I really am missing something here. Does anyone have a typed up/chat log/ something of a chase scene involving two cars?

Okay, the GMC bulldog ACCELERATION: 5/10 with a speed of 90

SR4: Acceleration:
Vehicles have an Acceleration rating that determine their movement rates. The number to the left of the slash is a vehicle's walking rate in meters per turn. The number to the right is it's running rate. A river or rone can attempt to move a greater distance by making a vehicles test (see below). Each hit on the test adds 5 meters to the vehicles movement rate.


Alright, so how does, for the GMC, 5 m/turn make sense, since every metahuman has a walking rate that's faster than that.



I understand chase turns and stunts and all that, but the speed thing is making me nuts. Am I stupid or what?

I beleive that the 5/m is per "second" and not per "turn" or every 3 seconds. So with 5/m you are going 15 meters per combat turn at a walking rate and 30 meters per turn running.
The exact speed is really not all that important as we cn assume crazy Shadowrunners stomp on the pedal and are going the maximum speed as soon as they hit the pavement.

I found that highly screwed up (the rules that is) so wrote some modified ones that my group has been using for a while.

Nope, they're per turn. Even then, you can get some insane results with chase combat. Such as a sports car going Mach 4.6, and a Dodge Scoot keeping up.

How many times do we have to repeat that if a car can go Mach 4.6 there will be no chase combat against the Dodge Scoot to begin with?

Er ... we are aware that for vehicles, this is acceleration and not speed, ne? And that a vehicle with a driver rarely accelerates at merely its base acceleration?

Right, a driver, not rigged, with a Ground Craft 1 and a 3 Reaction. The Bulldog has no Handling modifier, and we'll assume there's no adverse conditions. So, the driver could buy a success and travel 15 meters in the first turn. The second turn, he can again buy a success and now travels 30 meters (45 meters in 6 seconds, pretty slow at 27km per hour, but this is a regular dude here). Third turn, buy a success: 45 more meters moved (half max velocity). Fourth turn 60 meters added. Fifth turn, 75. Sixth turn, top safe velocity of 108km per hour, 90 meters per turn.

Does that help?

Yes, but to do each of these he makes a vehicle test, so can you do multiple of these say, one in the first initiative pass, one in the second, etc?

one thing to note about about chase combat is that it do not care about how fast the vehicles can move...

given how the rest of the rules are basically conversions of the SR3 vehicle combat rules, its odd they did that.

only reason i can think of was that to many people complained about the SR3 rules as being to bookkeeping intensive, with its rigger test each round and changes depending on speed and ground (former changing maybe each round, depending, the latter changing at the GM's say-so)...

Doesn't care how fast your moving? I'm very confused T__T

Using the Chase Combat rules in the SR4 core book, speed and acceleration are not taken into account. Now, this is not the only way that vehicle combat must be run in SR4. Indeed, the rules under Chase Combat should only be used when pure speed is not really a factor in the situation. If vehicles are involved in a chase in tight quarters, like a dockyard with tons of shipping crates, or a residential area with short streets and lots of houses, where each side is making lots of twists and turns to evade each other, then raw speed really isn't a factor it's more driver skill. If you really want to bring speed or acceleration back into the picture, then just add a DP bonus to the driver whose vehicle has a higher Walking acceleration, equal to the net difference; or you could give a DP bonus of Net Speed / 10 (rounded down).

The vehicle rules are far too brief and poorly worded, but I always took those acceleration rates as: acceleration. Meaning the vehicle starts at whatever speed it was going last turn and then can change speed based on the acceleration values. There was a thread previously where someone asked these same questions and I gave a long-winded response... I'll try and go dig up a link.

Here we go, see what I wrote in this thread.

By RAW your wrong. Under RAW the vehicles acceleration is not what we think of as 'Acceleration' but just the term used for a vehicles combat movement rate. A GMC Bulldog getting 1 success on acceleration a round will move at 15m per round. Highly stupid but how it is. That is the main reason I wrote my House Rules which make Acceleration actually mean Acceleration.

You can interpret the rules as you say, but I doubt that was the intent, nor is it the only interpretation possible. Acceleration as walking/running is about relative movement between vehicles, and not about velocity. This comes about because vehicle combat is handled separately from the rest of combat.

thing is, the acceleration scores are, from what i can gather, only used when a vehicle is mixed up in regular combat.

ones everyone jumps into vehicles and thunder down the highway, dukes of hazard style, said scores have no effect what so ever...

i guess the biggest thing about vehicle combat rules are that they do not happen in 3 second rounds, but in 1 minute ones. thats a whole lot of time. also, unless your on a desert highway at night, there will be all kinds of things that can show up in the timeframe.

and most runs are not set in those environments, but in urban ones.

a quick guess is that the rules are aimed more at movie style chases, especially in urban areas, with cars and other vehicles doing crazy things like driving on sidewalks, up and down stairs and other silly things to try and trap the opponent for either getting away or stopping them.

its not built for drag race style pedal to the metal getaways...

I was just reading up on this. I think I may have a handle on it, but I don't know. None of this is for sure, but this is a Chase Scene as I imagine it.

Let's assume that Runner team A (with a non-rigging 1IP runner at the wheel) is trying to escape evil Go Gangers B, Runners in a Bulldog Step Van, Gangers in a Honda Spirit.

Now, if these guys are on the Open Highway in NAN territory with no cars, then it isn't much of a chase. The Gangers take a complex action to accelerate past their "Running acceleration" and the Runners do the same. The Gangers will have a few turns where they will be able to keep up (because their acceleration is higher) but eventually the Van will pull away because it has a higher top speed.

Round 1)
-Shadowrunners (0 Meters/Turn) use a complex action to accelerate. They get 2 hits on a driving test and accelerate 12 (10 Running acceleration+2 hits)
-Go Gangers (0meters/Turn) Use a complex action to accelerate, they get 1 hit and accelerate 21 (20+1 hit)
-End of first round, Gangers going 21, Runners going 12.

Round 2)
-Runners (12 Meters/Turn) Use a complex action to accelerate, get 2 more hits, and accelerate 12 again.
-Gangers accelerate Walking speed (no complex action) and try to Ram (Sideswipe), They accelerate 3 (by choice, to pull along side)
-Gangers roll attack (Reaction+Vehicle skill+0 Handling modifier) 3 hits. Shadowrunners Defend by (reaction+Vehicle skill+0 Handling Modifier, 3 hits), They trade paint but don't do much to each other.
-End of 2nd round, both teams going 24.

Round 3)
-Runners (24 Meters/Turn) Use a FREE action to accelerate Running speed (10), and a complex action to Ram back.
-Runners roll (Reaction+Vehicle Skill) but suffer a -3 Dice pool penalty because they are "Running" this round, get 1 hit. Gangers Roll (Reaction+Vehicle Skill) and suck it up, getting 0 hits. Runners deal the Bulldog's Body rating to the Gangers (because they are going between 21-60 Meters/Turn, page 160) a.k.a 17 Damage to the Gangers(Body 16+1 hit)and the runners suffer 8 (1/2 damage dealt) themselves. Roll Damage resist accordingly.
-Because of the sucessfull Ram, both vehicles must roll (Reaction+Vehicle+0 Handling) to resist crashing. Runners must roll 2 hits, and gangers must roll 3. In this case, because of the long stretch of straight road, the GM would probably add bonuses to their dice Pools.
-Assuming both cars survive, the gangers accelerate walking (10) and attempt to cut off. They roll (Reaction +Vehicle skill) and get 1 hit. The Shadowrunners try to avoid it by rolling (Reaction +Vehicle skill) with a dice pool modifier of -1 (the number of hits on the Ganger's cut off Test) If they succeed, the are fine, if they fail, they crash.
-End of turn 3, Gangers/Runners going 34 Meters/Turn


And so on and so forth. If you are doing a chase where acceleration and speed aren't strictly an issue (Such as weaving in and out of traffic or on a crowded dock) then you needn't worry about acceleration and maximum speeds and such. Instead, at the beginning of each TURN, the drivers make a test to determine how far away from each other they are (The winner of the test sets the distance for the turn). Here, acceleration and speed mean very little as you are likely performing underneath your car's maximum potential because you are avoiding obstacles. If it is a particularly sparse enviroment (a stretch of the Redmond Barrens that is fairly clear or a strangely traffic-light section of Renton) then the GM may provide Dice Pool bonuses to the guys with higher accelerations.

The only thing wrong with the above example is that each hit on the Acceleration test adds 5m/turn of speed, not 1.

Thank you guys so much. I swear to God the dumpshock community is the best group of role players I've ever encountered.

By common sense, no. By RAW, yes there is, especially if it happens during a Chase Combat scene. It takes a minimum of four minutes to get away, regardless of speed differential.

Remember:

DAH! And I thought I had it too! Nice catch man. Sorry for the mix up. Was everything else okay?

I don't have my book here, but I remember that by RAW you don't have to make a test when it's useless (there's an example iwth the character who goes to the Landromat). To me, this applies when a plane tries to get away from a car.

If the basic conditions are no longer met, chase combat can be broken off at any time - like normal combat.

and that could just as well being explained by the chased going somewhere or engineering a situation that makes the chaser loose track of their target.

a chase is as much about making use ones environment as it is about vanishing in a cloud of burned rubber...

Doy you have a page quote for that?


Based on that you should be able to break off Chase combat in less than four minutes in non-high-speed situations. BY RAW, however, you cannot.

The RAI are for two similar vehicles chasing each other. Thus, if a Dodge Scoot is chasing a Nissan-Patrol 1 in heavy traffic, it makes sense. The Dodge Scoot can weave in and out of traffic, and the Patrol-1 has a better acceleration. The Patrol-1 is NEVER going to reach it's top speed going through downtown Seattle.

Now, if you are thick or want to adhere to the rules under all circumstances even when they shouldn't apply, go nuts. For the rest of us, with common sense, if Vehicle A can clearly outrun Vehicle B with absolutely no problems (Like a Dodge scoot chasing down a suborbital) then the rest of us would not even bother rolling.

Oh, no, the smart thing to do is handwave the escape. But that's neither the RAW or RAI. The intro paragraph clearly says that the rules are for simulating multi-vehicle combat. And even then, they don't work right.

i know im going to regret it, but gimme the numbers...

In Chase Combat, you need to spend three rounds at Long Range, then you get to make a Break Off test. Each round = 1 minute, so it takes at least 4 minutes to Break Off from Chase Combat.

Although I think your way of doing Chase Combat is really good (and a preferable way) I don't think it is how the book says to do it.

I think it is more like this:

Turn 1:
Runners' driver and Gang's driver roll Reaction + Vehicle +/- Handling. G-Driver gets 3 hits, R-Driver gets 2. G-Driver wins and picks Close Range.
Roll Intuitive
R-Driver is highest intuitive. He choses to do a driving stunt, Maneuver and gets 3 hits.
G-Driver is next. He tries to ram.
The Passengers then get their turns to fire out windows or whatever.
Then second intuitive pass, and let's say the R-Driver has wired reflexes. Since he spent a complex action the last phase to control his vehicle, he can spend simple actions shotting at the other car, but he can't attempt another stun.

Turn 2:
R-Driver rolls Reaction + Vehicle +/- Handling + 3(for Maneuvering last turn). G-Driver gets Reaction + Vehicle +/- Handling. Say R-Driver wins and picks Long Range
Roll Intuitive
G-Driver is highest, since it is long range and he doesn't want the Runners to get away he Maneuvers.
R-Driver tries to Break Off and only needs 1 hit because only 1 vehicle is chasing him.
More shotting out windows, only this time at long range because the cars are at long range.

Turns would continue like that till either a car crashes (from a Cut Off stunt, a critical glitch, or a driver choses not to control their car than fails a vehicle test), a car gets away by succeeding three Break Off stunts in a row, or a car is destroyed.

This is the way to do it if two vehicles are in traffic, or have barriers (like in the Redmond Barrens). This is because the vehicles cannot simply 'Put their petal to the metal'. They must avoid other cars, debris, open manholes and the like.

With all due respect, it's a stupid way to read an interpret a RPG book. With this logic, you'd be rolling initiative when the players watch a boxing match since there's a combat, you'd be asking your players to roll a climbing test when they climb the stairs because the climbing skill is to be used when the characters are climbing.

Seriously, what do you need? A whole paragraph explaining in which situations to use chase rules and in which not to use them, taking into account the vehicle's speed and acceleration, the use of magic (movement power, for example), the kind of vehicles, the condition of the chase, the goal of each participant, the color of the vehicles and the music playing in the vehicle's sound system? It's a rulebook not a law!

This is incorrect. Not the jump from Close to Long Range (The "Picard Maneuver", in reverse) but he has to maintain Long range for 3 consecutive turns before he can Break Off.


Yes, one paragraph explaining all that would be nice. We buy a rulebook for rules, not handwavium. For example, what happens if we want to use a Dodge Scoot to catch an airplane before it takes off? Handwave it away? Or use rules, actual rules, that we shelled out good money for? And that's leaving aside the fact that the airplane will take ten minutes or so to reach takeoff speed!

You can't talk about the RAI, since you didn't write the section; and the RAW simply doesn't work.

No RPG can possibly simulate every possible situation. The rules give a basic framework and you move on from there. If you want to sit back and poke holes in rules, you can do that all day with any RPG. If you actually want to play the RPG and have fun, then you figure out a way to make it work.

The Chase Combat rules work fine for running fast chase scenes between relatively evenly matched vehicles, or situations where driver skill is much more important than raw vehicle abilities. I'm sure if they wanted to, the designers could lay out a set of "vehicle driving simulation" rules, but the would probably be dead boring. I don't want to play "vehicle simulation," I want to play "Shadowrun."

iirc, they did vehicle driving simulation in rigger3, only noone used them as they slowed down the game to much...

cant please everyone it seems (tho some seems to dislike SR4 on principle).