The situation is that the players are in a van headed towards an objective. They are getting sandwiched between two opposing groups of vehicles.

Chase Combat ensues, the oncoming vehicles begining in Short range, vehicles chasing from behind starting in Long range.

Oncoming vehicles need to perform a maneuver to do a 180 to continue the chase (presuming that they don't crash the players).

Now...

The player's vehicle has a turret mounted LMG. In a 1 minute Chase Combat turn, that LMG can fire it's entire box of ammunition and be reloaded to keep on firing.

How in the hell do you resolve weapons fire during chase combats?!

By not using the worlds dumbest resolution system?

The Chase rules are broken when there's more than 2 vehicles involved.
The crash rules basically mean that the bigger the car your driving is, the more likely you are to die from hitting a lampost.

Your group's driver is going to be taking a -1/vehicle penalty to his driving tests. If he fails the driving test, then he must immediately make a crash test, if he fails that, then the car they are in crashes and everyone inside takes body of vehiclex2 or 3 damage. For most people that means instantaneous death.

The fastest TPW I ever saw, was from the chase rules. 15 minutes into the game, everyone was dead.

Everyone just slows down while driving. Or better: Let them use more ammo if they want, but they only get so many USEFUL actions.

Of course sometimes it doesn't make so much sense. But mostly: Oncoming traffic, obstacles, trying to get a steady aim etc. should give you excuses enough so you can explain why they don't have 20 CT while in a chase.

With the ramming damage and damages sustained by the vehicle you can just use a cross-value. (Ramming car gets half or the others car body (times speedfactor), other one gets full of yours, Ramming equipment and nethits apply). And i always apply only the damage a vehicles has sustained (after damage resistence) to the passengers (No added Vehicle armour there though).

All quick, easy, and i am pretty sure it is even similar toe how the rules are really MEANT to be.

Only if you don't use seatbelts. If you do you take no damage at all.

I just eyeball it and ignore the chase rules. I set modifiers based on traffic, road conditions, et cetera, and periodically make the drivers make opposed tests to indicate who has superior position in the chase -- glitches indicate screw-ups, and critical glitches lead to crashes. If you want to do something dramatic or exceedingly difficult, you make a test for it based on the difficult of the action. 90-degree turns at high speed, cutting down narrow alleys, driving down stairs, et cetera. If you want to try and wreck the other guy, you have to first get into a superior or equal position and then opposed test to force them off the road.

It keeps things more cinematic.

Otherwise, if it's a straight flat road and the conditions are good, the fastest car always wins unless one of them wrecks.

Juist approximate it. chances are witha a LMG turret they'll damage to other cars before it goes on too long anyway. start and end with a pilot roll to see if the driver crashes but other then that for fun and suspense make it a dynamic initiative based chase.

Does anyone have a sensical, easy to use chase combat alternative system?

Car Wars? Ballistic? Atomic Highway?

How well do those translate into Shadowrun, though?

Not well. But they're built for automotive combat.

I need rules that work for SR.

Sort of. I'll try to codify how I try to run chases, below, though I'm going to go into more detail than I usually bother with, just for fun.

TL;DR -- This was longer than I thought, but when I write down my house rules I usually go for completeness, and defined terms and whatnot. Suffice to say, the following is a more Cinematic version of chase rules than is presented in the book, as those are an incredibly abstract nightmare.

For reference: A vehicle going at Speed 100 is crossing a distance of about a city block per combat turn.

For vehicle stunt tests, use the normal thresholds in the vehicle rules in Combat. Reference the Terrain Table, but apply a positive threshold modifier instead as a negative dice pool modifier.

Define the Lead Vehicle as the vehicle that is being chased. If for some reason this changes mid-chase, redefine the Lead Vehicle on the spot. Define Trailing Vehicles as all other vehicles in the chase.

It's possible that multiple vehicles could technically qualify as the Lead Vehicle. In that case, let the pursuer(s) choose which one they're following, and the other ones are all Trailing Vehicles. A Trailing Vehicle may choose to break off pursuit on its turn -- if for some reason other Trailing Vehicles want to start pursuing that Trailing Vehicle, start it up as a separate chase.

In the event of a total drek-fest cluster-frag car chase where 2 separate biker gangs of 3 bikes each are chasing the players' group of 6 vehicles, or a car chasing a car chasing a car chasing a car, you have no one to blame but yourself.

The Lead Vehicle sets the speed of the chase, and can change it by +/- the vehicle's fast Acceleration rating at the beginning of each Combat Turn. A vehicle may exceed its Speed rating by up to 25%, but doing so imposes a -2 penalty on all vehicle tests.

At the beginning of each Combat Turn, the driver of the Lead Vehicle rolls a vehicle test, modified by terrain/conditions/traffic (as well as speed, if above or below the vehicle's Speed). All trailing vehicles do the same. If the Trailing Vehicle does not achieve at least as many hits as the Lead Vehicle, it slips down one range increment for each hit it is deficient. A tie results in no change. Net hits by a Trailing Vehicle may be used to move a number of increments up or down the chart at the driver's discretion.

A Trailing Vehicle traveling less than its Speed receives a +2 modifier on the above test for each full (fast Acceleration rating) it is below its Speed rating. So a Sports Car with a Speed of 240 and a fast Acceleration rating of 60 receives a +2 bonus at 180, a +4 bonus at 120, and a +6 bonus at 60.

Each Trailing Vehicle places somewhere on the following chart:



Once the relative location of every vehicle is set, everyone rolls initiative and run a normal combat turn. During this combat turn, the driver of the Lead Vehicle may spend at most one complex action to attempt to perform a vehicle stunt (quickly turning down a side street, driving through a red light at a busy intersection, taking a shortcut through the mall etc). The threshold is set by the GM depending on the difficulty of the stunt being attempted. The driver of all Trailing Vehicles must each make a vehicle test with the same threshold or immediately move down the Range Chart by a number of places equal to the threshold number. This costs the driver of each Trailing Vehicle their next complex action. If they do not have a complex action remaining this turn, it costs them the first complex action on their next turn.

Failure of the Lead Vehicle to succeed on this test allows all Trailing Vehicles to move a number of positions on the range chart equal to the threshold. Failure of any Trailing Vehicle to succeed on this test forces them back a number of positions on the range chart equal to the threshold. A glitch on this test inflicts damage on the vehicle equal to (chase speed)/10, resisted normally by Armor and Body. A critical glitch on this test causes a crash -- that vehicle takes ramming damage as normal, and is immediately stopped. If this is a Trailing Vehicle, that vehicle is removed from the chase. If this is the Lead Vehicle, the chase ends immediately.

The case ends when all Trailing Vehicles have fallen off the range chart, wrecked, or otherwise broken pursuit.

For the purposes of Trailing Vehicles wanting to be up next to each other, assume that anyone within the same position is "about even" with the others.

If you're going ridiculously fast through an area that doesn't support it (driving 200mph through the shopping mall), the GM should impose additional penalties on all vehicle tests.

A Trailing Vehicle that can't keep up with the chase speed (even pushing to 125% of its Speed) either drops out immediately, or falls behind a number of meters equal to the difference between its Speed (or 125% of that) and the chase speed, depending on how you want to adjudicate it. There are distance markers in the Ranges chart to let you know when a Trailing Vehicle passes from Disadvantaged to Outrun. Once it drops below Outrun (chase speed x3) range, the Trailing Vehicle is assumed to have dropped out of the chase.

---

That's the extremely wordy version for extreme clarity, but it breaks down rather simply:

Chase Target says "we're pushing the speed up to X." Everyone checks that speed against their Speed and Acceleration to get their bonuses and penalties. Conditions set by the GM apply extra modifiers. Everyone rolls to figure out where they are behind the Chase Target.

Using Matchbox cars, you arrange where everyone is for a visual.

Roll Initiative.

Crazy stuff happens <here>. Shooting, stunts, et cetera.

Re-kajigger the Matchbox cars if necessary.

End turn, start next turn.

Thanks ^_^

Welcome.

Sanity check to make sure that my chase rule isn't a whopping pile of crap. All dice rolled using random.org's random integer generator.

A GMC Bulldog van is trying to escape a Lone Star Chrysler-Nissan Patrol-1 car. The van driver has Reaction + Pilot Ground Vehicle of 7, +1 for AR-assisted driving. The Lone Star driver has a Reaction + Pilot of 5, +1 for AR. So 8 and 6.

The driver of the van pushes it up to 125% of its Speed, or 112 m/turn (83mph), and receives a -2 to position test. He receives a +0 for handling.

The Patrol-1 can easily hit that speed. At 135 it gets a +2, but wouldn't go up to +4 until 90, so the driver receives a +2 to the position test. He receives a +3 for handling.

The chase begins with Lone Star at Outrun (pulling out of a donut shack just after the van passes)

Van: The driver rolls 6 dice and gets 2 hits.
Car: The driver rolls 11 dice and gets 6 hits.

The car has 4 net hits. It steps from Outrun -> Disadvantaged -> Even -> Advantaged using 3 of those hits. The 4th is unnecessary. Lone Star pulls ahead of the van and orders it to slow down and stop.

Combat Turn: Van has 6 Initiative getting 3 hits, so 9. Lone Star has 6, getting 1 hit, so 7.

The van driver spends his action to perform a stunt, and veers off down a narrow side street to try and lose the cop. The GM decides that the threshold for this is normally a 2, modified to 3 due to the high speed, with a -2 penalty for the added difficulty of the side street's narrowness and clutter.

The van driver decides to spend Edge (of which he has 3 points) to help his success. He rolls 7 dice (8 -2 for speed -2 for difficulty +3 for Edge) and gets 5 hits (after some exploding 6s).

The cop immediately attempts to follow, rolling 9 dice (6 +2 for speed +3 handling -2 difficulty) and gets only 2 hits. The van immediately pushes ahead, moving the cop back down from Advantaged to Outrun.

The next turn starts with the same test as before (6 vs 11 dice) with an additional -2 penalty for driving down the side street.

The van gets a major break here, getting 3 hits on its 4 dice.
The cop only gets 2 hits, and is forced off the position chart. The van is able to make it out of the alley, and turn down another major street before the cop can catch sight of it again.

Chase over.

It's not chase rules, but hopefully it'll help add some chaos to your chases: my random car chase generator.

The difficulties and terminology used are for White Wolf's Scion game, but the two systems are pretty close so it should be easy enough to convert to SR. The difficulty scale for the two games is about the same so you could probably convert them over without modification, but some of the failures will have to be changed on the fly to match how SR works. A botch in Scion is basically a critical glitch in SR, so those would stay the same. You'd need to come up with a result for a normal glitch if it happens.

That's really good. It'd certainly save the GM the pain of coming up with those kinds of events on the spot, and the modifiers would be pretty easy to convert-on-the-fly or by reference to the SR4 tables.

Oh, I thought about it and figured that a Trailing Vehicle in Advantaged position should probably get a +2 bonus on the Cut Off action for superior positioning. If you want to get complicated, I'd also say a Lead Vehicle could attempt to Cut Off a Trailing Vehicle in the Disadvantaged position, with a +2 modifier for superior position, but doing so would bring them Even.

Basically, whatever would make sense.

Assuming you don't mind being less than 100% correct by RAW the difficulties can convert over exactly. Scion has the same basic system: dice pools, a target number for each die, count your successes. It also has the same basic difficulty chart going from 1 to 5. Vehicles in Scion even have handling ratings similar (sometimes identical to) their SR counterparts. IIRC Scion terrain types even break down like the SR ones (open, light, restricted, and tight).

If I can find the time I'll probably convert the Scion house rules I made for car chases to SR, since everything I've heard about the SR chase rules makes them sound all but unusable. The biggest part of what I based that chart on was the idea of the do-over: the ability of one side or the other to change the result of that particular leg (oh crap, I just remembered there's a parade today, I'll avoid that part of town!). For SR I'd let anyone on the players' team redo the leg by spending a point of Edge. My group has a pretty low Edge total though. If it was a lot higher I'd probably have it be only the driver + one extra do-over per person.

Funniest thing about the car chase generator? I've never used it. I made it while the PCs were still at Hero level (i.e. just barely more than mortal) and once you get much beyond that car chases just aren't going to happen, at least not ones you can model with a real-world-based generator. Others have used the generator, but not me. I really need to start throwing in all sorts of car chases just so I can.