Re: [Epic] marine chapters (was: Orks with LandRaiders)

From: J. Michael Looney <mlooney_at_...>
Date: Mon, 01 Sep 1997 09:08:44 -0500

Sutherland wrote:
>
> >Space Marines spend 100% of their life in training or in war. Why in the
> >hell do they only shoot to 48 meters? When I was in the Army I spent
> >some time as a range safety NCO, where I watched people that had never
> >fired an rifle in their life be able to hit a 50 meter target (which
> >would be equal to the upper 1/3 of a human body) at least 75% of the
> >time after one day, and pushing 100% of the time after 2-3 days. All GW
> >ranges for fire arms are WAY to short, unless of course you are doing a
> >Waterloo game. Oh, wait a second, they are, I forgot again.
>
> Playability. If we played with real stats you would need a football field
> to play on. watch a microarmor game. teeny, weeny little guys runnin
> around with itsee bitsee tanks shootin each other. The game is not a
> simulation, it is a recreation. Pick one or the other for GW is most
> assuredly never going to do both.
>

Point one: You don't have to have your ground scale be the same as your figure scale. Almost no
war game uses a figure scale = ground scale option. Yes you are right to do so would require a
large floor to do any thing with, but you don't have to have your scales in match,

Point two: I play micro armor.
Point three: Micro armor is a recreation, not a simulation. I know I do (or at least did) both.
All wargames (played by hobby type people) are recreations, not simulations.
Point 4 and <rant>
The major problem with E40K vs "real world" ranges is not that the scale is hosed, that could be
fixed by saying 1cm = 20 meters and that each turn is about 15 minutes of real time (The are not
random numbers, they are what Command Decision, my micro armor rules of choice, uses). The
problem is the ratio for small arms/tank guns/artillery is broken. If you assign a range of lets
say 30 cm to a unit that has, in theory, 4 grunts and a support weapon (which in the ranges I
just gave, works out to 600 meters which is a rational range) then tanks should have a range of
around 50cm for small gun armed tanks (say 1940 era med. tanks and current recon AFVS) to 150 cm
for larger gun (like say current MBT). As it so happens tanks are not worth a crap vs infantry
at those ranges but are hell on jets vs other tanks. Not sure how to show that, except may be to
say that A/T shots can not be taken over x cm vs infantry stands. Let me think on that. The
killer is that even short range artillery, infanty mortars for example, have ranges starting at
200 cm That would be a 4km range in "real life", which is what a man portable 60mm mortar would
do. The problem here is obvious. Well, mortars show up on the battle field and you must use
spotters for the longer range stuff. All wargames set after 1870 do this, I don't see this as a
problem. You can even require the models of the guns to be set up, on a side table, so that you
can do counter battery fire. </rant>
Received on Mon Sep 01 1997 - 14:08:44 UTC