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-- Extension of tactic skill (http://holonet.terrandesigns.com/showthread.php?threadid=1234)


Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 7 October 2000 04:54 PM

Arrow

Recently, one of my fellow gamers (Habuth) and I, decided to have a look at the tactics skill. Presently the description the book is rather vague, so we had a closer look.

Basically, the skill is broken down into different levels-specialisations, (infantry, artillery, armour, starfighter, fleet etc.), and skills are awarded for having a high skill level in that particular field- about 1 skill per ipi or two above 4D. For simplicity, I've only listed the infantry tactics below, but similar rules would apply for the others.

Infantry Tactics

Flank Attack – Infantry is able to enact an effective flank attack with story results. 3 points.
Assault – Infantry is able to enact an effective assault. Necessary to overcome a Defend. 3 points.
Street Fighting – Infantry is able to use the city terrain to their advantage. +10% enemy casualties. 4 points.
Withdrawal – Infantry is able to withdraw. Suffer casualties, but disengage at end of battle. 2 points.
Fighting Withdrawal – Infantry is able to withdraw yet still cause significant damage to opponent. Disengage and +10% enemy casualties. 4 points.
Anti Tank Tactics - + 10% enemy casualties to tanks. 4 points.
Defend – Infantry is able to construct a durable defence. Assault is required to shift them without killing everyone in the defence. 3 points.
Fire Disipline- Units use ammunition at half usual rate. 3 points.
Camoflage- Increases chance of Ambush being sucessful. Reduces casualties by 5%. 2 points
Ambush: If sucessful, +30 enemy casualties. 3 points.

This is in the preliminary stages, so if anyone has any comments then I'd really love to hear them. Cool.

__________________
Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Lokar on 7 October 2000 06:02 PM

Talking

Its nice to see the special bonus rules from Panzer General 2, Panzer General 3D, and People's General for Star Wars. I'll have to find my old Stargedy Guide and help you out. Good luck.
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Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by GreenCape on 8 October 2000 04:46 PM

Your maneuvers idea sounds great, Emp.
However, i havn't got the games Lokar mentions, so could you explain what the 'points' are about?
Thanks.
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And you think you're weird?


Posted by Lokar on 8 October 2000 05:00 PM

Post

The "General" series is a group of about 8 games which deals with fighting on a tatical scale. The games are made by SSI and deal with all sort of combat ranging from WW2 (which about five are about) to space and fansty combat and hypothical betwween the US and China. They're a great group of games.

As to the points I think that they refer to bonus points given when rolling on your Tatics skill as applicable to the situation.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 9 October 2000 03:34 PM

Post

Firstly, Lokar, while the last three are from PG2, the others are completely original from Habuth and I. If the games you mentioned have any others, though, please mention them.

Greencape, well the way the points work is this. You build your tactics skill up, say infantry tactics specialisation and for every pip above 4D you are awarded one skill 'point'. So for example a person with 5D+1 in infantry tactics will have 4 points to spend. So he could 'purchase' fighting withdrawal or one of the three point skills and have one point remaining.

To effectivly pull off one of the skills, the commander will either(1) have to make a roll against the size of the force he commands or(2)make an opposed roll against the enemy commander.

An example of (1) would be the flank attack and for (2) would be defend.

As I said, these are only in the initial stages of development, so what the difficulty actually is hasn't been decided yet. When Habuth and I finish the rules then we will post them all.

Until then ANY comments or ideas are most welcome.
__________________
Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Chris Curtis on 9 October 2000 04:22 PM

Overall, I'd say this looks pretty good for a preliminary state.

My one real comment is that this probably won't be very useful for most players/characters. The way you have it right now it's geared much more towards larger engagements of forces. Thus, it's almost more strategy than it is tactics. When it's 5 vs 10, "+10% casualties" really isn't a very good way of doing it.

Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time coming up with a better/alternate way to do it for small units.

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Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 9 October 2000 04:58 PM

Generally the outcome of the battle will be a story event. The +10% will have an effect on the story.

You're right, most characetrs won't find a use for this as it invloves units of a least the size of a company (120 men), which would be controlled by a Major.

In our campaign, one character has attained the rank of Major (another that of Lt. Commander- an honoured captain in our game).

The next ranks up, Lt. Colonel- in charge of a battalion, and Commander- in charge of a line of ships, will require some kind of tactical ability. To simply say our characters can do tactics (in our view) is wrong. Also it diverts the characters from spending all their points on blster, dodge and lightsabre combat. In a way it puts some character into the characters!
__________________
Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Habuth on 9 October 2000 06:58 PM

Some clarifications from the original author...

Firstly, the system is pretty much completed in a preliminary version. It has sections fro infantry, armour, starfighters, artillery, capital ships and strategy. I have an entire summary sheet prepared. However, it is a tad large to be placed here. If you wish to have a copy, then tell me and I will e-mail a copy to you. At the moment, we are undergoing discussion as to developing this and comments and ideas would be most apreciated. Alternatively, perhaps the online aventure journal at this site would be interested?? If so, no problems. Dammit, you won't even have to pay me

Secondly, the inspiration for these skills actually comes from the adventure journal. I don't know if any has seen the dog fighting manouvres? Initially, I saw them and thought of linking the knowledge of the manouvres to piloting skill. After some discussion, myself and Emp. Xan. rejected this idea. But we agreed to initiate a similar system for the tactics skill.

Thirdly, apart from the added character given to the rules, these skills do a lot for the definition of any character who plays any kind of military leader. All through history, you will se commanders described as perhaps foolhardy, defensive, rash, active, clever, cunning, limited etc. The tactical skills that a character has go some way to representing his style of fighting and his character as a whole.
What's more, what Emp. Xan. (I think) didn't mention was that tactical skills can be aquired without the actual tactical skill. If a character performs well in some battle, such that they could reasonable be expected to have aquired a tactical skill, then they are given that skill. For instance, any airspeeder pilot who was at the battle of Hoth and saw the Skywalker manouvre could be assumed to have received the tactical skill "Skywalker manouvre." Another example, from our own game, refers to a Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) Ologon whose courage and skill was proved at the defence of Piper's Fort. He recieved the "Defend" (infantry) skill. When such a skill is recieved, then the next tactics skill pips that are developed yield no awards. I.e., defend (infantry) would normally have cost Ologon three points. As such, the next three pips of tactics skill that he invests in do not yield any tactical skills. (Is this making sense? If not, Emp. Xan will clarify). This means that not only do the tactical skills define your character, but your character and his/her actions define the tactical skills.
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Posted by Chris Curtis on 9 October 2000 09:37 PM

I can agree with a lot of what you both said, Habuth and Xan. There were a lot of good points raised.

However, I still think it stands that in most cases PCs probably shouldn't be commanding large groups. Those types of engagements simply aren't what RPGs are designed for. RPGs (and SW in particular) are very much geared towards the individual character and small groups.

My character in our campaign is a Lt. Colonel. However, he doesn't command a battalion or starfighter wing or anything like that. He's simply the commanding officer of a small NR spec ops group who happens to hold that rank. The largest battle he's been involved in where he was in command of it was around 20 spacecraft, and not all of those were fighters.

I'm sure many of the other players have had similar experiences. While their characters may hold a relatively high rank, they likely really don't command all that many people. Certainly not enough to make the skills you have very useful in play.

I think the idea behind the specializations is great, it has the potential to add a lot of depth to an otherwise oft-neglected skill. However, I think you should probably try to gear it toward small "squad-size" engagements, at least if you want other players/groups to be able to use it easily.

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Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 9 October 2000 09:51 PM

It's funny you should mention that, Chris, because I am working on smaller engagements too. Naturally a flank attack or assault wouldn't have too much say in engagements with only a few squads (which we have done before- Aliens rip-off). With that we used a combination of tactis and command to see how many troopers died/escaped. It worked quite well.

However, there has been quite a few threads in the past about large battles, so there is some demand for the kind of rules given in this thread. And we want to see what ideas the other members of the forum can give us, so we can imrove it for our own game. If you see what I mean
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Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Habuth on 9 October 2000 09:52 PM

Like I said, it's mainly for background purposes with the occasional use in big battles. But many of the specilizations could in theory be applied to smaller squads... but in small squads, you'd probably just play it out... rather than make a roll for whether a flank attack worked, you'd make the players enact it.

Also, we have a pretty rigid command structure which has come from many hours debate and thought. In our campaign, a lieutenant col. should command a battalion... obviously this is the rebellion, where they're pretty flexible. But if ones character holds that high a rank, it's nice if just now and then they can do something really BIG and fight in a proper battle instead of just skirmishing with stormtroopers...
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Posted by Lokar on 5 November 2000 09:28 PM

Cool

Hey man I like the idea keep 'em coming if ya have them. I couldn't find the PG2 Cheat Book. I did pick up the latest PG3 it has some Tatics bonuses. I'll put them if ya want. It could help if you guys are at stumbling block.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Habuth on 5 November 2000 09:45 PM

At the moment, our stumbling block is not having too much opportunity to try out the rules... that should all be changing soon hopefully ('nuff said ahem)

But post PG3 stuff anyway, could give us some ideas If you want the tactics rules, as we've written them so far, just post and they'll be sent to you
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Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 6 November 2000 05:25 AM

Thumbs up

Please do post them. Any help we can get would be most welcome!!!
__________________
Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Lokar on 7 November 2000 06:49 PM

Sorry for thr delay I got alot on plate as of late.

Blitz (armor)- Any tank unit this leader commands envelops retreating units, forcing the enemy unit to surrender.

Force Recon (recon)- Any recon unit with this leader has a greater spotting range.

Liberator (general)- Always the hero, the troops attached to this leader gain publicy when they capture enemy populations centers.

Survivor (general)- Always planning an escape route, this leader will not die if his unit is lost. He will return at the beginning of the next battle.

This is just a warm-up let know what you think guys.


__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Thrawn on 8 November 2000 03:25 AM

Hey Habuth

I would like a copy. my players have a large forces of mercenaries and the both have tactics for infantry.
you systems sounds very nice.
so keep em coming

My Email address is Thrawn@hotmail.com
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Posted by GreenCape on 8 November 2000 09:12 AM

Post

Could you send me a copy of those rules. They could be really useful.

My adress is chassagnardant@hotmail.com

Thanks
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And you think you're weird?


Posted by Lokar on 8 November 2000 10:01 PM

Expert Support (artillery)- Any artillery unit with this leader automatically fires an additional support fire.

Determined Defense (general)- This leader strenght is defense, his unit takes less damage and inflicts more when it defends.

Sixth Sense (general)- This leader knows his enemy is near, he cannot be ambushed and ignores reserve fire.

Tank Hunter (general)- This specally trained leader boasts an air unit's attack and defense against armor units.




__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Habuth on 9 November 2000 04:35 PM

Okay, I have finally got around to sending the tactics rules out...

As for PG3 rules:

Blitz is already represented by the armour tactic "overrun" (they are basically the same thing)

Force recon I like the idea of, something like the knowledge to set capable pickets, scouts etc. I will add that one in , I think

Liberator is a bit vague when considering the sta wars universe, and is place specific rather than person specific.

Survivor... well, could have that in there, I suppose. But most major characters tend to be natural survivors anyway, and most commanders are major characters. Still, worth bearing in mind... could perhaps be represented by the survival skill? Or a specialisation of survival - battle escape. Or escape sudden death. Or something. Have to think about that one...

Tank hunter... there is already an infantry skill "anti-armour tactics" and the equivelent for armour against infantry.

Sixth sense... interesting idea, but personally I'm inclined to reject it. It would if such things were decided by possesion of the "Scouting" skill that I'm planning

The last two are also already catered for too. But thanks v. much for the idea of scouting skill... Any more ideas?


Posted by Habuth on 9 November 2000 04:37 PM

Oh, in particular... any ideas for fleet tactics??


Posted by Lokar on 9 November 2000 08:19 PM

Here's some more (only ground stuff for PG3, I'll have to think on starfighter and cap ships)

Skirmisher (general)- Keeping his troops spread out causes enemy fire to be less effective than normal against this leader's units.

Shock Tatics (General)- Striking to affect enemy moral, any suppression caused by this leader's attack remains for the rest of the turn.

Ferocious Defender (general)- Trained in the art of fortification, this leader's troops are at maximum entrenchment as soon as the order is given.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Emperor Xanderich II on 10 November 2000 10:45 AM

Thumbs up

I like the skirmisher one, definately be able to use that.

As for the other two, I'll have to look at the file (word is still broke), shock tacs may be alright, but I think we have the defender one.

Cheers!
__________________
Lieutenant Commander Lothar Xanderich
Blue Squadron Commander, Order of the Spork
Emperor of the Zaran Empire


Posted by Lokar on 11 November 2000 08:21 AM

First Strike (general)- Using superior tatics, this leader's unit always fire first.

Fire Displine (general)- Carful with supply, this unit leader usesammo at half the rate of the other troops.

Mountaineer (general)- This leader's pathfinder skills provide increased movement in bad terrian and he is an expert at assaulting uphill.

Aggressive Maneuver (general)- Memorizing the lay of the land allows this leader to increase his unit's movement.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by CraigMarx on 11 November 2000 02:35 PM

Smile

I'd just like to say it's about time someone extended the tactical skill portion of the game. I was also wondering if you could send me a copy of the rules. Thanks.

My address: craig_marx20@hotmail.com.
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Craig Marx,
Grand Moff of the Imperial StormElite


Posted by Lokar on 12 November 2000 12:55 AM

I was just thinking of the "Pincer" maneuver. It works for armor, starfighters, cap ships, just about anything. But, I guess that might be more of a higher level Stragedy than a Tatics.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Habuth on 12 November 2000 04:17 AM

We have pincer for capital ships, though we left it out for other types I think... Have you seen our rules, Lokar? We have quite a lot of stuff already... We already have fire discipline, and I think the others are a little too specific. And skirmisher... hmm, could be useful, but might be hard to work out rules for...

Still working on that scouting one, though
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Posted by Lokar on 12 November 2000 10:56 AM

Nah, I think I'm the only guy to post here that hasn't asked for them yet (strange isn't it). Could you email a copy I'd like to take a look as well.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Habuth on 14 November 2000 06:34 AM

No problem. What's the addy?
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Posted by Lokar on 14 November 2000 08:19 PM

Sure thing, should have posted it earlier. Here it is: EDragonIII@aol.com
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


Posted by Lokar on 15 November 2000 08:55 PM

Thumbs up

Excellent, I took a look at it. Looks good. I'll see if I can help with some new ideas.
__________________
Times of change demand that all people either stand up and be counted or hide.

Brigader General Lokar;
Head of Assessments Branch, Fraxian Security Agency


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