Author Topic: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?  (Read 26019 times)

Daemion

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From the Scale and Size thread:

I was under the impression that damage from infantry was mostly dictated by what sort of crew-served or support weapons they are equipped with? So blazing away with your Federated Long Rifle might not do more than scratch the paint & annoy the pilot, but the platoon's support PPCs? A little more effective...

Damon.

I wish it were that way, but enough fiction has the platoon sandblasting. Not only that, but the Infantry Rules from CityTech onward had the damage dropping by number of guys in squad, and it wasn't a large drop. You could wipe out 4 or 5 guys in some instances to see a mere single point drop in platoon damage output.

It was that way under the old BattleDroids rules - infantry platoons only had so many support weapons of a particular type which you might recognize: Small Laser, Machine Gun, or Flamer. While the wording of the rules suggested that a whole squad was wiped out per point of damage, I actually imagine it was the support weapons taking rather accurate or overpowered hits that left each squad/platoon worthless to track for the rest of the board game.

I would have been fine with Mechanized Infantry being looked at as a nebulous number of vehicles, like motorized, if it weren't for wording in Tech Manual which explicitly stated that each platoon had a full vehicle per squad, so I can't look at platoon damage as wiping out a vehicle with a hit, because it varies by weapon damage output. And, you're still dealing with the same life-meter and odd damage devaluation based on number of guys, too.

Tack onto that the weird thing in construction that the mass of Federated long Rifles does the bulk of the damage, but the support weapons give that damage its range in Tech Manual, and that blows the whole notion of the damage simply being the support weapons out of the water with the current set of rules.

Personally, I like the notion of the Support Weapon being the deciding factor for a squad against an armored target. Just think about the original choice for Battle Armor main weapons, how it effectively made each suit as powerful as a squad.

I know what I'd like to see for infantry depiction and rules, and have gone a few steps to make some house rules that play it that way.


So, with that out of the way, I open up the discussion with the question: Does the current ruleset meet your expectation of how infantry should function? How have you always imagined the damage working compared to how it works, numberwise? How deadly do you think the futuristic battlefield of the 31st and 32nd century aught to be for the grunt? Should he be fully covered over to avoid burns and such from stray shots and the like?

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Daryk

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #1 on: 17 February 2018, 07:20:20 »
Well...

1) Broad brush, I think infantry functions reasonably under the current rules set, but the lack of consistency between TW and AToW drives me crazy.  Paul has previously stated that what drives some of the craziness was an early directive from on high to preserve the infantry tables from Combat Operations.  I would prefer the damage conversions working in both directions with a single formula.  I'd also prefer to eliminate BA weapons as a class.  There is really no good reason not to use infantry support weapons to arm BA.  That said, some of the existing BA weapons should be available as infantry support weapons (BA Tube Artillery, I'm looking at you... you're basically an 81mm mortar).

2) How I resolve the actual mechanics of infantry weapons doing damage to heavy vehicles is to imagine the longer range granted by secondary weapons is tied to their ability to provide targeting information to the rest of the squad.  The math is less than desirable at the moment, but doesn't have to be.  I actually don't have much trouble imagining a futuristic auto-rifle firing ammunition that can damage heavy armor en masse, and even less trouble imagining grenades that can do so.  4AP/4BD with a 15 round burst is designed to be beyond anything we can do today in that small of a package (compare to the vintage weapons).  That said, the 5AP/5BD with 20 burst of the Support Machine Gun is quite close to the M2HB.

3/4) Yes, the average grunt needs body armor, without question.  "Armor" with less than 5 total BAR across all types of damage (i.e., a divisor of 0.5 per the Companion page 170 conversion rule), yields double damage to infantry.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #2 on: 19 February 2018, 20:13:15 »
So, with that out of the way, I open up the discussion with the question: Does the current ruleset meet your expectation of how infantry should function?

Absolutely not. I think infantry along with a number of the other systems ought to be completely reworked.

Quote
How have you always imagined the damage working compared to how it works, numberwise?

I think that Infantry Rifles, from the humble bolt-action rifle, all the way up to the Mauser IIc, ought to deal 0 Damage against Mechs, Combat Vees, and Aerospace. Flat Zero against anything carrying BAR10 armor. Probably against anything carrying BAR5 armor. I think that if infantry platoons want to deal damage against these targets, they should have to be statted out with explicit anti-mech weapons. Likewise, I think the rules for the mech/vee/asf/ba machine guns should change. They should deal 0 damage against real armored targets (bar5+) and deal their actual damage only against unarmored infantry and the weaker side of support vees. In return though, they should get more substantial ranges. But, despite doing 0 damage, they should still register as a "hit" for the purpose of criticals. They should deal their zero damage, with no chance at a Through Armor Crit, but with a chance of dealing a Crit to exposed components, to reflect the way that internal equipment probably wouldn't like having bullets hit it.

Quote
How deadly do you think the futuristic battlefield of the 31st and 32nd century aught to be for the grunt? Should he be fully covered over to avoid burns and such from stray shots and the like?

The 31st Century Battlefield ought to be a terrifying place that an unarmored infantryman wants no part of. His role should come in after the mechs and combat vees have done their job.

If you want to make me REALLY happy, there ought to be rules for using the high powered microwave antennas of an ECM suite for anti-infantry purposes. Allow an explicit ECM Suite like the Angel/Guardian/Watchdog/Clan ECM to deal damage against infantry in a manner similar to a flamer, but without starting actual fires, by microwaving the water in an unarmored infantryman's brain and making their heads go all Scanners.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #3 on: 20 February 2018, 19:06:53 »
Absolutely not. I think infantry along with a number of the other systems ought to be completely reworked.

I think that Infantry Rifles, from the humble bolt-action rifle, all the way up to the Mauser IIc, ought to deal 0 Damage against Mechs, Combat Vees, and Aerospace. Flat Zero against anything carrying BAR10 armor. Probably against anything carrying BAR5 armor. I think that if infantry platoons want to deal damage against these targets, they should have to be statted out with explicit anti-mech weapons. Likewise, I think the rules for the mech/vee/asf/ba machine guns should change. They should deal 0 damage against real armored targets (bar5+) and deal their actual damage only against unarmored infantry and the weaker side of support vees. In return though, they should get more substantial ranges. But, despite doing 0 damage, they should still register as a "hit" for the purpose of criticals. They should deal their zero damage, with no chance at a Through Armor Crit, but with a chance of dealing a Crit to exposed components, to reflect the way that internal equipment probably wouldn't like having bullets hit it.

The 31st Century Battlefield ought to be a terrifying place that an unarmored infantryman wants no part of. His role should come in after the mechs and combat vees have done their job.

If you want to make me REALLY happy, there ought to be rules for using the high powered microwave antennas of an ECM suite for anti-infantry purposes. Allow an explicit ECM Suite like the Angel/Guardian/Watchdog/Clan ECM to deal damage against infantry in a manner similar to a flamer, but without starting actual fires, by microwaving the water in an unarmored infantryman's brain and making their heads go all Scanners.

I think infantry should get better weapons, i want swarms of lrms flying from a single platoon.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #4 on: 20 February 2018, 19:10:02 »
Infantry getting better weapons is fair, but they should have to actually carry them. None of this "well, we list an autorifle, but they damage the mech with implied but never detailed equipment" garbage. You want swarms of LRMs from your infantry? Sure, let em lug disposable launchers that fire a LRM. But, they've gotta actually drag it, and any other launchers, across the field, or have a vehicle carrying them.

Get rid of the awkward mechanized platoons and make them actually embark/disembark from explicit vehicles too. Support, combat, or otherwise.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #5 on: 20 February 2018, 19:14:07 »
If they disembarked then they could swarm...is this really what you want lana, to get swarmed? Cause this is how you get swarmed!
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #6 on: 20 February 2018, 19:19:25 »
Infantry getting better weapons is fair, but they should have to actually carry them. None of this "well, we list an autorifle, but they damage the mech with implied but never detailed equipment" garbage. You want swarms of LRMs from your infantry? Sure, let em lug disposable launchers that fire a LRM. But, they've gotta actually drag it, and any other launchers, across the field, or have a vehicle carrying them. 

I'd like to think if the infantry is in a hex with plenty of ammo, they can be very dangerous.  (Troopers just grab another LRM/SRM launcher after firing each volley.)

Leaving the hex (or if it is hit with fire or AoE damage) will reduce the infantry unit to just what it can carry.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #7 on: 20 February 2018, 19:54:04 »
I'm pretty much OK with it. I'd like to see infantry as a useful part of the battlefield, at least under appropriate circumstances, and I can live with the current level of abstraction, even if the way damage is calculated, and how it drops off don't necessarily align with "reality".

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #8 on: 20 February 2018, 20:20:47 »
Some days I like to return to the 'infantry=red stains' days whenever the someone makes a 'why are 'mechs kings of the battlefield?' post. TW paints allot of things in broad strokes and no one would use PBI or combined arms if they couldn't inflict significant damage on the battle field so I'm cool with it as is (and it gives MGs a better place in BT)

AToW does a better job with the detail from the infantries point of view in a way that makes sense. 
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JadeHellbringer

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #9 on: 21 February 2018, 02:16:35 »
I'm pretty much OK with it. I'd like to see infantry as a useful part of the battlefield, at least under appropriate circumstances, and I can live with the current level of abstraction, even if the way damage is calculated, and how it drops off don't necessarily align with "reality".

At the end of the day, that's kind of the issue too. There's a distinct difference between 'simulation' and 'game', and the latter relies more on abstraction and streamlining to keep things moving and fun as opposed to the realism and detail of the former. I'm all for house-ruling if you don't like how rules are set up- I know my group used to use more than a few, and so long as everyone is aware of the changed rules, go nuts. But, at the end of the day I'm not sure that overhauling infantry (again) is a great idea- they're much tougher than the used to be (not saying much, granted!), without making things a lot more complex and time-consuming, and I'm not sure there's much to be done to keep that time management problem from ballooning if you make changes now. Let's be real- this is already a slow-moving and detail-oriented game, and having niche units (by that I mean non-Mechs) become bigger time drains likely won't help encourage people to want to use those units.

Then again, I'm also open to being proven wrong, so if you have good ideas for alternate rules, post them down in the board game section of the forums and let's see what you have. (Which is Hellbie-speak for 'don't put them here', of course ;) )
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #10 on: 21 February 2018, 04:25:56 »
Absolutely not. I think infantry along with a number of the other systems ought to be completely reworked.

I think that Infantry Rifles, from the humble bolt-action rifle, all the way up to the Mauser IIc, ought to deal 0 Damage against Mechs, Combat Vees, and Aerospace. Flat Zero against anything carrying BAR10 armor. Probably against anything carrying BAR5 armor. I think that if infantry platoons want to deal damage against these targets, they should have to be statted out with explicit anti-mech weapons. Likewise, I think the rules for the mech/vee/asf/ba machine guns should change. They should deal 0 damage against real armored targets (bar5+) and deal their actual damage only against unarmored infantry and the weaker side of support vees. In return though, they should get more substantial ranges. But, despite doing 0 damage, they should still register as a "hit" for the purpose of criticals. They should deal their zero damage, with no chance at a Through Armor Crit, but with a chance of dealing a Crit to exposed components, to reflect the way that internal equipment probably wouldn't like having bullets hit it.

The 31st Century Battlefield ought to be a terrifying place that an unarmored infantryman wants no part of. His role should come in after the mechs and combat vees have done their job.

This.  I have my own house rules for infantry which are shockingly similar to this.  Infantry can only damage BattleMechs and armored vehicles with specifically identified support weapons.  This can be modified and abstracted to a degree by using "mechanized infantry" which, to my thinking, assumes the APC/IFV transports mount said support weapons.  Field guns are another option that make infantry significantly more effective against 'Mechs and armor and can be towed by mechanized infantry.

Not sure about the fundamental change to the "machine gun" stats, though.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #11 on: 21 February 2018, 10:46:02 »
Does the current ruleset meet your expectation of how infantry should function?
Yes, with no reservations. Infantry are fun to use, and having fun is the primary purpose of this game.
Quote
How have you always imagined the damage working compared to how it works, numberwise?
I've always imagined damage from infantry being based on shot grouping. To-hit rolls and cluster rolls aren't about actually hitting the building-sized robot right in front of you, they're about coordinating with the guys right next to you so that your shots land in the same spot to combine their effects and deal that one or two points of damage. Failure on the to-hit or cluster roll doesn't mean you missed the mech, it means your shots went off and hit some random armor plate on their own, and weren't enough to have any effect. Yes, I'm aware that there are edge cases that don't fit in that. It's a game, I don't let it bother me.
Quote
How deadly do you think the futuristic battlefield of the 31st and 32nd century aught to be for the grunt?
As deadly as the rules make it. You make the game fun to play, and only after that do you adjust the narrative to fit the game. This isn't an rpg, the narrative does not come first.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #12 on: 21 February 2018, 14:26:24 »
Never liked the current mechanized infantry conceptually. I’d rather vehicles follow vehicle rules and not be abstracted as another unit type with additional rules to bridge the gap.

On one hand I agree with Weirdo that infantry are fun and usable in their current form. I might tweak the rules to make the tables more uniform with other aspects of the game.

On the other, I am bothered that the Lords of the Battlefield™️ are susceptible to piddly small arms fire. Maybe bothered is strong. Is there an overly specific compound word in German for something like “only mild annoyance as when a fly lands on your fork”?

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #13 on: 22 February 2018, 00:58:09 »
Never liked the current mechanized infantry conceptually. I’d rather vehicles follow vehicle rules and not be abstracted as another unit type with additional rules to bridge the gap.

On one hand I agree with Weirdo that infantry are fun and usable in their current form. I might tweak the rules to make the tables more uniform with other aspects of the game.

On the other, I am bothered that the Lords of the Battlefield™️ are susceptible to piddly small arms fire. Maybe bothered is strong. Is there an overly specific compound word in German for something like “only mild annoyance as when a fly lands on your fork”?

I'm 100% with Weirdo on this one, more options for unit types is not a bad thing! Sure, your infantry is weak compared to mechs, but even the oldest sourcebooks state that infantry can be the deciding factor on the battlefield indicating that every unit has it's place.

The rules already place enough emphasis on mechs, they don't need to down grade any other units further tyvm.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #14 on: 22 February 2018, 01:28:52 »
But, at the end of the day I'm not sure that overhauling infantry (again) is a great idea- they're much tougher than the used to be (not saying much, granted!), without making things a lot more complex and time-consuming, and I'm not sure there's much to be done to keep that time management problem from ballooning if you make changes now. Let's be real- this is already a slow-moving and detail-oriented game, and having niche units (by that I mean non-Mechs) become bigger time drains likely won't help encourage people to want to use those units.

Then again, I'm also open to being proven wrong, so if you have good ideas for alternate rules, post them down in the board game section of the forums and let's see what you have. (Which is Hellbie-speak for 'don't put them here', of course ;) )

I was gonna say. There have been good ideas put up down there, like removing the weird to-hit gunnery and messing with the cluster chart instead, or working damage by squad support weapon, and having armored units attacking those instead of amorphous mobs.

I think you are wrong about the detail and slow thing when it comes to infantry. The real issue is what detail are you going to focus on that can still make them believable when you let the gameplay make a picture in your mind's eye? It really is a matter of simply changing styles, which means the tracking bodies thing might be what should have been put on the wayside.

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Phobos101

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #15 on: 23 February 2018, 02:34:35 »
Never liked the current mechanized infantry conceptually. I’d rather vehicles follow vehicle rules and not be abstracted as another unit type with additional rules to bridge the gap.

This 100%. I don't see why a game so detailed it simulates the effects of damage to individual parts of individual limbs just handwaves a whole vehicle.
Also small arms should not damage mechs, and should not damage armoured vehicles either.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #16 on: 23 February 2018, 08:00:44 »
Interesting how people are so firm about the in-universe performance of fictional firearms from a thousand years in the future, especially against armor plating that does not exist in any form in the real world.

I can only presume there's some source out there showing how they'd perform, probably followed by the results of Chobham vs phaser tests. Can anyone link me to this source?
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #17 on: 23 February 2018, 11:52:53 »
I mean, a federated long rifle is basically an AR family weapon with a germanium based KF bolt carrier group, since it has no buffer tube to retreat into. Pick any flavor of AR you like, and shoot at an Abrams tank for as long as you like. You aren't getting through.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #18 on: 23 February 2018, 12:03:58 »
How do you factor the thousand years of materials/propellant/other advances, or the fact that the Abrams' armor bears little to no resemblance to Battletech armor?
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #19 on: 23 February 2018, 12:46:10 »
Well, I'm going off apocryphal mentions of things like a small laser being a credible threat to a modern MBT. If a small laser can slag an Abrams, and BT armor is only taking minor amounts of damage, I can surmise that it's incredibly unlikely that they've crammed anything near equivalent into a rifle cartridge. And if they have, I would be afraid to fire that from only sixteen to twenty inches away from my unarmored face.
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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #20 on: 23 February 2018, 13:22:31 »
I think BT rifles are very different from todays, as most seem to be heavier. My AR is just over 7 lbs while the long rifle is 10, and most other in the game are heavier still.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #21 on: 23 February 2018, 13:25:55 »
How do you factor the thousand years of materials/propellant/other advances, or the fact that the Abrams' armor bears little to no resemblance to Battletech armor?

Two reasons.

First, we've got several references to the performance and materials of rifles in the Battletech universe.  One I'm specifically thinking of is the assassination of Ryan Steiner, where the shooter goes through the calculations for shooting through the bulletproof glass, distance, etc.  There are other scattered references in different books as well, and all of them generally portray rifles as roughly equivalent to modern day weapons.  The Federated Long Rifle isn't really any better than an M-16 when it comes to shooting people.  And remember, you don't really want extreme penetration when it comes to anti-infantry weapons.  If your bullet has enough energy to go right through the guy and the brick wall behind him, then you've included too much propellant.  You could have more rounds in a smaller package if you cut back to only what was necessary to kill the target.

Second, it's dumb.  Guys killing mechs with assault rifles not only goes against our modern beliefs of how war is supposed to work, it goes against the "Kings of the Battlefield" role that mechs are supposed to fulfill.  It breaks suspension of disbelief.

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #22 on: 23 February 2018, 18:03:08 »
There's also the notion that you can fire it while on the move. That one MP in BT over 10 seconds is a dang fast run, and you're still trying to coordinate with your squaddies to line up a shot on a specific spot so that all your bullets hit to score as damage?

At a full run?

And, yet, the game allows it. They can move and shoot with light weapons.

That suggests gear that isn't mentioned in any write-up of BT infantry I've ever come across, like gyro-stabilized harnesses.

You ever watch the old Ghost in the Shell anime? There was a moment when a perp being chased by the Major loads some advanced propellant rounds into his gun. He has to stop and brace himself to keep from being knocked over, and he still slides back a few inches. That's what advanced propellants will do in your fire-arm. Better propellants means more force against you, harder recoil, and thus a significant decrease in accuracy.

Mech Ballistic weaponry seam to have recoil compensation built in, a guess as to why autocannons weigh so much compared to modern cannons in MBTs. People don't.

I can see an autocannon, appropriately designed and braced, landing a lot of its rounds home to a small area just fine. I have a hard time seeing that with a group of guys spread out all over, some in various stages of motion at the call to fire.  Under the older rules, I could see why even laser weapons could knock out a squad or so as simple direct energy weapons. The coordination required to line up a grouped shot from infantry would leave them vulnerable to that kind of retaliation in the moment they opened up.

The Total Warfare rules certainly suggest a more dynamic, fluid deployment of the platoon in a hex, but, the execution of their attack seems a bit too effective for that dynamism.

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Daryk

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #23 on: 23 February 2018, 18:49:56 »
As I stated before (not in these words, obviously), I'm with Weirdo on this one.

Current firearms have been given stats as the "vintage" weapons in the Companion, and they're significantly weaker than their 31st century counterparts.

I explicitly said my interpretation of the extended ranges of auto-rifles and other primary weapons when paired with longer ranged secondary weapons was down to sharing improved targeting information.  If you look at any of the faction armor kits, you see they all have relatively sophisticated communications built into their helmets, and more than one picture of them includes some kind of optical display (the one that springs immediately to mind was one of the old Lyran pictures).  It's a small step from this kind of information extending effective range to enabling effective damage to extremely complex machines with plenty of joints and other weak spots.

Maingunnery

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #24 on: 23 February 2018, 19:34:24 »

A few things are unnecessary complex. I would like to see that small arms do no damage to BAR5-8+ Armor.
And that simply BA weapons are used as support weapons, we just need a different calculation of squad platoon carry capacity.
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Daemion

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #25 on: 24 February 2018, 00:35:46 »
As I stated before (not in these words, obviously), I'm with Weirdo on this one.

Current firearms have been given stats as the "vintage" weapons in the Companion, and they're significantly weaker than their 31st century counterparts.

I explicitly said my interpretation of the extended ranges of auto-rifles and other primary weapons when paired with longer ranged secondary weapons was down to sharing improved targeting information.  If you look at any of the faction armor kits, you see they all have relatively sophisticated communications built into their helmets, and more than one picture of them includes some kind of optical display (the one that springs immediately to mind was one of the old Lyran pictures).  It's a small step from this kind of information extending effective range to enabling effective damage to extremely complex machines with plenty of joints and other weak spots.

I would be perfectly okay with that if that was something explicitly talked about in the infantryman's kit make-up. It suggests something else that isn't talked about - smart/homing rounds. But, point me to a page in any book describing infantry kit - do they have homing rounds for their front line infantry? Certainly would have been a great starting point for precision AC rounds, don't you think?

But, if that's the case, then the older BMR application of infantry damage as one large grouping or 5-point clusters would make more sense than the purely rules-bound for BAR sake 2-point clusters.

And, this also is forgetting something we seem to often forget as well, Mechs (and other armored units, but especially Mechs) are constantly moving, aren't really the plodding 'stompy' robots that people talk about them as. It's hard to target the 'weak' knee joint while it's on a pumping limb that doesn't seem to stop except for intermittent breaks in movement for whatever reason. And, I haven't even gotten into the supposition that there might be some sort of defensive algorithm or program that helps the Mech detect incoming shots, where they'll probably land, and turn a glancing, better protected face into that attack, thus letting the armor deflect the energies like it's designed to do.

And, lets not forget the ambient ECM that all war machines and units are putting up to make such targeted attacks difficult.



See, the real problem that we're facing is that nobody in charge has bravened up to actually come up with some final guidelines on how to interpret how advanced the BT setting is. The rules are schizophrenic when it comes to infantry and armor and their interaction with Mechs and buildings because there's no final word on how that should be reflected in the setting's gear, and how the settings gear should be reflected in even an abstract fashion for game rules.

The statement in Total Warfare that rules are rules, fiction is fiction, and art is art, is erroneous, or we wouldn't have people throwing fits over the placement of the Marauder's dorsal gun, the fact the Behemoth only has one, or the placement of the LRM Tube on the T-Bolt.

I certainly didn't, because I saw the placement as cosmetic, and that the bulk of the cannon for the Marauder probably simply extended into the right torso from the base of the gun, right where the ammo feed split away into the left torso. Or, some weapons, like the Atlas's hip-mounted LRM, are rapid-firing the appropriate number of missiles/beams. I had no problem with that, but later artists started adhering to the placement of the weapon on the table for a Mech being the deciding factor of the placement of the barrel opening on the picture. So, they certainly did.

I have no problem imagining that infantry weapons - specifically those armed for front line engagements with advanced armored units like Mechs - are able to fire rounds to sandblast away at the armor. There's special gear required for that though, and most likely training, as well. A level of coordination that you don't get with green troops. And, combat losses would hamper that unit ever getting very far. I have no problem with the notion that support weapons could increase the effective reach of said weapons by acting as a homing corridor, or weakening the armor enough that the hits have better chances of scoring damage.

But, the problem lies, then, in the fictional depiction of infantry, if that's the case. And, there still needs to be some tweaking with the rules, because that at least suggests the support weapons should be capable of great damage on their own, and not merely supplementation to the hailstorm.

And, if people have a hard time with that, and insist on infantry light weaponry not being very effective against futuristic armor, which I can also get behind, and that the fictional depiction of infantry kit is what we should adhere to, then the rules have to change.

I'm actually kind of fond of the 3rd option - that both are true. That the typical infantryman we've seen depicted in BT is the large rank and file, but what we see on the board is something outside that depiction, something truly special.

And, I'm with all the people having issues with the way Mechanized Infantry works. That's too big a disconnect, too abstract.


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monbvol

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #26 on: 24 February 2018, 01:33:51 »
As I stated before (not in these words, obviously), I'm with Weirdo on this one.

Current firearms have been given stats as the "vintage" weapons in the Companion, and they're significantly weaker than their 31st century counterparts.

I explicitly said my interpretation of the extended ranges of auto-rifles and other primary weapons when paired with longer ranged secondary weapons was down to sharing improved targeting information.  If you look at any of the faction armor kits, you see they all have relatively sophisticated communications built into their helmets, and more than one picture of them includes some kind of optical display (the one that springs immediately to mind was one of the old Lyran pictures).  It's a small step from this kind of information extending effective range to enabling effective damage to extremely complex machines with plenty of joints and other weak spots.

If it were that simple you wouldn't need the support weapon at all, just the targeting gear/computer.  Which there are a number of ways to get without having to lug around a big support weapon.

My main issue with infantry is that the way Total Warfare and Tech Manual sets the damages and ranges of the guns it does tend to make some weapons a bit too good, especially against armor.  Thus leaving me scratching my head why I should take certain weapons.

A particularly glaring example in my mind is the semi portable autocannon.  A Time of War stats say it is better against armor with an AP of 6.  BD is 3 and a burst of 25/-2 is possible.  So it should be a bit more reliable at hurting mechs than the autorifle and pretty devastating against enemy infantry.  Yet bring it to Total Warfare/Tech Manual and it doesn't offer any range benefits over the autorifle and thanks to it's crew of 2 it actually has a per person damage of 0.385 leaving it worse at everything.

In other words if autorifles are this good then why aren't other things better.

A few things are unnecessary complex. I would like to see that small arms do no damage to BAR5-8+ Armor.
And that simply BA weapons are used as support weapons, we just need a different calculation of squad platoon carry capacity.

At the very least the implications need to be changed more in favor of having the right support weapons for the right role.

I would be perfectly okay with that if that was something explicitly talked about in the infantryman's kit make-up. It suggests something else that isn't talked about - smart/homing rounds. But, point me to a page in any book describing infantry kit - do they have homing rounds for their front line infantry? Certainly would have been a great starting point for precision AC rounds, don't you think?

But, if that's the case, then the older BMR application of infantry damage as one large grouping or 5-point clusters would make more sense than the purely rules-bound for BAR sake 2-point clusters.

And, this also is forgetting something we seem to often forget as well, Mechs (and other armored units, but especially Mechs) are constantly moving, aren't really the plodding 'stompy' robots that people talk about them as. It's hard to target the 'weak' knee joint while it's on a pumping limb that doesn't seem to stop except for intermittent breaks in movement for whatever reason. And, I haven't even gotten into the supposition that there might be some sort of defensive algorithm or program that helps the Mech detect incoming shots, where they'll probably land, and turn a glancing, better protected face into that attack, thus letting the armor deflect the energies like it's designed to do.

And, lets not forget the ambient ECM that all war machines and units are putting up to make such targeted attacks difficult.



See, the real problem that we're facing is that nobody in charge has bravened up to actually come up with some final guidelines on how to interpret how advanced the BT setting is. The rules are schizophrenic when it comes to infantry and armor and their interaction with Mechs and buildings because there's no final word on how that should be reflected in the setting's gear, and how the settings gear should be reflected in even an abstract fashion for game rules.

The statement in Total Warfare that rules are rules, fiction is fiction, and art is art, is erroneous, or we wouldn't have people throwing fits over the placement of the Marauder's dorsal gun, the fact the Behemoth only has one, or the placement of the LRM Tube on the T-Bolt.

I certainly didn't, because I saw the placement as cosmetic, and that the bulk of the cannon for the Marauder probably simply extended into the right torso from the base of the gun, right where the ammo feed split away into the left torso. Or, some weapons, like the Atlas's hip-mounted LRM, are rapid-firing the appropriate number of missiles/beams. I had no problem with that, but later artists started adhering to the placement of the weapon on the table for a Mech being the deciding factor of the placement of the barrel opening on the picture. So, they certainly did.

I have no problem imagining that infantry weapons - specifically those armed for front line engagements with advanced armored units like Mechs - are able to fire rounds to sandblast away at the armor. There's special gear required for that though, and most likely training, as well. A level of coordination that you don't get with green troops. And, combat losses would hamper that unit ever getting very far. I have no problem with the notion that support weapons could increase the effective reach of said weapons by acting as a homing corridor, or weakening the armor enough that the hits have better chances of scoring damage.

But, the problem lies, then, in the fictional depiction of infantry, if that's the case. And, there still needs to be some tweaking with the rules, because that at least suggests the support weapons should be capable of great damage on their own, and not merely supplementation to the hailstorm.

And, if people have a hard time with that, and insist on infantry light weaponry not being very effective against futuristic armor, which I can also get behind, and that the fictional depiction of infantry kit is what we should adhere to, then the rules have to change.

I'm actually kind of fond of the 3rd option - that both are true. That the typical infantryman we've seen depicted in BT is the large rank and file, but what we see on the board is something outside that depiction, something truly special.

And, I'm with all the people having issues with the way Mechanized Infantry works. That's too big a disconnect, too abstract.

There are certainly a lot of issues in the game that are clearly artifacts of things tacked on after the fact that we're supposed to pretend were always there or worked the way they do now.  The interaction of infantry, combat vehicles, mechs, and buildings are certainly one of those things.

As far as disconnects of fluff and rules I tend to be of the mind that players should be able to re-create scenes and actions from the fluff as much as possible otherwise it is pointless to have any link between the fluff and the game.  Which includes artists should place weaponry correctly in the art.

Mechanized infantry, yeah having a proper vehicle with it's own record sheet instead of this weird abstraction we have now that adds unnecessary special case rules would be much better.

Domi1981

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #27 on: 24 February 2018, 04:23:17 »
Just my 2 Cents: Infantry should be way less complicated. But that´s a general Battletech issue. Furthermore, infantry with hand lasers and rifles shouldn´t be able to damage mechs and tanks. There is so much rule stuff I would boil down because its to cumbersome.

Carbon Elasmobranch

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #28 on: 25 February 2018, 03:41:16 »
If it were that simple you wouldn't need the support weapon at all, just the targeting gear/computer.  Which there are a number of ways to get without having to lug around a big support weapon.

My main issue with infantry is that the way Total Warfare and Tech Manual sets the damages and ranges of the guns it does tend to make some weapons a bit too good, especially against armor.  Thus leaving me scratching my head why I should take certain weapons.

A particularly glaring example in my mind is the semi portable autocannon.  A Time of War stats say it is better against armor with an AP of 6.  BD is 3 and a burst of 25/-2 is possible.  So it should be a bit more reliable at hurting mechs than the autorifle and pretty devastating against enemy infantry.  Yet bring it to Total Warfare/Tech Manual and it doesn't offer any range benefits over the autorifle and thanks to it's crew of 2 it actually has a per person damage of 0.385 leaving it worse at everything.

In other words if autorifles are this good then why aren't other things better.

At the very least the implications need to be changed more in favor of having the right support weapons for the right role.


Auto-rifles show a rather serious hiccup in the damage conversion formula.  The assumption of the formula seems to be that the weapon is firing at its full rate of 15 every time it's used by infantry in BT, but the reload factor is still going by the number of rounds in the mag (30) instead of the number of bursts per mag (2), and may only suffice for one turn's worth of fire, since infantry weapons have to fire more often than heavy weapons in order to deal damage.  If you went by bursts instead of rounds, the auto-rifle would end up as a mere .10 damage per trooper, at best.

Phobos101

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Re: Does Total Warfare Treatment of Infantry Meet Your Expectations?
« Reply #29 on: 25 February 2018, 03:51:50 »
Interesting how people are so firm about the in-universe performance of fictional firearms from a thousand years in the future, especially against armor plating that does not exist in any form in the real world.

I can only presume there's some source out there showing how they'd perform, probably followed by the results of Chobham vs phaser tests. Can anyone link me to this source?

Battleships were phased out because smaller, cheaper platforms (torpedoes, aircraft) could defeat them. The same would apply to the Battlemech: If you can disable it with sustained rifle fire, why build it in the first place? You could just go buy a whole heap more rifles instead.