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[Last Hussar]

anyway, let's not get distracted -

You are obviously new here!  If you want a serious discussion round here you need to use reverse psychology: start a thread about who would win a race between Ivor the engine and Thomas the tank engine and wait for it to derail (ha!) Into a discussion about facing colours of the Jacobite rebellions.

[toxicpixie]

My toddler is currently shouting about Thomas

I now have images of the 1st Sodor Special Engine Detachment with Thomas and Percy decked up as armoured trains...

[Ithoriel]

A whole new meaning for "tank engine?"

[Luddite]

I'm pretty sure that they won't be in the lists.

[toxicpixie]

Actually an "official" set of stats/rules for armoured trains would be a good addition now I think about it...

What's the CV of the Fat Contoller?

[FierceKitty]

Thomas was always "too impatient", as I remember it.

[petercooman]

Actually an "official" set of stats/rules for armoured trains would be a good addition now I think about it...

What's the CV of the Fat Contoller?

I'm guessing 4, as those trains never listen.

Thomas was always "too impatient", as I remember it.

I try not to remember 

[old smokie]

the Battlegroups Online should be free to use if you have bought the rules, I don't see why you should have to pay a subscription every year to use it

[Last Hussar]

Make sure every copy has a hole drilled top left corner, so they are easy to hang in the privy. 

Not a fan...

Seriously, I've tried to stay out of the conversation, apart from my one (serious) post, because I am unlikely to buy them, and even will not really want to play them because of the 'Troll unit' issue, as the "remove all hits at end of turn" has been termed.  Given that please don't yell at me for making a second post (I am excluding my Pendraken forum style Trains joke!)

I have two issues with the rules, and I see them as connected.  The Troll unit one, and the any scale claim made above.

I know this is just playing with toy soldiers, and civilian games will never be a simulation, but if your rules don't at least ground in reality, you might as well paint up your favourite vehicles and play chess on a landscaped board.

Sections act differently to platoons, which act differently to companies, which act differently to battalions, which act differently to brigades.  To say the same rules cover them all is wrong.

I feel the basis to a set of rules has to be ground scale.  You don't have to define it precisely, but there has to be some sort of relationship between move distance and weapon range and unit footprint. 

Say you have a few (Pendraken, obviously) infantry on a 30mm square base.  That could feasibly be a platoon at 1mm =Yard.  At that scale it cant be a battalion.  Scaling up to battalion means the weapon ranges need shortening or they become ridiculous - I don't buy that its just the centre of operations and people are actually in front of it - you'd have to define a zone around the unit to check for co-locating with other units because attacks would actually hit 2 or more units, and artillery LOVES a clustered target.

As you increase the game scale you increase the time scale.  You also lose all the individuality - brigades are a mixture of weapons, an amorphous blob almost, and you are in SPI/Avalon hill terriory.  You don't even SEE the pill box, let alone deal with it - As brigadier that is all happening at company/platoon level.

Which leads onto Trolls. 

Yes - suppress is the short term "Bugger! keep your heads down", and units do keep fighting after taking casualties, but a Tank company reduced to 7 tanks is going to have reduced fire-power compared to a fresh one at 16.  (There is also the 'Firefly Problem' specific to the British Sherman troops.  If an individual 76mm Sherman has, for example, Fire-power 5 in a set of rule- I can't check BKC, as my son has his copy in Cardiff- and Fireflies have, say, 8, the relation ship between a standard and a Firefly troop is not the same, because the Firefly is only 1 out of 4.  If your troop is fighting 2 panthers, and only the Firefly can hurt them, you are outnumbered 2:1!)

Individual sections may disappear, but companies don't with that level of frequency - larger units can be thought of as having more 'Hit Points' and although their opponent will do incrementally more damage, it is over a time period where the company can pull back or react in another way.  Hit the flank of a section and you will possibly get them all.  Hit the flank of a company and you hit one platoon, allowing the other 2 to turn and face, which will be helped by the fact they will initially be out of combat.

I realise as I'm not a potential customer, and lots of people like BKC, my comments may be irrelevant "Don't care, Hussar's game isn't what I want to play".  However if there is a good set of Stand=Company rules, those I would buy (and NO, NOT "But just call the stands companies")

[petercooman]

.....

I have two issues with the rules, and I see them as connected.  The Troll unit one, and the any scale claim made above.
.......

I agree with your post about the scale, And i must add we always play at 1 stand=1 section. I have never tried to use them as companies, and don't feel the need to.

But about the troll units, i think that for infantry it works fine, and it acts as schock, but for vehicles it acts more as a 'warning'. I see a hit on a vehicle as a near miss or a non penetrating hit (a big CLING heard on the inside). I see it as level of danger awareness, crew status and the like. Crew get dazed by non penetrating hits, receive minor injuries and are kept of their duty to make small in the field repairs, plug an oil/fuel leak. Alse near miss shells kick up dust, throw debris in front of viewports, and all that stuff.

All that slows a crew down, slows the vehicle, and enlarges the time to response to threats. So when they reach their total hitpoints and are KO'd,  i see it as the crew bailing because there is damage they can't repair, they ar stuck or they are taken out.

This is not an ideal way to look at it, but for me it makes sense. Theres a lot of stories around about vehicles taking hit after hit and surviving, or who just need a new crew and can go on working.

[Last Hussar]

Its the vehicles that really annoy me.  A hit on a tank is either kill or non kill.  With BKC the 'x' numbered hit kills it.  If you are playing 1:4 what happens to the platoon that is under constant fire, but the enemy can't quite get that last hit over the course of 4 or 5 turns.  I find it hard to believe all 4 tanks are fine.

[fred.]

The default scale for BKC is one stand = 1 platoon.
There is an option to play at 1 stand = 1 section, where vehicles are 1:1.

I don't think it has ever been officially suggested that the rules work for 1 stand = a company, or even higher.
Therefore saying the rules don't work for 1 stand is a company is rather irrelevant.

I think Peter has explained the rationale of the multiple hits fairly well. I think it is also to represent that units can shrug off multiple low level of attacks, but a sustain attack will break them. It may simply be a terminology thing, by calling them hits it immediately makes them look like wounds or something similar directly related to physical damage. But most modern combat is a lot more about perception of damage taken then actual damage taken.

[Ithoriel]

A hit on a tank is either kill or non kill.

So not true I'm not sure where to start!

Even a non-penetrating hit may stun, wound or shock the crew temporarily taking the vehicle out of action. Machine-gun and rifle fire may rattle the crew to the point they bug-out before something heavier can hit them. A vehicle may suffer anything from an engine stall to complete obliteration.

I do feel that gradual removal of hits is a better fit for my view of how combat in the period worked than instant recovery but I have no real problem with the mechanism as written, if people prefer that.

As to the Firefly problem, pretty much all of our games require a certain amount of fudging to make them playable. Most of the games I've played have been Eastern Front but the couple of post D-Day games I've played in we just gave troops with a Firefly one extra dice when firing AT and boosted the points value a little. Realistic? Possibly not but it seemed to work for the games we played. The exceptions to the rules will always need a little ingenuity to model.

For me BKC gives believable results, even though it's sometimes for what seems the wrong reasons, which is why it's my favourite WW2 non-skirmish system. I'd sooner the right result for the wrong reason than vice-versa

[petercooman]

  A hit on a tank is either kill or non kill. 

These guys don't agree:







I can understand your point of view, but there's so much that could happen, it's unpossible to represent every effect in a game, so hitpoints are the best option.

Don't forget that a lot of tanks were left behind instead of destroyed too, So you could see constant hits as a sign of being in combat and spending ammunition and fuel, and running out of it too.

[sane max]

I remember Last Hussar's attitude to the rules from another forum, LH, if you don't like the fundamental concepts of the rules, and calling them bog-paper is a fairly definitive 'don't like the rules' position, then you can hardly contribute anything constructive to a thread discussing how to amend them. You bang on about scale, but then start from the (incorrect) assumption that a model tank = 1 tank.

It's not a troll rule. There is in fact only 1 'Troll Rule' I know about and that is 'Obvious Troll is Obvious'

Thanks for your contribution.