Greyslayer
07/26/04 04:45 AM
216.14.192.233
|
Artillery is a poorly designed subset within the Battletech gaming rules.
A simple example is the 100% transfer of damage to units underwater. Being an 'area of effect' weapon in Battletech much of the damage is delivered by warheads or shells exploding above the ground (thus causing even units in cover in adjacent hexes to not receive cover benefits when receiving damage). Yet Vtol units could be hovering just one level off the ground and be completely unaffected by the resulting weaponfire in this regard. Now back to the units underwater, damage to units underwater when the source is an underwater explosion is devastating (of course transfer to units above the water such as adjacent 'mainland' hexes would not happen at all), but it is simple to see that damage to anything below the water level when the source is above the water level is sheer lunacy, especially when the laws don't indicate a depth to which the explosion would reach...
For example a neptune is cruising a deep channel (depth 13) when artillery fire aimed at a hovercraft above causes the sub to receive damage despite being 78m deep. Yet at the same time some 6 meters off the water's surface the Sprint which was tailing the hovercraft remained completely undamaged....
How to rectify the situation?
What I suggest is quite simple, and in reality, gives some consistancy to the rules and thus gives an extension to 'flak' rules. Flak sets a level the round will explode at and only those units at that level would receive damage. Of course Water being a better transmitter of damage if the explosion occurs underwater would allow damage on multiple levels, it would not though, allow damage to be transferred to those units above the water (except those units floating on the water..).
Level 2:
Artillery can be set to fire normal, flak or depth rounds. Depth rounds can be detonated as deep as depth 2 on a map board but it must be set prior to firing, if the round fails to reach depth 2 it will not explode. Once a Depth round goes off it transfers damage at the expected damage to adjacent hexes and up to 2 hexes above and 3 hexes below the impact point units would receive full damage five hexes below that would receive half points damage (as depicted in the weapon data chart)
Level 3 would change as per MaxTech changes the damage distributions... each hex of damage would require another 5 hexes of depth it could reach.
Units on the surface such as hydrofoils and normal boats would receive damage if they are in the hex the round lands and explodes underneath them in.
Not a simple set of rules but at least attacks against units underwater in this situation would finally make some sense! 
|
Karagin
01/05/05 04:02 PM
65.129.167.82
|
I have noted that this is one area that the rules and the writers lack a clear understanding of how artillery works. And I find that tehy are mixxing depth charges and conventional artillery together which are like mixing apples and oranges.
As a suugestion, how about giving us something on WW2 subs vs deptharges in the are of hull strenght versus the shockawave and pressure changes casued by the charge going of near the sub and otehr such things.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
|
Silenced_Sonix
01/05/05 05:33 PM
168.209.97.34
|
Memory serving, the depth-charges from WW2 were pretty ineffectual - if they did not hit the sub square on (or at least very, very close to it), they did virtually no damage. The shockwave was lethal against soft-skinned targets like humans etc, but the subs were pretty resistant.
Evolve or Die
|
Karagin
01/06/05 10:41 AM
65.133.242.77
|
The idea of the pressure change and shockwave seems to be what the rules in BT for arty under water are going on.
And given that if the real equilivlaten was less then stellar then someone didn't do their homework when writing the rules.
Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
|