OK, so I'm having a bit of trouble with the arsenal vehicle mod rules. Specifically, I can make a better combat walker than a tomino, cheaper, out of a westwind eurocar.

Specifically, I take the walker option, and add 2 mechanical arms. The resultant vehicle has a much greater top speed, same body, higher handling, and can seat 2. It's that last one that really gets me.

I've done some pouring over the rules, but I can't find anything clear-cut. What separates a walkier with mechanical arms from an anthroform drone? Is the Westwind Robot really workable?

anthroforms are specifically designed to be human in shape and size.

a westwind with walker and arm mods would basically be a car with legs

Heheh. A car with legs would be quite cool. But wouldn't it still be a touch on the quick side? The fastest walker I've spotted has a speed of 40, yet the Westwind with the walker mod would still move at 120.

The mod also falls down when twinned with flying vehicles...

Robotech anyone?

i'd probably not try the robotech angle . . rather the mask/transformers style ^^

masked ares crusaders, working overtime, doing crime, all the time!

Transformers, more than meets the ICE

Yeah. The real issue here is that the walker mod MAKES NO SENSE.

add ram plates to our modified westwind, and you run into people for 30 damage.

heh, try a ram test with a banshee. thats a killer, for both sides...

what are you complaining about?
guess what kind of damage an approximately 6 to 8m tall robot weighting in at about 3 to 5t going fast will do to you if he steps on you or kicks you? O.o

Legs are substantially more stable on uneven terrain than wheels are. Sure, if you've got paved roads the wheel is the way to go, but if you're trekking though a craggy hillside your wheeled westwind is likely to get stuck.

Ooh look! Arsenal's vehicle mod rules break again. Filmatleven.

Why are they broken? It seems they are working just as intended.

Is there any published artwork of what the Tomino is supposed to look like?

What's broken here, is that the speed of the walker modification on existing vehicles far outstrips the speed of existing walkers.

The ram plate thing isn't a broken thing, except at the speed the walker goes. It's not really part of the argument, just a fun thing to do with it.

I'd really like something other than "it looks different" to differentiate between walkers with arms and anthroforms. Something like:

"Anthroform drones may make use of the full range of human mobility, engaging in climbing, gymnastics, and any other physical skill as if it were human. Walkers, with or without mechanical arms, do not have the range of motion or flexibility to make such complicated maneuvers. Anthroform drones may use any equipment normally useable by metahumans, although it may need to be troll-modified in the case of larger models."

All that Jazz. You know, actual rules for anthroforms, as opposed to "it works pretty much like you'd expect," which with few exceptions appears to be the RAW. Unless I've missed something, which may be the case.

anthroform-drones may wear heavy military armor i guess . . now imagine the mage trying to stunball the poor chap before him with force 12 only to realize . . shit . . not working o.o
other than that, anthroforms fit inside buildings . . and not just the garage/car-port-part of them . . thei weight less so they may climb up into the second or third floor and don't have to worry about the floor saying:"fuck dis shit!" and going home taking them down with it . .

i think the biggest distinction is that a person can fit into a humanoid walker, whereas an anthroform drone does not have a pilot seat.

Humanoid Walker with Anthroform in it . . Babushka 2070: the Emergence !

So let me see if I'm understanding this... you are talking about putting arms and legs on a car and you've determined that the rules get a little wonky? Have you considered that putting arms and legs on a car is, well... silly and probably not what was intended?

I mean no offense, but this kind of strikes me as one of those cases where you "prove" the rules are broken by creating an absolutely ridiculous situation that no one would actually attempt in RL.

according to one of the devs (synner i think?) in a discussion (i think it's the 'calling out hermit' one) about drones/vehicles etc, anthroform drones get to use the same set of rules as is found for cyborgs in augmentation when they are being rigged (ie it isn't anything special about the cyborg that lets them use those rules, just that those particular rules are more likely to be used by a cyborg relative to a normal rigger, as i understand it).

so the difference is that an anthroform drone actually does in fact move like a human. you can use the crazy rules from augmentation that allow for some really, really impressive attributes, and so on.

of course, not using those rules also has it's advantages, mostly in the form of needing less skills to use it properly. but yeah, with the right skills a rigger controlling an anthroform drone can do some stuff that a walker vehicle just plain can't do.

Silly thing no-one would do in real life? I've seen video of walker robots made from old cars. Go to youtube. Besides, what ELSE are we going to convert into a walker? Are motorcycles, tanks, or any other vehicle any less silly? What, pray tell, do you propose modding into a walker, then? What are you going to attach arms to?

The manservant 3 drone is a walker with mechanical arm enhancements. It is specifically listed as a walker, and not an anthroform. So specifically there's some difference. It's kinda hard to sort out. It seems the rules for anthroform drones are hidden in the cyborg rules in augmentation. Walkers are still piloted with anthroform, though? Or is that only if it's bipedal? And if the cyborg rules are really for anthroforms, how does a cyborg in a non-anthroform body work? Do they still use the appropriate vehicle skill for agility? Do they still use top speed as their move rate in combat, or do they use accel like any other drone? Oh, and can we modify an anthroform drone with cyberware mods, and if so, what capacity does it have?

Gah, milspec armor on top of 20 vehicle armor. That'd take some creative killing.

We're talking about walkers, right? Just harpoon a tow cable into the legs and circle it a few times until it trips itself.

Just playing the devils advocate here... but do they use the most expensive sports car they can find to make it go faster? A Porsche or a Ferrari maybe? Hell why not a Bugatti? They only cost like 1.2 Million. My point is that nobody would spend that kind of money to make a walking car and if they did what the hell are they using it for? If you need to drive it down some stairs or something you should rethink your plan, because you're probably spending more on the job than its paying. You buy a Westwind because its ridiculously fast ON WHEELS and make sure to plan your escape so you can stay on the roads. If you can't, then you need a helicopter or some other plan, not a 100,000+ Gobot.



Any of the drones in the book? I'll be honest that I haven't spent much time using the rules, but its seems logical to me that the arm and leg mods were intended mostly for drones, although lifting arms on a vehicle also make a lot of sense. There are lots of kinds of arms after all. They don't all have to be humanoid "grip the gun in your robot hand" arms.


I don't know if these questions were for me or the general audience, but you'll have to ask someone a lot smarter than me...

Point 1: That's pretty close to my point, which is that the walker mod, applied to any vehicle, leads to something way to fast compared to the things already designed as walkers. I'd kinda like to see walkers normalize a little slower than that, maybe have a cap on how fast they can be.

Point 2: There are 2 levels of mechanical arms by the rules, humanoid grip the gun type, and the lifting ones. They cost different amounts and use different rules, both can be added to whatever.

Point 3: My point there is that there is, without me having to make a rediculous mod, a canon walker with arms. So even if I never did any custom vehicles these are pertinent questions.

I've found that dividing Acceleration by 4 instead of by 2 makes them much more reasonable.

walkers (all walkers, in fact) are piloted with anthroform. that's what the skill does.

anthroform drones get to use the pilot skill (including any modifiers such as that from a control rig or presumably specialisation) as their agility attribute, and do not have to actually make pilot tests ever. they can use skills as if they were in a human body (for example, gymnastics dodge, climb tests, etc). they can also use the regular weapon skills rather than always using gunnery.

as far as cyborgs in non-anthroform bodies, per the rules they actually work almost identical. i believe the implication on synner's post was that those rules were intended to be specific to rigged anthroform drones as opposed to cyborgs in general, but i could be mistaken about that. you'd have to find his specific post to be sure. if those rules were indeed intended for anthroform drones as opposed to cyborgs, then it appears that a cyborg in a normal drone body would use the normal rigging rules (which is a terrible waste of a cyborg, mind you). that's how i would run it, at least.

wtf? Do you mean Matroska/Matryoshka? Those are the little nested dolls. A Babushka is a triangular headscarf, worn by Russian grandmothers.

yeah, maybe . . i dunno . . but good to know *g*

Thats more what I'm needing, thank you. I'm sure all that is in the RAW somewhere. Just not all convienent like.

Now we just need to know how much capacity our anthroform has for cybernetic mods.

actually, a good chunk of that is derived from reading dev posts here on dumpshock. i suppose it might make it to the FAQ someday, or even to the errata.

as for that last little bit, though...

it would seem reasonable to use a similar rule for walker legs.

if you're talking about a roughly human-sized drone, it stands to reason the drone would have as much capacity as a normal cyberlimb. if you're wondering how much a body 1 microdone with such arms could have, though, you're on your own there =P

Shrug. It was funny! He tried! Gotta give him a little credit.

Capacity-wise, I'd base it off body. Perhaps an anthroform drone has something like 10xbody capacity. Or if you like, you could break it down to 2xbody capacity in each limb and torso. I kinda like leaving it as full drone capacity instead of doing it peicemeal. Less record keeping, plus a bit mroe free-form with what are less strict design requirements than trying to work with flesh.

The other way to do it would be to go with 20 in each leg, 15 in each arm, 10 in torso and 4 in head, which is using the cyberlimb capacity strait. That adds up to 84 capacity, before "bulky." Anthroforms with the mimic mod would instead use the stats for synthetic limbs.

So how would you purchase str boosts? what stats in what limbs would be needed to increase handling?

Strength boosts are just cyberlimb Strength enhancements; Handling increases are just cyberlimb Agility enhancements.

I'm not sure I'd allow stat-boosters at all, but I'll crunch the numbers.

There's really two ways I can see this going. One is to treat an anthroform as a special case of having 4 cyberlimbs, a cybertorso and skull. If you do it this way, then you use the second capacity scheme from my post, and you allow strength and agility mods as 'zonga suggests.

The other way, and the way I'm leaning, is to treat the anthroform as a special case of vehicle. In this case, you have one large capacity rating for adding cyberware, many cybernetics are disallowed, including stat boosters, and all customizations are handled by the vehicle mod rules. Looked at this way, perhaps adding cyberware capacity is a new vehicle mod, which gives you (bodyx2) capacity, takes 1 slot, and can be taken multiple times. Perhaps you get some capacity for free and can mod up for more. In the case of mechanical arms on other kinds of vehicles, I'd say (bodyx2) capacity is a good estimate of how much you should be able to fit in each arm.

'nother fun question: what happens when you take the mechanical arms mod for an anthroform? More arms, natch, so how do we make that work?