Gaming With Scientists And Engineers

I ran a, successful, Twilight: 2000 converted to GURPS campaign for several years.

I lived in Ames, Iowa and we played at the Memorial Union on Iowa State University.

The player pool was full of STEM students.

That means they're familiar with the metric system.

Twilight: 2000 is in metric because the US military uses the metric system.

GURPS does not use the metric system.

The "conflict" doesn't really come up very often.

T2K uses real world items that we could get real world weights for, so the kg vs lb thing was nullified. 

Ranged combat in GURPS is given in yards, not meters.

The problem happens when I, keeping in the style of the setting, said that a target was X meters away and then using that same number on the range chart in yards.

I had two players doing the math on their calculators and demanding that since I said 100m, we should use the range band for 109.3613 yards.

That changes the range penalty from -10 to -11, so it was screwing them.

It was a little squabble, but it was persistent.

I think it was the first time I invoked the concept that π = 3.00 in GURPS, therefore 1m = 1 yard and 1 lb. = 0.500kg.

It's strange how that made the engineers happy, but the scientists still chaffed.

What finally got them to stop grumbling over it was to hand them my hoary old SMART book and show them the section on range estimation.  It's not what you call, "highly precise," which means that, "the target is 100m away," suddenly means 80 to 120m away and 100 yards fits in that range, so they finally accepted when I gave a range penalty lower than they calculated. 

I just realized that this NEVER came up in any of my conversions of Traveller to GURPS.  Traveller is even more metric than T2k! 

Wildly Optimistic

Twilight: 2000 was written in a time where we thought the Soviet Union was at least as strong and capable as we were.

It was first published in 1984.

In 1984 we didn't know what we know now.

T2K has since become an alternate history and the "what if" being presented is, "What if the USSR was really as good as the US Army Green Book said it was?"

Their equipment has parity with ours.

Their tactics are as effective as ours.

Their logistics system is as efficient as ours. 

Their economy is, at least, as good as ours.

They have numbers and a shorter supply line.

It's actually kind of amazing that NATO fights them to a draw by July 2000.

Among the things we have to accept as givens in this alternate history is the Soviet ICBMs being both reliable and accurate enough to hit the 78 targets shown on the map in the previous post.

The USA Hit List from Challenge issue 27 lists the total megatonnage dropped on a spot, my little experiment with Nukemap shows a single hit with that value centered on the thing most likely being aimed at.

Cape Kennedy, for example, in Urban Guerilla:

[R]eceived the attentions of a 10 warhead MIRV'd (one-megaton total) device. Unlike the other strikes, this was a series of pin-point attacks upon the launch sites themselves. The resulting blasts vaporized nine of the 11 launchpads and the vehicle assembly building.

That's to get enough spread to get all of the launch sites, which a single 1 mt ground burst wouldn't.

 I centered the 1mt ground burst on the vehicle assembly building.  You'll note that most of Cape Canaveral AFB is well clear of the blast effects.

As far as accuracy goes, the 500 kt missile aimed at Mayport:

Mayport Naval Station in Jacksonville suffered a near miss that landed in the sea just offshore. The resulting nuclear-induced tidal wave and wide-spread radioactive seawater contamination were dreadful and deadly. Millions died, both in the wave surge and in the subsequent legacy of nuclear poisoning, disease, starvation, and chaos that followed.

A problem with the Challenge article is it lacks details given in the modules.

The hit list is also hampered with a lack of information about which warheads the Soviets were using.  The KSC strike matches a sub-launched R-39 pretty well.

Of note, the Soviet Union had thousands of warheads and just over 100 are fired at the US and Canada.  Likewise, the US response was very restrained.

There were more nuclear strikes in Germany and Poland than in all of the US and Canada.  Seems to me that these nations might be a bit bitter about that once the war fizzles out and notes can be compared.

We know from the game 2300: AD, set in the same setting 300 years later, that the world does recover, for the most part, by 2020. 

Kaboom!

There's a web page called Nukemap.

You move ground zero where you want it, select a warhead or yield and see the rings of destruction!

So I took the USA hit list from Challenge Magazine issue 27 and did all the targets.

Basically it's all the refineries and select military targets.

Here's MacDill and it's 1mt airburst hit:

It's bad to be in the orange.

The small orange circle is the fireball radius (0.66mi).
The orange-gray circle is the 5psi line for moderate blast damage (4.37mi).
The larger orange circle is the thermal radiation radius for 3rd degree burns (7.57mi).
The big gray circle is the 1psi line for light blast damage (12.3mi).

I am well clear of it!

Oops

I just noticed something.

I'd made a "what if" version of myself from Twilight: 2000 on the assumption that I was in Florida.

A fair assumption since I came down here in late September 1997.

What I'd forgotten was I'd driven back to Iowa to get my stuff and was at my mom's in Ames for Thanksgiving that year.

I'd have been in Ames for the general nuclear exchange.

It's my party and I can change it if I want to...  In the T2K universe I got my stuff earlier and was here for Thanksgiving.

I like the Dunedin militia version of the character better.

What it raises is the question of where was FuzzyGeff when the bombs fell.  If we time it right, he's down here helping me move for Thanksgiving.  It hardly matters, I suppose.  Without his medication, asthma prolly gets him before anything else. 

"Don't You Wish We Had Some Grenades?" J. Cobb

I have broken tradition.

I have equipped my T2K NPCs with a selection of hand grenades.

Grenades are simply something that we always overlooked when running games set where you could have some.

Often the game rules made them a pain to employ.

They're a little awkward in GURPS because the fuse time is multiple turns in most cases.

I don't recall if any of the players took any, but since they skimped on body armor, I suspect they don't have any encumbrance left. 

I Had A Point

I think I might have misspoke in the comments about the utility of the Military Rank advantage in a Poland T2K campaign.

If a player had taken rank, they'd have NPCs associated with that rank under them because of the Duty disad everyone took with their MOS template. 

But it appears to be latent in late June 2000 in Poland because the party is placed outside the command structure by the collapse of 5th ID at Kalisz.

Their rank and duty means they can be collected by another refugee of that battle and be commanded by them if they outrank the party.  Wanna bet they resent it if I do place them under such command?

This same rank could be used to collect other NPC's and command THEM... if anyone had bothered to take it. 

Now that I've written the introduction to the point I was going to make...

What was the point I was going to make again?

I've lost it.

I will point out that point based systems will always, seemingly, charge you for things you're not using at the same rate as if you were using them.

Wasted points until the circumstances they can be used in comes up.

As a GM who thinks he's dealing with enough just translating the setting from a 41 year old game to a 22 year old game...  I don't think I want to deal with charging for an advantage situationally.

Sure, military rank is not as useful in Poland as the players flee Kalisz, but it will have its value restored when they respond to Operation Omega. 

It Hasn't Come Up Yet

I need to dig into my materials and figure out how MilGov and CivGov are handling gun control.

That also means deciding if The Brady Act and The Assault Weapons Ban were passed in the political climate of Twilight: 2000.

Would Bill Clinton have been elected if The Cold War had continued?

Would G. H. W. Bush have been re-elected?

Who would be elected in '96?

If Bush was re-elected, he's in lame-duck mode when he orders US troops across the inter-German border just days after election day 1996!

If it's a re-elected Clinton...  Oh Lordy.

Someone else entirely?  Ross Perot?  Oh, fucking, Lordy. 

Alternate histories are messy.

Though having Perot win in '92 has some appeal just for the amusement value and having someone else be the president-elect in November '96 when he sends in the troops really helps explain the CivGov/MilGov divide present in the game. 

Can't Mary Sue

I redid several of my favorite T2K characters in GURPS and I can't introduce them as my Mary Sues because they all have rank.

The ranking PC in the party, so far, is a Specialist!

The "what if I'd never broken my legs and stayed in" literally Me is a sergeant 1st class.  "I'd" have been in the service for 13 years at that point.

My other favorite Mary Sue is 2nd Lieutenant Thomas MacTavish.  The party can't afford no NPC officers.  When I was running MacTavish, two of the players outranked him.

OG T2K made it easier than GURPS to be an officer because it didn't take from other things to be one.  In fact, it was a bonus in the OG rules. 

If It Ain't Broke

Looking up stuff to figure out 40mm smoke grenades led me to look at smoke hand grenades.

The US adopted the AN/M8 back in 1940.

Basically the same as the AN/M7 tear gas grenade from 1935 but burning HC (hexachloroethane) smoke instead of CN (chloroacetophenone).  M7A2 and M7A3 burn CS (2-chlorobenzalmalonnitrile).

The M8 was the standard white smoke grenade until replaced by the M83 in 1994, which burns for less time, but emits thicker smoke.

You need to read the markings to tell the M8 from the M83.  The M7 is a different color, but externally the same.

The M18 (1942) is the colored smoke version of the M8 and is externally identical, except for the markings and the color shade being painted on the top.  We still issue the AN/M18!

We changed our fragmentation grenade five times (or three times depending on how you count it) while we kept the same smoke grenades.  Mk II "Pineapple" to M26 to M61 to M33 to M67; though an argument can be made that the differences between the M26 and M61 and M33 and M57 are so small as to not really be a "change." 

That tells me we got the smoke grenade so right we couldn't really improve it. 

 

Obsolete

Didja know that the US doesn't manufacture or issue 40x46mmSR HE grenades anymore?

While I was doing the research to make Guns Stats versions of them I kept hitting the phrase "production complete."

This raises the question about what rounds are available in T2K.

According to Jane's Infantry Weapons 24th Edition 1998-99 the US issues:

M433 HEDP
M576E1 Shotshell
M661 Green Star Parachute
M662 Red Star Parachute
M715 Green Smoke Ground Marker
M716 Yellow Smoke Ground Marker
M674 CS Tear Gas

Compare with the 1967 Vietnam list... 

Does this mean there's no HE around?

No.

HE is still issued by several other nations with 40mm grenade launchers, such as the German DM 11.

40x46mmSR is a NATO standard round after all!

It Never Ends

I had a T-72B1V in my T2K conversion.

Why would the Venezuelan version of the T-72B1 be in Poland?

Worse, I had it wrong.

I meant the T-72BA which is a T-72B with Kontakt-5 ERA.

I had been calling the T-72B the T-72B1, but mentioned the missile system.  The B1 variant is the one without the missile system!

Confusingly, the V suffix, for vzryvnoi, is often used when explosive reactive armor is applied, such as the T-72AV and T-72M1V with Kontakt-1 ERA. 

I might even have been using the wrong references and what I meant was T-72M1 and T-72M1V not T-72B1 and T-72B1V.

Happily, it just doesn't seem to come up all that often.  The differences between T-72 variations doesn't matter almost all of the times they appear in the game because the players generally lack the means to attack them effectively.

It's clear I need to make me a whole document of these things to go with my Leopard I and Patton files. 

 

 

MS-HEAT

Gun Stats assumes that both shaped charges are the same size!

So you calculate them from the published penetration in millimeters, which comes out as half as much as a single stage, then double that damage.

A normal HEAT round that punches 900mm will do 6dx12(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.

An MS-HEAT round that punches 900mm calculates at 6dx6(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.

If the target is protected by explosive, reactive armor MS-HEAT does the listed damage as if the ERA wasn't there.  If it not protected by ERA, then double the listed damage. 

Silly me, I've been finding out the penetration of the precursor charge and main charge then adding them.

For example, the PG-29V fired from the RPG-29 will penetrate 900mm RHA, but only 750mm it it's protected by reactive armor.

So that means the precursor charge penetrates 150mm on its own.

I've been showing this as 6dx2(10) cr ex follow-up 6dx10(10) cr ex linked 6dx5 cr ex.

It comes out the same on RHA, but penetrates better when there's ERA than the rules as written. 

Fun Little Details

On the cover of The Free City of Krakow is this little tidbit:

I think it says 105mm on the side there, and I don't think we ever made a nuke round for that gun.

Never mind that this is a really small box for even a 105mm howitzer round.

How Much To Be A Nuclear Power?

In GURPS: Twilight - 2000 you, too, can be a nuclear power!

An M109A4 runs $567,000.  An M198 towed gun runs $530,000 and a 5-ton to drag it around adds $41,000.

A 155mm XM454 AFAP round is $4,991,250.

So you need $5,558,250 for the track and one round.  $5,562,250 to go wheeled.

Starting wealth is $5,000, so you need 1112.45 times starting wealth to buy into this dream.

That's 50 points for Filthy Rich to get $500,000.  Another 25 gets the first level of Multimillionaire and $5,000,000.  Another couple (2) points adds another $1,000,000 getting you a total of $6,000,000 for 77 points and you now command a howitzer and a single round W48 warhead.

It's scary that this is technically possible if a player thinks ahead a little bit.

UPDATE:

The cheap route is to get a 152mm D-20 towed howitzer for $150,000, a deuce-and-a-half for $22,000 to drag it around and a 3BV3 round for $5,682,937.50.  Wait; that's not cheaper at all!

Toe To Toe With The Rooskies

In 1981 we developed another nuke round for the 8" howitzer.

It's something interesting.

The W79 is a radiation enhanced warhead.

Normally the burn ex rad sur damage is 65% of the cr ex damage in GURPS.

The W79 Mod 0's low yield mode gets the same burn ex rad sur damage as the full yield mode!

So the XM753 with W79 Mod 0 is a rocket assisted round that does 6dx25(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx283 cr ex linked 6dx1928 burn ex rad sur in low yield configuration.

It does 6dx25(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx2966 cr ex linked 6dx1928 burn ex rad sur in high yield configuration.

The W79 Mod 1 only has a single mode and does 6dx35(0.5) pi++ linked 6dx2530 cr ex linked 6dx1645 burn ex rad sur.  (I love how it lists a damage for the projectile before the explosion, though they're all air-burst capable).

GURPS range is -/24,600.  That's about 14 miles.  <- Fixed!

GURPS range is -/24,600.  That's about 19.7 miles.  That's safe, right?

14 is a bit short of the 19 Wikipedia lists.  I could be that's because they gave the velocity for a Zone 7 charge.  Rocket assisted rounds usually use the heaviest launching charge, so...  Using the velocity for a Zone 9 charge I get about 18 miles, which is closer (and might even be correct as the exact ranges of these things are classified.)

UPDATE: I forgot that this round was never fired from the short barreled M110 and was always used with the M110A2.

With a Zone 8 charge it gets 2,770 fps. and will go to 34,650 yards which is 19.7 miles which is nearly spot-on-close-enough to the range listed in Wikipedia!

This GURPS! Now... 

Artillery Again

Did the 8" for the M110 tonight.  This gun comes up for both Twilight: 2000 and Funny New Guys.

Same green bag/white bag deal as 155mm.

M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 1 (base increment): 6.3 lb.; 806 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 2: 7.6 lb.; 879 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 3: 9.3 lb.; 984 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 4: 11.7 lb.; 1,133 fps.
M1 Charge (green bag), Zone 5: 15 lb.; 1,358 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 5 (base increment): 17.7 lb.; 1,432 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 6: 23.1 lb.; 1,675 fps.
M2 Charge (white bag), Zone 7: 30 lb.; 1,950 fps.
M188 Charge, Zone 8: 40 lb.; 2,316 fps.
M188A1 Charge, Zone 9: 50 lb.; 2,510 fps.

The M188 charges don't come around until the mid-70's and are used with DPICM and HERA rounds.

The fun part was calculating the damage for the M422, W33 nuclear round.  Pairs well with the 155mm M785!

6dx17,889 cr ex linked 6dx11,627 burn ex rad sur for the 40k-ton high yield setting.

6dx6,325 cr ex linked 6dx4,111 burn ex rad sur for the 5k-ton low yield setting. 

Battle Of The 8-Wheel Armored Cars

Since I've stranded a LAV-25 in Libya fighting the Afrika Korps, how would it fare against a SdKfz 232 8-Rad?

First, armor.

The LAV has, in F, L/R, Rr, T, B order,  DR 90/75/50/30/30 on the body and DR 67/60/35/35 on the turret.

The SdKfz has, with the "bumper" plate: DR 83S/33/55/14/14 on the body and DR  62/62/62/14 on the turret.

The best AP round for the KwK.30 is the PzGr.40 which is an APHC round doing 6dx3(2) pi++.  That will roll an average of 63 which can penetrate DR 126.  Decent penetration on the front armor.

The KwK.30 is completely manually controlled and sighted, so...

The 6dx5(2) pi++ from the M791 round punches 210 DR, so no problem nailing the front armor of the SdKfz.232.

Again, thermal sights and full weapon stabilization are in play with the LAV and a powered turret with a much faster traverse than the hand-cranked German turret.

The SAS would, literally, murder people in their sleep for the LRDG to get hold of a couple of these.

Just For Fun

The LAV-25 is a perennial favorite of Twilight: 2000 players.

How would the 25mm Bushmaster fare in the Libyan desert against the Panzer IIIG?

It would fare well.

M791 APDS-T does 6dx5(2) pi++ that rolls 105 on average and punches 210 Dr.
M792 HEI-T's 6dx4(0.5) pi++ linked 4d+1[2d+2] cr ex isn't gonna punch.
M919 APFSDSDU-T doing 6dx8(2) pi inc will certainly punch with an average roll doing 168 before dividing the armor in half, so it'd punch DR 336.

Even the Panzer IIIH is sweating against this 8-wheel armored car.

Of course, the frontal DR 90 of the hull and DR 67 on the turret of a LAV-25 isn't putting up much resistance against the 5cm PzGr39 (see previous post for how much DR that punches).

I think the thermal sights and stabilization on the LAV will matter a great deal.

Stig Pickers

De-genercized the bayonets in my GURPS: T2K conversion.

Now you use an M7 bayonet instead of a knife bayonet. 

Veja Du

Something I consciously did with my TL project of making characters was avoiding making a soldier from each TL.

Now I am making the NPC's in detail for the campaign that FuzzyGeff and Marv will be playing in January... and they're all soldiers. 

Making each one a person is the challenge. 

One place it's tempting to make them individual is the weapons selection, but that'd wrong because troops are issued weapons exactly to prevent them from picking a gun that can't be supported by the logistics train.

Twilight: 2000's situation might be more eclectic because of masses of non-US troops being accepted into US formations as things become more and more ad hoc.

A NATO unit might consider itself lucky if everyone has a rifle that uses a STANAG magazine with rifling to use 5.56 NATO.

There's reserve units from the States that have M16A1's and though they can use the magazines, they can't use the NATO spec ammo.

The smart commander would try to keep them and their ammo needs in one place, but T2K is a situation where everything collapsed and everyone is scattering to the wind and getting back together randomly.

How random do I wanna get?