I'm looking for a good set of suppressive fire rules. Anyone got suggestions?

Specifically, I'm looking for something that would give me a mechanic for determining if a character was hit by suppressive fire.

Ideally:

• The character's behavior should matter -- a character hiding behind a fortified position should be much safer than one who's popping out to return fire
• The relative volume of fire and the skill of the suppressors should matter -- good troops should suppress more effectively than poor ones
• The casualty rates would ideally match real-world ones; I'm reading War by Sebastian Junger and it occurs to me that the casualty rates in the engagements he describes are probably a lot lower than most games would model with direct fire

Are there any games that do this well?

Anyone know of online (or offline) resources that would provide some insight into the issue.

I've found some papers that look promising, and it looks to me like a good rate for sustained operations is around 30 to 50 casualties per 1000 troops per day. About 10% of causalities are caused by small arms fire (80-something are caused by high explosives from various sources).

At the small unit level (platoon), this is less than 1 casualty per day.

Clearly, though, those troops aren't in fire fights /every day/ -- so I'm not sure I can go from casualty rates at a unit-level to odds per fire-fight.

Cheers,
-E.

Palladium would model suppressive fire indirectly, since characters can opt to spend actions to Dodge (or not). (credit where credit's due: I first saw this when Settembrini mentioned it in his Rifts game synopsis, back near the last pages in Design & Development).  That's fairly basic however and may not be what you're looking for.

The system for ultra-realistic gun combat might be Leading Edge Games' Phoenix Command. I couldn't see anything about suppressive fire on a quick look through the main rulebook but if you're brave, I dare you to go join the Phoenix Command yahoogroup and re-ask this question I think it may be still active and if nothing else they'd probably have some opinions and/or be read up on casualty and gun statistics.

I noticed a need for some sort of suppressive fire rule during our last game of Deadlands... we had a naval battle between our ship and two well-armed gun boats... cannon and gatling guns on both sides.
The way the GM ran it the gunnery crews kept firing until wiped out... there didn't seem to be any rules in place to have them make a fear check/duck for cover. They all stood their weapons until shot down.
It seems like coming under heavy fire like they were should have had a least a few of them abandoning their posts... and had the PCs aiming at specific individuals rather than just spraying the decks to keep them off the guns until our cannon could put a hole in their hull/boiler.

Hah, there I was wanting to mention Palladium...

But really, my default supp fire rules are the GDW d20 ones. GDW house system,
T: 2000; Dark Conspiracy, T:NE, you know?

There are a number of ways you can go with it, depends on the game system you're using. You can't really have one set of rules divorced from any game system. For example, we might talk about how suppressive fire destroys someone's confidence or resolve, but that's useless if your system has no stat for that.

In some systems with Wound Levels, you can treat suppressive fire as a temporary Wound Level - ie the suppressed party has a malus to all their actions. That is, the game mechanics force them to account for the distraction of the fire.

In systems where you have Attack vs Defence to hit and a limited number of actions per round, it's simply, "if you take an action to defend, you will certainly not be hit; if you take no defensive action, you may be hit." So the party who just ducks down below the bunker wall will be fine - but they won't be able to fire back at their attackers; if they pop up to fire, they may be hit. In this case, the PCs are still free to do as they wish, but the in-game events encourage them to behave in a certain way, ie be suppressed.  

Tell us which game system you want to use, we can suggest suppressive fire rules that'll fit in with it.

Quote from: Settembrini;420007Hah, there I was wanting to mention Palladium...

But really, my default supp fire rules are the GDW d20 ones. GDW house system,
T: 2000; Dark Conspiracy, T:NE, you know?

Hmm GDW...have to check that one out. I have the .pdf of Twilight 2000 2.2 at home (cheap on DriveThru, got it when I was fooling around with Cadillacs and Dinosaurs - a T2000 2.0 product).

Not too familiar with the older version of T2000 - I believe they went from d20 in 1st ed (?) to d10 in 2nd, then back to d20 in 2.2...? Though I'm guessing by d20 version you mean the original.

Quote from: Settembrini;420007Hah, there I was wanting to mention Palladium...

But really, my default supp fire rules are the GDW d20 ones. GDW house system,
T: 2000; Dark Conspiracy, T:NE, you know?

Quote from: Bloody Stupid Johnson;420003Palladium would model suppressive fire indirectly, since characters can opt to spend actions to Dodge (or not). (credit where credit's due: I first saw this when Settembrini mentioned it in his Rifts game synopsis, back near the last pages in Design & Development).  That's fairly basic however and may not be what you're looking for.

The system for ultra-realistic gun combat might be Leading Edge Games' Phoenix Command. I couldn't see anything about suppressive fire on a quick look through the main rulebook but if you're brave, I dare you to go join the Phoenix Command yahoogroup and re-ask this question I think it may be still active and if nothing else they'd probably have some opinions and/or be read up on casualty and gun statistics.

I'm not familiar with any of those systems; I'd expect Phoenix Command and T:2000 to both have rules for that sort of thing. Despite desiring something that reasonably well matches reality, I'm not looking for highly detailed rules -- quite the opposite; I'd like something that plays in a very streamlined fashion.

Quote from: Simlasa;420005I noticed a need for some sort of suppressive fire rule during our last game of Deadlands... we had a naval battle between our ship and two well-armed gun boats... cannon and gatling guns on both sides.
The way the GM ran it the gunnery crews kept firing until wiped out... there didn't seem to be any rules in place to have them make a fear check/duck for cover. They all stood their weapons until shot down.
It seems like coming under heavy fire like they were should have had a least a few of them abandoning their posts... and had the PCs aiming at specific individuals rather than just spraying the decks to keep them off the guns until our cannon could put a hole in their hull/boiler.

I'd very much like a system that encouraged the tempo and behavior seen in real-world fire fights. You've touched on morale here, which is a critical factor as well -- but something I see as related-but-distinct from the suppressive fire rules.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;420010There are a number of ways you can go with it, depends on the game system you're using. You can't really have one set of rules divorced from any game system. For example, we might talk about how suppressive fire destroys someone's confidence or resolve, but that's useless if your system has no stat for that.

In some systems with Wound Levels, you can treat suppressive fire as a temporary Wound Level - ie the suppressed party has a malus to all their actions. That is, the game mechanics force them to account for the distraction of the fire.

In systems where you have Attack vs Defence to hit and a limited number of actions per round, it's simply, "if you take an action to defend, you will certainly not be hit; if you take no defensive action, you may be hit." So the party who just ducks down below the bunker wall will be fine - but they won't be able to fire back at their attackers; if they pop up to fire, they may be hit. In this case, the PCs are still free to do as they wish, but the in-game events encourage them to behave in a certain way, ie be suppressed.  

Tell us which game system you want to use, we can suggest suppressive fire rules that'll fit in with it.

I'm not starting with a system in mind; that's why I asked for examples of games that does this well.

I'm reading Sebastian Junger's book "War" about troops in Afghanistan. the book describes several engagements where suppressive fire plays a critical role in the engagement.

Most games I've played model aimed shots -- which clearly play a role in the non-fiction engagements Junger describes -- but relatively few of them model an environment where there's arbitrary incoming fire.

Although I do think a core set of suppressive fire rules could be established that are largely system independent. Something like the following:

• If you're taking suppressive fire you run an X% chance of being hit per minute, where X is a factor of number of people firing in your general direction, the quality of the cover you're behind and the types of actions you're taking.


• X is usually < 1% for situations where there's at least decent cover and characters taking fire are behaving defensively


• If you're not behaving defensively -- e.g. if you're standing up a lot, or if you're out from behind cover for a substantial period of time -- then you don't use the suppressive fire rules, and instead use whatever the game system's combat system normally calls for, which likely yields a much greater chance of being shot


• Returning suppressive fire is considered "defensive" for these purposes (i.e. you're unlikely to take direct fire). Taking aimed shots at specific opponents usually means being exposed long enough to let them take such shots at you. If forces on both sides are doing this, just use the regular combat rules instead of the special suppressive-fire rules... and expect (For most games) a much higher casualty rate than you'd see in an engagement where most people are suppressing

Clearly morale rules would be highly game specific, and an approach where you wanted to degrade effectiveness of the characters would need to reference specific mechanics... but I think the approach where you just "might get shot" and your chances of being shot are dependent on how aggressive you're being would tend to give results that match what I see in Junger's book.

Cheers,
-E.

I wrote some rules a while ago, based on the ones in Dark Heresy. I don't own the book and haven't seen it for quite a while, but I think they are in there.

Quote from: -E.;420043Clearly morale rules would be highly game specific, and an approach where you wanted to degrade effectiveness of the characters would need to reference specific mechanics... but I think the approach where you just "might get shot" and your chances of being shot are dependent on how aggressive you're being would tend to give results that match what I see in Junger's book.

The issue with morale rules is the whole old one that caused dragons to be given a fear aura in D&D: players don't like being told what their characters do.

What's neater is if the circumstances encourage or discourage certain courses of action, as I described. In systems I've written, during combats people get two actions a round, their choice of,

• Move - including changing from standing to prone, prone to crouching, or crouching to standing
• handle - really a subset of moving, this means reloading a weapon, getting on a radio, etc
• attack
• defend actively - as opposed to just moving and being harder to hit than someone standing still
• orient - stop and look around to see what's happening, how many enemy there are and exactly where they are, etc. A perception check may be required to see certain details, eg an individual person along a trench line 200 yards away

Thus during a combat round someone can stand up from behind cover and look around (Move + Orient) but then might have someone watching the area and laying down the suppressive fire take a shot at them (Orient + Attack). Of course the attacker is exposed, but that mightn't matter if they're firing first. If the attacker misses, then the guy in the bunker or wherever can then fire back and duck down (Attack + Move).

This leads to PCs generally keeping their heads down, or trying to outflank the foe, call in indirect fire, and so on. There's always the opportunity for a PC to get up and charge directly at the enemy. But that's why we have spare character sheets.

The reason most rpgs don't model the deadly effect of suppressive or indirect fire is that being shot by someone who wasn't even aiming directly at you is not very heroic, it's just depressing. Pte Smith goes for a piss and is struck by a mortar bomb, glorious innit.

This is the general idea I use for my games. I will use the percentile mechanics (StarPerc) version because they are easy to understand without knowing the details.

Full Automatic (Suppressive) Fire

Full automatic fire is generally used to pin down the enemy in heavy cover, giving them substantial penalties in firing. It is primarily a defensive option, but if the fire happens to hit an unprotected human, the results are generally lethal. For example, a machine gun is pinning down a small group of three in a rockpile. They are safe as long as they stay under cover. If one of the three breaks cover, a roll to hit is made by the machine gunner. On a hit, 1d10 rounds hit the target.

If full automatic fire is used against unsuspecting targets out in the open, cover rules are not used for the first round.

Full automatic fire is very useful against vehicles.

Submachine-gun rounds cannot penetrate any vehicle armor, while machine gun rounds can penetrate light armor.

Suppressive fire can be achieved with volley fire from a group of weapons as well as a single weapon on full automatic fire.

A successful suppressive fire pins down the opponent so he can’t move without risking being hit. A Quality of Success roll for the suppression can be directly applied to the opponent as a negative modifier on his Chance of Success. Half of the Quality of Success is the penalty.

For Example

A machine-gun is being used to suppress fire from three enemies using rifles. The suppression is successful, and the machine-gunner makes a Quality of Success roll of 45. The three enemies have a negative modifier of 23 on their attempts to hit this turn.

Hope that helps.

-clash

Th T:2000 rules are NOT Phoenix Command style!

You take one D6 for every bullet fired, substract a certain amount for recoil minus Strength, substract a certain amount for range, and half the remainder.

Now, every time anyone enters the are of suppression fire, the d6 are taken, rolled and for every "6" a bullet hits.

This is my default now for many many games.

Kyle, Flyingmice, and Settimbrini have collectively hit on the sort of thing I'm looking for.

Basically these rules make taking offensive action (moving around) risky and encourage risk-averse characters to hide behind cover -- exactly what we see in reality (or so my understanding goes).

A couple of nuances I'd like to see (or understand from the rules-sets mentioned)

1) Is *returning* suppressive fire as risky as moving around or taking an offensive action?
2) What, really, are the odds of being hit?

#1 is about encouraging situations where two units are suppressing each other -- something I understand happens quite a bit in reality.  Clearly a truly risk-averse character would simply hide... but if *everyone* does this, the unit will be over-run. In my view returning suppressive fire should be more risky than hiding behind a rock, but way less risky than advancing.

To the extent I understand them, I think Kyle's rules cover these distinctions pretty well conceptually.

#2 this goes to the tempo of battles and the observed casualty rates. I read about fire fights taking "all afternoon" in many cases. To me this represents a situation where the odds of being hit in any given "game round" (say a time period from a few seconds to at most a minute for most games) are negligible if the character is not engaging in risky behavior.

My understanding is that a lot of these engagements go an hour (or even hours) with virtually no casualties -- I'm not sure what the odds should be to match reality, but I suspect they're fairly low relative to the odds of being hit most systems I've seen would model.

Thanks, folks -- this is the sort of thing I was looking for, and I have several systems to check out!

Cheers,
-E.

I think you have to concider the scale as well. I can suppress a corner with a hand gun as long as someone knows I'm watching it. I can suppress a group with a machine gun, even if I can't see them, just by being scary.

Quote from: -E.;420236My understanding is that a lot of these engagements go an hour (or even hours) with virtually no casualties -- I'm not sure what the odds should be to match reality, but I suspect they're fairly low relative to the odds of being hit most systems I've seen would model.

That's quite right. With any single gunshot, the odds of getting hit even if the shooter is a few yards from you are actually quite low. Thus, one dice roll per shot is really really boring. Which is why you don't usually see these sorts of rules in rpgs - plus, who wants their character to be knocked over by some random unaimed shot? It's like stepping on a mine, maybe realistic, but pretty anticlimactic.

With large-scale battles what I've done is to move to "long turns." Whatever the length of the regular combat turn, the long turn is some minutes. The to-hit rolls then become about one of the very many shots fired happening to hit. For example, even if there's only a 1 in 1,000 chance of a hit, if 100 rounds go downrange, there's a 9.5% chance at least one of them will hit. I'd rather make one dice roll aiming for 91+/100 than 100 dice rolls aiming for 1,000/1,000.

It's similar in ancient and medieval melee battles. A large battle isn't simply a bunch of duels. It's about groups of guys lining up shield-to-shield, the whole group moving forward banging their spears on their shield, then maybe one guy jabs at another in the line, that guy stumbles a bit, his line falls back a few steps, they're urged forward again by their commander, and so on.

With the long turns you then slot in a few duel-type actions for the PCs to keep the players happy, and usually you'll be able to say that however the PCs go in their duels, this determines or at least influences the battle as a whole.

QuoteIn my view returning suppressive fire should be more risky than hiding behind a rock, but way less risky than advancing.

That's what you have cover and perception rules for. And rules about ease of being spotted. The enemy is laying down suppressive fire - but hey, if the enemy sees a guy get up from the trenches, they'll turn that suppressive fire into direct aimed fire. But they have to see him. Now, if he gets up and charges, okay he's easy to see, bye bye Pte Foolhardy. But if he slowly eases himself over the sandbag, just his head, shoulders and rifle, well maybe they'll have to make a pretty difficult perception check to notice him. But he'll have to make a similar check to spot the exact source of that suppressive fire. And so it goes.