Design problems in the Vehicle Guide

[beetle496]

Okay, so the Vehicle Guide is hard copy. Is it full color? Are there images anything like the Player Record Sheets? My choice not to purchase during the KS was prejudiced by my copy of the AADA Vehicle Guide. I have regrets.

[HeatDeath]

Updates 88 and 103 have sample spreads:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/3077178

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects.../posts/3291189

Yes, they are full color.
Yes, the images are very similar to the player sheets.

The good news is the Vehicle Guide will be an add-on during the Car Wars Companion KS.

[HeatDeath]

Another key distinction between the 6e Vehicle Guide and the older vehicle guides is that the Vehicle Guide provides a 16BP build and a 32BP build for each miniature, so you have a very large number (272 if I've done the math right) of balanced duels available. The older VGs, in contrast, provided large numbers of builds spread out over a wide range of monetary costs, but only a few builds at any given price, so setting up balanced duels was much trickier, even if the book contained a much larger number of builds [mathematical validity issues notwithstanding].

This distinction is really /very/ fundamental, and I haven't seen it remarked upon before. It's a really interesting difference between the record sheets and vehicle guide for 6e, and the vehicle guides for 4e and the similar and contemporaneous Battletech technical readouts: the record sheets and vehicle guide for 6e are focused on providing large numbers of vehicles that are balanced against each other - all at the same build points.

The vehicle guides for 4e, like the Battletech technical readouts, are more focused on providing vehicles at a wide variety of balance points - prices for 4e, tonnage/BV for Battletech. This latter approach makes more sense for games the are intended to be combined arms/team play games, where a team will intrinsically be more functional if it includes units with widely varying strength levels because of the tradeoffs that come with those strength levels.

This makes perfect sense for Battletech, but seems like it was a weird fit for 4e, and always had been. In Battletech, low tonnage units are intrinsically more mobile than high tonnage units, and BV doesn't cancel this out - a low tonnage flyer of a battlemech cannot be built out to have a similar BV to an assault mech. Per the Battletech Master Units List, BV correlates pretty closely with tonnage.

In contrast, there is no intrinsic difference in capabilities between a low-point and high-point CW 6e car. The high-point car will just simply be the same or better in every area - attack, defense, and mobility. There is no capability you can give to a lower BP car that you cannot give as well or better to a higher BP car in CW 6e. [Lanchester's Square Law notwithstanding.] I wonder if that's part and parcel of why 4e came to emphasize building your own units and why the vehicle guides were little used sideshows - team play with multiple power levels on a team was never a huge part of 4e play or lore.

6e is, in stark contrast, really /staggeringly/ well designed for one-on-one dueling - much better for it than we had any right to expect, frankly - and providing large numbers of balanced pairs of vehicles to facilitate this is /excellent/.

[beetle496]

Thanks @HeatDeath, I missed those updates. But am if I am reading correctly, those were posted only after the Backer Kit window closed. Is that correct?

Gorgeous, and on my “must buy” list. I was hoping they might be the same format as the Player Record Sheet. Good enough though, and obviously better than anything I was visualizing.

The PRS were such a surprise to me! Was there a KS update about them?

I stopped following the KS just about this time a year ago. Nothing SJG could do better at that point, but it was tapping my mental reserves, rather than helping them.

[HeatDeath]

Originally Posted by beetle496

The PRS were such a surprise to me! Was there a KS update about them?

I was following the KS updates pretty closely, and they weren't on my radar until people started unboxing their packages.

[beetle496]

Originally Posted by Magesmiley

…I found that one of them violates the build card rules on page 8 of the core rules. Specifically, that players "cannot equip multiple upgrades that share the same name or subtype." The Division 8 version of the Pure Energy (page 45) has two Upgrade-Wheels cards.

From a clarification on another thread, I now understand that stacking Radial and Airless is RAW. A player just can’t have “double radials” or some such nonsense.

Originally Posted by HeatDeath

…6e is, in stark contrast, really /staggeringly/ well designed for one-on-one dueling - much better for it than we had any right to expect, frankly - and providing large numbers of balanced pairs of vehicles to facilitate this is /excellent/.

+1

[Sam Mitschke]

@beetle496
You can't stack items that share the same subtype. The thread you referred to is talking about suspensions, which do not have a subtype and therefore can be stacked. Airless Tires and HD Radials share the "Wheels" subtype, so they cannot be stacked.

The error on p45 of the Vehicle Guide has been corrected for future printings — use Reinforced Weapon Mounts instead of Airless Tires.

[beetle496]

I do so appreciate the drill down.

Originally Posted by Sam Mitschke

You can't stack items that share the same subtype. The thread you referred to is talking about suspensions, which do not have a subtype and therefore can be stacked. Airless Tires and HD Radials share the "Wheels" subtype, so they cannot be stacked.

My first intuition was correct. Then from the Suspension thread, understood that to be mistaken. Glad I asked again on this thread!