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 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.

Bring mortars!

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.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 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.

https://youtu.be/jlcATR_sP8E

Not crouching while moving.

https://youtu.be/oLCn3jvNKfw

Not crouching while moving.

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.

I was agreeing that the guy wouldn't be trying to cover ground on his knees.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I was agreeing that the guy wouldn't be trying to cover ground on his knees.

Hah, my apologies. I went back and reread it, I am jerk! That's what happens when you read post while your falling asleep.

Nah, I just wasn't clear in my reply. All good.

Sounds like we're about to cross the streams with the TLOS thread!

 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).

 precinctomega wrote:


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.

 Easy E wrote:

 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.

Great discussion so far guys. Very intrigue and forcing the old nuerons to fire a bit.

Thanks!

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?

Either way, measuring in mm implies pretty slow movement!

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.