Tenative Heavy Gear Campaign Rules

Copyright 1997 by Mark Langsdorf. Electronic or physical reproduction is allowed for personal use only. Not for sale. Not authorized by Dream Pod 9. Heavy Gear is a registered trademark of Dream Pod 9 and is used without permission. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Initial Forces

Each player has a force pool of available units. Some or all of the units in the force pool can be used for any given scenario, subject to scenario limits. The winner of the campaign is the player with the largest force pool at the end of the game.

All initial units are Qualified (or Green), except there may be 3 Veteran vehicles/infantry squads and 5 Veteran technicians, and 1 Elite vehicle/infantry squad andd 2 Elite technicians.

Each player starts off with a squadron of calvary, a section of Heavy Gears, 3 squadrons of infantry, a squadron of air units, a squadron of artillery, and a support unit. [A squadron consists of 3-8 vehicles or infantry squads (aka units). A section consists of 3-5 squadrons]. The TV and composition of each unit is summarized below:

Unit Composition TV

Calvary Squadron Striders, Tanks, or Hovertanks 7500

Infantry Squadrons Infantry and APCs 2500

Gear Section Heavy Gears or Striders 12500

Air Squadron Hoppers, VerTOLs, Aircraft 50,000

Artillery Squadron Self-Propelled or Towed Artillery 5000

Support Unit Technicians and Transport Vehicles 7500

Initial unit designs may be taken from any published sourcebook or built by the players. Player designs must either be scratchbuilt, new production or mass production models.

Scenarios

Each session of the campaign will consist of the play of one or more scenarios. Scenarios should be agreed on ahead of time and preferably written up in something like the following format.

Scenario Name
Backstory - a brief description of the history leading to the scenario
Date & location - when the scenario is, where it is, and the maximum amount of time that could have been spent on repairing vehicles involved in the last scenario
Forces - the allowed forces involved for both sides, including TVs, maximum numbers, unit types, and any special restriction such as minimum deployment range
Terrain - the terrain for the battle, and both side's starting position
Objectives - both sides victory conditions, modified for each side's strength.
Special Rules - any special rules for the scenario
Replacements - the TV of the replacements (and any restrictions on them) received into the force pool before the scenario starts. These forces are available for the current scenario, subject to the restrictions in #4, above.

Unit Improvement

Forces that survive scenarios will (usually) improve. Each unit (vehicle crew or infantry squad) that survives a scenario receives improvement points. Once a unit has more IP than the square of it's current level, it can attempt to improve it's skill level.

Event Points

Fired Weapons in Combat and Survived 1

Damaged Enemy Unit 1

Killed Enemy Unit 2/kill

Won a partial victory 1

Won a complete victory 1

Won against 2:1 or better TV 1

Won against 4:1 or better TV 3

Won against 10:1 or better TV 6

Vehicle destroyed but crew member survived -1

Suffered a total defeat -1

Suffered a defeat with 2:1 odds in your favor -1

Suffered a defeat with 4:1 odds in your favor -2

Suffered a defeat with 10:1 odds in your favor -5

A unit which has more IPs that the square of it's current skill level may attempt to improve. The unit must roll its skill versus a Threshold equal to 2. The unit's current skill level is applied as a penalty to the roll, and 1/2 any excess IP (over the square of the skill level). If the roll succeeds, the unit goes up by one skill level and loses IP equal to the square of the old skill level. Vehicle crew must advance in each skill (Piloting, Gunnery, Electronic Warfare, Tactics, and Leadership) seperately.

Casualties, Repairs, and Replacements

In most scenarios, vehicles will be damaged or destroyed, and crew and soldiers will be wounded or killed. Fortunately, wounded crew can heal, damaged vehicles can be repaired, and losses can usually be replaced. Often, though, the quality of damaged units will go down.

Wounds and Recovery

Vehicle crewmembers can be wounded in several ways. Crew compartment hits will only effect some of the crew, while overkills, crashes, or ammo/fuel explosions will effect everyone on the vehicle. Wounded crew members must make a 2d survival roll after the scenario. If they fail the roll, they die and are removed from the game. Otherwise, they are wounded and out of action for 4 weeks, minus the margin of success in weeks.

The threshold number for the survival test is 4 for a crew compartment hit, 5 for a catastrophic crew compartment hit, and 6 for an overkill, crash, or ammo/fuel hit. Ejection systems give a +2 bonus to the survival roll.

Crew without vehicles may be reassigned to vehicles without crew. There is a -2 skill level penalty to trading vehicle types (gear, tank, strider, aircraft), a -1 skill level penalty for trading vehicle classes (going from a Jaguar to a Hunter), and a -1 attribute penalty for having a new vehicle. The type-switch penalty wears off in d6 months, while the other penalties wear off in d6 weeks.

Infantry are normally represented as having 3-5 hits. Some "dead" infantry are actually infantry that have been incapaciated by wounds. For each "dead" soldier in a squad, make a 2d survival roll against a threshold of 7. The roll is at +1 if at least one member of the squad was still had wound boxes at the end of the scenario, +1 if more than half the squad still had wound boxes, and +1 if the squad was on the side that held the field at the end of the game (not necessarily the winners). If the survival roll is failed, the soldier is dead. Otherwise, the soldier survived and can heal.

Wounded soldiers heal one hit per week until they are back at full capacity.

Replacements

Partial vehicle crews or infantry squads may be merged with other squads or new replacements. Determine the new crew/squad's quality by calculating the weighted mean of the skills, attributes, and IPs of the original squad's, rounding down for skill and attribute and up for IPs.

Example: Infantry squad Alpha is Elite (4) with 9 IP, squad Beta is Qualified with 3 IP. After a heavy combat, Alpha has 3 members and Beta has 4. Alpha and Beta are merged and a group of 3 Rookies (with 0 IP) is added to the mix to form squad Gamma. Gamma's skill level is [(3*4 + 4*2 + 3*1)/10] or 2, qualified. Gamma has [(3*8 + 4*3 + 3*0)/10] or 4 IP, making it eligible for an improvement roll.

Repairs

In the downtime between scenarios, vehicles must be maintained and damaged vehicles can be repaired. Use the repair rules in the HG Rulebook. The same repair may be repeated more than once, but each successive failed attempt increases the threshold by 1.

Questions, comments, suggestions? Email me at mlangsdo@io.com.