My rigger is about to go into battle in his biggest, baddest, loudest, not-ever-a-good-idea ride: an uparmored, upgunned, Ares Roadmaster. In this VR simulation, we're going to try and ram through the gate, autocannon the guards, and distribute rockets liberally. Normally we try to use a lighter touch, but since it's a simulator mission, we want to see if we could get away with it.

Now, beating 20 points of hardened armor is pretty straightforward - really heavy weapons would do the job, and lighter stuff would have to have a lot of net hits. I'm checking my list of hardware, and there's not much that can stop me. I'm betting that until the Heavy Response Team shows up in the chopper, nothing will even touch me.

I'm willing to bet that I'm overlooking something. You guys are a bunch of ruthless and inventive mayhem merchants - how would you stop an APC?

Hack on the fly for basic access, and kill you in cybercombat, or just plant databombs all over the vehicle's node.

Lasers and Gauss rifles are a no brainer when it comes to heavy armor.

Ordering a spirit to manifest inside and engulf you is always good for a laugh.

High level directional jammers will dumpshock you in a hurry unless you're physically plugged in, or have a really good ECCM program.

Given availability:

Manifested Spirit with the engulf power
GE rotary autocannons (preferrably the vanquisher) with AV ammo
Ares Heavy MP Laser
Flamethrower
HMG with AV ammo
AV Rockets/Missiles
Inferno Rockets/Missiles
AV Mortar
Zapper Rocket
Ares Firelance Vehicle Laser
Gauss Cannons (any and without any trouble, whatsoever; they eat APCs for breakfast and are left hungry for more)
anything more powerful than the above


If none of the above are available, you could also try:

Neurostun gas grenades
Seven-7 Gas grenades
Pepper-Punch gas grenades
CS gas grenades


And independant of the weapon of your choice, you can always eploy tank traps =)
Other than the above and hacking the vehicle, I am not aware of any other options to stop such a vehicle.

A set of these, one up by default to prevent entry, one that flips up behind you in an "airlock" system. Some of these planted in the roadway (as powerful as you like, use Arsenal demolitions rules, and count the roadbed as a reflector) between those so they can shoot up into the under-armor of what ever is stopped there. In-ground zapper system that's WAY nastier than the rocket, plus has an anti-personal effect in case people get out of the car. No wireless connection on any of this, plus manual switches in the guard bunker that cuts out matrix control and revert them to dumb hardware. Guards are in a bunker with direct site (mirrored glass) and interact with entering drivers via drone.

Not everybody is gonna invest in that type of hardware, but "in through the gate" can be made impossible for even a tank, if people have the interest in preventing that. Gates are natural choke points, and you can typically kill ANYTHING that comes through a fixed choke point, if you are willing to install the hardware.

Given the amount of armour on the streets, most larger installations should have one or two LAWs (750 each, and no sensors means a long shelf life) in the weapon locker. Not enough to reliably kill a fully upgraded Roadmaster, but it will penetrate the hull and cause some shrapnell fun inside

QFT! I'm thinking of buying one for my PC just for that one time where we are escaping a heavily defended complex being chased by a tank and take the tank down in a sigle combat turn.

To be fair, I was talking about the gauss cannons, not the rifle. The rifle doesn't have the "cut armor by half before applying AP modifiers" that the cannons have.

Part of the Arsenal 2nd printing errata including giving the Thunderstruck the half armor part against non-smart armor. It pretty much made the assault cannon obsolete.

Check teh Errata.



Edit: As on how to stop the Vehicle

Barriers- Pop Up Steel enforced Concrete ones. Explosively fired up from underneath the car.

+1 to what Mongoose said.

Your primary concern is two-fold. One is terrain. This includes intentional things such as jersey walls, tank barriers, ditches, Ice Sheet, etc., as well as unintentional ones such as raised highways, hills, parked vehicles, buildings, etc.

Second thing is getting from the APC to the inside of your building. As soon as your guys leave the vehicle, they should expect heavy counter fire. They also better move awfully fast, because that APC may as well have a giant, red bullseye on it because when those big guns come to bear, you will not be able to hide it.

I think availability would be the deciding factor there, no? I know the panther is much easier to get then the thunderstruck. AFB tho, so i'm not sure about the other ass-cannon in arsenal.

Doh! Yeah, that would make the assault cannon obsolete.

Thunder Struck 24F 13000
Panther 20F 5500
Vigorous 18F 4000

Ammo Thunderstruck 18F 350 for 10 and 14F 300 Battery
Assault Ammo 16F 450 for 10

So Thunderstuck costs ~ 3x as much, and ammo costs ~1.5 times as much. Plus harder to get.

For people planning to buy one off the back of a truck, the assault cannon wins because it's easier to get and to get ammunition for. For top shelf corporate paramilitary units or high end real military units who don't deal with availability issues, the Gauss rifle is the new king of the portable anti-armor jungle. Compared with how inaccurate and expensive every anti-tank missile other than the Heimdahl is, I can't see anyone who can buy them wholesale not buying gauss rifles.

Yeah, leaving with the goods could be a problem if you are driving away in what amounts to an illegal military vehicle. As soon as they twig to the attack, the corp is gonna alert the local government- not for help, but because its the gov's job to protect the public OUTSIDE of corp territory. You really think the gov is gonna let you drive back to the barrens or whatever? And if they do, that they aren't tracking you every inch of the way, feeding the data to the military?

Agreed. Heavy plascrete roadblocks (tank traps) should stop an APC even heavier vehicles easily, or at least damage it so much it can't drive. Once it has stopped, the guards should take cover and call for militairy backup. An APC could initiate a response from even the metroplex guard. I don't know where you guys got the impression that armored militairy grade vehicles were that common on the streets. Lone Star and Corps, sure, but private citizens? Not so much.

2 panther/vigorous with AV rounds on Wired-Reflexed I characters with decent dice pools. Or 3 without the AV rounds. Called Shot for +4 DV, in 4-5 shots on average the vehicle is history. No need for the crazy stuff.

the zapper spike strips seem like a better choice to me. fry the people in side, bust open the lid, and you've got yourself a slightly-used APC on corporate property.

Summon a fire elemental, tell him to materialize inside and give everyone a hug as his Energy Aura goes to town boiling them as if they were in a giant pressure cooker.

I'd suggest a LAW w/ a anti-vehicle warhead.. but someone at catalyst has a warped sense of humour, and you'd never hit the broadside of a roadmaster from 10' away.

Although not completely RAW, I always assumed the extra damage from Called Shot used the same rules as the extra damage from automatic fire. Reasoning? Targeting vital areas (upper chest, head etc.) doesn't really help in piercing armor by itself. If you translate that into meaning targeting areas of the body with lighter armor, it might make more sense, but with most personal armors it's often the case of either good armor or no armor with little in between.

In any case, since the GM determines whether an APC has any vulnerable parts (which is required to use the Called Shot rule), this tactic might not be completely effective. It could have weak spots on the roof, rear and possible sides though which the gunners with assault cannons might get a round or two through (much like WW2 Anti Tank riflemen would target weak spots in the armor of enemy tanks). Of course some or all of these weak spots might be impossible to hit from the shooters' angle, essentially giving it "cover."

You have a point...but every night before he goes to bed, my rigger (and his unholy Pilot Ground Vehicle dice pool) pray that tomorrow somebody tries to get him into a car chase. Like I said, this vehicle is never supposed to get used outside of a warzone, but the GM is letting us run a simulation. I mean, I know I shouldn't...but could I?



The issue with roadblocks that I'm seeing is the ramming rules. If my Body 16 Roadmaster hits a gate at a speed of 55, it deals BodyX2 to the target, and must resist half that. If I add a ram plate, that raises the enemy's damage to the next level - BodyX3, while I continue to take Body. 16P vs my Roadmaster, and 48P versus the target. The hypothetical barrier rolls ArmorX2 to soak damage, so a reinforced concrete wall would soak with 24 dice (figure 8 hits on average), reducing my hit to 40P. This is 2.6 times the structure rating of the wall; figure 2.6 meters square are blasted out. Big enough to get the Roadmaster through? Maybe. Regular Plascrete is weak enough I should get a 4 meter breach - that should do it.

I've heard a lot of people talk about how ramming is broken - they might be right. Still...might be fun to try it once.

Assault cannons use special ammo. They can't use AV ammo.

Hhmm, well the main question is who are they hitting? Is the site extraterritorial or operating under local laws? What's the site, what happens there, and what sort of attack are they likely to normally expect? How much space do they have from the edge of their land to the target do they have to play with for defence in depth? All of these things are going to affect what kinds of defensive measures they're reasonably likely to have around the place.

Since the plan is to charge their way in the first line of defence has to be making that as hard as possible, the Citymaster isn't all that special so it shouldn't be too hard. Things like chicanes on road in at the guard station so that they have to steer in a tight S-shape forcing them to slow down and be a much better target are good. Barriers and bollards like people have posted are an idea. The other thing to keep in mind is what landscaping and design can contribute to security, a prime example of this being the new design for the US Embassy in the UK. The water feature looks nice but also blocks off a good quarter to third of the building acting as a modern water filled moat, then you've got the very deep dry moat to the bottom left covering another quarter, as well as the earthen berms. Unless they bring their own bridging equipment it keeps things like truck bombs a minimum distance away and looks a hell of a lot better than massive blast barriers. Large mature trees can act as a privacy screen and also act as a major barrier.

Of course if you want to be really evil just do what I did to some PCs ages back and build a modern moat to secure the place. Have a metre deep and two metre wide concrete lined ditch with vertical sides dug around the building covered over with slabs that are hinged on the side nearest the outside perimeter and held up by locks on the side nearest the building. Cover them with grass or whatever is around to camouflage them. When someone tries to charge the building security trips the locks to unlock them so the slabs fall into the ditch at an angle providing a nice little ramp for them to drive down and then concrete wall to slam head first into. It's kind of like a modern day version of the ha-ha, here's a cross section of one to give you an idea.

Anti-tank mines are always fun. Scatter a bunch of command detonated, using physical wires rather than wireless of course, ones along the approach road and either side of it plus any likely routes someone could be expected to come charging along would be easy enough. Even if it doesn't penetrate the vehicle itself there's still a very good chance it could mangle a wheel or bugger up the mechanics of the vehicle giving you a mobility kill.

Na... wait. You know the Hitpoint... umm hitboxes is for an estimate of 10 cm thickness of that material. Make that thing a springed 1 meter long block and it has 10 times the HP. Which means your ramming Roadmaster flattens/crumbles 10% of it and STOPS. Sure you can try it again and again... but can your Roadmaster take 10 times that? And do you have the time to ram it into pieces?

Proper roadblocks, like the aforementioned pro barrier arrestor would be considered "hardened material". On top of that, the roadblock will be thicker than 20cm. IN the case of the arrestor probably somewhere around 20-30cm. If we take 20cm as the lower estimate, we have a structure rating of 34, rolling 64 dice against your damage.

Using basic napkin math, you'd see an average of 21 hits on the soaking roll for the barrier. That leaves 27 damage unsoaked. Still not enough to beat the structure rating. Meanwhile, you roll your 36 dice against your own 16 damage, netting an average of 12 hits, leaving 4 damage.

Your Roadmaster is damage, but far from out of the fight (which is impressive) but it's standing still now and it ddnt make it through the gate.

Also depends on what and where you are deployed. defending a base, Gauss whoops ass. Extended periods in the field, I'll take the assault cannon since the battery pack on the Gauss rifle goes dry in 10 shots. If I have some kind of awesome charging device for in the field, I might go with Gauss.

Back to original topic.
If the mage can get 5+ successes a powerbolt will bring you down in a couple shots.(just try to use counter-spelling to defend it, it wont do anything but go ahead)
But virtually any summoned spirit as well.

Also ramming the gates will frack up the citymaster fairly hard and probably kill all the passengers. The ramming rules by default are a POS.

There are AV assault cannon rounds.

In arsenal: AV Assault Cannon Rounds are -1/-3 AP. Which puts total AP to -8 against vehicle. If the GM allows for Called Shots, this means you can damage the APC; the damage won't be huge, but 5 rounds should do the trick.

With AV rounds, this doesn't matter. The armor of a maxed-armor APC is lowered to 12, which isn't out of reach of a decent roll.

Fair enough. Just be sure you have some way to make the vehicle "vanish without a trace". That means more than just hot driving; you need magical support, a series of hidey holes where you can "clean" your tank, etc. A car chase is one thing, but say they tag your tank with a cloud of nano-RFID, or use ritual sorcery to track it (assuming the shot a bit off), or just use long-range observation to passively track you?
Of course, all that is a potential problem with a normal run, of course, but you'll be asking them to turn it up to 11...

You are right. That happens when you don't use assault cannons. Ever. Apologies.

The simplest way I found to beat a vehicle is just a good ole trench. I have seen photos of an M1 tank that didn't see a trench on the opposite side of the hill and fell straight into it. From a civil engineering standpoint it is simply a ditch to divert stormwater away from the site. So you have a gate and guard post with the ability to drop the bridge across in an instant. 10-15 feet across and 8 feet deep is plenty to stop a vehicle.

There are other methods I have seen to stop a semi. One is curving roads with concrete flower pots. The semi will hit a few of them, but it will slow the truck down enough to stop or to be countered. There are poles set in the ground that can be raised or lowered enough to stop a semi at 45 mph. You also have large hollow spikes to tear up the wheels. Finally, you have strips that can be deployed similar to the arresting wires on an aircraft carrier that rip, but slow the vehicle enough for it to stop.

Then the next thing to do on an immobile vehicle is either shaped charges or to disable its ability to see. Snipers are trained to shoot radios, IR, etc. A thick viscous glue with paint added will stop one from seeing out windows.

Depends on the sprawl. He might get away with this shit in, say, Sarajevo, or Bogota. Seattle not so much.

One thing I haven't seen said yet is possession. One possession spirit and then they have your APC. Not good.

It has been a while since i read the rules on it, but I think that is hard to pull off against something like a roadmaster. Possible sure, something to count on, not really. It is kind of like my powerbolt suggestion, if you got a mage who can pull it off regularly it works fine. Then again that same mage will likely powerball the party into the next life without breaking a sweat.




Even if up-armored it is a Roadmaster. A citymaster is a security vehicle not a tank, even citymasters will be seen on the streets enough that huge security responses wont happen all the time. Way too many corporate interest can have one on the road, it isn't just lonestar who can, should, or would be driving one. A roadmanster is a toned non-security version of this, it standard truck class. It is about as heavily armored a truck you will find so its not subtle, but its not swat teams as soon as one is seen. It is frequently used to transport goods of value. Tons of these can be on the road, with no response forthcoming. It is supposed to be driving on public streets.

The problem with ramming is the 16P damage also applies to passengers. -_-
Unless your GM rules that Passenger protection drops DV by its rating rather than just adding dice, then that's probably a TPK situation.

Well, at least I assume your team will be traveling in the vehicle. Did you disable its wireless, or are you planning to do it jumped in?
Personally, I wouldn't worry about gate response or how it's set up if you plan to roll on this sim in a tank. Just go through the wall and all that biz is a non-issue. Check out the damaging barriers table. DV 2 per bullet. The GE Vigilant you dropped in that thing shoots 20 bullets per FA burst, which means a DV of 40 on the mother. You can literally drive that beast straight through the building like dig-dug.

Yes ramming is lame in the game. Even if you blow through the door and the roadmaster rolls awesome and doesn't take 1 box of damage, the team inside is resisting the full impact, but maybe with a few extra dice. My house rule has been you resist the damage the vehicle you were in did not soak.

And please don't remind me about how dumb the breaking barriers with bullets rules are. I'm not going to use a missile, but a SMG.

At least it makes sense with the Autocannon rather than a Supermach. Those cannons are made for killing armor, so a reinforced concrete wall shouldn't pose too much challenge.

I'll give you that, but a standard SMG will be hitting for DV 20 and that shreds a crap ton of barriers, and don't get me started on how crappy explosives are in this game(all editions)you would be lucky to blow down wood paneling with a kilo of C4.

Oddly, this thread reminds me of a drone - the Knight Errant Pursuit-4, in arsenal. In particular, the variant mentioned in the description - its a very small, fast minicar drone made to get ahead of a vehicle of interest and drop roadstrips. The variant is equipped with optical taps, signal feeds, and a low profile to get under the car and give remote hackers a physical connection, a point of entry into the enemy vehicle and its passengers PANS.

Seems like the kind of thing a corp would use to go after a murthering-big apc. I mean. Its not like big huge vehicles like that have guns on the bottom, is it?

Were I to use one, it'd have a mechanical grapple, gecko tips(to -stay- under), and a storage compartment for explosives, laser links, and a remote rigger with the demolitions skill. Get under, form a tap for the rest of the spider/hacker crew, and start planting c-12 explosives on the vehicles tires(called shots to ignore the vehicle armor). It may not be kind to the roadmaster, or the people inside, but it'll get the job done.

Alot of you are mistaking a Roadmaster for a Citymaster. The roadmaster is an armored delivery truck (Arsenal pg 109) like a bank truck. The Citymaster is an APC. The Roadmaster isn't subtle but it won't merit military intervention either.

As for stopping it, I'd got with the zapper strips suggestion except I'd use multiple spaced say 10 or so feet apart. 10(e) to the vehicle and 5S(e) to everyone inside every few feet is going to ruin someones day.

Using bullets against a barrier, a bullet does only 2 damage. Not 2 per bullet but 2 flat. If you shoot 15 bullets at a barrier, the barrier get 15 damage resistance rolls against 2 damage, each. Yoiu will find it very difficult to breach barriers with machine guns, once they reach a reasonable level.

Are runners citizens?

Getting a decently armoured vehicle is no problem for criminals and the omnipresence of drones means the you don't even have to put your life on the line. Sure, assaults with up-armoured combat drones will not be an everyday occurence, but the IMO the threat is real enough to merrit one or two LAWs on site for corp installations (I am assuming the OP does not want to rob a Stuffer Shack ).
I mean all that is needed are two LAWs in the weapon locker and a floating licence for the corresponding skillsoft on a central server.



@Angelone: The OP was talking about "an uparmored, upgunned, Ares Roadmaster", which is intended to "ram through the gate, autocannon the guards, and distribute rockets liberally". In other words a DIY citymaster

Just because it's uparmored and upgunned doesn't mean it suddenly becomes an APC. I understand he upgraded it and is using it to blow the hell out of stuff. He did however specifically say Roadmaster and alot of people started talking Citymaster , my main point was they are two very different vehicles. The Citymaster will get you noticed RIGHT NOW. The Roadmaster will have people going "Hmm, wonder what's in there." but won't really attract attention until you start blasting.

Edit-

The Citymaster is based on the Roadmaster design. If you compare the old pictures they even look almost the same. The comparison between the two is fair and using their names interchangeably in this context is completely justified.

Also, be wary of mages with wreck, powerbolt or other physical damaging spells. Should they decide to overcast (gee a wheeled tank is storming the compount---should I nuke it?---hell yeah) the APC will be toast. The drain may suck, but the OR on such a vehicle would be at most a 6.

Other issues from the mystical angle: spirits causing accidents, spirits manifesting inside the passenger compartment (fire elemental would suck in this case).


To prevent this remember to ward the crew/passenger area, and have an astral static spell up. IIRC counterspelling doesn't help a vehicle.

The pictures look the same because they are the same. Someone messed up and in (my version of) Arsenal the picture is labeled Citymaster, which makes me believe someone made a simple mistake. If they really do look that simular I don't know. I expect the Roadmaster to look more like a Stepvan or Black Mariah than a Citymaster personally.

Out of curiosity what old books? The Rigger books? I'm interested in checking it out but don't feel like digging all my old books out of storage to look at them.

Why's it matter if they look similar? They're still very different beasts in stats and availability.

They are? Where? The 5 acceleration the Roadmaster has more?

Roadmaster has an availability of 4, so they are more common than the Citymaster by a longshot.

Roadmaster (base since I don't know what mods the OP added)
Handling- -1 Accel- 10/30 Spd- 120 Pilot-2 Bod-16 Armor-16 Sensor-2 Avail-4 Cost-48K

Citymaster
Handling- -1 Accel- 5/30 Spd- 120 Pilot-3 Bod-16 Armor-20 Sensor-3 Avail-20R Cost-51,200

Statwise they are simular, but then again so are alot of other vehicles. It doesn't mean they are the same thing.

The discussion is not about the stock roadmaster, though. I posted the relevant stats in my post above. The roadmaster we are talking about in this thread has an availability of 20F and is therefore even harder to get than the Citymaster. Also, the Roadmaster from this thread is more expensive than the stock Citymaster.