"Near Future Rules -New Thinking?" Topic

So I'm contemplating returning to 15mm SF after a 30year(!) hiatus. It seems to me that most rules then and the few that I'm aware of are still postulating combat to look a lot like 20th century mechanized warfare, albeit with more firepower and floating vehicles. With the current rapid expansion of drone warfare, I'm not sure that's a reasonable extrapolation any more. Are there any rules out there that are taking this "Warfare by Remote Control" into account?

Not sure new rules are needed.
A drone that flies will still have a movement speed, if it shoots it will still need to roll to hit.
It will still have a save and will still need a model.

I guess the only difference is that it has no morale so will not fall back or rout.
Also, no-one will call in a medi vac to rescue it.

I would use the same rules as for flying vehicles, just ignore the human aspect.

If that makes sense?

However I too wondered if sci-fi rules are sci-fi enough and we had this chat on my forum:

link

AFAIK there are drone rules in Stargrunt.

15mm would be a great scale to explore tactics using smaller drones, like the quad-rotor deals they sell at the hobby store. Mount an assault rifle on the bottom with a big drum of ammo and a camera and off you go. If you had the models, you could adapt just about any rule set to use them.

The bigger UAV's might fit better in 6mm or 3mm games, where distance comes into play a little more. In 15mm, I'd represent the big UAV's as off table support, where ground units spot the target and call in a strike.

Tomorrow's War has plenty of rules for drones of all shapes and sizes.

Overall I agree with Angel Barracks though, there's not really a need to have totally different rules; air support generally operates the same, regardless if it's a F-16 or a Predator, a drone tank would generally operate in a pretty similar fashion to a manned tank, and so forth. In fact I'd postulate that everything will basically become 'semi-autonomous with a fly by remote option', and whether it's manned or not will depend entirely on how close you need a human to the decision-making loop.

-Will

Here are my house rules for Flying lead:

link

Tomorrow's War does to some degree. The US Army in those rules is heavy into drones and robots with bots carrying weapons and sensors. Plus it has a lot of rules on net warfare and using drones. Good stuff plus it has a kicking act/react system that isn't your old I go/you go. You can get it at a fairly reasonable price too.

The Japanese in Tomorrow's War are even bigger 'drone' users than the US: all their combat troops are autonomous AIs in a frame that looks human, only their HQ types are live humans.

But don't forget the Zeroth Law of scifi: Nobody wants to read about or game the experience of a bunch of drones shooting at each other on an otherwise empty battlefield. You need to have people on the table!

Infinity is nominally set 175 years from now, and you can field a pretty large number of drones in most armies. 6-8 combat drones out of 20 minis per side, and a pair of 'baggagebots' which may have some EW capabilities in addition to packing more food/water/ammo and the wounded.

At one level, we can say that the minis gamer's God's eye view is showing the effect of all the surveillance drones in use.

Something like a Predator should really probably be handled as off-board, since it's just another (relatively) fast-mover air strike!

I will second that Tomorrow's War has the use of drones and AI forces well covered in their rule system. TW also makes a distinction between dumb bots and smart bots. In effect dumb bots will follow a strict protocol and are often remote controlled while smart bots are independent AI machines In fact the TW game I am running at Historicon has one force (The Tyrel Corporation Combots) are all AI robotic infantry and armor fighting vehicles going up against a well armed if slightly outdated equipped human force.

I think at this time there are two prevailing schools of thought in regards future conflicts. One sees a more automated if not completely automated force while the other sees that man will always have a human element to any conflict.

Drones and robots are for rich countries or countries that don't have surplus populations.

Eventually humans will be as to computers as computers are to humans.

There will be no separation. The two are inextricably linked and the one makes up for the shortcomings in the other.

Whether you need extra rules or not depends on how finely you want to model drones, and how "near future" you want to play.

In the close near future drones might have autonomous combat ability when a human is out of the loop (eg due to jamming), but they are going to be significantly less effective than when a human is in the loop. In the far near future drones might be able to work at the same, or better, capacity than a human when fully autonomous.

Gruntz covers it as well.