Are hovercraft controlled with Driving or Piloting? Plus other vehicle skill stuff...

[Sam Baughn]

In the Basic Set, Hovercraft is listed as a speciality for the Driving skill, but in SEALs in Vietnam the PACV is controlled with Piloting (Hovercraft) which isn't an option for Piloting in the Basic Set.

Does one of these books need an errata?

Also, since we're on the subject of vehicle skills, the defaults for Driving (Halftrack) and Driving (Construction Equipment) seem kind of harsh. I've seen claims that half-track trucks were popular because they basically use the same controls as normal trucks, which would imply a fairly good default from Driving (Heavy Wheeled). Likewise, most construction equipment seems to have rather more in common with a truck than a tank does, but the tank actually gets a better default from Driving (Heavy Wheeled).

And should trikes and motorcycle-sidecar combinations be controlled with Driving (Motorcycle) or Driving (Automobile)?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

Also, since we're on the subject of vehicle skills, the defaults for Driving (Halftrack) and Driving (Construction Equipment) seem kind of harsh. I've seen claims that half-track trucks were popular because they basically use the same controls as normal trucks, which would imply a fairly good default from Driving (Heavy Wheeled). Likewise, most construction equipment seems to have rather more in common with a truck than a tank does, but the tank actually gets a better default from Driving (Heavy Wheeled).

And should trikes and motorcycle-sidecar combinations be controlled with Driving (Motorcycle) or Driving (Automobile)?

defaults in general are kind of harsh at the low levels and kind of generous at the high level. But that's an entirely different can of worms.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

In the Basic Set, Hovercraft is listed as a speciality for the Driving skill, but in SEALs in Vietnam the PACV is controlled with Piloting (Hovercraft) which isn't an option for Piloting in the Basic Set.

Does one of these books need an errata?

Maybe. But does it matter what you call the skill? Both Driving and Piloting are DX/Average skills anyway. If it makes you feel better you could just as well call both of them specialties of Vehicle Operation.

And yes, the defaults are different. But skill to skill defaults at fixed numbers don't make much sense anyway - in this case for example they'd certainly vary with how the controls were set up, which for something as unusual as a hovercraft could well more closely resemble a ground vehicle, an airplane or a power boat depending on who built it.

Honestly I think the game would be better for not having any skill to skill defaults and just admitting that some tasks may be possible with more than one skill without all of them necessarily being shared.

Personally I'd also argue dividing vehicle skills by operating environment was the wrong way to go in the first place. To the extent there is a division, it's probably between vehicles where instant reactions matter vs. those where the speed of your reflexes doesn't really matter, and that division isn't reflected in the division at all.

[weby]

In reality the normal operation of hovercraft in my experience feel very different from both driving and piloting. Though in a way they resemble driving a car on ice without winter tires.. :)

Basically with a hovercraft the thing wants to keep going in the direction it is going in, there is almost no resistance from anything. In a plane the control surfaces and the wings will cause the resistance and in things like cars you have the ground. So on a hovercraft you need to give thrust in the direction you want to turn in.

That being said, some parts of driving and piloting skills are far from each other and others are much closer. The current default values feel quite wrong in many cases.

The construction equipment one seems most fishy to me, as some of those are wheeled vehicles, others tracked and some of them like a grader are really easy to use for basic use like clearing out slow if you have driven any heavy vehicle, but using a the scoop on an excavator really does not get any help from having driven anything around the roads..

[DemiBenson]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

And should trikes and motorcycle-sidecar combinations be controlled with Driving (Motorcycle) or Driving (Automobile)?

One of the New England MSF trainers is a sidecar instructor, and he describes it as as different from a car or a motorcycle as cars are from motorcycles.
So they should have bad defaults from both.

[Not]

I suspect if you read the descriptions under driving you'll find something that works. The descriptions are very broad. Even Mecha is plausible. ("Slithers.")

[Vilobion]

Originally Posted by Perfect Organism

In the Basic Set, Hovercraft is listed as a speciality for the Driving skill, but in SEALs in Vietnam the PACV is controlled with Piloting (Hovercraft) which isn't an option for Piloting in the Basic Set.

I feel like Hovercraft for Vietnam should actually be boating, since (and I may be wrong, in Cunningham's law I trust) weren't the hovercraft they're talking about chiefly used to navigate waterways?

[Crystalline_Entity]

Technically hovercraft fly - I remember trips between Dover and Calais when I was a child, and they were called "flights" - and are presumably counted as aircraft, so given the definition of piloting as:

Originally Posted by GURPS Basic Set p. 214

This is the ability to operate a specific type of aircraft or spacecraft

you can justify using Piloting.

However, given that they rely on exerting a force against the ground/water to manoeuvre I can understand why it is classed under Driving instead. It probably only matters for the purposes of whether it defaults to other specialities of Driving or of Piloting though. As malloyd says it may well depend on how the controls are set - so a hovercraft built by an aeroplane corporation maybe be set up differently (and get different defaults) from one constructed by a marine engineering firm.

[vicky_molokh]

I heard there are similar ambiguities regarding GEVs IRL, with the division being between classification as a boat vs. an aircraft.

[Drifter]

For trikes and motorcycle-sidecar combinations I would stick with Driving (Motorcycle). While they may be somewhat more stable to operate in certain, limited, situations, the control apparatus is different. A person that can operate an automobile probably can't just jump on a motorcycle and expect to drive it with the same skill level, even if they don't have to figure out how to hold it up.

Hovercraft sound more like Piloting to me. But perhaps Boating would be better, as they are prone to fill with eels.