Mini Car Wars

[The Horn'd One]

Thanks again, owenmp

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by The Horn'd One

Nice, Artemis. Thanks. :D

No "T"... Musketeer, not heretical gods.

[The Horn'd One]

Gah. Appologies, ak_aramis.

[Lone Wolf]

It says that you can use these in the real game but I have Car wars classic and the $$ don't add up. does anyone know how mini car wars comes up with the stock cars and their amounts?

[HeatDeath]

Taking a very quick look at the stock car list from Mini Car Wars and the Pocket Box, the one thing that comes to mind is that the MCW prices may be omitting tires, since MCW does not include the rules for tire shots or separate tire damage. EDIT: Mini Car Wars omits ammo tracking as well. That'll be a nontrivial fraction of the price differences as well.

Also the armor values are slightly different.

It's a very interesting question. I never noticed the price difference before.

I've been really into MCW lately - I'm working up a maneuver lab / animation tool computer program for it. I may try to do a deeper dive on this later.

Admins, this thread should probably be moved to the Older Versions subforum.

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

Taking a very quick look at the stock car list from Mini Car Wars and the Pocket Box, the one thing that comes to mind is that the MCW prices may be omitting tires, since MCW does not include the rules for tire shots or separate tire damage. EDIT: Mini Car Wars omits ammo tracking as well. That'll be a nontrivial fraction of the price differences as well.

I have full write-ups for the _MCW_ vehicles; I can e-mail them, if desired. (The _Rocket Special_ is a dashed-effective design; I beat some higher-tech design in NOVA with it.)

[HeatDeath]

I'd be curious to see those.

[HeatDeath]

Ok, I dived into this problem a little more. I broke down the pocketbox version of the Killer Kart and the MCW version, and recalculated their costs.

At this point, I have /no/ idea how MCW is costing the KK. The price difference is 98 dollars. MCW omits tire damage, acceleration differences, HC differences, and ammo tracking, so my working theory was that the MCW costs would omit one or more of the corresponding parts of the car - suspension, tires, ammo, etc - and their associated costs, since they are no longer germane to the car's combat efficiency. That would have made /sense/.

But the marginal costs on taking lesser tires, suspensions, or ammo - things that matter significantly under CCW but are irrelevant under MCW - are all way higher than $98. In terms of dollars spent for in-game combat efficiency, the MCW Killer Kart should cost over a thousand less than the CCW version, assuming they're using the same build system at all.

Then I thought it might be that MCW charges less for armor, since the armor cost on the Killer Kart is the origin of the oddball $98 in it's price. But there's no integer price for armor points that will make the prices match. You can get the MCW KK to within $2 of the MCW version if you only charge $5 per armor point /and/ make it pay $100 more for the ammo (that it's not even tracking) but that's clearly nonsensical.

It's entirely possible that MCW is rounding it's car prices too, since all of them end in 0 and most end in 00. Which makes working this out even trickier, assuming there even /is/ a consistent algorithm.

I'm gonna try breaking down another couple of cars and see if any pattern falls out. But I'm not optimistic at this point.

[swordtart]

Originally Posted by Lone Wolf

It says that you can use these in the real game but I have Car wars classic and the $$ don't add up. does anyone know how mini car wars comes up with the stock cars and their amounts?

Can you say where it states that. I couldn't find it.

I always assumed the stats need not be consistent as there is no vehicle design system for Mini-CW and you were limited to the options listed and re-arranging armour (it doesn't even say you can re-arrange weapons as that would need you to know about the 1/3 spaces rule and thus spaces etc.)

There are also no weight information to give a clue.

Edit.
Wait found it.

Nope, can't make it work. I fear the statement may be "Incorrect".

[HeatDeath]

Mini Car Wars, Page 1, Section 3, first paragraph.

TBF, the specific wording is that the cars will be "usable", not that their prices will match or that they will be combat balanced at the stated prices.
Are they /actually/ "usable (with a few additions)" ? The dollar cost and combat balancing notwithstanding, the main "additions" are that you have to figure out the damage points for the tires, the acceleration, and the handling class. That seems pretty close to rederiving the entire car. So yeah, that sentence, while technically true, may not be /practically/ true.

The MCW stock car list section indicates specifically that armor can be rearranged, but does not explicitly endorse the rearanngement of weapons or powerplants.

[As opposed to the pocketbox stock vehicle list, which /does/ endorse moving weapons and the position of the powerplant around "at no cost". The pocket box stock car list does not reference the 1/3rds rule in this context, but the rule is in the rulebook under vehicle construction, and is implicitly applicable.]