Life Fire Excercise/Testing

[zgrssd]

Currently you need to have units participate in combat to get any field testing done. There should be some other ways to generate field testing without combat, up to a certain degree.

One part of it should be passive, happening the same way automatic training does. Particulary non-combat units like Trucks would be affected by it.


But there should be two additional active options, that cost IP/Ammo to offset the usefullness:
- Life Fire Excercies
- Life Fire Testing
Both should cost Ammo to execute, but be able to get Field testing - but only up to a certain degree (say 100 Total).

Life Fire Excercise
"Armed services usually use live-fire exercises as an opportunity to use real ammunition in a realistically created combat situation. The area in which these tests are conducted will be devoid of people to avoid casualties, and will likely be owned by the government which authorized the test. Most live-fire tests are conducted either against derelict equipment, such as tanks and ships, or against remotely controlled drones.

The purpose of this type of exercise is twofold: First, it offers recruits the chance to get accustomed to their weapons so that they will know how to properly operate them; secondly, this provides soldiers with an opportunity to fire live ammunition without having to worry about an actual enemy returning fire. This allows soldiers to get reacquainted with the feel and time of actually using and expending ammunition, rather than simply simulating the experience. Live-fire exercises of this type can be observed either by remotely controlled cameras or by long-range telescopic devices, such as binoculars."

The primary purpose of this one is to generate XP for the unit, not field tresting. But naturally they will get some field testing of the gear done as well. After all they are firing live Ammo, so they notice if things do not go boom when they should!

The Life Fire Test is more aimed at getting kinks out of a specific weapon System, not training soldiers.
I have to point to the Mark 14 Torpedo for this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_14_t ... ontroversy
The structural design seemed to be okay, but the production model had serious flaws (a really low Weapon Design score, propably caused by a low Base Design score). Any life fire tests actually conducted instantly and unambigiously found the flaws.
However, the supply situation was so abysmal, that the Burea of Ordnonance and Admirals would not "waste" those on any tests until the skippers just forced the issue.

Accordingly this would be a way to spend ammo, specifically to raise field testing to a decent point (say 100) and then do a Desing pass on the model.
For the cost, the basis could be:
(Difference to 100 Base Design) * Attack Ammo Consumption. It may just be a option you pick during design, to make sure to get a 100 result (spending ammo to offsete any low rolls). Or it may be a seperate thing you do after, to then feed the results back into the design process for a Mark 2 variant.

[TheSquid]

Yes, this sounds like it would be really useful, especially considering how much combat is required to get a model's design stat up.

It would be cool to have this as a posture strategem, similar to field training, but focused on the model design and/or some XP as you stated above (depending on whether one uses "test" or "exercise").

Naturally the units doing this would have some penalties while they're performing these tests.

The only thing I'd add is that if live fire tests/exercises are added, that there be a limit to how high the model design stat can go from these (i.e. while it should be possible to test to a certain percentage, getting higher than that (50%? 80%) should still require actual combat). Firstly for balance, secondly because "tests" and "exercises" might be good preparation up to a point, using them in an actual battle should be more impactful.

On that note, model stats should rise faster when used in actual combat as compared to when they are undergoing "testing".