correct scale of accuracy?

[error808]

Hi

what I am doing is having ideal conditions

then adding on tierdness, suppression fire, experience of solider etc to find out the probability of a hit

ie Officer hitting a target at 300m, with a carbine, no scope in combat conditions would be 10% incrediable fluke, even if the target is standing stationary.

I'm hoping to reuse as many numbers as possible...

100,88,50,38,10,5,0 is the scale for, moral,stanima, health, firing stance, suppress etc

does this scale sound right? and how could I relate them effectively?

atm standing is 50% acc, and snap fire from hip is 38% acc,

devide by 50% then devide by 38% ?

then again which order should the rolls be in?

moral
health
supression
stanima

stance
aim type
soldier experience

weapon acc
range to enemy
elivation

+ relivant enemy stats

i wonder with all this deviding wether anyone will hit anyone else

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

Am I correct in guessing that you want a hyper-realistic game about modern warfare?

Right now, the stats don't really have any context- can you give an example of how they might fit together in a hypothetical example of play?

Also, if realism is a major factor, what are you using as research? 

Do players play one character, or many?  (since, getting injured is a quick road out of play, assuming combat is the focus)

What other games that do similar things have you looked at, if any?  What do you think is worth emulating, what do you want to do better?

Chris

[error808]

first off, this is my version of sodoku , no its just I've played a couple of "calculator" games, where combat is limited, likewise I've taken a peak at a couple of combatish rpgs, but I can't get my head round dice, I prefer %,

well I'm going for realism I was worried at first but given my research in combat stats are like...

aprox 35% hit rate, aprox 150m range (without combat conditions it would be 63%)

5% lethal
95% incapasitating
overall 1.75% chance of leathal

(taken from ghost recon, cold war crisis and wikipedia, which doesn't include any moral issue... ie in reality you would take cover more if you are getting shot at for real, plus given its a game I knew roughly where the enemy was)

if you throw body armour into the mix, an incapasitating hit could be recovered from dependant on serverity. (ghost recon works on same principle, likewise in rpgs even a head shot can be survived)

in terms of mechanics, I'm thinking players have a groups of soldiers to compensate,

roughly speaking, I'm thinking a set number of rolls per engagement with an advantage bonus system

therefore combat is more open to change, I'm guessing engine, does the hard work, with human description

for example,

Stats...
Bad roll on both sides...A rolls a slightly better roll than team B (advantage A)

Combat
Unit A orientates towards the enemy, but only a few fire.

Stats...
Average roll for B, poor for A, (Advantage B)

Combat
Unit B Machine gunners lay down supressing fire, sniper goes prone and begins aquiring

Stats...
Both sides have good rolls but B wins. (Advantage B).

Combat
All of both teams enegage.

Unit B Sniper scores hit on leader.
Machine gunner scores hit and suppresses.

Unit A fires Grenade Launcher and hits. Exposed soldiers find cover.
Other friendly units come to help.

Stats...
Ok rolls, Unit A scores slightly higher than B (Advantage A)

Combat
Both teams pull back and try to out flank.

Stats...
Unit A scores excellant roll (Advantage A)

Combat
As luck would have it a freindly Tank and APC roll in with troop support.

Result
Unit B killed. Although Unit B is a small part of Team B.

[Chris_Chinn]

Hi,

I was also curious if you checked out any other games that do modern combat?  Burning Empires does a great manuevering fireteam kind of thing, the Sanguine version of Albedo also has a lot of solid rules for shock, staying cool under fire, etc.  There's also a lot of older games like Twilight 2000 that focus heavy on firefights.

If realism is high priority, you might want to check out some websites for veterans or go talk to some of them.  A few of my friends who are currently serving have surprised me with stories of bullets literally bouncing off of people's heads (no helmet!) and similarly scary/strange things.

Also, is the game mostly about tactical manuevering?  Is there any kind of play/concerns about soldier morale- as combatants, as human beings, etc.?

Chris

[Callan S.]

Hi,

You might have been joking about the sedoku. But do you imagine that the game will sharpen your wits, like doing a soduku or a crossword does? And if so, is that a feature for you? Specifically you, what other people think doesn't count as an answer.

[Vulpinoid]

Sorry, but the accuracy issue is a point for me here too.

I have read a specific statistic about the US Military in Vietnam in a few sources (Note that I'm in Australia, and we had our own soldiers in Vietnam who fought with slightly different tactics). My sources are from the current Australian military as well as a few American publications.

I did quite a bit of research in this area for a series of convention games in the late 90s (as well as ongoing research for the miniatures game I'm working on).

The specific statement I've read indicates that only 1 in 200 bullets fired by American soldiers during Vietnam actually hit a legitimate target. This isn't kill shots, this isn't accidental friendly fire. This is the rate for the US Military of the time dealing damage to their opponents.

So I'm not sure where you get your 35% hit rate from?

Sure you could say that the 35% was severly dropped during Vietnam due to low morale, dense jungle coverage and other factors. But lets say low morale halves your chance to hit, and really low morale drops it to a quarter. And similarly, let's say light coverage also halves the chance to hit while heavy coverage drops it to a quarter. Multiply out the values and a 16th of 35% is more like a 4% chance of scoring a hit. That's still about 8 times too high.

Other modifiers like injuries, misfired shots and faulty ammo couldn't account for that much. Especially when you consider that visibility in the jungles of Vietnam doesn't extend much beyond 50m in most cases, and the Viet Cong didn't often fight in the open.

Show me where the stats come from that you're using, because as far as I can see from looking at Iraq, it doesn't look like things have changed too much

I could be wrong with my figures, but if you're quoting "realism" make sure the core numbers are correct.

On the other hand, too much number crunching and division slows a game down dramatically. So you'll also need to consider whether the aim of your game is to simulate every bullet shot, whether it's designed to play at real-time speed, or somewhere between the two extremes.

V

[error808]

when I said soduko, I meant me playing around with numbers (not players)

I've checked out ufo enemy unknown, which gave me good mechanic ideas (thanks for the references)

I agree with what you guys are saying, I'm planning to work out conditional statements so calculations are reduced

lets put it this way, I am thinking of all the things which could go wrong and adding it to the stats

the example given is; prone 100% human accuracy, 65%hit chance, with 65% chance of spread at 150m, stationary standing target (100% target area) with no reaction, no human error, no wind etc

though in reality most shots would be from kneeling, with stamina, moral, wind, miss fire, weather, terraine, enemy movement etc

thus I ask what would be an acceptable scale?

if prone is 100-90% of human accuracy (without everything else taken into consideration)

kneeling 38%? standing 10%?

hence even a 100% acc soldier, kneeling would be <38% acc (minus everything else)

hence if the soldier is 50% tierd after running, equals <19% acc

the rest of his unit is killed, moral 10%, <1.9% acc

bravery test failed, soldier goes into shock, crawls for nearest cover

hence put into the right order

"Everyone in the unit is killed, last man weirly craws for cover and becomes a blubbering mess."

therefore, no heavy lengthy calculations have to occur

atm I've got

Condition: Calculates overall, health, stamina, moral.

Detection: % chance of detecting enemy according to stance movement, angle, range etc

Accuracy: % accuracy taking into account detection and soldier condition.

lol this post was longer

[Ron Edwards]

Vulpinoid, this is a moderator post for you.

In our culture of gamers, people think they own certain words, like realism. So when someone else wants to discuss realism in designing their game, others leap into the conversation to make sure that their version of the word gets attention and gets into the first person's design.

Let's not do that here. If you want to discuss realism in game design as it applies for you, then you need to start your own thread about that game, or better, post in Actual Play to clarify what you mean by the term. But here, in this thread, there is no realism except for the one inside the thread author's head. You should only be posting in this thread if you think you can stay with that, and to focus on what he wants out of the term, for his game. Offering resources or ideas for resources, like Chris did, is great. Hammering on more details because those are the ones you care about isn't - it will only distract and bog down the person's focus on his game.

Best, Ron

[Vulpinoid]

Sorry, Point taken.

V

[Callan S.]

Hi again error808,

Just suggesting this cause it might be a fun thing for you: Would working out just the right numbers with your friends, be a fun activity? Like spending a night just hashing it out? A friend of mine and his brother spent an evening hashing out a map for a game world, sounded like they had a ball doing it. Here your working out the statistics of war - rather than doing that in advance of the game, would that actually be a fun activity to do with friends?

Just asking incase it sounds like fun, because such an activity can have structure and rules which make it even more fun, too.

[contracycle]

I think some of th stats are being interpreted incorrectly.  It may be that only 1 in 200 rounds struck a target, but they may not all have been fired at targets.  Given the practices of the "mad minute" and recon-by-fire, quite a lot of ammo was expended speculatively.  Probably accuracy against a fixed target is about the same as for any other group of people.

FPS's also offer another baseline.  Less than a third of all shots I fire in a game hit a target, but my headshot percentage is high.  I'm not a bad shot; but I often fire to give myself cover, or into a cloud of smoke or through boxes, or to force someone else to stay behind cover.

Total expenditure of ammo is affected by things other than the probability of hitting a target you can see.  I think RPG's do this rather poorly, in that the way task resolution works almost every shot fired is heading toward a real target with a decent probability of success.  A 5-on-5 gunfight will probably see only 10 or 20 shots fired, if that, whereas it should probably be on the order of a hundred or so.

[Vulpinoid]

Total expenditure of ammo is affected by things other than the probability of hitting a target you can see.  I think RPG's do this rather poorly, in that the way task resolution works almost every shot fired is heading toward a real target with a decent probability of success.  A 5-on-5 gunfight will probably see only 10 or 20 shots fired, if that, whereas it should probably be on the order of a hundred or so.

This is a good point also. When I wrote my post about the 1 in 200 shots, I had forgotten some other research I've done for a highly themed "Wild West Gunslinger" game. There were some very spectacular shootouts in the 1860s through the southwest. If I remember correctly, one of these had a local law enforcer causing five kill shots with five bullets in six seconds.

So I'll concede that there are distinctly different levels of skill out there, and maybe this should play a larger part in the calculations involved.

I guess that it's similar for covering fire. This may not damage the target but it stresses them out, and causes them to lose accuracy on their shots.

Consider it this way...If you watch the movie "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", this counts as whether or not you shoot "American Style".

V

[dindenver]

Hi!
  I noticed with your % spread, that is it close to (not a perfect match, but maybe close enough) to the point spread on a d6
6 or less=100%
5 or less=83%
4 or less=67%
3 or less=50%
2 or less=33%
1 or less=17%
0 or less=0%

  So, what I would suggest in order to maintain that sense of realism you are going for, but  to make it more accessible to the math challenged is a series of 1d6 rolls
  You want to factor in the following:
- morale
- health
- suppression
- stamina
- stance
- aim type
- soldier experience
- weapon acc
- range to enemy
- elevation
- + relevant target stats/actions

  I would suggest instead of rolling 11 or more times for each action, that you break it down to key factors and have some of the others simply modify those. Maybe there should be three rolls:

Attacker
- Soldier experience (this is the main factor rated 0-6 or some such)
- Morale (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Health (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Suppression (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Stamina (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Stance (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Aim type (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Weapon acc (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)

Environment
- Cover (This is rated 0-6 or some such)
- Range to enemy (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Elevation (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Wind (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)

Defender
- Stance (this is rated 0-6 maybe?)
- Action (Running, etc) (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Morale (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Health (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Suppression (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)
- Soldier experience (This provides a +1 to -1 mod maybe?)

  So, if you were making an attack, there would be three rolls, 2 made by you or the GM and one by the target. The first roll would be the attackers ability. In other words, how good is the character at handling the weapon and handling the pressure/implications. The player would roll 1d6 and need to roll less than or equal to the Attackers Experience level (rated from 0-6), but modified by the attacker's current conditions (morale, etc.). Using the above rough guideline that makes for a range of -7 to 13 at the most extreme ends of the spectrum. If that roll succeeds, then either the attacker or GM rolls for the Environment. Starting with how much Cover the Target enjoys, but modified by other factors. With the above guidelines, you get extreme ranges of -3 to 9. If this roll fails, then the bullet is still on target. Finally, the Target gets to defend. In this case we'll start with the Target's Stance and modify based on the Target's current condition (Morale, etc). We get extreme ranges of -5 to 11. If this roll fails, the target has been hit. assuming circumstances do not force rolls to automatically fail. You have the worst odds of hitting falling around 0.5% (The odds of rolling a 1, then a 6 and another 6 in that order with one roll each). Especially with large fire teams, this should be easy and quick to calculate and easy and quick to roll.

  Finally, Ron has a point, when you say "realistic", many people have many different opinions. And the debate is endless as to what is or is not realistic in this or that RPG. Even in fantasy RPGs where the actions you could do in real life are few and far between! So, bear that in mind when taking people's advice. But also realize that no matter how much research you do and how much care you put into making the game realistic, there will always be someone (maybe even a playtester) who claims the game is "totally unrealistic." I think if you approach this game with the intent of satisfying yourself based on the realism (and no one else), and that someone will call your mechanics unrealistic, then you should be able to finish the game with confidence.
  Hope this helps, good luck man!