A More Ordinary Test: PC's vs Army

Side A:
Sam the Scout:  vacc suit, med kit, laser pistol
Arnold Army Major: cloth, SMG, scanner, Tactics Skill-3!
Mack the Marine Lt: combat armor, gauss pistol, RAM GL, Tactics 2!
Nick the Navy Guy: vacc suit, shotgun
Melvin the Merchant: cloth, light assault gun
Otto the Other: cloth, auto-rifle

Tracked ATV, Auto-cannon

Side B
Sarge:  flak jacket, assault rifle, Tactics-1
7 troopers, flack jacket, assault rifle

Heavy APC, Auto-cannon

Surprise Check: both sides spot each other easily, driving around in big, noisy tracked vehicles.  Since Side A has 5 Tactics points, vs. 1 on Side B, Side A chooses to be Intruder.

Turn-1
Adventurers drive ATV behind stone wall, 4 jump out for cover.  Arnold fires Auto-cannon against APC, but it proves too well armored.
Army guys return fire with their auto-cannon, impeding the tracks on the ATV and jamming the adventurers' auto-cannon.  Arnold tries to clear the jam, but since he has no mechanical skill, he fails.
6 of the army guys disembark from the APC along another stone wall.  They let loose with their auto-cannon again, totally jamming the ATV tracks and shearing off its antennas.

Turn-2
Arnold and Sam jump out of the vehicle.  Mack fires his RAM Grenade launcher at the APC, and despite spending a tactics point, he misses by 1.   Nick fires his shotgun at long range and misses.  Mevlin fires his light assault gun and misses, and Otto fires his auto-rifle and misses too.

The six army guys return fire, spraying the line with bullets,  Melvin is hit for a serious wound, 2 light wounds and a graze and is out of the fight.  Otto takes a a light wound but keeps fighting.  Mack's combat armor shrugs off the bullets.  The auto-cannon fires too, missing 3 targets, but hitting Arnold for a serious wound, knocking him out of the fight too (a Tactics point from the pool saves him from a mortal wound).

They continuing firing, the auto-cannon killing Nick and Melvin, seriously wounding Sam.  Regualr bullets give Otto a serious wound, taking him down too.

Turn-3
Mack, alone and wounded, fires his grenade launcher one more time at the APC, hitting it.  It manages to moderately wound the auto-cannon gunner, but Mack, realizes he's been beaten and surrenders.

LESSONS LEARNED
This was the most fun of the battles so far.  Having actual player character types involved made it more enjoyable.  The adventurers were outnumbered, by a little.  The heavy armor on the APC made it immune to the adventurers' auto-cannon, and they had to rely on Mack's launcher.  Trouble was, no one in the team had more than launcher-0 skill. 

The adventurers had a metric pile of Tactics.   I was too stingy on how I allowed people to spend tactics points.  I had limited it to 1 point per roll.  I'm going to change it to any number per roll, and you can spend them after you roll (to Mike it, as it were).  I seem to remember doing that back in the old days (or at least I remember Tom Larkin calling out "tactics point" a lot). 

If the adventurers could have spent their 6 ponts (3 from Arnold, 2 from Mack, 1 from their battle computer) all at once, then they could have hit with the first grenade, and perhaps saved themselves from being raked by 2 rounds of auto-cannon fire.

Also, man, someitmes a weak space guy is just no good in a ground fight.  The fact that the army troops all had Rifle-1 skill made a huge difference, especially when they shot twice with their assault rifles and many of the adventurers were firing with gun combat-0.  Also, whoever came up with the idea of giving each character level 0 skills for all their service skills chart was a genius, he immiediately made everyone more useful in a variety of situations, without making them over-powered super monkeys.