Boostable Fuel Charges and Movement on Vehicles

[Weldun]

So, messing around with converting some vehicles into Hero 5E (I prefer it, okay?) I came up to a problem. Many games list a range rather than an operating time for their vehicles. Okay, no problem right? Well, yes and no. See, the motorcycle that I was working on would have been left with just 1 hour of fuel. Now, you could use GM handwavium and say that vehicles can use only part of a power, but I wanted to see if I could use the mechanics as they stood to work this out. And I came up with this construct.

 

 

Two-Wheeled Ground Vehicle:  Ground Movement +15" (21" total), x4 Noncombat, 5 Boostable Continuing Fuel Charges lasting 1 Hour each (+1/4) (47 Active Points); OAF Bulky (Standard Tires; -1 1/2), Only On Appropriate Terrain (-1/4)

 

 

Charges work exactly the same in 6E, so those of you not familiar with the previous edition should still be able to follow along. Interestingly, on the vehicle that I was working on, this nearly doubled it's actual range (which for the system I was converting from, could be done by not taking the vehicle above half speed) so long as you were only using 1 charge at a time. A simple mechanical way of being able to trade between fuel efficiency and performance. Now, for a vehicle where the charges are measured in hours, you could probably go the hand-wave route but it opens ideas, no?

 

Note: Before anyone decides to criticize the IDEA behind the construct, I want this level of fidelity in some games. You might not and that's just bully for you, alright? But sometimes you want this level of detail.

[Lucius]

Doesn't stacking Charges lead to a Burnout Roll?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders what charging stacks leads to

[Weldun]

Doesn't stacking Charges lead to a Burnout Roll?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wonders what charging stacks leads to

True. Maybe this could just be a different way of reflecting some form overcharge or nitro system? Personally, I feel that the burnout roll has a bit of unnecessary overkill given that unless you are applying them to a 5 active point or less power (before charges), you're using up a fair amount of potential active points for a +5AP boost. Really, it's just a way for charge based powers to push, when you get down to it. But with this built, I'm planning on applying a -1 to all combat driving checks for every extra charge you are using (meaning -4 at max boost) to reflect that most vehicle handling characteristics decline rather sharply when go past optimal.

[bigdamnhero]

Hmmm.  I've never tried combining Boostable with Continuous Charges, but it seems like a sound way to model what you're looking for. I'd have to math it out to have a better sense of costs, let alone how closely it models actual engine performance, but the concept seems sound. I'd think you'd want to chart out fuel consumption at different speeds for each vehicle ahead of time, rather than having to math out the results in mid-game, but that seems like it would be easy enough to do. If fact, I bet you could find Real World data along those lines and work backwards from that.

 

Not something I'd use it in many games, but if I ever ran a Mad Max kind of game I can see something like this coming in really handy.