Expanding T2013's Careers and Starting Equipment

[3catcircus]

So I've been going through an exercise to redo the layout of Twilight:2013, rearranging the sections of the book to flow better - such as moving the life paths and character generation section before the skills, pulling the equipment section before the combat section, etc. It's pretty much just a cut and paste job between pdf and Word, but in doing so, I'm looking at some areas of concern.

I'd like to better differentiate Assault Infantry - are these Mountain, Airborne, Mechanized - and how to indicate as such? The Special Ops life paths are too difficult to qualify for - in real life, there are plenty of soldiers wearing Ranger tabs, but the prereqs make it look like your character needs to be an olympic athlete with genius level IQ.

I'm thinking of taking V2.2s careers and formalizing an equivalent first career pass in T2013 - for examples, if you take the skill levels in Assault Infantry, and designate specific levels in specific skills, it is a standard Mech Infantry vs Airborne vs Mountain, etc. I also like the idea of converting the v2.2 prereqs for T2013, but bumping then up to reflect the max starting attributes being one higher than in v2.2.

Thoughts and recommendations?

Also, any recommendations on a list of standard personal equipment by nationality? I'm having difficulty finding what is standard issue kit...

[Milano]

I am still hoping to recreate some of the small arms in tw2013. Might anyone have any leads on the math behind them?

[pmulcahy11b]

The Special Ops life paths are too difficult to qualify for - in real life, there are plenty of soldiers wearing Ranger tabs, but the prereqs make it look like your character needs to be an olympic athlete with genius level IQ.

..

In a way, it's sort of realistic, in a way it's not. In my Airborne class, we lost over 30%. In Ranger School, we lost close to 50%. Even in Infantry OSUT, we started out with 250 recruits and graduated 197 Infantrymen.

I've never tried it, but loss rate for Delta and DEVGRU candidates is around 90%.

The Commander of the WWII OSS (which spawned both the CIA and SF), COL Bill Donovan, once said, "I'm looking for a Princeton graduate who can win a bar fight -- and not get caught afterwards."

[Tegyrius]

I am still hoping to recreate some of the small arms in tw2013. Might anyone have any leads on the math behind them?

http://www.de-fenestra.com/t2k/images/reflex_ballistics.gif

http://www.de-fenestra.com/t2k/ballistics.html

All credit goes to Justin Stodola (user Spoe on this forum).

- C.

[3catcircus]

In a way, it's sort of realistic, in a way it's not. In my Airborne class, we lost over 30%. In Ranger School, we lost close to 50%. Even in Infantry OSUT, we started out with 250 recruits and graduated 197 Infantrymen.

I've never tried it, but loss rate for Delta and DEVGRU candidates is around 90%.

The Commander of the WWII OSS (which spawned both the CIA and SF), COL Bill Donovan, once said, "I'm looking for a Princeton graduate who can win a bar fight -- and not get caught afterwards."

The issue is that the granularity of the careers doesn't distinguish between the equivalent of, say, earning a Ranger tab and being assigned to a special operations-capable unit doing high speed low drag stuff.

I would argue that simulating getting a Ranger tab wouldn't be part of the Special Ops careers. Not taking away the difficulty of Ranger School, but I assume that the "Special Operations Training" career is intended to simulate RASP, SFQC, BUD/S, etc. And "Elite Infantry" would simulate 75th Ranger Rgt, SF, SEALs, etc. It reads like it leads to one of the 18 series SF MOS.

The question becomes then, how do the "Assault Infantry" and "Naval Infantry" fall into the picture. TW2013s rules sort of imply that Assault Infantry could be anything from mechanized infantry 11Bs to 82nd Airborne to 10th Mtn or anything in between. Naval Infantry reads like USMC -or- SEALs.

There's just too little info in the TW2013 career descriptions to be able to fully define which types of unit the various careers are actually trying to simulate.

That, and the careers don't really do a good job (in any edition of the game) of simulating the initial training and qualification - whether 3-week long Airborne school, 62-day Ranger School, Nuclear Power training pipeline (18 months of a million dollar education shoved down my throat a nickel at a time...), or the old 4 week navy apprenticeship training school immediately after boot camp.

[Milano]

@ Tegyrius ---- YOU ARE MY HERO!! I've been looking for something, anything, for years! Thank you for giving me\us this.

[Milano]

After playing with the formula some can I verify the variables with you?

gr = is the Grain weight of the bullet

ft / s= is feet a second of the bullet art that range. (I realize this is dependent upon BCs etc)

d = damage

r = radius of the bullet

mv = muzzle velocity in ft/sec

e = no idea!


Might there also be any formulas for Range, Spd, Recoil and Bulk ? Thank you very much for any information you may be able to share or directions to point me.

I also REALLY like your website and the encounter generator. Thank you for that as well.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

e is probably "energy" but I'll admit that my knowledge of shorthand for scientific notation is very limited.

[3catcircus]

e is Euler's number. It's a constant.

mv are mass and velocity. Kinetic energy equation is 1/2 mass multiplied by velocity squared.

It appears that the square root term becomes dimensionless. The cube root term is raised to the 2/3 of a power (cubed root of a squared dimension). As ac result, I assume d is the damage as a function primarily of the size and mass of the projectile. Which seems to make sense (large, slow projectile vs small fast projectile).

I assume s in the k1, k2, and k3 is seconds.

[Tegyrius]

I didn't develop the ballistic formula - as noted above, Justin Stodola built it for us. I'm not that much of a mathematician.

For the other traits, try this. Note that I haven't looked at this document in 13 or 14 years, so my ability to answer questions like "what the hell were you thinking" is kind of limited. I've eaten and slept since then, so my memory is somewhat faded.

http://www.de-fenestra.com/t2k/downloads/T2013_Reflex_System_firearm_design.pdf

I coded the JavaScript calculator around the same time, so, again, my memory of how the math works is not very fresh either...

- C.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

e is Euler's number. It's a constant.


Ah, I have knowledge!
Maths was never my strong point so things like this are typically in the "what the hell is that?" zone for me

[3catcircus]

I didn't develop the ballistic formula - as noted above, Justin Stodola built it for us. I'm not that much of a mathematician.

For the other traits, try this. Note that I haven't looked at this document in 13 or 14 years, so my ability to answer questions like "what the hell were you thinking" is kind of limited. I've eaten and slept since then, so my memory is somewhat faded.

http://www.de-fenestra.com/t2k/downloads/T2013_Reflex_System_firearm_design.pdf

I coded the JavaScript calculator around the same time, so, again, my memory of how the math works is not very fresh either...

- C.

Justin deserves a ton of credit for developing the ballistics calculations - lots of under-the-hood math going on to go from masses and velocities and convert real-world energy values into dimensionless game mechanics.

Your coding of the javascript tool to implement that equation deserves an equal amount of credit - makes it extremely easy to plug in information and get an output quickly for the math-disabled.

[Olefin]

Love to have more Twilight 2013 info for the 4th issue of the fanzine- anyone who wants to submit articles please get in touch with me - would like to have it as a regular part of the fanzine