Mass Combat against bestial hordes?

[Genesis]

Hey guys, long time no post.

There must be rules somewhere for running a Mass-Combat-type scenario against an opponent that doesn't use Strategy (like a horde without a leader)... but I can't seem to find them.

Basically, I've been using Mass Combat to provide a background for PCs to do interesting things in their corner of a battle, so I really liked the abstraction of the larger conflict and the built-in mechanisms for the PCs to affect it. Now the force they're a part of is fighting... well, zombies, basically.

What does the horde roll in the Strategy contest? Are they capable of using things like Recon superiority? Are there certain battle strategies that ought to be ineffective against a decentralized force?

I thought GURPS Zombies would have something like this, but the horde combat rules there don't quite do what I want them to....

[Kelly Pedersen]

For the question of "what does the horde roll for Strategy", I'd suggest rolling the average Perception of the zombies, but severely curtailing their options for battle strategies. Looking over it, I'd suggest just All-Out Attack, Attack, Indirect Attack (but only if the zombies happened to have a detached group who could come in as a surprise), Full Retreat (if the zombies are somehow scared by something like True Faith), and Raid (only if the zombies are in scattered, small groups at the start).

I would allow a Reconnaissance contest before the battle, again using the zombies' average Per to substitute for the normal roll. If they have Recon superiority somehow, I'd add that, but I'd only give zombie elements Recon TS if they had some kind of enhanced senses, like tracking humans by smell or a generic "life sense" that let them zoom in on living humans.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Genesis

Hey guys, long time no post.

There must be rules somewhere for running a Mass-Combat-type scenario against an opponent that doesn't use Strategy (like a horde without a leader)... but I can't seem to find them.
.

A horde without a leader would still have the default Strategy skill of an average member of it and that will be modified by relative troop strength, which will mostly be a matter of numbers and the presence of any super-powerful monsters. Even an attacking "army" of totally mindless automatons would have an effective strategy skill based on their edge in numbers.

[Gnaskar]

Mass Combat pg 27, the sidebar on battling monsters is probably the best you'll be able to find.