Re: Re: [GZG] DSIII q

John Lerchey replied to Grant Ladue:

 >Ah. Ok, that's actually in there to some exent. It's not clearly
spelled
 >out enough yet, however.
 >So, let's say Unit A is attacking Enemy A. They start slugging it out,
and
 >after a few TCRs (that's Tactical Combat Rounds boys, it's a technical

term!)
 >Unit A can now see (has LoS to) Enemy B. Unless Enemy B JOINS the
 >firefight, Unit A cannot initiate fire against them. They are focussed
on
 >units involved in the firefight. Now, that said, I've found it very
hard
 >to make that make sense in play in certain situations. For example, if
 >Enemy A is withdrawing and passes through Enemy B, and Enemy B is
something
 >like APCs, and Unit A is tanks, it seems unlikely to me that Unit A 
should not
 >be able to light up the APCs while chasing Enemy A.

Agreed; this situation is currently not handled well. Changing the
"Target 
Priority" rule to something like "Elements involved in a FireFight may
only 
fire at enemy elements which are already involved in the same FireFight,
or 
which are located between the firing element and elements already
involved 
in the FireFight" would work better - OK, that sentence obviously needs 
more work to become understandable, but the intent with it is that if 
you're already fighting an enemy unit you can also shoot at any other
enemy 
that gets *between* you and the enemy you're already fighting.

 >>I don't know. I'm not sure that I've seen enough to justify my
 >>"feeling" for it. I am starting to wonder though if the "time change"
is 
too
 >>drastic.
 >>It's like there should be an intermediate phase between "non-combat"
and 
"all
 >>out firefight". Not sure about that though. Hmmm....
 >
 >I'm not sure what an intermediate phase would be for.

Neither am I; that's why DS3 doesn't have one <g> See my previous reply
to 
TomB and Laserlight for more on this.

 >The current explanation is along these lines for how the game turn is 
broken >down.
 >
 >First, the designers kept the 15 minute Game Turn.
 >Ground scale and figure scale were also retained from DSII.
 >Looking at the speeds of units in DSII two things bubble up.
 >
 >1) Vehicles are SLOW. Flat out most can't achieve 15mph.

... and the only vehicles capable of achieving 15 mph were Combat VTOLs
in 
Travel Mode and AeroSpace craft; the maximum possible speed for DS2 
*ground* vehicles was 7.5 mph (for Grav and Fast GEV vehicles) :-/

 >2) Combat drags. [...] You might achieve 1:1 kill
 > ratios in FIFTEEN MINUTES.

In comparison, the Gulf Wars of the past fifteen years featured several 
actions where US armoured units wiped out numerically superior Iraqi 
armoured units within a couple of minutes in spite of the Iraqis
initiating 
combat... and I've read eyewitness accounts from WW2 German tankers that

were surprisingly similar too, with Panthers in particular knocking out 
more than their own numbers of Soviet tanks in the space of a few
minutes. 
You can't do that in DS2 :-(

[...]

 >So with a problem defined, there were a number of things that were
viewed 
as >"fixes".
 >
 >1) Increase speed. Tanks NOW can move at 60mph on roads.

To clarify: While most of today's MBTs "only" do 40-50 mph on roads,
most 
of today's wheeled APCs like the Stryker both can and do move at 60
mph... 
and historically there have also been tracked tanks (eg. Christie's 
designs) which managed around 60 mph.

 >3) When the actual combat does occur, *that* is where you want to
spend 
your >time and attention. Also, you want to have some mechanism to allow
a 
platoon to >kill or be killed at a greater than 1:1 ratio inside of a 15

minute window. OA >can speak much more coherently about this than I can,

but it does make sense.

Coherent? Not when I'm this tired... <g>

 >Rates of fire (including laying in the target) are generally a *bit*
higher
 >than 1 target in 15 minutes. :)

Yeah... under ideal conditions, today's tanks can reach rates of fire of
1 
target per 4-6 *seconds*. DS3 justifies its 20-second tactical combat
round 
length by assuming that conditions rarely are that ideal - the tank may 
have to move around a bit to get a clear line of fire to its next
target, 
or shift to new firing positions if fighting turret-down, or search
around 
some seconds longer to locate the next target, or fire back-up shots at 
targets already shot at to make sure that they really are destroyed,
etc. 
(Firing back-up shots is fairly common today, since a TC often doesn't
have 
time to determine what effects the first shot at an enemy vehicle had 
before it is time to fire the next shot. Note that DS3 includes the
effects 
of such "double-taps" in the standard to-hit mechanics, ie. scoring a
"hit" 
means "at least one of your shots hit the target".)

 >The flow is,
 >Activate one or more units.
 >Move a long, long way fast to find/engage the enemy.
 >Blow the crap out of each other.
 >Other guy gets to activate.
 >Repeat til everyone is dead or broken.
 >:)

DS3 essentially aims to take the old description of combat as consisting
of 
"long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense terror" and
shift 
the time scales so the player can concentrate on the terror instead of
on 
the boredom <g>

 >[...] In DS3, from the dozen or so games I've played in the last year,
it
 >usually both works and feels right. There are quirks that come up,

...and which we try to correct as quickly as possible - after all,
finding 
quirks and trouble spots is what playtesting is all about! ('Course, one

drawback with fixing problems ASAP that is that the playtesters 
occasionally forget which rules were the latest version... ;-) )

 >Sorry for rambling... I had the need to explain stuff. ;)

And you did far more succinctly than I could, too :-)

On OGREs:

 >>Cool. It would be a real shame if oversized vehicles aren't well
integrated
 >>into the new rules. Off the top of my head, I am thinking that
massive
 >>firepower (like an Ogre) would tend to short circuit a firefight. Of 
course,
 >>that may be right... :-)
 >
 >Yeah. I'm thinking (not having tried it yet) that OGREs are gonna
rock, 
or be
 >totally lame. The biggest problem is that a game like OGRE just dosn't
 >translate well into a different frame of reference.

Translating the "feel" of one game faithfully into another game is
always 
difficult; it is usually much easier to capture the feel of SF novels.
IOW, 
don't work too hard on modeling *OGREs* in DS3 - concentrate on
modelling 
*BOLOs* instead ;-)

 >In OGRE, the OGREs can usually move farther in 1 move than max weapons

range of >the enemy (give or take). Time slices are done in standard 
"turns". Ganging up >(adding attackers to improve attack odds) counts
(in 
DS, other than counting on >BOOM chits, it really doesn't matter how
many 
RFAC/1s you have, you aren't >getting through 7 points of armor).

Assume that those Light GEVs have GMSs as well as light autocannon, or 
remember that while an RFAC/1 has no chance to *destroy* a target with 
Armour/7 it can still *damage* it ;-) (An OGRE module would be less 
vulnerable to Special Damage outcomes than normal vehicles are though, 
since the track modules are unaffected by "Systems Down" results while
the 
weapon modules are unaffected by "Immobilized" results.)

 >So, what are my expectations for when I try this out?
 >First, I'm going to armor the crap out of the OGREs. In DS3 terms, the

lowest >armor is likely to be around 8, and could easily go as high as
12. 
I'm also >likely to bump the OGREs armor die up to a D10.

I don't really favour increasing the Armour Die type, because it makes
the 
armour performance less predictable - D10s and D12s have higher maximum
and 
average results than D8s do, but they still roll "1"s occasionally. The 
only real reason to increase the Armour Die type instead of the Armour 
Rating is to make the OGRE harder to hurt with larger heavy weapons
while 
still allowing Size/1 weapons to damage it...

 >Now, the scary part is that the OGRE is going to be able to fire 
everything it
 >has during each TCR. Just like a tank platoon on huge steriods. A Mk
III 
will
 >have a DFFG/7 (or 8, I don't remember what I put on it), 4 MDC/5s, 2 
missiles
 >and a pile of Light (class/0 anti-soft target) weapons, and superior
fire
 >control, and will be either an Orange or Red unit.

Being robotic, it should also have a Motivation Number of 0.

 >If the OGRE is swarmed (hit by a company) it could suffer badly. OTOH,
if it
 >gets to initiate, it's going to pick out an enemy platoon and vaporize
it.
 >I really have no idea of how well (or badly) this will work, but my
next DS3
 >game is likely to be a sigle Mk III going after a command post
defended 
by >crunchies and squishies (normal tanks and infantry). I'm betting
that 
it'll be
 >ugly, but fun ugly.

I'm looking forward to it :-) Which reminds me that I still haven't
painted 
my own OGREttes - those Mk Is and Mk IIs might not be any good against
real 
OGREs (Mk IIIs and larger), but they're still a handful for lesser
vehicles <g>

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry

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