Vehicle Combat

[SCUBA Hero]

Cross-posted from the 6ed forum:

 

Thoughts on Vehicle Combat

 

1. For vehicles with large numbers of the same weapon, allow them to be organized into batteries, with each 2X the number of weapons adding 1 Damage Class (got this idea from Traveller).

 

2. Drop the “DCV cannot be lower than 0” rule. Or, at least, allow Size and Range modifiers to cancel each other out (not how to integrate this into the OCV/DCV checklists yet).

 

3. Drop “0 OCV if moving at Non-Combat speeds”. As vehicles usually move at Non-Combat speeds, and 0 OCV applies last under the standard rules, all skill is moot – gunners are at 0 OCV. Note also that if the vehicles involved in combat are large enough that they end up at 0 DCV due to Size modifiers, any Attack Roll is 11-. Period. (Under the standard rules.)

 

4. Create some method for applying Advantaged attacks against vehicles. Here I’m mostly thinking about Explosion or Area Effect – the Active Points are 1.5X or 2X the Active Points in Killing Attack, but under current rules they do no more damage. (One way around this is to simulate missiles and the like with Armor Piercing instead of Explosion.)

 

5. Create some way of cheap BODY or other method representing vehicles taking damage over time. With a standard aircraft carrier at 30 BODY, hits that normally do damage after defenses will kill the carrier relatively quickly, while ones that don’t tend to take a long time to play out, and be chaotic (depending on high damage rolls). I’m looking for the SFX of a large vehicle’s structure being battered over time. For example, I’ve considered using some form of BODY as the SFX of Star Trek shields (but the vehicle doesn’t lose any capability until its “real” BODY is breached). Ablative defense using the option helps here, but doesn’t solve the problem.

 

A while back I had posted in the Star Hero forum that vehicle combat was (IMO) wonky, without giving any details on what I meant. The above covers the basics of my thinking.

[SCUBA Hero]

Re: Vehicle Combat

 

49 views and no replies. (Blacksword; I did see your reply in the 6E forum on you using the #1 idea for mooks) How does my thinking in the above post interact with your experience running Vehicle combats?