W3I: Notes

Traveller, Stargrunt II and Dirtside II

There have been attempts to combine various wargames rules with Traveller’s Third Imperium setting. One such is Ken Pick’s “Striker Zero” which focuses on Jon Tuffley’s Dirtside II rules (designed for 6mm miniatures) and to a lesser extent Stargrunt II rules (designed for 25mm, but adapted to 15mm miniatures), both of which share the same game mechanics, with a few exceptions.

Striker Zero does a fantastic job of first matching Traveller tech to that of Dirtside II and Stargrunt II, creating a couple of new weapon classes in the process and then fitting that tech back into Traveller’s tech level system. Where it falls short is that it only covers Tech Levels 7-15.

Fortunately the tools needed to correct this shortcoming are already on hand, in the form of other rules mods for Stargrunt II. In conjunction with Stargrunt II and Striker Zero, I’ve chosen to use the following mods:

• Hardtack by Allan Goodall, (a very thorough mod focused on ACW, perhaps too focused in some respects, but we'll see),
• Standards of Valor by Phillip E. Pournelle (an excellent mod covering the stone age all the way up to the black powder era, just the sort of thing we're looking for),
• and Mike Elliot’s Dirtside II for WWII (very handy for the WWII era).
• plus an uncredited piece which adds to Mike Elliot’s work, titled “Dirtside II - WWII Mod” where I got this and who wrote it I have no idea.

Weapons Technology

In Traveller two opposing forces often employ weapons and armour from different tech levels. For each tech level difference between opposing forces shift all armour checks up or down accordingly. In some cases the difference between early and late technology in a specific tech level can be significant  enough. For example if a Bronze Age (early TL1) army was facing an Iron Age (Late TL1) army the Bronze Age Army would shift their armour down one level when attacked with Iron Age weapons while the Iron Age army would shift their armour die up one level. These armour shifts apply only to soldiers employing armour and never shift any armour above a D12 or below a D4 (no armour). This is an open die shift so if the Armour die can not be shifted any further, then the attackers FP die is shifted accordingly.

Technological Level

"As technology improves so will the lethality of weapons employed. As forces become more lethal and able to project fire across longer distances, the size of forces will decline and become more dispersed. Manoeuvre elements will reduce from Company size to Platoons or even squads. Upon the advent of accurate multi-shot capable firearms, manoeuvre elements will drop down to the fire team level." - Phillip E. Pournelle, Standards of Valor

Close Assault

In Standards of Valor the Close Assault rules are modified somewhat, due to the addition of unit formations and close assault weapons being given a Fire Power rating. Though the procedure remains largely the same:

1. Attacker declares intent to Close Assault
2. Attacker rolls a Reaction Test to follow through on the declaration. 
3. If Attacker passes Reaction Test, defender responds by rolling a Confidence Test. 
4. Resolve Close Combat

Standards of Valor makes some additions to the Threat Level table for Reaction Tests and Confidence Tests, but the procedure remains the same.

The procedure for resolving close combat differs from the procedure for ranged combat and also differs from the procedure described in the Stargrunt II rule book.

Use the Standards of Valor Close Assault rules to resolve all close assault actions with the following caveats:

• Close combat edged weapons have been assigned a Fire Power rating, therefore players will now roll a Fire Power Die in addition to their Troop Quality Die. This means that the die shift for having close combat edged weapons is no longer in use, but we do have to assign an FP rating for troops without such weapons. Since clubs, cudgels and daggers have FP 0.5 and IMP D4, and we can’t assign a lower Impact rating, it makes sense to assign a lower FP rating, otherwise why bother to equip soldiers with Daggers, Clubs or Cudgels. So unarmed personnel receive FP 0.3.
• Modern forces usually operate in Skirmish Formation, although riot police commonly adopt Close Order, Open Order and other formations.

In general I'll be using the Stargrunt II rule book with a great deal of input from Striker Zero, Standards of Valor (SoV) and Mike Elliot's WWII mod and the uncredited addendum to those rules. For example we'll be using pretty much all of Striker Zero, with the following additions from SoV: close combat weapon and archaic firearms data, close combat rules, formations, animals, additions to the vehicle design sequence, archaic heavy support weapons, tech level rules and a host of other minutae. Additionally we'll incorporate the Kinetic Energy Cannon (KEC) weapons, WWII personal and support weapon data, as well as the vehicle designs from Mike Elliot and our uncredited author.

There's a lot here to work through, Striker Zero is 10 pages long not including the force write-ups. Standards of Valor is 103 pages of rules mods. Hardtack is 48 pages and the two WWII mods are 4 and 12 pages long respectively. 

 

I don't think I could just sit down and write these into one single comprehensible document. I believe the only way I will be able to make this work is to play test, play test, and play test some more, adapting the rules and documenting as I go.

If you haven't seen these mods before, I'd recommend giving them a look.