How About This For Weapon Ranges?

Joash Shooting the Arrow of Deliverance, William Dyce

Ok, I think I may have finally cracked the weapon range issue in a way that appeals to me. Let me know what you think of my solution.

If you saw my post on TheBack40K yesterday, then you've seen the research I did on what the range of various modern day weapons (and a few old-fashioned ones) would actually be in 28mm scale.

Well, I've been able to improve on that research, as I was able to find out what the typical infantry engagement ranges are (from official US Army research). As well as the typical visibility range across most open terrain. I also discovered a page that explains the World of Tanks visibility system, and the minimum range at which you can see any tank, concealed or not. Which just so happened to match my desired number for such a range. So...

As we can't use real 28mm scale ranges without most weapons shooting 2-4 times further than the width or length of a standard 6'x4' table, I tried out a few scaling techniques. The one I settled on was to modify the ranges with a Logarithmic curve. Each range is scaled by raising to the power of 0.755. Which has the effect of scaling the short ranges by a much smaller amount than the longer ranges.

I settled on 0.755 because that's what made the width of a 6'x4' table equal to the typical infantry engagement range. While it made the length of a 6'x4' table a little longer than the maximum infantry engagement range. That seemed like a good match to me.

Anyway, here's the new chart:

So basically anything up to a Springfield sniper rifle will need to be measured on-table. While most of the heavy guns and machine guns will shoot further than the corner-to-corner diagonal. The Long Tom and the MLRS still have ridiculously long ranges, but I like the WOW factor of it. :)

I think this gives us a good place to start thinking about weapons stats. As far as range bands go, I want to make 12" the universal short-range (with a to-hit bonus) for everything. The only question is whether we come up with a universal long-range of X" that would give additional penalties, go with per-weapon long ranges (like over half of full range), or not worry about it.

What do you think?