Is Cargo a Valid Hit Location if There is no Actual Cargo?

[Mettius]

For Car Wars Compendium (PDF from Warehouse 23).


Many vehicles will not have every component listed. If a component
is not present, just skip it! Few cars will have both front and rear power
plants (motor); many will have no gunner, turret or cargo.

and then states...

When a weapon penetrates from the front or back, the damage goes
to each internal location in order. Only one actual item in each location
can be damaged by a single shot. When a weapon penetrates from the
side, roll randomly to see which of the three locations is hit. Re-roll for
any nonexistent location. A location that is destroyed (such as a
destroyed PP) is still a location which damage can hit and pass
through. A car with unused space does have a cargo location, even if it
doesn’t have any actual cargo.
-p41 CW Compendium

We are a bit confused. I'm getting back into the game after many many years. So in the case of damage coming through the under body armor a single component would be hit until destroyed, then remaining damage would hit the top armor.

In the case of a vehicle design which does have some extra spaces and weight left over, does this mean there exists a cargo hit location? (With no DP, and nothing in it?) Or only if there is something like a passenger stuffed in the trunk or some other scenario defined "cargo"?

[kjamma4]

Yes, there does not need to be actual cargo in the space to be a viable location

[swordtart]

Fully concur with kjamma.

Technically there doesn't even have to be any weight left over for there to be a cargo location. This makes sense, if your luxury car is just as big as another luxury car but it only has half the internal space used up then it is more likely the penetrating hit would pass through an empty area. Of course it is an abstraction, you could have a luxury with 1/3 of a space left (2 mini rockets take up 2/3 space). There is the same 1/3 chance of hitting that tiny cargo area as a luxury with the majority of it's space. So giving up less than 2% of your internal space you can gain a 33% immunity to internal hits. This is of course really cheesy :)

Note that cycles are treated slightly differently as all components are effectively in the same compartment so any hit penetrating armour hits one and only one component, on the flip side they don't have a cargo compartment so you always hit something internal. These rules are for some reason in the Cycle Targeting section whereas other vehicles are in the Damage Location section.

[juris]

Under the core rules - yes I agree. Is it cheesy? Yes. Have there been arena designs with an empty cargo space for this reason? Yes. Is it effective? Not really. A FE or CA or sloping is much better.

Originally Posted by kjamma4

Yes, there does not need to be actual cargo in the space to be a viable location

[43Supporter]

Back-when, we got around the "cheese" by using the "size" of the internal component to determine the chance of it being hit.

For ex.: Someone using a Pickup with a 150cid-turbo engine had four internal components (driver; engine; fuel tank; cargo space) totaling 16 spaces. The internal-hit roll would look like this:

[1d6]
1: Fuel
2: Engine
3: Driver
4-6: Cargo

This is, however, an "edge case" -- a more-usual situation would be that of my _DMN-8R_, which has a driver [2 sp.], 150cid engine [3 sp.], 5-gallon tank [0 sp.], and one unused space [1 sp.]:

[1d6]
1: Fuel
2-3: Engine
4-5: Driver
6: Cargo

[swordtart]

I had various goes at this but I kept running up against the component with DPs but no space and the component that has space but no DPs issue.

There are also plenty of other anomalies elsewhere in the damage allocation* rules that once you start unpicking it you end up creating more problems than you solve. Accept it and move on... these aren't the droids you are looking for....

* e.g. The fact that a high damage out of arc hit on the front will hit front weapons and then work it's way through the vehicle until it comes out the back without hurting the side armour or weapons that are broad-side to you. The fact that not all spaces represent volume, rather the amount of volume they deny other components. The fact that random weapon fire will miraculously home in on the 1/3 space mini-rocket in the side mount of a 20ft van trailer just because it is the only weapon there etc.

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by swordtart

I had various goes at this but I kept running up against the component with DPs but no space and the component that has space but no DPs issue.

See my earlier post -- for ex.: The fuel tank is 0-sp., but still appears as a "minimum 1/6" to be hit. Something which takes space, but has 0 DP -- well, the shot whips through without stopping.

[juris]

As Sword said this rule never really comes up, but I'd never assign more than a 1 in 6 chance to hit an empty cargo space on an internal hit. There's nothing there!

[kjamma4]

Originally Posted by juris

As Sword said this rule never really comes up, but I'd never assign more than a 1 in 6 chance to hit an empty cargo space on an internal hit. There's nothing there!

What about a van with only a driver and the smallest engine possible?

[juris]

That's just silly ;)

Originally Posted by kjamma4

What about a van with only a driver and the smallest engine possible?