Hi all been a while since I posted in this section and since then I've stared and abandoned multiple attempts at producing rules of any sort usually because something about what I've produced hasn't worked at all. Anyway I thought I'd offer up an interesting subject for discussion and that's weapons ranges.
In 28mm scale games I think it is fair to say that there are a very common set of weapon ranges used in multiple games. The classic example is the rifle/assault rifle/las gun/whatever else you care to name having a range of 24", which no matter what scale you believe 28mm to be (I've seen 1/48, 1/50, 1/56 and 1/61 all used but that's a different discussion!) is mind bogglingly unrealistic at 32 to 40 yards (the former using 1/48 the latter 1/61). I understand why many games have this sort of discrepancy however I like a challenge and I want to work on a game with "realistic" ranges. I'm not going to make things to mathy for this post I'm simply going to list my assumptions based on basic research, the resulting scale ranges and some initial thoughts on implementing them.
When it comes to 28mm scale wargaming I feel most comfortable working in imperial measurements, so yards, feet and inches will be my chosen units of measurement for this. Additionally since feet and inches are a base 12 system it makes sense to assume a ground scale 1:48, this makes a lot of the maths a lot simpler (a big plus for me). I am also working with modern firearms rather than ancient weapons like bows or javelins.
At this point I expect gun experts to shout at me because these assumptions are quite a long way away from real life weapon ranges which vary massively depending on ammunition and other factors like wind and scoped or iron sighted aiming. Plus of course grenades vary depending on type and the throwing ability of the person throwing them. However I'm going to stick with them as a baseline set of numbers as I feel they illustrate my thoughts well. When scaled to 1:48 these ranges produce the following numbers:
That's quite a difference from what many wargamers are used to. Assuming a standard 6' x 4' table a minature armed with a rifle or submachine gun could reasonably expect to hit a target anywhere on the table and if 12" deployment zones which are used in many games are used here then a miniature armed with a pistol or shotgun could very easily hit a target in the opposing deployment zone. However I'm not entirely happy with these numbers, from a gaming perspective I usually expect multiples of 6 or 12 for my weapon ranges (ok some games also use 3 or 9 but they are not as common) so I'm going to perform a few adjustments and round the ranges to the nearest 12.
Now from a game perspective this looks much more reasonable, still unusual compared to what has become the norm but nice round multiples of 12 offer some familiarity. In my opinion this is an acceptable break from reality as it just makes life easier to work in multiples of 6 or 12 when dealing with imperial measurements.
So now that I've got a list of reasonably realistic assumed weapon ranges my thoughts turn to the impact on game design. Firstly being in range isn't that much of a factor any more, it is quite reasonable to assume that a infantry figure would be in range of a target the vast majority of the time. In a game using these sorts of ranges getting caught in the open would probably by lethal for the unfortunate miniature involved. This in my mind would encourage avoiding direct line of sight as much as possible which would in turn encourage gamers to use lots of scenery and to stick close to it. I would also expect a game using these ranges to potentially get very lethal very quickly which can often be no fun for the person on the receiving end (Tau gunline while playing a foot slogging assault army anyone?). So personally I would want such a game to focus not to killing the opposition but morale and pinning systems instead.
These are only my initial thoughts I would love to see what others think of realistic weapon ranges and how to implement them and I'll try to add more thoughts later.
If you go for realistic weapon ranges, you have to go with realistic ground scale a 4x6 table is so unimaginably small area 87 meters by 58 meters in 1/48 scale.
The basic reason of a compressed range design and variable scale system (since models are different scale, ranges are different scale, area of operations is in different scale building and terrain features are in different scale) is to allow gameplay in a manageable surface area and not requiring a football field to play, of course one can simply go to realistic weapon ranges only and keep all other scales compressed, but this will lessen the tactical depth of your gameplay to an extend.
You also should consider what role shooting plays in the game. Do you even need ranges? As PsychoticStorm pointed out, at 1:48 scale, a 4x6 table is basically an in your face conflict where if you can see it, you can shoot it.
The weapon ranges you talked about earlier are highly compressed and don't match the figure scales, but are done so that you can get infantry and vehicles on the table. Not surprising given that the rules publisher sells lots of infantry and vehicles. What is your goal?
PsychoticStorm wrote: If you go for realistic weapon ranges, you have to go with realistic ground scale a 4x6 table is so unimaginably small area 87 meters by 58 meters in 1/48 scale.
The basic reason of a compressed range design and variable scale system (since models are different scale, ranges are different scale, area of operations is in different scale building and terrain features are in different scale) is to allow gameplay in a manageable surface area and not requiring a football field to play, of course one can simply go to realistic weapon ranges only and keep all other scales compressed, but this will lessen the tactical depth of your gameplay to an extend.
I should have made this clear in my first post but yes when I was considering realistic ranges I was also considering a realistic ground scale. I fully appreciate just how small an area a standard game table is at 96 by 64 yards (yes I am going to keep working in imperial ) and this obviously would limit the types of game that could be played using this ground scale. You're not going to get any large weapons or vehicles in this sort of game unless their position is being overrun (which is an interesting scenario opportunity). So this would shift the focus of the game towards skirmish style gameplay involving small numbers of infantry. Of course as you rightly point out you could use realistic ranges and compress all other scales but that to me at least isn't particularly appealing, what's the point of going to the effort of using realistic ranges if everything else is massively out of scale?
jmurph wrote: You also should consider what role shooting plays in the game. Do you even need ranges? As PsychoticStorm pointed out, at 1:48 scale, a 4x6 table is basically an in your face conflict where if you can see it, you can shoot it.
The weapon ranges you talked about earlier are highly compressed and don't match the figure scales, but are done so that you can get infantry and vehicles on the table. Not surprising given that the rules publisher sells lots of infantry and vehicles. What is your goal?
Yeah it's funny isn't it just how often sales dictate rules rather than the other way around. Though of course I do understand the appeal of having lots of big guns and vehicles on a table, blowing stuff up with them is a lot of fun as is painting the miniatures.
So now we consider the role of shooting, is it the primary way to win the game (say by killing the opposition) or one of many tactical options open to a player? Personally I massively prefer the latter. I've played against static gun lines in 40k and Fantasy where the only goal was killing the opposition and to be quite blunt I find those games are deathly dull, even worse is gun line vs gun line game where essentially it boils down to luck and getting the alpha strike. Ok the former is a product of dice rolling and the latter is more of a weakness of the IGOUGO turn structure but my point still stands, games that involve shooting and nothing else don't tend to excite the players. Now if we assume that shooting isn't the primary means of victory it simply becomes a tool to help ensure that the player's objectives are achieved. What role can shooting play now? This in my opinion is where a pinning mechanic can become very important. Shooting with one unit to pin a target in place either to allow another to take an objective or prevent the target taking an objective can make for much more interesting gameplay. This would move the focus of the game from killing to morale and objectives. Which of course opens up another can of worms that I won't discuss now (I need to do a lot of thinking about those systems before I'm comfortable discussing them).
Finally my goal. Since you asked it's only fair I answer. My thoughts are towards writing a set of "realistic" post-apocalyptic skirmish rules. So two players each controlling a small group of survivors (say 3 to 10, not really fixed force size yet) fighting over the few remaining resources of the old world. I think this is the sort of scenario that could benefit from realistic ground scale and weapon ranges. The area for combat is very small, part of a street or maybe just the interior of a large building but it makes sense (to me anyway ) that groups would fight over a small area like that if it contains something useful like food, medical supplies, ammunition, tools or whatever else you can think of that groups of survivors would want to scavenge from the ruins of civilisation.
We play Blitzkrieg Commander, and are almost never in assault. Games are still perfectly fluid, mobile, and tactical in nature. Command roles, artillery, and the like help keep things from being dull.
Muskets and Tomahawks uses dice rolls to see the enemy, while allowing longer range weapons that would be standard in other games.
The Starwars mini game by Wizards of the Coast was line of sight. Maps were not large, but even if you didn't play on a grid, shooting wasn't boring if you spiced it up with terrain (I used to have two 2ft by 4ft boards for it, one of Hoth and one of Endor, and it played fine converting movement into inches instead of squares).
Once you move out of pikes, shooting should be decisive and deadly. Heck, even before that, Crossbows were a game breaker, so effective there were movements to ban them as they tore straight through most armor, outranged many bows, and took little to no training.
Shooting doesn't need to be boring, terrain, command roles, line of sight modifiers or checks to spot, initiative responses, and so forth can keep a game from bogging down.
Many games are silly in that guys end up using their rifle more often as a club then to shoot with. The onus should be on the guy trying to reach melee, not on the shooter to hope on a wing and a prayer it doesn't get there.
The real question is, what are you trying to do with your game? That should dictate the ranges/firearm effectiveness.
The reason you see 'unrealistic" weapon ranges in many game sis to promote maneuver before engaging and to limit the "effective" range of weapons so that maneuver can matter.
Many games have unlimited range or some other range combination, but those games have different things they are trying to represent and emphasize.
If your game is highly focused on shooting, than maybe ranges matter, if it is focused on logistics, it might not matter as much.
I cant hit anything with a pistol if its 30 ft away or greater. Dick Cheney shot his buddy at lessthan 50yds with a shot gun and no problems. My step dad was accidentally shot with a shotgun and barely broke the skin. I had a patient shot over his scapula with a 4-10 and I bandaged him up and sent him home. That was 25ft away. Your ranges are too far EE. 400 yards with a rifle? Lets say unscoped. Im going to say beyond expert level for 1200' in combat. Thats like annie oakley stuff there. Unless all your skirmishers are james bond...
I think this is a more realistic skirmish type range. Sure a scout sniper marine can get all zen and take out a target 2000' away but... thats a looooooong way. I suspect most acurate fire in modern warfare is terrifyingly close. Think about school shootings. Kenya mall. Texas college sniper in the 70s. Distances we civilians can relate to. Not that far.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Heck, Shelby Foote in the Narrative History of the Civil War is talking about rifled muskets fired at 10 and 20yds.
One solution to making ranges matter without unrealistic range compression is to have your to-hit rolls decrease with range. A rifle might have a 25m range increment, shooting at full effectiveness from 0-18", a -1 penalty from 18-36", -2 from 36-54", etc. Since the battlefield is not a gun range you're going to have suppressing fire, obscured targets, shaky hands from fear, etc, making it hard to get a perfectly accurate shot. So your theoretical maximum range is really long (as appropriate for the physical limits of the weapon), but normal troops aren't going to hit very accurately from across the table. Then of course you can add bonuses and penalties for various conditions: going prone with a scoped weapon might let you ignore the first X range penalties, shooting while under suppressing fire might double all range penalties.
The other part of the solution is the same as it always is: LOS-blocking terrain. Even if a rifle has a maximum range longer than the entire table you shouldn't be drawing LOS that far very often. Having sufficient terrain keeps movement and positioning interesting and means that a back-edge gunline is going to lose every game because it can't meaningfully engage with mission objectives outside of a small part of the table.
no such thing for a rifle in WW2 as there were so many different training or non training levels.In wargames a Russian workers militia given a rifle of the back of a truk hasd the same range as a fully trained rifleman and a sniper!!!!!
Hows that REALISTIC
Thank you everyone! I've got a lot of stuff to read and think about. A lot of your thoughts about how to implement realistic weapon ranges are in line with my own (I'll post those when I actually have them more fully developed) so that's quite pleasing. Doktor_g huge thanks for that reality check, it's good to read about someone's actual experience with firearms. As you might guess I have no experience of firing any sort of gun so all I can do is rely on research. You are quite right that my ranges are unrealistic I was basing them on ideal effective range data. There's definitely a huge difference between an expert marksman shooting a static target in perfect conditions and your average person shooting at a moving, obscured target potentially whilst under fire themselves. Still I would like to think that those initial numbers I used were useful simply to illustrate the vast difference between real life and miniature gaming.
I guess I've got a lot of thinking, research and game design to work on now, thanks to everyone for your thoughts on this subject.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Ok so I've had a few thoughts about basic mechanics of the game I want to design and how those might be applied to ranged weapons. This is all obviously very WIP and needs both further thought and once it's fleshed out some serious play testing.
In my current plans all tests will be performed using a single D20 and will produce one of 4 outcomes:
Critical Failure (an unmodified roll of a 1)
Failure (a final result of under the test target)
Success (a final result of equal to or over the test target)
Critical Success (an unmodified roll of a 20)
Yep that looks very familiar.
Of course depending on what the player is testing for these outcomes will do different things, what we're concerned with here is shooting so I'll focus on that.
Critical Failure: Not sure what will happen here, presumably something bad like running out of ammo, a misfire or weapon jamming.
Failure: A miss
Success: A hit
Critical Success: A particularly lucky hit again I'm not sure what will happen in this result
So now that's all defined I'm going to look at what the player would actually need to roll when they try to shoot a target. Currently I am considering 3 different test targets which will be universal to the actions and tasks that require a test. They are as follows: Simple Tasks, Normal Tasks and Difficult Tasks. It is an appealing option to me to use these test targets to define different range bands. So a short range shot would be a simple task, a medium range shot would be a normal task and a long range shot would be a difficult task. I personally think this is quite an intuitive system. When checking the range of a shot the player compares the measurement to the range bands of each weapon and will know immediately which test target they need to beat with modifiers being applied to the result of the dice roll.
Currently I am considering two sets of probability levels for the tests. They are very similar but the impact on the way the game plays is potentially very large so I think I will only determine which to use after play testing.
Option 1:
Simple Task: 7+ (p = 0.70 or a 70% chance of success)
Normal Task: 11+ (p = 0.50 or a 50% chance of success)
Difficult Task: 15+ (p = 0.30 or a 30% chance of success)
Option 2:
Simple Task: 6+ (p = 0.75 or a 75% chance of success)
Normal Task: 11+ (p = 0.50 or a 50% chance of success)
Difficult Task: 16+ (p = 0.25 or a 25% chance of success)
No matter which of these two options I end up deciding on they will be universal to every action and task in the game that needs a test to be performed.
I hope that a system like this is intuitive on the tabletop, I guess only play testing will show that but I need to work on a lot of things before I even have the skeleton of a game ready start play testing. Though I will admit to chucking around a few D20s just to see what happens.
Horizon wars has an interesting mechanic where the distance is the target number you roll for on a number of firepower dice, every time you reach the target number it is a hit so, if you roll 4 d6 and get 3,4,5,2 that equals 14, so you could hit someone at 14 inches, or twice at 7 inches.
Just an interesting mechanic to think about. A lot depends on scale.
Well, realism can be interesting.
The actual range to scale is huge for 40k so pretty much getting line of sight on the table, you have range.
This is why some games have the short, medium, long ranges for their effective ranges.
I would be tempted to try the realism with the "Epic" range of models so the 6mm scale may be more to your liking.
Nothing wrong with wanting your warfare to be more like a simulator, you just have to get some like-minded friends to play along.
Good luck!
licclerich wrote: no such thing for a rifle in WW2 as there were so many different training or non training levels.In wargames a Russian workers militia given a rifle of the back of a truk hasd the same range as a fully trained rifleman and a sniper!!!!!
Hows that REALISTIC
That's not actually correct. It completely depends on the designer's choice in writing the rules. For example, in Up Front, the Russian troops have a lower firepower at long range, reflecting their lack of training. In Arab-Israeli Wars, Israeli and Jordanian tank units equipped with exactly the same vehicle (Centurion) have different firepower, range and defence factors to reflect the superior training of the Israeli crews.
I am, it's interesting to see what differences a 2D10 system has over a D20 system (I have tables of results and probabilities for both that I'm studying). As is so often the case with dice both systems have their advantages and disadvantages. I need to give them some serious thought and look into how they will affect the probabilities of achieving a success or failure especially once modifiers come into play
Easy E wrote:Horizon wars has an interesting mechanic where the distance is the target number you roll for on a number of firepower dice, every time you reach the target number it is a hit so, if you roll 4 d6 and get 3,4,5,2 that equals 14, so you could hit someone at 14 inches, or twice at 7 inches.
Just an interesting mechanic to think about. A lot depends on scale.
That is a very interesting mechanic and intuitive mechanic, it definitely looks to be very appropriate for a game like Horizon Wars. Not sure it's so suitable for infantry based skirmishes but it's definitely and idea I could return to in future and play with for a different game. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
Talizvar wrote:Well, realism can be interesting. The actual range to scale is huge for 40k so pretty much getting line of sight on the table, you have range. This is why some games have the short, medium, long ranges for their effective ranges. I would be tempted to try the realism with the "Epic" range of models so the 6mm scale may be more to your liking. Nothing wrong with wanting your warfare to be more like a simulator, you just have to get some like-minded friends to play along. Good luck!
I think that short, medium and long ranges will definitely work for the game I am designing. They tie in very nicely with my idea of having a selection of fixed numbers that you need to equal or beat on a dice to succeed at any given action. 6mm and small scales are definitely very interesting for getting realism into a game. At those scales it is also reasonably viable to have armoured vehicles and heavy weapons without the game being comically unrealistic. Not there's anything wrong with a lack of realism, it's just that with this design I am aiming for something different to the compressed ground scale so common in 28mm and 15mm games. Thankfully like minded friends isn't an issue, whilst I have a fairly small gaming group they're pretty open minded and if I provide everything are usually happy to give absolutely anything a go.
Kilkrazy wrote:
licclerich wrote: no such thing for a rifle in WW2 as there were so many different training or non training levels.In wargames a Russian workers militia given a rifle of the back of a truk hasd the same range as a fully trained rifleman and a sniper!!!!! Hows that REALISTIC
That's not actually correct. It completely depends on the designer's choice in writing the rules. For example, in Up Front, the Russian troops have a lower firepower at long range, reflecting their lack of training. In Arab-Israeli Wars, Israeli and Jordanian tank units equipped with exactly the same vehicle (Centurion) have different firepower, range and defence factors to reflect the superior training of the Israeli crews.
Those approaches are very interesting. I'm not sure that I could out right copy them but with some mucking about the basic ideas behind those stat changes are certainly useful.
Thanks for continuing to post your thoughts everyone, it's back to the design docs for me.
Oh, heck, once you start looking into probability, it's game over :-)
I never really liked the d20 because 1) it's too "rolly" physically and 2) you can parse probability using 2d10 much better anyway (01-00, 1% steps). Right now, I am stuck on trying to use only 1d6 for my skirmishing, but really like 2d6.
For 1d6, I am trying a (base) 6 is a success and everything else fails. Skills/abilities/gear gives bonuses. 1s and 6s explode, so if you roll a 1, roll again and subtract, A 6, roll again and add it. So, if you are testing in something that you have a net -2 penalty in, for example, you could still succeed. Likewise, their is always the chance of failure.
Infinity does an excellent job of displaying this on the tabletop. Weapons have range bands, and many have a "sweet spot" that is pretty realistic.
For example, pistols and shotguns are good up close, but their "to hit" modifier degrades with range. Rifles have a sweet spot in mid-range. Heavy Machineguns suffer up close, have a sweet spot at mid to long range, but are less accurate at very long ranges. So on and so forth.
This type of thing gets you past the effective range question and into the usability at various ranges question.
By implementing modifiers, you permit better trained units with better stats to get better effect from the same weapon. For example, a 10 point line trooper with a rifle (ballistic skill 10) is not nearly as proficient as, say, an elite 40 points guy with the same weapon (ballistic skill 13). In fact, the line trooper shooting in his "sweet spot" has the same to-hit roll as that elite guy in a less ideal range.
Ok just to give you accurate weapon ranges, not to pick at yours, but just out of interest if you want them. Just to add these are effective range not possible range. Oh and sorry I don't do yards and I can't be bothered to convert so they're in meters.
Grenades: as far as the thrower can throw.
Pistols: 30m possibly up to 50m if your Clint Eastwood.
Shotguns: normal 30-40m solid shot 100m
Sub machine guns: 150m
Rifles: 300m, squad 400m
Sniper rifles: dependent on skill of firer 800-900m
Heavy machine gun (unmounted) 800m
Hope this helps, as you said depends on calibre, sights, weapon mods etc, but in general it depends on firers skill and these are fairly representative across the board.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: I am, it's interesting to see what differences a 2D10 system has over a D20 system (I have tables of results and probabilities for both that I'm studying).
The main difference is that 2D10 is a bell curve of results, while D20 is equal probability for everything. 2D10 makes the extremes on either end much less likely and the middle results much more likely, so your rolls are more consistently average-ish. A single D20 is a lot more prone to fluky rolls, especially if you follow the tradition of 1 and 20 being critical success/failure. From a game design point of view a 2D10 system makes things a lot more predictable and easier to balance, with the downside of having two physical dice being rolled at once.
Yes, see Frostgrave as an example of fluky and weird dice roll results due to a d20 system with small modifiers attached. Depending on the nature of the game, this can be what you want, however if you want more "average" results you need to combine multiple dice.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: I am, it's interesting to see what differences a 2D10 system has over a D20 system (I have tables of results and probabilities for both that I'm studying).
The main difference is that 2D10 is a bell curve of results, while D20 is equal probability for everything. 2D10 makes the extremes on either end much less likely and the middle results much more likely, so your rolls are more consistently average-ish. A single D20 is a lot more prone to fluky rolls, especially if you follow the tradition of 1 and 20 being critical success/failure. From a game design point of view a 2D10 system makes things a lot more predictable and easier to balance, with the downside of having two physical dice being rolled at once.
Just going to nit pick this a bit. 2d10 summed is not a bell curve, it is still linear with a peak in the middle. You need 3 dice to start approaching a bell.
Also something to consider modifiers play differently depending on you dice mechanism. +1 to multiple dice affects the results differently depending on the target number, rather than just the straight percentage bump of one dice.
Some nice fellow thought of a few different ways of approaching things (jmurph, you are 100% correct):
Just thought I would throw that out there... graphics always seem to remove the complication.
The thing I have found with all games and ranges is simple:
If you want realistic ranges, movement often doesn't matter.
But, the reason for shorter ranges for many games is realism. People running around firing at targets are often WILDLY inaccurate.
I'd like to see a system that gives better ranges for weapons the less you move, to represent taking the time to make a good shot instead of a spray and pray.
2d10 does make for a good system. I always root for 2d12, because you don't see d12s being used enough.
Mattlov wrote: I always root for 2d12, because you don't see d12s being used enough.
Found the D&D barbarian.
Well I leave this thread alone for a few days and what happens? Information overload that's what. Thanks everyone, you're really helping guide my thoughts towards game mechanics that might actually work.
Firstly the dice issue, that graph is fantastic Talizvar thanks for posting it, I do have my own version of basically the same thing but without the 3D6 and the take middle 3d20 options that I was going to post but you've saved me a job. Anyway for what I'm planning the D20 works better simply because there's a good chance that players will be using weapons that fire more than one shot at a time. Resolving multiple shots one at a time really slows a game down in my experience and I don't think the increase in predictability is enough of a gain to justify the 2D10 or even 3D6 options. I admit this is just personal preference on my part but what's the point of designing a game if I don't want to actually play it?
I'm also going to drop the critical success on a 20 and critical failure on a 1. While it is a mechanic I enjoy, for the game I am developing integrating it in a way that's satisfying is probably not possible without making major compromises elsewhere. Instead I will revert to the old favourite of 20 always being a success and 1 always being a failure. Still gives that little "woo natural 20" or "Feth! a 1" moment. Sure it's a very gamey thing to have but that sort of thing can add a lot of tension to what might otherwise be a forgone conclusion. Makes going forward relatively simple as I know that there is always a minimum chance of success or failure of 5% and a maximum of 95%. Those sorts of numbers are easy to remember and work with.
Now back to weapon ranges, I've ordered a couple of books about guns. Hopefully those will let me get some more accurate numbers to work with. But yes I do admit my original numbers were completely wrong for real world conditions even if the weapon in question could perform at the sort of ranges I assumed there's not much chance of a real human (at least of the non expert marksman variety) ever hitting anything without a lot of luck.
Of course the big challenge is making all of this work as a game. As Mattlov says, in a game with long ranges movement can often become a moot point entirely. I'm still not sure if I've entirely sorted out how I'm going to get around that but the basics of the shooting mechanics are starting to come together. The way I see taking a shot working is as follows:
1) Declare target
2) Check line of sight and range (let's leave the debate about how to implement LoS for another time)
3) Spot check (I might allow automatic spotting if the target is in the open)
4) Roll to hit
5) Check Damage
That's a pretty familiar looking way of shooting I would hope.
Lets start with the spot check, that would be a D20 roll with a difficulty based on the distance to the target. I'll probably split it in to short, medium and long ranges with a their target number using the base difficulties I posted earlier in the thread (7+/11+/15+ or 6+/11+/16+ still need to work out which option works best). This would have modifiers based on equipment (a character with a scoped weapon might be able to spot a target easier than someone using iron sights for example), cover and whether or not the target is hidden in said cover. Here's an example.
Character X is targeting Character Y. Character Y is at medium spotting range, this gives a 11+ as the target number needed for X to spot Y. Unfortunately Y is also behind cover and is hiding. Lets say for the moment that each of those is a -1 to the roll (I will test different modifiers when I start to play test), now the spot roll is a 13+. That's still a 40% chance of success down from a 50% chance, at long spotting range that would be a 20% or 15% chance. Simply spotting a target at long range could be difficult in this system. Whereas at short range it will be relatively easy. I would hope that this encourages players to try to get close without exposing themselves to too much fire.
Now assuming that we've spotted the target lets move onto hitting the bugger. Character X is armed with a pistol. This lets for arguments sake give the pistol a maximum range of 24" (based on a 30 yards real life range) and range bands of 8", so short range would be 0"-8" medium would be 8"-16" and long would be 16"-24". Again shooting would be based on those universal difficulty ratings with modifiers based on skill, range, prior actions (a negative for movement and positive for taking time to aim), cover and whether the character is taking multiple shots (this is where assault rifles and SMGs make their presence known). The way I see the range modifiers working is -1 for medium range and -2 for long range. So assuming our target is at long range and in cover (lets go with -1 for cover again) Character X is at -3 to hit already, unfortunately for poor Character X they also moved before they shot taking that to -4. It's not looking that good for Character X so far but I'm going to be kind, I mentioned skill modifiers and I've decided to make Character X a Veteran and give them a lovely +1 to hit based on their skill. So we're back to -3. Based on the earlier difficulty options that's either a 15% or 10% chance of hitting on a D20. That's an unlikely shot to say the least however it could be worth taking if there's nothing better for Character X to be doing.
Moving on to damaging the target this is where things get unclear as I've not really fleshed this out yet. The one thing I am sure of is that being hit will always result in getting a pin marker which will contribute towards the morale system. However there are two options I'm working on for actually doing damage, the first is the attacker rolling a D20 against a defence statistic. I don't like this that much because it goes against the universal test target number system I want to implement so I've not fleshed it out at all. Option 2 is the defender rolling a D20 to survive against a difficulty (not sure which one yet, do I want to make shooting very killy or not very killy?) with modifiers based on their armour rating, various "abilities" (being naturally tough for example) and of course the power of the weapon. I prefer this one as it fits better with the base mechanics and possibly more importantly it gives the inactive player something to do. The last thing I want if for the inactive player to be doing nothing while one of their characters is pumped full of lead. I also need to work out what happens after a character is wounded. Are they out of action immediately, can they take multiple wounds or do they simply take a wound marker that affects everything else and forces some sort of survival roll every time they activate, there's a lot of different options for that.
So that's where I'm at so far with the shooting mechanics. I'm now going to look at what that means for the stats used to play the game.
Starting with the weapons. Guns will have 5 statistics, their 3 range bands (short, medium and long), a firepower rating to represent how much damage a bullet can be expected to do and a rate of fire statistic. Going back to Character X and their pistol I'll set out some example stats:
Pistol
Short Range: 0" - 8"
Medium Range: 8" - 16"
Long Range: 16" - 24"
Firepower: Still not sure how this will work all I know is I want it!
Rate of Fire: 1
I'll also give an example Assault Rifle with an assumed 250 yard real life maximum range which with some mucking about with rounding gives a in game range of 192"
Assault Rifle
Short Range: 0" - 64"
Medium Range: 64" - 128"
Long Range: 128" - 192"
Firepower: Still no idea but it's presumably better than a basic pistol. Rate of Fire: 3 (this is just an example RoF to illustrate the stats)
Yikes that's a scary looking weapon however that's sort of what I'm after. I want being shot at to be something that players don't want to happen. Hopefully that will make them stick to cover and avoid line of sight (however that ends up working) whilst trying to manoeuvre themselves into a position where they can get a shot off.
Now on to the character stats. I want to keep these relatively simple and the universal target number stuff helps massively there, additionally movement will also be a universal statistic because the game I'm planning only involves humans and it makes sense from a game point of view to assume that they all move at a reasonably similar speed. I suspect that stat lines for characters will also have 5 boxes. Skill, the skill rating of the character, currently I'm planning 3 ratings (Rookie, Regular, Veteran). Defence, not sure how this will work yet, it might just be an armour rating or it might be more in depth than that. Morale, not even started work on this but it I know it will be a vital part of the game. Abilities, characters will be able to select a number of abilities from a universal list, expect to see names like Leader, Medic, Marksman and Tough. Finally there's equipment, a simple list of the characters equipment. Here's Character X's stats from earlier:
Character X:
Skill: Veteran
Defence: Got no idea how this works
Morale: Or this!
Abilities: Some abilities
Equipment: Pistol, maybe a knife and some armour too who knows?
Thanks again everyone, your thoughts are really helping me get towards something that resembles a game rather than simply a collection of ideas.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: Hi all been a while since I posted in this section and since then I've stared and abandoned multiple attempts at producing rules of any sort usually because something about what I've produced hasn't worked at all. Anyway I thought I'd offer up an interesting subject for discussion and that's weapons ranges.
In 28mm scale games I think it is fair to say that there are a very common set of weapon ranges used in multiple games. The classic example is the rifle/assault rifle/las gun/whatever else you care to name having a range of 24", which no matter what scale you believe 28mm to be (I've seen 1/48, 1/50, 1/56 and 1/61 all used but that's a different discussion!) is mind bogglingly unrealistic at 32 to 40 yards (the former using 1/48 the latter 1/61). I understand why many games have this sort of discrepancy however I like a challenge and I want to work on a game with "realistic" ranges. I'm not going to make things to mathy for this post I'm simply going to list my assumptions based on basic research, the resulting scale ranges and some initial thoughts on implementing them.
When it comes to 28mm scale wargaming I feel most comfortable working in imperial measurements, so yards, feet and inches will be my chosen units of measurement for this. Additionally since feet and inches are a base 12 system it makes sense to assume a ground scale 1:48, this makes a lot of the maths a lot simpler (a big plus for me). I am also working with modern firearms rather than ancient weapons like bows or javelins.
It was a long time ago now but British Army doctrine with the old SLR and iron sight used the following for effective ranges:
- individual rifleman - 300 meters (328 yards)
- a rifle squad using the same weapon - 600 metres
- an SLR with SUET sight
So a group of riflemen firing at the same target would, between them, produce effective fire at greater range than a rifleman firingnas an individual.
FacebookJunkie: Very good point about a group being more effective than it's individual components. It's one of the tricky things that games often do poorly. A unit of 100 infantry (or even a dozen!) is not the same as 100 individuals acting. Just like an MG team can do some damage to infantry at 800m, but wouldn't be able to pick out any specific individual.
That being said, according to the info I have seen, most modern firefights happen at ranges under 300m, generally under 100m. Especially in urban conflicts, where it can get to hand to hand. Unless you are defending a hill surrounded by open fields, long range encounters tend to be more of an artillery or air strike thing.
Also keep in mind that most bullets do not land on their target. I think the last study I read put it somewhere in 1 in several hundred. Which is kind of misleading because most of the fire is suppressive. Kill shots are usually unexpected- pin them first then get an angle and go for the kill. Or fire enough that they run away. Or shoot them before they even know what's going on (ambush).
Sharpshooters, of course, operate differently, but are specialists.
Rick Priestley analyses tabletop scaling excellently in Tabletop Wargaming.
As has already been mentioned by other posters , if you want realistic weapon ranges proportionate to your models scale, you need a playing board bigger than most people's houses.
Furthermore, we can't even scale down weapon ranges proportionally: Case example: If a rifle can fire 24" on the tabletop, then a pistol should only have a range of 3". i.e. it would be virtually useless. On the other hand artillery would have a range of 400" or something, -realistically you should be setting up your 125mm artillery down the end of your garden. And on that subject, rear line units like artillery shouldn't even be present within the parameters of 95% the battlefields that are represented by most tabletop games. They're included because players want to be able to field them.
A great suggestion Priestley had was to up the max range and balance this by introducing more realistic range falloff increments. e.g. Soldier with rifle has a range of 36. But if firing at 12-24" gets -1 to hit, and at 24-36" gets -2. It adds complexity tot he rules,but is worthwhile imo. The situation in most games is highly unrealistic, with guns being 100% effective to a given range and then utterly useless beyond that
Personally I get my head past unrealistically low ranges by visualising the battlefield as full of smoke and other factors which limit visibility.
Peregrine wrote: To be fair, this is a pretty accurate approximation of the usefulness of pistols on a real-world battlefield.
That depends upon whether you (or the game rules) consider the battlefield to be a literal depiction of distance. e.g. if a house is 8" long, it would be absurd if a pistol could fire less than half that distance. If on the other hand, that house represented a cluster of buildings, then 3" would be a more appropriate range.
Mattlov wrote: The thing I have found with all games and ranges is simple:
If you want realistic ranges, movement often doesn't matter.
But, the reason for shorter ranges for many games is realism. People running around firing at targets are often WILDLY inaccurate.
I'd like to see a system that gives better ranges for weapons the less you move, to represent taking the time to make a good shot instead of a spray and pray.
2d10 does make for a good system. I always root for 2d12, because you don't see d12s being used enough.
Then difficulty for weapon ranges is that, for everything from team weapons on up, you would never see them on the board, just their effects.
To me, the real question is what do you want to emphasize in your game? Is it firepower or maneuver? If you want to emphasize firepower, than their is no need to worry about ranges at all. The weapons can hit it. If it is maneuver, then you will need some restriction on what a weapon can hit/not hit to give space and meaning to movement.
doktor_g wrote: I cant hit anything with a pistol if its 30 ft away or greater. Dick Cheney shot his buddy at lessthan 50yds with a shot gun and no problems. My step dad was accidentally shot with a shotgun and barely broke the skin. I had a patient shot over his scapula with a 4-10 and I bandaged him up and sent him home. That was 25ft away. Your ranges are too far EE. 400 yards with a rifle? Lets say unscoped. Im going to say beyond expert level for 1200' in combat. Thats like annie oakley stuff there. Unless all your skirmishers are james bond...
I think this is a more realistic skirmish type range. Sure a scout sniper marine can get all zen and take out a target 2000' away but... thats a looooooong way. I suspect most acurate fire in modern warfare is terrifyingly close. Think about school shootings. Kenya mall. Texas college sniper in the 70s. Distances we civilians can relate to. Not that far.
Shotguns are effective a lot further out if you are not using bird shot (which Cheney was and I suspect the wound you treated was caused by as well).
In the army our 9mm pop up range had targets out to 30 meters (typical Ivan targets, about half the size of a real person's torso and head) and they were easy to hit.
Even as an old guy, I can hit a 3 inch group with my rifle at 100 meters pretty easily (prone unsupported). With iron sights I can hit Ivans out to 300 if I have my glasses on. With my optics (I have an aimpoint with 3x flip out magnifier and an EOTECH with 3x flip out magnifier) I can hit out to 300 easily, with nice groupings in the face of the target. Both the rifles with those optics are 16 inch barrel M4 types, so not long barrel sniper accuracy type rifles at all. I have a M1A SOCOM CQB model with a vortex red dot. Even with the red dot I hit my 8 inch plate at 200 meters pretty easily.
But there is a big difference between shooting at targets on a safe range and trying to peg moving hostiles while under fire. It's not that the weapon can't hit 300+ meters (physics dictates it can), it's whether the operator can in combat circumstances. Heck, getting a solid visual can often be a challenge in and of itself!
The point that treating range as a binary when it should be stacking factors is probably a really solid one. Likewise, I find it interesting that missed shots tend to "disappear" in games, with no real danger of overshooting and hitting an ally (or other nearby person), for example.
I think it goes back to modeling combat as blow by blow (like in D&D where you absurdly roll for each swing, or most wargames, each shot) rather than measuring the overall effect. Basically, firing at someone does 1 of 3 things: it causes them to stop, flee, and/or fire back. Stopping may be temporary (such as taking cover) or permanent (give up/wounded/dead). Stopping and fleeing are generally best as they usually mean that the enemy is not shooting at you. Firing more rounds generally makes them more likely to stop or flee, but doesn't greatly increase the odds of a fatality. If the first round doesn't hit, the next ones probably won't either.
The mistake many games make is they only really model the kill shots and gloss over the rest (which is actually most of the shots!). They also often assume a pretty high accuracy rate. Heck, 1 in 6 would be amazingly accurate compared to the data we have for real firefights (which is closer to one in hundreds of rounds actually hitting).
Again, you come back to the question of what you want your game to be and design accordingly.
jmurph wrote: But there is a big difference between shooting at targets on a safe range and trying to peg moving hostiles while under fire. It's not that the weapon can't hit 300+ meters (physics dictates it can), it's whether the operator can in combat circumstances. Heck, getting a solid visual can often be a challenge in and of itself!
Hence the use of pop up targets AND moving targets which only display for a short time. I've fired plenty of ranges with both. I also made my guys ruck to the range, going pretty damned fast the last half mile and flopping right into firing positions with heart rates up, gear chafing, sweat already pouring into your eyes and so on.
And yeah, it is different when rounds zip past you. And yeah, you'll fire a lot more rounds than will actually hit a bad guy. Yet, engagement ranges in Afghanistan have been 200+ meters.
And I stand by what I said above, shotguns are definitely good past 20 yards, and hitting a guy at 30 yards with a pistol isn't the worlds hardest task for even moderately trained troops. Snap firing a rifle at 100m is pretty easy and hitting a guy 200 meters away, even if you only have 2-5 seconds to engage, is doable for moderately well trained troops.
jmurph wrote: But there is a big difference between shooting at targets on a safe range and trying to peg moving hostiles while under fire. It's not that the weapon can't hit 300+ meters (physics dictates it can), it's whether the operator can in combat circumstances. Heck, getting a solid visual can often be a challenge in and of itself!
Hence the use of pop up targets AND moving targets which only display for a short time. I've fired plenty of ranges with both. I also made my guys ruck to the range, going pretty damned fast the last half mile and flopping right into firing positions with heart rates up, gear chafing, sweat already pouring into your eyes and so on.
And yeah, it is different when rounds zip past you. And yeah, you'll fire a lot more rounds than will actually hit a bad guy. Yet, engagement ranges in Afghanistan have been 200+ meters.
And I stand by what I said above, shotguns are definitely good past 20 yards, and hitting a guy at 30 yards with a pistol isn't the worlds hardest task for even moderately trained troops. Snap firing a rifle at 100m is pretty easy and hitting a guy 200 meters away, even if you only have 2-5 seconds to engage, is doable for moderately well trained troops.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything, just pointing out that range isn't just a fixed number. As you point out, you train your guys to get used to the vagaries of an actual firefight. So they are going to have a better effective range than some guy who just plinks at beercans, who is still probably going to have a better effective range than someone who just learned how to squeeze a trigger. From a design standpoint, incremental penalties reflect that quite well.
As to shotguns, you can take a deer at 35 or so yards with buckshot. Maybe 50-75, but less likely to be a kill shot, and much higher chance just to wound. Choke makes a big difference. Smooth bore slugs should be good 50-75 yards.
Pistols are defensive weapons, so 30 seems reasonable. I just get a little frustrated by range rats who think that just because you can hit paper at a given distance, that means anything in a firefight- IRL, people miss all the time with even a few yards distance! Hence the importance of practice and drill....
jmurph wrote: But there is a big difference between shooting at targets on a safe range and trying to peg moving hostiles while under fire. It's not that the weapon can't hit 300+ meters (physics dictates it can), it's whether the operator can in combat circumstances. Heck, getting a solid visual can often be a challenge in and of itself!
Hence the use of pop up targets AND moving targets which only display for a short time. I've fired plenty of ranges with both. I also made my guys ruck to the range, going pretty damned fast the last half mile and flopping right into firing positions with heart rates up, gear chafing, sweat already pouring into your eyes and so on.
And yeah, it is different when rounds zip past you. And yeah, you'll fire a lot more rounds than will actually hit a bad guy. Yet, engagement ranges in Afghanistan have been 200+ meters.
And I stand by what I said above, shotguns are definitely good past 20 yards, and hitting a guy at 30 yards with a pistol isn't the worlds hardest task for even moderately trained troops. Snap firing a rifle at 100m is pretty easy and hitting a guy 200 meters away, even if you only have 2-5 seconds to engage, is doable for moderately well trained troops.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply anything, just pointing out that range isn't just a fixed number. As you point out, you train your guys to get used to the vagaries of an actual firefight. So they are going to have a better effective range than some guy who just plinks at beercans, who is still probably going to have a better effective range than someone who just learned how to squeeze a trigger. From a design standpoint, incremental penalties reflect that quite well.
As to shotguns, you can take a deer at 35 or so yards with buckshot. Maybe 50-75, but less likely to be a kill shot, and much higher chance just to wound. Choke makes a big difference. Smooth bore slugs should be good 50-75 yards.
Pistols are defensive weapons, so 30 seems reasonable. I just get a little frustrated by range rats who think that just because you can hit paper at a given distance, that means anything in a firefight- IRL, people miss all the time with even a few yards distance! Hence the importance of practice and drill....
I will reserve my comments to pistol.
30meters might be the case, but police train for 25 max, and above that is considered long distance for competition shooters. It can definitely be done (heck I shot mansized rocks at 200 yards+ with a .44 mag) but its hard, and thats without the whole someone shooting back thing.
I'd actually put shotgun right about that range, but thats based on personal experience only.
The more realism you want, the more complex the game will get.
Realism in weapon ranges will eventually make infantry effectively obsolete, for example as infantry rarely if ever fire beyond 200 meters and usually only fire within a tenth of that. Tanks fire ten times that. And artillery a hundred times that-- or much more, really.
Melissia wrote: The more realism you want, the more complex the game will get.
Realism in weapon ranges will eventually make infantry effectively obsolete, for example as infantry rarely if ever fire beyond 200 meters and usually only fire within a tenth of that. Tanks fire ten times that. And artillery a hundred times that-- or much more, really.
Not even close. Infantry engagements are rarely 20 meters or under, even in an urban environment unless actually clearing buildings. Mobility is a major factor too, there are places tanks cannot go (such as up stair wells, into tunnels, up steep mountains, through dense forests and so on). Artillery can only hit what someone else sees.
In Afghanistan, typical infantry engagements are 300+ meters.
Yeah, urban engagements, for example, are often infantry affairs as vehicles are limited where they can go and very vulnerable in such a setting. Pounding an urban area with artillery is also often not feasible. Really, artillery only works if you don't care about infrastructure or anything in the area. So it's out if you need to secure an airfield, fuel supplies, etc. It also can't be used too close to friendly forces.
Infantry are also essential to securing areas before vehicle support can arrive. Beachheads, for example.
Also consider that some forces simply will not have access to artillery or heavy vehicle support. Insurgents, partisans, etc.
CptJake wrote: In Afghanistan, typical infantry engagements are 300+ meters.
The new, modern Team Yankee game is 1/100 scale, so infantry squads would be engaging at distances greater than the width of the canonical 4' x 6' wargaming table. This ignores mortars and SAWs, to say nothing of A-10s or Hinds.
The real issue is using Ancients / Napoleonic ranges of muscle (bows) or smoothbore blackpowder (muskets) for modern rifles.
For 1/50 scale models, 2' on the table is 100' / 30 yards, which is basically pistol range. At that scale, 300 meters is corner to corner.
IMO, for modern stuff, just let the range be unlimited, and modify for close vs long.
I've played loads of WW2 games were anyting firing a non-pistol round can shoot at anything you see. Yes, it compresses the battlefield and makes for skirmish gaming being largely what it's about. That's not a bad thing.
One of the key characteristics of the modern battlefield is that if you can see something it can be destroyed. So terrain becomes the main issue. To many table tops have large completely flat open areas where the ground can actually be very uneven in real life. There certainly are big areas of open ground where you can't hide, but those aren't areas you go if you want to stay alive, so having them on the table top makes a ton of dead terrain and can lead to stalled out game play.
I think that's a failure of scenario design more than rules. The point of a game is fun, so you can have ranges that scale to real world ranges in terms of the ground scale of the table, but you need to give more thought to the scenario, terrain and the layout of the table.
The shrunken area represented does let you do some neat things. The Battlegroup series of WW2 rules doesn't use figure scale = ground scale ranges but it does have interesting things like off table anti-tank attacks rather than just off table artillery. Just like you can have games where air attacks or off table artillery, you can now include off table ground based direct fire attacks.
frozenwastes wrote: I've played loads of WW2 games were anyting firing a non-pistol round can shoot at anything you see. Yes, it compresses the battlefield and makes for skirmish gaming being largely what it's about. That's not a bad thing.
One of the key characteristics of the modern battlefield is that if you can see something it can be destroyed. So terrain becomes the main issue.
To many table tops have large completely flat open areas where the ground can actually be very uneven in real life.
It's far more immersive when units engage at ground scale ranges that match the figure scale. 1:1 ground scale / figure scale should always be the ideal for miniatures wargaming with human figures on the tabletop.
Playing around dense terrain is a major shift from open tabletops, but is clearly a more modern way to play. The real world actually has pretty dense cover & terrain.
Too many tabletops are still following Ancients / Napoleonics practice of agreeing to fight on a nice, open plain with largely unrestricted sight lines. 40k is especially guilty here.
It's far more immersive when units engage at ground scale ranges that match the figure scale. 1:1 ground scale / figure scale should always be the ideal for miniatures wargaming with human figures on the tabletop.
I think the immersion factor is a really smart thing to bring up. Incongruity breaks the dream so if the ground scale, figure scale and weapons range all match and make sense together, there's nothing to pop up and jar one out of the action.
Playing around dense terrain is a major shift from open tabletops, but is clearly a more modern way to play. The real world actually has pretty dense cover & terrain.
I like it a lot, myself.
Too many tabletops are still following Ancients / Napoleonics practice of agreeing to fight on a nice, open plain with largely unrestricted sight lines. 40k is especially guilty here.
Napoleonic warfare was basically the end of the practice of agreeing to fight on a nice open plain. Surprise and operational level outmaneuvering became the keys to victory at that point in history. I take your meaning though.
Spoiler:
Much of the time the armies formed into nice lines to face one another because Napoleon was suddenly upon them and their options were to form up or retreat. And the size of the armies hit a point where a single plain wouldn't contain the battle. For example, at the Battle of Eylau, despite the Russians stopping and offering battle rather than retreating, there was an entire town between the armies and the 2 days of actual fighting was preceded by a reconnaissance war and Napoleon attempting to get behind the Russian retreat, which itself was only caused by cossacks intercepting a French messenger who had some written orders. The Russian and Prussian generals had no real idea what Napoleon was up to or where his army was prior to that intelligence victory. In the end they fought in the streets long into the night and while Napoleon possessed the field at the end of the battle, he actually failed to achieve his aims. It wasn't until 4 months later at Friedland would Napoleon get what he wanted (the sufficient destruction of the Russian army to bring the Tsar to the negotiation table and knock them out of the war) and that battle was the result of the Bennigsen thinking he had found a small isolated force he could outnumber. So the Russians crossed a river and attacked Turned out the French had almost twice the number of the Russians show up throughout the day.
The other thing missing from wargaming in a lot of cases is the unknown. You'll never get a situation like Friedland if the Russian player gets to read the French army list at the beginning of the battle. Or knows that on turns 2, 4 and 6 another corps of French will be arriving at certain points on the table. Just like how you don't get reserves in wargames because if you know the enemy's position those forces are best used to concentrate an attack rather than be available for the unexpected.
Figure scale = ground scale ranges and hidden deployment where you make a small map or write notes saying where people are hiding. And maybe a random army generation table where you don't know what the opponent is going to have. Would make for a very intense game. Though something tells me most people would rather show up with their 1500 points knowing the opponent has the same and then fight over a flat empty battlefield. If only out of familiarity. Games like 40k load so much onto the coin toss for who goes first as a result of this tendency. Now add in unlimited range on all weapons and the current trend of putting terrain into the army lists and no terrain really blocking line of sight anymore. Ugh.
Anyone ever thought about base size in terms of ground scale? This is sort of related to volume-based LOS. When one fig measures range to another, it's usually from base to base - in effect, the target for purposes of range is a volume of space rather than a body. Considering that the actual target, the body, is anywhere in that volume of space, there is almost an assumption of built-in micro cover in games that use sigmoid curves for range. Looking at that volume in terms of ground scale rather than fig scale really emphasizes this assumption.
LOS from/to a part of the figure seems silly too. Hell, I know none of my figures look like they are trying to crawl inside of their kevlar and being as small as fething possible and exposing as little as possible in order to return fire, which tends to be a common position when the rounds are snapping past. Additionally, real troopers tend to not be as motionless as a statue when engaging in a firefight.
I don't think the debate about LOS mechanics has been conclusively settled; and I tend to side with CptJake. But I'm not really talking about LOS - just taking into account that range is usually measured to the base rather than the sculpt, at least regarding human-sized targets, which effectively is the same premise as the volume-based LOS mechanic.
The implication is, "range" is actually the effective range of the weapon to hit an active target within that volume. If the volume is measured by ground scale rather than figure scale then we have a nicely rational basis for shortening weapons ranges - not only are the targets moving, ducking back, grabbing whatever cover they can but they are also doing this in a larger area than we might think just based on the size of the model.
@Jake - That's all the more reason not to use the HUGE magic cylinder (which allows targeting to the air above the model), but instead to shrink the target down to the model's torso using TLOS.
____
@Manchu - measuring range base-to-base is merely a convention that improves consistency. The half-inch difference between measuring to the model is not a big deal.
If models are moving about, magic cylinder says that they are deliberately jumping up and down so their heads can be lethally targeted above walls...
When I say volume-based LOS, I am not talking about an indefinitely tall cylinder. I mean the volume in which the body of the figure could be as it ducks, stands, climbs, and otherwise moves around.
Manchu wrote: Anyone ever thought about base size in terms of ground scale? This is sort of related to volume-based LOS. When one fig measures range to another, it's usually from base to base - in effect, the target for purposes of range is a volume of space rather than a body. Considering that the actual target, the body, is anywhere in that volume of space, there is almost an assumption of built-in micro cover in games that use sigmoid curves for range. Looking at that volume in terms of ground scale rather than fig scale really emphasizes this assumption.
The problem with the "ground scale" idea is that terrain tends to be scaled the same as the models. So you could in theory make a new game that had ranges and terrain sizes for one scale and then larger-than-scale models for aesthetic reasons, but it doesn't work as an explanation for scale/range issues in existing games.
The idea is, the target's constant movement is already accounted for in foreshortened ranges. Measuring the target's base in ground scale just bolsters that rationalization.
Manchu wrote: What exactly do you mean by "magic cylinder"?
When I say volume-based LOS, I am not talking about an indefinitely tall cylinder. I mean the volume in which the body of the figure could be as it ducks, stands, climbs, and otherwise moves around.
A magic cylinder (MC) is a cylinder the size of the base, up to a certain conventionally standardized height, which has nothing to do with the actual model. Heavy Gear uses this, with a targeting template that replaces the model for purposes of determining LOS. Implemented correctly, MC is one of the stupidest mechanics I've ever seen in a miniatures game, because it completely removes the point of having miniatures at all. One might as well be playing with labeled bits of dowel.
MC doesn't have to be infinite / indefinite height. It can be fixed height, as in Heavy Gear. The volume of where the body could be includes anywhere over the base, which is why opponents are legally allowed to target empty air to lethal result.
JohnHwangDD wrote: A magic cylinder (MC) is a cylinder the size of the base, up to a certain conventionally standardized height, which has nothing to do with the actual model. Heavy Gear uses this, with a targeting template that replaces the model for purposes of determining LOS. Implemented correctly, MC is one of the stupidest mechanics I've ever seen in a miniatures game, because it completely removes the point of having miniatures at all. One might as well be playing with labeled bits of dowel.
I thought the earlier reasoning about a model having to be constant jumping to be targetable in all parts of their volume was a better case not to have them than this. The visual appeal of painted miniatures on lots of finished terrain should be enough to have them. Having the miniature height matter brings in all sorts of issues of a soldier being frozen in time, unable to crouch. Or some figures giving game advantages or disadvantages based on how tall or how crouching the sculptor chose to make them.
I think a magic cylinder is fine as long as you reduce it's height to the shoulder height at your figure and ground scale. And maybe make some rule where you can crouch or lay down and count as even smaller.
@frozenwastes - thanks for the picture! The constant jumping making the full volume targetable is the first part of my objection, and the dowel replacement is the logical conclusion.
In any case, the vagaries of crouching / kneeling models are a much smaller issue within a TLOS system. After all, they can't fire over things that standing models can.
Tying it to shoulder height is just a half-step toward TLOS, so you're getting there! Keep going along those lines, and you'll end up with a LOS system that actually works! ____
@Manchu - In the Warmachine picture, note how the air above the Mechanitrall is legally, lethally targetable, even if the model itself is fully obscured behind a 1.5" tall wall - that's my biggest peeve with magic cylinder.
Manchu wrote: I don't follow, what makes you say that?
The idea is, the target's constant movement is already accounted for in foreshortened ranges. Measuring the target's base in ground scale just bolsters that rationalization.
The point is that things like buildings/roads/etc define the size of the table, and typically the scale they show is that everything on the table is roughly the same scale as the models. If two models are standing on opposite sides of a road 1" across the ground is the same "real" distance as 1" on a model. So the idea of a ground scale where the ranges are, say, 6mm scale while the models are 28mm for aesthetic reasons, doesn't work. For ground scale to work as a concept you'd have to have something like Epic terrain and 40k models.
JohnHwangDD wrote:@frozenwastes - thanks for the picture! The constant jumping making the full volume targetable is the first part of my objection, and the dowel replacement is the logical conclusion.
The dowel replacement is not the logical conclusion unless aesthetics don't have any priority. Look at any actual army level game where a base of figures represents hundreds of figures. The figure height does not matter here and you could make the case that you may as well use flat chits and not have figures at all in the same way as dowels are the "logical conclusion." I say no way. Visuals matter.
No thank you.
In any case, the vagaries of crouching / kneeling models are a much smaller issue within a TLOS system. After all, they can't fire over things that standing models can.
A given crouching soldier not being able to stand up and take a shot is as realistic as one being taken out from the area above their heads being attacked. As in, neither makes sense. What we probably want is abstraction that doesn't give us jarring moments like either of those examples.
Tying it to shoulder height is just a half-step toward TLOS, so you're getting there! Keep going along those lines, and you'll end up with a LOS system that actually works!
For skirmish games where the ground and figure scale is the same, TLOS works really, really well. Area terrain and base volumes do work though. While I have some major problems with warmachine, that's not really one of them except for the issue that the volume for a 3 foot tall gobber and a 6 foot tall human is the same. For the most part the model volume mechanic works.
Manchu wrote: You realize that ground scale and figure scale are different in most miniatures games, right?
Maybe if you count all the various niche-market historical games, but which major games have different scales? 40k doesn't, Infinity doesn't, FoW doesn't seem to have a different scale. WM/H might, but in opposite direction with ranges being ridiculously short to enable its MTG-style combos, and there isn't really any "ground" on most of the WM/H tables I've seen. The only games I've seen that do any kind of scale differences are space combat games like BFG/Armada/Starfleet Battles/etc, where the ships are invisibly tiny dots at table scale but full-size miniatures for aesthetic reasons. But that's getting rather far away from the genre of games the OP is talking about.
A 6'x4' table in 28mm is the size of a soccer field. Is it your belief that 40k is meant to simulate battles limited to the size of a soccer field? And that a bolter's effective range is liitle more than 100 ft? Sorta skipping to the punchline, are you assuming fig scale and ground scale are 1:1 in 40k because unlike those "niche-market" historical games (haha) 40k doesn't entail design notes?
Manchu wrote: A 6'x4' table in 28mm is the size of a soccer field. Is it your belief that 40k is meant to simulate battles limited to the size of a soccer field? And that a bolter's effective range is liitle more than 100 ft? Sorta skipping to the punchline, are you assuming fig scale and ground scale are 1:1 in 40k because unlike those "niche-market" historical games (haha) 40k doesn't entail design notes?
Obviously 40k's scaling and ranges are broken, in large part as a result of being a reskinned 1980s fantasy game. But having unrealistic ranges, whether for balance reasons or inherited from a previous game, is not the same thing as having a consistent and deliberate "ground scale". There is no consistent relationship between the 24" range of a bolter, a ~4" wide bunker (the closest terrain piece I have within reach to measure), the 48" range of a large-caliber autocannon used as the main gun on a Predator tank, or the 18-36" movement range of a supersonic fighter jet. The unavoidable truth here is that 40k is a 28mm game with some really stupid range/distance values, not a consistent dual-scale game.
"Consistent dual-scale game" seems to be a term of art you just invented for the sake of this argument. The fact of the matter is that figure scale and ground scale are not the same in 40k, whether or not anyone has actually bothered in the last X years to consider this as a specific design principle. Sure we can handwave away bolters or whatever much more plausible weapons are used in Infinity - not so the Garands and K98s of Bolt Action (or FoW for that matter). Fig scale and ground scale are different, with ground scale being much smaller.
Manchu wrote: "Consistent dual-scale game" seems to be a term of art you just invented for the sake of this argument.
No, it's simply stating the obvious: for a game to have a "ground scale" it must actually have a scale. A collection of arbitrary ranges/movement distances/etc, none of them consistent with each other, which happen to not make (fluff) sense in a 28mm game is not the same thing as having a ground scale. For there to be a credible argument that 40k has, say, 28mm models and 10mm ground scale, you would have to show that 40k's weapon ranges/movement distances/etc are all consistently scaled to 10mm. If you don't have that consistency then you don't have a deliberate ground scale, you have a bunch of unrealistic numbers in a 28mm game.
The fact of the matter is that figure scale and ground scale are not the same in 40k, whether or not anyone has actually bothered in the last X years to consider this as a specific design principle.
Ok then, what is 40k's "ground scale"? If you're so sure that it's not 28mm then what is it?
Sure we can handwave away bolters or whatever much more plausible weapons are used in Infinity - not so the Garands and K98s of Bolt Action (or FoW for that matter). Fig scale and ground scale are different, with ground scale being much smaller.
Except when we look at the typical "ground" these games are played on it usually seems pretty consistent in scale with the models. For example, the length of a building is appropriate for a 28mm game, which means that the ground it sits on is also scaled to 28mm. To have a smaller ground scale you'd have to have something like a game of 40k on 6'x4' table with Epic buildings/roads/etc and 28mm infantry models. But we don't normally see this kind of thing. We see people setting up tables that represent a small area of a battlefield at 28mm scale, and then playing games with 28mm scale models on the 28mm scale battlefield.
Priestly recently released a book on wargames design that specifically addresses the ground scale issue of games like 40k(and by extension games like FoW), Bolt Action, Antares, etc.,. . The answer is not that there is no answer but that there are goals for the games which make a fixed ground scale not an option. It has a variable ground scale. Not a thoughtless lack of ground scale. The weapon ranges relative to the size of the figures are chosen for specific reasons.
The ranges and inconsistency between the figures is intentional to allow a greater variety of unit types on the table. And to make sure the game works for a certain table size.
Tabletop Wargaming by Rick Priestly wrote:Slow units movement = M/2. Standard units movement = M. Fast units movement = 2M
Short range fire = M. Standard weapons range = 2M. Long range weapons range = 3M+
Where M = T/8, and T = width of the playing table (normally 48″, hence the 6″ movement).
Meeples & Miniatures review of the book wrote:What is more, this is then complicated by modern weapons that have much larger ranges. In order to cater for the use of both the pistol, and artillery, with the argument that since gamers like to get all their toys out on the table, despite the fact that artillery should be far off the table, the game designer has to allow for these things to be placed on the table so players can use them and manufacturers can make them. In order to accommodate all this on the tabletop, it is suggested that a Sigmoid Curve approach to range is adopted, so that short-range weapons can be used, as can long-range weapons, but it means that the mid-range weapons have their firing distances severely distorted. The author then goes on to suggest that the Bolt Action rules are a very good example of this working in practice.
These games don't have no ground scale, they have an intentionally variable ground scale so that a company can sell artillery models and guys with pistols and submachine guns to the same customer and have them both end up seeing play on the same table.
So, in contrast to that, this thread is about games that have a 1:1:1 figure:ground:range scale. Whether or not a variable ground scale counts in anyone's estimation as a ground scale at all is totally pointless. The contrast between that and a defined 1:1:1 figure:ground:range approach is all we need to talk about how this might work and be different.
Even with variable scale, the scale ranges from about 1:100 to maybe 1:1000, still way out of line with the figs. The point is that the figs don't match the table action.
Whether that is good or bad is another question entirely.
On the subject of model posture, I'm applying a rule in my system that the height of all models counts as being standing. i.e. if my opponent wants to determine LOS to one of my infantry units and they are posed lying prone (less visible) or prancing on top of a rock (more visible),I place a proxy standing figure next to them and use that as a basis for LOS.
This can be applied as a house rule to most game systems. Besides being a fair solution, it also allows players to model their units however they like without having to worry about being accused of modelling for advantage.
Manchu wrote: You realize that ground scale and figure scale are different in most miniatures games, right?
I'm well aware of many designers using grossly oversized models on compressed playing areas. It's a major design flaw, that few designers address, counting on the ignorance and blindness of the players. When the ratio gets to be off by a factor of 5 or more, it breaks immersion. Even 2x or 3x starts to be problematic to anyone who's at all knowledgeable about the actual items in question.
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JohnHwangDD wrote:@frozenwastes - thanks for the picture! The constant jumping making the full volume targetable is the first part of my objection, and the dowel replacement is the logical conclusion.
The dowel replacement is not the logical conclusion unless aesthetics don't have any priority.
Look at any actual army level game where a base of figures represents hundreds of figures.
In any case, the vagaries of crouching / kneeling models are a much smaller issue within a TLOS system. After all, they can't fire over things that standing models can.
A given crouching soldier not being able to stand up and take a shot is as realistic as one being taken out from the area above their heads being attacked. As in, neither makes sense. What we probably want is abstraction that doesn't give us jarring moments like either of those examples.
Tying it to shoulder height is just a half-step toward TLOS, so you're getting there! Keep going along those lines, and you'll end up with a LOS system that actually works!
For skirmish games where the ground and figure scale is the same, TLOS works really, really well. Area terrain and base volumes do work though. While I have some major problems with warmachine, that's not really one of them except for the issue that the volume for a 3 foot tall gobber and a 6 foot tall human is the same. For the most part the model volume mechanic works.
If you're not going to use the actual model for LOS and other purposes, but you want a strongly tactical game, you need dowels.
Those army level games look *far* more realistic than something like Bolt Action. If the flats were slightly raised and textured, even better!
Spoiler:
The above is a proposed multi-base that supports 1:1 figure:ground scale; humans stand 2.5-3mm tall.
The not crouching / not standing thing in TLOS produces far less offensive results than MC. By far. The ability to target MC when you can't see ANY of the model is just awful. The resulting "LOS" between MCs where neither model can see each other is completely indefensible as a design decision.
KOG light is TLOS with a 1:1 ground:figure scale, with unlimited range & "toe-in" (all-or-nothing) cover. Getting back to the OP, it's realistic weapon ranges all the way.
I have no issues with area terrain in a TLOS context. They aren't mutually exclusive. Area terrain is good for slowing / dangerous terrain. Or providing blanket cover within, as mutually agreeable.
The volume thing leads to certain very silly results at the other end of the spectrum, too. Like the Wrack model being taller than the MC volume. You might see a model's head, but not have LOS to it. And yes, I agree, it can work. Anything can work. I just think that TLOS >> MC because it's a lot simpler, with fewer counter-intuitive results.
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Manchu wrote: Is it your belief that 40k is meant to simulate battles limited to the size of a soccer field? And that a bolter's effective range is liitle more than 100 ft?
Yes, and Yes. 40k is blackpowder ARW/Napoleonics on a manicured lawn. That's why Bolters are just huge smoothbore muskets.
No excuse for FoW / BA, though.
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frozenwastes wrote: Priestly recently released a book on wargames design that specifically addresses the ground scale issue of games like 40k(and by extension games like FoW), Bolt Action, Antares, etc.,. . The answer is not that there is no answer but that there are goals for the games which make a fixed ground scale not an option. It has a variable ground scale. Not a thoughtless lack of ground scale. The weapon ranges relative to the size of the figures are chosen for specific reasons.
Blah, blah, blah. It's a terrible handwave that says "to hell with realism and scale".
JohnHwangDD: Do you not find it disruptive that TLOS rewards crouching/prone models and penalizes expansive poses even though in-game, the units would not be doing either? You seem to be advocating a very simulationist approach (TLOS as modeled, 1:1 groundscale), but since models are an abstraction, is a literal rule like LOS really appropriate?
I think in many games, scale that varies from the model scale and abstraction of LOS can work very well. For example, Clix games generally use squares for tracing LOS and have shortened range, but, in context, it usually works very well.
In fact, if you are trying to make a concrete clarity game, manual measuring and LOS determination will constantly cause problems and standardized areas such as squares, hexes, etc. will often prove superior.
Imagine that a standard 4x4 table could be divided into a 48x48 square surface. Now, you instantly have eliminated movement distance issues. 6 inches becomes 6 squares, no fudging. Each square is now either clear or blocked/cover/etc. according to the rules of your game. Sure, you can no longer make fractional moves, but I would be skeptical about how much that adds to gameplay vs. the clarity such a system adds (again, assuming such clarity is a goal).
No, not really. There are compromises in all LOS systems. Compared to the nonsense targeting of MC, the posing issue of TLOS is the least bad of all, by a rather significant margin.
I very strongly prefer visual verisimilitude, which necessarily mandates 1:1 ground scale and 1:1 weapon ranges as a direct consequence. While models are an imperfect abstraction, TLOS rather neatly solves the LOS question rather cleanly and directly.
I like freeform movement and variable terrain, something that grids just do not permit.
Those army level games look *far* more realistic than something like Bolt Action. If the flats were slightly raised and textured, even better!
The above is a proposed multi-base that supports 1:1 figure:ground scale; humans stand 2.5-3mm tall.
Something like this:
Spoiler:
As well, realism isn't the only consideration when it comes to aesthetics of army level games. If you thought those cards or pogs looked better because their height was more realistic, then all I can say is we have very very different ideas of what looks good.
I know from conventions that if I do cards or chits people will walk by the table and just glance down. If I run a 54mm battle, they'll stop and look at things with wonder on their faces.
The not crouching / not standing thing in TLOS produces far less offensive results than MC. By far.
To you. I find the figure being locked in a single position and issues of crouching to be far, far more offensive.
The ability to target MC when you can't see ANY of the model is just awful. The resulting "LOS" between MCs where neither model can see each other is completely indefensible as a design decision.
It actually has a very, very simple defense as a design decision. The ability to not have advantage/disadvantage based on modelling (or rather to not have to worry about it at all) is put at a higher priority than not having such a moment of empty volume shooting empty volume come up in the game.
"I prioritized X over Y because of Z" is always a valid defense of a design decision. It's okay that you don't care about Z. Not all games or approaches are for all people. You seem to conflating your priorities with something objective though, which is strange.
KOG light is TLOS with a 1:1 ground:figure scale, with unlimited range & "toe-in" (all-or-nothing) cover. Getting back to the OP, it's realistic weapon ranges all the way.
My first thought was that realistic weapon ranges, a low model count 1:1 ground:figure scale would be mated very well with TLOS, but the more I think about it, the more I see the advantages of a model volume approach. It opens up the design space of allowing players to decide what posture their models are taking. If I have a guy with a rifle on a flat roof, I can put a little marker on him showing he's prone or crouching and now the small brick wall around the top of the building can suddenly grant cover or even outright LOS blocking. Very important in a game with unlimited ranges. If I go with TLOS, I have no decision to make. The model is going to be in one of those modes already and I won't be able to choose.
JohnHwangDD wrote: And now you're adding "posture" markers? More unnecessary complexity!
If I'm playing a lower model count game, then why not? Complexity doesn't have to be a bad thing. I want a game to have as much complexity as required to allow for player decisions that matter to me. If you have decisions made multiplied by the number of figures you need to decide about get too high, then things will bog down. If we're keeping model counts relatively low for a 1:1:1 figure:ground:range game, then that won't be an issue.
If I want the players to have the ability to decide what approach their soldiers are taking to a piece of terrain, then indicating it is not "unnecessary complexity" but is actually necessary. In a lot of situations you don't have to add markers at all. You can just say "yeah, the guy on the edge of the roof is going to be peaking over to take shots, exposing himself as little as possible." That can be the default assumption for any model touching cover so you only need to mark those that are totally hiding.
Well - I didn't think it would be necessary to explain that ground scale and figure scale are rarely 1:1 but now that we have ...
The volume of a man-sized 28mm miniature on a 25mm round base, where that base is considered to be in the same scale as the miniature, is roughly 170 cubic feet. When we talk about range, we are talking about the effective range to hit a target that occupies some space within that 170 cubic feet and where the shooter is only guessing at where in that volume the target will be when the shot potentially impacts.
Now, if we measure the same volume but account for the radius of the base in terms of the smaller ground scale, the volume will obviously increase. Since we know that rules using limited ranges (24" bolter or 24" K98) are using a smaller ground scale than figure scale, this is the proper measurement of the target volume. This is just a rationalization of limited ranges; it doesn't have anything to do with LOS mechanics because we already (usually) measure ranges base-to-base.
OTOH, a person can comfortably fit in a suitcase, something well under 10 cubic feet. So it's a 17:1 volume ratio, which is even worse if one is using unrealistic ranges for ground scale compression. If the ground scale compression is a fixed 3:1 (and it's often worse), then the 27x factor bumps effective volume ratio up to 459:1...
All I'm seeing is more reason why 1:1 ground scale and TLOS and unlimited range is preferable.
Since there is some good back and forth, probably better to head there.
The reason I think it belongs here is that when you have effectively unlimited weapon ranges the lethality of the game can go up so you have to consider what approach to LOS you are going to take. For example, a sniper on top of a building is in a great position because they can shoot at lots of targets but is hard to hit (or even spot) in response. If you go with a true LOS then a sniper becomes super exposed, standing tall over the edge of the building. If you can indicate or assume that the soldier it is representing is doing the smart thing and only exposing himself to fire as much as needed to shoot, then you can actually represent the advantages of a sniper in a good position.
Model volume that is too high will also fail here. Unless you back the figure away from the edge and then assume the model is shooting out of a tiny sliver at the top of the volume. Which is sort of silly. So I think a hybrid approach is best. Have a reduced height volume and assume the soldiers are adopting the posture that makes the most sense unless you declare otherwise.
As well, I'm not sure it really is TLOS vs Magic Cylinder. Either one plus assuming the soldiers are doing what make sense and indicating it as needed probably produces the same third option. A meeting in the middle where you neither have models shooting out of the air above their heads nor being locked into what the sculptor chose for your tactical options.
How you determine who can be shot and how effective the fire will be can matter more when 1:1:1 figure:ground:range is being used, so how you handle LOS can matter a lot.
The volume-based conception of a figure's location also takes in to account scale of time and - presumably - fog of war factors. As I mentioned, one could think of it as incorporating micro terrain cover (which is usually not represented by a separate mechanic).
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frozenwastes wrote: when you have effectively unlimited weapon ranges the lethality of the game can go up so you have to consider what approach to LOS you are going to take
Fair point - but it don't think it works the other way: using limited ranges doesn't overcome the "frozen in time" problem of TLOS. (BTW I freakin love your avatar.)
The volume-based conception of a figure's location also takes in to account scale of time and - presumably - fog of war factors. As I mentioned, one could think of it as incorporating micro terrain cover (which is usually not represented by a separate mechanic).
"conception of a figure's location" <-- I like that.
Spotting rules might be another thing worth considering in a 1:1:1 game. Again more complexity, but if we're talking about lower figure count, that might not be an issue. The Battlegroup series of rules has spotting for direct fire but not for suppressive fire. I think they work. They don't have realistic weapon ranges though. They do the same thing as FOW but with SMG fire being 10" instead of 4."
If I were to house rule it to have in scale ranges, it would probably become more static for conflicts with more open ground (Kursk) but should work fine for areas of more closed in terrain (Normandy bocage and towns).
Manchu wrote: Fair point - but it don't think it works the other way: using limited ranges doesn't overcome the "frozen in time" problem of TLOS. (BTW I freakin love your avatar.)
I think it comes down to differing definitions of what a miniature is on the table top. The "frozen in time" characteristic of TLOS is the result of assuming that the soldier in question is always in that pose and standing in that way whereas some sort of base based volume approach assumes the volume is the space in which a soldier might be. It's the space in which a given soldier interacts from and can be interacted with. So I guess it's a matter of the miniature equals the soldier or the base size and some volume above it being the space in which a soldier operates. Games that use the centre of the miniature/base have fallen out of fashion, but that's another option.
As for Space Cop, I tend to be a fan of movies that are intentionally bad. So many great one liners in there.
Like many posters here, I came to miniatures gaming via 40k. So I never really thought about ground scale until I started to read what Peregrine called the "niche-market historicals" rule sets. Also like Peregrine, I guess I just assumed ground and figure scales were 1:1 in games like 40k. But when I discovered otherwise, it actually didn't bother me that much. The argument for 1:1 seems to be about tactical realism, especially from gamers/designers focused on squad-level WW2 gaming. Setting aside how much tactical realism we are ever going to achieve with a miniatures game, I think the ground/fig scale difference doesn't bother me because it doesn't actually make games less fun. To the contrary, it makes them more fun - for me - because it increases the variety of weaponry I can use in a game.
There's definitely something to Priestly's approach. It does let you put a heavy mortar on the same table as guys with SMGs and have them both matter during a game.
I spend most of my time gaming 19th century stuff in 54mm where one figure is a "battalion" (whatever that means depending on the period and place) and the basic unit of maneuver is the division. Very abstract stuff. I do have a bunch of 15mm WW2 stuff and have played games with a 1:1:1 (at 1:100) approach. Though recently I've been going with Battlegroup with its 10" range bands and being able to choose whether or not artillery is on the table or not. By which I mean that the ranges while bigger than Flames of War still allow for artillery models to show up on the table top. In 2nd edition Flames of War there was a rule in the Mid war eastern front book to allow for off table artillery but I think they scrapped that as there are models to be sold (and painted and put on the table).
A design question for 1:1:1 approaches. When do you make range matter. The inverse square law shows that a target that is further away basically shrinks and becomes harder to hit. So when and how does a given set of rules account for that, if they do? How much does it matter? Do you prefer a simple optimal range/long range split?
I tend to go with that approach. Usually the easiest way to convert a variable ground scale game to a 1:1:1 approach is to make the existing ranges optimal and then allow attacks at any range past that at some sort of penalty.
The sniper on the roof is a great example of where TLOS falls down hard for a skirmish game. I kind of like the idea of letting the active player declare the visibility of the models in cover. So if he can see to shoot, he can be shot back. If he is clinging hard to cover and cannot shoot (IE hiding), he cannot be seen. Well, unless maybe until they get closer (or get around the cover) and spot him....
Range is a very interesting question. If we are still taking about skirmish gaming, then there is also going to be the difference between firing on the move, which is largely short ranged and suppressive, unless you can catch them unawares or pinned, and the careful, aimed shot (usually made at some distance). Interestingly, the second is usually also at an unaware target. Once a target is aware that they are under fire, they tend to move to cover and/or shoot back, which makes aiming hard.
So, range, then is generally the range of effective direct fire. I would say generally this is a direct function of state and equipment. Firing on the move with a pistol? Very short effective range. Still with a scoped rifle aiming at an unaware foe? Whole table with no real penalty (too close would actually be tougher).
SMGs and battle rifle should be ideal for close encounters and move fire, rifles for long range, and pistol for when you have nothing else! MGs are for laying down heavy swathes of fire at very limited angles.
So maybe cut the range of most weapons on the move (hard cap) or use incremental penalties (say a weapon with range 10 accrues a penalty of 1 for ranges beyond 10, 2 beyond 20, 3 beyond 30, etc.). But they all need not be exactly the same. The rifle, for example, might have a minimum range, especially while scoped. And, of course, I like fixed length lines for things like flamethrowers. Anything within X distance of the line gets scorched!
frozenwastes wrote: A design question for 1:1:1 approaches. When do you make range matter. The inverse square law shows that a target that is further away basically shrinks and becomes harder to hit. So when and how does a given set of rules account for that, if they do? How much does it matter? Do you prefer a simple optimal range/long range split?
KOG light is a 1:1:1 game set in the near future. As the default unit is a robot suit (or tank or powersuit), I assume accuracy based on modern computer-aimed devices (e.g. M1 Abrams fire control system), so range doesn't really matter - LOS (i.e. terrain) matters.
In the case of KOG light, I simplify things to have unlimited range (which really means more than 100 meters), and then apply a non-optimal long range penalty.
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jmurph wrote: The sniper on the roof is a great example of where TLOS falls down hard for a skirmish game.
If that's what you need to model under TLOS, simply allow the player to lay the model on it's side for a prone position...
For myself laying models on their sides is a deal breaker. I think it looks awful and will never do it. As well, even varnished models are far more likely to be damaged if you regularly place them prone.
Manchu wrote: Well - I didn't think it would be necessary to explain that ground scale and figure scale are rarely 1:1 but now that we have ...
No, I understand perfectly well what it means to have a difference between ground scale and figure scale. My point is that 40kdoesn't work that way. 40k doesn't have a separate ground scale, it has a bunch of ranges/distances that don't make sense fluff-wise. You can't explain it with the ground scale concept because the various nonsense ranges/distances are still equally ridiculous no matter what you pick for a ground scale. You can't have an assault rifle with 24" range and a 40mm (or more!) autocannon with 48" range, no matter what you decide the ground scale is at least one of those numbers is absurd.
And when you look at other popular games you see the same kind of thing: the table is representing a very small area of a battlefield at the same scale as the models, and various ranges/distances are inconsistent and unrealistic. The only games that fit your model are space combat games like BFG/Starfleet Battles/etc, where ship models are clearly out of scale to everything else so they aren't tiny specks.
referencing the rhetorical device you unilaterally introduced earlier, the notion of a "consistent and deliberate ground scale" - i.e., where ground scale is mechanically relevent to the game design (such as with frontage). But that was never the contention.
Manchu wrote: You're still barking up the wrong tree:
40k doesn't have a separate ground scale
referencing the rhetorical device you unilaterally introduced earlier, the notion of a "consistent and deliberate ground scale" - i.e., where ground scale is mechanically relevent to the game design (such as with frontage). But that was never the contention.
Uh, what? If a ground scale isn't relevant to game design then how exactly does it exist? If the designer isn't saying "this is the ground scale" as they're creating movement distances/terrain size/weapon ranges/etc then the ground scale exists only in your imagination.
You missed the point again. The "official ground scale" of X game was never relevant to my point, just the observation that ground scale is self-evidently smaller than model scale as a matter of limited ranges. Therefore, the volume of the "magic cylinder" is larger than it might casually appear.
Manchu wrote: You missed the point again. The "official ground scale" of X game was never relevant to my point, just the observation that ground scale is self-evidently smaller than model scale as a matter of limited ranges. Therefore, the volume of the "magic cylinder" is larger than it might casually appear.
Then I really don't understand what your point is. You're describing a "ground scale" that doesn't exist in the game, wasn't ever a part of the design process, and isn't at all consistent across the various things that would be part of a ground scale. I don't know, maybe it makes you feel better to try to rationalize away the unrealistic distances like this even though it has nothing to do with the actual game? But from a game design point of view 40k is a 28mm game with 28mm model scale and 28mm ground scale, and some distances that are set for game balance reasons* rather than realism.
*See previous quote from one of the original designers of 40k, about how those distances are set to fractions of the table size for game mechanics reasons and have nothing to with "realistic" ground scale.
lolno 40k is a setting as well as a game and bolters can shoot farther than 100 feet ... if it being a fictional setting confuses you too much then by all means think again about Bolt Action or Flames of War
Manchu wrote: lolno 40k is a setting as well as a game and bolters can shoot farther than 100 feet ... if it being a fictional setting confuses you too much then by all means think again about Bolt Action or Flames of War
The fluff of 40k has nothing to do with game design or what is seen on the table. Bolters in tabletop 40k have a range of ~150'. What happens in some novel involving space marines is about as relevant as what happens in the latest Star Wars movie.
Manchu wrote: OK so yes the fictional component is indeed too confusing for you.
No, you just for some odd reason believe that "40k's tabletop rules don't accurately represent the fluff" isn't an acceptable answer, and there must be some bizarre "ground scale" explanation that proves that it's actually realistic after all. Regardless of what some space marine novel says 40k is a 28mm game with 28mm scale models and 28mm ground scale. Whether or not you like the fluff of that is up to you, but that has nothing to do with the scale from a game design point of view.
You're the only one talking about space marine novels, chum. The difference between ground scale and fig scale in 40k ... just like in BA and FoW ... is self-evident regardless of it having no mechanical impact.
Manchu wrote: You're the only one talking about space marine novels, chum.
Excuse me for assuming that you could understand 'space marine novels' as a general reference to 40k's fiction and not nitpick whether or not you were literally talking about the novels or some other part of the fiction.
The difference between ground scale and fig scale in 40k ... just like in BA and FoW ... is self-evident regardless of it having no mechanical impact.
Calling it "self evident" over and over again doesn't make it true. I've posted the reasons why your supposed ground scale is a myth that exists only in your own mind, but here they are again:
1) 40k was not designed with this supposed ground scale in mind. According to the previous quote from one of the original designers distances are set as fractions of the table size for gameplay reasons. Bolters have 24" range because infantry weapons should (in their opinion) have a range of four times the movement distance of an infantry unit, not because 24" is the ground-scale equivalent of the "real" range. Any supposed ground scale that matches those numbers is complete coincidence, not the intent of the people who wrote the game.
2) Typical 40k tables represent a 450'x300' section of a battlefield at 28mm scale, with appropriate terrain features scaled to roughly 28mm. A ground scale of less than 28mm requires that the ground the game is played on be appropriately scaled, and most 40k games do not work this way.
3) No single ground scale can make 40k's distances realistic. A ground scale that makes 24" bolter range make sense fluff-wise fails when applied to the 48" range of an autocannon or the 18-36" range of a supersonic fighter jet. So you don't have a single unified ground scale for distances, you have a set of single-case scales for each different measurement. When you're firing a bolter it's a 3mm ground scale, when you're firing an autocannon it's a 1mm ground scale, when you're firing a flamer it's a 20mm ground scale, etc.
Now, if you want to make the argument that 40k's lack of a proper ground scale makes its rules a poor fit for the background fiction (or even a bad game in general) then that's fine, but your claim that 40k has a separate ground scale that is not 28mm simply does not match reality.
Since you already know that nothing I've said has anything to do with the claim that 40k uses a specific, consistent, mechanically relevant ground scale - which only you have been talking about ITT - you must therefore also know that those three points are irrelevant.
Manchu wrote: Since you already know that nothing I've said has anything to do with the claim that 40k uses a specific, consistent, mechanically relevant ground scale - which only you have been talking about ITT - you must therefore also know that those three points are irrelevant.
Then, since the subject here is game design and mechanics not "Manchu's headcanon explanations for his 40k games", what exactly is the point of anything you're saying?
Variable ground scale where no value of X in 1:X is equal to figure scale 1:Y and all values are greater than Y in a sigmoid distribution.
So for the purposes of a contrast in this thread about 1:1:1 scale ranges, the fact that 40k's variable ground scale can be called a non scale is irrelevant.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Basically the point is that harping on a about BA/FoW/40k variable ground scale being a non scale is pointless semantics. For the purposes of this thread, the sigmoid distribution of weapon ranges merelly serves as a point of contrast.
frozenwastes wrote: Variable ground scale where no value of X in 1:X is equal to figure scale 1:Y and all values are greater than Y in a sigmoid distribution.
That doesn't even make sense. You're essentially saying that if I measure from point A on the table to point B on the table the "real" distance represented can be anywhere in some huge range of values depending on what I'm measuring it for. IOW, that bunker is 50' away from my infantry squad if I'm moving them over to it, 300' away if I'm measuring for their lasguns, and 5,000' away if I'm measuring for their autocannon. Maybe this weird constantly-changing table makes sense for some Chaos-distorted demon world, but for normal games? Nope.
Take it up with Rick Priestly. He's the guy who invented specifically to allow a greater variety of model types on the table at the same time. And it's not by weapon but by distance. The variable ground scale telescopes on a sigmoid distribution of scale vs inches. In FoW, shooting an SMG and an Autocannon at 4" away represents both weapons shooting at maximum effective SMG range.
And again, you're still missing the point of bringing up such an approach which makes your semantic argument about calling 40k's variable ground scale a non scale irrelevant. It's only relevant is as a point of contrast with a 1:1:1 approach [EDIT And apparently it can matter when you think more of the figure scale side of things in certain LOS mechanics)..
Manchu wrote: Well - I didn't think it would be necessary to explain that ground scale and figure scale are rarely 1:1 but now that we have ...
Funny, what prompted me to post in this thread was Richard Clarke's editorial on the sigmoid curve in the most recent issue of WS&S. I actually didn't even want to bring it up at all - it isn't necessary given I just wanted to make the rather simple point that the volume of the magic cylinder is probably larger than we might generally imagine in games with limited ranges, which ends up helping to rationalize limited ranges.
So there are two ways the differences between 40k's variable ground scale and a defined ground scale equal to figure scale matter. I guess me insisting there is only one way it is relevant (as a point of contrast) isn't quite true It comes into play when considering different ways of handling line of sight as those abstractions can increase the conceptual range between the attacker's possible positions within a magic cylinder and the target's possible positions. It's basically a point that the figure scale can be thought off as out of whack rather than blaming it all on the ground scale or a distribution of ground scales that telescope as you get further away.
That's actually kind of neat. I think it may have even more of an application when considering ranges for multi figure stands where the area the unit occupies can be larger relative to the height (ie, Flames of War type basing).
KOG light is a 1:1:1 game set in the near future. As the default unit is a robot suit (or tank or powersuit), I assume accuracy based on modern computer-aimed devices (e.g. M1 Abrams fire control system), so range doesn't really matter - LOS (i.e. terrain) matters.
That's actually very cool and adds a level of decision making to play. It now pays to be much more careful about model placement and TLOS offers an intuitive way of making decisions based on that. Am I right to say the game is literally about making TLOS based decisions because the attack system assume a level of accuracy that drastically surpasses that present in say WW2? That the probabilistic nature of magic cylinder approaches is undesirable when things are so definite and accurate?
In the case of KOG light, I simplify things to have unlimited range (which really means more than 100 meters), and then apply a non-optimal long range penalty.
Simple and effective.
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Manchu wrote: Interesting point! I had not even considered the application to multi-basing ... now I will have to dig out my DZC rulebook ...
There's actually a couple factors here. Realistic ranges in terms of figure scale and realistic ranges in terms of comparison with other weapons (not using a sigmoid distribution). If realistic ranges aren't just about matching figure scales, then you can get more realistic by comparing weapons to weapons rather than just pinning everything on the figure scale. And when you have multibased models where the ground the base represents is much larger than the figure scale would indicate you can still have realistic ranges because of with what they are in relationship. My 54mm 19th century games have realistic ranges in terms of ranges compared to frontage of units, but not in relation to figure scale. There's probably something else here in terms of application that is worth considering that will come to me after I've let this sit with me for a while. I can probably be a bit more flexible with weapon ranges and still have a traditional bottom up ground scale type wargame experience meant to replicate results of historical battles. It's probably in that direction. A means of getting myself to think from a different angle in terms of inserting some top down thinking while still maintaining a bottom up approach.
frozenwastes wrote: It's basically a point that the figure scale can be thought off as out of whack rather than blaming it all on the ground scale or a distribution of ground scales that telescope as you get further away.
Except it doesn't help with this problem at all. Even if you assume that the figure scale is off and ignore it you still have the problem that all the other scales are also off. There is no figure scale you could change 40k's models to that would make the scale of the game consistent, no matter what you do the scaling is an inconsistent mess. It's much better to just accept that everything about the game is 28mm scale and weapon ranges are not fluff-accurate.
That the probabilistic nature of magic cylinder approaches is undesirable when things are so definite and accurate?
I don't understand this "probabilistic nature" of the magic cylinder approach. The magic cylinder is an abstraction, not a representation of anything in the real world. It isn't saying "the target is at some random location in this volume of space, and you may or may not hit it with a shot into that volume", it's saying "we're not going to bother representing model position at any greater level of detail". Fluff-wise the shooting model knows exactly where the target is, the rules are just doing the equivalent of rounding off all distances to the nearest 1" increment or playing a game on a hex grid. Trying to interpret an abstraction as any real-world situation is a pointless effort.
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frozenwastes wrote: In FoW, shooting an SMG and an Autocannon at 4" away represents both weapons shooting at maximum effective SMG range.
And this makes no sense. When you shoot that SMG at 4" get out a pen and draw a line on the table between the shooting unit and the target. That 4" line represents a particular distance X, the maximum range of a SMG. Now, at some later point, a model with an autocannon measures a maximum range shot along the line you drew. Because the autocannon's ground scale is different from the SMG's ground scale that 4" line on the table now represents a larger distance Y in the "real" world. Somehow those two points on the "real" battlefield are significantly farther apart. And if there's a 4" long bunker next to the line, well, that bunker changes size depending on what weapons you're measuring near it.
S = SMG unit, A = autocannon unit, T = target unit. * = dot on the table. All three horizontal lines are parallel and adjacent on the table.
Now, an autocannon's real-world effective range is clearly more than double the effective range of an SMG, even though in a game like 40k a heavy weapon might only have double the tabletop range of a basic infantry weapon. So clearly they have different ground scales.
If you measure the distance from the two 4" shots made end-to-end by the pair of SMG units you get a total of 8", representing X' in the real world (where X is double the effective range of an SMG). If you measure from A to T that same 8" now has to represent Y', which is more than X' because the autocannon's ground scale is not the same as the SMG's ground scale. So what is the real-world distance represented by the 8" between the two dots? Is it X' or more than X'? The answer depends on which gun you're currently measuring range for. Obviously this is absurd, a real-world battlefield doesn't expand and contract based on which weapons are currently firing.
The conclusion here is that you can have a separate ground scale and figure scale (40k doesn't, but a hypothetical new game might), but your ground scale needs to be the same for all distances or you get into absurd contradictions that are just as bad as having a 1:1 ratio between ground scale and figure scale with unrealistic distances.
The volume of the cylinder represents the space in which the target must be, within a certain time frame. The shooter does not know precisely where the target will be at the moment the shot potentially impacts.
About variable ground scale, you are getting mixed up by thinking of range as measurement of distance generally rather than a measurement of range of effective fire of a given weapon.
I mean this 100% straight up with no sarcasm or facetiousness: I'm not trying to explain away the problems with Priestly's approach. I'm saying it has costs. All design decisions do and designs based on his framework, the publisher sees those costs as minimal. Sees the problems as things that can be ignored. For example, Warlord Games makes a Pegasus Bridge terrain kit. Here's the real bridge it is based on:
Using Priestly's approach to weapon ranges and a variable scale, there's a funny thing that happens. A soldier with a rifle can not fire the length of the bridge. It's less than 50m but at the scale they made the kit to work with their 28mm bolt action game, it is longer than a rifle range.
That's one of the problems that arises with this approach and nothing will explain that away. It's either accepted and ignored or it is not. I would suggest if you are trying to run a historical scenario where the models on one side have to shoot at the models on the other, then different rules or a different approach might be in order. Others are okay with the rules as is and their implications in this case.
...that would make the scale of the game consistent, no matter what you do the scaling is an inconsistent mess. It's much better to just accept that everything about the game is 28mm scale and weapon ranges are not fluff-accurate.
I completely agree. It would make no sense for a game with a variable scale that distorts and telescopes as you get further away to be described as "consistent."
I don't understand this "probabilistic nature" of the magic cylinder approach. The magic cylinder is an abstraction, not a representation of anything in the real world.
Here I disagree. Any model on the table top, however you interpret LOS rules or what range system you use is indeed a representation of the position of a soldier (or equivalent) at a given point in time.
It isn't saying "the target is at some random location in this volume of space, and you may or may not hit it with a shot into that volume", it's saying "we're not going to bother representing model position at any greater level of detail".
Describing it as probabilistic or likening it to something quantum is metaphorical, so sorry about any confusion. Basically it's a concept of representation that explains what is going on in a given abstraction. So while one may start with a "we're not going to bother" approach, one can build upon it in a consistent manner. Like allowing a model to get a cover save for a fraction of the base being obscured because of all the probabilities of where the soldier represented might be, it's probably in a position to hug cover as much as possible. Describing that LOS system as a probabilistic location of a represented soldier is basically saying "since we didn't bother defining exactly where the soldier is, when it matters for other parts of the game, where is she?" Made the cover save or the shot missed because of the cover? She must have been behind the cover. DIdn't make it? She must have not been hidden as well as she would like. In contrast, a TLOS system might say "we know exactly where she is. And not enough of her is covered by the terrain, so no cover."
Trying to interpret an abstraction as any real-world situation is a pointless effort.
No, because it lets you answer questions about where the target might be when it matters. It gives you a framework to use in design work. So it's not pointless.
frozenwastes wrote: In FoW, shooting an SMG and an Autocannon at 4" away represents both weapons shooting at maximum effective SMG range.
And this makes no sense.
Pretty much every abstraction produces situations that make no sense. Our options are basically to compensate by adding another rule for the situation, accepting it and hand waiving away the situation or switching to a different game/approach. So of course it makes no sense.
When you shoot that SMG at 4" get out a pen and draw a line on the table between the shooting unit and the target. That 4" line represents a particular distance X, the maximum range of a SMG. Now, at some later point, a model with an autocannon measures a maximum range shot along the line you drew. Because the autocannon's ground scale is different from the SMG's ground scale that 4" line on the table now represents a larger distance Y in the "real" world. Somehow those two points on the "real" battlefield are significantly farther apart. And if there's a 4" long bunker next to the line, well, that bunker changes size depending on what weapons you're measuring near it.
Absolutely. I disagree with nothing there. That is one of the strange effects on conceptions of scale that an approach that cares nothing for consistency in that area creates. Distances on the table distort and telescope so it's best not to think of it unless the approach impedes the game. Like if you make a bridge for a scenario that you need to be able to shoot across but can't because the model is too big relative to the ranges picked for the game based on average table width...
Obviously this is absurd, a real-world battlefield doesn't expand and contract based on which weapons are currently firing.
So can you now see why a thread about "realistic" (at least in contrast to that) weapon ranges might exist? Why games with such ranges might exist?
The conclusion here is that you can have a separate ground scale and figure scale (40k doesn't, but a hypothetical new game might), but your ground scale needs to be the same for all distances or you get into absurd contradictions that are just as bad as having a 1:1 ratio between ground scale and figure scale with unrealistic distances.
Hey! Welcome to the thread!
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Manchu wrote: The volume of the cylinder represents the space in which the target must be, within a certain time frame. The shooter does not know precisely where the target will be at the moment the shot potentially impacts.
Replace "shooter" with "player whose model is shooting." I'm guessing the shooter in fictional terms would know enough about the target to at least attempt the attack. I think the abstraction is more about player knowledge rather than in fiction knowledge if it's going to have much utility in game design. We don't know where exactly the shooter is within one volume and where the target is within another but when we use the system to see the results, we find out. Or chuck the whole approach for a TLOS system and accept the problems that come with that. Or do a hybrid. Lots of discussion about that lately
To tie this all into realistic ranges, the impetus behind considering them is that the approach used by many popular games creates problems. Problems that come up for enough people that books and magazine editorials have been written discussing the implications and/or benefits/problems. Shortly after Bolt Action came out, Battle Games magazine (could have been WS&S) had a generic WW2 scenario based on a real event and they presented it as rules agnostic so you could adapt it to your rules of choice. Maps, pictures of the actual site, a discussion of the forces and what they were attempting to accomplish. Unfortunately once you build the terrain between a machine gun position and a tree line to the proportions of the real battlefield in 28mm, the machine gun could no longer reach the tree line using Bolt Action ranges. The scenario designer got angry emails saying his scenario didn't work. Flames of War players on the other hand, had no problem with it as the terrain at around 1/100 for 15mm left the machine gun in range of the tree line. This is also an example of where my earlier musings of the figure scale being the thing that is actually off might be the case.
I don't think the shooter can absolutely know, either, foremost as a matter of time and the potentially unpredictable behavior of the target. But there are other considerations: the psychological state of the shooter, whether and to what extent LOS is obscured by conditions not represented with models, etc. I perosnally like the idea that this reflects the characters represented by the figs doingbthings in their world that we the players cannot explicitly see but can imagine - which is a large part of the appeal of miniatures gaming as an imaginative spectacle for me.
Yes, I see what you are getting at now. It's also a good practice to make sure our mechanics keep touching back on the imagined fiction of the scenario on the table top.
KOG light is a 1:1:1 game set in the near future. As the default unit is a robot suit (or tank or powersuit), I assume accuracy based on modern computer-aimed devices (e.g. M1 Abrams fire control system), so range doesn't really matter - LOS (i.e. terrain) matters.
That's actually very cool and adds a level of decision making to play. It now pays to be much more careful about model placement and TLOS offers an intuitive way of making decisions based on that. Am I right to say the game is literally about making TLOS based decisions because the attack system assume a level of accuracy that drastically surpasses that present in say WW2? That the probabilistic nature of magic cylinder approaches is undesirable when things are so definite and accurate?
In the case of KOG light, I simplify things to have unlimited range (which really means more than 100 meters), and then apply a non-optimal long range penalty.
Simple and effective.
Yup, KOG light is a LOS-based game, for both attack and coherency. Weapon lethality is pretty high, so you'd best find some cover to work with. Movement is also important. The "final" Beta version is discussed here:
- https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/90/668519.page#9221605
Manchu wrote: ...there are other considerations: the psychological state of the shooter, whether and to what extent LOS is obscured by conditions not represented with models, etc.
Also the major factor of how supressed the squad is from fire they are taking, which is unfortunately non-existent in many rule systems
Manchu wrote: ...there are other considerations: the psychological state of the shooter, whether and to what extent LOS is obscured by conditions not represented with models, etc.
Also the major factor of how supressed the squad is from fire they are taking, which is unfortunately non-existent in many rule systems
This is comes up as "negative activation" / failed morale often enough. I believe an initiative system can be sufficient to handle this implicitly, where explicit rules tend to add work and reduce enjoyment of many players.
3km for the M1 Abrams is about right, and why 1/285 starts to fall apart for modern weapons in the desert. OTOH, if you're wargaming Vietnam, where it's mostly heavy cover, then LOS determines engagement rather than range.
A late WW2 Panther / Panzer IV with a 75mm main gun has an effective range of something more like 1,200m -- 4m on the 1/285 scale tabletop.
Really, the whole thing simply further highlights the fundamental need to move away from "maximum weapon range" toward games that focus on LOS and fire control for modern/postmodern timeframes. Infinity is like this, as is Relic Knights. KOG light is like this. 40k / FoW / BA are really obsolete dinosaurs in this regard.
The funny part is rogue trader acknowledged it and gave an extreme range of 10 times the weapons maximum range of the weapon, assuming you rolled a 6 to hit first and then roll to hit normally.
It was not perfect by any means, but a better direction than the one followed later on.
"Better" is subjective. From the point of view of allowing lots of vehicles and artillery on table and necessitating purchase of models representing them, the GW approach is probably "better".
The trick with this issue is to take away the idea of "range" entirely. Easy E, bless him, has already cited Horizon Wars's approach which does away with weapon ranges, but I introduced an component in Zero Dark, in which critical successes (a 12 on a d12) adds a success (a hit, in shooting), so even shooting at a distant target has a chance to hit.
This creates a realistic motivation to deliver suppressive fire and reminds all players that, in a hot battlefield, you're never really "out of range".
@precinctomega - I'm not entirely sure that range should completely disappear as a concept - some weapons are more effective at certain ranges, and it's OK to capture that if only for weapon differentiation purposes.
I believe in critical successes, and think it's a fun (if not strictly realistic) mechanic.
Knowing that ranges are so hugely foreshortened on the tabletop is becoming more and more immersion-breaking when units are "out of range". I wonder if this will characterize the next wave of wargaming.
Certainly, yes. But not to the extent that some games suggest and often not in the ways that they suggest. For the purposes of the scales we're talking about - allowing for the idea that there's always an element of fudging scale on the tabletop - weapons are often more *appropriate* for certain ranges. But, for example, if you stand six feet away from me, whether I'm handling a pistol, rifle, shotgun or rocket launcher, you're still going to be easier to hit than if you were standing 12 feet away. I might prefer to use my pistol over my rocket launcher - but not because that makes you easier to hit, but rather because (a) I don't want to blow myself up with the rocket launcher and (b) I need to hold onto the rocket launcher in case I need to hit something big and nasty or something further away (because at that point, my pistol won't be so useful).
As has already been alluded to, what should distinguish weapons isn't so much their ability to hit or not hit, but what effect it has when the round arrives.
I've always been frustrated by weapons that can be lethal up to, say 32" (even with a diminished chance of hitting) but then magically become totally ineffective at 33".
Having said that, actually, HW did away with weapons almost entirely (it retained weapon effects, though). It's all boiled down to a single stat and a single roll. But HW if an admittedly abstract system. Zero Dark does the same thing, but has a much larger menu of weapon effects to add on.
Well, some weapons do have very limited ranges, even in this scale. Thrown weapons (IE grenades), snub nose pistols, tasers, etc. You literally cannot hit someone with a launched taser dart past 35 feet due to the wire length. And good luck getting a good contact at 35 feet.
OTOH, trying to shoulder a long barrel rifle while a guy charges from the door you just kicked, or the ally next to you is problematic. Minimum ranges are a definite concern with larger, long range weaponry and why you carry a sidearm. It's not that you *can't* do it with the rifle, it's just that it works a lot better if the guy with the assault weapon took care of them first, and, failing that, pistols are more maneuverable and give you more shots.
So it really depends on what you are going for. I think treating close quarter fighting the same as long range sharpshooting is a mistake as they are fundamentally different. The problem is most games just lump all of that as well as machine gun fire, bow and arrows, etc. as "shooting". Which is fine if your system is taking a Hollywood level view, but breaks down if you are trying to reflect the decisions that have to be made quickly in the field based on very different roles and armaments.
But you're right. Another good example is sniper rifles. Terrific weapons if you're lying down, in cover, with good support and a target at optimum range. But a rather different beast shot from the hip.
You can spend (waste?) a lot of time tailoring your game with endless weapon tables (Infinity?) and still fail to accommodate the massive variety of potential in missile weapons.
Hence why I encourage moving away from thinking about specific weapons and towards weapon effects. You can then bolt on a mix of effects to customize your weapon to the particular impact you desire (either as the designer, proscriptively, or as the player, prescriptively).
So you might have an "unsteady", "lethal", "sighted" weapon for which you need a steady firing position (can't move and shoot), which delivers a lot of damage if it hits, but gain bonuses if using the optic sight (need to be prone).
This would represent a sniper weapon. Add the "explosive" quality and you get an anti-tank missile. Take away the "unsteady" and "sighted" qualities and get a disposable rocket launcher. Etc.
You can then use the qualities you attach to weapons to structure their rarity or points cost. With just a dozen different effects you can customize thousands of different weapons.
To what extent is muscle-powered weaponry a factor in the game?
Once you move to chemical / energy weapons, range expands dramatically, and limited range becomes the exception, rather than the rule. This is why CC is BtB or 1", whereas lasers and such are unlimited.
If one has a ground scale inflator, then realistically, CC must only be BtB, and thrown weapons should be like 1" or 2".
In some ways, I'm not sure it does. When you're talking about really "hot" battlefield of noise, dust and confusion, the range of a crossbow or longbow isn't meaningfully shorter than that of your average assault rifle. It's more awkward to handle a long bow and takes longer to reload a crossbow. They don't have the penetration of a rifle and, yes, that penetration is reliant at least partially on the strength of the wielder.
If you want to do "grand design" battles of vast regiments or manoeuvring blocs then you might need to account for the range of more primitive weapons, but I generally don't worry about it for more skirmish-y game systems.
thrown weapons, I'm not so happy with - especially grenades. I'm yet to encounter a rules system that does it in such a way that my suspension of disbelief isn't challenged. As I expect to write rules for grenades and smoke as well as more direct thrown weapons like knives for Zero Dark very shortly, you can expect to see my best effort. I suspect it will still fall short of my ambition, though.
I don't agree with croossbows having the same range as modern 'assault' rifles. I doubt you're hitting anything let alone penetrating at 100 meters with most crossbows, for every 'assault' rifle I've fired 100m is a pretty easy shot. Most firefights take place further than 50 meters which is what I am finding as max effective for a crossbow on various hunting forums.
I don't know if it's a big deal since you would not expect to find bows and modern combat rifles in the same battlefield. Maybe for a zombie game, but then you are firmly in fiction/cinema land anyway.
Crossbows and bows have much lower velocities than most firearms, so we would expect lower effective ranges. They can, however be used for arcing fire, though usually this is only effective en masse. There are examples of modern archers using bows to hit targets at 300+ yards, and even medieval crossbows could throw bolts at such ranges (though with much diminished force and accuracy, of course).
That being said, there is a reason why crossbows replaced bows and firearms replaced crossbows!
As to knives, that is almost pure Hollywood. Thrown knives are rarely more than a potential distraction, and then only at short range. Much like the shuriken, it's a great tactic to use to slow down pursuit (hurl and run), but terrible to rely on as effective weaponry.
Grenades are a different beast. They are slow, unwieldy, and a great way to get shot if you try to make a solid throw under fire. But they make a nasty burst and can be arced over cover. Since modern weaponry generally forces targets to hug cover, direct fire becomes less reliable. But hunkered forces have reduced visibility, and it is easier to close when they are buttoned down. Suddenly, grenades become super useful- toss them at the pinned targets and they either flee cover (and get shot), or remain and die.
Likewise, a fortified building can become less dangerous once you toss a grenade in the window.
So a short range, AOE weapon seems fine so long as your game has way to force enemies to cover and limit LOS.
One of the ways our pop culture has influenced our ideas about engagement ranges is from the need of movies to have identifiable characters against identifiable threats. Take, for example, Private Jackson in Saving Private Ryan. He's sniping targets and all the kills are shown through his scope as a form of close-up and the tank destroyer that finally destroys his position ends up being so close that it lifts it's gun to nearly 45 degrees to shoot at the tower. Everything needs to be compressed and personal.
Now compare that with some of the current (as in the last few weeks) footage of the fighting in and around Mosul. It's all waiting around and shooting at targets you simply can't see on the camera. Or spotting for artillery on known enemy positions and known IED/Car bomb positions.
Or SPG9 recoiless positions firing into windows of buildings a kilometre away with no human targets visible while infantry fires short bursts at the same buildings from just a short range in front of the SPG9s (apparently with the goal of keeping them engaged until the explosive round can be delivered?).
The only time enemy combatants seem to show up as anything other than tiny specs is when buildings are breached after their exterior sentries have all been taken out and the Iraqi forces have done what they can to get explosives through the walls or windows.
From what I understand, Mosul has a very different layout than Fallujah and the fighting in more tight terrain there might bring the effective firefight range down, just like the differences between say Normany bocage and Kursk steppes.
The more I think about realistic ranges, the more I am thinking the more traditional approach to modern miniature wargaming was on to something. Spotting is a thing.
jmurph wrote: I don't know if it's a big deal since you would not expect to find bows and modern combat rifles in the same battlefield.
Seems like an unlikely thing to have to represent.
If it's an actual conflict rather than some spec ops mission, then yeah, there probably should be an assumption of off table artillery.
Even relatively portable medium and light mortars could be off the table firing onto it if you're doing a 1:1:1 figure scale:ground scale:range approach. 500m at 1/100 for 15mm is still 16.5 feet on the table top.
As for your KOG game, it becomes less useful as things are less static. A spotter calls in a firing grid, a ranging shot lands and the spotter calls for fire for effect, but the fast moving vehicle is likely long gone. So a more modern method of calling artillery is probably needed. Something like a high altitude support craft or satellite guided weaponry might me more appropriate. Or some sort of electronic tagging? Although if there's a walker defending a building, I guess there's no reason not to take it out just like using artillery on a known sniper position.
40k has this inconsistent and backwards WW1 in space thing going on where nothing in it necessarily makes sense. You've got things like orbital strikes and manticores and basilisks and even those giant death strike missiles but everything operates like none of that exists most of the time.
I actually think it's more appropriate for things like KOGS, which has a near future setting. It may be that the scope of the game isn't for anything other than some vehicles and infantry fighting, but that doesn't mean off table artillery doesn't make sense as a natural point of expansion. And you get to start thinking about cool things like automated protection systems, automatic counter battery systems and the like. Especially given that the warfare seems pretty symmetrical.
If I expand KOG light, artillery would be part of an upscaling from SpecOps to LIC engagements on a somewhat larger battlefleld, played left to right on a 4' x 6' gameboard (so 5' nominal separation vs 2' separation). In such an environment, off-board artillery-type / CAS-type support, and organic, loitering drone support would be obvious.
However, the other 1:1:1 game that I'm curious to do would be WW1 trench combat on a similarly wide map, where Victory is advancing the line by 6" (or more) on either side...
CptJake wrote: I don't agree with croossbows having the same range as modern 'assault' rifles. I doubt you're hitting anything let alone penetrating at 100 meters with most crossbows, for every 'assault' rifle I've fired 100m is a pretty easy shot. Most firefights take place further than 50 meters which is what I am finding as max effective for a crossbow on various hunting forums.
You're mistaking the point. They question isn't how likely they are to hit, but whether hitting is possible. Yes, a rifle is easier to use more accurately and more likely to do meaningful damage, but the isn't about hit ratios or damage, but range and the range of both crossbows and longbows can be measured in hundreds of metres, they are equivalent to a rifle in that respect. When they arrive, yes, they are less likely to hit and less likely to wound, but those are different mechanics.
CptJake wrote: I don't agree with croossbows having the same range as modern 'assault' rifles. I doubt you're hitting anything let alone penetrating at 100 meters with most crossbows, for every 'assault' rifle I've fired 100m is a pretty easy shot. Most firefights take place further than 50 meters which is what I am finding as max effective for a crossbow on various hunting forums.
You're mistaking the point. They question isn't how likely they are to hit, but whether hitting is possible. Yes, a rifle is easier to use more accurately and more likely to do meaningful damage, but the isn't about hit ratios or damage, but range and the range of both crossbows and longbows can be measured in hundreds of metres, they are equivalent to a rifle in that respect. When they arrive, yes, they are less likely to hit and less likely to around, but those are different mechanics.
R.
No, I'm really not mistaking the point. You are not hitting with a crossbow at 100+ meters, just as you are not doing so with my Crossman 760 BB gun. In the 1 in a million scenario you do hit, the victim shrugs it off. A hit with zero effect is effectively a miss.
So a rifle will always "miss" the tank in front of it? But that depends on how you define "zero effect".
I think a French knight at Agincourt would have disagreed that the statistical inability of an individual English bowman to harm him meant that he could ignore the hundreds of arrows falling upon the charge line every second, battering their armour, injuring and frightening the horses and causing chaos within the line that was worsened by the terrain conditions and defensive stakes at the English position.
Sure, the sound of a rifle round pinging off your armour may not present a tankie with an immediate "wound", but it is indicative of the proximity of infantry in range: infantry who might carry more dangerous things than ineffective rifles. And this could, itself, have an impact upon the morale of the crew affecting the tank's performance.
Or it might not. But I would argue that it makes the rifle not totally ineffective, even against a target it cannot possibly hope to damage physically. I built this mechanic into Iron Core before that project stalled, to show how even a small squad of infantry can realistically stall the ability of a much larger, armoured target to manoeuvre freely through smart tactics and a little luck.
Massed longbow fire against massed targets =/= modern crossbow against individual targets.
And yeah, as a tanker, a round or two pinging off my armor wouldn't even be noticed unless it hit an optic. The engine and turret hydraulics and electronics coupled with wearing a CVC and having a couple radio nets blasting into your ears drown it out based on experience.
But regardless, again, a crossbow does not have the same range as a rifle. It just does not, not even in combat conditions. Modern data on engagement ranges shows, with zero doubt, the vast majority of firefights take place outside of crossbow range.
I totally agree with you, but we're not talking about reproducing realistic modern engagements. We're talking about miniatures wargaming seeking to capture a sense and flavour of real engagement.
Personally, I wouldn't include crossbows and longbows in a modern or sci-fi setting with any pretension to "realism" for exactly the reasons that you cite: rifles are so much more effective that muscle-powered weapons are irrelevant and pointless. But some settings - like Infinity - want to include them for the rule of cool and, for that reason, we have to build a version of reality in which they have a comparable range and kill power, however unlikely that seems.
Also, muscle-powered ranged weapons must be taken into account for fantasy or historical games where they will fulfil the tactical role of the modern rifle (albeit less so, because otherwise why take swords too?).
Modern rifles have an effective range of up to 600m. But this assumes the effect of a fireteam shooting together, which extends the individual range of about 400m (it's the same effect that made longbows lethal en masse at range, but on a smaller scale). Still, delivering accurate fire at 400m is still bloody difficult under battlefield conditions. Not only do you need to spot the target, but also find a secure fire position from which to engage with confidence that you won't come under counter-fire from an as-yet-unseen enemy position. The Cold War style open-countryside or early Op TELIC open desert engagement lends itself well to this sort of extended, long-range fire. But it also lends itself very badly to an interesting miniatures wargame (unless playing in 6mm or smaller, in which case... Horizon Wars!). It's a similar reason to why I haven't written the modern/sci-fi naval battle my father keeps nagging me to do ("Because over-the-horizon naval engagements at 20km are boring, Dad!"). As a result, the sort of engagements that are interesting tend to be fought at ranges of 300m or less, with the most intense exchanges of fire occurring at less than 100m. In these cases, assault rifles remain obviously superior to muscle-powered weapons with their higher rate of fire and vastly greater stopping and penetrative power.
But if you absolutely, positively have to include bows in your game, then a classic longbow has penetration of light armour at up to 200m, and modern compound recurve bows with carbonfibre shafts and titanium heads are going to be lethally effective for sure at that range. More than a rifle? Hell, no. And even basic ballistic armour will stop it in its tracks. But I still wouldn't stand still and let someone just hit me with one.
Who cares. As designers we must abstract. To abstract shooting weapons are all shooting weapons. Melee weapons are all melee weapons, etc.
For me personally, when it comes to weapon ranges I am trying to balance the ability to manuever vs. the ability to fire. Shorter ranges allow your more ability to move about the tabletop freely, while longer ranges reduce the availability of free manuever but increase the ability to effecthe enemy. All ranges do is allow you a way to balance these effect.
So, instead of agonizing over ranges, you need to determine how much free movement you want where the enemy can not impact you.
precinctomega wrote: I totally agree with you, but we're not talking about reproducing realistic modern engagements. We're talking about miniatures wargaming seeking to capture a sense and flavour of real engagement.
Isn't it up to the individual designer to decide what they want to represent? To decide just what constitutes that "sense and flavour" for their game?
I definitely see an application for thinking about real effective ranges of both rifles (in this case single shot breach loaders and simple repeaters) and bows for colonial wargaming. I've read loads of accounts where European forces were attacked with bows, spears or javelins. Early machine guns (including the deadly maxim) start showing up as well. Even then, when arrows start dropping around you, it's time to fix your bayonet as it means they are close and you might see hand to hand combat. Doubly so for javelins and spears. Not sure I ever saw an account of an officer ordering the fixing of bayonets in response to rifle fire in the same way. Usually the response to that is to take cover and shoot back.
As an aside, it was actually kind of amazing how the lessons of colonial warfare were totally forgotten for the opening months of WW1. In the colonies they're hugging cover, building emplacements and trenches, digging rifle pits and machinegun pits, but in northern France they do massed assaults over open ground. The effectiveness of the Krupp guns in the Franco Prussian War was still in living memory for some of the senior generals.
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Easy E wrote: Who cares. As designers we must abstract. To abstract shooting weapons are all shooting weapons. Melee weapons are all melee weapons, etc.
Well... not universally. Any time you have a situation where you want to represent the effectiveness of weapons at different ranges you can no longer lump them all together. Even at 1:1:1 in 15mm, I wouldn't lump in submachine guns and squad LMGs as being the same thing. Even if I had some sort of special exception for SMGs, I'd still have some sort of differentiation in the rules. If a bunch of soviet tank riders attacking a german position end up at different distances from the enemy position, the fact they don't have any rifles is going to really matter.
For me personally, when it comes to weapon ranges I am trying to balance the ability to manuever vs. the ability to fire. Shorter ranges allow your more ability to move about the tabletop freely, while longer ranges reduce the availability of free manuever but increase the ability to effecthe enemy. All ranges do is allow you a way to balance these effect.
So, instead of agonizing over ranges, you need to determine how much free movement you want where the enemy can not impact you.
So why assume that issue isn't already solved for a given design project? Why downplay discussing one aspect of design by assuming another hasn't been done yet?
1) jump off points representing the most forward areas of impact free movement 2) unlimited movement rates when not under enemy fire 3) separate movement rates based on how cautious/cover hugging the infantry in question are advancing 4) a mandate for a certain level of terrain to block line of sight
Those are all examples of different approaches from existing games. Some of which have unlimited range for firearms which are not SMGs or pistols.
Even then, there's no reason one question necessarily has to be answered first. Given weapon ranges X, Y, Z, what other design work needs to be done to get the game you want? No reason to say "stop agonizing over ranges" when it comes time to discuss what X, Y or Z are.
Indeed. A lot of design decisions are about personal preference, which is why some games suit some people and not others. The closer your vision of a great game is to the designer's the more you'll like it. This is veering into the larger realm of design philosophy and away from the OP, but it's interesting to wonder whether a game a designer writes purely to please him or herself is going to be more or less popular than one written to please a diverse community. The popularity of games like 40k, Warmachine and Infinity is impossible to deny, but how much of that is based on good design and how much on aesthetic factors, I wonder?
Easy E wrote: you need to determine how much free movement you want where the enemy can not impact you.
Totally excellent point, well made. My perspective is that freedom from threat (in a modern/SF game) should arise from tactical manoeuvre (use of cover and suppressive fire to limit enemy fire arcs) not from factors outside your control (like the fixed range limits of enemy weapons), but YMMV.
Indeed. A lot of design decisions are about personal preference, which is why some games suit some people and not others. The closer your vision of a great game is to the designer's the more you'll like it. This is veering into the larger realm of design philosophy and away from the OP, but it's interesting to wonder whether a game a designer writes purely to please him or herself is going to be more or less popular than one written to please a diverse community. The popularity of games like 40k, Warmachine and Infinity is impossible to deny, but how much of that is based on good design and how much on aesthetic factors, I wonder?
I think the majority of the game design work done in miniature gaming is actually not for commercial purposes but for individual preferences and very local and limited adoption. Maybe people will talk about their rules (or modifications of an existing game) or share a PDF outlining them, but I think a lot of the design work that happens is never done with the goal to be popular.
My designs are for games I run at local conventions and at gaming dinner parties that I host. Full stop. I never expand them beyond point form and certainly don't write anything like a rulebook. I'll be there to run them. And if someone really wants to run something I wrote, usually they've played it or we've talked about it enough that point form reminders are enough.
So of course I design to please myself because I'm designing for games that I plan on playing. Doing otherwise would be really dumb. It's like different situations and goals require different approaches.
Very fair question and one I was just asking myself.
Anyone who wants to represent something to do with weapon ranges in their rules or anyone who wants to play in a game where weapons might have different ranges? If I'm picking a spot to dig in a unit in a rifle pit, I probably don't want to do it within bow or javelin range of a ridge line or copse of trees/jungle. Or if I've got a SMG armed unit of soviet infantry, I may have to consider how I'm going to advance given the longer ranges of the weapons the germans have. I might make some sort of decision in a game about that, so it's probably worth thinking and talking about in terms of design work.
Prior to reading CptJake's posts, I too assumed that bows and crossbows were lethal out to a longer range than they are. I did some googling and think he's on to something. So given that I already do colonial wargaming, so I may have to consider this new information in terms of individual arrows fired at range. That said, if I'm going for a hollywood feel, I may have to specifically disregard it and make bow fire even more effective instead. A bunch of overconfident colonial infantry getting massacred by brave native forces with simpler weapons is definitely a trope worth thinking about in a more action movie oriented game. Similarly if I did get into zombies gaming again, I'd definitely give bows and crossbows some thought.
Sometimes these little "actually..." moments about weapons and armour and whatnot can spark something pretty cool. My early gaming history includes things like D&D where a shield gives a pretty minor bonus to protection against missile fire. In reality, a shield is extremely effective against missile fire. Apparently in many ancient conflicts, javelineers with small shields would drive off skimishing archers despite being out ranged by them. As a result, I've changed some of my ancient skirmishing rules and things have gotten much more interesting.
precinctomega wrote: The popularity of games like 40k, Warmachine and Infinity is impossible to deny, but how much of that is based on good design and how much on aesthetic factors, I wonder?
I would submit that the enduring popularity of Warhammer Fantasy, 40k, Warmahordes and Flames is overwhelmingly on inertia and model aesthetics, then marketing, leaving "good design" in rules mechanics is far, far down on the list of relevant factors. It takes an exceedingly poor set of rules to prevent a good-looking game from getting traction. As Frozenwastes might confirm, in my experience, only DP9's Heavy Gear has managed to produce a series of rules so awful that they overcame the inherent attractiveness of the Heavy Gear minis.
For me personally, when it comes to weapon ranges I am trying to balance the ability to manuever vs. the ability to fire. Shorter ranges allow your more ability to move about the tabletop freely, while longer ranges reduce the availability of free manuever but increase the ability to effecthe enemy. All ranges do is allow you a way to balance these effect.
So, instead of agonizing over ranges, you need to determine how much free movement you want where the enemy can not impact you.
So why assume that issue isn't already solved for a given design project? Why downplay discussing one aspect of design by assuming another hasn't been done yet?
1) jump off points representing the most forward areas of impact free movement
2) unlimited movement rates when not under enemy fire
3) separate movement rates based on how cautious/cover hugging the infantry in question are advancing
4) a mandate for a certain level of terrain to block line of sight
Those are all examples of different approaches from existing games. Some of which have unlimited range for firearms which are not SMGs or pistols.
Even then, there's no reason one question necessarily has to be answered first. Given weapon ranges X, Y, Z, what other design work needs to be done to get the game you want? No reason to say "stop agonizing over ranges" when it comes time to discuss what X, Y or Z are.
Of course most of this is YMMV territory, but it is more fun to lay down an absolute and argue for it whether I believe it or not.
All of the examples you post above deal with movement so they support my supposition that the true question isn't about proper range, but instead about the relationship between the ability to move unimpeded vs. the ability to be taken under fire in the game. Any discussion of range is actual a discussion of movement or lack thereof in your game.
Sorry, but I thought your post was very dismissive of the discussion of effective crossbow ranges itself (eg "who cares" and "stop agonizing over ranges") so I responded assuming you meant that dismissal.
If you are going to do a 1:1:1 approach then proper range matters. Should it? Should you do such an approach? Depends on the design goals of the game in question.
For myself, I want movement decisions to be that which emerges from the fruitful void. I want to design simple movement rules, set my weapon ranges (whether it's a 1:1:1 game or not) and my turn structure and have maneuver be the thing you figure out based on the implications of multiple rules elements interacting.
In some situations the lay out of the terrain and the ranges of the weapons will make for a very fluid game with lots of movement and others it will get more static. Just like how warfare in one sci-fi novel might differ from another. Or how warfare in one historical period (or even individual battle) might differ from another.
That said, I think the movement not impacted by fire and movement under fire is a very useful tool for thinking about how all the rules elements interact. I think a rules set designed from the get go to represent that might be very interesting and could totally see how in such a top down approach you'd want to limit ranges as part of defining these maneuver modes. As opposed to a more bottom up approach where questions of scale and proper ranges produce their implications.
precinctomega wrote: The popularity of games like 40k, Warmachine and Infinity is impossible to deny, but how much of that is based on good design and how much on aesthetic factors, I wonder?
I would submit that the enduring popularity of Warhammer Fantasy, 40k, Warmahordes and Flames is overwhelmingly on inertia and model aesthetics, then marketing, leaving "good design" in rules mechanics is far, far down on the list of relevant factors. It takes an exceedingly poor set of rules to prevent a good-looking game from getting traction. As Frozenwastes might confirm, in my experience, only DP9's Heavy Gear has managed to produce a series of rules so awful that they overcame the inherent attractiveness of the Heavy Gear minis.
LOL
I tend to agree. A company that wants their miniature range to be popular is probably better off putting money into marketing and model design rather than game design. For those publishers that sell only rules, the rules will mostly have to stand on their own merit, though marketing will play a huge roll. Like the amount of people who see and buy a given game because of the publisher's reach into the market compared to selling the same rules on your own website. It's also possible that social media might be a better use of one's time than game design if the goal is popularity. Or video production explaining the game with beautiful miniatures and terrain.
It takes a special kind of game to have a publisher with good reach (Wayland's distribution of DP9 stuff across Europe) and a decent social media/video presentation (Beasts of War promoting the hell out of the game), totally beautiful miniatures (the HG minis themselves) and still have it flop to the point that the company has to change hands.
So reading through this thread, I had an idea about determining line of sight. I personally like the volume approach for pure simplicity, but like in Malifaux, even models on a 30mm base can have different heights. Would it be dumb just for consistency to assume that all human sized models are the same height... say 1.5". But than during their movement they can crouch and their height changes after you place a "Crouching" token next to them to 3/4", or they can go prone after you place a "Prone" token next to them and their height becomes 1/4".
If your going with realistic weapon ranges, wouldn't it be realistic to assume that a soldier is always in motion. You aren't going to see a modern infantryman in the army scuttle across a street kneeling just because that was the position he started his day in. So I think it would be dumb to say that since my miniature is kneeling, it is physically incapable of ever standing up during a firefight or ever changing it's position besides where it's weapon faces.
Yeah, for states, I would assume that actors are always trying to minimize their profile. However, that may better reflected in making more experienced actors harder to "hit". I would suggest that if at any point during a move an actor is visible, an aware shooter should be able to take a shot (not necessarily a particularly accurate one), maybe with a test based on the shooter's quality to see if they react in time if the mover ends out of sight.
Lying prone should be handled separately from the normal movement state as it affects several factors- while it is a much smaller silhouette, it is also functionally stationary and extremely vulnerable if flanked or assaulted. In any encounter where the enemy can reach a prone actor with a bayonet/knife/tomahawk/etc. they are almost certainly a casualty.
only DP9's Heavy Gear has managed to produce a series of rules so awful that they overcame the inherent attractiveness of the Heavy Gear minis.
Quoting for truth and lols. That was actually a contributory factor to the game that eventually became HW! However, it was also true of the first edition of Infinity from which I recoiled in horror at both the rules and the poor translation.
NH Gunsmith wrote: If your going with realistic weapon ranges, wouldn't it be realistic to assume that a soldier is always in motion. You aren't going to see a modern infantryman in the army scuttle across a street kneeling just because that was the position he started his day in.
So I think it would be dumb to say that since my miniature is kneeling, it is physically incapable of ever standing up during a firefight or ever changing it's position besides where it's weapon faces.
If you've ever seen tactical movement, there is a very particular way they crouch and move. Very compact, very deliberate, definitely crouched. They don't stand tall.
As for TLOS & posing, the kneeling posture simply represents the model at a point in time, just as range and position represent the model at a point in time. That's the nature of slicing up blocks of time into snapshots where action happens. The game should have a model scale, time scale, movement scale and distance scale that is harmonized to create something that is plausible. 40k ranges aren't plausible for 28mm miniatures. It's semi-plausible for 6mm miniatures. And totally reasonable for 3mm miniatures. This also holds for Fantasy, where a human miniature stands is 3mm tall, not 28mm tall, with 100 figures per base. ____
jmurph wrote: Yeah, for states, I would assume that actors are always trying to minimize their profile. However, that may better reflected in making more experienced actors harder to "hit". I would suggest that if at any point during a move an actor is visible, an aware shooter should be able to take a shot (not necessarily a particularly accurate one), maybe with a test based on the shooter's quality to see if they react in time if the mover ends out of sight.
Lying prone should be handled separately from the normal movement state as it affects several factors- while it is a much smaller silhouette, it is also functionally stationary and extremely vulnerable if flanked or assaulted. In any encounter where the enemy can reach a prone actor with a bayonet/knife/tomahawk/etc. they are almost certainly a casualty.
This gets to the question of how many states do we want to include and track? How long those states should persist, whether a model can dynamically change state as a reaction. And so on. This adds more complexity to the rules, and mucks up both TLOS and MC. What's the game impact of having states? Does the time invested in managing, tracking and processing postures or stances justify the effort?
Very good questions. I would say that in a low model count skirmish game, it is important to give players meaningful options for their models, as well as means to avoid some conflict to encourage more variety of actors and actions. Games with more models/actors will want fewer state based decisions as the player will have more decisions to make due to the size of the forces. At the extreme, if players can control only 1 model, if the options are limited to just move X inches or shoot Y inches, then the play is more likely to become pretty linear pretty fast.
For example, if the game allows some sort of hiding/concealment, then stealth based ambushes (or retreats!) become an option instead of just raw firepower. It also creates a situation where counter tactics may be viable. Likewise, allowing shooters to take a more stable, lower profile position (IE prone) but where assaults become more deadly and maneuver is compromised allows them to focus on a preferred style of play, but at a cost (the more mobile team may be able to secure objectives, for example, or be less vulnerable to called in support strikes).
If players only control 1 model, then that has a whole host of complications that moves far beyond just having stances / poses in combat. At 1 model per player, we're really looking at something far more akin to a RPG rather than a miniatures skirmish game. I suspect that the current incarnation of Infinity is not far off from what we might have found in a 70s-80s RPG. Or a miniatures skirmish-oriented RPG a la D&D 4E.
While it is possible to shrink the scale of a basic (move X, shoot Y) combat engine down to 1 model per player, such dueling is a one-off for learning the basic mechanics and flow in the rules.
If we refocus to miniatures wargaming, I think we generally talk of having 5 +/- 2 maneuver elements per player, and I think it's rare to have poses / stances at this scale.
If the game becomes that intimate, 1 player per model, I wonder, what sort of range we are looking at. Perhaps 1:1:1 scaling makes sense again, even at 28mm.
I've got a game tonight with 1:1:1 going on. We're doing 15mm WW2 skirmish in the Caucasus mountains. Lots of LOS blocking terrain and loads of places to fire down from. We're going to try not having poses/stances marked, but go with a what makes sense based on what the player does.
We may end up talking about intent and plan on asking each other things like "this guy on the ridge, what's he doing?" before declaring fire at him or not. We've both played Battletech before, so we are used to the mechanic that the defender picks what side of a hex line an attack counts as being shot from but then the target has to shoot using the same LOS effects, so we'll be good doing that for terrain.
We have a punch of acrylic squares and dry erase markers if we need to put reminder tokens out, but I doubt we will.
The basis of the game is Battlegroup as Squad level with ranges changed to be 1:100 and anything that doesn't fit on the table top available as off table. I expect my soviets will come under fire from german 75mm mountain guns from off table or maybe even on as there were occasions they were fired at targets only 50m away.
I did and they saved the day. The opponent took a forward protruding ridge with an MG team and a rifle team and totally made my whole force static as the longer weapon ranges made much more of my force under threat (sometimes without cover) so my movement options became limited with backing up to the nearest cover (sometimes loosing line of sight to things) as my only option for a number of soldiers..
The mortars did their work though and soon both units on the ridge were pinned. So I got to get all my guys back to their more forward positions and then pushed a flank out of LOS of most of his stuff. It's always nice when you're defending to hit that point where the attacker stalls out and you get to change roles. Battlegroup works by taking chits when you unpin things (or lose units) and if the numbers on those chits (they vary from 1-3 I think) add up to your battle rating you lose the game (but your opponent doesn't know what numbers are on your chits). So he hit a point where he couldn't risk taking a chit for unpinning those forward guys. At first I was like "am I really going to win this?" and then he didn't unpin his units and I was like, "Yes, he's got next to no resolve left."
The mountain gun off table was really good though. Took out my BA-10 armoured car and pinned some infantry.
As for 1:1:1 figure:terrain:range, it worked fine. It really made having commanding firing positions that much more key. If not for my mortars & spotter, pinning my stuff so he could safely take that ridge could have decided things. And dealing with the BA-10. It's surprisingly resilient to most things mountain infantry bring with them in 1941 (other than their 75mm guns).
We marked the "posture" of a single unit one time. There was a bunch of knee high ridges and elevation changes and my opponent had some guys with a good number of SMGs stop there and declare full prone. I put some area fire onto the ridge top but didn't manage to pin them. Direct fire was unavailable to me (the rules have two different types of attacks, one can attack terrain features and usually can only pin, maybe kill a guy, but the one that actually kills units has to attack models directly). Every other time it was obvious. The MG team on the ridge was going to take the best cover possible while still being able to shoot at most of my stuff and the rifle team did the same thing facing sort of straight ahead to cover the other side of the ridge. There was no need to mark every unit. We probably didn't even need to mark it, but in a larger game I could see some utility in doing so.
I like Battlegroup as written, but for the smaller sized games (we played on the large side of "Squad" so we ended up with close to a platoon plus some nearby support), I think 1:1:1 with more terrain might be better. For larger games with 10+ tanks and 30-60 infantry, I'd keep the unrealistic ranges just so you can have 88s and SMGs on the same table. It's fun even if it makes for a distorted inconsistent ground scale like 40k or FoW (though not nearly as bad feeling as the ranges are larger relative to the models). And as Easy E pointed out, it does allow for more movement across otherwise open terrain at the longer ranges. When the MG team got onto the ridge, things became quite static until it was dealt with. Well static for me. Some nasty guys with SMGs had no trouble advancing.
NH Gunsmith wrote: If your going with realistic weapon ranges, wouldn't it be realistic to assume that a soldier is always in motion. You aren't going to see a modern infantryman in the army scuttle across a street kneeling just because that was the position he started his day in.
So I think it would be dumb to say that since my miniature is kneeling, it is physically incapable of ever standing up during a firefight or ever changing it's position besides where it's weapon faces.
If you've ever seen tactical movement, there is a very particular way they crouch and move. Very compact, very deliberate, definitely crouched. They don't stand tall.
As for TLOS & posing, the kneeling posture simply represents the model at a point in time, just as range and position represent the model at a point in time. That's the nature of slicing up blocks of time into snapshots where action happens. The game should have a model scale, time scale, movement scale and distance scale that is harmonized to create something that is plausible. 40k ranges aren't plausible for 28mm miniatures. It's semi-plausible for 6mm miniatures. And totally reasonable for 3mm miniatures. This also holds for Fantasy, where a human miniature stands is 3mm tall, not 28mm tall, with 100 figures per base.
____
jmurph wrote: Yeah, for states, I would assume that actors are always trying to minimize their profile. However, that may better reflected in making more experienced actors harder to "hit". I would suggest that if at any point during a move an actor is visible, an aware shooter should be able to take a shot (not necessarily a particularly accurate one), maybe with a test based on the shooter's quality to see if they react in time if the mover ends out of sight.
Lying prone should be handled separately from the normal movement state as it affects several factors- while it is a much smaller silhouette, it is also functionally stationary and extremely vulnerable if flanked or assaulted. In any encounter where the enemy can reach a prone actor with a bayonet/knife/tomahawk/etc. they are almost certainly a casualty.
This gets to the question of how many states do we want to include and track? How long those states should persist, whether a model can dynamically change state as a reaction. And so on. This adds more complexity to the rules, and mucks up both TLOS and MC. What's the game impact of having states? Does the time invested in managing, tracking and processing postures or stances justify the effort?
I have watched tactical movement, I did plenty of it in the army as an infantryman. Sometimes you do move while standing tall. In something called bounding overwatch, while your other fire team covers you, you do a 3-5 second rush before dropping down and providing covering fire while the other team rushes. There are numerous other tactical movements or scenarios where standing tall for the quickest movement is the best option when going from cover to cover, or due to the lack of cover. Also, when you are standing behind a tall wall and using it as cover, you might not be standing fully erect while using the wall for cover, but it is will be easier to justify it in game purposes by having the model counted as standing.
Not everybody in combat walks around like they are in a SEAL Team Six movie.
Unless the intention of this game will be strictly for close quarters urban combat, then standing will have to be a reality for it. The movements you use in combat are based off of the terrain you are fighting in. During that second video where they are engaging a machine gun nest, crouching would slow you down too much and allow the MG gunner to identify, track you with his weapon and fire. Sure, those guys were moving a bit slow in the video since it was a training excercise, but in real combat you are sprinting to gain as much ground before dropping down to prone and providing covering fire.
frozenwastes wrote: I did and they saved the day. The opponent took a forward protruding ridge with an MG team and a rifle team and totally made my whole force static as the longer weapon ranges made much more of my force under threat (sometimes without cover) so my movement options became limited with backing up to the nearest cover (sometimes loosing line of sight to things) as my only option for a number of soldiers..
Sounds liek a fun game was had by all! Good times, good times.
The quote above really stuck out to me. The main purpose of moving those units forward was to "fix" you in place because the range of the weapon limited your ability to manuever. This gets me back to my core thoughts about "realistic" weapon ranges as beign more of a decision about how much you want to limit or encourage movement in your game.
Easy E wrote: This gets me back to my core thoughts about "realistic" weapon ranges as beign more of a decision about how much you want to limit or encourage movement in your game.
Possibly, but it will also dictate how much terrain gets used. The ability of Infinity HMGs, Sniper Rifles and similar is what leads to a densely-packed table and contributes to the character of the game. Yes, you can shut down a corridor, but your opponent can ignore that corridor - or fill it with smoke - or deploy a counter-sniper - or whatever. On the other end of that equation is - sorry - Horizon Wars, with theoretically unlimited range, but very durable units. So yes, you might be able to hit something, but if it's tough enough, it doesn't care (much), so you can afford to throw tough elements into the teeth of enemy fire (up to a point).
So whilst I think you're right that it contributes to the character of movement, range may also contribute to other factors that will define the sorts of games you want to play and encourage others to play. Just to call upon a game with which most of us are likely to be familiar and which has limited range bands, imagine if you doubles all weapon ranges in 40k. What would the effect be? With the current style of tabletop, there would be much more emphasis on "stand and shoot" gaming, because the terrain is relatively open and the game rules enforce unit bunching. So you could increase the density of the terrain but then you'd be compressing the size of army players wanted to take (and hitting GW's sales). On the other hand, if you were wanting to play Kill Team, you could double weapon ranges more confidently. The terrain density is already quite high for this game. Squads are already broken up into independent operators. So have bolters reach out to 48" will have less effect when most of the lines of sight are already blocked. It would create some interested tactical challenges, though, and make shooting a more important part of the game (to its general betterment, IMHO).
Possibly, but it will also dictate how much terrain gets used. The ability of Infinity HMGs, Sniper Rifles and similar is what leads to a densely-packed table and contributes to the character of the game. Yes, you can shut down a corridor, but your opponent can ignore that corridor - or fill it with smoke - or deploy a counter-sniper - or whatever. On the other end of that equation is - sorry - Horizon Wars, with theoretically unlimited range, but very durable units. So yes, you might be able to hit something, but if it's tough enough, it doesn't care (much), so you can afford to throw tough elements into the teeth of enemy fire (up to a point).
So whilst I think you're right that it contributes to the character of movement, range may also contribute to other factors that will define the sorts of games you want to play and encourage others to play. Just to call upon a game with which most of us are likely to be familiar and which has limited range bands, imagine if you doubles all weapon ranges in 40k. What would the effect be? With the current style of tabletop, there would be much more emphasis on "stand and shoot" gaming, because the terrain is relatively open and the game rules enforce unit bunching. So you could increase the density of the terrain but then you'd be compressing the size of army players wanted to take (and hitting GW's sales). On the other hand, if you were wanting to play Kill Team, you could double weapon ranges more confidently. The terrain density is already quite high for this game. Squads are already broken up into independent operators. So have bolters reach out to 48" will have less effect when most of the lines of sight are already blocked. It would create some interested tactical challenges, though, and make shooting a more important part of the game (to its general betterment, IMHO).
Good analysis, it's food for thought. I'm toying with 2 options in my rules:
1) 36" standard rifle range
2) 24" as the standard, but with weapons being able to fire at +50% range with a considerable hit penalty.
Still undecided.
frozenwastes wrote: I did and they saved the day. The opponent took a forward protruding ridge with an MG team and a rifle team and totally made my whole force static as the longer weapon ranges made much more of my force under threat (sometimes without cover) so my movement options became limited with backing up to the nearest cover (sometimes loosing line of sight to things) as my only option for a number of soldiers..
Sounds liek a fun game was had by all! Good times, good times.
The quote above really stuck out to me. The main purpose of moving those units forward was to "fix" you in place because the range of the weapon limited your ability to manuever. This gets me back to my core thoughts about "realistic" weapon ranges as beign more of a decision about how much you want to limit or encourage movement in your game.
Wasn't fix and flank a tactical doctrine for at least a few nations in WW2? I think it was the default American approach and I know the Germans did it often as well.
As for it being a decision to limit movement in the game, I'm going to have to also point at the terrain as well as rules for supression/pinning. This ridge was Los blocking for most of the game and I had units that could fire at the approach to it at about a 45 degree angle from each side. So we had a situation where he had to attack without the excellent firing position. Then he pinned one of the units that could see half the approach and up he went. This actually forced me to move as I had my least damaged defenders with no cover from that angle. It just forced me to move back, which allowed him to advance with pretty much everything he had left. Then he lost the two units on the ridge (well, pinned) and suddenly I was able to retake my previously held good positions. I got lucky that everything went my way in the mortar strike.
So I do agree that it is a very important way to think about things, but hopefully scenario design will include terrain placement so the static time doesn't come too soon and so that withdrawal and repositioning is also still possible. It sort of makes sense that once you find a sufficiently close position to fire at the enemy you're not going to advance further until that enemy s dealt with. Range impacts movement, terrain impacts range, so scenario design and table layout probably needs to include some thought about what potential fields of fire will exist, limiting or allowing movement.
I think I'll make a thread about that with some MS Paint diagrams after I'm done work.
Automatically Appended Next Post: TLDR - range's impact on movement probably should be where we start our thinking about how the game will play out.
Something else to consider for skirmish gaming is what I'll term target acquisition times and engagement windows.
In the real world, when you 'build' an engagement area or kill zone, you have to consider movement rates of who/what you want to kill in it, how big a chunk of ground a unit tactically dispersed/moving takes up, how long it takes them to enter the kill zone, how fast they can make it through the kill zone, how long it takes to acquire them, how fast you can engage, and so on.
If a kill zone is too small, you won't get all the bad guys (they either traverse it to quickly or all do not fit. So you need to be able to kill X bad guys at Y rate dictating an engagement are of Z dimensions/size.
Why this is relevant to game ranges and this topic: I submit even with unlimited range, the distance between cover/terrain elements can be defined not only as a distance, but as a time it takes to travel that distance, which makes movement rates very important. Even with unlimited range, distances between cover are traveled at some rate (crawling/running/walking). It takes time to notice some one crossing a street you are covering. Depending on rate of their movement you may not be able to engage even if they are in range (hence the use of 3-5 second rushes in tactical movement, or I'm Up I'm Seen I'm Down...)
Unless you are specifically covering a certain fire lane/avenue of approach/TRP or what ever, you not only have to recognize movement, ID it as a threat, but also may need to bring your weapon to bear onto the target.
Your vision only covers a certain angle, as that cone gets further away, the distance defined by it is longer (the further you are from a football field, the more of the field you can see at once without having to move your head/turn around). How big the target appears at that distance coupled with that target's rate of movement is going to define chances of hit more than the range to that target (assuming skirmish gaming and unlimited range weapons like a battle rifle).
I think the above is is well-put, and why we shouldn't allow units to Overwatch against a vertical window slit. The player knows that the enemy will traverse past the slit, but the exposure would be sub-second, possibly all but invisible to the shooter. If the shooter blinks, they miss their chance. What level of tactical awareness should we assign to various units?
CptJake wrote: Unless you are specifically covering a certain fire lane/avenue of approach/TRP or what ever, you not only have to recognize movement, ID it as a threat, but also may need to bring your weapon to bear onto the target.
I think troop quality has bearing here based on footage I've been watching. These daesh fighters are all standing around and Syrian troopers (obviously armed and with helmets) start pouring out of a building to cross a street. The guy with the camera yells something and then the group of sentries have a conversation. And then one guy finally after like 10+ seconds starts to shoot his AK sort of unaimed in the Syrians' direction but then they're mostly gone. And then their position blows up as one of the soldiers still in the original building had an RPG. So not only did they take forever to react, when they finally did it was too late to do any real damage and they gave away their position to someone who was watching properly. All that footage that used to make up daesh propaganda is now showing up as counter propaganda because of how many corpses with video footage there are now.
Your vision only covers a certain angle, as that cone gets further away, the distance defined by it is longer (the further you are from a football field, the more of the field you can see at once without having to move your head/turn around). How big the target appears at that distance coupled with that target's rate of movement is going to define chances of hit more than the range to that target (assuming skirmish gaming and unlimited range weapons like a battle rifle).
I think an inverse square law approach might be workable here. So if someone is 300m away the target is only 2.78% of the size of the same target at 50m. And that much smaller form is moving between two areas where you can't see it. So you're watching for specks in a much larger distance and they're more likely to disappear sooner rather than later.
I've played games with realistic ranges. Micro fleet WW2, you're talking major warships with around a 2 meter range for their main batteries and which have movement measured in millimetres, the ships themselves are around 2 inches long for a pretty huge real life ship. Still enjoyed it though.
simonr1978 wrote: I've played games with realistic ranges. Micro fleet WW2, you're talking major warships with around a 2 meter range for their main batteries and which have movement measured in millimetres, the ships themselves are around 2 inches long for a pretty huge real life ship. Still enjoyed it though.
Question: When you say millimeters, are we talking about 1mm per knot? Or what?
Not necessarily. BFG was centimeter movement, instead of inch movement, but in increments of 5 cm, with some units covering upward of 60cm per turn. An inch game like WFB, using increments of 1 inch would be finer-grained.
Depending on the time scale and movement mechanics, etc., that naval game could be moving 30+mm several times per turn.
) and this obviously would limit the types of game that could be played using this ground scale. You're not going to get any large weapons or vehicles in this sort of game unless their position is being overrun (which is an interesting scenario opportunity). So this would shift the focus of the game towards skirmish style gameplay involving small numbers of infantry. Of course as you rightly point out you could use realistic ranges and compress all other scales but that to me at least isn't particularly appealing, what's the point of going to the effort of using realistic ranges if everything else is massively out of scale?
) that groups would fight over a small area like that if it contains something useful like food, medical supplies, ammunition, tools or whatever else you can think of that groups of survivors would want to scavenge from the ruins of civilisation.
