"Force on Force -" Topic

This set produces good, tense games and suits scenario play well. With that said I don't think it's completely mature yet as a set, and I agree that the defense system isn't ideally suited to my tastes, and I've taken a stab at house ruling it here: TMP link

I'm sure the system, and especially the defense system will evolve, as it's probably the n.1 issue people have with the otherwise brilliant game. However, the core of what makes the game good, the reaction rolls based on troop quality, is something I'd like to see in many other games, instead of the usual no reaction or automatic reaction that goes before the active player.

There are a few other oddities inherent to the system, like the use of variable dice pools modified by static extra dice instead of die shifts (meaning the odds will vary wildly depending on your basic pool of dice) and sometimes the reaction system makes you wonder at situations where a unit that is engaging a target or two already gets to fire again only because a new target popped in to engage it (makes you feel that they weren't fully engaged with the previous targets after all and always "hold back" to react to new targets, but perhaps that's the way it works out there!)

None of this really gets in the way of having a load of fun with the game and its great scenarios, so the experience comes highly recommended.

As a combat vet with OIF the most recent experience I got to ask what part of if 2 guys shoot at 10 guys and then then get owned does'nt feel real LOL. Is it the part were 2 guys can't shoot all ten? becouse there are rules for ambush and hidden units and other situations that enhance survival of out numbered troops. and for the record my weapon was a folding stock AK47. I never fired it on full auto , Prefered semi which gave me a better first round hit chance.The AK jumps around a lot on full auto much more then a M4. In the Majority of firefights ive been in ,you would be suprised at how few people actualy get hit on our side and when they do how effective the Body armour is.People still die and get hurt . I think the rules reflect combat very well. But Hey no rules are perfect and not everyone will like the same set. For me it works but i respect the folks that it does not work for. I also know that everything said in this post will be evaluated and taken to heart and that Shawn will just work all the harder to make the game better

There is nothing unrealistic about it, Mohamed.
The rub (I wouldn't go so far to call it an objection, for me at least, as the rules are still great and it all works out but its not the most intuitive) is basically that if you are used to micromanaging every soldier, in most situations you want to spread out in combat.

So forget the two guys vs ten. Think about the spacing between guys in a fire team. And now about the spacing between guys two fireteams.

For defensive reasons you spread out as much as possible (though staying in cover is still the primary objective, the bigger the cover the better, so more people can spread out and be harder to find in it). For purposes of "activation" (in game terms) you'd really want to be closer together, especially if you don't have radios within the unit or are in terrain that may make this difficult without being in close proximity. So the "proper" spacing of soldiers in a unit is based on a mix of terrain (how far can we spread out and still be in cover? How far can we spread out and still hear each other or use hand signals?).

FoF throws all that out, and it ends up being that you're basically going to activate more if you're spread out while having better defense when you stick together (both points are obviously up to some amount of debate on the exact statistics as you activate more but less guys and you have worse defense but less total casualties, but at that point you are losing sight of the general rub; its not intuitively "quite right" even if it works out).

All that said I personally just view this as a mechanics thing that doesn't matter in the long run. The tactics are still realistic at the squad level, its just that you don't micromanage within the units like you do in a lot of other skirmish games with similar amounts of realism.

So thats why its a "rub" but not a deal breaker. It doesn't feel intuitively "right" like things do in games that are a bit more "literalist" in their approach, like Chain Reaction, but it ends up playing just as well/accurately, and its abstractions make for a better game at certain scales.

A good point, it also felt a bit weird that the larger, more spread out side usually gets the initiative versus the small, cohesive one.

I'd like to add that in practise, there is no "evening out" of expected casualties "because you can only wipe out so many guys in one go from a smaller unit". You don't, generally, lose an entire fireteam in one go, and if you do, it's a rare kind of disaster.

The argument only really works with the example given – 1 soldier vs 2 soldiers, but it doesn't scale up. This is a common argumentation error, so no worries, though.