Re: [GZG] Question: small-arms tech and troop quality....

On Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 9:52 AM, Ground Zero Games <jon@gzg.com> wrote:
> Here's a deliberately vague and provocative question to get a
> stimulated debate going...... <GRIN!!>
>
> "Is one super-trained elite special forces soldier with the best
> cutting-edge high-tech weapon worth 25 untrained farmers with
> shotguns?"

Maybe.	More importantly, 8-12 super-trained elite special forces
soldiers with the best cutting-edge high-tech weapons are worth 250 or
more untrained farmers with shotguns.  A lot of the advantages of
training and discipline come into play with unit cohesion, morale, and
effective teamwork.  The horde of untrained folks are going to run
away a lot sooner if they run into problems, and aren't going to be
able to use their numbers to good advantage, and may even inflict
casualties on each other by accident.

> OK, now to put it a little bit into context.....
>
> If we have a (game) situation where there are five levels of troop
> quality from 1 = Untrained up to 5 = Elite, and similarly five bands
> of "tech level" where 1 = primitive firearms (that's "primitive" in
> the SF sense, eg: early to mid 20th century stuff, bolt-action rifles
> and such) and 5 = highly advanced weapons (plasma/fusion rifles),
> then is it in any way reasonable to calculate effective firepower by
> a simple multiplication of the two factors?

No.  A lot depends on factors beyond the weapons themselves.  Body
armor and sensors play into the question as well.  For instance, at
night the best weapons in the world don't help without night vision
technology, and farmers with bolt-action rifles and night vision would
lunch on anyone without night vision.  Further, if the high-tech
troops are armored in, say, Traveller-type battledress, the low-tech
fighters literally cannot penetrate and hence can only injure the
high-tech troops with heavy crew-served weapons.  So masses of
riflemen become irrelevant to firepower calculations and useful only
to delay and harass and hide the heavy machine guns and antitank
rifles that can actually kill the battledress.

On the other hand, if no one is wearing armor, then the tech levels of
the weapons become much less relevant and the training of the troops
become paramount.  M-14s vs. Super-tech gauss rifles is small enough
of a difference that it almost gets lost in the noise compared to
troop quality, presuming that the gauss rifle is simply an assault
rifle with light-weight ammunition, high muzzle velocity (and hence
superior armor penetration) and somewhat higher rate of fire--though
if it gets too high the benefit is lost to a shoulder-fired weapon
without a built in fire control computer and stabilization system.

> will matter a lot. All I'm talking about is the ability to place an
> effective weight of fire down on a target area, at whatever we decide
> to be the effective combat range for a given type of weapon.

When it comes to that, I tend to feel that crew-served weapons are as
important or more so than the rifles in question.  Good machine guns
can make up for inferior rifles if you have enough of them.  While the
Germans had inferior rifles to the US troops in WWII, the fact that
they had a superb and technologically superior machine gun which was
integrated into every single infantry squad more than made up for
that.  And the superior US combined arms and fire support trumped the
firepower of German squads in any case anyway.	:)

I have deliberately ignored the question of plasma/fusion rifles, as
it all depends on how one wishes to treat them in game mechanical
terms.	The precise characteristics of the weapon must be more
concrete to determine the effects of the weapon on tactics.

John
-- 
"Thousands of Sarmatians, Thousands of Franks, we've slain them again
and again.  We're looking for thousands of Persians."
--Vita Aureliani

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