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swordtart · 09-16-2021, 01:58 AM

To clarify I make the cost of a Jury-Rigged component half the cost of the component if it had been damaged down to a single 1 DP (or that hs lost 5 DPs if it has more than 6 DPs undamaged). A jury rigged rocket would cost 45% of it's undamaged cost (1 DP damage is 90% of undamaged cost). A jury rigged Thundercat plant would cost 5% (14 DP damage is the minimum 10% and jury-rig is half that.

I did introduce a rule in my game that any damaged component had a chance to not work each time it was stressed (underwent a state change). So plants would fail to accelerate, weapons wouldn't fire etc. You could try again next phase and they would continue to operate in their current state until then. In order to reduce overhead we checked the first time it was used in combat. After a failure, once you got it going it would continue working for the rest of the combat. We chose to do it by combat as we assumed you would drive carefully between combats. Some non-combat encounters would be equally stressful and require checks, some "fight" encounters did not lead to actual combat so there is wiggle room.

In a single battle with low damage it probably wouldn't affect the outcome (and so would reflect the baseline game) but over time it would have a descernable negative effect (not being able to fire for a phase could be critical). Any damaged components would work as per the standard rules during the combat they took the damage, it is only in any subsequent combats that pre-existing damage can have an effect.

Jury-rigged components would be checked every time they were used but if they failed you needed to perform a jury-rig mech task to get them working again. Having a plant that could not accelerate or a gun that could not fire until you reached somewhere you could work on it would be a real disadvantage.

For dregs, a jury-rigged rocket isn't that much of a problem as it only needs to work once. You may have to fire a weapon or accelerate in more than one combat before you get a chance to fix it.

If you perform a successful preventative maintenance check on a damaged or jury-rigged component before combat (mechanics repair or jury rig roll for of that component as appropriate) you can gaurantee that it will work in the next combat it is used. In campaigns this extra maintenance will become a pain very quickly. For a dreg, salvage is their life, they have plenty of rescources to throw at this, but you may not have the option to have a mech+2 on the crew to check your damaged plant every time you pop to the shops.

When you jury-rig something the preventative maintenance check is considered perfomed at the same time, ditto if you actually restore some DPs to a damaged component.

As to what the actual chance of failure is, you need to work that out yourself. When I refereed, I changed my mind several times. Originally it was a roll on a d6 under the damage taken (so 5 DPs down meant a 5in 6 chance of failure). This made it very CW but also brutal. I toyed with percentile under damage taken, but that seemed too generous. The last attempt was rolling a d6 per point of damage and the component failed for 1 phase for every 1 that came up, so if you rolled 5 1's you had to wait for the next turn before you could try again. I think I liked this one best as rolling lots of dice seemed to underpin the amount of risk you were running with a badly damaged component without making it an automatic kill.

Alternatively draft in some rule from GURPS or Traveller as this sort of this is out of scope for CW.

09-16-2021, 01:58 AM	#49
swordtart Join Date: Jun 2008	Re: Silly Cars To clarify I make the cost of a Jury-Rigged component half the cost of the component if it had been damaged down to a single 1 DP (or that hs lost 5 DPs if it has more than 6 DPs undamaged). A jury rigged rocket would cost 45% of it's undamaged cost (1 DP damage is 90% of undamaged cost). A jury rigged Thundercat plant would cost 5% (14 DP damage is the minimum 10% and jury-rig is half that. I did introduce a rule in my game that any damaged component had a chance to not work each time it was stressed (underwent a state change). So plants would fail to accelerate, weapons wouldn't fire etc. You could try again next phase and they would continue to operate in their current state until then. In order to reduce overhead we checked the first time it was used in combat. After a failure, once you got it going it would continue working for the rest of the combat. We chose to do it by combat as we assumed you would drive carefully between combats. Some non-combat encounters would be equally stressful and require checks, some "fight" encounters did not lead to actual combat so there is wiggle room. In a single battle with low damage it probably wouldn't affect the outcome (and so would reflect the baseline game) but over time it would have a descernable negative effect (not being able to fire for a phase could be critical). Any damaged components would work as per the standard rules during the combat they took the damage, it is only in any subsequent combats that pre-existing damage can have an effect. Jury-rigged components would be checked every time they were used but if they failed you needed to perform a jury-rig mech task to get them working again. Having a plant that could not accelerate or a gun that could not fire until you reached somewhere you could work on it would be a real disadvantage. For dregs, a jury-rigged rocket isn't that much of a problem as it only needs to work once. You may have to fire a weapon or accelerate in more than one combat before you get a chance to fix it. If you perform a successful preventative maintenance check on a damaged or jury-rigged component before combat (mechanics repair or jury rig roll for of that component as appropriate) you can gaurantee that it will work in the next combat it is used. In campaigns this extra maintenance will become a pain very quickly. For a dreg, salvage is their life, they have plenty of rescources to throw at this, but you may not have the option to have a mech+2 on the crew to check your damaged plant every time you pop to the shops. When you jury-rig something the preventative maintenance check is considered perfomed at the same time, ditto if you actually restore some DPs to a damaged component. As to what the actual chance of failure is, you need to work that out yourself. When I refereed, I changed my mind several times. Originally it was a roll on a d6 under the damage taken (so 5 DPs down meant a 5in 6 chance of failure). This made it very CW but also brutal. I toyed with percentile under damage taken, but that seemed too generous. The last attempt was rolling a d6 per point of damage and the component failed for 1 phase for every 1 that came up, so if you rolled 5 1's you had to wait for the next turn before you could try again. I think I liked this one best as rolling lots of dice seemed to underpin the amount of risk you were running with a badly damaged component without making it an automatic kill. Alternatively draft in some rule from GURPS or Traveller as this sort of this is out of scope for CW.