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Originally Posted by swordtart
"All DWs are nixed" referred to the fact that if you can go off-road, you have far more space to drive round the DWs, not that they failed to operate.
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OK. Thanks for the clarification.
That said: That isn't always the case. For one: I have some PB _CW_ road sections where the runoff isn't even 1/4" wide. For another: Is the shoulder flat, or (like around here) is it a ditch? These are questions one needs answer for when the scenario is being set up. (There was one adventure I was in where the GM didn't realize the road he was using had a cliff face on one side, and a sheer drop on the other; this had a catastrophic effect on the Bad Guys when they tried to go around a vehicle which had just blown up....)
Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart
If there is an option to go off road, that should be what your bikes are doing by default (and if your scouting identified this as valid your bike should have OR tyres). Very few vehicles can match a bikes performance off-road even without OR tyres other than specialist off-roaders. Those vehicles can still be disadvantaged by the ability of bikes to slip through narrow gaps (note the rules regarding vehicle size vs counter size).
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[nod] There's a couple articles about "biker tactics" in _ADQ_ which discuss this -- I recall one of them talking about how "The Brotherhood? They never saw us; as soon as a semi, appeared, we headed for the roughest ground we could find".
That said: There was the biker gang which learned in the worst of ways "a semi *can* mount OR suspension and tires", but that's a bit beyond the purview of this discussion -- as the bike I described came from _ADQ 1/2_, I'm trying to stick with "tech which was available at the time" to indicate if it's useful, or not. (I mentioned Trikes as an example of how that tech *wasn't* available to bikers of the time.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart
The shoulders of the road are not classed as "off-road" according to the off-road rules.
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True -- but most road-shoulders are considered Gravelled (+D1 hazard), so they're not *totally* without risk.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart
Like the -6 you would get from doing 2 x D3's in quick succession plus likely 2 doses of gunfire HS loss ;)
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Oh, definitely -- the TEC is nice, but he does require fire-support to get the most out of him. This is why most TECs have a hazard-producing DW; Oil is nice, Oil Plus Gunfire is Even Nicer.
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Originally Posted by swordtart
Actually I thought originally that you were flicking back into another diagonal and would need a D6. Going straight is less of a risk, but you have only dropped half your mines in that case and you need to time it carefully or you'll need a weapon timer to avoid wasting mines.
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Yes -- the driving pattern looks like this:
-\_ .
If one is able to generate a "three-deep" checkerboard, the diagonal becomes far more viable. This is what the designer of the bike in the OP was trying for, I think.
Quote:
Originally Posted by swordtart
Sadly CW scenarios are not version controlled, so we can sometimes not be be quite sure which scenarios and supplements take account of which version of the rules.
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I go by Publication Date -- as I said above: The bike in the OP dates from _ADQ 1/2_; to my thinking, then: Anything which was available prior to _ADQ 1/2_ may be considered in one's tactics and design. By the same token, if I were describing something from "Grand Theft Autoduel" (_ADQ 3/1_), then anything predating that issue is "legitimate" to use. One cannot merely drop Heavy X-Ray Lasers into any old scenario.... :)
Example: Playing the "Crusaders" scenario in the first edition _Deluxe Car Wars_ is appalling easy for the bikers to win; a bunch of Light Cycles with 1 sp./50 lb. cargo spaces, and a bunch of FO Grenades, and Midville burns. Playing it with PB tech, it becomes much harder for the bikers....