Robert S. Dean · 29 January 1992
Steve Higginbotham writes:
> Sorry, I was being facetious. My apologies, and all that. I can apologize
> in public on the list if you like...
No sweat.
> Seriously, I am aware of all these things. I was an Army brat with an
> unwholesome interset in the History of Technology and Warfare.
Well, as you an see by my mailing address (.army.mil) I derive my livelihood
from the army, though I find that few of my co-workers are very interested
in these sorts of issues.
> In fact, the M1 Abrams is essentially invulnerable to hand held anti-tank
> weapons. So is the British Challenger, I am given to understand.
Yes, and it can be worse in Traveller, since I can arrange things so that
the M-1 equivalent is armored all-around, instead of mostly in the front.
> Part of the difficulty is inherent in the short-sightedness of the GDW
> people: If Tank armour gets better, then SOMEONE will develop a weapon
> that can punch through it. GDW does not assume this.
They do, actually...it's just not necessarily going to be an infantry weapon.
> A quick and dirty fix: steal some of the PGMPs from 2300AD. The
> throw-away, high output models. That particular idea should be able to be
> upgraded to deal with any tank. (In fact, there is no reason that the HEAT
> round could not be upgraded to deal with the tougher threats)
>
> My particular picture of High Tech warfare has never included the FGMP
> anyway. Fire once, and everyone within LOS knows EXACTLY where you are.
> Expect a return message REAL SOON. I always liked the RAM auto launcher
> equipped Marine.
> Note that Battledress includes the extra muscle implicit in powered armor.
> These guys may be able to lug a 3/4 ton weapon if they have to. Certainly
> they could break it down to three luggable loads for the heavy weapons team
> to carry.
Actually, I seem to recall (without my rules handy today) that the extra
carrying capacity of a suit of battledress is about 200kg--which is why I
picked 3/4 of a ton--it's over the limit.
> Remember pinpoint hits also. I know that tanks have armor overall, and
> can't be pinpointed. How about the vision system? the sensors? The
> muzzle of their weapon? The heat exchanger from their fusion plant? There
> should be a LOT of vulnerable things outside the armour of ANY tank. And a
> pinpoint hit with a RAM grenade WILL punch through factor 60 armour, or
> even factor 75.
I don't like the pinpoint hit rule for a couple of reasons, having to do with
change overs from Striker. The first is the log armor scale. In Striker,
and in MT, there is a non-log region of the armor table (below 10?). Above
that, a difference of 8 in the armor factor is twice or half the protection,
as the case may be. Thus, the old Striker damage system seemed to be fairly
reasonable--a difference of +8 (twice the energy to penetrate) was almost a
sure kill. In MT, the table is the same, but now we have the multiplicative
factor (*2 *1/2) to determine high/low penetration. This leads to some severe
distortion at the upper end of the scale--if my armor is 40, 80 is needed to
get a high penetration. 80 is 2^5 (=32) times thicker than 40. 10 armor only
requires 20 (approximately double the thickness) to achieve a high penetration.
If I ever run a military campaign with MT, I'll probably make the high/low
penetration a subtractive difference of 8 rather than a multiplicative
difference of 2--the MT system seems to be trying to factor things in twice
and it doesn't work.
The second reason I don't like pinpoint hits is back to targetting ability in
general--I think that if systems are good enough to allow you to pick a
specific location on a tank that is less than 10% of the visible surface area
when that tank is a crossing target travelling at Mach 4 200kms away, then we
shouldn't even bother with a 'to hit' roll for a non-pinpoint shot. Esthetics
of the game mechanics don't jive.
> And if worse comes to worse, use collapsing rounds, nuclear weapons, and
> all that good stuff. A collapsing round CAN be stopped, but its NOT easy,
> and it will trash pretty much anything it hits. The Nucs are more
> vulnerable (to Dampers), but dampers are treated like Point defense weapons
> - they CAN be saturated. Toss enough Nukes, and some will get through.
Hmmmm...do the dampers roll as against indirect fire rounds (I think so)?
A TL15 PD system will roll 14-16 dice against indirect fire roounds, meaning
that the damper could reasonable expect to wipe out 50 or so nuclear missiles
before being overwhelmed. Gets expensive...
Collapsing rounds require damper boxes, which are not man-portable, which still
leaves us with "rifle infantry and a few anti-tank guns". I sometimes think
that a better analogy for TL15 infantry would be current infantrymen pitted
strictly against F-15Es. Sure, you can carry Stingers, but...
Rob Dean