Ranged combat: Range / TN problems

[bergh]

Hi

Im Developing my GENERIC rpg (no name so far).

My system is going to have a Target Number you need to reach to succeed, and i need to set the TN for the different ranges in a ranged combat. so i need help from someone who got som experince in target shooting.

the example is this:
Its a flat field, and there are person sized target standing still.

how big % would you deem that you on hitting him, and im talking a fast shoot, which is not aiming, but more like you see him and put your rifle to your shoulder and then just point it in the direction and "aim" for half a second and then fire.
Please also state your level of skill, are you a pratices shooter or what?

10 meters =?%
20 meters
50 meters
100 meters
150 meters
200 meters.

If you got both rifle and pistol experince then share it!

Sorry guys i really don't have any firearms experince, so i just hope someone here would give me precise number, then let me worry about adjusting them to be RPG "friendly".

[Andrew Martin]

Hi

Im Developing my GENERIC rpg (no name so far).

My system is going to have a Target Number you need to reach to succeed, and i need to set the TN for the different ranges in a ranged combat. so i need help from someone who got som experince in target shooting.

the example is this:
Its a flat field, and there are person sized target standing still.

how big % would you deem that you on hitting him, and im talking a fast shoot, which is not aiming, but more like you see him and put your rifle to your shoulder and then just point it in the direction and "aim" for half a second and then fire.
Please also state your level of skill, are you a pratices shooter or what?

10 meters =?%
20 meters
50 meters
100 meters
150 meters
200 meters.

If you got both rifle and pistol experince then share it!

Sorry guys i really don't have any firearms experince, so i just hope someone here would give me precise number, then let me worry about adjusting them to be RPG "friendly".

For the US Army, the target range has 40 targets at a range of 50 meters to 300 meters. The starting soldier is given just 40 rounds and is expected to hit 36 targets to be a expert (36/40), 30 to be a sharpshooter (30/40), and 23 to qualify as a soldier (23/40). In the US Army simulator program (Army Operations), the targets pop up and down and you only have a two or three seconds to acquire the target and shoot it down; the targets also cycle through all the range brackets so the target hit rate is effectively pretty much the same for any range.

[Ben O'Neal]

I might also quickly point out that there is no way anyone could efectively suggest TNs without knowing what your ranges are for your mechanics. Like, is 100 impossible? is 10 really hard? is 20 piss easy?

It looks like you might be using a percentile system, but I can't be certain. Also, I don't know what a given percentage in your system would mean.

So if you give us an idea about what dice you are using and what the maximum and minimum ranges are, as well as how hard you want your game to be, we should be able to help you somewhat.

-Ben

[bergh]

Dont worry about the Target number, i wanna calculate that my self.
The procentage i need to calculate how tough it is to hit.
But if you really wanna know im thinking about using a skill+D12 system.
and a "joe average with a little training" type person having skill 8+D12.

I can imagine that within 2 meters the chance is 100% of a hit.
300 meters must be ALOT less.

i can't understand that about the us army soldier having the same chance of hitting on 50m and 300m....

[Jack Aidley]

IIRC figures from US police forces show that they hit with an average of one shot in six. I believe also most firefights take place in the ten to twenty feet range.

It's one thing to knock out targets on a firing range it's another to fire at a moving target who is shooting back.

However, I think a better question to ask is not 'what is realistic' but 'what works for my system'.

[bergh]

then please educate me/help me. i really can't figure out what the difficulty should be in my system, becouse i don't have any shooting experince.

as i said before a normal soldier would have a skill of 8 which i added to a D12 roll. when you roll a "12" you roll again adding it on top.

Now i need a Target number for a normal rifle to hit.
i would sugjest this: [remeber that this is a non-moving human size target]. there should be added modifers for moving target and size, in cover and such later.
METERS     TN
2m   8
3-10m   9
11-20m   10
21-30m   11
31-40m   12
41-50m   13
51-60m   14
61-70m   15
71-80m   16
81-90m   17
91-100m   18

anyway i will really what a system who are kinda realistic rather then just fit it in with my fantasy. i want the system to be believeble.
So i really need your help guys.

[Overdrive]

I have some experience with firearms. I shoot .22 pistol somewhat regularly and can hit within a 10 cm circle from 25 meters most of the time. Firing all the 10 rounds fast (3 seconds?) spreads the holes to maybe 20-30 cm with one or two a bit off. With a 9mm I can't do as good, and the recoil easily spoils any fast successive shots.

In the military we used to shoot from prone position at 150 meters, hitting the center circle (30 cm?) almost all the time. The same thing from standing position at 50 meters with 3 second targets.

The targets used in target shooting are very small because firearms are quite accurate at the firing range conditions. I could probably hit a man-sized target with a pistol from 50 meters with ease. Firing a rifle prone, I'd hit the same target with properly aligned sights from well over 300 meters, if it was clearly visible; at least with some practice. Oh, during one exercice, blue torso-size targets were popping up and down much like in America's Army (the PC game mentioned), and I think we hit those even at about 300 meters or more.

But last summer we were playing paintball with semi-automatic guns with horrendous muzzle velocities. Every hit hurt like hell, and the guns could spray huge amounts of ammo in the air. We had to run and dodge all the time to avoid being hit. One time I managed to sneak behind an opponent, aimed for as long as I dared, and missed at 5 meters. Missed again, and again, and then the guy turned around and began shooting at me. Somehow I hit him in the head before he hit me.

Think of this what you want. Someone said that shooting does not fit Gaussian probability curve -- at times people make gross errors much greater than what the standard deviation indicate. In other words, you might hit the center all the time, but sometimes miss completely.

[bergh]

i have read it, and i will try to come up with some rules, and write again, soon, but please write more if you think you can help me

[Mike Holmes]

Have you read the thread, Bergh, on Fear and Confusion in the theory section? It might be enlightening. The point is that range relatively little effect on accuracy, despite what people might think. Human senses, and ability to correct with hand-eye coordination basically work on a geometric scale. That is, usually something is required to double before it has an effect on perception. For example, to passively detect an audible difference in the volume of two sounds one has to be twice as loud as the next.

So, for range, in general, things become slightly harder at twice the range. So, if you say that 5m has a TN of 8, then 10 meters should have a TN of 9, 20 a TN of 10 and so on.  In fact, the TN for the lowest range should be based on the weapon in question. So a pistol might look more like 2 meters TN 8, 4 meters TN 9, 8 meters TN 16, etc.

But this all assumes just the human element. There are effects that impact the flight of a round that make things harder at longer range. These are actually proportional to the distance. For instance windage is proportional to distance. That is, if there's a wind that would be -1 at 10 meters, it's -2 at 20 meters. Given that there's no such thing as absolutely still air, some proportional effect for range should occur. Further, things like round drop "accellerate" through the process, so at the end, there's an increasing effect of range. So this works against you as well.

The problem is that every weapon is different in terms of how well it resists things like windage and drop over range. Eventually you reach "max effective range" which is the range beyond which effects like this make firing essentially random - good aim is no longer a factor. Then there's the question of how easy the weapn is to aim...

So, if you really want to be accurate in modeling range and firearms, you have to have a separate set of TNs for each weapon. Essentially it's pointless to say that there are only two weapons, pistols and rifles, for these purposes. There are some pistols which can effectively fire twice as far as others, and rifles that have up to ten times the max effective range as others.

Most systems aren't willing to go to these lengths to model firearm fire. What GURPS does, is the next best thing. It makes range a penalty based on the original vision idea at the top of the post, and then gives each weapon an "accuracy" modifier. That can go some way to cancelling the range modifiers. In this way you get about 10 levels of differentiation without having to list each weapon separately.

As an example, if you have a rifle with an ACC+4, and you're at a range of 40 meters (32-64 meters), then you have a -5 for range, or a net -1 for that weapon at that range. The target number in GURPS is skill, so to translate this to your system would require that you have a set TN for hitting somebody and add the penalties instead of subtracting. So, if 8 is the normal TN, then in our example, you'd need a 9.

Note that in order to take care of the windage and drop, etc, all weapons are then also rated in terms of a max effective range - otherwise skilled shooters could exceed these ranges by far more than is realistic. Further, in a system like this, target size and movement are all handled by exactly the same doubling/halving method. That is, if we say that a man is about 2 meters and the base, then a target 1 meter high is -1, .5 meters is -2, etc. Something moving 2 meters per second is -1, 4 is -2, 8 is -3, 16 mps is -4, etc.


The real trick here is none of this stuff. It's figuring out what to set that basic TN at. The problem is that you have to think about what goes into it. Essentially, following what people have said here, and the thread I referenced, it's one thing to shoot at a target, and quite another to shoot an somebody who might shoot back. The question is one of aim. Few shots taken are aimed properly. That is, most of the time people firing are shooting more or less randomly in the direction of the opponent. They do this because it makes the opponent less likely to take time to aim (it reinforces the same behavior in the opponent), and it makes them exposed for less time. Shots made unaimed have a very small chance to hit the target.

So the winning tactic in this case is actually to poke your head up, aim carefully and fire. Again, given that your opponent is just firing randomly, you aren't actually likely to be hit. The problem, however, is that guns make a lot of noise, and overcoming the urge to duck is really hard. Note that ducking is pointless. By the time you hear the shot, the round will be inside of you (they travel at speeds similar to that of sound if not faster, so there's no time to react). But people still do it. The rationalization is that there may be a second or third bullet following - someone is firing. So you better duck to keep those from getting you.

This is what leads to the tremendous numbers of rounds that are fired without a hit. So, first consideration is whether or not the player has control over the PCs fear. If so, then this can be ignored to some extent. But even when firing aimed fire, the excitement of battle is enough that it makes one jittery and firing is difficult because of that. GURPS uses the term "buck fever" in it's section on realistic combat refering to the phenomenon that hunters note of missing easy targets because one is so excited to be taking the shot. This is with animals, much less potentially lethal human targets. So the effect is profound. If you allow PCs to ignore this effect, and just deal realisitcally with range, then they'll be extrememly lethal. This may be appropriate to some genres like action, but for many it's way too unrealitistic to be ignored.

Simply put, guns are easy to use. Shooting at another human being is very difficult. So range, while not unimpoirtant, is much less important than the psychological effects of combat. If you ignore the psychological effects, and otherwise realistically model combat, then combat becomes ridiculously lethal. Basically, your "typical soldier" will create a casualty with almost every shot.  

Mike

[bergh]

i have taken all those think into acount i think.

My system will have two tabels of TN
one for "practice shooting". which as you state is VERY easy to reach the TN.

Then im making an table for "FireFights" which has VERY high TN.

why i make two tabels and why the "firefight" table is so high, is becouse i try to take into account the confusion, high sounds, and they both you and your enemy is moving and using terrain to hide in between and making quick shooting, with out much aim.
(it is also easyer and faster to read the "firefight" TN table, then with each shoot calcualting movement modifers and such, these things are incoporated into the tabel, ofcourse extreme speed and such give additional modifers).

Im also incorporating that you can effect the TH of the "fire fight" table, but successfull "coolness" test and such.
So maybe you are a good rifle shooter when shooting at practice targets, but when you are in a fire fight, then this simply is not enough, experinced soldiers don't need to be crack shooters to win, average fire arms skill combines with the training and coolness to handle the stress of battle, is whats really gives the difference.

So as you can see i have used all your guys post as a basis, and i will post my system, when i have it more complete.

[Overdrive]

What might make all this even more complicated is that sometimes, people are not afraid of dying. If you understand that it is very unlikely to get hit when you're shot at random, without much aiming, it just might be possible to put that fear out of your mind. With intensive training of very narrow tasks, like that Rainbow 6 room clearing, you might be concentrating very hard at what you're supposed to do and do it even if fired at. And sometimes, someone might have lost his mind and ignored all threats like incoming gunfire.

This all in my opinion. But I do rock climbing, and that can be quite scary at times. When toproping, I have no fear, of course, there just is no chance to fall. I can climb pretty hard routes (for me) with a toprope. But it's a different beast to lead (i.e. place protection as you climb). The hardest leads I've done are nowhere near as hard as the hardest toproped routes. The fear of falling is very real, and sometimes incapacitates to the point that continuing even on a moderately easy section is difficult.

On the other hand, sometimes I've led pretty difficult routes and afterwards felt like I could take on the whole world. After that I've done some other lead and just forgotten about the fear. Just enjoyed the self-confidence, tried something which I'd never normally try leading. And then fallen for doing something stupid..

[Andrew Martin]

If you ignore the psychological effects, and otherwise realistically model combat, then combat becomes ridiculously lethal. Basically, your "typical soldier" will create a casualty with almost every shot.

American soldiers serving in Iraq have casualty exchange rates of one to several hundred; that is: several hundred dead Iraqi Fedayeen for each dead American soldier. Here's a quote from a soldier:

And if you are on your toes, you can often beat them to the punch (their first-round accuracy blows chunks) and rack up some kills nice and easy.  IF you are doing what you are supposed to be doing.

Now for some real world examples:
Here's a software guy that works on military simulators and his experience with shooting some guns.

A 30-year-old Bren firing the old .303 round is still the most accurate weapon I've ever fired, even firing 3 rounds automatic. Easy to get a saucer-sized grouping at 200 yards on a 3-second pop-up target. Of course I was firing from a prone position, and no-one was firing back. But I still did better than with a Lee Enfield of similar vintage, 73% on a pop-up instead of 32% at a stationary target at 200 yds, the first time I'd fired anything larger than a .22.

Same guy, with a tank simulator and anti-tank weapon:

While waiting to give my paper, I had time to hit the M1 Tank training simulator and RBS-70 simulator.

After 15 minutes on the M1, I was getting a 1st round Pk of 50% with sabot, but a lot less with HEAT. Average time from target appearing to destruction was 15 secs. That was with laser operational, but auto Fire Control off. It would have been a lot easier if there had been less cover - with no clear LOS, only an antenna to aim at through the shrubbery, you can't get a good range with a laser.

Ranges were anything from 700 metres to 4 km. Close in, the high rate-of-change-of-azimuth for crossing fast moving (60 km/h+) T-80 targets was tricky, especially as they zigged.

With the RBS-70 - well, I got two hits out of 20 attempts. The major problem was the coarse tracking. Once I'd managed to get the thing trained onto the close vicinity of the target, steering it to hit was comparatively easy. But the simulator had the Z-controls for the fine and coarse tracking reversed - pull back the thumbsticks to go down. Bleah!

Although the graphics were quite realistic (as opposed to a single moving dot on a black screen), it was very similar to the SeaCat simulator I'd used back in 1965.

It occurs to me that a simple edge-filter tracker could be made for the RBS-70 quite easily. Get the pipper close to the target, tell it 'go fetch', and it will automatically slew to centre the target on the scope. Given a good range and doppler from the laser, and the calculations involved to get a minimum-energy intercept (or even a straight constant bearing one) would be trivial. It would mean that gunner skill wouldn't be quite so important, especially with total novices. Not good vs targets in NOE, nor in bad weather. But in normal conditions, it would raise the Pk dramatically.

Abbreviations:
"Pk" is "Probability of Kill".
"NOE" is "Nap of Earth".