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 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...

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.

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.

 CptJake wrote:

 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:

 CptJake wrote:

 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.

Realism is something of a waste of time where toy soldiers are concerned. Verisimilitude is a better ideal.

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.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:


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.



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.

@Manchu - that discussion has been had before, under LOS. Magic cylinder is possibly the worst of all possible worlds.

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...

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.

 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.

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.

 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.

From the latest version of Warmachine

 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!
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@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.

You realize that ground scale and figure scale are different in most miniatures games, right?

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.

 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.