Building rules rev 2.

[Froggy the Great]

The rules are designed around the idea of a straight-down collapse.  The idea is that those closest to the building will be hit harder than those farther away from the building.  No differentiation between hard and soft targets is made here.

 

I can't help but wonder if you're looking at the idea of a 10"AoE and ignoring the fact that at 10" out, the potential damage you're taking is only one point.

 

I don't think it's all that overpowering, really, especially when you consider that most buildings, at least the ones I'm going to be using, are only 4-5 levels high.

[Leech]

Darn, guess I missed that completely.

 

Okay, taking that into account, a 10 storey building will almost certainly hit you with rubble 10 inches out, but it is almost impossible for it to damage you.

 

I can live with that.

[Mad Pat]

Sorry but causing trouble is my job in life.

 

have you taken into account a dense urban area, where one building collapsing could possibly bring down all of them.

 

I also don't know how I feel about a unit being destroyed if it decides to ram a building...or did I miss a change in that.

 

Patrick "Mad Pat" Haughton

AO 00092

[Froggy the Great]

Sorry but causing trouble is my job in life.

 

have you taken into account a dense urban area, where one building collapsing could possibly bring down all of them.

 

I also don't know how I feel about a unit being destroyed if it decides to ram a building...or did I miss a change in that.

 

Patrick "Mad Pat" Haughton

AO 00092

Dense urban area:  Yes I had.  This is why I'm still considering this.

 

Units ramming:  It's just simpler if a ram sacrifices the unit.  It could be made more specific to unit types, but it would make it Too Complex, in my estimation.

[sparky]

Sorry Frosh - I can't do any playtesting till next year, I'm leaving the state to go to work for a few weeks.

 

You all have fun and have a wonderful and happy holidays. :D

[Froggy the Great]

Thanks a heap.  I'll have my players destroy buildings next to opposing units, and see what happens.  You have a good one.

[Akela]

There was an RMS special report I read once that described the extent of the damage caused by the WTC collapse.

 

Each building was a little over 400 meters tall. They divided the new york financial district into "Zones of damage" and I remember that zone 2 was the "major debris" zone where heavy damage was sustained and over 2 inches of dust. I do remember zone 2 extended out to 1/4 mile (400 meters). Everything outside zone 2 was just dust damage and sometimes tiny debris.

 

I think Frosch's system of the decreasing damage circle replicates zones of damage quite well.

[Froggy the Great]

Thanks, Matt.

 

Y'all playtest this over the weekend for me, okay?   :D

[quester]

Units ramming:  It's just simpler if a ram sacrifices the unit.  It could be made more specific to unit types, but it would make it Too Complex, in my estimation.

you might want to change that to vehicales ramming or people might be trying it with a stand of Inf

 

and are you going to post a cleened up rewrite ??

[Froggy the Great]

Heh.  Good catch, Quester.

 

And yes, eventually I will.  Every time I have them out to play though, the selfish players keep on insisting on shooting each other, not the buildings.   ???

[Mad Pat]

quickest way to solve the shooting each other as opposed to shooting the buildings is make it part of the scenario that the prize is in the building and they have to destroy them to get to the prize.

 

a search for Jimmy Hoffa or something.

 

Patrick "Mad Pat" Haughton

AO 00092

[Froggy the Great]

Or you could do what i did today, declare a "Natural Disaster" and declare that a random building spontaniously collapses.

[smokingwreckage]

Call it a terror campaign where the winner is whoever destroyed the most buildings on the enemy's side of the table...

[Spire]

Well, I only have real-life experience with the physics of destroying building materials, don't ask me to prove the math  :D

 

In my experience, APFSDS (Armor Piercing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot) ammo is about useless against structures.  It would be like trying to cut fabric with a pin.  In the service, we used 2pcs of 4ft x 8ft x 3/4 inch plywood as targets, after about 30 rounds or so out of the 120mm main, we'd be able to throw another 4ft x 8ft patch across the middle and get another 30 rounds out of it.  The only reason we did that was because the laser range finder would keep bouncing off the target and from whatever was behind the target through the holes and would screw up the ballistic computer's targeting solution.  

 

Now, don't get me wrong, I could probably drop a building using SABOT rnds, it's just not time or cost efficient.  HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) or HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) are far better at it.  With a round or two of either, I could probably just about destroy the average split level home, while using SABOT I'd need ten rounds or so and I'd have to PRECISELY put each round to drop the building.  If my choice was either use SABOT rounds or driving thru a structure, I'd drive thru it.  

 

The big advantage that the explosive rounds have is the blast/concussion effect that they make.  It effects a much larger area and is like suddenly inflating a paper bag with more air than it can hold.  This 'overpressure' effect is why they do more damage.  Energy weapons work by exciting photons (lasers) or electrons/protons/neutrons (particle weps) that then collide with other atoms at the target point, causing them to super heat rapidly and the material will explosively vaporize.  Flamers I don't think need any explanation.

 

The WTC attacks show exactly how much damage has to be done to drop a modern skyscraper.  The first attempt back in 1993 consisted of about 2000 lbs of explosive material (fuel-fertilizer EX and compressed hydrogen gas).  It left about a 150 ft wide crater and around 50 ft deep.  The 737's flown in on 9/11 had a max weight of 115,500 lb, with about 4000 gals (24-32,000lbs I think, can't remember what JP4 weighs per lb) of JP4 fuel, that was travelling fairly fast (max speed is 575 mph).  The WTC's unique construction also was also a factor in the collapse.  The Empire State building survived a crash of a B-25 Mitchell Bomber  (Wt 27,051 pounds, max speed 300mph+) in 1945, but it's construction is much different.  By comparision a 120mm HEAT round has a 12.33 lb warhead, a TOW II has a 13lb warhead, a Hellfire missile 7 lbs more than that, and a 155mm HE round comes with a 94lbs warhead.

 

In CAV when it comes to anything over a 3-4 story building, nothing we have on the table is going to drop it in the time frame of the game.  Unless we go ADM (Atomic Demolition Mine).   I think a CAV running into anything larger than that is just going to hurt itself, and the weapons aren't chucking enough EX to do the job.  Off board arty and airstrikes would be about it.  Actual engineer type units should be able to do it as well.  Hummmm, CEs (Combat Engineers) in PBA (Powered Battle Armor), that's got a nice sound to it.

 

 

-MCM

 

"Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."

-General William Westmoreland, during the war in VietNam

[Mad Pat]

Umm I like the Idea of P.A.C.E (Power Armored Combat Engineers)

 

I also think you bring up a good point.  You drive a car in to a wood shack..what happens, you drive through the shack trashing the shack.  You drive a car in to a bunker...You wreck the car.

 

I think the easiest way to solve the CAV ramming a building idea is this.

 

apply the amount of damage tracks each item has as auto damage to the other object.

 

Dictator with 5 damage tracks hits a three damage track building.  it applies 5 damage tracks to the building, come out the other side while the building collapses because its taken more damage then available damage tracks.  The Dictator, takes three tracks worth of damage, for his stupidity which really doesn't kill it but sure as #### doesn't make him combat ready for the Ogre stalking around the other side of the street.

 

Patrick "Mad Pat" Haughton

AO 0092