Sport Tanks and the Shangri-La

[Fakku]

I spy with my little eye

Fakku threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: PANZER Total: 8

 

[7734]

I spy with my little eye

Click to shrink...

Honestly this would have spotted the target if they didn't flub their drive check hard enough to make your entire team wince in pain at the metaphorical nutshot that happened thataway in the woods.

 

[7734]

Right rolls for your team.

Let this serve as a lesson: remember you all have speed limits for your tanks, and pushing that slams the DC through the roof! In case anyone didn't read the rules, here's the DC chart for Drive checks.

Also remember you're throwing 2d6 at this, so your maximum is 12.

	Quarter Speed	Half Speed	Cruise Speed	Flank Speed
	3 fuel/round	5 fuel/round	7 fuel/round	9 fuel/round
Grasslands	no check	10​	14​	18​
Marsh	no check	10​	14​	18​
Swamp	10​	14​	16​	20​
Jungle	10​	14​	17​	21​
Hill Jungle	13​	17​	21​	25​
Hill	no check	10​	14​	18​
Light Forest	no check	10​	14​	18​
Heavy Forest	12​	16​	18​	22​
Hilly Forest	14​	18​	22​	26​
Pine Strand	no check	10​	14​	18​
Heavy Pine Strands	10​	14​	18​	22​
Mountain Pines	12​	16​	20​	24​
Dunes	12​	16​	20​	24​
Light Desert	11​	14​	17​	21​
Shifting Desert	13​	16​	19​	23​
Crags	15​	18​	21​	25​
Mountains	16​	20​	24​	28​
Fording River	12​	16​	20​	24​

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 2 drive Total: 4

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 2 spot Total: 8

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 3 drive Total: 3

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 3 spot Total: 8

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 4 drive Total: 5

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 4 spot Total: 7

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 5 drive Total: 4

7734 threw 2 6-faced dice. Reason: Tank 6 spot Total: 7

 

[Icipall]

Wow, we ain't hitting the wide side of the barn.

 

[7734]

Wow, we ain't hitting the wide side of the barn.

Click to shrink...

I'm honestly considering making the 2d6 level of play a seperate splatbook because this is the sort of thing I expected to happen, just not at this magnitude. I'm also going to have to re-work a lot of DCs.

 

[Spectrum]

It's fine, just use tank shock.

(We can't pass a drive check either? Okay, fine, quarter speed tank shock on grasslands. We'll scuff their paint at least!)

 

[7734]

"All tanks, come in." you spoke into the radio, hoping against hope nobody had left theirs out.

"Solomon here."

"Michelle here."

"Iris is ready!"

"Formin here."

"Cerdan, reporting."

Right, ok, everyone was ready- wait, what?!

"Coach?" you asked, shortly before a flood of chatter. "Clear comms! Clear comms!"

"Right, so I probably should have specified this earlier, but for this match I'm allowed to sit in on your comms and watch your feeds." Cerdan said, chuckling. "The Lansing boys have the same, though, so since both of you guys are green as grass. Don't expect me to help much."

"Right, right." You muttered. "Anyway, plan. Everyone, start moving northeast-ish. I want to get bunkered up in those hills in ambush positions. Chars, avancee!"

Popping yourself out of the back hatch of the turret, you carefully negotiated your headset cable with you and started scanning for things. Trees, more trees, one of your tanks- and then a screaming noise as you were slammed chest-first into the top of the turret. Fuck, that hurt! Switching over to your A-set (in-tank comms) you yelled at your driver.

"Sabah, what the fuck?!"

"Missed a gear change pretty bad, hold on." Sabah replied. "Oh, that's not good. I'm sticking pretty bad."

"Please tell me you didn't just fuck the gearbox." You said, wincing.

"I'm not saying the gearbox is fucked, I'm just saying I can't shift into third very well."

You stared into the sky, before hearing a loud crash. Whipping your head over, you saw Solomon ducking back into his tank, before hearing noise on the B-set. Changing over, you got there just in time to hear Cerdan.

"-down, ok? Solomon, just stay calm. There'll be a drone to check him in a minute."

"He's not making any sense, though!"

As a quadcopter came down, you gulped. You really didn't want to loose a crewman in the first minutes of your first match! Still, as something happened over there- you weren't sure what, you couldn't listen in on their A-set- you got the highlights reel from everyone else.

"This is Michelle, be advised I think we have track damage."

"Come in, Commander. Be advised Formin has an engine fault, it keeps cutting out. Think it's a clogged carburetor."

"Iris here! Um, does anyone know what happens when the engine has an off beat? I think it's something not timing right, but… err…"

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Everything was falling apart!

"This is Cerdan to all tanks." Your coach said. "Take a deep breath, and calm down. Things go wrong, and things go wrong faster when you rush. The referees are putting a fifteen-minute indictment on Solomon's tank so Meridith can recover from hitting her head when they rammed that tree. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you what you do now will define the rest of your engagements together. You don't get to be a team just by sitting around and eating bon-bons after practice, that's for sure."

And with those inspiring words, your coach got off the comms.

"We're gonna need a new plan, Captain." Someone- these low-bandwidth comms couldn't really let you figure out who by voice alone- said with a note of desperation. You agreed. You were a team, damnit!

-/-/-/-/-/-/

Your Actions

Communication
[] write-in something short to say to your teammates. Two sentences, tops.

Driver
[] Drive to tile xyz
[] Spot for tanks

Commander
[] Radio check to communicate
-[] Write-in what you want to say
[] Shoot a target
-[] Write-in target
[] Reload!
[] Spot for tanks

Spoiler: Map

Note the black directional flag is because the same-color-as-tank directional flag would overlap and be hard to read.

Also note that when you spot the enemy

Spoiler: Character Sheet

Character sheets!

docs.google.com

 

[googlyeyesultra]

Also note that when you spot the enemy

Click to shrink...

Think something is missing here, chief.

We've got at least one tank that isn't going anywhere right now (and a lot that maybe aren't going anywhere right now), and we didn't make it up to the hills. Obvious options are to have operational tanks overwatch (load and spot, maybe turn to cover as many angles as possible) while the others make repairs, or have operational tanks make their way up the nearest hills and overwatch from there.

Edit: going up to the hilly forest is a bad idea, given the 14 drive check required.

Going to the hills is nice in some regards, but it'll make some of our team feel abandoned. Also, I'm not really sure how line-of-sight works - we might be currently hidden behind the hills from the enemy? And if so, having only a few of us go up would be a big mistake.

Also, I've realized that we flat-out should not be going at cruise speed ever - we only have two dice per tank, meaning a max of 12 and an average of 7, and the driving dc at cruise is 14 or more depending on terrain. Which is presumably why all of our tanks broke.

I can't really tell from the rules how repairing things works or what partial damage on a component does, both of which seem to matter a lot now.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Also, I've realized that we flat-out should not be going at cruise speed ever - we only have two dice per tank, meaning a max of 12 and an average of 7, and the driving dc at cruise is 14 or more depending on terrain. Which is presumably why all of our tanks broke.

Click to shrink...

Hm. Is our lack of dice due to the properties of the tanks, or the properties of the tank crews? I don't think I remember the rules

I can't really tell from the rules how repairing things works or what partial damage on a component does, both of which seem to matter a lot now.

Click to shrink...

Assuming that @7734 's narrative description of the tanks' problems is correct...

Solomon's tank is immobilized until and unless Meridith recovers from getting hit on the head.

Formin's engine keep crapping out, so the tank probably can't average more than... I dunno, a walking pace, if that. Unclear. The engine may crap out entirely at any time.

Iris' engine is making funny noises.

Michelle's tank appears to have track damage, which might be repairable in a timely manner or might not.

Aaaand our gearbox is fucked, or at least wined-and-dined-with-lascivious-intent.

All our tanks are immobilized or at most semi-mobile at the moment, in other words.

...

Honestly, at this point we need a good morale-restoring rallying speech (the short kind), followed by those of the tanks that can still sort of move taking up whatever positions look good within no more than a few hundred meters.

Unless the enemy's managed to score as many self-inflicted mobility kills as we have, or have gunnery as bad as our driving, both of which are admittedly possible... We're probably going to lose the match. But if we lose without losing morale*, we can bounce back from this by working hard on our driving and maintenance so that next time we don't manage to crap out all our tanks within the first 5-10 minutes of the match.

*(e.g. we stick together and take a few of the enemy with us)

 

[kelllogo]

Hmm. I didn't think driving through sparse trees would break everything so fast.

It looks like we've 'just' got some hiccups in mobility for the most part. There's a strike 1 - strike 2 - out! counter on parts. I wouldn't be surprised if that makes future checks harder. Tank 5 isn't going anywhere for the moment, but might wake back up later if Merideth didn't hit their head too hard. Probably not going to matter, since I expect the rival team to be chugging along into spotting us within the next 2 turns.

( -_-) I don't think charging for the hills puts us in a good position now. There's probably some guys that will start plinking at our team if we do keep creeping up to the hills. Our dudes are practically to get stuck when trying to hide in the denser woods. And staying put to reload is barely better than we started terrain wise.

Current plan:

"Load AP and advance slowly to the hills if you can move. We can't stay put."

Drive 1 hex North-East

Load AP

...Tank 5 is in front of the other tanks isn't it?

This hopes that we haven't yet been spotted. If we have and the other team had the good fortune to have loaded ammo with some of their dudes on the first turn to stick with the spotters... well, we're in for a rough time since nobody's keeping a good eye out.

 

[Spectrum]

Unsurprising. Well, first strikes shouldn't matter. The bigger problem is that we can't actually go anywhere without autofailing drive checks unless we go all the way around to the south...so for lack of other options that's what we'll do.

[X] Plan Rotate Away
-[X] "Change of plans, we'll have to stick to the easier terrain to the south, quarter speed only. Solomon, you should be back in play before we get out of formation."
-[X] Drive to tile J-12-1
-[X] Reload!

 

[googlyeyesultra]

[X] Plan Cheesy Speech
-[X] "It turns out driving tanks is tough, but we're tough too! We'll make it through this setback - together!"
-[X] Driver - spot for tanks
-[X] Commander - Reload!

 

[Simon_Jester]

I'm torn. "Cheesy Speech" hopefully fulfills the morale goal, but gives no actual orders, which may stress the crew out. "Rotate Away" gives the right orders, and, hm, does try to keep morale up with a comment.

[X] Plan Rotate Away
-[X] "Change of plans, we'll have to stick to the easier terrain to the south, quarter speed only. Solomon, you should be back in play before we get out of formation."
-[X] Drive to tile J-12-1
-[X] Reload!

 

[Sentient Tree]

Remember, everyone. Our concealment is all at least 16, while the highest spot check they're likely to be able to roll is a 16. And that would require them to roll two 6's, while standing still, AND have a specific perk in the tank that rolled well. However, if we move, our concealment is halved, making it feasible to spot us. Meanwhile, our Tank 3 has the perk that gives them a big bonus to spot checks while standing still.

What this means is that we are functionally invisible, while we stand still. If we stay still we can spot them moving, and get the first strike.

We should stand still until they get close, then only start moving again when we've spotted them and are close enough to engage. This gives us a lot of benefits:

• First strike.
  • It's possible to knock a tank out in one good roll, so if we can manage to get a knock out or even heavily damage something important we'll gain an advantage.
• We won't abandon Tank 5, which can still fire.
• We don't bang ourselves up anymore trying to maneuver.
  • The enemy may damage themselves a lot getting to us, which leaves us with the ability to move better once we engage.
  • That lets us move to get better firing angles on them and get our frontal armor oriented at them. We won't be able to do that as easily if we damage ourselves too much trying to move.

So here's my plan:

[X] Plan: Be Like Ghosts
-[X] "Okay, we may look like we're in a tough spot, but the other team is also new and probably doing just as bad as us. Load AP rounds, this is where we'll make our stand."
-[X] Driver - spot for tanks
-[X] Commander - Reload!

 

[Haruhi is Waifu]

[X] Plan: Be Like Ghosts

 

[Simon_Jester]

[X] Plan: Be Like Ghosts
-[X] "Okay, we may look like we're in a tough spot, but the other team is also new and probably doing just as bad as us. Load AP rounds, this is where we'll make our stand."
-[X] Driver - spot for tanks
-[X] Commander - Reload!

 

[Sentient Tree]

I realize that if I'm right and this strategy works, it shows that the current rules incentivize a play strategy that is probably not intended. Which is to say, sitting on one's rear and hoping the enemy moves first, at least until higher tiers. If that is the case, I have a suggestion for avoiding this in future matches/rules sets.

Instead of determining concealment by subtracting weight from 30, subtract weight from a variable number. For example, you could base it off of tier, with the number increasing as tier increases. Or, let engine quality determine what the number is, and make better engines be both quieter and more expensive, letting better engines be more likely to be picked in higher tiers.

Edit:
I would suggest playtesting various numbers for tier 1 in the coming matches. For example, next match perhaps 22. It would give our tanks 8 or 9 concealment, which is possible to hit even when we aren't moving.

When moving, I would also suggest subtracting a fixed number, such as somewhere between 2 and 5. For high weight tanks the 'divide concealment by half while moving' mechanic doesn't really do much.

 

[coyote16able]

[X] Plan: Be Like Ghosts

 

[Simon_Jester]

I realize that if I'm right and this strategy works, it shows that the current rules incentivize a play strategy that is probably not intended. Which is to say, sitting on one's rear and hoping the enemy moves first, at least until higher tiers

Click to shrink...

I mean, in a tank-on-tank battle, that's usually a winning strategy on the small scale unless it results in the enemy encircling your position.

But there could be a balance issue with small parked tanks being fucking invisible even in terrain where they'd normally have trouble hiding.

 

[7734]

Also, I've realized that we flat-out should not be going at cruise speed ever - we only have two dice per tank, meaning a max of 12 and an average of 7, and the driving dc at cruise is 14 or more depending on terrain. Which is presumably why all of our tanks broke.

I can't really tell from the rules how repairing things works or what partial damage on a component does, both of which seem to matter a lot now.

Click to shrink...

That's correct. Also, you only need to do repair when you hit three strikes; everything before that isn't terribly important since it doesn't have an affect.

Solomon's tank is immobilized until and unless Meridith recovers from getting hit on the head.

Click to shrink...

Correct.

All our tanks are immobilized or at most semi-mobile at the moment, in other words.

Click to shrink...

No, everything else with only one strike is still fully mobile. When something breaks, then you're fucked!

Unless the enemy's managed to score as many self-inflicted mobility kills as we have, or have gunnery as bad as our driving, both of which are admittedly possible... We're probably going to lose the match. But if we lose without losing morale*, we can bounce back from this by working hard on our driving and maintenance so that next time we don't manage to crap out all our tanks within the first 5-10 minutes of the match.

Click to shrink...

Or don't just go blitzing off into the woods at full speed when this is literally your first match...

I realize that if I'm right and this strategy works, it shows that the current rules incentivize a play strategy that is probably not intended. Which is to say, sitting on one's rear and hoping the enemy moves first, at least until higher tiers. If that is the case, I have a suggestion for avoiding this in future matches/rules sets.

Click to shrink...

That's not a major concern. Trust me, if you stay in one place too long it'll go badly for you; mostly in that you are a single area for an extended length of time another team can just stand back and start blazing away at tiles to beat someone out. That's what Caliber 0 guns are pretty explicitly for- beating bushes in case of Ghost Panhard or something, and serving as a sounding gun for when you need to push into Dangerous Ground. The thing to remember is that A, you're automatically revealed when you fire, and B, you're revealed (to the shooter only) when you're hit.

 

[Fakku]

Honestly this would have spotted the target if they didn't flub their drive check hard enough to make your entire team wince in pain at the metaphorical nutshot that happened thataway in the woods.

Click to shrink...

So do we actually have a rough guess of which direction their coming from or no, since you didn't add anything about this in the update.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Or don't just go blitzing off into the woods at full speed when this is literally your first match...

Click to shrink...

To be fair, it's a Renault FT-17. "Top speed" is supposedly about seven miles an hour. I think we may have been underestimating just how many trees there supposedly are on a "lightly wooded" space.

EDIT: Maybe the DC of driving checks through terrain should be a function of how many hexes/turn you're trying to move, instead of a flat function of trying to go at half speed in both a tank for which "half speed" is a brisk walk and one for which "half speed" is "outrun Usain Bolt."

That's not a major concern. Trust me, if you stay in one place too long it'll go badly for you; mostly in that you are a single area for an extended length of time another team can just stand back and start blazing away at tiles to beat someone out. That's what Caliber 0 guns are pretty explicitly for- beating bushes in case of Ghost Panhard or something, and serving as a sounding gun for when you need to push into Dangerous Ground. The thing to remember is that A, you're automatically revealed when you fire, and B, you're revealed (to the shooter only) when you're hit.

Click to shrink...

I am reminded of an account by a Korean War tanker. After one too many self-similar ambushes by North Korean T-34s, they started firing machine gun bursts into every haystack they saw. When the tracers started ricocheting straight up, they knew they had located one of the rare steel-cored North Korean haystacks, and that it was time to light up an enemy tank with the main gun.

 

[Sentient Tree]

I mean, in a tank-on-tank battle, that's usually a winning strategy on the small scale unless it results in the enemy encircling your position.

But there could be a balance issue with small parked tanks being fucking invisible even in terrain where they'd normally have trouble hiding.

Click to shrink...

Definitely a good point about encirclement. The problem is that enemy tanks won't know our position, so they can't encircle it except by accident anyway. On the other hand there is the possibility of information warfare: bribe a judge to tell where the enemy is going to start out, and try to encircle that area. Might be a good idea to try something along those lines for our next match if it's an option.

That's not a major concern. Trust me, if you stay in one place too long it'll go badly for you; mostly in that you are a single area for an extended length of time another team can just stand back and start blazing away at tiles to beat someone out. That's what Caliber 0 guns are pretty explicitly for- beating bushes in case of Ghost Panhard or something, and serving as a sounding gun for when you need to push into Dangerous Ground. The thing to remember is that A, you're automatically revealed when you fire, and B, you're revealed (to the shooter only) when you're hit.

Click to shrink...

Good to know nothing needs fixed mechanically here. How many different hexes can one tank shoot into at a time with a caliber 0 gun?



Our best bet then is to wait until the enemy start firing, at which point they'll reveal their location (probably without finding ours unless they either know our general start location or can fire at a truly impressive number of hexes per turn). Then, we can either open up on them or start maneuvering to get closer if they're too far away.

Regardless, if the enemy doesn't find any of our tanks on at least the first turn of firing, we will definitely be able to orient our frontal armor in their direction.

Which brings up an excellent strategy! Put most of our tanks on hills, then send one tank out far away and have them start firing caliber 0 guns. The enemy will hopefully think that tank is our main force, and orient their frontal armor at them. Once the shooting starts we'll be sacrificing a tank to hopefully get a good shot at side or rear armor with the rest of our tanks.

Edit:
Okay, maybe not an excellent strategy, but it's an idea for a future match. Or for this one if the enemy don't start firing too soon.

 

[Simon_Jester]

A "caliber 0 gun" is a machine gun, probably; it's going to be pretty distinct from any tank main weapon, in the sense of "they can hear the difference."

 

[Sentient Tree]

A "caliber 0 gun" is a machine gun, probably; it's going to be pretty distinct from any tank main weapon, in the sense of "they can hear the difference."

Click to shrink...

That makes sense. For our purposes, I think the most important thing to know about them for our strategy is whether caliber 0 guns can fire at multiple hexes per turn (since they're probably a machine gun), and whether they reveal the shooter's location (which by my reading is the case).

Unless they can light up several different spots at a time, caliber 0 guns are mostly good for checking if an enemy is hiding in a specific couple of spots that you suspect they might be in. If they are, great! Light 'em up. If not though, you may have just revealed your location for little gain, and will soon find out exactly where the enemy is, when they start firing at you.

Interestingly, this makes the hills we were heading for simultaneously the best place to be, and also the worst place to be.
- Best, because it gives us extra range to shoot if the enemy reveal their location.
- Worst, because it's also exactly where an enemy might think we would camp out, and thus shoot a caliber 0 gun at.

This makes the game have some interesting mind games in it, where you need to second guess your enemy to figure out where they are likely to be. Will they take the high ground? Or will they suspect you'll expect them to take the high ground and therefore choose to hide near it? Have they even had enough time to get to the high ground?

Even better, what about if an enemy fires near you but misses? Do you engage? Or do you stay still in the hopes of tricking them into letting their guard down?
Although that's probably a terrible idea since they could just keep firing now that they've revealed their position anyway.

Edit:
Ooh! In future matches we could let a tank go out ahead a bit and shoot possible hiding spots. If they find something, great! If they get shot at though, we now know where the enemy is anyway while keeping most of our tanks safe.