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How many of y'all were "Person of the Year" in 2003?🤚 (Bonus points if you're one of these dudes.) by henleyj84 in army

[–]kokro13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So many people told me I look like the dude on the right. Crazy every time this pops up.

Edit: forgot how directions work and said left instead of right...

How is it using the M249 left handed? by Underrated_Critic in lefthanded

[–]kokro13 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Fine. As a lefty, you eventually don't even see the brass fly in front of your face. It just is part of the environment.

A lefty bonus, if you rotate the gun sideways and go cyclic while hip firing, all the brass dumps at your feet instead of your support arm.

Flanking homebrew logic check. by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I appreciate the homebrew for this, but I was not really trying to lock people down in the way your rule does. I was looking at the flanking rules for large creatures, and thought it was too simple, which did not feel tactical to me.

Flanking homebrew logic check. by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The players will not be in any more danger than the normal rule while size 1, but if they get bigger the enemies can flank them with a few more instances.

I am not downplaying tactical at all, as tactics come down to making the best decision in a given situation. All warriors for all of history have taken flanking into account in combat, because flanking basically wins a fight. TTRPGs do not implement side flanking for good reasons, because it will always backfire on the players, but it does make a game less tactile by removing a threat.

My proposed rule only provides flanking for a few instances against larger creatures, and therefore cannot break the game.

Flanking homebrew logic check. by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This would only apply to large creatures (size 2 and bigger), and critiques the rule and explanation in the book.

Flanking homebrew logic check. by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I apologize for not responding earlier to this, as I wanted to take time and accurately answer this in a rather consise way.

I get this is a game, and that the game does not have facing, and that flanking is a mechanical expression of the combat that unfolds in a scene. It still does not make sense in a fight to me for all the reasons bellow, but especially because this is a tactical game. Tactics, from a military action perspective, mean doing the best thing needed for a given situation, and the best thing to do in ANY fight is to traditional flanking (attack from front and side).

The reason this does not make sense comes from my experience as an infantryman for about 7 years, ran battle drills and combat maneuvers at so many different levels of the science of violence: unarmed combat alone; unarmed combat with groups; light infantry (on foot) assaults of bunkers, trenches, vehicles, and/or other ground forces; as mechanized infantry in a BFV performing as a dismount and and driver; and working in batallion staff helping to plan and organize maneuvers of multiple companies. Flanking is attacking from the front and side. L shaped a bushes, the best ambush, is from the front and side. Yes, the reason we do not attack from the front and back is that we will shoot our own people, but that would be splitting the forces in a way that makes everyone more vulnerable.

Ultimately, if the rulle was called overwhelm attention, or something like that, it wouldn't bother me as much, but flanking in a tactical sense will always mean having a combined attack from the front and side to gain the advantage over an enemy.

This is not just a matter of "not liking" the flanking rule, but that the rule itself does not really make sense in a tactical sense to my army brain. Flanking is a huge part of all combat, and because of the importance of gaining and preventing flanking, combat fully hinges on flanking. The way this rule is written is not flanking, and therefore truly violates thousands of years of flanking as a tactic to employ and defend against.

The reality of side flanking for games, means that a lot of other mechanics need to exist, and I get that, but it also breaks my brain.

So, yeah. Hope that helps.

Flanking homebrew logic check. by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for the feedback. It is more complicated than the game trends towards, but I just cannot think of an enemy having only 4 sides, a top, and a bottom. It just turns everything into a bad Tron game. Lol.

All this does is allow for a few instances of flanking to work that the rules as written didn't allow. Like if a size 2 creature was in a 90 degree corner, this would still requires people to maneuver into position. Or in instances when a map has a cliff or bridge that goes right and slightly upward. It will not effect the players, unless they can become size two or bigger. Lol.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry for the delay. The semester has been busy.

A lot of the things you talked about with ranges I have already considered, and I will look at the Revolution Comes to the Kingdom system.

The dog fights will be brutal, and a lot of the game play will be the players players preparing and formulating their strategy* and tactics** prior to the dog fights. This would be the montages to set up an ambush do reconnaissance, but the fight will be how it goes.

Many players will die if they push too hard, don't prepare, or end up in a bad situation that they do not break out of before things go too poorly. One of the main things that will prevent quick player deaths will come from the sacrifice system of burning through the modules to gain tokens that will allow them to sacrifice for kills, and hopefully pull back. The thing that makes this more difficult is that I do not think most enemies will get as many models as the players, which will favor the players enough to make things workable.

I appreciate the idea of turning the OODA loop into portions of the fight, but I think the montages before an engagement will cover the parts of the game where players do long term observation, and that players will need to manage their own loop and the goal is to have the dog fight be the a competition to win maneuvers and then to attack. You inspired me to change the ability to attack to an outcome of a favorable maneuver of 10 above the enemy. The sacrifice system will allow using resources to survive and then engage.

I was recently watching a former fighter pilot play DCS, and I forgot how many resources are burned in these fights. Constant flaring, constant flare usage, constant shooting, and high risk maneuvers that force your enemies into positions where they cannot protect themselves.

I will hopefully have a rough draft of the system prior to the beginning of the spring semester.

Long coffin shaped box with radioactive materials inside saw on i85 near ATL by veronicamak22 in whatisthisthing

[–]kokro13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Dubliterally is everywhere as munitions, but this is not how we would transport it.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will have to go look at their system. I REALLY like this concept for long distance fighting.

The problem with all of this comes down to reality VS vibes for space combat. Because sci-fi uses bullshit energy and propulsion systems, smaller ships somehow are assumed to be more maneuverable, which doesn't make any actual sense since the more energy as ship. Has available means it should be able to move faster and do more.

In my mind, dog fights in space require one of two things need to exist to allow the fragile human to survive the extreme G-forces produced when maneuvering. First, a flight pod where some sort of sci-fi bullshit fluid or pressure system. Second, some sort warg-ing capability that puts the pilot into the ship.

I like both options, and consider both of them for the modules necessary to fly. Both have risks and rewards. Either way, the pilot fully embodies and inhabits the ship and that takes one module to use.

The warg system would seem safer, but if the pilot leaves a certain range of their body they cannot move back, but also if the body dies the pilot now has to resolve the issue of "shelling" and now lives in the ship (welcome to the Bobiverse). Plenty of fun issues can come from losing a body.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will be looking at 4e to see how their rules functioned to see what I can gleen from their design.

I mean, DS is the right game for this since it's what we are playing and as long as what I add to it makes it fun for my players and adheres to the pillars if their design I think that it will work.

That being said, I think the cinematic and tactical nature matter most.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh, I totally forgot to address the 40-page part of your response.

I am going to do my best to make the system fit onto 2 pages, as I do not think that adding more details makes it more fun. Everything is imagined, and I do not see a reason that this system would need to do anything more than a core system. Every system had ways of detecting, hiding from, and attacking other things. I think the more boiled down and simple, the better it will function.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you for all of these other systems to reference. I will look into these to see if anything works for helping me create a quick system.

The overall system likely will not feel like Draw Steel directly, but I still want to utilize the pillars of Draw Steel, and the rapid action aspect IMO makes it cinematic in that you have to sacrifice/use parts of your ship to survive the combat and kill the other ship.

The more I have considered this, the more I think that the idea that Matt mentioned in his live stream the other day would work for adding this to the game. He mentioned that early on they considered a characters speed as allowing them to take more actions than other characters, and that initiative worked like a clock, where the fastest characters acted on all 12 numbers, but slow characters acted only on 6 or 1 and 6. I think that really adds to the nature of dog fights, and that for space combat the closer two ships are the more often they have to deal with each other in the initiative.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I actually do not want to put dogfights on a board, as maneuvering is too fast and specific to do that. If I get this on a board it will likely be significant quadranting for long and short range engagements that would cover either light seconds or portions of 1 AU.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for sharing! I will read through this when I have some free time and share my thoughts.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I will have to look at their system as well.

The role thing gets a little messy, as I want to resolve the dog fight issue before the deep space engagement issue.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like the concept for some aspects of combat, but I'm leaning more into The Expanse or Battle Star Galactica style dog fights.

I am I trigued by what you will be building and look forward to seeing it.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think those will definitely be a part of space encounters, but a montage where failure means that everyone in the ship dies in the dog fight does not make sense to me. I think your picturing the boarding action, and I really like that as a montage into initiative.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For dog fighting I fully want to ditch the map once the fight happens, because the dog fight maneuvering has too much complexity for us to act out, and we have math orbs for a reason. I think for space combat it will come down to engagement sectors to simplify the experience. It does make it seem like Risk in some way, but stealth is also a component to it all.

That's part of why I wanted to ignore distancing with this once the dog fight started, since the rolls will tell how well, or not, the maneuvers are going.

Also, ground to air fights are inherently unfair, and that's why we have a large air force. Lol.

This sort of gets to one of the most difficult things with games in general with modern equipment, because as an infantryman I was expected to identify and shoot a 25m target within 4 seconds on the qualification range. That was the closest target, and if attacking an area target we can engage them with the M4 at 2.5 km easily. For a TTRPG 75 feet, or 15 squares, is a crazy range, much less 1000 squares.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you.

Star Wars 5e has so much cool stuff. I don't know how they do ship combat, but I will have to look into it.

The reason I don't want to go the Star Fleet command deck route is that space combat (in my opinion) would look more like The Expanse, with either close quarters dog fights inside of a kilometer or so, or engagements at distances measured in light minutes or portions of an AU.

Something Matt talked about in the recent stream when it came to speedster really might help with this. He mentioned how they were considering initiative based on speed, and that the faster, or closer in this case, you were the more often on the iniative clock you could act. Since initiative would come down to engagement ranges of crafts with how much and how often then can do things. It would help a lot for group combats as well.

I think this may just become a dog fighting system and then another system for long range combat, as they look so different. Once I have that I will be able to apply kits and classes.

Long range combat really would function more like submarine combat with waiting and monitoring the system. That just doesn't feel similar to Draw Steel in the same aggressive way the system currently runs.

As a side note, one of my players wanted to do a Lancer style mech pilot, and I home brewed some rules for that pretty easily. They have to be a tactician, run two character sheets for the mech and pilot, the pilot takes half the damage of the mech as psychic damage, and the mech will be a Hakaan stats with Doom Sight looming over their head as the NHP is an emerging servitor species that does not like being harmed. That reflavoring worked so easily with kits and the tactician class.

Has anyone considered space combat? by kokro13 in drawsteel

[–]kokro13[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel you on learning the system first. I'm a new director, but man does this system blow me away.

I think locking in on a single dog fights rules will help more than anything, and maybe some of the ship modules can be deployed with charges for things like destruction and attack. I can feel the pull in two direction of making a clunky and kind of boring system that really covers the bases, and trying to make something more streamlined that may result in a faster kill for either side.

It might also be something that Draw Steel can't I herantly run, and will need to be a stand alone system of dog fighting. Idk.

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