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Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy



Phoenix Command



Phoenix Command is a role playing system produced by Leading Edge Games in 1986. Getting three reprints, with the latest being 1991. It has over a dozen supplements, including rules for donkeys stepping on landmines, tanks, artillery, and hand to hand combat. The game is played on a hex map, with a scale of 2 meters per hex. Every turn is 2 seconds long and divided into 4 half-second impulses where movement and combat are executed simultaneously.

How it's played



I do not play, I merely bare witness to the grog abyss... I will be using the full, advanced ruleset with all supplements.
I'm going to go ahead and dedicate a whole post to how play very soon.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------




How it will be done will, in broad strokes, be that you, the audience, vote on what equipment we buy and who we hire. Then, you will vote on a support asset of some kind. Then, you will vote on what mission will be played, then finally, create and vote on a plan of action. There may be consequences to what you do, so choose carefully...

Every mission will be then be played and posted.

Yooper posted:




After a brief period of US isolationism the world got itself into a shitfit. Wars are no longer being fought in buttfuckistan by major operators but across the globe in many, many regions. Now with a reduced budget, and a desire to keep taxes down, the US has sanctioned a bunch of Private Military Contractors.

(That's us BTW)

With the defunding of NATO congress has decided to make these PMC's earn each buck instead of just pissing it away in procurement. There's a midterm election coming and by god the senator from Kentucky cannot have a tax increase. Similar situations have occured throughout Europe. In a nutshell it's like Ayn Rand wrote the military defense budget.

Fortunately there's pockets of stability. Unfortunately most of the rest of the world poo poo in a bag and lit it on fire.

In 2019 China invaded Taiwan, or rather tried to. A fierce missile battle ended with the Taiwanese launching a tactical nuclear warhead into the Chinese invasion staging area. An hour later they launched a second missile that airburst over Guangzhou. The Taiwanese not only had managed to design and manufacture there own subs but also had retrieved some warheads from K-219 near Bermuda.

In the ensuing months China broke apart as a nation as the economy collapsed. Today there is everything from rampant capitalists to staunch Maoists. Beijing is trying to bring it all back together but it's a damned mess. In many areas it's unclear who's really in charge.

The Taiwanese subs were suspiciously close to a variant of the US Navy. Speculation was that the US assisted the Taiwanese in designing the subs as conventional missile subs and they had no idea of the Taiwanese nuclear capabilities.

In this same area North Korea is making GBS threads on South Korea but open hostilities haven't started. Yet.

------

Russia in the East is a province of its own that as long as it supplies raw materials to Russia in the West, no one asks any questions. Oddly enough the fishing fleets in this area have proven to be the greatest source of friction as everyone is out to harvest those waters.

India and Pakistan haven't tossed nukes at each other but Kashmir is still a sticking point. It was an autonomous UN zone for about a week and then the shitstorm hit. For now it's a no mans land that no country dares claim. Tibet is in the midst of a rebirth, though China still has the hammer down.

Eastern Europe is simply the unstable zone. Russia, unable to conquer it all militarily, has instead sought to destabilize the zone economicaly, militarily, and culturally. Romania skirmishes with Bulgaria. Ukraine and Poland went at it. The Balkan states are just a huge basket of gently caress no. Estonia leads up the anti-Russian league but lacks anyone with any muscle to back it up. For now Russia is satisfied to just create the chaos.

The Former Yugoslav states have merged into an odd economic zone that purchased all of Greece's debt from Germany. Now they manufacture weapons for sale to damned near everyone else. Greece is poor but mostly stable. Though a good deal of Greek nationalists are foaming at the mouth for independence.


-----


Turkey still stands but drat near everything near her is a dumpster fire. Iran and the Saudi's came to blows once and both sides were completely embarrassed by the UAE Air Force. The UAE is the only stabilizing force at the moment and if they pull back it'll go to poo poo.

North Africa has settled into a staging point for everyone to get the gently caress out and to Europe. Italy is the main collection point to send them all back. We won't get into the rest of the details of Africa right now. But reserves of rare earth metals there have proven to eclipsed even the demand, and cruelty, for mining diamonds.

South and Central America is a playground for the CIA and DEA. PMC operations in that area are discouraged unless sanctioned. As of now the lithium deposits in Chile and Bolivia make those countries like Saudi Arabia was in the 1980's. Rich.

--------------------------------------------------------


Who We Are



Officially known as the U.S. Army Recruit Class of 2020, these fine American boys unfortunately failed Basic Training. Unfazed by their failure, this class decided to take whatever skills they actually learned and take them to the market. A new merc' company called Hired Goons decided to hire this group, in all their wisdom.

For now though, we need a name! And more importantly, recruits! WE WANT YOU FOR SERVICE - Apply for a life as a mercenary today, and I'll create a dossier for you. Submit a picture and you'll even get a nice looking dossier. We have 12 open slots, the rest will be in reserve until we expand our roster. Time to show the Hired Goons what we're made of - we can't let them down!

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Apr 8, 2017

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Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy


Proposal
Business Proposal
Budget Earmark Hearing

The Pregame

Characters And Equipment
Movement and Combat

Hired Goons Chapter 1 - Tibet Madness

Home Base Established/Base Commander Choice
Base Commander Result
First Mission Briefing
Mission 1: Operation Circuit Breaker Part 1
Mission 1 : Operation Circuit Breaker Part 2
Mission 1: Operation Circuit Breaker Debrief

Hired Goons Chapter 2 - Intermission, Thunderdome, and procurement

Phoenix Command: Beyond Thunderdome - Bracket
Procurement, Base Management, and Instructor Proposal
Plan Illuminati Selected, Small Arms Weapon Selection
Procurement, Base Management, Inventory Update 1


Hired Goons Chapter 2 - Part 2 - THUNDERDOME

Round 1, Fight 1: Potato v. Dwayne "The Dwayne" Dwayne
Round 1, Fight 2: Popete v. Actuary

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Apr 22, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy



Budget



Roster| Dossiers










Table of Equipment












In Memoriam

Graveyard remains empty.

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Apr 22, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
To clarify, everybody starts as a rifleman, but must qualify (aka survive) for weapons. I will be taking down qualification requests right now, as to know what weapon your dude will train for as that becomes available (XP, equipment availability).

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Telsa Cola posted:

It it possible to stay as a rifleman?

Sure! I'll be doing the full dossier and character creation soon on a person by person basis as the roster fills up.

While everyone starts as a rifleman, you don't have to change roles. You can in fact specialize. Depending on your stats, you may be a good rifleman but also good at recon, or a good artillery spotter for example.

I will soon be doing full effort posts deciphering equipment and their stats, how they work, and character creation and how that works as well in a series of posts explaining this insane system, including combat before we actually kick this thing off.

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 02:36 on Apr 8, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Just for future reference, any materials that can be used as maps or units on something like Roll20 would be very helpful.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

simplefish posted:

If I can find them I have a fuckton of DnD resources, I'll try to dig them out and dropbox you

In the meantime try some of the more zoomed in landscapey ones from here maybe?
http://m.imgur.com/t/gaming/FcDww

Mapping isn't the hard part, I can find plenty of those, plus some stuff I've accumulated on Roll20 over the years. Its modern infantry and vehicles that are giving me a research sesh.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Thanks for the token tool and advice. I found on my own a ton of top-down sprites and I'm harvesting all that. So right now, if you find some cool terrain and wanna throw it up, who knows where Hired Goons will end up in the future so all is welcome.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
All 12 roster slots have been filled, all others are free to sign up but you will be put on reserve until we get more bodies or replacements for the dead

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

LatwPIAT posted:

If you need weapons that aren't in any of supplements, poke me and I should be able to whip up stats for basically any conventional firearm. I should even be able to provide you with some extra hit location tables for prone targets getting hit along the length of their body (converted from LEG's Small Arms: Spectrum) and grappling rules (converted from LEG's Rhand: Morningstar Missions).

Hell, if you want it, I should be able to send you a copy of my Excel spreadsheet that does to-hit and hit location rolls (with damage, disabling wounds, healing time, and critical periods).

I'm pretty knowledgeable about this system!

Whoa that would be amazing, especially the prone hit location tables. Isn't grappling covered by Garrotte and Suffocation rules though?

Its actually funny you posted here - I used your FATAL and friends post as learning material

You were absolutely right in that the adv. rules make the game easier

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Apr 8, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy


Arguably the most important part, besides the tables, of Phoenix Command are the Characters and the Equipment that they use.



This is an example character sheet. I am keeping and recording a character sheet for every active merc' in our company, how the sheet, and therefore the character, works is is that every character has a series of stats either inherent to them (physical and mental), influenced by their equipment (encumbrance, aim time, body armor, etc...), or training, experience, and qualification (the "Skill Level").

The Characteristics

To start, every characteristic ranges between 3-18, with 3 being the lowest. Why 3-18? God only knows. 3 is described as extremely poor, where 18 is described as exceptional. We aren't really given a direct comparison or correlation to what these numbers mean, except once. The rules provide an example: that a man with STR 10 can deadlift 200 pounds, a man with STR 14 can deadlift 250, and STR 18 can do 400 pounds. The difference seems pretty wild which means there's some fancy math like exponents or logarithms going on behind the scenes but it seems that it gives a half decent range of abilities. Also meaning that a person with STR 3 can lift can deadlift about 4 pounds.

Characteristics will be determined randomly by roll of 3D6. Because our guys are supposed to be the more elite option, I will reroll low stats until it gets within the quality band expected of such fine basic training rejects (10-18 guaranteed).

STR: The overall strength of the character. Straightforward right? Wrong. Strength in of itself doesn't mean much beyond how much your guy can carry, lift, and do hand to hand damage, however, STR determines encumbrance and base speed, which in turn influences the maximum speed. Which then influences Combat Actions which then influence Combat Actions per impulse. Chaos Theory is real and it is a wargaming ruleset.

INT: This is not actually how smart your character is. This is how quick thinking your character is. This is used to generate the Intelligence Skill Factor. This also influences Combat Actions (which then effect Combat Actions Per Impulse!)

WILL: "Resolve and character, affecting courage in the face of danger and resistance the pain of wounds." Sounds like some cool hero stuff right? Nah it just determines how squeamish you are when you get shot, namely, the Knockout Value of a person. A person with high WILL has marginally higher chances of staying conscious when getting shot. Its more like pain tolerance, really.

HLT: This is your "health." It is not hitpoints. High HLT means you die slower. Death comes for us all.

AGI: This determines how fast you move, essentially. Very important for hand-to-hand combat (especially swordsmanship), but not much else besides speed.

Gun Combat Skill Level: This skill is pre-ordained, and ranges from 0-20. 0 being a civilian that picked up a gun about thirty seconds ago, to 20 being a legendary hero on the battlefield, aka Big Boss. 3 and 4 are described as "average" troops for any given nation. This is how good you are with a gun. Represents an overall level of skill. This is going to be at 3 for everyone in the beginning. As your mercs survive missions, and get training, they may get Learning Points to increase their skill level, or learn qualifications in specific fields such as Marksmanship, Explosives, Tank Driving, Kamikaze piloting, whatever your heart desires really. Each qualified skill level can only be used for that skill. So if you have an overall GCSL of 2, you shoot like poo poo. But that same person has a Qualified Skill of 8 in RPG shooting, he is a great anti-tank hunter.

I have to consult no less than 6 tables to determine all this stuff. Welcome to hell.


Equipment

Equipment is well, pretty self explanatory. There are grenades and explosives, weapons of all shapes and sizes, clothing and armor, even tanks and artillery. Everything has their own stats which are used for combat (shooting and determining damage, range, accuracy, aim time, rate of fire, etc...), determining encumbrance, body armor protection (Protection Factor), etc...

"Clothing" as it is said, weights a base 5 pounds no matter what you are wearing. However when you get to load bearing equipment, everything from magazines to magazine pouches and canteens are given weight and must be lugged around. Travel light.

Weapons

I'll just go ahead and post a single weapon and break it down.



Here we have a staple of the U.S. Army: the M1911A1, manufactured by Colt. A .45 pistol that has been in service for over 100 years. I even have one, great gun, fun to shoot. However, learning to use, clean, and operate a real firearm is less complex than what you see here.

Starting from the top of the leftmost column:
Physical Characteristics

Length and Weight (L and W): Very simple. How long the weapon is, and how much it weighs, in imperial measurements. So inches and pounds. The 1911 is 9 inches long, and weights 3 pounds.

Reload Time (RT): How much it costs to reload the weapon. The M1911A1 costs 4 actions to reload, which depending on how good your character is, can take anywhere from half a second or longer. Half a second reload times are, however, rare. Not everyone is John Wick.

Rate of Fire (RoF): How long it takes to chamber a round. Measured in action costs. The asterisk means that it doesn't cost anything to chamber a fresh round. This is usually for bolt-action rifles from what I've seen.

Ammunition Capacity (CAP) and Feed Device (FD): How many rounds the weapon can hold. This is usually determined by the Feed Device. In this example, the 1911 has a capacity of 7 rounds, and has a Feed Device of a Magazine (Mag). Meaning it has a 7 round magazine!

Ammunition Weight (AW): How much ammo weighs. This is measured by Feed Device. So, by Belt (Blt), Magazine (Mag), Drum (Drm), or Round (Rnd). The 1911 has an ammo weight (AW) of .7. Which means that every magazine weighs 7/10ths of a pound. Two magazines would weigh 1.4 pounds. Bing bong so simple.

Knockdown (KD): This is the "measure of the weapon's knockdown capability." It has nothing to do with damage, but whether an impact from this weapon literally knocks a person over. Don't ask me what a KD of 5 is supposed to mean, I'm just using the tables here.

Sustained Automatic Burst (SAB): "The measure of a weapon's recoil and its accuracy over long periods of automatic fire." This is basically meaningless for a semi-automatic pistol like the 1911, but it can greatly influence automatic weapons, which is something I'll go over later in a combat and movement post.

The Center Column, "Aim time and Modifiers"

The number on the left is how many actions spent aiming. 1-6 for the 1911. Meaning, a person can spend 6 actions aiming the weapon. The number on the right, is the penalty to the to hit of the weapon. Basically accuracy. Again, this will be covered in a combat section. Essentially, spend more time aiming and you'll shoot gooder.

The Right Column, "Penetration Table"

Penetration, Damage, and Ammo Type (PEN, DC)
Now this is where things get funky. We are given numbers and letters what do they mean!

So the leftmost letters, IE, "FMJ, JHP, AP" stand for the ammo type being used currently. Full Metal Jacket, Hollow Point, and Armor Piercing, respectively. Each have their own unique penetration over distance. The numbers extending to the right of the table are the actual penetration (PEN) values. Under the PEN values are the Damage Class (DC) values. Higher PEN means higher penetration, ergo better capability versus armor. Higher DC means the bullets themselves do more damage. You want high PEN when shooting armored mans, and high DC when shooting anybody.

The range intervals are in hexes, being 10, 20, 40, 70, 100, 200, 300, 400. Boxes in grey are ranges that are beyond a weapon's effective range.

Ammo types of course influence this, so FMJ is the standard round with standard damage and penetration. Hollow Point has marginally less penetration (still only a pistol round here) but a decent boost to damage. Armor Piercing then gives high PEN, and usually lower DC but in the case of the 1911, AP has very high PEN but the same DC as FMJ ammo. Alphabet soup aside, ammo important.

The Bottom Row (Ballistic Accuracy "BA" and, Time of Flight "TOF")

Not listed in this example: Minimum Arc. Minimum Arc, or MA, is the minimum number of hexes that a fully automatic weapon's burst fire must be spread. So an MA of 3 means that the full auto burst must be essentially 3 hexes wide. The 1911 being a semi-auto pistol, it does not have an MA.

The Ballistic Accuracy (BA): "The measure of a weapon/ammunition accuracy potential." In the basic, and even advanced rules, this means literally nothing. However, being the insane person that I am, I have all the supplements. This is used exclusively for shooting beyond a weapon's effective range. This is only used for a complicated calculation/tabulation for shooting people very far away, beyond a weapon's listed range. Think of it like bullet drop, and inherent inaccuracies of the ammo and weapon.

Time of Flight (ToF): "The projectile's time of flight in tenths of seconds." That's it. This rule for tenths of seconds is kinda cool, its designed to figure out the precise moment of events to determine their true order, so if on its face two things happen at the same time you can delve into the rules to figure out which event happened first. Rare, but useful. Also needlessly complicated.

This concludes characters and equipment. I will be generating characters, creating dossiers (char sheets basically) and filling out the roster soon. Up next, is movement and combat.


Epilogue: Explosives



Here is a standard issue M67 Frag Grenade. You throw, it goes boom. Except I gotta roll dice 2000 times. Literally.

Same fare in the Left Column, length, weight. However, some new stats get added and have one key difference, rather than range in yards from where the shooter is shooting his gun, explosive damage and shrapnel are measured in range (number of hexes) from the blast itself. This is in intervals of: C (close, will explain in combat post), 0 , 1 , 2, 3 ,5, 10. They don't really tell you what numbers to use if you are 4 hexes, or in between 5 and 10 hexes away.

Arm Time: Time the bomb takes to arm, in action cost. So it takes 3 actions to arm this particular grenade.

Fuse Length (FL): Fuse length in 2 second phases. So, for the M67, 2 phases, or 4 seconds.

Range (R): The distance the grenade can be thrown in 2 yard hexes from a kneeling stance. If we are kneeling, this grenade can be thrown 16 hexes or 32 yards.

The Right Column:

PEN and DC remain the same, except one key difference. PEN and DC refer to penetration power of armor, rather than a bullet. So think of this like an explosion on an armored surface. This is used primarily for anti-armor weapons like rockets. Or even strapping a bomb to the side of a tank.

However, a new row is added. The Base Shrapnel Hit Chance (BSHC) and Base Concussion. BSHC is used for resolving shrapnel, from the hex the grenade explodes in. BC is used for concussion damage.

So any given explosion can have hundreds, or thousands of pieces, of shrapnel hitting a person, before Base Concussion is even applied. As you can see, Base Concussion damage is measured in the hundreds and even as high as the 10s of thousands. They're deadly.

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 8, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

JcDent posted:

Is it true that this was made by NASA engineers? Because it seems like the creators look like the sort of people who think IT'S OBVIOUS what the granade factor for things 4 or 5-10 hexes away are.

But enough autistic spergs bought this to get supplements released, Jesus Christ. ArmA doesn't give as much poo poo about war as this game does.

There are 18 books in total, including the core and advanced rules.

And yes, LEG were a pair of NASA engineers. They stopped doing game design and went back to being rocket scientists in 1991.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy


Congratulations to Actuary, our first official active merc. Rest of the roster is coming.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
As I get around to completing the dossiers, command says we need a good ratio of Squad Leaders to men. I figure five men per squad leader. That means when the dossiers complete you will need to nominate two as the company's leaders.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Roster and all char sheets have been finalized and updated on the front page. Whoo, took forever. Now time for the real poo poo.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

xthetenth posted:

Oh god, popete got hosed on statline. :v: (I have no idea how much of a difference that makes)

Popete is below average. Our best and finest Merc is Grimace Howlington III with Count (von Count) being a close second. Everyone else kind of hovers around the same mediocre numbers.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

xthetenth posted:

I tend to prioritize number of actions in unfamiliar settings, time will tell whether I'm actually right about that, but nearly twice the number looks pretty useful (watch them have implemented an implicit system of severe diminishing returns on actions).

These stats, especially movement, are not permanent. Half of the Squad can throw away like 2 magazines and move up several rows on the movement speed tables and action table.

Which makes me think if I can incorporate the char creation tables into a spreadsheet and track everyone's char sheet that way


nah gently caress it, I'll do it by hand. I have a file on my desk with all 12 char sheets. This is real.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Popete posted:

Yeah I'm gonna die in qualifications...

Qualifications? What're those?

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Popete posted:

I was assuming there was some qualifications for the weapons, but maybe that's just stats based.

I guess I'll qualify for a crow bar.

The joke was that none of us are qualified. But yes, qualification comes with training not stats. Survive and you just might get that M60. But your stats say you'll be a little slow with it.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

LatwPIAT posted:

Update: I can totally calculate what the PEN and BC is for existing hand grenades at basically any range.

Also, do you want play aids? I made some for the three main Stances and Bracing.

Who are you oh wise one

Also quick question, do you round up or down when the numbers don't match up perfectly on the tables

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Apr 9, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy


    Welcome to my own personal descent into hell.




    Movement. Easy right? Hell to the no, this is Phoenix Command baby.

    As I've stated before, Phoenix Command is a system which relies on 2-yards-per-hex maps with a time scale of 2-second phases which are divided 4-half-second impulses.

    In order to understand movement and combat, we must first understand stances. As graciously provided to me by a wise monk who descended from Grog Mountain, here are some play aids describing stances:







    These are fantastic, and describe the modifiers to size, shooting, and movement that stances add. Standing you move at your fastest, but you are a bigger target and don't shoot as accurately as you could. Kneeling is a middle ground, with a moderate size, moderate accuracy boost, and moderate penalty to movement. Prone movement is as slow as it gets, but you are a small target and shoot quite well.

    At a standing stance, here is what movement looks like:



    And here is the relationship in action costs/movement penalties/ALM bonuses between all three stances:



    For movement, it is important to know your Field of Fire and Field of View; in short, your Facing

    Field of Fire: describes a 60 degree cone where you are facing, whereas;

    Field of View: is a 180 degree arc in front of your character.

    It costs 1 action to change your facing, however, when moving you get 1 free facing change per movement.

    It costs 2 action points to actually assume an aiming stance. Otherwise, you are hip firing. This affects field of fire and field of view.



    FoV and FoF, the ranges of the actual lines are not to scale, just to show the arcs themselves:



    Where Blue is Field of View and Red is Field of Fire.

    Additionally, there are rules for moving your head but not your body ala head on a swivel rules; where glancing once costs 1 CA (combat action) and increases your FoV to 240 degrees, a 2 CA glance expands your FoV to 300 degrees, while a 3 CA glance extends the FoV to a full 360 degrees. Each CA cost is not actually one CA spent, but rather a decrease in your total CA. So if you had a 5 CA character on full alert at 360 degrees, he can only has 2 CA until he stops being so alert.



    Finally, there is the Brace Stance which is special and somewhat limited in use:




    There is also ducking, which is a single action (at no cost) which simulates diving to the ground or behind cover, which gives a penalty to the enemy shooting at you. You are also penalized in that you can't shoot as quickly. To picture this, imagine any John Woo movie. I guarantee at least once one of our mercs is gonna fire his guns while flying through the air and going "aaaah." This about wraps up movement, there's a lot of things you can do but they all involve...moving. Onto the next step.



    Combat is so extensively detailed it will be an impossible and time consuming effort to cover absolutely every rule, nuance, and minutia that the rules provide. Combat also involves about half a million tables, which I will omit for brevity's sake. But I will try my hardest to give the broad strokes.

    Skills and variables relevant to combat are: SAL (shooter's skill), Time spent Aiming (Aim Time Mod), Stance, Brace, Aiming or Hip Fire, Range, Weapon Accuracy

    The sequence of combat usually goes like this:

    AIM/FIRE>ODDS OF HITTING>HIT LOCATION>APPLY DAMAGE; Rarely there will be a time of flight between firing and hitting as necessary, IE two people shoot eachother at the same time and need to find who got shot first.

    All shots cost 1 action, and that includes aiming for one action, and this is referred to as a snap shot. All Aim Time Modifiers for weapons include shooting. So if you wanna spend 6 actions aiming, that includes shooting, so you don't have to spend 7 CA's. Additionally, you need line of sight to shoot the enemy. Except when you don't.

    Shots, unless they are fully automatic, which will be a bullet point further down this post, are only limited by CA. A semi-automatic weapon can be fired 2 times per impulse, if you have the CA. However they will be extremely inaccurate unless you've got some very situational good modifiers going on like being prone and braced, and assuming a firing stance. At that point you may as well just aim. This of course is limited by the RoF of a weapon which usually is limited to bolt action weapons. Automatic weapons (with a * or **) don't need actions to be spent to chamber a round. So while the M16A2 has a RoF of 7, that actually refers to how many rounds can be fired per half second burst when doing automatic fire; whereas the RoF on the M24 sniper-rifle is 3, which means it costs 3 CA to bolt the rifle.

    ODDS OF HITTING

    The odds of hitting are determined by table, of course. However, there is a whole table dedicated to modifiers to this as well! To determine the To Hit, you must determine your SA or Shot Accuracy which is the sum of your Aim Time Modifier and the Skill Accuracy Level. There are many factors that go into the odds of hitting, like how long you've spent aiming, the range to target, and the target size.

    Target size refers to the, well, size of the target. A target can be looking from cover, so that only his head can be hit, shooting from cover, which exposes their upper body, and exposed which is basically in the open and can be hit anywhere.

    Essentially this comes down to figuring out all possible modifiers, finding their sum, and rolling for some odds of hitting. Figuring out all the modifiers is the biggest part of the workload. If you roll the target number or less, you hit. Now comes the worst part.

    Automatic Fire

    To preface, all Automatic Fire gets a +1 to accuracy.

    How many hexes are covered by the automatic fire is covered by the Arc of Fire, and is also determined by the weapon's stats, but first:

    You must determine if you fired at the correct elevation. This is called the Burst Elevation. To determine the BE, you determine EAL (accuracy) normally as with any other shot, however you use a different Target Size table rather than the normal Target Size table. You simply sum all the modifiers to aim. You then use a table to determine the Burst Elevation Odds and roll like any other shot to hit. But unlike single shot firing, this is only to determine if your elevation of your bullets was correct. There are more steps.

    If your elevation roll on the odds table was a success, that is to say, you shot where you wanted, you now need to determine the Arc of Fire. Automatic weapons have a minimum arc stat listed. Otherwise, you choose how many hexes you want to sweep. This affects bullet distribution, so you don't want to sweep long areas for no reason; especially if your Rate of Fire is low. Go hog wild spraying everything with a minigun though. The second and only real limitation on your Arc of Fire is your Field of Fire, which is always 60 degrees. So up close, you can't sweep that much, but the distance you are allowed to sweep increases as range increases.

    All targets covered by the AoF may be hit, naturally. However Phoenix Command takes this a step beyond. All people 100 hexes toward the shooter, and 100 yards past the target are eligible. Meaning there is a 200 hex long cone of fire from the shooter of pain and danger.

    To determine hits, you use a separate Automatic Fire Table. This allows chance for hits for one or more round per target in the arc.

    The Sustained Automatic Burst value on the weapon makes the next Elevation Check harder.

    Shotguns

    Shotguns have their own system, separate from normal shooting. Shotguns even have their own stats. Shotguns have a Shotgun ALM rating which translates to how wide a spread the shotgun fires. Odds to hit are calculated normally, but you pick the higher number between the SALM and the Target Size Modifier to calculate the EAL. Same simple sum of all modifiers. If there is a hit, the shooter now looks up the Base Pellet Hit Chance of the shotgun. There are two ways numbers are classified here. If there is a number with an asterisk, IE, *11, that means that on a successful hit using the Odds alone, 11 pellets hit. However, BPHC's with single numbers with no asterisk are in a percentage, IE, 94. You must roll 00-99 and roll equal to or greater to hit with its pellet as if rolling to hit for a single shot. This is usually for long range shots.

    Shotguns have a spread radius similar to automatic weapons.

    If there are multiple pellet hits, you may either resolve all hits separately, or for simplicity's sake roll as if they all hit the same location and multiply the physical damage by the number of pellets. This is no fun, and I will be resolving all pellets separately.

  • Automatic Shotguns: This uses the same rules as Automatic Weapons, with two key differences. Firstly, you use the larger of the SALM or Target Size like with a shotgun. Secondly, when you hit, you resolve number of pellet hits rather than just individual hits.

    HIT LOCATION

    The hit location is determined by table. There are 3 pages of tables. One page for getting shot from the front, one page for getting shot from the side, and one page getting shot from an oblique angle.

    Hit location is modified by Target Size.

    You simply roll a D100-1. Take into account how the target is situated, IE, in the Open/Looking Over Cover/Shooting From Cover. Depending on what you roll, you hit them anywhere in over like 40 locations.

    If the location hit is wearing armor, you then need to compare your weapon's penetration value to the Protection Factor of the Armor. The bullet can then glance or overpenetrate. This will be discussed more in depth in the damage section, below.

    You may "call shots" and resolve normally using a special modifier, and then resolve hit location specific to that body part. IE, you call your shot to the head. You manage a hit, now you roll to see what part of the head you hit: grazing shot, forehead, eyes, mouth etc...


    RESOLVING DAMAGE

    Shooting a person does damage. Shooting a person with armor may or may not do damage, except when it always does damage. There are several key concepts behind damage.

    Physical Damage and Knockout:

  • Physical Damage (PD) is the amount of damage one has sustained, or how much damage a would inflicts. Higher numbers mean a more severe wound, while lower numbers mean a more minor wound. In the tables there are several symbols that modify PD. H is for denoting hundreds of damage, K for thousands, T for tens of thousands, X for hundreds of thousands, and M for millions.

    Note, that the way it works out is that anything over around 700 damage is fatal within minutes.

  • Knockout: When a person is damaged in any way, they must immediately do a Knockout Check. Basically they roll a 00-99 based on the amount of damage they took on a table, and if they fail they are incapacitated. You then roll on another table to find out for how long. If they succeed they stay in the fight. Knockout represents shock, fear, or actual loss of consciousness that comes with being shot. Whenever you make a knockout roll, you roll against the TOTAL of your PD. So if you get shot and succeed, it is harder to succeed on successive gunshot wounds.

    Using the "Hero" Rules, whenever we are charging the enemy or rushing to the aid of another comrade and we are wounded and succeed a knockout save with a value of 98 or 99, we enter HERO MODE. This allows a person to ignore all previous damage on knockout rolls, meaning any new damage is rolled against on its own rather than the sum total of PD.

    Armor

    Before delving into the medical system and actual damage, lets go over armor.

    Any given piece of armor has stats that give two ratings: a Protection Factor and Blunt Trauma Protection Factor.

    Additionally, any given piece of armor has an Effective Armor PF, which represents angled armor or ablation or what have you that increases an armor's capabilities beyond pure thickness.

    To find EPF, you cross-index its PF with a 0-9 dice roll on a table.

    Penetrating Armor

  • Effective Penetration: to find an impact's EPEN value, you must take its PEN value and subtract the EPF. Now two things can happen:

    1. No penetration. If EPEN is equal to, or less than 0, the round does not penetrate. HOWEVER, this does not mean 0 damage. We must now calculate the blunt force trauma caused by the bullet. This is done by cross referencing the weapon's PEN value with the hit location and Blunt Trauma Protection Factor of the armor. The table then spits out a damage value that represents bruising done by the bullet's physical impact.

    2. Partial Penetration or Low Velocity Penetration occurs when the EPEN is greater than 0, but less than the EPF. This represents bullet impacting at a severely reduced rate of speed which makes it much less lethal. This makes all armor absolutely worth its weight, as even armor with low PF can save your life and limb by substantially slowing a round's impact, and thus, lowering its PD into non-lethal levels.

    3. Penetration: A penetration occurs when the EPEN is greater than the EPF. This means the bullet punches through the armor without any significant impact on its lethality. As with all things, to resolve damage, you use tables.

    Disabling Injuries and Shock

    A wound may also disable a person's limb. If you survive the wound, and succeed in your knockout roll, you may continue combat but without the use of that limb. This is supposed to represent the effect that broken limbs and pain etc... have that go in the way of making limbs unusable. A disabled limb cannot be used until the damage is fully healed.

    Shock

    When a disabling wound is sustained, there is a new value introduced into the mix for resolving Knockout. This is shock PD. Shock PD has its own table, (we are at around 25 tables used now), and does NOT count toward actual wounding of a character. It is ONLY used when a person is making a knockout roll immediately after sustaining a disabling injury, and is meant to simulate the shocking effects of broken and shattered bones and other horrible things that does to a person's mental state.


Explosive Weapons

Explosive weapons are divided in two: Explosive Weapons and Hand Grenades. Explosive Weapons are classed as rocket launchers. Hand Grenades are classed as hand grenades.

Two stats are important here: Base Shrapnel Hit Chance and Base Concussion. BSHC is the chance to hit with shrapnel in the blast area. Base Concussion (BC) gives the raw concussion damage.

Key factors:

1. Explosive Weapon Accuracy; this is almost resolved as normally as a gunshot. Except, when you "miss" you consult a table to find a difference in EAL between what you rolled and the EAL of "odds just above what was rolled". You then use another table with this EAL differential to determine how many hexes you missed by. If greater than 1 hex, you roll 1d10. If 0-4, the shot is Short. If 5-9 it is long. It lands however Long or Short in hexes. IE, a Short Miss of 2 hexes means it lands 2 hexes in front of the target. Long would mean it lands 2 hexes behind the target. If the miss is only 1 hex, roll 1d6. Each number, 1-6 corresponds to an adjacent hex to the target and rolling 1d6 gives you that number, and thus, the hex.

2. Hand Grenades: Explosive Weapons? Wow same.

Explosive Damage:

For Base Shrapnel Hit Chance you simply roll 00-99 to see if any particular target gets hit. You roll for each target in the blast zone, which means rules wise people can get hit with more shrapnel than what the grenade generates. Also, this means that a person can get hit by hundreds or even thousands of pieces of shrapnel, all of which are rolled individually.

Shrapnel has a new range band, "C" which means contact with the explosive. IE, blowing up in someone's hand. As with shotguns, you can either individually determine each piece of shrapnel's hit and damage, or you can just apply them all the same and multiply the damage by however many pieces of shrapnel hit.

For Base Concussion, you take the BC value and multiply it by any Blast Modifiers.

Total explosive damage is BC damage + shrapnel. Bombs go boom and kill people.

MORALE

When getting shot at, people get scared.

To find out when this applies, you find the Critical Distance that your character is willing to take a shot and shake it off, it is directly related to Knockout Value on a table. Whenever a shot or automatic fire elevation is missed, you find the EAL of odds just above what was rolled, and find the difference between that EAL and the EAL used to shoot. If the difference between the EAL's is greater than the Critical Distance, there is no effect. If it is less, however, you must make a Morale Save. A 00-99 is rolled and to succeed you must roll equal to or below your Knockout Value. If you fail this roll, that is to say, roll higher than your KV, you must either dive to Low Prone ( a defensive posture which gives penalties to hit, but you cannot move or shoot) or behind cover.

Once you are prone, or behind cover, you can make a Tripled Morale Roll, which is a 00-99 roll, which to succeed you must get below 3x your KV. Meaning, you triple your KV and that's your new value to succeed when doing morale. If you succeed this new roll, you are back in the fight.

However, if you fail, two things can happen. Either you wait for your character to Rally, or you come under Life Threatening Fire.

Rallying occurs when a character "enters the hex of the broken man" and spends combat actions equal to the unbroken character's Rally Time. Once the unbroken character spends enough points to equal his Rally Time (IE, 40 Rally Time costs 40 Actions), the broken character may make a new Morale Roll. This takes a lot of time for people with low KVs, so if the new morale check is failed, you spend even MORE time trying to convince your battle buddy not to lose his mind.

Life Threatening Fire is not actually described in the rulebook. It is mentioned just that once, and says that if a character takes life threatening fire, he will flee or surrender. I don't know how to actually figure out what life threatening fire is, or how to resolve if a dude surrenders or flees. So shrug. I guess I'll flip a coin after somebody tells me what "life threatening fire" precisely means.


THE MEDICAL SYSTEM

Which Merc is gonna tank a round to the forehead and survive? (2 Million damage btw)

Basically the way this works is: guy takes damage, guy calculates the Damage Total = (PD x 10)/Health . You now reference a chart. It gives you the Critical Time Period. The CTP is the time a person has to seek medical aid before they roll for survival. This becomes deadly when the person is unconscious, or like, got shot in the face with a rifle grenade. Depending on the severity of the wound, the CTP can be as long as months. Or be so severe that your life is measured in .5 second game pulses.

At the end of the CTP, you make your Recovery Roll. You roll your 00-99, and if you win, you survive. If you fail, you die.

This is offset by the type of medical aid you find, if you find it. There are several types: First Aid; Aid Station, Field Hospital; Trauma Center. The better the medical treatment, the higher the odds of survival. Minor wounds are guaranteed to be survivable the higher you go. The lower you go, more moderate wounds can be fatal.

Each wound is also given a Healing Time in days. Again, the better the center, the faster the healing time. Any character who spends 1/3 of his healing time in a Trauma Center will reduce Healing Time by 20%.

Knockdown wise, if a character succeeds his knockout roll without a disabling injury, functionally he is fine. However, if he is knocked out, a table is used to find out how long he is knocked out. If he wakes up again, he has a penalty to combat points equal to healing time/20.

This is pretty cool, IMO. Not only can we calculate how long it will take for one of our Mercs to bleed to death, it also gives an opportunity for field medics to immediately give first aid, to extend that CTP at a crucial time.

We may need Commander Yooper to buy some Medevac Choppers.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Added Space posted:

I kept waiting for the post to spontaneously end when your head exploded but it just didn't come.

I guess "life threatening fire" is if the gut has a wound that would lead to rolling for survival.

Well that sounds logical but technically you must roll for survival on just about anything from a paper cut to a chainsaw wound to the face. The way it works is that you roll for survival on different times with different chances of actually surviving. My guess is that this is their approximation of modelling people bleeding to death

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
There are 36 tables in the core rulebook

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

LatwPIAT posted:

So you don't want this then?

Did you actually reverse engineer the math to get precise base and max speed? Are you a wizard?

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
I am eternally grateful that the apparent patron saint of Phoenix Command has blessed me so.

That being said, I feel like we are at a good point to officially begin. I may do another two mechanical posts regarding the supplemental rules (hand to hand, landmines, animals, etc...) and the mechanized combat rules.

However for now, keep your ears to the ground regarding a certain General who may have our first contract...

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Apr 10, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

LatwPIAT posted:

:kimchi:

I can't take credit for the Base and Max Speed formulas. Those were done by someone else. Everything else is me though. Feel free to ask me about stuff, I can probably help out some! :keke:

Where did you find the rules for Medic and FO stats? I assume FO is in the artillery supplement?

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy


Listen up you Hired Goons! We just arrived in country, this high up place called North Lakhimpur near Tibet is where our flyboys do their...flying. We are currently located in an undisclosed location within Tibet. Undisclosed because after we were smuggled across the Himalayas, we got lost. Now, we cleared an area we deemed suitable and setup shop.





Welcome to Hired Goon HQ!

All we have is a barracks and other living accommodation at the moment, but I'm sure we could stiff some contractors to build up our little nest. As our roster of active mercs grows, we will need more barracks for them. Similarly, if we hope for any of them to actually survive we'll need to hire advisors, and build training facilities. Likewise, we'll probably need to get a field hospital, with support staff.Maybe if we decide to get a little fancy we can build helipads and either ask the flyboys to buy some support helos or buy them ourselves. Medevac is an absolute necessity, when we can afford it. We need to be mobile, so of course we'll use prefab buildings or something that goes down and up quick. No bunkers and trenches for this company.

Anyway, we've been approached by three brassy types who we will end up needing if we wanna run this show professionally. We have three options to select a base commander within our budget. What a base commander will be doing is obviously managing our force, finding what jobs are out there, and making contacts for intelligence in the field. Pretty important job if you ask me. We are gonna need one of these guys if we hope to actually get a job around these parts.





Option 1 - Lt. Col. (Ret.) James "Jimmy" Toff



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Option 2 - Comrade-Sergeant Vasiliy Popov



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Option 3 - Kurt Russel Cosplay Enthusiast




Each commander comes with a particular set of skills, or, so they claim. Choose wisely! Each one is worth every penny. Hopefully.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
The voting margins remain too close to call, will extend voting to tomorrow afternoon.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
One choice may or may not be inherently better than the others. Each Commander brings something unique to the table.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
VOTING CLOSED: RESULT

It was close, neck and neck even, but in the end only one broke through with a huge lead:

















































https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpOHV1T6Kdg



Welcome aboard Mr. Plissken


Final result was 9 Toff, 13 Popov, 17 Russel Cosplayer. I was gonna have a runoff but there was a sudden 4 vote burst for ol' Kurt at the very end.

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Apr 13, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

LatwPIAT posted:

How convenient, someone did a writeup of MacReady in PCCS stats once!

Also, enable PMs or find some way to give me your email so you can get editing access to the Hired Goons Character Manager! :3:

Done

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Apr 13, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Its only fitting we have boss as crazy as the game system

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
I ran a huge update. I'll post it. But I'm too tired. Maybe later.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy




We welcome our new Commander, a man impersonating an actor and claiming to be "Snake." I think our shareholders lost their minds.

Irregardless, we got our first job. Not gonna get paid for this one, it comes straight from the flyboys so we aren't getting paid, but its still pretty important. We just got the mission file faxed over. Who still uses fax machines? Where did we get one?





This is an exceedingly lovely satellite photo of the target. We're hitting a PLAAF JY-14 RADAR SITE. This mission is on short notice so we'll have little time to prepare, and our commander....wait, where the hell is he? Wait, what's that sound?







Our base commander seemingly kidnapped one of the radar techs on his own initiative. But, how did he know about the mission...we just got the briefing fax like an hour ago... Where'd he get the cell phone? I guess we have to wait till he comes back.

Commander Snake posted:

Kept ya' waiting huh?
/




Meet, uh, well we don't actually know his name, but he's a PLAAF technician, and Commander Snake claims to speak Mandarin. Snake says this guy provided a pretty detailed description of the base and the staff. He isn't even tied up, seems to just kind of sat down at our comms and started working again...



*Hired Goons Gains Expert Comms Tech*

Anyway, we now have a detailed layout of the base and who is staffed there. Their roster looks like this:

1x Officer
3x Guards
3x Technicians

All chairforce types. We suspect that the officer and techs, if armed at all, will be packing nothing more than pistols. The guards don't have grenades, armor, or optics or anything. Real rear echelon type of place, we don't expect even the guards to give up much a fight. The objective here is to kill or disable all the staff, and then go in and smash all the equipment and make the radar inoperable.

The actual radar dish is up high on the mountain, but nobody goes up there due to altitude. The primary target is to just raid the control center. The dish is supposedly pretty advanced, sufficient to give a very wide detection area. It covers Lhasa airbase, so those flyboys must have something crazy in mind if they want us to take it out.



We're going in at night, with the whole crew. This will be our plan of action:



Team A will approach and set up overwatch on a ridge overlooking the radar site.
Team B will approach from the East, and assault the compound.

Roster:

Team A
Actuary
Dwayne "The Dwayne" Dwayne
Potato
Tesla Cola
Snake Doctor
Spanky

Team B
Grimace Howlington III
Steve
Count
Dread
Simpson Mcfish
Popete

In the future we'll have a choice of jobs, depending on how competent the Boss actually turns out to be, but for now, we need to come through for the flyboys.

Now accepting proposals for how to execute the mission. Voting closes soon, since this is a very time sensitive mission.

Phi230 fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Apr 14, 2017

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Mind you, that we have nothing available to us that isn't in our table of equipment, and our boys are only qualified to take M16A2s.

Grenades might be useful inside that building though...

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

Zaodai posted:

I agree that overwatch team seems a little heavy on personnel when we could use some extra bodies in the base. That said, is that a road or a wall around the perimeter? It looks like a road, but I don't want to assume.

I take it none of our guys are able to use the sniper rifle we have for even a bit of fire support, or the M60 either? Or do they just take a penalty for being unqualified?

We should probably have two guys stay on the ridge (ideally a sniper if we can have someone use the rifle), then 4 guys from A team move in from the north west while B team strikes in force from the east to clear buildings. I assume there's no reason to worry about collateral damage, so we might as well bring all the grenades and stuff we can.

The road stretches around the base, there are no windows on the building, and it has roughly 6ft high stone wall that guards the east and north. There is a gate about 2 meters wide, and on the Northeast corner there is a large opening for cars and trucks to enter the compound.

Neither of our M24s are ready, they were both damaged en route and are being repaired. Our M60 may be taken, but at a massive penalty for aiming and shooting. Its also extremely heavy, and whoever takes it will move slowly, and would need an ammo bearer who also would move slowly and carry less ammo for their primary.

Zaodai posted:

Do our guys have binoculars and/or radios? Is overwatch team able to provide us spotting information on targets they can see from their position?

No binocs, no radios. Maybe we can buy some later. Just gotta give Bogdan a call...

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

chitoryu12 posted:

This is all pretty concerning. Not only can our teams not communicate beyond things like flashing lights in Morse code, our overwatch team would be restricted to shooting whoever just happens to be outside.

Is there a position where they can see the gate to the compound instead and fire at targets through it before holding fire for the raiding team?

The ridgeline is high enough to allow a clear view of the whole exterior, including compound. You could tell them to only fire for a certain amount of time, then hold... They do have watches, after all.

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy

chitoryu12 posted:

Are we fighting the Chinese military here or the Chinese-backed or Tibetan rebels?

PLAAF

Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Voting and planning closes in 2 hours

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Phi230
Feb 2, 2016

by Fluffdaddy
Voting is closed. Circuit Breaker it is. Will run the mission when I get home so feel free to plan and stuff because there's still some time

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