AP or not AP

[kikashi]

In recent games at my club, we have been having a bit of difficulty with deciding when a Specialist counts as a Grunt & when as a vechicle.
E.g. When firing at a specialist Man-packed Anti-Tank gun, do you use the AP bonus of a weapon or not?
Likewise, with a Powersuited Assault Specialist?

We have found that the latter is v.difficult to kill without using AP, so decided that it will be used against those, but not against the former.

However, we would like an official ruling please, so that we keep in step with the rest of the community.

Mark

[kikashi]

Also, a generic way of deciding this issue should it occur with different specialists.

Thanks

[wikkid]

Personally I use the armour of the target as the deciding factor (this could be model specific based on wysiwyg).

Although I appreciate there are sci fi armour types which are not necessarily hard armour, I work on the general assumption that the AP characteristic of a weapon is only of use against hard armour. So vehicles, power armoured specialists (including unarmoured crew on grav bikes [the bike is hard after all]) etc.

I do not include Gruntz in hard armour, on the basis for the armour to be heavy enough to need AP rounds, the Grunt would not be physically able to carry the weight.

Just my 2p worth.

[pancake]

Yeah i'm with wikkid on this, its down to whats difined has armour. Gruntz in power armour are still gruntz, you would'nt waste an AP shot on one grunt. Specialist are very diffetent and yes man packed gun crews are a gray area. There should
be some way of a rule for shooting an AP round at a man packed gun. But at the moment they have damage boxes on the card to represent both crew and gun together. Fire an AP round at speialist gun crew at the moment i'd say the gun is a good target for AP so if the weapon fired is +2 AP it would take damage +2 AP. But would be nice to have robins input on this cheers.

[inrepose]

From a weapon perspective I was trying to provide the feeling that anti-infantry carried weapons tend to be very poor at penetrating tank armour. For heavy weapons with AP against soft targets it is ignored because the technology is design to penetrate heavier armours and is wasted on softer targets.

My current planning was based around not factoring in crew in damage e.g. You destroy the vehicle and crew are wasted with it - unless they are carried in an APC in which case they get a chance to bail.

Pancake is right, as per current rules, because if you shoot at a crewed weapon you are currently considered to be targeting the weapon. However I can see the issue where you might want to target the crew because they could be picked off as softer targets, in which case you don't have a regular stat card to hand for them. I think in the rules I did mention that crew should use your "standard army Grunt" statistics, so you could for most games simply treat them as your default Grunt (accept SKILL) and target them individually.

If you shoot the gun crew, for simplicity, another Gruntz unit could split to take over the crew role if they take an action beside the gun (if it has not also been destroyed).

I always wanted the rules to enable Gruntz to hijack vehicles but had not spent a lot of time thinking about unlimbered artillery crews. I have some GZG field guns painted and ready to play with so I will give it some more thought and work on a way to break down the categories (I think there is another thread where someone has suggested some categories).

[pancake]

Cheers Robin.

[kikashi]

If we are able to target the crew separately, would we not need to specify how many crewmen are needed to be able to fire a weapon?
this is going to lead to more record keeping I fear.

The problem does go beyond this however, because the "Specialist" unit type does cover a very wide range of options.
From my Assault Walkers, to snipers.

Perhaps the simplest solution is to say that any selected movement type, other than Grunt Walk, is classed as a vehicle, so AP is applied?

[inrepose]

That could work as an option, it does not make motorbike/gravbike riders a little tougher than I would like though. At this stage I would like to avoid record keeping for crew but I will give it some more thought.

[kikashi]

I wasn't saying that the record keeping was a good thing, far from it! I was trying to show up a flaw in the idea of treating the crew separately!

I think it would be much better to have 1 set of stat for the gun and crew combined, as we have now. The stats can be rationalised as a compromise between the stats for a gun on it's own, and an Gruntz squad.

The only problem I see is in deciding whether a Specialist is a Grunt or a vehicle, as it occurs to me that it also would make a difference between being vulnerable to small arms fire, and whether they double moved that turn, etc.

[kikashi]

In response to your comment on bike mounted troops, perhaps there should be the existing Specialist options for models carrying heavy weapons, and a 'mounted infantry' option for Gruntz that just use small arms.

As you may remember, this is something that I am keen on, as it would allow me to field a full blown Hammers Slammers army. The background for HS has the infantry riding hover bikes into combat but dismounting to fight. This does away with the need for separate transport so would need to be costed appropriately. The speed advantage could be offset by making them more vulnerable to shooting whilst mounted, perhaps a -2 or -3 to their guard stat, and no ability to go prone.
If we said 1 action to mount/dismount, I think they would be fairly well balanced, but I would be glad to hear your thoughts.

If ordinary Gruntz can be given jet/jump packs, they should be able to have bikes, horses or even teleportation devices, IMHO.

[comstar]

Sounds like a good perk to me and not a jet bike specialist!
They move like jet bike specialist then as you say have to spend an action getting off then act like normal troops I would say for sake of keeping game simple they keep there same stats! This could be except that they move fast with a double move may be a better option and can't shoot unless they can dismount takes an action. Could be a bugger with suppresion though!

[EllAtromy]

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