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Originally Posted by wabishtar
I'm running a setting where the use of the bicycle in combat is more common due to a lack of both riding animals and fuel for motorized vehicles. I'm not sure how to go about modeling this in GURPS Mass Combat. I'm imagining regular bicycles that simply serve as transport as well as a three-wheeled bicycle chariot that serves as cavalry. Any suggestions?
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A bicycle isn't a stable combat platform, like a horse or a 3 or 4 wheeled vehcile might be. So the ONLY benefits to a bicycle might be faster road movement (and possibly mildly faster off-road), and a tiny bit more transport value, but not much.
I don't see it, but given that I used to be able to pretty much average about 10mph on day-long rides EVERY day (but with no encumbrance), which works about to a comfortable pace of 80 miles per day, I'd say that you should basically treat bike-mounted soldiers as infantry, with infantry-based TS depending on equipment and quality modifiers, but treat the bike-borne infantry sort of like Hoplites. Max mobility would be about 80mi/day on roads, probably half that off-road; both would be modified by encumbrance...call it 40mi/day on road, and 20 off-road. And THAT is close enough to Mounted plus a TL bonus like Motorizes has. So I'd price it as per Mounted, but with a +10% per TL bonus past TL4 to account for the ever-increasing efficiency and quality of the mount (bike) itself. Modern off-road dual-sprung bikes are pretty spiffy for both on and off-road movement, but you ain't gonna be swinging swords, firing bows, or shooting guns from 'em.
This is hoplite infantry; ride into combat, dismount, and kick whatever butt you can.