Can Worldbeaters beat the military?

[Chuckg]

> You didn't catch the "or" in there?

I did -- but since I explicitly cited the rule that says that even simple Vehicles may hold their actions, your point that missiles cannot delay is alerady proven wrong.

So leaving out the 'or' did precisely jack and squat to misrepresent your argument... said argument was DOA to begin with.

[snip]
> Are you saying the missiles always hold their action? Is that
> part of their programming?

I am saying that any reasonable portrayal of a homing missile is "you move, then missile moves". It's supposed to be mindlessly following you, after all. To follow implies to wait and see where you're going first.

So yes, I would say that the missile always holds its action until after it's target has taken one... or it's next action is about to come up, whichever comes first.

[Chuckg]

> They have teamwork skill? The pilots and the missiles?

The pilots, yes -- the missiles, no.

*nods*

This, Agent X, is how you get a polite answer from me -- when you make a valid point without any unnecessary excess.

All right. Two missiles arriving at once will clock Firewing for an average of 60-some Stun, but /not/ CON Stun him.

OTOH, given that he's only got 80 STUN, he's not feeling very well... and the next hit he takes from anywhere is going to floor him.

And if the pilot chose to lead off with a /four/ missile salvo... or two each from two planes... well, sucks to be Firewing.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Chuckg
> Tactics familiarity. The average pilot wouldn't have the
> genuine skill.

Incorrect -- all US combat pilots (and we're talking about US-trained pilots here... nobody else flies F-18s! Even our foreign allies who get F-18s have to take our training courses...) and most other pilots of other world air forces, are officers. Any reasonable writeup for OCS or the military academy grants 3 points of Tactics.

It depends on your philosophy. Does *every* officer in your world have the full 3 pt tactics skill, or is that reserved for exceptional officers and leaders?

Originally posted by Chuckg

> And if guesses wrong and the first salvo hits the FW, he's
> SOL.

The missile in question has several possible terminal guidance packages -- most of which can tell the difference between the Force Wall and Firewing. Especially given that it's Transparent To Physical, and he's not.

But is the FW transparent to Radar? That is the key question. I don't think it is since it is perceivable by radar.

Originally posted by Chuckg

[snip]
> He puts it up on his own hexside.

Unless I am way off base, if the missile enters the same hex as he does before it detonates, Firewing will still take the damage. If he wants to use the Force Wall as a point defense system, he needs at least a couple meters of stand-off.

It doesn't *enter* the same hex. It detonates at the hexside before it gets in.

[Chuckg]

Originally posted by Agent X
Why in the world would Firewing be announcing his presence to the world like that and not be in combat mode?

He's done it at least one in canon -- see 'Firewing at GATEWAY space station', UNTIL sourcebook.

[Metaphysician]

Originally posted by Agent X

As to the No Range Penalty RKA option for the missiles - the writeup of the Hornet does not use that option. It uses the additional vehicles option.

Um, I said *Mechanon* could use such a slot on his multipower.

[Gary]

Originally posted by Chuckg
All right. Two missiles arriving at once will clock Firewing for an average of 60-some Stun, but /not/ CON Stun him.

OTOH, given that he's only got 80 STUN, he's not feeling very well... and the next hit he takes from anywhere is going to floor him.

Actually, even if both hit and aren't blocked by the FW, that's only 21 stun on average each or 42 net stun. And Firewing is going to get back 25 of that on his 12 recovery. And since the missiles take 2-3 phases to arrive, Firewing can simply shoot them out of the air with his explosion attack.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Chuckg
Lemming -- Even simple Vehicles may Hold their Actions -- pg. 174, TUV.

I had this vision of a Warner Brother's cartoon.

Ok, I read your response about the delay being a course correction special effect. However, I'm going to give an actual brain the advantage here.

[Chuckg]

> It depends on your philosophy.

Actually, it "depends" on virtually every officer-training Package Deal I've seen written up in Champions products.

Furthermore, even without that, it would not depend on my philosophy -- it would depend upon how extensive military training actually was, which is an objective fact, not a personal taste.

> Does *every* officer in your world have the full 3 pt tactics
> skill, or is that reserved for exceptional officers and leaders?

No, every single one of them gets the basic 11 or 12-... the exceptions are those who somehow managed to scrape through the course without actually learning the material they were supposed to.

Even a junior company-grade officer has to make command decisions, and rather complicated ones. The thoroughness and comprehensiveness of military training is often underestimated... hell, the average squad leader nowadays is exposed to an education of tactical concepts at the platoon and company levels, just so he can understand WTF his superiors are supposed to be doing well enough to allow him to intelligently exercise his own initiative in fluid circumstances!

And that's for *infantrymen*. Pilots have a *much* higher training budget, and are expected to execute a much higher degree of Thinking It Through than infantrymen... and at approximately twenty million dollars per aircraft, you can easily see why.

[snip]
> But is the FW transparent to Radar? That is the key
> question. I don't think it is since it is perceivable by radar.

The base power construction of Radar is "Detect Physical Objects" -- page 106, Big Black Book.

A Transparent To Physical Force Wall is not a Physical Object. (A normal Force Wall, since it does have tangible substance, would be a physical object.)

Q.E.D.

[snip]
> It doesn't *enter* the same hex. It detonates at the hexside
> before it gets in.

Actually, it takes an average of 7 BODY worth of damage...

... vs. the missile's 2 DEF and 10 BODY...

... hmmm. Hasn't lost all its body yet. That means we have to use the Vehicle Damage Table on page 322 of the BBB.

You have a 1-in-six chance of disabling the warhead... the "lose largest Power" result. Anything else won't save you, as the missile's already reached Firewing.

[Chuckg]

> Actually, even if both hit and aren't blocked by the FW,
> that's only 21 stun on average each or 42 net stun.

Or 84 net STUN on a four-missile salvo.. and each F-18 carries 10 AMRAAMs.

[Chuckg]

Re: the Force Wall question...

If we go by special effect, then the answer is even simpler -- the question then becomes "Does a bonfire give a radar return?"

The answer is "No."

[Chuckg]

Originally posted by lemming
Ok, I read your response about the delay being a course correction special effect. However, I'm going to give an actual brain the advantage here.

If this were true, then IRL pilots could dodge incoming missiles with last-minute jinking just as easily as Firewing allegedly could... after all, the enemy fighters are also being piloted by actual living brains, not simple homing circuits.

And yet, that doesn't work even in "Top Gun", much less actual dogfighting. We don't spend half a million bucks per seeker warhead for the thing to be defeated by a simple twitch of your joystick.

(The rare occasions when such a missile /does/ miss can be taken into account by the think having a 14- chance to hit, not an 18- chance.)

[Agent X]

Originally posted by Chuckg
He's done it at least one in canon -- see 'Firewing at GATEWAY space station', UNTIL sourcebook.

Don't have it yet but, okay, he flew right up the first time he came to the planet. Now, he's wanted for mass destruction, etc. - I think he knows he's going to get a hostile response from authorities.

[Metaphysician]

Odd, I'd think that entirely passing through a damaging effect would automatically detonate the warhead prematurely. If I were adjudicating, I'd probably go with that for missiles and attacks of roughly the same size ( as opposed to being hit by a pencil-thin laser beam, for example ). Thats just my two cents, though.

As for maneuvering: are there any existing rules that would increase the difficulty of a move-through on a hex thats itself moving and dodging??

[Metaphysician]

Originally posted by Chuckg
If this were true, then IRL pilots could dodge incoming missiles with last-minute jinking just as easily as Firewing allegedly could... after all, the enemy fighters are also being piloted by actual living brains, not simple homing circuits.

And yet, that doesn't work even in "Top Gun", much less actual dogfighting. We don't spend half a million bucks per seeker warhead for the thing to be defeated by a simple twitch of your joystick.

(The rare occasions when such a missile /does/ miss can be taken into account by the think having a 14- chance to hit, not an 18- chance.)

OTOH, we could definitely use a way to determine whether a given flier is more maneuverable than a fighter aircraft.

What are the rules for establishing the lock in the first place??

[Chuckg]

> Don't have it yet but

... didn't stop you from making a definite statement about it anyway.

Don't you ever get tired of not knowing what you're talking about before you talk about it?

> okay, he flew right up the first time
> he came to the planet.

*bzzzzzzzt*

Wrong answer. I didn't say that, and that's not how it happened.

Firewing flew on up for a friendly chat well after he'd been established on Earth for a while.

"In early 2003, Firewing visited the satellite under his own power and rested for several hours on one of the struts. Rather than attempting to arrest him, Commander Currie went out in a suit to join him, and the two spoke for nearly an hour about space travel, aliens, and professional sports before Firewing left peacefully."

-- page 122, UNTIL sourcebook

Yet *again*, you go around shooting off your mouth having opinions and making claims about things you know nothing about.

It's futile, it's wrong, and it's enormously annoying. Learn another way.