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I haven't seen all variations of YZE that are out there - far from it - but as I'm thinking about the ones I have seen to date, and thinking back to the "classic" gameplay elements I'd come to expect of Twilight: 2000, I am getting a bit curious about what a "heavily adapted" YZE core rule set might look like ... assuming that the ambition actually is to cater for what we old-timers would still recognise as "Twilight" gameplay, that is.

Elements I'm particularly thinking of might be tricky to adopt are mainly the heavily hardware-oriented aspects. Of what I've seen to date, YZE does not tend towards great detail in handling hardware.
With the fairly simple, coarsely divided weapons stats (damage value, to-hit bonus, and range bracket) and a subjective range zone based firearms combat system, I'd see that preserving e.g. the differences between an M16A1 and an M16A2 ... or between an M16A2 and an Ak 5 in the middle of deep Norrland winter! ... would become a bit difficult. I still hope they manage it, because to me, it just won't be Twilight without it...

One of the most critical strategic aspects of the classic Twilight: 2000 campaign as I seem to recall is resource management. (Exactly how many SS109 rounds do we have left ... okay ... but we have five magazines between us ... how do we divide this...?). From what I've seen, YZE games tend to gloss over ammo bookkeeping, but it's of course easy enough an element to add.

One element that YZE games seem a bit fond of is base building. That is one element of course that slots straight into my memories of Twilight: 2000 gameplay ... only, of course, that the base is mobile.


So ... what do you guys hope or expect to see from a YZE Twilight: 2000 system?
What, if any, YZE elements do you absolutely NOT want to see?

I'm hoping for...

• Hits damage attributes
• Good integration of vehicles.
• 12-20 skills

Things I'd like to see...

• mixed d6 d8 using a mode of #d8=Lowest(stat, skill), #d6=difference(stat, skill) using d6=[X,-,-,-,-,S] d8=[X,-,-,-,-,S,S,SS]
• Age impacts char gen
• More than 4 atts (preferably the 6 rolled of T2K 2e) but not more than 7 (noting that Initiative was a figured att in 2e)
• Specification of which rounds each weapon uses.
• Specification of which tire mounts will fit on the various vehicles, thus no "universal tires" (Tires and gas both as travel "expendables"

Things I don't want to see:

• details to the level of differentiating the M-16A2 from the M-16A1 or A3... they all put the same size and power of round downstream at the same rate of fire and speed of travel, with very similar accuracy.
• supernatural anything.

Things I don't want to see:

• details to the level of differentiating the M-16A2 from the M-16A1 or A3... they all put the same size and power of round downstream at the same rate of fire and speed of travel, with very similar accuracy.

.
M16A2 and M16A3 are essentially the same weapon; the differences are superficial (A2 has burst fire; A3 has full auto), and should reasonably have no impact in terms of game stats. With you so far.

But then I need to disagree; quite firmly, I'm afraid.

The thing is, although they superficially look very similar and load cartridges that look identical; fundamentally, M16A1 and M16A2 are, for all their similarities, really quite different weapons:

• M16A1 (and previous) had 1:12" twist rifling and fired the M193 5.56x45mm/.223 Remington cartridge with a 55gr bullet. The bullet has a high tendency to tumble and fragment upon impact yielding more damage against unprotected targets, but has poor penetration against body armour.
• M16A2 (and subsequent) has 1:7" twist rifling and fires the SS109 5.56x45mm NATO cartridge with a heavier 62gr bullet, with higher muzzle energy. The bullet is more stable and not at all as prone to fragmentation, and so does less damage, but has much better penetration. This weapon also has noticeably higher accuracy at ranges beyond 400m, extending the weapon's effective range.

This disregards differences in mechanical reliability and whatnot, but on the ballistic properties alone, the M16A2 is much more similar to the L85A1 and other ~500mm barrel 5.56x45mm NATO rifles than to the superficially similar M16A1.

My expectation of a Twilight: 2000 game is to incorporate enough detail in weapon stats to reflect this level of difference in hardware ... and I may have misunderstood your meaning, but shouldn't tracking just these kinds of differences between weapons go in under your "specification of which rounds each weapon uses"?

M16 A1 and A2 can fire the same current ammo. With fairly similar extension. The biggest difference? Not safe to use tracers. Unless it's got the newer barrels. Which, thanks to Army supply chains, most army ones did. And Navy Supply likewise for the Navy and Marines.

And, since the A1 was phasing out in the late 1980's when I was issued a CAR-15 lower (4 position Safe/semi/burst/full) from the late 1960's modified with a tack-weld to block selecting the full auto, with an M16A2 upper and barrel manufactured around 20 years later... and most still in service by 1999 were using modern A2 barrels...

The 1999 US army M16A1's still in service were largely rebuilt into A2's or A3's, piecemeal. Even when still labeled A1's, they were functionally almost A2's.

The M16A4 and M4, given the ranges of scores listed in other games in the line, they only need a different entry due to the Picatinny Rail System.

The thing is, in game terms, if they aren't reworking the nature of the weapon stats, they all are "Long range." If they are, one or two zones may be worth noting, but

The real issue is one of "is the game served by small differences?" and the story aspects really make little difference over a few dozen meters of range ... especially with the 25m grid implied in core for FL, Alien, and MYZ.

Besides, most unmounted infantry engagements are under 200m... the extra range literally is not a routine need. Which is why the M4 is being more and more issued. The extra range it gains from the new ammo is lost by the shorter barrel... and it's less encumbering, but given core YZE, that, also, is WELL below resolution. Heck, it's almost below resolution in games like 1E or 2E T2K...

You are highlighting one of my main apprehensions regarding applying the "out-of-the-box" YZE to the Twilight setting - the subjective range zones; a low-res system where both weapons are just thrown into the same "long range" category. Granted, it's great for action-packed cinematic-style play, but my image of Twilight: 2000 is somewhat more ... gritty.

As for the weapons, yes - with all the conversions and rebuilds and mods that came about, the M16 family has become a veritable jungle. I can't even pretend to keep track of all the variations and sub-variations of it found in service nowadays. Even the 5.56x45 cartridge "family" have been split into new variations.
In my image though - largely based on hearsay and conjecture, admittedly - what was found in "mainstream" issue at USAREUR garrisons pre-1995 was a bit more bog standard, both in terms of the firearms and the ammunition.

And as for the routine tactical requirement, I completely agree. But in RPG's, I find players often land in non-standard situations...

I suspect Vader, that kind of fine detail will not be found. Much as I love the older editions, imo that kind of detail is too much minutiae (especially in 2020) and you might as well be playing Accounting: 2000. It's one thing for players to worry about how many rounds of 556 ammo they've got, another to worry about whether they've got the right 556 ammo. I suspect the number of players who care is even smaller than the number of people actively playing older editions. If you want to track that kind of detail, fair enough, I think you're just making an awful lot more work for (presumably yourself as) the GM. I can't imagine anyone I've ever played with - including ex army quartermaster's staff, librarians and accountants - finding that particularly engaging.

Tyres is an interesting one and I imagine easy enough to incorporate, but you could say the same for engines in a lot of vehicles - for example, when the British Army shipped out to Iraq the first time round, they shipped out with all the Challenger powerpacks, from UK and Germany. They were each good for 800 miles, the problem was the REME had no idea which ones had done how many miles each (source: Hugh McManners' Gulf War One ). I don't recall engine life or tyre usage being tracked in the older editions rather than generic 'wear' on the vehicle - which I can see being the mechanic used again.

Gas/alcohol usage tracking - definitely, its a key part of the T2k experience imo, along with foraging for supplies, scavenging and gathering biomass to distill.

I do think the combat system needs to be a lot more granular than Mutant:YZ (the YZE game I'm most familiar with). Does it need to be full tactical maps detailed? I've got an open mind on that, but it needs to support reasonable tactics and 'feel' life-threatening every time someone points a weapon in your character's direction.

My biggest hope is that settlement or convoy management will be a feature. I'd love a quite detailed settlement building set of rules with some mass combat rules for raids and rules for specific scenarios/modes of transport again, like Pirates of the Vistula etc.

My main concern is actually if the combat system has enough resolution to allow differentiating the characteristics of the different weapons in the first place.
Simplify it far enough, and the system might only be able to resolve the difference between pistols, SMG's, assault rifles/machine guns, and sniper rifles - all irrespective of calibre or any other characteristics.
And while such systems do exist and certainly can be enjoyable enough for the right setting; I, for one, am not terribly keen on a take on "Twilight: 2000" where an FNC to all practical intents and purposes is identical to a G3, or M60. Or, in Swedish terms, an Ak 5 in game terms is identical to an Ak 4, or Ksp 58.

Assuming - assuming - the game actually tracks ammo (which at least the YZE games I've seen generally don't), I expect people will already be keeping an eye on how many rounds of 9x19mm, 7.62x51mm, 5.56mmx45mm, 12.7x99mm ... AND/OR 9x18mm, 7.62x39mm, 5.45x39mm, and so on ... they have for the various weapons they've picked up. I remember this bookkeeping as a key feature of Twilight campaign gameplay back in the day.

Adding the difference between M193 and SS109 into that mix seems to me less of an addition in bookkeeping than creating a system to keep track of different vehicle tyres and how worn they get over time.

Which, by the way, I feel is a great idea!
I don't know if it'll make any librarian or accountant players happy per se, bit I think it really fits the theme of the setting.

In fact, I'd like to expand that to include tracks as well as vehicle power plants. I remember vividly from the Army how those were the key factors to really limit a tank or APC's utility over extended distances. It'd put an interesting twist on one of the, what I remember as nearly archetypical, images of a Twilight campaign: the group trundling across central Europe in their M2 Bradley ... a vehicle only made to traverse long distances on a transport trailer!

Thinking on ammo: I've only ever GM'd T2K and have, I think, had 8 different people in T2K groups at various times. Of those, 3 really appreciated having different ammo types accurately reflected (and would have complained had it not), 4 appreciated it, but would I think, have been happy with just 'assault rifle ammo', and 1 actually would have preferred 'assault rifle ammo' - but he didn't like T2K and dropped out of the game anyway.
I think the difference between different calibres of ammo is a fundamental part of T2K, as part of the overall 'shortage of everything' 'make-do-and-mend' setting. However, beyond the calibre/case length (i.e 7.62*51(NATO) vs 7.62*39 etc), further details are likely to be too much, in most cases. Not always - at 0.50cal, the different ammo types do matter, as reflected in the earlier editions. However, I can't see any of my players wanting to differentiate between different types of 5.56*45 (ie M193 vs ss109).

With tyres, and vehicles more generally: I agree that here, more detail would be good. In the earlier editions, you could stock up with ammo, weapons, food, tools, etc, but you couldn't get a spare tyre to stick on the bonnet of your Landrover, or an entire spare engine to stick in the trailer.

From memory (and this might just be 1st Ed), getting parts to fix a vehicle required a donor vehicle of the same type, which while simple to administer, was clearly not that realistic in many cases: easy enough to change this to a common family of vehicles (i.e. say that a part from an M113 can come from any M113 family of vehicles), but even then, this is a 'make-do-and-mend' world, where motor vehicles can be routinely refitted to run on wood alcohol (which I understand is actually pretty dubious, but that's a whole other discussion), so it seemed to me that there could have been some more consideration to vehicle parts, and recovering parts that fit from similar vehicles or jury-rigging parts sourced from different vehicle types.

Somewhere or other, I think I still have some notes I made to address this, and which also generated a weight for vehicle parts (so that you could strip a wrecked vehicle of all useful parts, but had to have the cargo capacity to take them), though I'm not sure if I ever finished developing them.

You illuminate an important point, and one where I wouldn't mind seeing a bit more realism in the new ed.:

Converting an internal combustion engine to run on other combustible chemicals than the one it was originally built for is often possible within certain limitations, but not with unaffected performance. For instance, you can generally convert petrol engines to run on ethanol, actually gaining a bit of power, but at a much higher rate of fuel consumption, and depending on how you've been able to convert it, you might considerably increase the rate of wear. On the other hand, converting a diesel engine to run on ethanol would be much trickier ... on the other hand again, there are other (more or less) home-cooked chemicals that might be easier to make a diesel engine run on.

I'd like to see something like a chart with a variety of engine categories on one axis and various possible chemicals, scrounged and home-made, on the other; telling which combinations are possible and with what consequences to performance, fuel consumption, engine longevity, etc..

Coincidently, I turned to my bookshelf, and my copy of 'Alternate Fuel for Road Vehicles' (M. L Poulton) was on the shelf in front of me (working from home) - perhaps the writers of the new edition should invest in the 50p + postage that a second hand copy is currently going for on Amazon (UK).