Targeting a Group

[CRMcNeill]

I was reminded recently of a preparatory military tactic of dispersing troops or vehicles in order to prevent them being easily targeted by an area effect weapon. I can see this being a useful rule for gaming purposes when trying to rule the effects of a potentially area-effect weapon like a flamethrower or a repeating blaster. I've had a similar idea for running starfighter squadrons, where an Attack Formation has the fighters bunched together, sacrificing maneuverability for shield collaboration and greater ease of coordinated fire, but could also be engaged as a single target by capital ship weapons. However, the premise is also potentially valid for capital ships, vehicles, and even a small group of characters.

Just to start the ball rolling, how far apart should a group of characters be to avoid being targeted as a group by, say, a heavy repeating blasters. Same question for a group of speeders or walkers.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[RyanDarkstar]

How about something simple like 10% of the targets' range of the weapon being used? For example, with a light repeater, anyone outside 5/12/30 of each other would be exempt from the area of effect.

Or to make it deadlier, just up the percentage 20% or up to 50%.
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Currently playing D&D 5E and painting an unholy amount of miniatures.

[Mamatried]

if shooting at a group (but targeting one) and miss then there could be a GM wild dice roll to see if the missed shot hit the guy beside the target.

this way you still target the one, but can hit the group.

as for a flame thrower or a weapon with an area of effect then I would rule that all the targets covered by the area will take damage, and then something like reduce damage by range, meaning the very "tip" of the flames brushed over you compared to being in the center of the flame, taking the full force.
sp if you are at the edge of the range then very little damage, in center more damage etc

I can see a -2 withing 1-2 feet, -1D at 3-5 feet and -1D+2 at 5-10ft, or something similar on an arc basically

[Naaman]

Not sure if this is what you have in mind, but given your other rules, here's my suggestion.

When using auto-fire, simply declare that the shooter is attacking the area occupied by a group. For each auto-fire die not added to the attack roll, increase the difficulty to dodge by X (play around with it to find what makes sense to you). Anyone in the affected area that fails the dodge roll takes base damage from the attack.

Considerations:

Density of fire: troops that are sufficiently spread out should be less affected. A Weapon that has more auto-fire dice can more easily overcome disbursed formations (my suggestion above basically accounts for this).

Combined Fire: More shooters increases density of fire... so a way to account for this would be nice to see.

Area targeting is basically indiscriminate: There is somewhat of a "luck" factor that may be best represented by a modifier on the target's dodge rolls (this is a little tricky, since the suggestion above applies a density of fire bonus to an attack roll: a bonus on dodge rolls has a mitigating effect, which may render the notion moot... but it "feels right" to me for now). Perhaps, any character dodging gains a bonus if they perform a full dodge (something big enough to make full dodge a GREAT idea when subject to high density area-of-effect fire).

You may find this last bit interesting: according to the US Marines (IIRC), a machine gunner can expect 82% of his rounds to "be effective" when firing at a cyclic rate (I assume you understand the concept of "effective fire" with respect to military doctrine).

[CRMcNeill]

I'm leaning strongly toward using a simple binary choice; either a group of ships/vehicles/characters are in close formation, and can thus be attacked as a group (or may use Auto-Fire dice to offset MAPs when attacking multiple targets), or they are sufficiently dispersed that this can't be done. The actual distances involved would be more for narrative purposes, so that the GM can describe how widely separated a group is, or dictate that circumstances prohibit a group from being one or the other. A squad of stormtroopers, for instance, can't be dispersed when attempting to come through the hatch on a starship, and can thus be targeted as a group by repeaters, but must be dispersed when trying to move through thick jungle or similar terrain.

Does that make sense?

EDIT: There would also be offsetting advantages and disadvantages for each in most cases, such as bonuses to coordinated fire when in Close Formation, or defensive overlap if using personal shields ala the Gungan warriors in TPM.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Mamatried]

another question is the accuracy in laying down volume of autofire be it on a tight clusterd group of spread out individuals.

I would argue that for the most par autfire is for supression and should have very high difficulties to actually hit any thing, but force the enemy prone or otherwise hider their actions as they cover from the fire.

naturally in tight quarters a short range burst will have a much better chance of hitting ans should in such case deal some more damage.

In would even go as far as rolling how many botls actually hits the grouped target, then if this is a 5D damage weapon and 3Botls hit the damage on each target "with spary and pray" would then be number targets divide by damage D and then add 3.

so the group is 4 stormtroopers they are shot with a rifle dealing 5D danage, the nymber of bolts hitting the group is 3, meaning 1 trooper is not hit.

the troopers all roll their str+armor vs the damage then they add+3 damage +1 for each bolt that hit.
the +3 in this case added after the damage/resistance roll.

in this case all the stormies failed epically and went down leaving only one.

[CRMcNeill]

I've already got an Auto-Fire rule that requires expending dozens or hundreds of rounds to get a 2D or 3D bonus, which amounts to a hit rate of ~20%, and the RAW already has a Suppression Fire rule that works well with my Auto-Fire system, so that's not really a concern. Allowing the Auto-Fire dice to be used to off-set MAPs nicely represents the advantages w/r/t hitting multiple targets with a single burst of fire. What I'm mainly interested in here is limiting the counter-MAP function to a more restrictive area than "the same Fire Arc."
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[CRMcNeill]

There's a rule from the WH40K tabletop game, where a model that was part of a squad (or squadron, in the case of Battlefleet Gothic) had to stay within a certain distance to remain part of the squad. What I'm looking at is less absolute, but on a similar principle. Being more than a certain distance away wouldn't break up the unit completely, but would break it down into sub-units, which would have to be individually targeted. For instance, a squad all standing within x meters of each other could still be targeted as a squad. However, if the squad was divided up into fire teams or elements, then each team or element would have to be targeted as a separate unit, with the MAP offset option for repeating fire only applying to other characters within the same unit.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index