Jade Imperium - OOC 13

Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-06-25 05:30:16
Hehehe. I was looking over my rolls and had to add that part about Oros not technically being dead. There was a moment where I wondered if you'd try to capture him or interrogate him (later, of course), but this way I think is the right choice. You don't need a Karl from Die Hard situation. :)

Also, I haven't had time to update the map or anything, but the eastern wherren in the habs are gonna move through the trenches south and add more firepower against the horde, in addition to bolstering the line in case the enemy breaks through to melee. I'm honestly not sure which way it'll go - the range is going to drop and your guys will be landing more hits, full-auto becomes much more viable from the SCAR wielders, but in return the enemy will close to spear range and be able to attack as they move.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-06-25 06:43:19
Also, Jesus Christ. What is it with you guys thinking you fail if the enemy gets to melee? Then wherren are in melee. That's it. It's Fight instead of Shoot, which your guys are all better at anyhow. You can fire into melee, and if you take a penalty to your shot, you don't even have a chance of hitting friendlies. (If you DON'T, however, and you miss, then you do hit friendlies. But you're more accurate without the penalty. But with the penalty a miss has no ill effects... the choice is yours.)
Gatac 2010-06-25 09:47:23
I think doing everything we can to not get overrun by a horde of enemy Wherren is a sensible goal, metagame concerns aside. I don't take particular solace in being the better fighters on paper if we have to prove that against several dozen Wherren with spears. As Stalin noted, quantity has a quality all of its own. And even if we, the PCs, escape the chaos, we're still looking at a lot of casualties among our allies.

I'm not afraid they'll completely overrun us; we're dug in too well and are doing too much damage to them to let that happen. But I don't like meeting those guys in a "fair" fight. We have several advantages in this situation, and I intend to make use of all of them to win.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-06-28 21:42:09
Semo'll be back up next round. The enemy melee force is now at d6 range.

Davis heals to 4/6 wounds and 6/18 shock. The dome top is open to air now, you can get a good view of what's going on and thus don't have to be told everything all over again. :)
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-02 04:11:51
And so technically I guess they did end up getting to melee, although it availed them naught. :)

There may or may not still be a handful of wherren archers and whatnot on the western side of camp, then at least three Khiraba in the woods, but their lines of sight to the camp are smoked up pretty good right now.

I will have to figure out actual provisions now, stuff like "how many AT4s do you actually have" and "how much ammo do you have considering you've been doing weapons training for nearly wherren every day?" The enemy might not be able to take the camp, but they are by no means done with you guys. Not until Hiigra's people swoop out of the jungle in a hairy tsunami or the Gateway finishes and the US Army sweeps out the jungle in a bullet tsunami.

You have 8 dead wherren and 10 wounded. Four of those wounded are the prison guards, and they are incapacitated and not battle-ready for a while. The rest of the wounded are still combat effective.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-02 18:31:44
I have been trying to figure out remaining weapons and ammo, and to do that I had to come up with some reasonable numbers for what you might have brought, and sadly I had to get all bean-countery and encumbrancey. It wasn't a pleasant task.

First off, the most generous number I've found for ATV towing capacity is around 1500 pounds. I'm going to knock off 100 pounds for the actual trailer and the makeshift armor you added, which I think is reasonable.

You have at least 40 rifles, with an even mix between Tenners and SCAR-Hs. For simplicity's sake I'm calling them the same unloaded weight, 8lbs. That's 320 pounds of rifles. I would think at least sixty rifles would be reasonable, since you figure there'll be some to trade to tribes, some to train friendlies on, and so on. More rifles would also allow you to arm Davis' prisoners. Let's call it 60 rifles, for 480 pounds.

This is the fourth day of Gateway construction, and I have been assured that you have kept up with the wherren firearms training. A magazine of 7.62mm weighs about 2lbs. Only 20 wherren are trained on SCARs, but even assuming an EXTREMELY light training regimen of 2 magazines per trainee per day, that's 320 lbs of spent ammo. How much ammo you'd bring with you could be variable beyond that, but you'd bring an equal number of mags per SCAR. 320 lbs fired is at minimum 6 mags packed per rifle, or 360 pounds in total. That'd leave 20 magazines left if you went that route, BTW.

The Tenners are much easier. I'm going to suppose 1 pound per fuel rod, probably... 3 rods per rifle is a reasonable but not overbearing load, times 30 rifles, is 90 pounds.

Let's not forget water. We'll assume you took only a day's worth of water for the team with you, which would be roughly 80 pounds.

Total so far is 1,010 pounds.

AT-4s are 15 pounds each, Stingers are 30 pounds. You need at least three AT-4s, because one AT-4 was fired just now and two were fired into the manta back during the camp ambush. Stingers were mentioned, so you need at least one Stinger. That's 75 pounds of explosives.

All the Claymores are gone save the few in front of the habs, but I think I mentioned there were twentyish at some point. That's 70 pounds (20 times 3.5 lbs).

None of this includes the stuff you guys carried on your own, of course.

1155 pounds now. The rest of it can be whatever you like.
16 AT-4s? Sure!
8 Stingers!
122 SCAR magazines!
245 fuel rods! Tens of thousands of Tenner shots!
Gatac 2010-07-02 18:38:40
About the plan right now, I'm okay with the team coming in, but we could do a sweep around the perimeter. The only reason for urgently coming in would be having Luis available to treat wounded Wherren, I think.

On the gear issue, I'd say we have a few more AT4s and spare SCAR ammo. Tenner ammo may be much lighter but I don't know if we'd trust them. Maybe add another 2 rods per Tenner (for a total of 5 per), 3 AT4s, and fill the rest with SCAR ammo.

punkey 2010-07-02 18:57:56
We'd have more Tenner ammo than that if we're bringing that many of them. Call it a total of 7 rods, but otherwise I agree.
Gatac 2010-07-02 19:32:55
Also, on the issue of pursuing fleeing enemy forces, I think that's not sensible. Flush them out so they don't keep sniping us now, yes, but they'll scatter into the winds and be extremely hard to track through the jungle. We're short on people as is and anyone following fleeing enemies could be sucked into an ambush. I propose we put our own house in order and deal with stragglers as they make trouble for us; if they fuck off to nowhere and never come back, hey, problem already solved. :)
punkey 2010-07-02 19:39:44
We've got enough supplies and other toys that we can easily hold out for three days, particularly if we get busy preparing now. Plus, #1 rule of a tactical retreat is to punish people for following you so you can actually retreat.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-02 20:21:10
I think my last post, though a little rubbery with the time, brings everyone onto the same page. I also don't think we need to do round by round at this point.
Gatac 2010-07-02 20:34:04
Alright, then I figure we do a quick sweep of the perimeter, see if we can't chase off stragglers, and then into the camp.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-02 21:08:30
Are you moving as usual, with one person making the Stealth roll for the group? It's your usual move, because normally the enemy is not actively looking for you. In this situation, with everyone in camp taking full cover so as to 1) preserve smoke grenades and 2) not present any juicy sniping targets should the Khiraba relocate and try to harass you again, it would be pretty obvious that the camp is hiding, which means that you guys are up to something.

If a party is actively searching for a second party, the second party uses the least-skilled person's Stealth roll. This probably applies to both parties in this situation. You guys roll vs. the Khiraba's worst sneaker, and if they were looking for you in turn, they'd roll awareness vs. YOUR worst sneaker.

The alternative is any or all of you can make your Stealth rolls individually or group up however you like. This is basically using Luis and/or Arketta as bait. If you choose to roll your own, you can't be in close formation with your teammates. Just inside visual range for this jungle environment.
Gatac 2010-07-02 21:12:05
Yeah, normal move. Let's take the time and do it right.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-02 23:46:46
... And everybody sees everybody! I figured the claymore-blasted, broken-treed, orange-spattered, corpse-strewn apocalypse would make a better location than "jungle".
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-03 01:47:55
Hioo! Because melee is Zaef's thing, and it's also an option for the Khiraba, I will let you guys decide if you start close enough so you can close to melee with a single move or if it takes a full round to get there, or something like 2 rounds. Beyond 2 rounds it just wouldn't be feasible for you guys to see each other. It doesn't change the range die for anything in either case, it's d6 across the board, so unless cover is taken (which there is plenty), hits will be commonplace if shooting starts.
Admiral Duck Sauce 2010-07-03 16:00:34
Because nobody actually fired, I'll give you guys another choice in addition to the "distance of engagement" thing above, which I'd like to at least get Ross' opinion on too.

There's going to be shooting. Get your one-liners in if you want, and let me know if you would like a bonus to accuracy (you spent the pause lining up your shot) or a bonus to initiative (you spent the pause on a hair trigger, visualizing your next move). I don't normally allow initiative bonuses for waiting, but I think it's an appropriate option given the classic showdown question of speed vs. accuracy.
skullandscythe 2010-07-03 16:20:51
I'm cool with one round. Zaef will be taking a bonus to initiative, waiting for the pin to drop. The tumbleweed was a nice touch, by the way. :P