From: David Chong Newsgroups: rec.games.miniatures.misc Subject: Re: Dirtside II Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 13:12:37 -0800 Organization: UCCSN System Computing Services In-Reply-To: <49pltb$qbc@roch3.eznet.net> On Sat, 2 Dec 1995, Iceburg wrote: > I too have a set of house rules. Mine include rules for commandos, > mortat teams, cruise missiles, air to air dog fighting combat, surface > to air missiles (SAMs), and many rule changes as well. > > If people are interested, I'll convert it to text (it's in MS Word > now) and post them here. > > I'd be interested in seeing what you've come up with for air to air > combat as well. I wonder how close our rules might be. > > I've even written a QBasic program that draws chits. You just type > the number you want to draw and it tells you the total red, yellow and > green values as well as if a special chit was drawn. > > -Greg I'd very much like to see what you have written - please do post your rules here, I'm sure others would benefit from them as well. Of particular interest to me are your air to air rules and such (SAMs, cruise missles incl.), and your rules for mortar teams. I am not very happy with these aspects of the game. Following are summaries of what has already been discussed, what points I have found could use work, and included are my gaming group's house rules. ARTILLERY: On Artillery: the responsiveness of tactical artillery support is lower in Dirtside II than it is on the modern battlefield. On-board, "company" - level mortars have between a 25% and 50% chance of being "unavailable" in a 15-minute turn, depending on the quality and type of stand calling the fire. In a game where the figure scale is 1:1 and command is at the battalion level, I find that ridiculous. What are my mortars doing roughly a third of their time, for 15 minutes, if not supporting their parent unit? In a larger scale, such as 1:platoon, I could swallow this as representing "fog of war", shoot and scoot, or what have you. But when I have the single vehicle on the table and one of the 12 units it is supporting can't get it to fire over a 15 minute period, that is unacceptable. We have therefore installed a stop-gap house rule that mortar teams/vehicles attached at the company level automatically land. Again, even this is a lower level of coordination than exists with, say, the modern M-1A2/Paladin artillery system. Also a problem with artillery and bombs is effectiveness. Infantry walking around in a field are just as vulnerable as infantry dispersed within buildings in the middle of a city. This is, again, ridiculous. Soft cover such as forest (and for that matter hard cover such as buildings) aid infantry not merely by physical protection from shell fragments: their great aid is in obscuration. It is difficult to call in fire or drop bombs effectively when you cannot determine the precise location of enemy troop concentrations. Seeing one or two troops milling about does not mean you have located the enemy to such a degree that directing fire on their position will have the same effectiveness as if the target were playing volleyball on the beach. Our house rule, again stop-gap until we write/read something better: artillery fire at infantry in cover (soft or hard) draws HALF as many chits as normal, rounded down. In order to claim this benefit, target stand must be _completely_ within said cover - cannot be on edge firing out, claiming cover by contact, etc. MORALE: Allen Goodall mentioned in a post that he had written some morale rules. I'd be very interested in seeing these, as I have never seen a platoon survive long enough to have _any_ effect from morale checks. I think a morale check for simply taking fire is in order. Artillery and airstrikes should _certainly_ have morale effects, which they do not in the core rules. I hope Allen posts these. OPEN TOP ARMOR: Open top armor is mentioned in the rules, but there is no benefit whatsoever to designing a vehicle so-equipped. Therefore, we decided that open top armor cuts a vehicle's base point value in half. (cost of size + cost of armor). MOBILITY: We wanted our motorcycles in on the action! The mobility rates for wheeled vehicles were not appropriate for an all-terrain bike. High-Mobility 2-Wheeled: Base Move 12. Cost: 20% BPV Special: No turrets may be mounted on the vehicle Terrain - Easy: Roads Normal: Open, Lt. Scrub, Urban Poor: Cultivated, Hills, Light Woods, Rough Difficult: Swamp, River/Stream (crossing), Dense Woods Impassable: Mountains, Open Water AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT Any aircraft armed with one or more MDC, HEL, RFAC, or GMS weapon systems may use its activation to attempt to engage an enemy aircraft. These weapons are considered to have a high-volume rate of fire - large- caliber single-shot weapons are innapropriate for the high speeds and angles of attack inherent in Air Combat. A/A combat may be declared as opportunity fire, interrupting the activation of an enemy air unit. This is called "interception". When an enemy air unit declares its intention to activate, a friendly, previously unactivated aircraft may elect to intercept it. This declaration of opportunity fire must be made as soon as the enemy aircraft activates. A player may not wait and see where an enemy intends to run a ground attack before declaring interception. An intercepted target aircraft must decide whether it intends to "engage" or "evade". If the target engages the intercepting aircraft, whatever action it was originally taking is abandoned. Attempting to evade allows the target to continue its original activation, provided it survives the A/A interception. Note that multiple interceptions may be declared in response to one another, as in a domino effect. Record the order of activation, and targets. When all sides are finished declaring interceptions, resolve the combats one at a time, with the _last_ attack to be declared being resolved first. This gives some small advantage to the units which declared their actions first, as they are given the choice to engage or evade, or, if their attackers are eliminated, do not have to choose at all. Important Note: All interceptions on a single aircraft must be declared simultaneously. A player cannot declare one interception, and then wait to see the outcome before activating additional fighters to intercept the same aircraft. If player A intercepts player B's fighter 17 with one aircraft and loses, fighter 17 is no longer subject to interception. EVADE procedure: The attacker rolls based on the aircraft's fire control system. FCS on an aircraft is taken to be not only to be the guidance systems for the weapons, but also the radar and sensor suite. Thus, this is a 'detection" roll. A Basic system rolls a D6, Enhanced D8, and Superior D10. An aircraft without an FCS may roll a D4, attempting a "visual" interception. The defender (the intercepted aircraft) rolls based on its signature, class 1/D12, 2/D10, 3/D8, 4/D6, and class 5 rolling a D4. If the defender has ECM, it may have a secondary die roll: Basic/D4, Enh/D6, Sup/D8. If the attacker rolls a higher number than the defender, the defender has been intercepted, and the attacker conducts A/A fire. If the rolls are equal, the defender was forced to abort its activation in order to escape the attacker, but no fire is conducted - both units are activated, and play continues. If the defender rolls higher, it successfully evades interception and may continue with its original mission or remains unactivated as the case may be. ENGAGE procedure: Both fighters involved in the combat roll a competitive die roll. This roll is an ADDITIVE roll, meaning any primary and secondary dice are totalled, rather than taking the best result. The primary die is based on the pilot skill - any veteran pilot will tell you pilot training is far more important in ACM than hardware. A Green pilot rolls a D4, Regular/D8, Veteran/D12. Each aircraft is eligible for a secondary die based on the A/A rating of the aircraft (explained later). An aircraft without an A/A rating (without air-to-air capability) does not get a secondary die. Aircraft with a rating of Poor roll a D4, Fair/D6, Good/D8, Superior/D10. The aircraft with the highest total die roll conducts A/A fire. If the rolls are equal, _both_ fighters conduct fire - essentially a simultaneous head-to-head shot! A/A FIRE Procedure: The firing aircraft draws a number of chits based on the A/A rating of the aircraft. An aircraft without an A/A rating may not draw chits - in the event that such an aircraft "won" an engagement, this means it was able to outmaneuver and escape its assailant. A Poor aircraft draws one chit, Fair/2, Good/3, and 4/Superior. All chits count, including specials. Mobility hits are equivalent to taking out the target's engine(s) - the aircraft is lost, but the pilot may eject. Results are as follows. The target uses its flank armor value. Less than target armor value: Target aborts. Equal to armor: Target is damaged, must RTB (Out of the game) Greater than armor: Target is disabled, pilot may bail out Systems (T): No Direct fire or A/A fire, _may_ drop DFO. Systems (F): Shot not resolved, and same effects as Sys (T) Boom: Boom Mobility: As greater than armor result. "Bailouts" are really only relevant to campaign games. A/A RATING The A/A rating of an aircraft is a measure of its overall capability in ACM (Air Combat Maneuvers). Size, electronics, and weapons all contribute to the A/A capabilities of an airframe. The following system is my attempt at reconciling the general capabilities of an aircraft with the design system of Dirstside II. Signature Base Rating 1 20 2 10 3 0 4 -10 5 -30 6 -55 ECM Value Basic 1 Enh 2 Sup 3 Weapons Value Class 1 DFG (any type) 4 Class 2 DFG, GMS/L 7 Class 3 DFG, GMS/H 10 Each Ordinance Capacity -4 *Note: Ordinance capacity makes an aircraft "dirty", and not optimized for ACM, thus the penalty. Defenses Value Basic PDS 4 Enhanced PDS 6 Superior PDS 8 *Note: PDS are not the same in aircraft as in ground vehicles. Rather than an anti-missle system, these are electronic and thermal decoys and the like, and do _NOT_ count against the aircraft's total mounts. Fire Control System Value Basic 4 Enhanced 7 Superior 10 *Note: FCS in aircraft cost more, because they do more: calculate cost at 10 x class of largest weapon. Rating: 10 or less: Poor 11-25: Fair 26-40: Good 41 or more Superior This system has worked well thus far in playtest, but I am open to any suggestions on tweaking the values or ratings bands. Note that superior aircraft should be hard to come by, and they should be "pure" fighters, not fighter-bombers, or if so, then few and far between. Note that fighters do have a nice strafing ability. That's it! Hope you like them. If you use or reprint these rules, please include my name with them. David Chong dgc@scs.unr.edu From: David Chong Newsgroups: rec.games.miniatures.misc Subject: Re: Dirtside II/ Air to Air Date: Tue, 5 Dec 1995 15:08:21 -0800 Organization: UCCSN System Computing Services I forgot to add one section of my air rules. in my previous post... CAP An aircraft may declare itself to be on Combat Air Patrol, thus using up its activation. Aircraft so - activated may take no other action during the turn other than declaring interception fire on an activating enemy aircraft. Thus, the turn may end with several fighters on CAP, if no one wants to initiate air superiority operations, but wants to retain the ability to respond to such. Essentially, these units are partolling the airspace over the battlefield, watching for enemy aircraft, especially those attempting air to ground runs. Note that an aircraft on CAP, since it has used its activation, may not be used later in the turn to activate for an A/G strike. David Chong dgc@scs.unr.edu