If there is one segment of the rules that doesn't seem quite satisfying to me in SR, it is certainly the damage against vehicle rule.

okay, if you use non AV weapons, Power gets cut by half and Damage Level staged down one level but...considering the low value of Body for most vehicles (except military grade ones) I think it is too easy to destroy a vehicle with a mere handgun unless I got the rules wrong (which might be the case)

For example, Bonehead the street samurai takes his trusty Predator 3 firmly waiting fort he ganger charging him in his Ford Americar
Calm as the Reaper itself, Bonehead (Pistols 6 Comnbat Pool aims at the car and shoots rolling 10 dice (you never know if you won't have to dodge even when you're called Bonehead) a nice shot with 8 successes (thanks to his Smartlink II).
The car gets a resistance test with its miserable 3 dice against a Power of 4. even if our ganger didn't get swindled by his car dealer and assuming he gets 2 successes, it still means the car gets a Deadly "wound"...
I think it is way too easy to wreck vehicles with light weapons...and I'm not even talking about autofiring weapons...
I was wondering about changing the system : maybe go for a different staging process like staging damage up every 4 successes...

What do you guys think?

Vehicle Damage Resistance Test
New Damage Code Concept
A Note About Vehicle Damage
There are many more where that came from if you search with different keywords.

No need, in my opinion. If you're getting enough successes to stage up, and there isn't anything significant between the engine/whatever and your gun, you're going to be taking that thing out pretty easily.

I might be wrong, but it seems to me like putting a bullet through the hood of a car would be pretty likely to do something nasty.

~J

just dont read deadly damage as the same as the vehicle goes up in flames. what happens is that the engine dies and if your lucky then the driver is able to safely stop it (thats what the crash test is for). a vehicle can be repaired even when its at destroyed level, the frame/body may be more or less intact but some of the control and engine systems most likely are so broken that it must be totaly replaced. personaly i would have redefined the condition from destroyed to disabled as that more accuratly defines the status of the vehicle...

Cost to repair a Destroyed vehicle with no subsystem damage: 50% of base vehicle cost.

~J

taken from rigger 3 i guess. or did you use the system in sr3?

parts are often quite expensive when bought 1 and 1. reason the car is cheap ist that the makers buy parts in bulk and use them on a wide range of designs...

has any one ever tried to give light vehicles normal body dice to resist damage without the vehicular damage reductions?

just to make a little equation for you, (3+body x 2)round up

i have just done a little example from what i can remember.
motor cycle 3+1x2=5 body dice
.dune buggy 3+2x2=7 body dice
cars 3+3x2=9 body dice
pickup trucks 3+4x2=11 body dice

well i hope you like it, it might help with your problem.

huh, how are those numbers anywhere close to normal body dice? or have i missed what your saying with the word "normal"?

this may sidetrack but my personal itch when it comes to vehicles is that they use body to define the size of the vehicle. a better measure would be to hang on to the total load and CF numbers before any mods where installed as the first say something about current weight (the difference between the max and the currently free is the weight of the vehicle) and CF says something about how bulky the vehicle can be (if it open then its similar to load, if closed then its as bulky as max CF only that most of its is just empty space). only numbers then missing are engine size and weight + body weight...

There are some very critical points in a car you can hit.

In the case you described I would say the bullet went in threw the front great passed threw the radiator into the rocker assembly and destroyed the rockers for eth front 2 cylinders. Car is now undowered.

Unfortunately in the case of a large vehicle with weapons this is a bit harder to explain but then they normally have more armour and or body.

I see where you going xizor but compare your system and the current one where aramor 4 bod 3 APC goes up against a light pistol and a smartlink 2.

The vehicle will be rolling 9 body dice against target 2. If the attacker has enough pistols dice (lets say 14 for the all out sam at target 2) the vehicle will probably take a serious wound. By the current system the round should automatically bounce from the vehicle armour so you actually made vehicles more vulnerable to light weapons

Edward

Keep in mind that Body 3 is car-sized. Smaller than a van, which is body 4.

That's one damn small APC. Also lightly armored, at only twice the armor of a typical Lone Star interceptor-type (the C-N Patrol 1).

And it really does make sense that shooting light weapons at an armored vehicle should produce a lot of pretty sparks. An AR ought to do better than a heavy pistol, but that's the usual discussion.

~J

Ok bad example numbers. The point is that modification means you can hurt a lot of vehicles with weapons you couldn’t before.

Edward

Right, and I don't agree that that's a good thing.

Oh, oops, neither do you

Note to self: do not post when sleep-deprived.

~J

Being a rural lad we used to have fun "retiring" cars and old farm equipment. It really doesn't take much to punch through a normal car/van. If you're curious go and buy a door or bonnet/hood from a scrapyard and smack it around with a claw-hammer and screwdriver.

As to engine, sure a big truck engine might take more, but I have seen a car engine mangled by a rock throw with some force. Even with a truck a lucky shot is all that is needed. If you take out the guvnor arm on a diesel engine the only way stop the engine from revving itself to pieces is to IMMEDIATELY block the air intakes. But there are many delicate parts in an engine system that can be taken out.

Exactly how do you run an engine after the bullet goes through the battery and there is nothing to power the electric fuel pump, or maybe the onboard-engine management system gets a new "polo" makeover.

I see all those american cop/action shows where people dive behind the car door and don't get shot, amazing!

heh, never use a action movie to explain physics

stuff, one could argue that at least a cop car have maybe a lineing of kevlar or similar in it. and the windows can be replaced by ballistic glass. basicly its the same as doing the personal armor upgrade found in rigger3.

takeing out the battery of a moveing car will not do mutch good as the engine is running of the dynamo or whatever it is that is hooked up to the drive shaft. hell on a diesel engine you dont even have a electrical system to take out as they use pressure to ignite the fuel. still you may ruin the valves or similar. or maybe you take out the control system (power steering on older cars, as in hydraulics. electrical "drive-by-wire in newer models). there are a lot of ways to disable a car...

Remember that vehicle armor is hardened, so if your base power is less than the AR, no damage occurs.

And yes, unarmored vehicles don't stand up to bullets very well.

hmm, fuel pumps. sorry dont know enough about mechanics to counter that one

edit:

just did a bit of checking and it seems the gas pump your talking about varies a bit from vehicle to vehicle. some (mostly older designs or diesel) have a mechanical pump on the engine itself while newer ones use an electric one. it seems that its allso a bit about how reliable you want the vehicle to be...

so, what kind of damage will bring a engine to a screeching halt?

A few quick ideas, what do you think?

Screaching halt

Jammed axle, rockerbox damage, broken cam/timing belt, big end, metal fork in the universal joint of the drive shaft, bent discs in the brakes, snagging the handbrake cable, losing the restricter on the fuel system on a diesel engine, direct hit to gearbox/diff box, piston damage.

Dead engine
Loss of battery if fitted with electric fuel pump, broken fuel lines, broken distributor, injector timing wiring, excessive water, broken accelerator cable/cam disc.

Short Delay failure

Hole in fuel tank, clogged/holed fuel filter, hole in sump, loss of battery, hole in cooling system, damaged HT leads, shrapnel in air intakes, broken injector timing wiring, broken universal joint on drive shaft, wrong fuel type.

Just a few of the problems I have experienced with motors. As far as damage to the onboard management system goes it could include: Speeding up, stalling, revving to pieces, loss of gears, and loss of brakes. Remember that most new cars now and I imagine every vehicle in SR has power assistance. Lose the power to steering and brakes and a lot vehicles can turn into high speed bricks oncourse for disaster. Recently the power steering belt failed twice in quick succession on my Astra GTE, for me it was heavy to steer, for my girlfriend it was impossible to change direction.

hmm, those can explain the crash tests but may not explain the pricetag og fixing a "destroyed" vehicle...

Quite frankly the repair costs in SR are laughable, unless its all about labour costs in locating all the secondary problems associated with the main failure at the garage. As for a rigger doing it himself it is purely game balance mechanics that appear to be designed by somebody who has little idea how an engine works and always takes it to the garage. I apologise to the rule designer if this is a misconception, but could you explain them.

Otherwise, once a moving vehicle is damaged the resulting crash could account for the cost. So if it didn't crash at >45mph house rule a lot of cost away.

AAPOI - My last service bill would have been £950 if I let the garage do all the work. We the aide of a Haines manual and the foolhardiness of a computer engineer I got the garage to do the weld and spent 3 days doing the work myself.

Parts = £95
Welding = £75
Labour = Pain, frustration and more pain.

heh, that i think is a lot of the rules in sr, gamebalance or some writer that didnt know and didnt bother with research...

If the chassis is bent/broken the vehicle is trashed, but a new chassis got be aquired from the scrapyard and all the expensive bits tranferred over.

I don't classify a vehicle destroyed unless it is hit by a) sustained heavy weapon fire, b) explosives, c) high speed crash

Not under Xizor's rules, which is what he was pointing out.

~J