New Vehicle Design Option, Opinions? Options

[GunnerJ]

Reinforced Frame
The vehicle's chasis can be hardened and "bulked up" to allow it to resist damage better. Each level gives the vehicle an additional die for damage resistance tests. A vehicle may not have more extra dice for damage resistance than half (round up) the vehicle's Body. Reinforced Frame can weigh the vehicle down, thus decreasing its Load.
Design Point Cost: (Body ^ Rating) * 100
Load Reduction: (Rating * 10) kg
Maximum Rating: (Body/2), round up

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The cost can be problematic. For rating 5 on a Body 10 vehicle, it costs 10,000,000 DP! But then, we're talking about giving Body 10 vehichles (which typically have lots of Armor) 15 dice for DR tests, which seems like a fairly big deal. Any suggestions?

[Ecclesiastes]

I love the idea. I've never liked that there wasn't any way to increase Body (for damage resistance only, I'm aware that increasing body would mess up the costs of lots of other things).

[SunRunner]

I agree that the cost is a bit high. How about this instead?

[Edward]

I like the concept. It always annoyed me that noma ter how much I armoured up my body 3 or 4 vehicle or how well I rolled a heavy pistol with AV rounds would kill it in a minute or less. (Base S damage all resisting dice succeed results in Light damage he only needs to hit me 10 times)

Edward

[SunRunner]

[Edward]

Thanks. I misread AV ammunition.

Of cause anything with 24 armour will have the manuverability of a of a mule drawn cart with a bet axel and a stubborn mule.

Edward

[SunRunner]

[tjn]

[Moonstone Spider]

Personally I think the entire chassis concept in vehicles should be scrapped.

Instead the vehicle should simply start as a body 0 drone and have one base model for each type, car, motorcycle, T-Bird, Walker, etc.

Make purchasing body an option, possibly with a hideous price-code like body^4 *100 total points for it.

Make the limit on CF based on body, for instance body * 50 = max CF (Probably needs work as I'm pulling these numbers out of the air here, not testing them). Body 0 drones always have 5 CF or somthing simple like that to avoid 0CF vehicles.

Base sig before improvements is 10-body. Engine type has a sig modifier rather than a default Sig setting, for instance Electric might be Sig-1 while Methane is Sig-2 and Gaseoline is Sig-4.

That way you avoid a lot of the stupidities of the current system, I was ticked when I discovered that for a third the price of a heavy axle trailer I could get a 20-foot trailer with way more CF and body.

[GunnerJ]

Sun Runner: I'm thinking of adopting something like your costs. However, I think that while it makes sense game-balance wise to not have such hich costs compared to Armor, it doesn't make as much sense w.r.t. the internal logic of the design option. Armor is just put on the vehichle, but Reinforced Fram changes the very structure and composition of the chasis; it's a more invovled modification. So I'm a little torn here.

New costs:

Design Point Cost: Body * Rating * 100
Load Reduction: (Body ^ 2) * 10 * Rating kg
Maximum Rating: (Body/2), round up

Rating 5 on Body 10 costs 5000 DP and reduces load by 5000 kgs.
Rating 3 on Body 5 costs 1500 DP and reduces load by 750 kgs.
Rating 1 on Body 1 costs 100 DP and reduces load by 10 kgs.

This seems quite reasonable to me.

[Thistledown]

I've used a really simple option in my vehicles called "Beefy"

Adds one to body, for a decent cost, but can only be taken once, and only on something that starts at body 2 or more.

Later I'll try and find the exact cost of it.