Help with ATOW combat

[DevianID]

Can someone run me down an example of an infantry v infantry action they did with ATOW?  We dabbled very lightly in it, with lots of rules that were wrong im sure, but MAN is it deadly.  Id just like to see what kind of actions and cover and such people used.  As newbies for ATOW we didnt have ranks in acrobatics or anything, just green infantry in terms of infantry skills.

Grenades or support weapons are super scary I guess.  1 grenade at ap2 d8 half killed 3 guys in the blast range, and we just used 2 to wipe them.  They had x4 rated armor, so we calculated the impact person took 6 damage and the ones 1 meter away took 4 damage.  Sound right?  They had 8 total health, which i think is average, so 2 grenades splatted the trio, from behind cover.

Also, towards the end of the fight, we kinda realized... our LMG gunner can kinda just shoot through walls all day at enemies he cant see?  Cause AP5 cuts through all normal interior walls and such?  Obv need a spotter or something, but still... was cool, but the implications are, well, terrifying that the enemy could just blat us from a hidden position.  Makes very scary attacks as your cover, unless really sturdy, isnt gonna help much beyond a hit penalty.

[Atlas3060]

A Time of War combat is very deadly, unless you use something like the "Heroic" rules option they have in the companion book that pretty much beefs up the health, fatigue points, and speeds up the healing of the characters. There's also the Lethality reduction rules on page 192 for the regular book.

The grenade 2X/8A that you bring up would do that much damage at point of impact. Then the AP and BD as it spreads reduces by 1 until we reach 0. If there's any barriers or things in the way to take the damage, they'll eat it first.

If you have armor that's 4x in protection, in theory that should soak up the blast fairly okay.
Because the 2X isn't greater than the 4X, it won't do full damage. You reduce it by the difference.
So in this example, the 2X/8A gets knocked down by 2 because Armor is greater (4-2=2) so instead you deal 0X/6A.
Regardless of the attack’s nature or the armor’s strength, an attack’s AP and BD may not be reduced below 0

Don't get me wrong, that's still going to hurt but not a full 8 damage kind of hurt. Plus if they do have barriers between them and the grenade, the cover is going to eat the damage first and then your armor worries about what you take from that.

The 1 meter away guys would face 1X/7A damage which would be reduced to 0X/4A thanks to drop off damage and their armor (4 from Armor - 1 from the reduced damge distance means there's a result of 3 in the armor's favor. Take that 7A and reduce by 3 to get the final damage which is 4). So those folks would probably have a better day compared to the one at the point of impact.

You're still going to be dealing with Fatigue and various modifiers due to your damage taken, making sure you're no longer stunned, etc, but you'll live.
Well you'll live until the second grenade pops off.

Light Machine guns are nothing to sneeze at. 5B/3B with the burst, yeah they're going to eat through most commercial and civilian grade barriers given how BAR rates the exterior of a house somewhere in the 4 region.
Now the thing is, sure you can cut through a wall, but remember that you cut through a wall.
Have fun with it, someone puts that much damage in a building, maybe that's a load bearing wall and now this crazy gunner has to deal with a room partially collapsing.

[Daryk]

I posted a whole series of infantry vs. infantry scenarios at AToW scenarios (linked in my sig block)... those should at least help illuminate some of the things you're asking about...

[DevianID]

Atlas3060 sounds like we did grenades right then.  We tracked that damage was 6 to the first troop and 4 to the second 1 meter away.  Cover didnt help, they were all behind cover but we just threw the grenade behind the cover they were using.  Stun, as I understand it, just reduces their shots back from 2 to 1, as it takes one of your 2 actions to clear stun.  It does mean they cant sprint, i guess.  Fatigue didnt matter in our game, though I think maybe we calculated the KO wrong.  Because each troop had only 8 health+ 8 fatigue, and no one dealt non-lethal damage, no one hit 8 fatigue without dying.

If the 2nd grenade immediately after the first hadnt killed them, I guess the one that took 6 damage, (75% max) would have a -3 to rolls?  And the ones that took 50% damage would have -2 to rolls?  We killed them before it got to that point where we learned about injured modifiers.

Daryk I saw your scenario, it was pretty close to what we had to do, but we had a squad of PCs not a platoon.  I didnt see any results there though, how did that game go?  Also I thought it was interesting in the thread there that 16 made the same observation, the 5b machine guns cut right through walls and doors, so we got that right by the end of the night.  We were not using suppression fire well to have the SAW target multiple hexes though.  How would you do that with your 5 meter hexes?  Treat suppression as activating 5 times to suppress a single 5 meter hex in Catalan, using 5-25 bullets for -5 to -1 to hit anyone moving into that hex?

[Daryk]

I think Daemion played out at least one of those scenarios.  I'll have to give Suppressing Fire some thought tonight after work...

[Atlas3060]

Atlas3060 sounds like we did grenades right then.  We tracked that damage was 6 to the first troop and 4 to the second 1 meter away.  Cover didnt help, they were all behind cover but we just threw the grenade behind the cover they were using.  Stun, as I understand it, just reduces their shots back from 2 to 1, as it takes one of your 2 actions to clear stun.  It does mean they cant sprint, i guess.  Fatigue didnt matter in our game, though I think maybe we calculated the KO wrong.  Because each troop had only 8 health+ 8 fatigue, and no one dealt non-lethal damage, no one hit 8 fatigue without dying.

If the 2nd grenade immediately after the first hadnt killed them, I guess the one that took 6 damage, (75% max) would have a -3 to rolls?  And the ones that took 50% damage would have -2 to rolls?  We killed them before it got to that point where we learned about injured modifiers.

Yeah much like in real life or any decent X-Com game, if someone is chucking two grenades at you then you won't live a long or good life.
Injury modifiers work on a -1 to your roll for every 25% of health you take.
So yeah you got the numbers right.
If they survived, then the movement rates are ganked up to hell and back too. You can't expect to walk decently if you're mangled up after all.
Fatigue itself I doubt will ever really matter compared to damage unless you specifically plan to just taze a subject or subdue them instead of outright killing.

Your fatigue points calculate to double WIL last I recalled and the modifiers don't matter until you get X amount of fatigue at or greater than your WIL score anyways.

Battletech's RPG systems aren't anything like a dungeon crawler-esque game where you can slap around 20 Kobolds just getting out of a room.
Heck our Kobolds are literally a Battle Armor, it hurts. 

[Daryk]

OK, Suppressing Fire is on pages 174-175 of AToW.  Given the description of it in terms of 1-meter hexes, I'd just require 5 times as many rounds be spent in each 5-meter hex, and apply the to-hit rolls as written.  It would take a pretty high burst value to go very far with 5-meter hexes.

[DevianID]

OK, Suppressing Fire is on pages 174-175 of AToW.  Given the description of it in terms of 1-meter hexes, I'd just require 5 times as many rounds be spent in each 5-meter hex, and apply the to-hit rolls as written.  It would take a pretty high burst value to go very far with 5-meter hexes.

Yeah thats what I figured, suppressing a single 5 meter line in the hex, not suppressing all 19 1 meter hexes that fully fit within a single 5 meter hex.