[X] My Assistant

[FriendoftheDork]

What's bothering me now is what's the difference between a vehicle's walking and running rate? What penalties should it incur from running? There's already a penalty for shooting from a moving vehicle, but do you maybe apply the -2 for running to any gunnery tests?

The penalty for shooting from a moving vehicle does not apply to Gunnery tests or emplaced weapons. It applies to hand-held weapons firing out the window, through a firing port etc.

The penalty from moving at "running" speed applies to all fire, and is only compensated for by Gyro stabilization.

[Warlordtheft]

IIRC-I thought the first number was the accerations rate and the second the decelleration rate (so to increase speed it is +5 per hit from slyck example, to decrease it is -10 per hit). I also assumed there was no walking or running speed for vehicles, also the only rate that mattered was the max speed. I'm going to have to review my books.....

[Malachi]

IIRC-I thought the first number was the accerations rate and the second the decelleration rate (so to increase speed it is +5 per hit from slyck example, to decrease it is -10 per hit). I also assumed there was no walking or running speed for vehicles, also the only rate that mattered was the max speed. I'm going to have to review my books.....

You can play it that way, but I don't see anything remotely close to that in the RAW.

[Slyck]

So FotD, you's apply a -5 to people firing personal weapons from a vehicle moving at Running speeds. It seems to me that this makes a chase scene with a go-gang pretty one sided as I don't expect them to have many more then 5 dice. I suppose there are still maneuver checks to add to this, but it still seems thin for an exciting scene.

[hobgoblin]

err, the rules have a -3 mod for firing from a moving vehicle.

thing is, when your running and shooting, your not only trying to aim, your also trying to not stumble and fall.

But when shooting from a moving vehicle, your just trying to compensate for the movement of the vehicle so that you stay on target. Or maybe your waiting for a quiet patch in the movements, but then that point may not be the best moment to hit who your aiming at.

[Saint Sithney]

A little experiment for you to try that should help illustrate why this is the case. You'll need:

• An empty parking lot
• A car
• 5-10 small beanbags

1. Go out into the middle of the parking lot.
2. Toss the beanbags in different directions and distances.
3. Get in your car and drive, in order, to where each of the beanbags landed as quickly as you can safely manage.
4. Get out of the car and repeat step 3 on foot.
5. Now imagine repeating this at the mall on a busy shopping day. (Just imagine, I'm not responsible for any wrecks you cause speeding around a crowded parking lot.)

Sure, given more freedom of movement, your car can almost certainly go faster than you can run. However, tactical combat (where acceleration-as-movement comes up) isn't taking place in situations where it has that kind of freedom (or if it does, it's moving out of the area where tactical combat is taking place). The low movement rates in tactical combat also cover the amount of extra time that the vehicle spends accelerating, decelerating, and turning - all of which a pedestrian can do almost instantly.

This sounds a lot more like a basketball game than it does a gunfight. Most actions in a gunfight are going to be either move to cover or cover some distance. Almost all of it is going to take place in a matter of seconds.

So, option one is a short sprint, which, for the first 3 seconds at least, a moving vehicle and a person will maybe be able to cover in an equivalent amount of time, due largely to the vehicle's need to decelerate a lot more mass. However, there are plenty of vehicles which could reach 80km/h in 6 seconds. (Of course there are a bunch of ridiculous Troll builds who can reach those speeds as well, and in less time, but this isn't about how broken the Meta movement rates are.) The real case to worry about here is the second case, covering distance. For instance, a sniper is firing on a vehicle in an open area. The vehicle has the choice of either, running away or closing distance enough to fire back. If the vehicle tries to run away, it is dead, because the sniper can just run after it firing away until it dies. This is nonsense. The only thing which makes sense here is to use chase combat rules. Basically, any time a vehicle has to keep accelerating, traveling in the same direction it makes no sense to keep the speed down. If a vehicle is turning and shucking and jibing, then yeah, it will never really reach a state of continual acceleration. Just keep such instances separate from those which don't require a lot of turning and stopping and so on.

But yeah, play how you like to play. If the RAW ruling says it's walking/running and not acceleration, and you play RAW, then godspeed. Just don't get upset when runners start going after 18-wheelers because they can run them all down on foot.

[hobgoblin]

But yeah, play how you like to play. If the RAW ruling says it's walking/running and not acceleration, and you play RAW, then godspeed. Just don't get upset when runners start going after 18-wheelers because they can run them all down on foot.

thats a situation that fits neither tactical nor chase rules, and so would be a situation that would needed to be sorted on the spot by around the table agreement.

[rumanchu]

The problem (as I see it) with vehicle movement rates is largely caused by the fact that drones (which interact with people quite often) are classified as vehicles under the rules. You don't need to try to pigeonhole vehicle movement rates to correspond to "human" movement rates if all you're dealing with is cars and tanks and boats and planes and so on...everyone in modern society has a pretty good idea of the premise that Cars Are Faster Than People.

Because drones are classified as vehicles, though, vehicles need to have stats that are analogous to those of people (especially once you factor in Cyborg bodies) -- it's ridiculous that a Honda ASIMO (which is designed to mimic human movement) would run at Ferrari speeds.

Ultimately, though, there's no good fix for it, because pretty much any vehicle (from the Dragonfly to a Boston Class Patrol Sub) can be equipped with either a drone brain or rigger control circuits -- which means that anyone with a commlink can, in principal, bring any vehicle into any encounter. Additionally, every rigger wants to be able to pimp out their drones with Teh Cool Upgrades, so the rules should incorporate the ability for a rigger to upgrade his drone *and* his truck.

Ideally, drones would use the Critter rules (and have Hardened armor, with maybe another power to factor in the vehicle recoil comp rules) with some additional rules for upgrades, and actual vehicles would have another set of rules for their speed. (Hell, give drones a power called 'Vehicle Mode' for the rare occasion where you need to have a Roto-drone chasing after a Dodge Spirit). I'm fairly confident that people interact with drones far more frequently than drones interact with 'vehicles' in most games.

(Another possible angle would be to apply some sort of multiplier to the 'acceleration' rates for "proper vehicles" involved in human-scale combat rounds)

As an aside, another problem with the movement rules in SR are that they are *super fast*. An average troll is a faster runner than Usain Bolt (32.25m/turn based on his World Record set last year). Average SR human walking speed (10m/turn) is *far* faster than "regular 2010" human walking speed (12km/hr vs 5km/hr)...and even "average" SR human running speed (25m/turn) is barely slower than the fastest (unofficial) 40-yard time (26.82m/turn). It's no wonder that vehicles look slow when Comic Book Guy runs at 18.6mph (for comparison purposes, Usain "I'm Crazy Fast, Y'all" Bolt officially runs at 24mph).

Now...all that being said, I agree with the example given earlier of tossing beanbags around in a parking lot and driving your car around: generally speaking (even accounting for the remarkable movement speeds of metahumanity in 2072), the scale of encounters when people are involved are small enough that (barring obscure rules for facing, turn radius, etc) vehicles *can't* move too fast without being (effectively) out of range of regular schmoes.

[FriendoftheDork]

So FotD, you's apply a -5 to people firing personal weapons from a vehicle moving at Running speeds. It seems to me that this makes a chase scene with a go-gang pretty one sided as I don't expect them to have many more then 5 dice. I suppose there are still maneuver checks to add to this, but it still seems thin for an exciting scene.

Yes they will pretty much miss if they are accelerating as much as they can while trying to shoot. If they don't they will only get the -3. Then again 2 dice is pretty horrible too and a recipe for critical glitches.

As for the go-gangers themselves I'd probably allow them more than 5 dice anyhow. And probably a vehicle specialization on their small arms skill.

Enemies with only 5 dice will seems thin anyhow. Cover? 1 die left. Medium range? Ok now they can't hit you.