Re: [GZG] Small arms tech and troop quality

>Hi Jon,
>
>I come out of lurkerland to give some opinion (for once)...
>
>>  was that effective range probably does NOT alter between
>>  quality
>>  levels as much as SGII depicts; the argument for this was
>>  that poorer
>>  troops tend to open fire at longer ranges than they should
>>  do in an
>>  attempt to prevent the enemy closing with them, even if
>>  they can't
>>  really do anything effective at that sort of range. Better
>>  quality
>>  troops have the fire discipline to wait until the enemy are
>>  close
>>  enough that their fire can really be effective, so might
>>  actually
>>  start firing at a CLOSER range than the poor ones.
>>  The outcome of the discussions was pretty much that for
>>  game purposes
>>  we'd be better off using fixed range bands for all
>>  troops rather than
>>  variable ones by quality level. The firers' quality
>>  would then be
>>  taken into account in the weight of effective, directed
>>  firepower,
>>  not at the range it was used.
>>
>>  However, this is not yet set in stone, and I'd welcome
>>  further
>>  discussion and input here.....
>>
>
>It is true that badly (or no) trained troops tend to fire sooner and 
>farther, and mostly at full auto, but that´s just usually a waste of 
>ammo. While a gun might have an effective range of a few hundred 
>yards, the real effectiveness is in hitting the target, not in the 
>shooting itself. Luck, of course, is a factor (as always), but a 
>good shot at 200 yards is more effective than a hundred bad shots at 
>400... unless, of course, one of those 100 actually hits.
>
>Before I start ranting... my point is that IMHO and rulewise, you 
>should look at the effects of the shooting, not the number of actual 
>shots that would have been fired. The SGII rules does this very 
>well, but it can forget that "flight-of-the-intruder" lucky shot 
>that was impossible, but actually hits.
>
>In my (admitedly, very few) games, we tried to simulate this with 
>additional range bands for lower quality troops. They more or less 
>would equate their standard (shorter) bands with the elite-troops´ 
>ones in length, but they had an appalingly bad possibility of 
>hitting (additional d4 dice, taking the worst result). I must admit 
>that it had no real influence in the game, but at least the player 
>with the better troops was quite careful with the movement of his 
>troops, even at long range, "just in case".
>
>It is just an idea, but if it helps... well, there it is.
>
>(as for the simulation of the bad fire discipline of green troops, 
>we also used some borrowed rules from Heavy Gear tactical, adding 
>another "ammo roll"  after firing full auto repeteadly, which they 
>did very often... but had to discard them because the green troops 
>with auto guns ran out of ammo quite fast... which we thought was 
>more realistic, but turned into boring games).
>
>My 2 cents.
>
>David

Thanks for the input, David, very welcome.
What you've said is pretty much the same as the result of the test 
list discussion - that while poor troops are not very effective at 
longer ranges, they SHOULD still be allowed to fire, because 
otherwise better troops can simply stand off just out of the range of 
any return fire.
If the better troops know there is still a chance, however slender, 
that they just MIGHT be hit by their poorer opponents then it makes 
them act much more carefully.
The quality-dependant ranges in SGII work well enough, but it is true 
that they can give some odd results in certain circumstances. In 
DSII, on the other hand, we used fixed ranges by weapon type, and I 
certainly don't recall anyone grumbling about it.

Jon (GZG)

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