Indirect fire rules

[Random Goat]

Hi

I'm a little confused by the indirect fire rules and critical hits. The rules say the if you 'hit' your shot lands d4 metres away - and if you critical hit you are dead on. What advantage does that actually give you if you are firing a howitzer with an area affect anyway?

Also if you fire rockets indirectly without HE area-affecting ammo does this mean unless you critical hit you do no damage? Each one lands d4 metres away. In this case if you do do a critical hit how many rockets hit?

If you miss with rockets the rules then gives 'the rockets land a number of hexes away' (rather than metres) - how do you then work out if rockets without area affect hit an enemy in that hex?

This section didn't quite make sense to me. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Goat

 

[Purkle-chan]

Hi.

Hi

I'm a little confused by the indirect fire rules and critical hits. The rules say the if you 'hit' your shot lands d4 metres away - and if you critical hit you are dead on. What advantage does that actually give you if you are firing a howitzer with an area affect anyway?

I couldn't give you an actual in game advantage, and I don't have my books handy. However, in general area affect gets worse the further the target is from the center of the blast. So getting something like that bang on target is generally always going to be preferable. Plus, things like the tac nukes do inflict less damage as you get further form the epicenter.

Also if you fire rockets indirectly without HE area-affecting ammo does this mean unless you critical hit you do no damage? Each one lands d4 metres away. In this case if you do do a critical hit how many rockets hit?

Without anything official, and without my books, I'd suggest some sort of dice roll to see how many out of the salvo hit. Either rolling a dX, where X is the number you fired, and that's how many hit, or rolling a d6 for each one and on a four up they hit. As for those that miss, there's always a chance that your target is going to be in the midst of a 'target rich environment', so those that don't impact your primary target might hit other meks/tanks/buildings.

If you miss with rockets the rules then gives 'the rockets land a number of hexes away' (rather than metres) - how do you then work out if rockets without area affect hit an enemy in that hex?

I think the wording might be a throwback to when they were still intending to include the table top rules in the main book. So you could take X hexes to be the smae as Y meters. As for whether or not they actually hit, probably something like roll a d20 for each one that lands in that area, with a target DC based on the mek's size, making it more likly that you'llhit larger meks.

This section didn't quite make sense to me. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks,
Goat

Hope all/some/a tiny bit of that helps, untill someone who knows more can add their two pennth.

 

[Random Goat]

Thanks, that does help some. Perhaps the errata may clear up some of the difficulties when published.

Goat.

 

[Lane Shutt]

Howitzer with area effect weapon - Targets in blast radius get reflex save for half damage. See personal combat rules.

Rockets - for single fire calculate impact point as normal.
- for ripple fire use rules on p104-105 to determine how many hit and where others land. Critical doubles number that hit.
- complete miss with ripple fire rockets could be treated as a hit on a non target hex then deviate from there. This would allow for damage to unintended targets. See example p103.

Non blast weapon hits in a hex - up to GM. If a target takes up a reasonable portion of hex then allow a chance to hit, lets say 10% for Tiny Mech up to 60% for Gargantuan Mechs. Tanks and other vehicles would have a better chance of being hit due to larger footprint relative to size category.

 

[Lane Shutt]

I think the wording might be a throwback to when they were still intending to include the table top rules in the main book. So you could take X hexes to be the smae as Y meters.

One Hex is 10m, confirmed in the example on p103.

 

[Random Goat]

Excellent, thanks. I appreciate all the help