Sensible Driving Speed

[swordtart]

We have had a little incident in the road campaign.

One of the drivers left a wheel behind and now has HC 0.

Up until now, the maximum speed that the convoy travelled was purely a function of fuel efficiency and habit. 55 seemed a sensible number so there was no need to drill down into the detail, we simply had encounters determined at in semi-random points. Travel between encounters was done by the random tyre damage rules in convoy. Periodic road debris magically caused damage, but it was agnostic to your tyres (meaning there was little incentive to get solids other than the extra DPs).

We find that real roads generally don't require much manoeuvring other than overtaking (and in CW we aren't sure how often that takes place). The gentle bends on most highways wouldn't even count as a D1.

Now we are in a tense situation, a stern chase by bandits. Unfortunately at HC 0 you can travel at 110 mph and be safe, which removes the tension a bit. Now on an unpatrolled county road there should be bumps and wrinkles that stop a car with a wheel missing bombing along at that sort of speed.

But how do we assess that? I started off by simply taking the base HC of the car, taking off three and then looking at that speed (on the assumption that with a D3 you could avoid virtually every incidental hazard). Better roads might only be -2 and a well maintained Interstate might allow an unmodified roll.

Of course the problem is that with HC 0 not only do you have a lower threshold speed before you have to start making control rolls, but also when you manoeuvre it takes much longer to get the HC back. With HC 3 you can recover back from that D3 in the next second. With HC 0 it will take 3 seconds.

The question then becomes "will you encounter another hazard before you have recovered from the last one?" How often should these hazards occur.

We don't want to actually lay each debris and obstacle counter down and play every inch of a 3 mile dash to safety phase by phase. Equally we don't want the chase to be reduced to who has the highest top speed.

Looking for suggestions.

[Magesmiley]

Nothing really official. However, it sounds like you might want to consider doing this as some sort of a skill check.

(2d6 + Driver Skill + Base Handling - Crash table modifier for current speed) seems like a fairly good starting point. Set the target success number based on the difficulty of the road. Every point less than the success number causes damage to the tires, with any excess applied to a missing tire going to the underbody instead.

And if they lose more tires, use the crash table.

Maybe the interval is every mile. Or two miles. Pick something that works for your situation.

For example, a decent straight road could have a success number of 4. A decent car (HC 3) driver 0 at 60 (Crash modifier of 1) would roll 2d6 and add 2 - always safe.

An HC 0 car going 110 (Crash modifier of 3), with a driver 0 would be looking ad 2d6-3 on that same road stretch, and failing 5/12 times. If the driver rolled 3, he'd be looking at 4 points to every tire (or 4 to the underbody if they're missing a tire).

And that's a decent road. If it's a windy road that is full of debris, raise the target number, maybe 6 , 7 or even higher.

And if you do use the above, I'd also give a bonus for solid tires to the roll if there is debris on the road.

[swordtart]

I also considered this for when we actually do need to start laying out road sections.

Per road section (10") = 50 yards.

Road Dice
Interstate 1
US High 2
State 4
County 8
Other 16


Number of debris counters -
Each die D-3 (0-3) Average 1.

Roll d10 to find longwise all debris and d4 to find individual 1/4" square.
Roll appropriate dice for lane + d4 for individual square.

Number of obstacle counters = number of debris / 5
Number of wrecks = Number of obstacles / 3

This assumes number of incidents is similar, but:
Less maintained roads accumulate more between scourings.
Narrow roads will have debris spread across a smaller surface area.
Patrolled roads have more efficient clean-up and have half the debris, obstacles and wrecks (round down).

Debris from same dice will be within 1 large square of other debris
(use D10 to scatter from previous counter, 9,10 in centre (but different D4's).

The debris littered road sections from the deluxe editions have 12-13 counters on 3 x 11 squares and don't look overly difficult to manoeuvre along. Two or three D1 drifts will take you safely through the entire road section and you could manage that in an "average" HC2 car at 60 without badly impacting your HS.

[swordtart]

Originally Posted by Magesmiley

Nothing really official. However, it sounds like you might want to consider doing this as some sort of a skill check.

Skill check might be the way to go. I think I'd just make a failure have to roll on crash table 1 with the hazard penalty equal to the amount they failed the roll. I'll assume they were avoiding the debris, so only tire damage would be from any skids. If they spin out or worse we'll put out a map (as described above) as it could have significant consequences.

[LokRobster]

100mph with a missing wheel is anything but sensible! You should make the odds of wrecking reflect the danger :)

The slightest hazard (well, 2 hazards in a row) is going to cause Control Rolls, and with the 100mph speed penalty on the Crash Table they're really likely to be serious.

For ease of tracking, I'd roll for hazards every 0.5 mile (didn't Convoy do something like this?) rather than setting up road sections. The Skill Check suggested seems good. You could have the Hazard be debris for D1 on a roll of 1-5, or D3 Obstacle on a 6. Hit the hazard or make a deliberate maneuver (Drift, Swerve or Bend) one Difficulty higher to avoid.
If a hazard appears, I'd give a 1 in 6 chance that it's followed by a second hazard. If it's a rough road i'd up it to checking every 0.25 mile with a 2 in 6 chance of a follow-up hazard that forces control rolls. Worsen the odds for worse roads.

Really I'd slow down... losing your car to debris and hazards doesn't seem as fun as another fight.

Or maybe i'm paranoid since our July 4th duel I had Driver +1 skill in a HC2 vehicle and still spun out at 40mph doing a D4 bend...