End of BS characteristics

[Chopperdacat]

Ever since I read the Flames of War rulesbook and heard their explanation of hitting something (which is basically if you can see something you can shoot at it, and if it's not completely obscure you can hit it) I have contemplated rather or not the BS characteristic is useles or not. Of course, if there is a target at long range or your gun is garbage, hitting an object may be a problem. So, do you think that the Ballistic Skill characteristic should be rid of in 6th ed?

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[Walrus]

There wouldn't happen to be a .PDF or anything on the FoW rules?

[Chopperdacat]

Aug 29, 2011 17:55:15 GMT -5 Walrus said:

There wouldn't happen to be a .PDF or anything on the FoW rules?

on the flames of war website I'm pretty sure they have a brief description of the rules or something (called bootcamp)

[Walrus]

Google-Fu engage!

[The Black Jackal]

Well, a friend and I have been working on a simple-yet-more-realistic tactical wargaming system, aimed at simulating modern warfare.

If either of you are familiar with Ghost Recon (the original PC game and its expansions, not the crappy Xbox sequels), the goal is to be able to simulate any mission in that game faithfully on Elite difficulty (so the defender has fairly even odds at success).

[cheminhaler]

That sounds fine and realistic.. but what about the tyranids?

The game needs to compensate and be ... balanced.

I'm Libra, by the way.

[Chopperdacat]

I posted this thread on dakka and it was met with somewhat mild to hostile responses. I guess people will never realize that being hit or not really depends on the person being shot at.

[Walrus]

well, it looks good, but like chem said, Tyranids? Or even Orks, who aren't supposed to be able to hit a barn when standing inside one.

[The Black Jackal]

Well, while your base shooting roll is based on your troops' unit level (A through E, A is on the level of supersoldiers like Space Marines, Jason Bourne, River Tam and Master Chief, B is more SAS, Green Berets and other elite regular troops, C is a competent soldier like US Army or Marines, D represents lower quality soldiers like insurgents, civilian militia troops and police officers, and E is just us regular untrained civvies), there are a bunch of modifiers based on how much of your target you can see, any special concealment modifiers they may have and any weapon or equipment bonuses you may have. I figure that Orks and the little Tyranid gribblies would probably be D-level troops, but they'd get some sort of close combat buff (probably have a higher chance of killing their target or something).

Close combat is very quick and dirty (actually, so is shooting when any given infantry model has a 50% of dying from a weapon hit before modifiers), but I figure that the infantry rules work with the little gribblies just fine with a little tweaking.

The bigger gribblies would probably be best approximated as tanks (which I don't have rules for yet, as we want the infantry thing to work first).

This is a very small-scale game we're looking at here, usually no more than platoon-level, but more often than not it'll be at squad- or even fire team- level.

[Walrus]

That is actually really smart... And sharpshooters could have a higher class (eg marine sniper/sharpshooter shooting at a B instead of C)

[The Black Jackal]

Actually, the only real differences between snipers and riflemen are equipment. Snipers get a scoped bolt-action/semi-auto rifle as standard (so lower rate of fire but more accurate at longer ranges, with a bonus from the scope), with the option of either motion sensors (deployable tokens that give you line of sight, which is very important in this game, as most weapons don't have a maximum range), hand grenades (used as short-ranged blast weapons) or a pistol. They may also take either body armor or a ghillie suit, and extra ammo.

Riflemen, on the other hand, come with an assault rifle as standard (not as accurate at longer ranges as the rifle, but has autofire capability, where you basically declare how many attacks you're making with the weapon and resolve them one at a time against as many targets as you want, but each new target must be within 6" of another one, and then subtract the number of declared shots from the weapon's ammo capacity) and has the option of taking either a rifle grenade launcher (basically longer range hand grenade attack that requires LOS), hand grenades, motion sensors or a pistol. They may also take body armor and extra ammo.

Of course, there are going to be a bunch of little weapon upgrades like silencers, multiple ammo types, extended magazines, scopes, laser sights and the like available as well.

While your idea of sniperhood being a higher unit level isn't a bad one, I do have to pose one question that exposes a pretty crucial flaw: what about A-level snipers?

[Walrus]

That is a good point....

Aha! What if you give them a rule like 'Best of the Best of the Best' or 'A class above', that gives them a perk any other sniper doesn't get. I was thinking of moving and firing, or faster fire rates.

[The Black Jackal]

Well, we finally did some playtesting yesterday, and snipers are just fine with scope and stationary bonuses (although a bipod and laser sights certainly help). However, grenades are very possibly OP, but it could be due to the fact that neither of us are used to a game with no unit coherency and readily available secondary weapons with a 6" blast radius.