Vehicle Damage Resistance Test Options

[Mephisto]

Hi all!
I recently discussed with others from my group if we should alter the vehicle damage resistance test and I like to ask for some input. "Search" didn't show up anything for me.

The "Problem": My group see it as a problem that if a vehicle with a low body (no rigger steering it) is hit with a weapon (like a sniper rifle) capable of doing about medium damage paired with some successes to stage up the damage will most likely severely damage or destroy a vehicle. Even if you reduce the power of the attack to "2", if you have a body of say 3 and an medium damage with 4 successes it will come out in the best of circumstances as a severe damage by a single shot.

Thought: We have thought about cancelling the staging of successes but this won't solve the problem with high damage weapons. Another thought was doubling the body of the vehicle for resistance tests.

Does anybody have any house rules on this one and/or experience with it?

Looking forward to your suggestions!

[Quix]

I hate giving responses with game balance as the reason. But that is my opinion on drones and low bod's. The PCs I've had who played riggers were better abd bigger gunbunnies then any of our sammies. For vehicles without riggers this leaves you on the short end of the stick but... what can I say, I can't solve all the worlds problems. I'm too lazy.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I was playing around with giving vehicles 3x their Body for Damage Resistance Tests. That would allow even the smaller vehicles to usually stage down damage against most small arms. Against very large vehicles, this would realistically require you to use some heavy weaponry -- or AV ammo with any old crappy gun apart from Hold-Out Pistols. There's just no way any unarmored target can expect to stage down an AV Sniper Rifle shot, or an AV burst from any FA capable weapon. Remember, it takes 72 dice on average to stage down once against a Power of 12.

[Kagetenshi]

Not much of a problem. Going into combat with an unarmored vehicle is like going in unarmored as a character.

If you're determined to change it, doubling Body dice doesn't seem too bad.

~J

[Demon]

the thing about it that bothers me so much is that their is alot of dead space in a vehical. Shooting one generally denotes aiming center mass. well if you shot is off and you hit the trunk, or passenger compartment (aside from the risk to the passenger) you are going to do next to nothing to the vehical (cosmetic obviously aside). If you hit any of the vital parts of the car then sure, but for the most part those are all in the engine area and along the bottom, if your not taking aim at one of those parts you prolly aren't gonna hit nothing worth while.

[Kagetenshi]

That's where the damage level reduction and halving of Power comes in.

~J

[Fonitrus]

[Kagetenshi]

The problem with that is that makes an Armor 1 vehicle worse than an unarmored vehicle of the same type for low Powers. For instance, take a heavy pistol (9M) against a Body 3 car with 2 points of armor. That starts off at 4L. We can't guarantee lack of staging, so we'll just try to get as many successes as possible against TN 4. With one point of armor we get four dice against TN 3, for an average of two to three successes. With no armor we've got nine dice against TN 4, for four to five successes.

Edit: in the case of a Body 3 vehicle, the example holds true all the way up to Armor 3, though the lead that the unarmored vehicle gets is reduced.

Talking about vans or transports stacks this even more against lightly-armored vehicles.

~J

[Fonitrus]

true but if u r a runner u r not gona go into nasty places with armour 1 or 2 same as if u wont go into combat (willingly) with only 2 balistic armour.

You are gona fork out some ¥ to get your car done up properly to be able to do the job. there is no half-good vehicle...it either stands up to the test or it falters..
thats why the 1.5*Body...in games i have played and have GMed always armour 5 was the place to be and armour 5 in most games i have GMed and curently running in, is the norm. Armour 5 is afordable and just under that point when ur handling suffers. takes up load..

as for the comparison of armoured vs non armoured ebing worse off at low ratings..well its adustable...
u can increase the threshold....i never bothered cause i never seen vehicles with less than 5 armour..except for bikes and few drones...

but to seriously think about it...lvl1 armour with body*1.5 dice is bit better than armour 1 and just plain Body dice....
so really no complaining..u r better off anyway..
u can raise the 1.5 to 2 easy

[RangerJoe]

(Quick aside. Good points, all, but Fonitrus, could you please refrain from using "u" when you mean "you" and "r" when you mean "r"? Cheers. I know I speak for many when I say that seeing "u r" anything makes our eyes weep. Unless you're talking about Ur, in which case all bets are off)

[Austere Emancipa...]

I am personally against any such "poverty traps", especially when there is no RL reason why such should exist.

Yes, multiplied Body dice coupled with a few points of Vehicle armor does make many vehicles very hard to disable with small arms. Considering how much punishment (lightly) armored HMMWVs can take from AKs, I have no problem with that.

[Fonitrus]

[Kagetenshi]

There are canon vehicles with Armor 3 and under (3 being the heavy pistol cutoff point) off the shelf. Some people will buy them and not upgrade. Most non-Riggers don't intend for their vehicles to see combat anyway, it's one of those things that happens by accident.

~J

[Namergon]

Some notes:
- a vehicle is most of time a (very) moving target. Hitting it is therefore difficult (high TN, hence not many successes).
- when the vehicle is parked, sure it is an easier target. No problem to hit a strategic point of the car.
- "destroyed" in the condition monitor of a vehicle should be taken with a grain of salt. I would rather say "so broken that make it work again would cost more than buying a new one"

[Kagetenshi]

Nope. Destroyed means it stops working and won't start again without serious repair. Whether or not that repair is cost-effective is an entirely different matter.

The rest of the car may be fine, but if the engine disintegrates the car is destroyed.

~J

[Fonitrus]

[Kagetenshi]

Yep, though the whole GM fiat thing comes into play if the damage was done with explosives or AV FA miniguns/HVHMGs firing their entire bursts, or if the chassis is shelled afterwards.

~J

[Austere Emancipa...]

I actually consider the D on vehicles to be "unable to move with its own power at the moment", nothing more. Exactly how broken it is usually depends on what it was hit with and how. Regardless, RL vehicles can often take a lot of punishment before reaching that state.

[Edit]I'm getting slow. :([/Edit]

[Lindt]

I have seriously considered using the 2x body rule, as I complelty agree that cars just arnt durable enough. The idea that I can scrap a car with 1 shot from a hand gun just dosent seem right to me (again, ignoring AV and what not). Sure, once you get into heavy weaponry, as I feel prefectly justified to blowing the bugger up if you unload on it with a 20mm cannon.
Also agree that D damage to a vehicle is that point where it stops working. The can it be fixed question is GMs advantage, someone unloads on a car (from the front lets say) with an SMG, its gonna do a lotta body work damage, the battery is most likely gone, same with raidatior, probely the oil, air and AC pumps, along with the alternator. Someone pulls out his LAW rocket, well its all over then.

[Modesitt]

This is slightly off-topic, but you'll find it very hard to convince your GM to hear the plight of the unarmored vehicles once you bring a drone with some armor into the game.

Example:
GM: "Ok, it has 3 successes with a shotgun. How many soak dice for the drone?"
Me: "2, but it doesn't matter. The shotgun slug bounces off the armor."
GM: "What?"
Me: "I don't even need to bother soaking. Subtract one damage level and cut the power in half, if that isn't higher than the armor of the vehicle it simply doesn't do any damage. This steel lynx has 9 armor."
GM: *Sound of GMs head exploding*

My thoughts: Triple the bodies of all vehicles, but downgrade armor. Maybe change it so every point of armor is another die on resistance tests AND a point of normal armor. Or create a new customization feature called "Reinforced Frame" that gives you more dice for vehicle damage resistance tests and make all vehicle armor count as standard armor.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Shotgun slugs doing nothing to armored targets shouldn't surprise anyone, really. What should really make the GM's head explode is that the Steel Lynx is immune to the Barrett M121's custom AP ammunition.

[Kagetenshi]

This is as good a time as any to ask for opinions on a house rule: is it reasonable to give APDS rounds their usual bonus against vehicles, but not cancel any of the vehicle's bonuses? IE, the armor is halved, but the power of the attack is still halved as well and the damage level dropped by 1?

For example, say someone has a custom sporting rifle (8S) and is attacking a drone of Armor 6. With normal rounds, the attack would be bounced; with AV rounds, it would end up being 5S after armor. With proposed APDS rules, APDS would generate 4M vs. Armor 3, or 1M.

~J

[BitBasher]

Not in my opinion. I treat APDS as standard ammo.

AV ammo is crackheaded. I treat AV as losing a power level and NOT dividing the armor by two, IE the vehicle gets full armor but it still penetrates twice as easily as standard ammo. This relieves the crackhead effect of AV ammo being more than four times as effective, essentially you go from "can't hurt it" to "it explodes from a heavy pistol shot" in one go. This also means something with 10 points of armor is safe from small arms fire, as I think it should be. Want to kill an APC? Go buy an assault canon with AV rounds or a missile. That's what they're for. This makes AV in man portable guns a stepping stone between normal ammo and heavy av weapons instead of an effective replacement for them.

I also limit drone armor to 3x the body of the drone and this solves most of all problems with the combat.

[littlesean]

Something to consider when accounting for damage on vehicles. Air bags.

Ok, well not air bags specifically, but look back 35 years and see how much electronics and safety equipment, not to mention environmental equipment and black box technology, were actually on vehicles. You really did have to hit the engine or gas tank to really make a difference.

Now, shoot the front bumper and the air bags may deploy, and if you are doing 100kph in a combat situation, that could be bad. There are sensors all over the vehicle to determine roll over, crashes and deploy safety equipment. What if a shot accidentally activates the retractable hardtop while in above combat situation? That would seriously affect the aerodynamics of the vehicle, converting it from a sleek bullet silhouette to an air scoop.

Go ahead another 60 years, and what kind of stupid crap has been legislatively 'required' for your vehicle to operate? (Please note, I don't think airbags, seatbelts, or catalytic converters are stupid, but the black box thing is questionable).

The possibilities are mind boggling.

Let your imagination run wild!

[Kagetenshi]

I'd imagine a rigger or power user would adjust it the way a skiier adjusts his or her binding release settings, decreasing the chance of accidental deployment by increasing the chance of nondeployment when it would be needed (seatbelts being an exception, of course).

~J