Spence

Re: New US Navy Uniforms One of the local sqd's was a test unit for all four of the patterns. The maintainers loved the pattern picked and the design/material as a working uniform. It was great for ease of upkeep, and like was mentioned above, hides stains and tears/patches extremely well. Someone actually noticed that the sailor must not only present a clean well kept appearance, but actually do some work. back in the day when I was a bluejacket, I remember having to keep extra sets of clean uniforms at work (when ashore) just so I could go to PSD or leave the hanger, because you always seemed to find the Zero who had seen too many movies and didn't realize people actually got dirty when working on aircraft.

Re: SpaceCraft Miniatures...

Re: Gatekeepers HERO: a work in progress

Re: Horrorclix! Scary minis by the fistful! Arrgghhh!!! And yet another genre shafted..... I hate "collectable" games with every fiber of my being..... Instead of being able to just buy a fig, you have to go through a crapshoot to see if you might just get lucky. Gggrrrrrrrr.......

Re: Req: Civil War Firearms stats Yep, and I am still waiting for someone ELSE to let me know how a test of tap loading worked out..

Re: Sky Galleons of Mars/Space 1889 Thought about it, but by the time I was ready the group had moved apart. Haven't thought about it since they got my hopes up for Victorian Hero...sigh...

Re: Req: Civil War Firearms stats Yes, you are correct. But since they were talking about Culloden, I jumped in on that bases. One of the reasons the ACW was so bloody with such high casualties was the use of tactics and ranges of engagement based on the use of muskets, being employed with rifles. I have a 50cal percussion rifle myself that I take out and shoot, and even a casual shooter like me hits a target most of the time even at range. Against a large mass……… Even with the reduced rate of fire, a bad shot can almost be guaranteed to hit something at 100 yards, especially since line infantry were not trained to hit a specific target but rather to pour as much fire into the enemy formation as possible. And many smaller actions were fought much closer than 100 yards. Most of the "expert history buff's" I know tend to cite the big battles for ACW. The small (make that very small) amount of ACW research I have done tends toward minor skirmishes with very little detail. I guess growing up in the South I was burned out on the subject almost before I got started. Now I am suitably ignorant about the Napoleonic period and the British Colonial Era, which is why they fascinate me.

Re: Req: Civil War Firearms stats Just a couple of notes that may apply. I have been trying to work out a system for blackpowder weapons in hero for a while. Something that stays somewhat realistic without becoming un-fun On reloading. The majority of people go with: prime, pour powder, place round, ram and so on. There were a couple of other methods, since rate of fire out-weighed accuracy. Here are just a couple. 1) Generally the bullet (ball, round, what have you) was smaller than the rifle bore would normally call for. The Mid-18th Century British Brown Bess barrel No 11 Bore (0.76 caliber) was issued a No14 (0.71 caliber) bullet. Giving one-twentieth inch gap between bore and bullet. On loading the first couple (few) times it was possible for "well trained men" to pour the powder and simpley drop the bullet in and tap the musket butt on the ground to "seat" the bullet. This allowed one to entirely skip ramming. Of course you could only do this until the barrel was too fouled and you had to start ramming again. 2) Paper cartridges. A paper wrap/tube contains the powder with a ball on top. Method A) Bite paper, prime pan, shove entire cartridge powder end first into barrel, ram. Or method Shove entire cartridge powder end first into barrel, ram hard enough to force powder into touch hole. "A" would be preferred and while I have found several references to "B", I can find nothing on how well it actually worked. On ranges and hit effectiveness. There were mnay "studies" c1800. Here are the results I could find from 3. These same ones are repeated over and over in all of my references. Picard. Range - % shots hitting 1.75m x 3.00m target 75m(82y) - 60% 150m(164y) - 40% 225m(246y)- 25% 300m(328y) - 20% Muller Range - % of hits(Well trained men,Ordinary Soldiers) 100yards - 53%, 40% 200yards - 30%, 18% 300yards - 23%, 15% Greener Range - % shots hitting 6' by 20' target 100yards - 75% 260yards - 42% 300yards - 16% 400yards - 4-5% Further research however points to these numbers being higher than normal, because while they were conducted "in battlefield" conditions. No one was shooting back. After reading a ton of contradictory information, I have to agree with Col Hanger, c1814. "(Brown Bess)….will strike a figure of a man at 80 yards - it may even be at 100, but a soldier must be very unfortunate indeed who shall be wounded by a musket at 150 yards provided his antagonist aims at him: and as to firing at a man at 200 yards with a common musket you may as well fire at the moon and have the same hope of hitting your object. I do maintain and will prove that no man has ever been killed at 200 yards by a common musket by the person that aimed at him." This reinforces the premise that accuracy was forfeited in favor of rate of fire. On rate of fire. One of the "standard" items in the books appears to be this. 500 trained men in ranks with a frontage of 150yards will deliver 6-10 shots per yard per minute. For individuals you get a range of 1 shot per minute to the upper limit of 5 shots per minute by the "experienced" soldier. Anyway, just some data to stir the pot…..

Re: Poster map - Hudson City tick....tick.....tick.....tick......

Re: Read or Die... I've seen the OVA and am actually working my way through the TV series now. So far I like it. I've never read the manga. In fact manga never "hooked" my interest.

Re: US Army Insignia Late to the thread, But remember that a ships organization is not necessarily the same on every ship. The CO, XO, Dept Heads and such are. But the individual divisions may change. Also the Duty Section make up is never the same between type commands since it is very dependent in crew size. In the Naval aviation community a duty section should be manned so a single section can perform all required duties. Sometime it will be Duty and Standby. I was in 23 years and our duty section were always even numbers. 4, 6, or 8. Mostly 4. Sections 1 and 3 were a pair as were 2 and 4. If you were working Duty and Stand-by, that days duty section worked and stood watches while it's "stand-by" section worked. Underway it really didn't matter because you were at work every day regardless. You also have to distiguish between what each community, surface or aviation, calls a "watch". Generally when a snipe works a shift at his job, such as in engineering or a QM stands a shift on the bridge, they call it a "watch". In the Aviation community, doing your job on the aircraft, be it repairing the electronics or the engines, is just you job which you work in 8 hour shifts in homeport or 12-16 hour days at sea. A "watch" would be something like ASDO, and is done in addition to your regular job. If the duty section is stretched it is not uncommon to work a 12 hour day (during the 8 hour shift) and then turn right around and stand a "watch" making it a 20 hour day. With this happening every 4 days if you are in 4 sections. The blackshoes (surface Navy types) have their own version of this of course. I have to go but I can whip up something with a little more detail tonight. Starwolf can then chop it to reflect the surface Navy's point of view.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game I have a copy of it. Seems to play well, but I haven't been able to find a regular opponent. It is called SITS (Saganami Island Tactical Simulator).

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game We changed the blind spot to the rear hex row for the smaller hull classes, and made it the three hex rows directly aft for the rest. This allowed a ship to shift its course port or starboard and unmask some batteries. Of course since we had broken the ships into sections, some ships would only be able to bring port or staboard batteries to bear. Edit. The grey boxes are not used. They are just on the template I made.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game I have never seen Starfire played one ship to one. The system was designed for fleet actions. I did design my own home brew system to add firing arcs and sectioned ships. I'll see if I can find them and post a pic.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game Pretty much ditto. I did enjoy the strategic part of Starfire. Just not the big world building part. The last strategic game of SF I played used a watered down version of the empire rules. Basically we took the shipbuilding, refit and repair rules plus a "supply" system. Each player started with a star map of "known space" which consisted of several systems and warp points. There he got to place 2-5 military bases in "his" systems and designate the 3-5 warp points that led to "home". He had x points to construct his support (defense stations, ship yards, etc.). and x points for his initial ships which he had to split into units. He then got a referee draw of ships pre-built for x points that way he didn't know exactly what he would be have. Plus there was an initial draw of ships "in the yard". At a predetermined cycle of x turns the player would receive a convoy carrying supplies. The players were fleet admirals on the frontier when war breaks out. Their orders are to defeat the enemy but defend the doorway to the empire. The amount and frequency of supplies could vary and no more reinforcement would come. So it boiled down to exploring toward the enemy. Trying to conserve your ships and resources until you could force a decisive action. Yards allowed some repair and refit, but that could remove ships from the line for several turns. The best part was a complete loss of politics and economic stuff.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game You never know. I have never seen the BR game so I don't know what the ships look like.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game Some things I knew, a few I didn't. Thanks for the info, it does explain a lot. I went oversea's for a while and when I came back it appeared the game had died, and I never really dug that far. I still have 3rd and Gal, and like to run set peice battles. I wouldn't mind a real campaign, but I just never had the players.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game I don't have any problems using standard counters of chits. In fact I have the huge hex in a hex maps they put out in the day. But I am trying to get newer gamers into things. And unless the is a cool "lump o lead" on the table you don't catch their eye.

Re: STARFIRE the Roleplaying Game I still enjoy the tactical game. Never cared for empire building on paper. It is actually the big reason I am still (yes, still as in not yet but looking) looking for a small scale series in mini's. Small enough so I can field a lot of them and generic enough I can designate then to be any class I need.

Re: SpaceCraft Miniatures... http://coldnavy.xtreme-hobby.com/shipyards/assembly.html

Re: 4th Edition supplements?? I have it and I wouldn't call it the worst ever. But you will need to rewrite any equipment. The "concepts" for everything do have definite usuable value. I wouldn't use it "stock" but it does give a very usable starting point for a Cyber Game. I liked the book as an "idea mine". An easier way is to just use Kazei 5 with mods.....

Re: Combat Handbook Question 1. Yes, to me. I really like having all the combat stuff in one book. 2. No, The UMA's content far outstrips the selection of combat specific items in CH

Re: Is it time for people to stop making new RPG systems? Thanks Enforcer. My finger is getting tired......