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Old 12-03-2022, 01:04 AM   #11
swordtart
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kjamma4 View Post
Fifteen yard penalty - using the L-word in Car Wars. I'd allow the entire bed to be filled with firers..
Any person outside a vehicle is represented by a counter. Pedestrian counters block Line of Fire.

Passengers in open-top vehicles can be targeted individually (at -5 to hit) and so you need the counter to trace LOF to them.

I cannot find in the compendium (or elsewhere) if it explicitly states that all cargo space in pickup is in the bed and therefore exposed, but anyone riding in the bed would be and they therefore need to be represented by a counter. Specifying where they sit was more a matter of putting their counters on the pickup counter to start with, but as they kept falling off we decided to just write it down. and target off the relevant position on the pickup counter instead.

You may fit 11 people in the bed of a pickup, but only if you stack them like cordwood :) Even if you did decide that 11 people in the bed was credible, you would still have to specify their location to determine fire arcs.
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Old 12-03-2022, 01:15 AM   #12
swordtart
 
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Sunroof.

I confused myself. Sunroofs allow a passenger or gunner a 360 firing arc, convertible hardtop (and by extension cars with no top armour) allow 360 fire for ALL crew (with the exception of the driver who can't fire forward).

I don't see anything preventing you having multiple sunroofs though and even the limitation on a single passenger is not explicit, "a passenger" is not always synonymous with "a single passenger".
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Old 12-03-2022, 02:32 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by 43Supporter View Post
_INS-4D_ -- Div. 5 Subcompact carrying Passenger with HAVR, and at least 6 pts. Metal armor on the four main facings.

Despite NOVA's worst attempts at cheating: Unit has never been defeated in an arena fight. >:)
I presume this was for a no tire shots event and you were not using the alt encumbrance rules. I'd still be interested to see that design. I find it very hard to believe it could not be beaten (even without cheating) as you only need a 2D weapon (or even a 1d+ weapon) and even with the constraint of division 5 that isn't that incredible.

INS4D beater by Swordtart:
Compact; Standard chassis; Heavy suspension;
Medium PP;
4 Hvy Duty tires.
Driver; Gunner.
Rocket Launcher w/10xStandard.
20 pts. Metal and 46 pts. Plastic. (F: 5/10 R: 5/10 L: 5/10 B: 5/10 T: 0/3 U: 0/3)
Cost: $4,998, Wgt: 3,586,
HC: 3, Top Speed: 100, Accel: 5.

The above is hardly the last word in optimised design but with a dedicated gunner even the painfully inaccurate RL will come knocking on the door in fairly short order at arena ranges. It can shrug off a lot of the fire from the HAVR (minimum 2 even if you roll maximum damage, but realistically probably 4-5) per fire arc. On the other hand 6 points of metal on average won't protect against a 2D weapon, and if I roll max then it will be game over for your vehicle as pretty much everything in a subcompact is a one hit and it's dead proposition.

I am sure other people could come up with something far better. I can only assume it came down to the skill and care of the drivers (or lack of it) rather than any specific advantage of the design (and we can only discuss the design here as performance on the day is so variable).
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Old 12-03-2022, 02:46 AM   #14
swordtart
 
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Originally Posted by sazzlefrats View Post
See now we are getting places. I've decided its possible to pull this off in my event after all. 6 Handgunners and a driver, in a luxury car, so I'm assuming its a small limo vs a lincoln continental.

Just a quicky,... since I'm also looking at trikes.... can you use a cycle windshell with a trike?
X-hvy trike, Hvy Chassis, OR Suspension, Turbo 150cid, 5 gal tank, OR PR tires, with 10pt guards. 151pts armor, 4 Handgunners with Hvy AV Rifles, scopes and CA armor each. Driver also has his own CA armor.

Having a hard time imagining what this looks like in real life though.
My most successful implementation was 2 telescoped HAVR infantry laying down in the bed of a stationary pickup at over 20" ahead of an approaching convoy (with a dozen or so mines between them). It virtually stopped a rig dead in it's tracks by shooting out the front solids in a few turns (through guards). The Rig couldn't bring anything particularly useful to the front arc. There was something like a 6-8 differential in their respective to hit modifiers.

When it started turning to allow its side weapons to bear (and so its hubs could protect the almost depleted tires), the bed riders simply pulled up the tailgate, ducked back down and were able to benefit from the rear armour of the pickup as it hared off down a side road (laying more mines as it went).

Had the Rig continued they would have found themselves in the same situation a few turns later and probably would have been mobility killed (and then swarmed by infantry who could then dictate their own attack vector). They decided instead to turn around and go another way. It cost them thousands in repairs and only fast talking prevented them from missing out on the delivery bonus as the detour and essential repairs made them very late (which was the purpose of the attack).

It's not the tool, but the one who wields it (and to a large degree the one it is wielded against).

Last edited by swordtart; 12-03-2022 at 02:58 AM.
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Old 12-03-2022, 10:28 AM   #15
owenmp
 
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Tampa Wrecking Crew Archive
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https://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/twc/index.html

Just . . . Don't
Things that seemed like a good idea at the time
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https://www.seanet.com/~owenmp/twc/badidea.html

More is better, but more brains is best.

There was an evil man with an evil plan. He would build the ultimate fighting vehicle. Bristling with weapons, this dreadnaught could fire in any direction and at any angle. To build this death machine on a budget of only $20,000 he would have to be creative.

He built a pickup truck with a recoilless firing forward, and put five passengers in the back with anti-vehicular rifles (this was before we started charging $$ for the use of gunners). They met his requirement: they could fire independently in the side and rear arcs of fire. At first, his creation appeared to be a legitimate threat.

At the beginning of the 2nd second of combat, disaster struck in the form of a mid-sized car with a ram plate. Since it came in head on, the gunners were unable to bring their weapons to bear. The recoilless was unable to stop the approaching vehicle, and the pickup had neither the maneuverability to dodge, nor the side armor to withstand a t-bone collision with a ram plate.

In the blink of an eye it was over. The impact hurled all five gunners to their deaths and destroyed the pickup's front armor, recoilless rifle, and power plant. The ramming vehicle earned $1,000 each for the slain passengers, $2,000 for incapacitating the pickup, and later earned another $1,000 for shooting the pickup's driver as he attempted to flee the arena on foot. Total: $8,000 and an invaluable lesson.
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Old 12-03-2022, 03:20 PM   #16
swordtart
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
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... In the blink of an eye it was over. The impact hurled all five gunners to their deaths and destroyed the pickup's front armor, recoilless rifle, and power plant.
Errr. is this a house rule? I am not sure why a head on collision to the front of a pickup would cause the people in the back to be hurled to their deaths.

I can see the ruling that people atop a vehicle can get thrown off, but at the start of that paragraph where it may have been conflated from it talks about moving ON oversized vehicles and IN a pickup bed. The top of an oversized vehicles does not have sides or rear like a pickup and it has been established that bed riders are protected by side and rear armour, they therefore are no more liable to being thrown out than the crew of a vehicle with a convertible hardtop (or just no top armour).

Further that whole section is written from the perspective of someone getting onto a vehicle, not starting out as a passenger in that vehicle. There is nothing to say that pickup bed riders are not in passenger seats* in the bed as the space and weight would be identical. They could therefore be strapped in and no more at risk than any other passenger (other than being exposed to burst effect and flame clouds etc.)

I can see bed riders getting concussed and that is already covered by the rules for collisions, and would be in dire straits in the event of a roll, but I fear that incident was ruled incorrectly.

*As a passenger in a cargo space is cargo and as a cargo holding component can be placed in cargo as an exception to the no vehicle components in cargo, it would be legal to put Safety Seats into the cargo area of a vehicle (including a pickup bed) to protect passengers.

Last edited by swordtart; 12-03-2022 at 03:32 PM.
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Old 12-03-2022, 06:37 PM   #17
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Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart View Post
"The locations of drivers, gunners and passengers must still be
stated for determining their firing arcs." CWC 2.5 p41
Is that the black cover version?
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Old 12-04-2022, 10:29 AM   #18
swordtart
 
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Is that the black cover version?
Yes, but it's also in the Blue compendium on P30, and Classic Car Wars on P29.

In old B&W Delux the damage location rules were different and I can't find it there (but it's harder to search the dead-tree edition than a searchable PDF). This ruling came into effect when the compartment model of damage location was introduced in the ADQ&A section of ADQ 6-3 (p47).

The closest you get in Pre-compendium is where it specifies in the "The Human Element" section that you need to specify which side of the car the driver is on. Even when I first played (edition 3) we assumed the same rules applied for the other crewmembers. I can't think of any other reason to specify which side the driver is on other than to determine hand weapon fire arcs.

So it has been official since Fall 2038 (1988).
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Old 12-04-2022, 02:48 PM   #19
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So it has been official since Fall 2038 (1988).
That explains it, then....
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Old 12-04-2022, 02:55 PM   #20
swordtart
 
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That explains it, then....
NEVER is a pretty big word if you are only including stuff pre 1988 :)
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