Rail Guns in SR4, I can't hardly wait Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Kronk2]

[URL=I saw this]http://img295.imageshack.us/img295/7702/sr...waffen00ao6.jpg[/URL]

And was wondering what the stats for a Tank Mounted Rail gun would be?

My party is about to do something stupid and they deserve a rail gun of the stern.

Ok here is the gig. They have been hired to Blow up an Azzie motor pool in Victoria (formerly in Texas), and instead of just blowing it up, they want to try and steal all the vehicles. They know that reinforcements are at best a half an hour away. The reinforcements consist of a group of tanks. I am being nice and ignoring that there is a HUGE airfield in Victoria, which has seen military use before. If things get really squirrelly then the Azzies can dispatch a team of heavy UAV's to bomb the crap out of them.

So anyway what I am asking here is, what would a railgun do to a City master or an APC. I pretty much am guessing that if the Railgun hits then the vehicle is toast. Guessing like 12P -15AP(AV) but they cost like 40k each and are fiddly to repair.

[Riley37]

Let's be overt: do you want the PCs to succeed, want them to fail, or want them to succeed only if they have a cool plan and/or good rolls?

Let's say the PCs somehow get into the motor pool and take control of many vehicles. If they slot preprogrammed chips into the autopilots, giving each vehicle a different escape route, with many of them converging after a while at pickup points, and then they personally drive one or two of the vehicles, then the MBTs may be able to intercept and destroy a few of the vehicles (eg the ones that scattered *towards* the MBT base), but not all.

If the PCs know who will get called when the motor pool gets hit, then they could take some measures to slow pursuit, eg mines and/or roadblocks. Diverting a herd of cattle onto the road that the MBTs would take, might slow them down a fair bit - sure, an MBT *can* squish cows like bugs, but enough of that might jam the treads, and the drivers need Composure checks.

More relevant question than damage: what is the speed of the MBT and how flat is the terrain? If the escaping vehicles are faster and the terrain isn't flat, then the MBTs will not in the short run get line of sight (LOS) to any stolen vehicles except, again, an unlucky few that drive towards the tank base. You can reasonably figure that tank guns are aimed either by a Rating 5 or 6 pilot with a Rating 4 Target autosoft, 3 IPs each turn, or by a metahuman who's even better and thus overrides the Pilot. Tanks might also keep a few high-speed rotodrones as advance scouts; if the tank keeps a 100m datacable on a reel, and sends the rotodrone 100 meters up, it can "see" a lot further out to the horizon, and it can detatch the rotodrone for further scouting. (Better to treat a multi-thousand-nuyen drone as expendable, than to drive the tank into an ambush.)

If the PCs instead take the vehicles as a fleet, all going in the same direction, then the MBTs know where to go and can give chase, and then relative speed matters.

Key question: where are the PCs taking this fleet of vehicles? Sooner or later they gotta stop somewhere, and if the Azzies can keep tabs on where the stolen vehicles are going, then they'll have time to call in more and more reinforcements, maybe pay others to set up interceptions.