Archived from groups: rec.games.miniatures.historical (
More info?)
In article <Xns95C6A392C820ABaldHeadedJohn@195.149.20.147>, John D Salt
<jdsalt_AT_gotadsl.co.uk@?.?.invalid> writes
>J M Kemp <news@castlegreen.org> wrote in
>news:EbX5Sxncl1xBFwHv@jmkemp.demon.co.uk:
>
>Excellent news. A good set of night combat rules is IMHO long
>overdue. Once one gets into the close-range murk & shadows
>stuff, I think fieldcraft (which remains much the same over
>centuries) trumps technology every time, so I don't think adding
>night-sights ought to cause very much alteration to the overall
>game.
My experience of night sights wasn't really that impressive. My night
vision was about as good on cloudless nights and much better when it was
raining or foggy. Also when you are focussing on the night sight you
tend to lose some of the other non-visual cues and peripheral vision. It
also buggers up your night vision when you stop using it. Not to mention
the low whining noise that it made. Admittedly I was using them in 1990
or thereabouts, so possibly the current generation are a whole lot
better and worth using, or perhaps not.
>[Snips]
>> Both sides do things simultaneously.
>
>Have you thought of using orders chits or some similar mechanism?
>ISTM that there aren't all that many different actions a soldier
>can take. If you've seen Buck Surdu's BAPS system (I've seen the
>first two editions, but not yet the third) it might be worth
>stealing the idea (for games where there are more figures than
>players) of having a limited number of orders chits a player can
>issue, and figures without a chit behave in a partly-randomised
>way. Give leaders the right to issue some specified number of
>chits and this might be a cleaner method of showing NCO/Officer
>leadership than all the + and - modifiers, and the random element
>of unordered figures may help produce some of the confusion of
>night work.
I was thinking about people marking things on a card, the essentially
hex based nature of the game should make it easier to write what your
intentions are. However this probably wouldn't work if you were playing
with more than one or two figures per player. In those cases chits or
similar would be necessary for speed.
Overall I like the ideas you've mentioned. A deterministic system for
moving the non-player figures would be good. I like something along the
lines of all the figures in direct line of sight of the player figure
(i.e. an officer or NCO) do what the player wants except when in a
contact. In contact how they behave depends on a die roll and the type
of patrol they are on. E.g. a fighting patrol is likely to get down and
fire back, possibly even directly assaulting the enemy. A recce patrol
is likely to leg it to the nearest cover and then crawl away from the
enemy to an RV.
This needs more thought and is an essential part to the wider game when
I'm done with the convention game.
> Somebody *always* loses contact with the back half
>of their patrol.
Tell me about it! I've been left behind on exercise a couple of times
when we went to ground in long grass. Nothing like the feeling of being
all alone at night knowing that other people armed to the teeth are
looking for you and will give you a good kicking if they catch you
(except possibly the same situation in a live combat environment where
it isn't a kicking you need to worry about).
>OK, if that's the case, then I think some of the numbers are the
>wrong way round. When I did the "eyes & ears" course at CTC
>Lympstone, it was made very clear that at night you get down low
>in order to see targets further away -- you are more likely to be
>able to pick them out against a light background. Standing up
>not only makes you visible from further away, it also reduces
>your own spotting ability.
Now I think about it you're right. I've reversed the numbers and also
made it so that standing people are spotted one square further and lying
one square less.
I've been stood on at night when a patrol walked over me. Similarly I've
been in situations where sentries have missed people that crawled up to
their positions.
>The positioning of the DF tasks is obviously not something the
>players will be able to change, but if might there not be a field
>telephone present in a forward trench, or an agreed flare signal
>from a listening post, capable of triggering a fixed dose of fire
>on a DF task?
Yes, there needs to be something agreed at the start of the game (as you
would when planning a patrol) for calling in fire using signals. I see
this as something that the players have to decide for themselves and it
might be fun if both sides chose the same flare signal for different DF
tasks. Both sets of artillery open up at once!
>In the latter half of the war, too, a patrol might have a box
>barrage fired to cover it in or out and isolate the portion of
>the trench system it was raiding -- although at the scale of this
>game, this is probably happening off-table, and accounts for the
>lack of reinforcements for the defender.
Yes. This could have a game effect in covering a fair amount of noise.
It could also wake up the defenders of a part of trench.
>>>What is the definition of "visibly outnumbered"?
>>
>> When there are more enemies in sight than friendlies.
>
>More enemies in sight than friendlies *in sight*, or more enemies
>in sight than friendlies you know to be present without
>necessarily being able to see them? I've been in a night
>triangular ambush (for exercise) ehere I could only see my no. 2
>and a rifleman on each side of me, but I knew I was part of a
>full-strength platoon all armed to the teeth.
If you are ready in advance of the enemy being present and sure that
no-one has been lost or moved then this is a reasonable assumption. On
the other hand when in contact and you don't know what has happened to
the people out of sight then you might be worried if you can see more
enemy than friendlies. I'd intended only to count those actually in
sight, not known to be there, because after a short period there would
be an element of doubt.
However I would agree that in some circumstances knowing that you have
friends close by even when you can't see them is a comfort. Although I
would have thought the GPMG would probably be more of a comfort than
being able to see the other half a dozen riflemen in your section!
I guess it is down to the umpire, or both players, to agree whether
certain figures would be counted in the circumstances where an ambush
has been set up (obviously once the ambush is sprung you would know that
your friends were there).
>Right -- the term was "dangerous area" when I was taught to fire
>a GPMG. I think I'd quite like to see the beaten zone reinstated
>-- again, few rules I've seen accurately reflect the way MG fire
>really works.
I've put it back in. I only changed it to make it clearer to
non-military types. Better just to explain what beaten zone and
dangerous area are.
>>>And what is the definition of a "fire-swept zone"?
>>
>> A bit loose, but anywhere that is being fired at and
>> represents a greater danger than where you are now. I don't
>> think it was specifically defined, so I ought to include it.
>
>I expect that, in the sort of rough-and-tumble I imagine
>happening in this game, most shooting would be snap shooting. I
>doubt there would be much in the way of continuous fire in the
>way on might see during daytime fire & movement where the fire
>group has to keep a certain weight of fire falling on the
>objective while the assault group moves.
I assumed that nearly all shooting was snap shooting. Continuous fire is
unlikely apart from crewed MGs. However the danger of being shot is the
key thing, not the weight of fire.
> Also, darkness in my
>experience gives a curious illusion of protection, and so makes
>people willing to move about exposed in ways they would not do in
>daylight.
True. I've watched people walk along trench parapets which were
essentially in the open when in daylight they carefully crawled out of
the trench and stayed low moving to another. I also observed people
doing this while the position was under attack at night (I was playing
the part of the enemy).
Although it can also do the opposite and make inexperienced troops very
jittery. I've been in situations (on exercise) where a platoon has fired
occasional shots and flares for several minutes in response to a single
blank shot from outside their perimeter.
>I suggest, therefore, that the "fire-swept zone" be
>defined as only referring to a beaten zone or dangerous area.
I've done that in the draft and added indirect fire as well.
>I must say I'm looking forward to seeing how these rules develop.
>They seem to focus on the important factors in night-fighting
>without bogging down in either irrelevant detail or over-
>ingenious games mechanisms.
I'm trying to get the flavour of the (exercise) patrols I did in my
youth. Sneaking about in the dark while armed to the teeth was the most
fun thing I think I've ever done.
>And I can easily see how they could
>be applied with only minor adjustments to "jitter-parties" in
>Burma, fending off the Chinese on Pork Chop Hill, bushwhacking
>the Indons in Sarawak or setting night ambushes in the jungles of
>the Mekong Delta...
I think so too. The basis of night actions hasn't really changed in many
years. Some of the weapons are different, but that's about it.
--
Jas
Hot Blood & Cold Steel - WW1 Skirmish in no mans land
http://www.cold-steel.org/ free rules download
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