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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.

Assumed Effective Weapon Ranges:

Grenades: 30 yards
Pistols: 50 yards
Shotguns: 50 yards
Submachine Guns: 150 yards
Rifles: 500 yards

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:

Grenades: 22.5 inches
Pistols: 37.5 inches
Shotguns: 37.5 inches
Submachine Guns: 112.5 inches
Rifles: 375 inches

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.

Grenades: 24 inches
Pistols: 36 inches
Shotguns: 36 inches
Submachine Guns: 108 inches
Rifles: 372 inches

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?

Thanks for your thoughts guys.

 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.

Good shooting doesn't remove tactics.

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...

Heres my off the cuff suggestion

Grenades: 20 yards (they arent throwing a baseball)
Pistols: 30 yards (thats a looong pistol shot)
Shotguns: 20 yards (max)
Submachine Guns: 100 yards
Rifles: 200yards

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.

Consider 2d10.

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.

doktor_g wrote:Consider 2d10.

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.

 Peregrine wrote:

 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.

Assumed Effective Weapon Ranges:

Grenades: 30 yards
Pistols: 50 yards
Shotguns: 50 yards
Submachine Guns: 150 yards
Rifles: 500 yards

Yards were a funny medieval sistem, but most of humanity can´t understand (my self included), like the russians verst.

If you are comparing 40k weapons I would suggest leagues, at least. That were more latin.

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.

 thegreatchimp wrote:
then a pistol shuld only have a range of 3". i.e. it would be virtually useless.

To be fair, this is a pretty accurate approximation of the usefulness of pistols on a real-world battlefield.

 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.