SST: Evo and BF: Evo compatibility

[GreyDL]

This really seems like a funny idea, but I keep wondering if it will really work. I'm also really interested in seeing how MGP has solved hte following issues

By biggest concern is that shooting in SST is based on the assumption that forces use accurate fire - no to hit rolls, the only deciding factor is whether the weapon can damage the target. My understanding is that in modern (ww2 and onwards) warfare it is actually just the other way around. When firing at a human with modern weapons, the biggest concern is hitting the target. While there is a lot of discussion about wound profiles and such, I would guess that it is safe to assume that any hit will seriously affect the fighting capability of a human fighter. This is assuming that he is not completely drugged etc.

IMHO games based on "real life" modern combat can easily look quite ridiculous because of rules abstractions. A far future plasma rifle with a range of 20 metres might just be OK, but what about an assault rifle? It becomes quite silly if the rightmost guy in a line can't reach the leftmost one with his rifle.. Or a 'nuke' that won't hurt you if it goes off at the other end of a mcdonalds counter

How can the weapons be made comparable? Anti-Tank weapons for example. In WW2 the best man portable rockets would penetrate around 200-300 mm of steel. Current comparable weapons penetrate more than 1 metre. I'd guess that the difference between modern and SST is even more extensive than between WW2 and modern. If a SST AT weapon does D10 damage, would a modern one do like D6.. how to build a good system with that. Or just rule that modern AT weapons are ineffective against multiwound SST models or something like that?

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Matt said the rules would be compatible, but the stats less so. Personally I can't wait to have a platoon of Exosuits take on an armoured force, regardless of how balanced they are it'll still look cool.

 

[mthomason]

Yep I reckon it'll work just great with a few tweaks here and there - maybe even something as simple as giving a -1 on damage on all modern weapons used against SST figures...

The points may be a bit harder to balance out, but I never really give a damn about balancing sides using points in the first place and just like to set up an "interesting battle"

 

[CudaHP]

Who knows too, the BF-EV stuff may need no tweaking at all.

At least we can hope so.

 

[mthomason]

Yup, we can only wait and see

I'm pretty certain that any adjustments would be pretty minor, though, if any are needed at all.

 

[roughneck GIR]

I'll use the chance of mixing the two together to have modern day US marines fend off bugs in the ruined remains of cities and a jungle research facility or 2 8) , oh and thanks Bu, sp 36 has made me want to make a nice glimmering painted pool or 2 with some styrofoam

 

[CudaHP]

I rationalyze the whole hit then wound vs Target issue as follows.

The target stat has been calculated or adjusted to account for both hit and wound, plus you are using automatic Assault Rifles firing in bursts, not single shots. Target takes all of this into account.

Using my reasoning there is no problem to be reconciled.
Target handles it all with one roll of a die related to one Stat.


If you don't buy this explanation try being anywhere within 800 to 1000 yards or meters, your choice, of an expert marksman with modern optical sights. At 600 meters with a stationary target (for the Time of Flight of the bullet) and tell me which eye you want hit. That would be the equivalent of the Morita Long Sniper Rifle or in modern terms M21 scoped in 7.62 or HK91 in 7.62 with good scope.
The above statement on hitting a 2.5 to 3.0 inch target at 600 meters is based on actual experience, not conjecture, and not one lucky shot.

Firing in short controlled bursts by well trained (Spec Ops or truly Elite type troops) MI or Special Forces, Seal, Delta, Spetnaz etc. etc. can be surprisingly accurate, unlike what you see in movies or TV. It is all up to the skill and ability to handle combat stress of the weapon operator or operators in question.

Additionally it is a game first and foremost.

We can get completely bogged down with trying to account for every possible physical variable until the game system becomes unuseable.

I prefer a game at least as play worthy as the current SST.

Just my feelings about trying to be too real world with a game.

 

[Sgt. Brassones]

You have some good points Cuda. Combat today takes place mostly at close range. Look at the current kit of the USMC; the M4 assault rifle, short barrel, open-eye optical sights. I suppose in a modern day game you could make the Target number high, say 5, and the Kill number just one more, say6 with no armour save except against fragment type damage. Meaning a little more difficult to hit but if you do it will probably result in a kill. This makes cover as important as it is in real life as it's the only way to save your ass.

 

[Kristovich]

That's something I like, but what if a soldier is in the open?

Maybe give 'em a low Target and Kill value but cover boosts both of 'em greatly to really represent the need for cover?

 

[roughneck GIR]

You have some good points Cuda. Combat today takes place mostly at close range. Look at the current kit of the USMC; the M4 assault rifle, short barrel, open-eye optical sights. I suppose in a modern day game you could make the Target number high, say 5, and the Kill number just one more, say6 with no armour save except against fragment type damage. Meaning a little more difficult to hit but if you do it will probably result in a kill. This makes cover as important as it is in real life as it's the only way to save your ass.

And so close encounters+weaker modern weaponry=bugs win, bugs have marines for lunch?

I guess to some extent we could play BF:E right now, using lami and some vehicles/tanks and what you guys have come up with rules-wise :wink:

 

[emperorpenguin]

. Combat today takes place mostly at close range. .

yup when you consider that assault rifles are designed for use at an effective range of 300 metres, that's only really 2 or 3 times the effective range of muskets!

 

[BuShips]

I'll use the chance of mixing the two together to have modern day US marines fend off bugs in the ruined remains of cities and a jungle research facility or 2 8) , oh and thanks Bu, sp 36 has made me want to make a nice glimmering painted pool or 2 with some styrofoam

Although I do like the way Ian Barstow did his "Editor job" in the mag, the photos in S&P can't be large enough to show the detail of my "water" (although you could use the zoom feature within Acrobat Reader to some extent). Thus, I'll let you ignore the dinosaurs for now (they weren't in the article, but... :wink: ) but you can see that this angle of my "inland sea" or bay works well. The ripples on the surface were achieved when I used my thick clear overcoat and conformed the brushstrokes to the shoreline. Glad you were inspired!

Here are the other two "waterholes", but I don't recommend drinking from these, heh. I wanted to represent algae-choked stagnant water areas. As far as the topic of this thread goes, the dino's were my attempt at doing a mixed-theme scenario option, much like modern against the bugs. When I was a kid I had a favorite comic called "Star-Spangled War Stories", about WW2 soldiers on a Pacific island with dinosaurs "Lost in Time".

 

[BuShips]

That's something I like, but what if a soldier is in the open?

Well, then they might get shot? :wink:

 

[emperorpenguin]

cool crocodiles!

or are they 'gators!? :wink:

 

[BuShips]

cool crocodiles!

or are they 'gators!? :wink:

Well, the "babies" up front are models of modern critters, but the big bad alligator (sort of) following her children to lunch is actually a model of a Deinosuchus, close enough scaled to work with SST minis. A Cretacious ancestor of the modern alligator, the fossil skull they found was longer than a man is tall: six feet, seven inches. When they scaled the missing parts of the fossil to find out the length of the entire animal, they estimated the creature might have been around 40 feet long (!). Originally it was thought to be linked to modern crocs, but lately they are connecting the linkage to alligators according to wiki. Talk about a mousetrap! :shock:

 

[Sgt. Brassones]

cool crocodiles!

or are they 'gators!? :wink:

Well, the "babies" up front are models of modern critters, but the big bad alligator (sort of) following her children to lunch is actually a model of a Deinosuchus, close enough scaled to work with SST minis. A Cretacious ancestor of the modern alligator, the fossil skull they found was longer than a man is tall: six feet, seven inches. When they scaled the missing parts of the fossil to find out the length of the entire animal, they estimated the creature might have been around 40 feet long (!). Originally it was thought to be linked to modern crocs, but lately they are connecting the linkage to alligators according to wiki. Talk about a mousetrap! :shock:

Oh, so you watched "Super Croc" on the National Geographic Channel too... :lol:

 

[BuShips]

Oh, so you watched "Super Croc" on the National Geographic Channel too... :lol:

Sadly, no. It sounds like a good show though. I was buying "museum" models (as opposed to toys) at a local store (yes, in the toy department, heh) and next to the T-rex models was what looked like an alligator model. As these were all from a company in Germany called Schleich and were all scaled to each other, I thought "What's up with this model?. It's out of scale" Then I saw in tiny letters the name "Deinosuchus" and knew it was a "Dino-saur" :roll: (big hint that it was). The Schleich models come with a little booklet in many languages that gives the scale and stats. Since the "gator" was in the Cretaceous period that was also the same period as the Velociraptors and T-rex models that I was getting, I thought "Now this little honey should make a nasty surprise if it was in a shallow bay or sea within a jungle terrain board." That's why there are three water features included within the jungle board I made for S&P #36. One of the traps for the poor unlucky MI chaps traversing the board to run afoul of in a separate article not yet seen is mama 'suchus and her three hungry babes waiting for the MI insode of the Bug deployment area :wink: . With a mouth like that, she'll be able to use an MI shock stick to clean her teeth with after a crunchy snack of Mobile Infantry. :twisted:

 

[Kristovich]

That's something I like, but what if a soldier is in the open?

Well, then they might get shot? :wink:

No kidding :shock:

What I mean was, there was talk about a Target value of 5+ representing the need for cover. But if a guy is in the open he isn't that hard to kill so I was saying perhaps 2+ Target value and cover raises it about 5+, but darned if I know for sure.

 

[GreyDL]

The target stat has been calculated or adjusted to account for both hit and wound, plus you are using automatic Assault Rifles firing in bursts, not single shots. Target takes all of this into account.

Using my reasoning there is no problem to be reconciled.
Target handles it all with one roll of a die related to one Stat.

Well at least in the current SST rules system the target value has nothing to do with how difficult a model is to hit - only how resistant it is to damage. According to the designer's notes, hard-to-hit models get a dodge save.

I am not really concerned about whether the games will be 'balanced'. My concerns are
A)will the look&feel of a mixed game be silly. This should not be a problem when using bugs. But I have doubts when it comes to MI vs. modern. I fear that the MI will not be different enough in terms of firepower.
B)when the starting point is so different (the main concern is hitting vs. causing damage), how can a single ruleset cover this neatly.


Of course there are also many other minor concerns. One example is the modelling of modern body armour. Troops really shouldn't get saves agains rifles, but have protection against handguns/smgs/etc. Give all AR:s piercing? That would generate problems in mixed games. Or maybe give modern troops no save, but have low powered weapons have a negative piercing value that can be exploited by units that are armoured. Either way I think it would lead to more cluttered rules, although I personally somehow like the negative piercing thing

SST seems to me like a game system where the rules try to represent the models accurately. Not like e.g. 40K, where models can be seen as abstract game pieces with some abstract rules, that do not necessarily have much to do with how they are represented in the background.

 

[BuShips]

That's something I like, but what if a soldier is in the open?

Well, then they might get shot? :wink:

No kidding :shock:

What I mean was, there was talk about a Target value of 5+ representing the need for cover. But if a guy is in the open he isn't that hard to kill so I was saying perhaps 2+ Target value and cover raises it about 5+, but darned if I know for sure.

Yeah, it wasn't a critisism as much as it was to note that as CudaHP said (and GreyDL now), getting hit is pretty much going to happen. The variable chance of a fatal hit is whether the bullet is stopped by the body armor, or perhaps either penetrates directly or bybasses the armor such as a head shot or under an armpit (which is what I've heard happening sometimes). So far, Mongoose isn't going to go down that road of madness from what I've read, but they might get interested if the players work out a conversion for them to look at. S&P would be a great first effort to play with these options.