Indirect fire rules

[Carlobrand]

As I look through the MegaTrav Indirect Fire rules, I note a couple of items not explained. Specifically, the effect of turns of correction and the effects of indirect fire control - if that is to be introduced into errata.

Base roll is Difficult (11+) with bonus for Forward Observer skill. Do we take correction as a +1 per turn firing, or was there some skill rule that talked about trying a skill a second or third or more times?

 

[aramis]

Check COACC and Ref's companion...
COACC, p. 65, shows it's +1 per battery-round fired, above the base roll being Observer's Forward Observer skill.

 

[Carlobrand]

Check COACC and Ref's companion...
COACC, p. 65, shows it's +1 per battery-round fired, above the base roll being Observer's Forward Observer skill.

I hadn't expected indirect fire rules in COACC. Thanks.

 

[McPerth]

What always surprised me is the lack of utility on it for the Field Artillery skill. The accuracy seems to depend exclusively on the Forward Observer, regardless if the gunners have skill 4 or no skill in the weapon they are firing (Mortars, Howitzers or Mass Drivers, as for the rest I guess they are direct fire weapons).

 

[jec10]

CT/Striker has far more sophisticated indirect fire rules.

For some reason they stripped all of them out of MegaTrav.

 

[Carlobrand]

CT/Striker has far more sophisticated indirect fire rules.

For some reason they stripped all of them out of MegaTrav.

MegaTrav drew quite a bit from Striker, but they adapted indirect fire to their task system - which is fine, but they neglected a few details. Sheafs, for example: the skill roll tells you whether or not you're on target, and you can find deviation if you miss, and you can correct (thanks to COACC), but I can't find anything in MT that describes the pattern a number of rounds lays down or the effect PD fire has on said pattern.

It's certainly easy enough to bring over the Striker sheaf and beaten zone rules, but there are variations. MT deals with a "danger space": you roll to hit anything in the danger space (a routine task roll, i.e. 7+? Doesn't say, or I'm looking in the wrong place.) and then penetration is reduced based on the individual's range from the point of the blast. If there are multiple rounds and PD gets involved, the rule tells us how to find out if we were on target but not what's going on with the other rounds landing around the target: there's no method for declaring what pattern the rounds landed in or which of the rounds in the pattern got shot out by PD, therefore no way of telling if this guy or that was in the danger space of one of the rounds or not - or even whether he took a direct hit or not (which makes life difficult if your intended barrage was HEAP rounds), unless he happened to be the one at ground-zero. Striker on the other hand assigns a base 11+ to receive a contact hit and 10+ to receive a fragmentation hit for everyone in the beaten zone, with modifiers based on how dense the firing sheaf was, and PD reduces the density of the sheaf.

Also missing is indirect fire control. There's a proposal in Errata for the machinery, and there's a comment under "The Fire Order" in the Player's Handbook that, "[t]he various weapons of a unit may be ordered (in separate orders) to conduct different indirect fire attacks (as many as one per weapon). This capability is limited by the capacity of its fire control system. See Vehicle Design in the Referee’s Manual," implying that indirect fire control allows a vehicle to conduct different fire missions with different weapons, but there's no description of the manner in which that operates.

 

[Ishmael]

There should be some useful info in the Ref's Handbook as the combat rules there are mostly from Striker as opposed to the Player's Handbook.

 

[Carlobrand]

There should be some useful info in the Ref's Handbook as the combat rules there are mostly from Striker as opposed to the Player's Handbook.

Ref's Manual presents a bit of milieu background, more details on the task system, star system generation, animal encounters and a social task bit, trade, a universal vehicle/small-craft/ship design system, a space combat system, and demolitions. It draws on Striker for design, but there's nothing there on indirect fire.

 

[Ishmael]

Not the ref's manual,
The Referee's Companion
( okay, so I had forgotten the actual name and called it a Handbook )
I've been using almost a quarter century

The section on large-scale combat covers much more from Striker than the ref's or player's manuals including morale, initiative and indirect fire.

I once even used those rules for a simple American Civil War miniature game.....

 

[jec10]

The Ref's Companion rules don't add that much to those in the basic rulebook. Certainly nothing about the effect of indirect fire control. Or crew quality.

Just an adaptation of the beaten zone rules from CT/Striker.

 

[Carlobrand]

Not the ref's manual,
The Referee's Companion
( okay, so I had forgotten the actual name and called it a Handbook )
I've been using almost a quarter century

The section on large-scale combat covers much more from Striker than the ref's or player's manuals including morale, initiative and indirect fire.

I once even used those rules for a simple American Civil War miniature game.....

Okay, I see it. Beaten zones as the square root of the number of rounds, targets in converged zones getting two rolls per target, targets in dispersed zones getting one at a higher difficulty level ... umm, that's from a base level of Difficult? Becomes Formidable?? Base roll of 11 becomes 15???

So, what is the base roll for danger space?

 

[jec10]

In CT/Striker, indirect fire contact hits were 11+ and frag hits were 10+. And a Dispersed sheaf only meant a -1 modifier.

So in CT/Striker hits were hard to get with indirect fire - which is why you nearly always used CBM rounds, or laser guidance to guarantee a hit.

For Group Hits in a Beaten Zone/Danger Space, the MegaTraveller Referee's Gaming Kit says "Use the same 'to hit' task as used for the primary target". So I assume that means the same difficulty.