Hello everyone,
I have questions regarding vehicles and vehicle combat.
First off, acceleration numbers. Vehicles have a walking and a running attribute from tactical combat. How long does it take for a vehicle to get up to running speed? It appears that it takes one round, or three seconds, which means the standard dumptruck is pulling a 0-60 time of 3 seconds. This seems a little screwed up. I don't have my core book with me right now as I am at work, but I was reading here about rigging and the question came up so I thought I would see if I was misinterpreting the rules or if anyone had some house rules they were using for vehicle acceleration.
Second question is about the initial Opposed Vehicle test that starts off a Chase Combat round. The rules state that each driver makes a vehicle test and the driver with the most successes gets to determine the chase distance (Close, Short, or Long). Is there any limit to how may range increments the winning driver can move? The problem I see is this: A garbage truck is chasing a Westwind 3k. The Westwind is 3x as fast as the truck, but if the garbage truck driver wins the vehicle test, he can move from long range to close range and ram the Westwind in one turn. That seems way off kilter to me.
Any thoughts or clarifications or rules that I over looked?

Thanks in advance for any and all help you can offer.

Yep...

My interpretation too.

But technically your right, on paper the garbage truck look like he's gonna catch on the westwind 3k.

But as a wiseman once wrote in this forum, SR4 was written by gamers not lawyers.

That mean a lot is subject to interpretation and also that the rules are a lot like guideline... You must have a fait GM and some serious players that are willing to be more freestyle than in SR3. I liked a lot SR3 and i still play my chronicle but SR4 pace just better suit my need in term of time of preparation as a GM.

-Spider

I meaned a fair GM not a fait GM...

Yeah, I we play pretty loose in our game, but I just wanted to get some others thoughts on this.
Any thoughts regarding the acceleration of vehicles in Tactical Combat?

It's my understanding that the handling only comes into play when executing maneuvers and such. In Chase combat the winner of the vehicle roll gets to chose the distance the two vehicles are at for the entire round. Does the handling act as a modifier for this test? If so things would begin to make a little more sense.
As I think about it more, the rules also make for some exciting car chases with both vehicles jockeying for position, however, I can already envision one of my players spending tons of cash on a really expensive car, and then bitching when the Lone Star armored Bison closes to ramming distance and smashes up his toy because the Bison driver won the vehicle test once.

My vote is to turn the close/medium/long ranges into a staged system, possibly with more than 3 levels.

For example, make 10 separate levels. 1-3 is close range, 4-6 is medium, 7-10 is long. Depending on who wins the initial checks, they can stage the pursuer's distance in any direction they wish, possibly a number of stages equal to the net hits on their vehicle test.

If we went through the trouble of creating so many levels, might as well keep track of speeds and acceleration. Give the character with a higher speed a bonus to the initial vehicle placement determination. Then if they go over their maximum speed, start giving them penalties in everything roll except that one.

Just a few ideas. Makes me sad that their drone/rigger book isn't in the initial lineup of released books.

i thought it was gonna be rolled into the equipment book.

I normally don't take speed into consideration unless its an open road or something like that for chase combat being that in most places like downtown no one will hit top speed (to many obstructions). I also have a guy who plays a transporter type character and is stacked in driving skills, so we have lots of chases.

When we start a chase roll vehicle test reaction+vehicle skill+handling. So that takes care of your handling with a dumptruck and sports car. For acceleration i just kinda play it by how the chase starting and is unfolding.

As for a dumptruck winning the test and being able to catch up to the sports car, we use the break off rule in an opposite way for closing. So if the sports car is at long range the dump truck can do a comlex action (Maneuver) so he get the +1 to the next round. Then if the dumptruck somehow wins the test the closest he can move is short range. It makes the chases a little longer but it makes them more exciting for the runner because then you are taking into consideration his skills and vehicle specs.

Unless there are some experienced NPC drivers most chases end in crashes as the runner tries to perform stunts and the NPC crash.

Turjon,
Thanks for the good post (not so say that all of your posts weren't good). Your approach to vehicle chases seems to do a good job of accounting for mismatched vehicles.