"Tomorrow's War - fire combat ranges" Topic

My nephew and I love Tomorrow's War. However, one thing has always bothered me: the lack of penalties for firing small arms at long ranges. It seems rather odd to me that there is a rule for gaining firepower dice if you are in "Optimum Range" but you loose nothing for firing from one end of the table to another. This is one aspect of Stargrunt 2 that I like: firepower is reduced in effectiveness based on the range, which is then dependent on the troop quality. I could just play Stargrunt but TW has a lot of features that I like which are not present in SG2.

I have been batting around a few solutions and there are two that seem to possibly suit the situation:

+1 defense dice to the target for each range band past optimum range

-1 firepower for each range band past optimum range. firepower cannot be reduced to less than 1 dice.

I am gravitating to the first option.

Thoughts?

I agree with the first option also…. I always view range and cover modifiers as a defensive characteristic as opposed to a deterioration of offensive capability.

Even the largest table should be well under 200 meters actual distance, no need for range bands for most any weapon.

Given the short distances involved, it seems to me the rules cover it as is: up to Optimum Range is X dice, beyond that (essentially, at Long range) you get X-1 dice.

They just write it as X+1 and X respectively. Given the ground scale I agree with Dynaman. Besides, the game is designed to have lots of terrain anyway, so "long range" shots should be pretty rare and hence not worrying too much about.

The distance is supposedly undefined in the game. However, in most miniatures games there is a figure and ground scale, with the latter being larger than the former. The "optimum range" band is rather small, even with an assumed 200m/max size table.

Besides, if one were to play with 1cm=1meter on the table that would make the game area incredibly small. Vehicle fights would become silly, although not as silly as in 28mm/40K scale. There is supposed to be terrain for sure, but having range limitations for small arms forces each side to become more mobile than they might otherwise be. This is one thing I like (ranges) about the game "Gruntz".

With that being said I don't think the game is supposed to be 1:1 scale. Indeed, it says itself that it is "scaleless".

Amyway, I appreciate the feedback.

Since the game is based around troop quality at close range good troops shouldn't miss.

Did you know that you can point and shoot an M14, M16, or AK series and hit within a couple inches of point of aim at any distance up to ~300m?

No, I'm not talking about a scoped rifle. Basic iron sights. Assuming the SG2 groundscale of 1"=10m (1/393 scale), a basic infantry rifle is going to be point-and-click out to 30". That is, there will be no loss of effectiveness due to mis-guessing the range, it's all on the shooter as to hitting or missing the target.

It's really all those games built around ancients or medieval melee-intensive combat that have biased our assumptions.

Yup. I was in the Canadian Armed Forces decades ago. The difference is that target practice is quite different from shooting back at people who are trying to kill you (adrenaline, heart rate and all kinds of other things tend to get in the way of accuracy). Small arms generally causes a very minor amount of actual casualties in the grand scheme of things. Heavy weapons and artillery are the big killers historically. Take a green recruit and put him in a street battle and he might be lucky enough to actually shoot in the right direction. That is one thing I like about StarGrunt 2. Small arms are not very effective in killing large numbers of men.

I think you would be adding unnecessary modifiers for the range bands.

The weapons of tomorrow will be even more accurate than the weapons of today (which are pretty amazing).

However, if you feel the need to add it in, go ahead. It is your game. Make it work for you.

The weapons of tomorrow will be even more accurate than the weapons of today (which are pretty amazing).

However, if you feel the need to add it in, go ahead. It is your game. Make it work for you.

I couldn't have said it better myself. So I didn't. ;)

Shawn.

I prefer to think of the ground scale as pretty close to 1-to-1 for the miniatures, so not having it drop off significantly seems okay to me.

Seems easy to house rule though. If you were to do that, I'd reduce it a bit for troops that are moving, but not for those stationary in a prepared position.

Thanks for the feedback gents. I tend to waffle a lot between systems.

Keeping accuracy up over longer ranges also encourages good use of cover.
Lots of terrain helps here, which has the added bonus of making your table look pretty!

Bearining in mind I'm trying hard not to threadjack here…

In The Crucible rules many small arms (though not all) have effectively infinite range as the ground scale is pretty much the same as the figure scale. At the Salute 2013 game we had infantry weapons finding targets at a scale kilometre away (over 10 metres on the table) albeit at a minus to hit at that range.

It worked fine and I don't see why it shouldn't work in TW – they are attempting to model much the same thing.

John T

Used Tomorrow's War for a mod for Traveller. The tanks and infantry had no trouble trading fire across the table, but these were mainly weapons that had ranges measured in kilometers. I thought that TW did a great job of modeling the lethality of the game, but I may have may the energy weapons a bit too lethal.

Got any pics of that long shooting from Salute 2013, John T?

Yup. I was in the Canadian Armed Forces decades ago. The difference is that target practice is quite different from shooting back at people who are trying to kill you (adrenaline, heart rate and all kinds of other things tend to get in the way of accuracy).

Yeah, but that's actually a pretty uniform effect on all shooters, so you can essentially ignore individual or national differences. Just drop combat accuracy to about 1% of target-range accuracy and you're good.

Small arms generally causes a very minor amount of actual casualties in the grand scheme of things. Heavy weapons and artillery are the big killers historically. Take a green recruit and put him in a street battle and he might be lucky enough to actually shoot in the right direction. That is one thing I like about StarGrunt 2. Small arms are not very effective in killing large numbers of men.

As long as they use cover, anyway.

Masses of troops in the open are going to get shredded by anything that can reach them, and it only gets worse as their shooters get higher rates of fire.

Sure Lion link

The firing was taking place from Combat Cars and Jeeps along with secondary tank weapons (as well as main guns, obviously) from the star port at one end of the table right down the high way to Cullen City at the other (where folks defending were – very sensibly – taking cover)

Weapons drop tbe chance to hit at that range – and being in cover makes it harder to hit a target as well in the rules (so, frankly, badly trained troops stand no chance and don't bother) but – if a hit is achieved – then the damage is still done, degraded only by armour levels and the nature of cover – ie hard or soft cover (although diffent weapon types – lasers and powergunns – see some 'soft' cover like undergrowth as 'hard').

John T