Re: [GZG] Small arms tech and troop quality

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's keep some focus here.

Jon has already pointed out that the resolution he was looking into
would
involve *subsequent* additional factors like range, cover, and so on. So
the
issue he is looking at isn't range independent. This eliminates the
immediate need to consider reduction of effective firepower levels with
range. It also eliminates the 'who has greater maximum range?' question.

What he's really asking could be boiled down to:

How do you relate various tech levels and various quality levels to
aggregate firepower from a figure at point blank range?

---------------

Jon:

Having thought about what I tried to implement in a D20 skirmish game
that
me and a few friends were noodling around, I took a very similar
approach -
anyone can fire at any range up to and including maximum weapon range,
efficacy being a product of quality/skill and perhaps weapon tech.

So, using weapon range as maximum range makes sense, as long as
effective
firepower drop-off with range is greater for poorer troops and lesser
for
better troops.

I like to see a degree of a random factor involved in the resolution,
just
so it isn't a straight excercise in accounting to calculate hits. But
that
factor shouldn't be huge, just enough to matter sometimes. Whenever I
see
straight addition or division for calculations, it makes me think nobody
every has a good or bad day, which just doesn't map to reality.

------------

As to the issue of better troops being harder to hit:

Study your wars. A lot of very good troops died when not employed
correctly.
That is to say, elite special units have been wasted when forced to
fight as
conventional line troops. Plenty of elite troops have sucked up bullets
during assaults and so on.

Veterans are more careful (sometimes timid if they are battle weary).
They
do know how too use cover better. But they are also highly motivated
units
and are often given very tough fights to handle and thus tend to take a
fair
number of casualties.

In static defense, or 'in position', I think that better troops may be
harder to dig out (fallschirmjager in rubble for instance). In the open,
during an assault, much less so. They still have to cross open ground
and
really can only run as fast as normal guys. So if I was to award them
any
defensive benefit, it would be a small one and one associated with being
in
cover and/or in position.

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