"Bringing Striker into the 21st century" Topic

I am a long time fan of the original Striker miniature rules for Traveller. I am getting back into the hobby after a 25 year hiatus. I decided Striker was one game I was going to concentrate on. In the past I have developed a lot of additional rules and equipment for the game.

Among the other games I wanted to pursue was ASL. While getting into it I came across the Conflict of Heroes game system, notably Awakening the Bear 2nd edition. The game mechanics, primarily the action points and the associated command structure are light years ahead of ASL and combined with many other aspects make a much more playable game system.

What I have determined after considering this for the last few months is I would like to use CoH as the basis for a re-write of Striker. I would like to find like minded gamers willing to swap ideas and concepts around. I game in 6 mm but the concepts should be applicable for any scale.

CoH has much less deadly combat results which feel right to me. The game scale also feels good in that most games are in the platoon to company size. Combat is squad versus squad or individual vehicles or weapons. The effects of various weapons systems, vehicle armour, size and nimbleness are distilled into a few characteristics not lots of specific details. Likewise troop weapons, quality, armour, command effects and special characteristics would also be boiled down to attack, defense, speed and range ratings.

As an example of my thinking at TL6 the basic infantry unit goes from the Striker 4 trooper fire team to the 8 to 12 person squad or most of a squad with support weapons either as a separate team or included in the base squad. At higher TLs the fire power of the weapons would mean fire teams or individual figures would have the weapons capabilities of squads.

Well this is my thinking. Anyone else want to see if we can take this further? Thank you in advance.

Stephen

That is a very good idea. CoH is a good system and enjoyed by many.

Now, what I'd suggest, is to think about what you want for an end result first, and then build towards that. A big part of the draw for Striker is the customzied build system. It was pretty intense though, and probably more intense than it needed to be. You will want to improve that as well.

I think you have a good idea. I am definitely interested in seeing what you think the final output should be.

CC

Do you play CoH? You seem to be familiar with Striker.

What I want for an end goal is Sci Fi in the CoH game mechanics. All the Striker input would give units for use in the CoH game system.

To anyone still listening..

Let me preface my comments by saying I was heavily involved in a re-write of Striker which never materialized so if some of my conversation doesn't match the Striker you know it may be because what I am discussing is rules or additions which were going to be added. In any case a lot of it will end up in the new game.

All aspects of Striker and Traveller which end up in the game will produce units or effects which play out in a CoH environment. Details such as the world environment or weather should be the most likely aspects to modify the CoH base game.

I am trying to update all of my reference sources so I can include additional Traveller items such as the various pieces of equipment covered in the numerous books published over the years. Also the design of aircraft and surface (wet) ships in addition to space ships so they can all seamlessly be incorporated into the game.

Yes one of the most loved/hated features of Striker was the multitude of design sequences. The changes my old gaming group made were quite involved. Plus I had real issues with some of the design sequences (when compared to real world equivalents) and details of many pieces of ancillary equipment. My personal test was designing known vehicles or weapons based on their real world characteristics and seeing how close they came to reality. Mostly bang on.

Finally for this introduction one (to me) seemingly overlooked feature of Striker which I liked the best is no points values. All items are costed out in a common currency, the credit. So when it came time to balance your forces just give each side a budget and buy away. For creating campaigns this was a god send.

Stephen

Well no feedback is quite disappointing but lets keep going and see what develops.

Having been in this hobby from the mid '70s to early '90s some of the most annoying parts, to me, are reduced by using hexes. No more 'how far did you move?', 'is the distance measured from the center of the tank, center of the turret, end of the barrel?' or 'how far around the building are you exposed?'. Distances and movement are X number of fixed of hexes and any units in a hex are covered by the terrain type. Distances are hex center to hex center and the rules for LOS blocks are simple as the entire hex is used for LOS purposes, unlike brand ASL where each building's outline is used. So plunk down a brick building in a hex and the entire hex is treated as a brick building. Simple and easy. Movement distances match between systems pretty well.

Weapons ranges for slug throwers and crew served slug throwers match up pretty well if you compare the counter ranges from CoH with the Striker effective ranges. Not perfect but good. You can adjust effective ranges based on the autofire DMs for crew served automatic slug throwers. The number of targets value can be factored in to adjust AP costs for mgs.

Unit composition works well to give action points. The average morale and therefore action points range from 5 for militia to 8 for long service professional. Not an extreme range but good to differentiate between troop quality. In CoH German rifle squads use fewer APs for an attack than Soviet. If you assume a different troop level, say militia versus conscripts or conscripts versus long service professional, but fixed AP costs for weapon types then the different APs available give similar results.

Initiative classes force you into certain organizations to keep control. Since Striker is based on fire and weapons teams while CoH is based on squads, part squads and weapons teams you have to look at total troop mixes and work up units in Striker and convert into CoH. I have to work this up but low initiative troops have to be led. So you have to assign higher quality troopers as leaders. High initiative troops function as wanted so there are fewer issues there except that to create high initiative units takes lots of your better troops out of circulation as potential leaders. Average initiative troops must be led or given orders according to Striker. These will be the bulk of most forces between conscript and long service professional. Here is where I still am thinking on. One of my pet peeves has always been orders in games. Unless you are working with a referee (and I have enough fun getting opponents let alone someone willing to sit by) orders are unworkable. Either you have to expose them or trust each other. I much prefer CoH and the use of command action points. Commanders who are leading have no APs left to apply as CAPs. Commanders who are "ordering' can provide CAPs. How many and if they are part of a unit which they are partially leading will have to be balanced. Striker has rules for who can lead and various requirements I am working on how to integrate. Time and communication requirements for giving orders in Striker have a good feel and should work out well when converted.

Morale can be used for combat results morale checks to modify die rolls for removing combat result chits. I really like the use of the chits for combat results but integrating where lower morale/initiative troops may be more susceptible to higher chit result values is an area I have a problem with. I don't like adding more tables to be rolled on. This would turn the game further into ASL so in my mind this is an important area to get right.

So far for now. Please give me some ideas or feedback. If there is a better place to discuss this let me know. Thank you.

The big mod you'd need to do for Striker is the electronics. Modern computers are vastly more capable than the predictions of the 1970s dreamed. (There's more horsepower in your cellphone than in the entire Apollo program, for example)

I didn't even see the Striker rules until about 10 years ago, and the thing that struck me was how short a turn was, and how you could have multiple turns before your orders could be acted on. Nothing wrong with the idea, it's just that modern games have really moved away from that concept. Kinda based on the experiences of Vietnam, at least the US military has a LOT of Immediate Action Drills that are triggered by one or two words or short phrases (like "Ambush Right!", which means that the troops are going to assault through the ambush by moving to the right of their direction of movement). The troop leader can then formulate orders based on where the troops will be at the end of the drill and start giving those.

Those IADs basically remove the need for that 30sec turn and the delays that turn length imposes on acting on orders. You can have 5min turns (or even turns of undefined length), and your players will feel in greater control of their troops.

CoH uses turns around 3 minutes. This will be the turn length. Each action is about 1/7th as long.

I went with a Grav Armor rules set for FUBAR, which I wrote, to go with my 15mm Grav Armor range.

There are also some stats generated by me, for the vehicles of other, major manufacturers as well. I suspect you, and/or they may differ with my ratings, but I tried to be reasonable with them. The Grav Tanks with older tech grav repulsor pods are more vulnerable, and less capable than the more high-tech ones that have the grav repulsor(s) installed in the bottom of the vehicle hulls, to protect them from enemy fire, and that have a far superior level of performance, permitting them to maneuver more like very fast VTOLs, rather than slow, clunky armor that can only hover just a few meters off the ground.

I use D10s instead of D6s, so there's less of a chance of lower quality troops not activating all the time, but they can still fail to do so at critical points in a game.

Dirtside II, and/or Iron Cow would also be options to consider.

With a 3 minute turn length, artillery fire could easily arrive either at the end of the turn called or at the start of the next turn.

Personally, I tend to like games that assume that your small-unit leaders are competent and know the plan (basically, less random chances of them doing stupid crap). However, I like the Fog of War card decks from Ambush Alley(etc) which come into play when you fail a Troop Quality test for something.

Getting back to my comments about the tech, your phone has a TL12 GPS unit in it, a camera, at least 3 different comms systems (voice, alphanumeric paging, and email), plus data network capabilities (ie, internet access).

Mako11

I am not familiar with FURBAR. I am trying to integrate Striker and CoH but am willing to look at other systems instead. I downloaded Strike Legion as it seemed to have a following but command ranges of 1" and chit based orders (frankly orders at all) spoiled it for me.

I had dirtside and it, similar to SL all seemed based on the old WRG armour rules which I didn't like in the day. Too general and managed to be both specific and vague at the same time.

Lion

Yes Traveller, and everything that came after based on it, missed the boat as far as computers goes. Of course you could say that was for the Imperium and Solomani electronics are way ahead.

Anybody still out there? I have been beavering away learning new rules.

Hey Stephen M,

I think you're kinda sorta heading in a similar direction to some things I'm doing. Here's a few thoughts:

- a grid table [not hexes, squares] just like military maps is not only a lot easier but more realistic from the player-as-commander aspect.
--Grids also make it MUCH easier to move hidden forces [infantry A6 moves A7 then B8], and indeed handle every aspect of "hidden" from mines to ECM to scouting to…
--Some ideas for gridded moderns might be taken from Poor Bloody Infantry by Peter Pig.

The electronics that Lion mentions is a great tech point – in essence, people who can travel the stars can probably do some seriously crazy stuff with comms. I think it is best represented by a "comms v. Electronic Warfare" mechanic. Whatever the speculative system that is used, it is certain that it will have some vulnerabilities to ECM "of some kind".
--the IAD are for use when comms fail. The unit makes some sort of a Quality roll to see if it can act the way a player wants. Even if it fails, they will certainly be able to shoot and call for fire [that call also beng vulnerable to ECM like above].

Finally, I think the Striker turn sequence can actually be simplified while retaining its salient featuers.

Actually, give me an email I can send you some concepts I've been thinking about. Cheers!

There is a game design section on Star Ranger's site, if you want to set up an open place to discuss.
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