Pre-Gens for Spec Ops - Opinions?

[DCB]

Originally Posted by TheOneRonin

I even had a thread shortly after TS came out where the general consensus by the community (Doug Cole and Icelander too) was that a Delta/CAG/ACE Assaulter would probably need around a 21 firearm skill to be able to do in GURPs what they have to be able to do in real life.

Found it! Here it is.

That wasn't the consensus, though, for two main reasons.

First and most importantly, as safisher pointed out, the required skill level strongly depends on what GURPS actions you're choosing to use to represent the real-life actions. The difference between a double-tap every 1 second (AoA) and every 2 seconds (Aim then AoA) is massive in GURPS terms -- up to +6[1] -- which is the difference between skill levels of "not even professional grade" and "stands out among experts". It's not clear which set of actions are correct -- or whether GURPS even has a good match -- but it's certainly the case that there's by necessity a very large subjective component in translating reality into GURPS actions here.

Secondly, the Skill 18/21 estimate seems to have a couple of omissions:
- Each Targeted Attack bonus can go +1 higher (TS p.45 says to round up)
- MP5 has Rcl 2, not 3 (HT p.123-124, no apparent errata)
- Trademark Move: Half-Move and AoA (Determined) Double Tap (Vitals) (TS p.41, suggested on TS p.15)
Each of these gives an additional +1 to hit in the scenario.

With these additions, the required skill goes down to:
- Guns-18: minimal miss chance in combat
- Guns-15: minimal miss chance in training (what was observed)
- Guns-12: minimal miss chance in combat with basic aiming
- Guns-9: minimal miss chance in training with basic aiming

Note that Guns-14/15 is the canonical estimate for specops soldiers (TS p.42), so the fast way of modeling their training (AoA with no aiming) appears to be fairly reasonable with these additions.

(That's assuming you take into account the +3 non-combat bonus for perfectly stationary targets who will never shoot back, never blow up, never get backup, and are in a familiar environment, which seems reasonable. To get a minimal miss chance in combat, one option is to introduce new combat actions that split the difference between AoA and Aim+AoA to get two kills per 3 seconds.)


[1] +3 base Acc +2 Acc from Very Fine(Accurate) weapon +1 Acc from match grade ammunition. A Very Fine gun's cost and time commitment is so minimal relative to specops training that it seems reasonable to expect.