dont bother deleting names ,I always think I can debate from what I posted Eddie!
And no offense from a little factual information could possibly be percieved.
as for you claiming to finally bring logic and or common sense to the thread ..well you arent the first Yankee serviceman to come across a
little on the strong side ...so whatever.
But I read the initial post more like a GM thinking "I want to arm the guys like this -or is that not doable ..? "
I still think the pick and mix approach has merit gamewise .I also think that the battlefield pick up variety has merit gamewise -and quite possibly in RL too,especially if talking a T2K enviroment .You will use whatever is more convenient -and from the first wars on record to the last ones we have had ,enemy gear and weapons have been used a great deal or just some -but still -its used.
The textbook example is most logical as agreed on -everyone with the standard rifle or carbine for their national service.Being sent overseas with a hodgepodge of weapons doesnt seem likely from a US POV.
Still,the other examples strike me as more interesting in game terms.Firstly , the weaponry can help outline the PC .The big strong MG gunner,the careful and skinny young guy with only a pistol ,the deadly and silent sniper rifle guy that is probably a psycho etc etc .
When the players have different ranges,damage stats and firepower - the game dynamics also change so that combat becomes different than if everyone has the same .Also having a little less than the enemy can be interesting .Players have to choose their terrain and posistions more carefully,and assign roles suited to their gear etc -good for cooperation in the party.Having the players slightly outgunned makes for great sessions -imho.Hence - some sidearms and shotguns will weaken the firepower considerably compared to an all carbine armed group.
I latch on to the battlefield pick up /captured weapons theory as well - depending on circumstances in game of course - any break or dealy in the supply chain might give results from soldiers eating enemy supplies and burning enemy fuel in their vehicles, to soldiers having to use enemy weapons and other gear to keep up effectiveness of the unit.
To make this "realistic" or "edible to some" will take a varying degree of stretch to make happen .As an example I guess the party can be met by a sour quartermasters detachment at the dock when they land in Europe and have all their shiny factory new carbines and gore tex gear taken away and given to hardened veterans ,and be issued a more hodgepodgy collection after .
After all -in the T2K game you can allow yourself to deviate from regulations..even more so than IRL
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eddie
Okay...I gotta go on a logic rant here. I still consider myself new to these forums because I primarily lurk, so let me apologize to the regulars here in advance that I know I'm about to offend in some unintended way. I'm not attacking anyone, just the idea of scavenging odd-ball weaponry in the Twilight environment that everyone seems to latch onto "because it's T2K, anything goes". As such, I will remove names in any quotes I take.
It's absolutely textbook. It's also logic and common sense. You have a 50m range with a 9mm, a 75-100m range with a shotgun or a 300m range with a rifle...which would you prefer to be armed with? I absolutely love the cool factor of walking around with my M9 on a FOB and during training, but when rounds were coming at me, I was grateful for standoff. That takes care of the common sense part.
"But you take what you can find...it's Twilight, after all..."
Yeah, exactly, but stop and think about it. NATO sent all these troops into the fight at the start of the conflict. How were they armed when they were sent? Was there a shortage of "textbook" weaponry? I mean after all, a unit doesn't get sent to combat unless they have the majority of their MTOE equipment, and specifically they won't go unless they have all of what is called their "pacing items" (I can talk more about pacing items if you wish, but really it's more real-world information than necessary at this point). MTOE gives the majority of combat soldiers a rifle or machinegun (light or otherwise, and yes, an M249 is a machinegun by definition) as their primary weapon, with a few special jobs receiving an additional pistol as a backup or in some extreme cases as the primary.
Then people start dying.
What do you think the most excess, lying-around weapons are going to be? The few thousand backup weapons spread throughout the theater, or the primary combat weapon of whatever nation the troops deployed from? And what nations sent the most troops into a theater? Has the largest supply chains? The US and Russia, right?
Now then, because the nation in question was the US and the Army was specifically named, I have personally sat in Brigade-level meetings on a monthly basis since June because up until last week I was a company commander for an Infantry company, and believe me...no COL or LTC is going to send a unit to a combat theater understrength on rifles. They'll do what is called a "lateral transfer" from rear-echelon units or better yet non-deployable units and trade out all pistols if nothing else. Or an Operational Needs Statement (ONS) before deploying to buy enough weapons for everyone to deploy with.
Now battle damage and casualties will wear down the availability of rifles, but most of the casualties will be meat damage, not metal damage, but even if a single Army Battalion bought every single M4 in existence, all of them died, and the weapons had to be coded out, there are still hundreds of thousands of M16s in the inventory and I'd say tens of thousands of M14s (which would be an even cooler game-twist in my opinion), which will be the subject of those lateral transfers for combat. How long does it take? When I was stationed at Ft. Drum in 1999 and we gave up all of our M16s to the NY NG and we received M4s, it took one day for them to pick up the weapons and less than a week for our supply guy to complete all of the paperwork transactions. As a company commander now, when I laterally transferred my four SAWs for M4s in August, it took three days to get the weapons and close out with the Property Book Office.
As for the shotguns, there are 16-28 per battalion (less than M9s) based on type of Infantry unit...other types of units filling in the Infantry role typically have less than 50% of Infantry-assigned weaponry according to the Center for Army Lessons Learned.
Now all of this takes into the Original Posters comment:
I fully acknowledge once in theater, away from the flagpole trying to survive, PC instinct takes over and they raid every single body they come across. I fully acknowledge that if the OP is starting in media res, they could have acquired other weaponry. I fully acknowledge that having all US weaponry limits them to only NATO ammunition. I'm just answering the question asked by the Original Poster in the parameters that he gave us.
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