Artillery.

[lurker]

Well, I was more involved with CAS than Arty ... except for mortars, been on both ends of the tub there ...

With that I'd say you have it covered fairly well. However, I may more emphasize the importance of a FO in the process. Maybe, having a skilled FO, with solid coms, equates to LOS. It would be critical for him to truly be skilled - not just an infantry nug calling in a grid , but a well trained FO that understands the process without needing to think through the process.

Also, again from real life, you do not here mortars or arty rounds before the first one impacts. - mortars are EVIL !!!! - Even bigger arty rounds impact before you here the shell. You do here them traversing over head, but they are past you when you hear them.

However, this is SW and a hero game, so do give them a chance to hear them and drop and pray (the only thing you can do unless cover is very close by) . But, they can be picked up with sensors. I know we had sensors that picked up rockets before impact (10 - 15 seconds, but that is a lot of time to try and save your life). So, that should be a lot easier than just hoping to hear them incoming.

Oh yeah, one exception to hearing them, rockets. They are easy to hear with their roar/woish ... fast moving so less time from shot out to impact, but you can hear them almost every time

One thing to consider, with indirect fire, no pilot will EVER fly in an area with arty being fired anywhere near their flight altitude. "Little sky big bullet' ... With that, you may want to look at how to handle those scenarios. The flip side of it is, if the FO (well 2 FOs working well together) has his act together, he can have the CAS racked and stacked and clear them with in seconds of the last round impacting.

Again, real life, that is devastating when your team can do that. Walk the arty up one area, then as the op for recovers and moves away have CAS/HELO/AC-130 right on top of them.


Oh yeah, walking the arty - moving it along with or to intercept moving target, or moving it to cover a bigger area of effect. Again, it will be critical that the FO is on top of his game. If so it can be devastating. However, if it is a fast (car or faster) moving target, they will be able to move faster than the arty can transition. That is why the reaction to arty (or any ambush for that matter) in a vehicle is to DRIVE FAST out of the x.

The only way arty can counter that is to have preplanned impact points where the vehicle will more than likely go through. However, even a very experienced FO will have trouble getting rounds on the x if the vehicle is moving fast or varying his travel (fast is still better than doing a zig zag). The best is to have the FO keep eyes on and use arty to start the ambush. He will be better prepared to time the shot, the travel of the target, and the time from shot out to splash.

I do like your various rounds you can use. I'm not sure about the jamming, but hay it is SW with more advanced technology, so why not ...
_________________
"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

[CRMcNeill]

I actually pulled that one from Armored Cav, by Tom Clancy. In the artillery chapter, he discussed current and proposed artillery shell types, which included the electronic warfare one, called Jabberwocky. No idea if it ever actually made it into service.

I can see quite a few uses for it, actually. You're talking about firefinder radars and the like for spotting mortar and artillery rounds before they land, but what if you can get an EW round in close to jam those sensors prior to the main barrage? For that matter, how about jamming the fire control of counter-artillery weapons like the C-RAM or its sci-fi equivalent? Put the round in a stealth casing to help it defeat sensors while in flight and it makes for a great surprise weapon.

The other idea (which I'll go ahead and add to the list) is a spotter drone; a repulsor-droid launched from an artillery shell that hovers over the target area providing real-time forward observation, either in support of or independent of ground forces.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

This also gets into the use of counter-artillery air defense to shoot down incoming rounds. This already exists in the C-RAM and Iron Dome systems, while sci-fi has David Drake's power gun calliopes and tri-barrels from the Hammer's Slammers universe.

This then brings up the possibility of smart artillery rounds that side-slip to evade defensive fire, or that throw off decoys to complicate the shot. The EW rounds could even be something fired as part of a barrage to activate in mid-flight to jam defensive fire control systems...
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

On the 'hearing it', imo it should be at least mid difficult poss even into the very diff territory on a straight perception test. BUT if heard, they get double the 'distance' moved out of the blast radius on a successful dodge.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[lurker]

I don't know about shooting down mortar & arty rounds (rockets yes - iron dome as an example) but it is the future and SW sooooo it can be explained.

Even if you don't allow shooting down indirect rounds, you can use the sensors to give a chance to get good cover and survive anything but a direct hit. Plus you can fire counter battery off the sensor input. It won't be as accurate as FO directed, but better than nothing. Plus it can get lucky and hit while the battery has rounds exposed (being carried from the bunker to the tubes and at risk of detonating as secondary explosives) Even a mobile 'shoot and move' battery may get hit.

As for the jammer, like I said, I don't know if it exists now, but it would have a use. As I mentioned FO with good coms to direct the fire is critical (well coms is critical for all aspects of the modern/future battle field) so a few well placed jammers could collapse a coms network and let you play havoc at will before the op for can recover and place the reserve troops where needed.

For rounds 'dodging' in flight. Again, not sure if it is possible for mortar & arty, but is very feasible for rockets. However, again future / SW technology, so even have the arty rounds dodging can be explained that way.
_________________
"And so I am become a knight of the Kingdom of Dreams and Shadows!" - Mark Twain

Forgive all spelling errors.

[garhkal]

I am just wondering. Which Jedi PC would be first to ask if he can 'go all magneto (first class era) on all the incoming arty rounds with TK...
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

I think you mean the HARM, not the AMRAAM.

And I don't see why the sensors would have to be active. Simple acoustics, or even a passive DER picking up the energy of the projectile's friction in atmosphere; just wave the sci-fi magic wand.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

I keep getting those 2 missiles mixed up..
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Dredwulf60]

This has been an interesting thread to read.

I think if I were to incorporate physical artillery into my game, (other than my home-brew mas combat system) I'd have the artillery crew make a hit roll against a difficulty based on the type of artillery system and the range.

Depending on how much the roll beat this difficulty would be the damage level that everyone in the area of effect would have to soak against.

There would be no dodging involved, (The shells are hitting the area and exploding regardless of anything that you do, aside from being fast enough to get out of the area)

Though you might have bonus dice to your soak roll based on any cover that might be available.

ie A battery of cannons need a DC of 20 to affect an area 3km away.
The damage is 4D6 for every target in the 250m area, (with a +1D6 if the artillery operator rolled higher than a DC of 30, +2D6 if the artillery operator rolled higher than a DC of 40)

Everyone in that area rolls to soak against that damage;
Open area: +0 to soak roll
Rough terrain: +1D6 to soak
Rubble and other debris: +2D6 to soak
Bunker and prepared positions: +4D6 to soak


Anyways...all off the top of my head. Not intended to derail what has already been developed. It just got me thinking.
Fire away!!

[JironGhrad]

[CRMcNeill]

I wouldn't agree that artillery is designed to do pinpoint damage. Modern technology can allow guided projectiles to be used very precisely, but even then, you are still talking about putting a minimum of several hundred pounds of explosive on a specific point. Ballistic (i.e. unguided) artillery's modus operandi is to blow the crap out of the general area a target happens to be in, with the hope that whatever you are actually shooting at will take enough damage to be crippled or destroyed.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[JironGhrad]

Well, by pinpoint I mean that you're not doing a tremendous amount of collateral damage. The 250m spread mentioned by Dredwulf would not meet US military standards (unless the mission was supporting a wide scale destruction for some reason). The M777 howitzer in use by the US Military is capable of 10m accuracy at ranges of 15 miles+.

Obviously, that is using GPS-based fire control, but there's no reason to assume that Star Wars tech is less capable.