Racing Design Guidelines

[Lindmark71]

I ran a racing event last week at a convention.
I had some interesting results and feedback of what worked, what didn't and what worked too well:
Worked
Turrets: worked great. The player can choose to shoot whenever, at whatever

Didn't work:
Front and back mounted weapons: players had to wait, often a while, before they could bring weapons to bear

Worked too well:
Twin linked HMGs with HD ammo: Two cars died in the 2nd turn after trading back to back twin salvos. One car was breached from right to left. 4D6 of damage per second is too high for a race car.
Spoiler, airdam, HD shocks: Not a single car ever had to roll on the control table, even once. Granted, if the game lasted more than 2-4 turns, maybe they would have gotten into a little bit of peril.

Drive offensively.

Curt

[Blue Ghost]

Cool. What con?

[Parody]

Did you start the vehicles next to each other?

Did you start them at speed?

Did you let them fire on T1P1?

We generally start our racing events spread out without a firing restriction (tracks with a single path, like The Airship) or facing away with a firing restriction (tracks with looping paths, like Stardust). We also have restrictions on what weapons you can take (which wouldn't stop a two HMG build) and a minimum top speed requirement.

[43Supporter]

Back-when, I used the following design restrictions for my racing events:

1) 1 space of weaponry per $15,000 of vehicle, rounded down (this means D5 and D10 are hand-weapons-only).

2) No individual weapon may inflict more than 6 points of damage per shot. This includes weapons which start fires, or which attack more than one side of a vehicle at a time (FCEs and such). [Linking weapons is still allowed.]

3) No dropped weapons of any kind. This includes any weapon which leaves a counter on the map surface for any length of time (so no grenades, not even Impact-fused ones).

4) No weapons fire of any kind permitted until a vehicle has completed one full lap of the course. [This includes Bumper Triggers and such -- too many players tried to circumvent this restriction by ramming so as to set of BT-ed weapons.]

As to the spoiler|airdam|shocks issue: It depends greatly on the track one is using -- most tracks are wide enough, one can get away with never having to make a control roll under normal circumstances. (I have in my files a road course which is 0.6 miles long, on *one* CW mapsheet; my old group couldn't deal with it, as it actually required cars to slow down....) I suppose one could ban such items, but that's up to the conscience of the GM. :)

[Lindmark71]

The event was at versuscon.com in Delaware.

Starting speed was set to 60, so new players could have immediate reinforcement of multiple car lengths per phase.

Most of my convention players have never played before.

Combat was allowed immediately.

Cars were placed as far apart from each other as possible.
The track was a figure 8 track with a non-crossing loop worth 1 point and a crossed loop worth 3.

[Parody]

Sounds like a good setup; it's basically what we do at Elko.

Maybe it only works because we're all grognard players. :)

[owenmp]

Dear Curt,

I have the vehicle construction rules and racing event rules from the former Car Wars gaming group Championship Autoduelling Circuit (CADC) of Detroit, MI. Tim Gould of the CADC was the Head Referee of two of the AADA World Racing Championships almost 20 years ago. Send me your e-mail address in a private message and I can e-mail you the CADC information. (If anyone else on this forum is interested, I can post that information on my Web site.)

The NOVA Web site has a short list of rules for racing events.

NOVA - Club Rules
http://novacw.com/other.htm
http://novacw.com/clubrules.htm

The Sword and Shield pressure plates from the movies Death Race and Death Race 2 might be helpful in Car Wars racing events to encourage higher speeds.

The late Aaron Allston wrote some combat racing rules for Car Wars in 1984. I can discuss them offline.

[ckosacranoid]

Hey Owen, could you post the rules for the CDAD on your site please.
I have run with that group a few times and the big thing to say the first few turns wher non weapons. they did allow dropped weapons one the inside lane, but few poeple bothered with them. they also had the big thing of very big guns on the front of the car and blast cannons and ATG with affle ammo and x-ray lasers where all the norm with them along with gas engines and heavy armor. the races where intresting though.

[juris]

1) Your game lasted 2-4 turns? That's not really a race ;)

2) Twin HMGs with HD ammo are broken beyond belief - reduce the HMG to 1d+1 base damage and it's fixed.

3) Agree with most of AM's racing suggestions - like no weapons fire lap 1 and no dropped solids/liquids. To really encourage racing no weapons fire unless vehicles are on the same lap...

4) IMO turn-based movement is the only way to go for racing - move your whole turn then fire - I'd really like to see X-wing style movement for the crossed loop section of your track :)

Originally Posted by Lindmark71

The event was at versuscon.com in Delaware.

Starting speed was set to 60, so new players could have immediate reinforcement of multiple car lengths per phase.

Most of my convention players have never played before.

Combat was allowed immediately.

Cars were placed as far apart from each other as possible.
The track was a figure 8 track with a non-crossing loop worth 1 point and a crossed loop worth 3.

[Lindmark71]

It was a great race: first to die. Four people came in first place.

Whenever I offer a plethora of designs for newbies to choose from, I like to offer a wide spectrum of design motifs from which to choose.

"Over-gunned paper thin armored racer" is a poor choice to offer.

Next time, I expect I will offer a "no firing until you've finished a lap", to encourage fast driving.

Drive offensively.

Curt