Author Topic: Vehicle of the Week: Savannah Master  (Read 47603 times)

Weirdo

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Re: Vehicle of the Week: Savannah Master
« Reply #90 on: 30 October 2012, 21:13:08 »
i'd not want to drive a SM with no weapon and just a limited amount of support supplies. i'd say go with one or the other (IMO, the sensor dispenser would be most useful since a SM makes a great scout), and stick a small laser, or even an ERsmall to make it capable of self defense. Ersmall would be preferable once the tech becomes available, for the increased range.

That seems like trying to do too much with too little to me. Larger units can go multipurpose, but at the scale of the Savannah Master you really have to specialize. Be either a strike tank or a support unit, but not both. To me, what you propose would end up being armed just enough to get itself killed, especially since scout duties usually imply solo deployments instead of the roving packs usually used by S_Ms. As an example, look at the Lexan. It tries to be both a scout and a combat VTOL, and winds up being poor at both roles.
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Welshman

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Re: Vehicle of the Week: Savannah Master
« Reply #91 on: 30 October 2012, 22:22:33 »
i'd not want to drive a SM with no weapon and just a limited amount of support supplies. i'd say go with one or the other (IMO, the sensor dispenser would be most useful since a SM makes a great scout), and stick a small laser, or even an ERsmall to make it capable of self defense. Ersmall would be preferable once the tech becomes available, for the increased range.

That's more a strategic decision. You don't let an individual pilot decide if he's going to carry a pop gun, you let the Colonel decide what he wants from his mission.

If I want my people doing recon, I'm darn well not going to give them the guns to be stupid. :)
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Diablo48

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Re: Vehicle of the Week: Savannah Master
« Reply #92 on: 31 October 2012, 04:00:36 »
That seems like trying to do too much with too little to me. Larger units can go multipurpose, but at the scale of the Savannah Master you really have to specialize. Be either a strike tank or a support unit, but not both. To me, what you propose would end up being armed just enough to get itself killed, especially since scout duties usually imply solo deployments instead of the roving packs usually used by S_Ms. As an example, look at the Lexan. It tries to be both a scout and a combat VTOL, and winds up being poor at both roles.

While I fully agree with you on the subject of the laser, I might still consider a single RL-10 as a backup weapon.  It is really not enough to encourage your pilots to do anything stupid on their own, but it does let them smack the enemy if they happen to run into them while making it very clear that they need to get the hell out of there after they take their one shot from the random encounter.  That unexpected shot will also do more to slow the enemy down than seeing an unarmed scout because even if it misses the fact that you took a shot at them will make the enemy wary of ambushes.  It also gives them a bit more secondary utility in a fight by allowing you to group up your scouts for a quick strike at the rear of the enemy line without putting them in too much danger because the enemy should know better than to waste time killing the empty rocket platforms, and if not then at least they are not shooting at something that still matters.


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SCC

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Re: Vehicle of the Week: Savannah Master
« Reply #93 on: 11 December 2013, 18:33:50 »
Yeeeah, that's not someone to game with. Ick.

Mine was a legit move by one of my longtime local gamers who saw an opportunity and lunged at it before I could get out of the trap (we had other units that needed to move first).
You know this trick would work with VTOLs, which would be really weird