What use is Suppression Fire?

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by joncarryer

Okay, I hadn't thought of checking TS, but even there, all it really adds is how to maintain the necessary ROF with multiple weapons. Nothing about how to ensure that the targets of suppression fire do what they're supposed to and keep their heads down. My GM (and reasonably so) is of the opinion that if it isn't specifically stated in the rules, then he's under no obligation to make stuff up to make the situation work as expected.

Your GM isn't under any obligation to simulate? Please give me his name and location, so I can stay, far, far away from his campaigns.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

With apologies, I HAVE Tactical Shooting, but I have not yet played using those rules and your interpretation is not obvious to me from a casual reading. I am going to offer a counter-example, which will be at least as wordy as its predecessor. If I make any mistakes here, please tell me where I should reread.

Let's replace these "professional" infantry with ordinary people (i.e. All stats 10, no Adv/Disadv, no combat skills) and see what we get.

With no Soldier skill, their Will-2 has to beat only a 8, which means 1 out of 4 ordinary people will expose themselves to suppressive fire in any given round, so the average, ordinary person will do so after only 2 or 3 seconds of fire. Assuming +5 for heat of battle (which to the best of my knowledge applies to everyone in GURPS) their 10+5-1 (assuming it applies, not sure where this is from) still hits the same rule of 14 as the soldiers so they still have the same 9.3% chance of failure.

So at this point, we have 25% of the civilians popping up every round, and 9% of those who do freezing up with the rest capable of coherent action. For a 12-person "unit", this means that ~3 will pop-up per round, and about every 4 rounds one will freeze. These numbers alone seem extremely high, and that is why I suggested that "ordinary" people should probably have some disadvantages to bring these numbers down.

Now, failed fright checks ARE an issue here - once someone fails a Fright Check while exposed they are subject to an automatic attack and assuming no one pulls them back will likely dies within a few seconds. And once that happens, taking your -5 to fright checks as gospel for seeing someone gunned down, about half will fail a Fright Check and freeze up, three quarters if it is Contagious. But the other half/quarter or so will soldier on and keep popping up every 4 seconds or so and freezing up exposed about every 48 seconds or so.

You are assuming that ordinary, untrained people want to pop up and shoot back. Why would they? You don't get to make that Will roll unless you decided that you want to take the risk.

This gets us back to the start of the thread, but the best solution to this (and the one that requires the least rules and rolling) is for the GM to play NPCs as if they wanted to live, and to limit how much information players get when PCs see or hear shooting so that they aren't sure how risky exposing themselves would be, and to let the dice fall as they may if a PC does something stupid.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

One does not use Suppression Fire in an ambush situation. One attempts to fire with the greatest lethal effect possible.

There may be attacks against multiple targets but infliction of psychological effects on the enemy is not promary.

None of what I specifically said is restricted to the rules for Suppression Fire. Untrained civilians make a Fright Check 'when combat time starts' and combatants have to make Will-2 rolls to expose themselves from cover 'when under fire'. Doesn't require Suppression Fire.

As long as the shooting doesn't kill them, they'll be rolling Fright Checks.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

As long as the shooting doesn't kill them, they'll be rolling Fright Checks.

Well, that relies on them seeing someone hit, being hit or nearly hit themselves, being under suppressive fire, or being near an explosion. Or the GM ginning something up, of course.

Those things will happen often in the course of an ambush, but may not happen constantly.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Well, that relies on them seeing someone hit, being hit or nearly hit themselves, being under suppressive fire, or being near an explosion. Or the GM ginning something up, of course.

Those things will happen often in the course of an ambush, but may not happen constantly.

No. I point, as sir-pudding has done often in this thread, to TS p. 47, the section on untrained shooters, which in turn points to the section on untrained combatants on MA p. 113 that I've now cited at least three times.

Completely untrained people make a Fright Check as soon as combat time starts. Just being in a violent confrontation, even if they themselves are not under direct attack, is enough to trigger it. Those are the rules and while people are free not to use them, it seems a bit disingenious to complain that untrained people are unrealistically brave during firefights while not using an optional rule designed to realistically model untrained people in combat.

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

I just described the textbook doctrine on how you are supposed to employ fire support in the assault. I did it in training dozens of times. Later when I get home, I can get out all my technical literature and quote you chapter and verse if you really really want me too.

The point is you don't just set up a SBFP, lay in a gun, and then shoot people until you win. It's called "fire support" for a reason. Fire and Maneuver means that the maneuver element has to make contact. The purpose of support isn't to destroy the enemy, it's to suppress or maybe neutralize (but really just suppress) so that the maneuver element can safely do that.

I was not in any way disputing the validity of your described tactics, I was saying that "it is uncharacteristic of the vast majority of gunfights in GURPS or reality" - most gunfights are not assaults on an entrenched position, they are a couple of people with pistols or AK's shooting at each other on the street. And even when there IS such an assault, operational parameters may constrain the ability to use some or all of those option - insurgents in Afghanistan, from what I understand, are pretty good at finding entrenched positions where the use of ANY of those support weapons would lead to headlines about massive civilian casualties!

Plus, more importantly, GURPS is not really a war-gaming system, and most games, like most stories, require exceptional, often heroic behavior and skills on the part of the characters. While there will be games where what you described will happen, they are extremely rare in my experience - even in war, the characters are usually either cut-off or otherwise in a position where they really only have themselves to rely on.

I will get back to this later, if I stay on here too long I am just asking for more surgery.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Icelander

No. I point, as sir-pudding has done often in this thread, to TS p. 46, the section on untrained shooters, which in turn points to the section on untrained combatants on MA p. 113 that I've now cited at least three times.

Completely untrained people make a Fright Check as soon as combat time starts. Just being in a violent confrontation, even if they themselves are not under direct attack, is enough to trigger it. Those are the rules and while people are free not to use them, it seems a bit disingenious to complain that untrained people are unrealistically brave during firefights while not using an optional rule designed to realistically model untrained people in combat.

That's one Fright Check. It's not Fright Checks, let alone (as I was arguing against, though you may not have been suggesting) a constant stream of Fright Checks. Without a steady repeat of frightening conditions, your unfortunate character is going to recover from their original fright and will no longer be effectively suppressed unless they're given some effective reminder of why they should be.

Of course, responding to an ambush by standing around, or even dropping prone in place (as I'd be inclined to allow if a character is stunned by surprise or fright check, though not if frozen by total surprise, though I haven't checked the rules on this), is likely to result in further fatal and/or terrifying things happening to you.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Earther

Assuming one doesn't have the Tactical Shooting book, supression fire in GURPS on p. 409 allows a player to get some shots in and hit random body parts of an enemy if they have enough skill to do so. That's it.

Sure, the rules in Tactical Shooting are super optional but it seems weird to me that you'd complain about the ineffectiveness of Suppression with just the Basic Set while refusing the rules that directly address this problem. Is it the inaccuracy of Suppression Fire that's bothering you? That's realistic. Suppression doesn't typically result in significant casualties. In fact the technical term "Suppression" means 0%-9% casualties; anymore and it is Neutralization (or Destruction at 30%+).

Cinematic gunfighters don't use Suppression. Suppression is boring and doesn't sell popcorn in high-speed action flicks. They use Spraying Fire, Ranged Rapid Strike, or even Extra Attack (Multistrike). Suppression is therefore already more of an option for "realistic" fights, if you want it to work like it does in real life, you can't just ignore the psychological effect. It basically is all psychological effect.

If a player's aim is to scare an enemy with their bullets, maybe another action/skill is more useful.

If you aren't using the rules that exist to support this, sure. There's a lot of things in the Basic Set that aren't especially useful except as the scaffold for supplementary rules. Gunslinger for an even more problematic example.

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Maybe examples for Fright causes should've been more clear regarding such things in Basic Set. E.g.
E.g. getting constantly shot at should be one of the default reasons for Fright Check (whether deliberate Suppression or something that only happens to be similar). Even without TS detailed rules.

The basis for the Tactical Mind rules were already in the Basic Set.

Originally Posted by B p 360

As a general rule, “ordinary” frightening things do not require Fright Checks. Fright Checks are for events so unusual and terrifying that they might stun or even permanently scar someone.

What counts as “ordinary” depends on the characters and the setting. This is one place where a character story can be helpful! An ordinary, 21st-century American might have to make Fright Checks for encounters with monsters, dead bodies, and the supernatural. A battle-hardened commando in the same game might not have to roll for dead bodies.

So if you are running a game with realistic combat psychology it's obviously appropriate to roll Fright Checks in combat. In such a campaign close lethal combat is never an "'ordinary' frightening thing". Warfare has always been capable of causing panic (stun) and permanent mental scarring (PTSD). It's up to the GM to decide that in this game, in this genre, these characters are subject to the psychological effects of interpersonal violence, death and terror.

All that Shell Shock does is substitute more realistic results for disadvantages, all that Cool under Fire does is provide some additional appropriate modifiers for this roll (and allows Soldier to help), all that Threat Recognition does is relate the existing GURPS rules for fight-or-flight response (Surprise, the "heat of battle" bonus, and Task Difficulty Modifiers for "routine" tasks) to real world terminology for mental states of tactical readiness. Really though all the actual "crunch" came from the basic set.

Originally Posted by Icelander

No. I point, as sir-pudding has done often in this thread, to TS p. 46,

Page 47, according to my copy (just in case somebody is looking for it on the wrong page) it's a box: Untrained Shooters.

Completely untrained people make a Fright Check as soon as combat time starts.

Yes, and if they aren't Focused when this happens (which generally they won't be; Focused needs a specific known threat), they make this roll without the benefit of the +5 "heat of battle", bonus.

Additionally as untrained civilians they are likely Unaware (Condition White) because this is the default state of ordinary people who aren't prepared for combat and don't have Combat Reflexes. This means they are also going to suffer 1d seconds of stun from Total Surprise. And again as long as they are making Fright Checks while Panicked they will never get the +5 "heat of battle" bonus.

Originally Posted by cosmicfish

I was not in any way disputing the validity of your described tactics, I was saying that "it is uncharacteristic of the vast majority of gunfights in GURPS or reality" - most gunfights are not assaults on an entrenched position, they are a couple of people with pistols or AK's shooting at each other on the street.

Most firefights by untrained irregulars, criminals, and police don't employ Suppression. Suppression is Fire Support. It only makes sense in support of a maneuver element (which needs to maneuver into contact) or in the defense.

And even when there IS such an assault, operational parameters may constrain the ability to use some or all of those option - insurgents in Afghanistan, from what I understand, are pretty good at finding entrenched positions where the use of ANY of those support weapons would lead to headlines about massive civilian casualties!

US Troops (and really all pros nowadays, IME) will always employ some fire support. Fire and Maneuver (the tactical doctrine, not the GURPS rules, although those rules support this) requires supporting fire. This is why US fireteams are the smallest element capable of Fire and Maneuver. This is also why every fireteam has a M249* SAW. It is why three element planning exists and why one of those elements is always "Support".

Really though if don't have supporting fire, you aren't using the Suppression Fire rule. Or at least you shouldn't be. Suppression, again, is fire support. It never makes sense (in real life or GURPS) to set up Suppression and expect to shoot until you win. Suppression in the assault aims to allow the maneuver element to maneuver, and in the defense aims to prevent the enemy from effectively doing so. 0-9% casualties generally aren't going to win the fight by themselves.

Plus, more importantly, GURPS is not really a war-gaming system, and most games, like most stories, require exceptional, often heroic behavior and skills on the part of the characters. While there will be games where what you described will happen, they are extremely rare in my experience - even in war, the characters are usually either cut-off or otherwise in a position where they really only have themselves to rely on.

If you aren't providing fire support, don't use Suppression Fire. Just shoot.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

That's one Fright Check. It's not Fright Checks, let alone (as I was arguing against, though you may not have been suggesting) a constant stream of Fright Checks. Without a steady repeat of frightening conditions, your unfortunate character is going to recover from their original fright and will no longer be effectively suppressed unless they're given some effective reminder of why they should be.

The whole point of Suppression is to keep up that steady stream of reasons to be afraid. Again, unless they are Triggered or Focused they don't get the +5 bonus, and Panicked is not Triggered or Focused. Once you start panicking it's hard to stop. Also besides that initial Fright Check unprepared civilians are going to suffer Total Surprise too (which also counts as Panicked)!

Of course, responding to an ambush by standing around, or even dropping prone in place (as I'd be inclined to allow if a character is stunned by surprise or fright check, though not if frozen by total surprise, though I haven't checked the rules on this), is likely to result in further fatal and/or terrifying things happening to you.

Do Nothing doesn't allow you to Change Posture (these are separate maneuvers) however it does allow Crouching (always a Free Action) and Dodge and Drop.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Page 47, according to my copy (just in case somebody is looking for it on the wrong page) it's a box: Untrained Shooters.

That'll teach me to go by memory. :/

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Do Nothing doesn't allow you to Change Posture (these are separate maneuvers) however it does allow Crouching (always a Free Action) and Dodge and Drop.

In general, I wouldn't allow a stunned character to perform actions described as a 'free action on your turn'. No crouching, dropping flat, changing a grip of a weapon, talking to your team-mates, dismissing active spell effects, changing the condition of a safety, etc.

Crouching or dropping flat are things you do in response to taking fire if you have some presence of mind, not if you are completely caught flat-footed and can't process what's going on.