Mechanical Men Revisited

Last weekend I ran a couple of test games using the rules from my last post. The basic scenario used a company in line against a single medium mechanical man - mech from here on in. The mech was armed with a gatling ranged 24"/48" and the riflemen were armed with breech loaders later magazine rifles.  the games started with the mech just moving into maximum Gatling range (48") The mechs orders were:

If you fired last turn, move forward 9" otherwise, if you are over half range fire with 3 dice or if you are at half range or less fire with 5 dice. 

 Using the standard Soldier's Companion initiative and turn sequence, this created some unusual situations.  In the most basic case, the mech would slowly move forward firing most often in the defensive phase 3. The defensive fire phase ensured that the Gatling could fire every turn there was no movement. Even at 3 dice the sheer number of shots had an effect on the company and in one or two trials it broke before it got a shot off. When the mech did get within rifle range, the sheer number of shots put out by the company ensured there was at least one golden BB to assure its destruction. Changing to magazine rifles only sped up the process a bit.  Oddly the best tactic for the defending company was to advance as quickly as possible into range and overwhelm the mech with fire power - not really the result I was looking for.

Simple probability means that two volleys from breech loaders will pretty much guarantee a kill even with 6+ to hit and a natural 6 to fail the save.

Next up, I am going to try a standard defensive bonus of +4 for mechanical men but use hitpoints for the four types of mech:

Small: 1
Flying: 2
Medium: 3
Large: 5

We'll see if this feels any better. We'll also put the company behind some cover.