Mortar's

[Olefin]

I would think that rounds for the smaller mortars would actually be plentiful, but that many of them may be coming from the facilities like the one in Krakow (Wojo's)- i.e. the small machine shop kind of ammo facilities that were still operational after the 1997 strikes

thus you may have 12 rounds for your 60mm mortar but possibly only one or two of them may be pre-war and the rest may not be the up to the same quality standards considering the source

[Legbreaker]

I think you're probably right there. Reliability issues are dealt with in the 1st ed heavy weapons book with a flat 10% chance of blowing up in your face or not detonating at all.
Still, 9 rounds out of ten working as intended isn't too bad, provided you don't mind loosing a few mortarmen along the way... :

[Bullet Magnet]

I think you're probably right there. Reliability issues are dealt with in the 1st ed heavy weapons book with a flat 10% chance of blowing up in your face or not detonating at all.
Still, 9 rounds out of ten working as intended isn't too bad, provided you don't mind loosing a few mortarmen along the way... :

There should probably be a little chart for that. After the 10% chance of failure as noted above, to account for the possible results. Things to include might be:
Dud Mortar - does not detonate upon reaching target
Insufficient Propelling Charge - reduced range (of course, they won't know this until they use the round)
Dud Propelling Charge - either not launching at all, or only travels a couple meters before coming back to the ground (with the round detonating as if it had reached intended target)
Overloaded Propelling Charge - round explodes in tube, causing injury to crew and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius

Those are just my ideas. I'll point out my experience with mortars is limited to seeing them used in a few movies. I'll leave it to someone who has first hand experience to correct me where I'm wrong, and to provide more accurate or clearer information. (and maybe to suggest odds of any of these events occurring)

[StainlessSteelCynic]

That's a great idea!
Other results could be: -
Overloaded Propelling Charge - round travels 1.5 times the actually intended distance but otherwise functions normally.
Slow Fuse - round fires and travels as intended but fuze doesn't work as intended, round sits where it landed and detonates 2D6 (seconds, minutes, hours) later.
Dud Shell part 2 - "Did that round feel a little light", round wasn't packed with any explosive charge other than the propellant, propellant and fuze work as intended but there's nothing to make it go "boom".
Sensitive Fuze - fuze activates while round is in flight causing shell to explode somewhere along its trajectory


I tried to think up enough possibilities to make a d10 chart when added to yours but I'm still two results short

[bobcat]

QC would be variable for post war munitions. Mortar,Goose Gun, and RPG rounds made by people who have been doing it for more than a year would generally be fairly reliablemaybe a D100 or D20 failure rate, less then a year D10, brand new facility with rookies D4

[Legbreaker]

Available chemicals and other materials make a big difference too. Using unstable chemicals for the explosive, or substandard metal for casings for example.
You use what's available and pay the consequences later (well, those on the firing line do anyway!)

[StainlessSteelCynic]

ArmySGT kindly sent me some other suggestions for mortar ammo failure and that easily gives us a quick & dirty d10 table to scare Players with
I particularly wanted a d10 chart so we wouldn't have to use a die not already used for the game so again, thanks ArmySGT

So we'd be looking at something like this (no particular order): -
01 - Dud Mortar - does not detonate upon reaching target
02 - Insufficient Propelling Charge - reduced range (of course, they won't know this until they use the round)
03 - Dud Propelling Charge - either not launching at all, or only travels a couple meters before coming back to the ground (with the round detonating as if it had reached intended target)
04 - Overloaded Propelling Charge - round explodes in tube, causing injury to crew and anyone unfortunate enough to be in the blast radius
05 - Overloaded Propelling Charge - round travels 1.5 times the actually intended distance but otherwise functions normally.
06 - Slow Fuse - round fires and travels as intended but fuze doesn't work as intended, round sits where it landed and detonates 2D6 (seconds, minutes, hours) later.
07 - Dud Shell part 2 - "Did that round feel a little light", round wasn't packed with any (or the wrong) explosive charge other than the propellant, propellant and fuze work as intended but there's nothing to make it properly go "boom".
08 - Sensitive Fuze - fuze activates while round is in flight causing shell to explode somewhere along its trajectory (maybe use d100 to determine percentage of trajectory travelled before detonation with 01 and 100 both being just at the muzzle of the tube)
09 - Body and fins separate after launch - explosive filled body tumbles in flight landing 1d6x50 meters short of the target in a random direct (1d12 clock face)
10 - Bomb casing breaks apart after launch scattering the explosives in pea sized bits over a 50x50 meter area.

[Legbreaker]

What about using 2d6 or even 2d10 to create a bell curve with common and relatively benign failures (dud round for example) sitting around the middle of the order, and the truly nasty and catastrophic ones (explodes in tube) at the end(s)

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Absolutely no reason why not.
From memory aren't d6 prone to giving a more defined bell curve than d10 and d20 If so it's probably worth using 3d6 in preference to 2d10 (or even 2d6), to place the more desirable (or the more likely) events within the bell curve peak and the less desirable events at the base.

With all this input I think we're about 75% of the way towards a workable faults table for post-war manufactured mortar ammo.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

ArmySGT has sent me some more suggestions for the faults table. At some point when real life stops bothering me, I'll try to put together a chart that takes advantage of the bell curve property of dice rolling as per Legbreaker's suggestion. While this table has been specifically made in relation to mortar shells, with a little tinkering it should be usable for other forms of artillery.



Slow Burn... On impact, the casing breaks in two at the ogive . The explosive filler burns (no detonation) in a bright furious geyser of blinding white fire and throws off sparks. 50% chance of igniting combustible materials in a 5 meter radius.

Bad fins or imbalanced casting.... The shell fires as normal but, cannot be stabilized in flight by a imperfect casting. The random rules for a miss apply, triple the distance for a catastrophic failure.

Intentional ..... The manufacturer substituted the explosive filler for clay. Whether, to save money or hide failures may not be known. There cannot be a detonation on impact.

Fuse failure..... the fuse arming mechanism shears a pin and the shell detonates at its highest point (perihelion) as the nose turns toward the earth.

Hangfire.... Slow propellant ignition... The shell drops down the tube and impacts the firing pin.. There is wisps of smoke and the shell will fire in 1d6 minutes.

[unkated]

To aid you in your work, O Cynic, I built the attached spreadsheet.

The First Sheet tallies outcomes for 2D6, 3D6, 2D10, and 3D10s both as number of outcomes or as percentages. Rows 12, 14, 31 & 33 display the could of outcomes of a given value using the number of dice; the row immediately under each count is the percentage chance of that given outcome. The differences in distribution is displayed in a pretty graph at the bottom.

The Second Sheet has blank tables for 2D6, 3D6, 2D10, and 3D10 outcomes, listing the approximate outcome for each set of dice as if on a D100 range (D1000 for 3D10).

Play with it and which outcome distribution you like best. Or skip if it doesn't suit.

What can I say I was bored at work.

Uncle Ted

[StainlessSteelCynic]

That's very nice of you... pfft, it's pretty damned awesome actually!

Thank you kind sir


Edit: Been giving the spreadsheet a good look and it's very, very handy. My only question is about the graph itself.
Was there meant to be annotation for the colours on the graph
When I open the spreadsheet the graph displays fine but there's nothing stating which colour is what die.
While I'm certain that green is the d6 and blue is the d10, I'm assuming that they are both 2 dice (i.e. 2d6, 2d10) and I'm also assuming that the red plot is 3d10 and the purple is 3d6, is that correct
Thanks again for this, it really has made the dud round results a lot easier to place onto a chart.

[Bullet Magnet]

When I commented about a chart for possible complications resulting from the 10% chance of failure on mortar rounds made by the Wojo plant, I really didn't expect there to be such a response. Not that I'm complaining at all.

At the time, I was hoping someone might come up with enough possibilities to make something like a 2d6 chart, or maybe percentiles. Now I see there are too many results to fit on a 2d6 roll, but 3d6 might work. (I like Legbreaker's idea of putting the more disastrous results at the ends of a bell curve; it helps to keep the odds low enough that players won't be afraid to use mortars)

And, like Bobcat suggested, this could be applied to any other facilities that are making weapons during he war, with variable odds of failure depending on the level of quality control in place at the facility in question.

I am looking forward to seeing what comes from this. And also, to see what kinds of possible complications there are that I hadn't thought of.

[Legbreaker]

When I commented about a chart for possible complications resulting from the 10% chance of failure on mortar rounds made by the Wojo plant, I really didn't expect there to be such a response. Not that I'm complaining at all.

At the time, I was hoping someone might come up with enough possibilities to make something like a 2d6 chart, or maybe percentiles. Now I see there are too many results to fit on a 2d6 roll, but 3d6 might work. (I like Legbreaker's idea of putting the more disastrous results at the ends of a bell curve; it helps to keep the odds low enough that players won't be afraid to use mortars)

And, like Bobcat suggested, this could be applied to any other facilities that are making weapons during he war, with variable odds of failure depending on the level of quality control in place at the facility in question.

I am looking forward to seeing what comes from this. And also, to see what kinds of possible complications there are that I hadn't thought of.

See this everyone
This is how the community should operate. Everyone working together to build on what's gone before, not tearing down and starting again, or arguing about the tiniest little discrepancies (which are probably just typos anyway).
This is GOOD!

[kcdusk]

See this everyone
This is how the community should operate. Everyone working together to build on what's gone before, not tearing down and starting again, or arguing about the tiniest little discrepancies (which are probably just typos anyway).
This is GOOD!

Absolutely agree. Take a point of interest, throw around some ideas, come up with an improvement in the game (regardless of if your using v1.0 or 2.2). Thats why i'm here.