more Striker...

>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.

So put micro-grav generators on it like the FGMP15 has.

>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.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.  In fact, the Striker Tables are
Logarithmic above 13.  I noticed this problem when we first acquired the
game, but it was not relevant in our play, since grav tanks never appear in
the course of play.  We haven't had a starship combat since 1990 (one of
our ships was shot up by the Zhos in the FFW).

>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.

Probably not.  However, under such extreme conditions, the to hit task
would be essentially impossible anyway, and the extra difficulty of a
pinpoint hit is irrelevant.  Note that a sizable (depending on task
difficulty) fraction of attempted pinpoint hits aren't any such thing.  You
SHOULD be able to TRY to pinpoint.  Whether you succeed is another question
entirely.

>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...

While Striker did not deal with the question, I doubt there is a good
reason that Damper Boxes cannot be smaller than the 3 ton  basic model.  A
man-portable version can weigh in at much as 150 Kg to get some useful
payload.  Surely between TL13 and TL15 they've worked out the portable box
for the infantry.  Then you fire a collapsing round from an anti-tank
rifle.
May still not be good enough.  In which case, as you say, we are back to
mid-WW2 in terms of infantry use.


My own analysis of MT/Striker combat produced this:

  1)  No grav vehicles will be on the field against a high tech army.
Densitometers can pick them out and meson guns can be targeted from
anywhere on the planet.  At TL13+, you use ACVs.

  2)  No fusion plants either.  Neutrino sensors and meson guns this time.
Fuel cells, solar, MHD perhaps.  No fusion.  Never.

  3)  This mostly means that a stealthy ACV will be the primary transport.
Yes, a stealthy ACV is a contradiction in terms, but it can only be
detected by things relatively close by, not by sensors on the far side of
the continent.

  4)  Therefore the superheavy armour never makes it onto the scene, except
possibly as tracklayers.  Lack of mobility relative to ACVs will relegate
them to fairly minor roles in any mobile campaign.

  5) In any case, combat between TL15 troops will be rare.  You won't
conquer a TL15 Hi Pop world with any force that the Imperium can move
through space.  Destroy the world maybe.  Conquer it unlikely.
Most combat will be at TL12-13, and will probably look a lot like the North
Africa campaign -> mobile troops running around madly, infantry sitting
still and just trying to survive, tanks avoiding the infantry whenever
possible, since the infantry have AT guns and Arty, and the tanks are much
safer to play with.

later...

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I have learned to use the word "impossible" with the greatest caution.
                                    --W. von Braun