[HT] [TS] More machine-gun questions

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

The USMC supposedly teaches it at the Advanced Machine Gun Leaders Course at least according to some graduates I knew. They never actually used it in training afterwards though.

FDC was a skill in 3e it is not in 4e (same with Operations).

It wasn't exactly a common skill in the NZ army either. The specialist support machinegun operators knew it, but there were only a few per battalion by the 90s. They used FN MAGs, either in the normal GPMG stocked configuration or the stockless sustained-fire machinegun (SFMG) configuration (a simple switch done in the field by any trained user with the right pieces of kit), but were in the support platoon with the 81mm mortar teams. The rest of us grunts had C9 LMG/SAWs (Canadian made FN MINIMIs) as our section machineguns, and change that we both liked (they're a ton lighter), and didn't like (lower effective range and less effective on people in not-very-hard cover and vehicles).

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

FDC was a skill in 3e it is not in 4e (same with Operations).

I know what I read and responded to. I can't find said skill in the 4e update booklet where lots and lots of 3e skills are mentioned since you kinda have to mention them in the booklet that updates to 4e. Further I don't recall ever seeing that skill in a 3e book I laid my eyes on.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

I can't find said skill in the 4e update booklet where lots and lots of 3e skills are mentioned since you kinda have to mention them in the booklet that updates to 4e.

It's not in there because it wasn't updated. GURPS 4e doesn't have any real rules at all for fire support from the POV of the supporting element.

Further I don't recall ever seeing that skill in a 3e book I laid my eyes on.

WWII, certainly. I'm pretty sure it was also included in CI.

[coyote6]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

WWII, certainly. I'm pretty sure it was also included in CI.

FWIW, I just checked, and there's no skill called Fire Direction in CI, and I think the only new skills in WWII were Soldier & Operations. But either I never got WWII, or it's MIA; all I have is old playtest files, so maybe it was added late.

[sir_pudding]

I remember it existing in 3e, it can't just be Icelander's house rule. I've never met the man.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I remember it existing in 3e, it can't just be Icelander's house rule. I've never met the man.

Not in WWII, under that name, or in the New Skills section. The book has Fire Direction Centers, but they are equipment, not a skill. EDIT: Under G:WWII, one could reasonably claim it was Tactics (Artillery).

High-Tech 3e has a section on artillery fire, with examples for tube artillery and indirect machine-gun fire under the control of a forward observer, but the skill rolls are all against Forward Observer AFAICS.

[sir_pudding]

Must be a reality shard.

[Sable Wyvern]

My brother spent a couple of years in a DFSW platoon (anti-armour and SFMG), so I posed him the question -- he has an hour to train up a new crew number one before a fire mission. The line is using M60s, and he can choose from a mortarman or an expert M60 gunner. His response: Obviously the mortarman because of the C2 sight.

On further discussion, he agreed that skill with the weapom under normal conditions would play basically no part in ability to use it effectively in SF mode.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

It's not in there because it wasn't updated. GURPS 4e doesn't have any real rules at all for fire support from the POV of the supporting element.

Skills that got dropped or folded into other skills have notes to that effect in the update booklet. Look at Abacus for example.

[Icelander]

Apparently, the Fire Direction skill has evaporated from history and now has never existed. This is rather an alarming event, as it suggests that we are living in an artificial reality where the rules change retroactively.

The Forward Observer skill is evidently used by the FDC and the FO, which means that the post where I suggested doing so in 4e also happens to reflect RAW from 3e.

This means that most of the calculations involved in indirect machine gun fire would be done by Forward Observer (and thus be something any artilleryman might be presumed to at least have a passing familiarity with).

The actual IQ-based roll made against a hypothetical Artillery (Machine Gun) skill would reflect the gunlayer traversing to hit a spot chosen by the FDC. This is clearly the easiest part of the whole operation, which in GURPS is reflected by making it almost impossible until the FO and the FDC have accumulated enough bonuses to make it a straight skill roll.