Sustained Fire Bonus

[Magesmiley]

This was one of the questions that I asked Scott that he answered in the "Talking Car Wars Classic Live!" thread. Scott indicated that if we had further questions to spin off another thread to hash things out. So here we are.

This subject is relevant still, as CWC doesn't spell it out very well.

Originally Posted by Magesmiley

Sustained Fire Bonus. The last guy who put answers up made a mess of this. For the record, what is a target for the purposes of gaining a sustained fire bonus? The same vehicle/building/pedestrian/whatever as outlined in the original Pocket Box edition (the section for which is not present in CWC or the Compendium) or is it the specific armor facing/component (i.e. tire, turret, etc.) being shot at ugliness as described here? (This disagreement has come up numerous times at conventions I've been at where Car Wars was played.)

Originally Posted by sdharing

I think we should keep this as simple as possible. As long as you're shooting at the same general target, you get the sustained fire bonus. Examples:

• You fire at a vehicle's front. Next turn, it swerves and you can only get line-of-sight on the vehicle's side. You still get the bonus.
• You fire at a vehicle's front. Next turn, you have LOS on both the front and side of the target, and you decide to go for the side. Still the same car and general target, so you still get the bonus.
• You fire at a vehicle's front. Next turn, you try to target the tire. That's a shift in targets, no bonus.

Originally Posted by kjamma4

This is one that always has bothered me. In my mind, you start by firing at the general to establish a target, see where the rounds hit, and then start "walking them in" to get to the specific target.

I'm going to ask some follow up questions to Scott's answer.

1. What about switching between side (1st turn) and front (2nd turn) of a vehicle? The front is a smaller target (-1 more to hit). Or is this still the same general size?

2. How about tire (1st turn) and switching to side (2nd turn)?

3. What about switching from side (turn 1) to the front (turn 2) when the out of arc of fire penalty applies? Keep in mind that the front when out of arc is -3 to hit worse than the side (which is the same as a tire shot)?

4. Or we could go from the front (turn 1) to an out of arc side (turn 2). This is clearly in the ones that were outlined in the answer, but does the additional -2 to hit for being out of arc of fire mean that you don't get the sustained fire bonus?

The ruling gets kind of ugly when you have to start delving into the various details. With the game back in print, people are going to run into these cases. I would strongly advocate for either picking the exact same target (period with no special cases) or that it means same vehicle (per kjamma4's comment).

This is why I asked the question - I'm a big fan of very clear rulings on when things do and don't apply. :)

A Bit of History on the Sustained Fire Bonus:

Way back in the days of the pocket box there was a section in the rules (on page 14) that clearly spelled out when you got the sustained fire bonus. And it uses the word "vehicle" rather than target when describing sustained fire.

The rules sheet in the Pocket Box, in the list of to hit modifiers, used the word target and explicitly referred back to the rulebook. So it seems pretty clear that, at least originally, in this context target was intended to mean vehicle.

The entry in the to hit chart made it into the Deluxe Car Wars rulebook, but the sustained fire section originally referenced didn't. Which left us with the phrase "same target" as being the only condition. The groups I played in back in the day started on the Pocket Box, so we always stuck with the vehicle (/pedestrian/building) interpretation of target as it seemed obvious that was the intention (and TBH, we never even considered that it might mean something else).

I don't know if this was intended to be a deliberate change when DCW was released, or just an editing oversight. ADQ never made any mention of a change and no questions were asked on this. (Scott you might know, being the editor of DCW, but since it has been about 30 years since it was released, I'm not holding my breath.)

And the to hit chart entry from DCW seems to be how the rule was carried forward to later editions, including CWC.

So, go with the same general size and continue to clarify cases, go with the same exact target, or go with the same vehicle?