I'm about to run 11th Hour for some firends all of whom have next to no knowledge of 40k, I have a rough grounding but am no expert. One of the players has asked if Guardsman have any communicators to talk to other squad members. I'm aware of the longer range vox-caster but is one squad member able to communicate with another over short range, if so, what is the range?

Cheers.

If they have combeads, the range is about a kilometer. Of course, that can be made much shorter if they are in a steel building, or in a cave or something.

It doesn't seem that the characters in 11th Hour have combeads, but it's up to you if you want to let them have it. Personally, I think it'd be more fun and interesting if they didn't have an easy way to communicate.

Actually, probably combeads are only available to elite forces. The job of the common grunt is to hold the line and die in the name of the Emperor, after all.

Micro-Beads have a range of up to 1km (assuming good conditions, may be reduced by buildings, weather, terrain and GM Fiat).

Vox Casters have a range of up to 100km though better craftmanship may have increased range.

Yes, I meant microbeads, not combeads. I think I am getting my sci-fi confused.

I suppose it would very much depend on the tech level your Imperial Guard regiment is running. For example I'd expect Cadian Shock Troops to pack microbeads but for some of the more technologicaly backward regiments not to. I'd probably avoid them with units from places like Catachan or Tallarn where environmental conditions can be harsh on 'sophisticated' technology. Penal regiments wouldn't be allowed the luxuary of such technology but they are probably standard issue for Storm Troopers etc.

Kahadras 

You also have psykers. Telepaths are great communications devices.

They mostly communicate when the Sgt yells at them on a squad level.

Big stuff like tank divisions and important officers have voxs for rapid communication over distance, but for anything really secure they'll be running a fixed line to the front which can't be intercepted and decrypted and runners. Fit, have 2 legs or know how to ride a bike, drive a jeep, know how to get to where they want you to go and like dodging bullets? Then you get a parcel to deliver to someone important.

The IG is a big, dumb, dangerous animal that is expected to work and function under any conditions a person can breath in. They don't want to rely on complicated comms or psykers if there's weird xeno shit clogging their airwaves, a solar flare frying anything more complicated than a flashlight, EMP's going off in the atmosphere or the hive fleet turns up and there's a great big hole in the warp.

In the beta rulebook half of the pregenned regiments do not have a microbead. This includes Catachan, Death Korps of Krieg, Maccabian Jannisaries, and Mordian Iron Guard. The iron guard don't really count though as they start with a Lemun Russ which comes equiped automatically with communications equipment.

I'd say a microbead is pretty standard for everyone but penal/death world regiments and extremely fanatical regiments. Also the words microbead and combead are interchangeable in the universe however the game uses microbead.

Droma said:

Most cases of regiments in the fiction, however, have only had Sergeants or Officers with microbeads - the rank and file almost always don't have them, the officers usually just vox the sergeants, and they then shout the orders to their squad.

 One excecption i can think is the Ciaphas Cain Novels. I remember Cain noting that he disliked working with local PDF forces because they tend to suffer from communication issues brought on by the lack of Microbeads.

Unholy_Ravager said:

Aye - whilst some Guard units (in that case, the Valhallens) at least had microbeads for sergeants and officers, PDF forces often don't have them at all, having to rely entirely on vox-units to convey orders.

What I'd like to know is: Is it common practise for IG squads to have a "radio man" with a vox caster? I'd always assumed it worked something like this, with one caster per squad…

http://i276.photobucket.com/albums/kk16/debbiezhou/2-1.jpg

…but these days I'm not so sure.

That would depend on two factors:

- the regiment you are looking at
- the author of the book you're reading

It boils down to what you as a player prefer. I too am more used to the "low-tech" approach, just because it's more gritty/grimdark and it makes for an increased difference to more elite forces (including particularly prominent and well-equipped IG regiments).

Theres a very good reason why the IG go low-tech with communications aside from environmental, resources and technical reasons- signals intelligence.

You only give comm gear to specialists, because they're trained to scuttle it in the event that the gear is or might be captured, in the event every Joe Guard is running around with a bug in his ear, all it takes is just one of them to fall into the wrong hands by any means and that's it, your whole communications system is wide open and you will be completely boned.

Admiral Yamamoto, flying along quite happily- got blown up by P38's because they got through the low level encrypt on his movements. Battle of Midway, JN-25 was cracked by the allies and the Japanese failed to roll out a new codebook- 4 to 1 losses to their fleet which they never recovered from. Capture of U-559, most of the crypto & its enigma machine captured, massive amount of bombe machines where made to crack German codes for the rest of the war as the possibility of it being cracked was the 'least of all security problems'

Look at how Osama bin Laden went low tech for years sending out messages, he used couriers with a USB stick that wandered into internet cafes or to other cells and while it was known he used them, they where next to impossible to intercept due to the 'physical' aspect of someone just delivering it manually. I worked for 5 years in a technical role 'finding' (mostly f**king horrible) people with signal intercepts and traces, 5 years on, still write the application architecture, ops proceedures and deliver projects in that scope from time to time when new technology comes in. If theres one thing to be learned from that is that you mostly catch the 'smart' ones when they screw up and the dumber ones never figure out just how wide open they are, all the time.

 I would imagine that Micro beads given out to a sqaud would only comunicate with the squad they are given to.

Unholy_Ravager said:

Yeah from a simple heirarchy of command your average trooper is only going to be allowed to vox to his squad mates and CO. His CO will be able to vox to other COs and his immediate superior (a junior officer). The Junior Officer is going to be able to vox to his immediate superior (senior officer) and out to each squad CO. At no point would your average trooper be allowed (or even able) to comm straight through to a junior or senior officer. I think the only exception to this would be commissars being able to overhear everything in order to maintain morale and order, and potentially scouts/snipers answering directly a junior or senior officer without a CO.

Of course if you mechanize your force then you likely have internal tannoy systems in all of your ACPs and your tank crews will each have a comms specialist who can relay communications by yelling over the noise of the engine. Similarly a hunter killer regiment will have long range comms gear on their armour assets (chimera variants and sentinel variants).