Topic: SM CompI and Airborne Assault errata

[Puin]

Well, I know this deals with old SM Companion I but as many of you have arcane lore ....

We are launching a SM campaing (we are also playing a HARP one and I'm poking them to try HARP SF !!!) and the GM has given me some "Airborne Assault" ranks as part of my military training.

But in SMCI appears this skill only in the stat/cost matrix but not in the skill descriptions. The GM has it's own description as the skill seems self-explanatory but .... anyone has or recalls having heard/seen the "oficial" description of that skill ?

For many years always thought of that mising one but never try to resolve the puzzle. Now may be the time !!!

Thanks for the answers !!! 

[JimiSue]

I remember asking a similar question of my GM lots of years ago and he gave me a reply, but upon now checking I think he made it up! For me, Airborne Assault would be skill in attacking ground-based installations and vehicles from the air - Strafing, in other words. I've never really had to make use of it so never had to come up with an in game mechanism, but if I had to do it in the heat of the moment I would say the bonus in that skill is the % of your normal OB you can use to perform that kind of action.

Incidentally, I also looked in Star Strike but there are no new skills in there. It seems more appropriate for Armoured Assault, but I don't own that... waiting for the print on demand publishing thing to happen so i can pick me up a copy

Note that this is not the only skill that appears in the master skill lists and which doesn't have a corresponding entry. I started to do some work to simplify the skill list and make it more of a general skill + specialisation sort, and found a handful, particularly skills that appear in RM but don't really have a place in SM. The only one that comes to mind now though is Defensive Weaving.

[Puin]

Nice try, but I do own a copy of Armored Assault and nothing there, not a clue.    but we do use the skill as you said, % of your OB/DB/Manouvers as you slide down ... death from above if you have a good skill

We love AA but it's very tabletop and you almost always deal with platoons or units rather than rpg characters, except powered troops or MIRCs. Wich we never had the opportunity to try !!! BAD BAD GM     

But it's very useful if your group is crossing a war scenario in his AFV/APC at top speed trying to avoid all incoming attacks, so we can be deployed in the right spot and go on as a RPG group. Nice experience, kinda "Aliens".   

We'll have to wait for another answer.

[JimiSue]

I suspect it was a skill that at one point someone thought would be good to include but it didn't make the final cut, and sloppy copy editing (I can comment on that since I was a professional copy editor for 5 years) meant that it was removed from the skill list but not from the skill cost matrix. Which means you can either choose to ignore it, or decide how you want to fit it into your own game. I personally only use it for vehicular attacks from the air onto ground targets but it looks like your interpretation is more general and applies for all attacks descending from above.

This does however, remind me of something else which I would find really useful but I can't find either in the SM2 rules (including SpaMCos 1 & 2) or Star Strike - how do construction armour types work against hand weapons (i.e. of the marks 1-5 range that the PCs will have)? At the moment I've been doing OB penalties, critical reduction, concussion hit reduction... or a combination of all three. My brain is telling me that I've read something, somewhere, once, but however often I look for it again, I cannot find.

[markc]

 There are rules in SM:P VM and Blaster Law(I think) about this. I cannot quote them here do to the fact they are in print. But you are doing the right thing by the rules and the factors are generally between 1-10 with ignoring all crits. I would allow a crit on a really really high roll or maybe apply a -350 to the crit reading (ie look at the damage then subtract -350 to the roll to see if there is a crit.) 
  There are also rules in the various SM:P books on dealing with attacking Arms Law armor Types.


MDC

[JimiSue]

I can see that I may need to actually buy Privateers at some point

[markc]

I can see that I may need to actually buy Privateers at some point

 I can tell you that the rules provided and an opinion on how the author did it in his game as well as providing an outline on how you can do it for your game.
 But all in all I do recommend you pick up the SM:P books as they can be of a great help for any SM2 game.
MDC

[Ynglaur]

Armored Assault had a table for Mk1-5 weapons against CAT (i.e. armor types 21-30).  It is very, very hard to do anything to vehicles with CAT 23+, even with something like a Heavy Plasma Repeater Rifle.*

* which is still one of the coolest weapon names, ever.

[markc]

 I looked into a couple of books and could not find the Airborne Assault info but from history I would say that it is the max OB you can use when dropping from the sky with un-powered flight or very low powered flight. From SM:P I would say the grav chute which is powered would require this skill for accurate air to ground fire.


MDC

[JimiSue]

I looked into a couple of books and could not find the Airborne Assault info but from history I would say that it is the max OB you can use when dropping from the sky with un-powered flight or very low powered flight. From SM:P I would say the grav chute which is powered would require this skill for accurate air to ground fire.

OK - so what if you're attacking the ground in a high powered attack vehicle? It can't be easy to do if your weapons are designed for air to air combat (e.g. the machine guns on WW2 aircraft), and at high speed it takes some skill to drop your bombs in the right place (for the sake of this conversation I'm assuming our weapons are not guided like the more advanced types we have today). Should we then also have skills for Strafing and Bombardiering?

[markc]

I looked into a couple of books and could not find the Airborne Assault info but from history I would say that it is the max OB you can use when dropping from the sky with un-powered flight or very low powered flight. From SM:P I would say the grav chute which is powered would require this skill for accurate air to ground fire.

OK - so what if you're attacking the ground in a high powered attack vehicle? It can't be easy to do if your weapons are designed for air to air combat (e.g. the machine guns on WW2 aircraft), and at high speed it takes some skill to drop your bombs in the right place (for the sake of this conversation I'm assuming our weapons are not guided like the more advanced types we have today). Should we then also have skills for Strafing and Bombardiering?

 

 IMHO I would include this in Combat Pilot in RMSS/SM:P I do not remember right off the top of my head if it is a skill in SM2.
MDC

[Puin]

OK, I found it. Well, one of my rolmates did it !!! 

He found it in his copy of "Future Law" 2n U.S. Edition 1986 pg.9 !!!

Basically states that the skill bonus can be used as an orientation roll or as % of the OB in an airborne assault situation.

Wich for us are those with parachutes, gravchutes or sky-diving.

Other airborne situations ?   

[markc]

  I do not think it applies to other airborne situations besides parachutes, gravchutes, etc. IMHO you would use a Flying type skill or acrobatics if you want to keep the skill list down.
MDC

[Skaran]

We used the skill skydiving for this which from memory had a description but no costs. Frankly neither SM2 nor Privateers seems to have had a rigourous proofreading before being released and assuming that the systems were playtested it looks to me that the results of this also did not get into the final products. A new edition would be nice but I won't hold my breath.