Has anyone thought of some night time operations rules for conducting night time fights? I was thinking about it because not all battles would fight during the day in a war zone. You have night time strikes and use the cover of darkness to hide your operations. Trying to expand missions and create something different from the missions on hand.
The easiest thing would be to make the entire map a low vis zone or something. Except for possibly the ZoC of clearly marked lamp posts.
As Hecaton wrote above, or if you want to be boring: I expect future warriors to use light enhancing gear for perfect visibility during night operations. So darkness doesn't matter. But , like I said, that's a bit boring...
Oh I like that! Cuts down on night vision systems, as well, A great way to make blind shots when using ARO. I see you, you blind me, and try to still take the shot with a large negative modifier.
IMO the ruling should be that if trooper is not illuminated, he is considered to be within low vis zone for everyone but himself*. Trooper is considered illuminated if he does not have partial or total cover from a lamp, and at the same time is within no more than 8 inches from that particular lamp. The reason being, unlit territory between light sources doesn't really block visibility, so everything just being in low vis zone would make shooting something under the lamp from afar the same as shooting something in the darkness, which doesn't make much sense. * - too lazy to come up with a proper wording, but the point is that he won't see worse just because he stands in the light. You get the idea. I know this way we overlook an effect of incoming light (including reflected by immediate surroundings of said lamp) making it harder to see everything that isn't illuminated, but stuff gets too complicated pretty fast this way.
I have made that mistake in my own missions. This leads to MSV being too powerful, sadly. And it would mean that Tactical jumps wouldn't be possible. CB has found a fix: Limiting LoS. They use it in various missions. Not sure this is a great fix, but still.
How do they do it specifically? Well, they even had one of the tables covered in "fog" completely at Interplanetario (IIRC), no less. That's a good catch. But this could be ruled around.
How do they do it specifically? By simply saying that LoS cannot be established beyond 24", as in a few ITS missions.
Considering you could still use Airborne Infiltration or jump near the lamp posts, that seems ok. There've been missions with the "Inside Area" rules which is even more restrictive.
Landing near the lamp posts looks like a suicide attempt to me. But the idea itself is fine, there is just the issue with MSV being pretty powerful. Imagine a link of 5 troopers equipped with MSV 1 going against you, and you have hardly any MSV. it would be a bit tough.
go borrow the Batman Minis game rules PDF, all games are assumed to happen at night so have limited visibility. Actually, hold that thought. I'm going to assert Fair Use and copy/paste: The rest of this I'm just going to paraphrase. Lamp Posts illuminate an area 10cm around their base, and can be shot out. You can get Air Support which places a circle of light the size of the explosion template. A Flare will light up the entire play area (3'x3' for BMG), and is used as if interacting with an object. A Lantern will light up a 10cm area around the base of a model, as if it was a Lamp Post. Can only be used if the model carrying it is not in base-to-base with an enemy model. A Laser lets you choose one model you have LOF to and mark it for everyone else. The model marked by the laser is treated as if it was in Light, but not the model with the laser. A character with Night Vision can see at any distance. A character with Total Vision not only has Night Vision, but can see a model even if the LOF crosses obstacles or scenery elements. Can't shoot them unless he has a weapon with Remote Control. A weapon with Remote Control can hit a model even if the LOF is blocked (guess that would be Guided in Infinity terms). A weapon with a Scope grants the user Night Vision and allows it to ignore Blink! rolls. A Blink! roll is basically a cover save for each and every obstacle between the shooter and the target. 4+ (on a d6) for walls or other solid objects (or other models, friend or foe); 5+ for wooden fences, cars, and other urban furniture, and a 6+ for wire fences, boxes, tables, or other domestic furniture. Blink! rolls are made after a successful hit. I think that covers everything...
Well, the point of MSV is that it is night vision goggles. If you would say that your night is so dark that MSV can't penetrate, then you negate what MSV is meant to be. Well, we have a problem anyway because I expect soldiers 175 years in the future to have excellent night vision gear.
I think White Noise is supposed to represent the opposite - throwing out so much light (possibly in a wavelength normally invisible) that it interferes with augmented vision and only with augmented vision. How hackers are able to do this I dunno; fucking space wizards amirite?
sure, that is what it is. But if you'd cover the whole table with that it would be unfair as well because the MSV troopers would all be blind. How does a Nimbus Zone work in technical terms?
More what I meant was in a "Night Mission" I wouldn't worry so much about MSV being OP when there's such an obvious counter.
Guess what, there are factions who cannot chuck out huge amount of White Noise Zones. Even if they do, they'd have to use a few orders to do that. We were talking about writing rules for nightfighting missions, and such would have to be balanced. A low vis zone across the table may actually be balanced when some factions play against each other, but not in other cases.
Scots have access to MSV. the problem is how much access do the factions have and will the players actually use those troopers. Even if they do, the non-msv troopers that also take part of the battle may be too handicapped. I decided to opt for caution and cut out the table wide low vis zone from my missions. Not that many people have complained about it, but people don't complain enough these days.
