[MTCE]

Does anyone else think the maneuver thresholds/handling for vehicles is a *smidge* high?

[Michael Chandra]

It's come up a few times in debates. Personally, I think vans/trucks are too harshly hit since they have both high Handling and low Speed Intervals, and could consider houserules, but for the rest: The rules are clear that you should only roll for tricky things, and that the GM can adjust the threshold, so honestly, either drive a good vehicle or get good driving skills, and you'll be fine even if you do force the GM to make you roll for stunts.

[MercilessMing]

Very, very high.  Like balanced around a dedicated rigger high.

Best advice I can give you is to think of Handling ratings in terms of what the Threshold Guidelines table (pg 36) says, and imagine that vehicle handling ratings were all made around the idea that 3 was the default starting point for a Simple Test -  "Complicated enough to require skill".  As the GM, pick the most appropriate threshold using that table, and add a modifier for how far from 3 the vehicle's handling is. 

And then, maybe double all Speed Intervals.

[Typhus]

Came here to say the exact same thing as Ming. 

1. Take the Handling Rating -3, apply as a modifier to the Threshold table, so GM has a guideline to use if they want you to roll. 
2. The Speed threshold seems like you could disregard in favor of just a -1 die penalty for every quarter of the max speed the vehicle is traveling.  Easier to calculate.  If you like calculating this value though, at least let the rigger reduce it by the VCR rating/offset with a bonus.
3. Acceleration rules are also mathematically painful at a table.  Just start your next turn at the new speed (old speed + accel value).
4. Treat drones in character scale combat as characters, distinct from how you treat vehicles moving at road speeds.  They still need to observe accel and decel speeds, meaning x turns to slow down too, based on current speed, but at least you don't have to consult a speed chart in combat.  Probably treat walker drones moving at character-equivalent speeds as not worrying about that though.
5. Allow failure by degrees with Threshold tests.  Failed by only 1 hit? Just have a skid out and lose some speed.  Failed by 2?  Maybe sideswipe something, lose half speed with a bad fishtail.  Fail by 3?  Spin out, maybe skid into something damaging, but not a full crash.  No hits at all?  Okay, fine, Crash Test time.
6. Disregard all the rules for Critical Glitch effects.  Destroying a character's primary investment for the sin of one bad roll is bad advice to give GMs, and not fun for players either.  Remind each other about Edge if your table uses these. 

For chases, well, good luck with that.  There's no real rules for it, so like many things in 6E your GM will be winging it.

Best suggestion on this is a couple scenarios:  If there's no obstacles at all, then the faster vehicle wins and you can rely on the speed ratings to tell you how long one stays in weapons range of it's pursuers.  You just need a ruling on what the starting "gap" was between the two. 

Otherwise, assume the vehicles are not able to go top speeds due to obstacles, curves, etc.  You could set a "maximum safe speed" for the vehicles, and use the suggestion above, if faster is the only factor.  Otherwise I would:

(1) Establish a number of "distances" (unspecified in length) that you need to attain in order to effectively lose the pursuers.   
(2) Let the lead vehicle attempt stunts which the pursuers then have to emulate at the same Threshold or else lose 1 "distance". 
(3) Don't track distances round to round.

If things are going too easy, the GM should throw some unexpected things in the driver's path, requiring more difficult rolls for both sets of vehicles involved.  I wouldn't do that without also using suggestions 1, 2 and 5 above tho.   

That's all I have worked out so far, generally speaking.  Good luck.

[MTCE]

I like all of these ideas. In my game last night, the team's on a snatch-and-grab "hostile extraction" run. Hacker commandeers some poor schlub's box truck because there's 4 PCs and the "acquisition". Opposition team hired by different Johnson to grab same target begins pursuit. Bad guy mage summons a fire spirit and sends it after the stolen box truck. It is 7AM (yes, they snatched the target off the street as he walked to work in broad daylight with lots of witnesses; I'll deal with that later) so there isn't much traffic on the road. Fire spirit is much faster than the truck and can fly, so catching up isn't much of a problem. I have it land in front of the truck and the driver (not a rigger) swerves to avoid a collision. He was doing 80m/turn at that point, so -8 to his dice pool of 9. Problem. Handling on the box truck is 5. Rolled a 3 on his one die. Even throwing 4 Edge at it only would have gotten him 3 extra dice, albeit with exploding 6s. Player opts not to "waste" the Edge. Roll failed. Crash test ensues with the same -8 to the dice pool. No way to succeed. Smash. Unbuckled PCs and acquisition get banged up pretty good. Truck miraculously survives but is also quite damaged. Gun bunny jumps out, opens up with SMG, scores ludicrous number of successes against the fire spirit. Even with the Immunity, he actually takes it out. I think he rolled 14 hits on 16 dice. It was awesome. So, King Shit and the Banged-Up Three, throw sack o' potatoes target over shoulder and...steal another car. I didn't feel like killing them all in another crash so I essentially let them get away. Long winded explanation for why this is going to be a problem going forward without some errata or house rules. Thank you for your suggestions. NOTE TO CATALYST: Please, please, please, get some better proof-readers and playtesters. You have an amazingly loyal fan base and one of the coolest settings in RPGs. Some of your fans (ME) have been playing since the FASA days. Please start treating us like it! Rant off.

[Typhus]

Oh, those are the days.

Suggestion from a fellow FASA-era gm: Next time have the fire elemental manifest inside the getaway vehicle.   

Not that crashing a stolen box truck and nearly killing their target isn't also a very teachable moment for them.  Well played in the end.   

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

One of the minor details particular to 6we is that there's a ceiling on astral movement: 100 meters per turn.  While spirits made riggers obsolete in every edition, at least in this edition you can't reliably send a spirit to go materialize inside another vehicle that's opposing you in a chase.

[GuardDuty]

While spirits made riggers obsolete in every edition

That's certainly not a statement I would agree with.  I never played in a 2E or 3E game where that felt remotely true.

[Michael Chandra]

I mean no offense to OP here, but since this topic already came up twice, and both times it turned into a heated debate, I'm going to just post this and go off-grid afterwards:

There are four (five) sorts of tests involved in vehicles:
1: Unopposed Piloting, which is either Stunts or Crashes
2: Opposed Piloting, which we can refer to as Vehicle Chases
3: Attacking
4: Defending

Speed Intervals apply in multiple cases, so blindly upping them all would for example take the bite out of drive-by penalties. So personally, I disgree with a general doubling of the intervals. However:

Handling only applies in Stunts and Crashes. Now Handling itself is strict. And to be frank, I like it. There's a massive added complexity if you're trying to stunt with a van rather than a low-Handling car. However, as I noted before, the double-dipping of penalties in low speed intervals and high Handling might be too strict. So a houserule I personally have suggested before is that when it comes to the Stunts and Crashes, you half the speed-interval penalty (round down, so every -2 becomes a -1).

(Another thing that's too strict, is the insinuation that a failed Handling test always leads to a Crash test. Given how one kind of Handling tests is driving covertly, obviously that ain't fair at all. I'd leave that up to the GM to decie as well.)

But one VERY important thing to keep in mind is that an unopposed test is rarely needed, and even then the threshold might be lowered:

Normal vehicle operation does not require a test.
Tests only come up when a driver/rigger wants to
do something tricky with the car— [...] make a hairpin turn at
high speeds, jump over the still-under-construction
bridge, that sort of thing. [...] Gamemasters can
increase or decrease that threshold based on the
difficulty of the attempted maneuver.

In the case where you have a spirit pop up in front of your car, and you're driving a poor-Handling vehicle at high speeds, honestly why bother swerving? Just ram the damn thing. And next time, if you intend to do stunts, bring a better car. At 9 dice, it's a VERY BAD IDEA to drive a van and push it to its limits.

Now if someone is interested in whether certain houserules still leave in the bite (because if you don't want a bite in the rules, then just go ahead and do your thing) while taking out the situations they don't like, and wants me to math out various dicepools with various vehicles and various speeds, with the base rules, the -1 Handling houserule, the halved speed interval houserule, another houserule that still keeps a bite in or a combination thereof, please go ahead and fire a PM at me. I know it can be hard to math those things out, and I've been itching for a full analysis.

But given how these topics keep ending up in both personal attacks and attacks against Catalyst, frankly I refuse to participate in those debates when so quickly they turn into 'debates', so I won't post anything else here. (And yes, insulting the quality of playtesters and proofreaders is the perfect example of turning into a 'debate' That is massively disrespectful to all the old and new fans that spent a lot of time playtesting, and was utterly uncalled for.)

[Typhus]

Astral movement is now 100m?  I somehow missed that one in my various read throughs.  That's a pretty major setting change.

[CigarSmoker]

Astral movement is now 100m?  I somehow missed that one in my various read throughs.  That's a pretty major setting change.

CRB 6 p.160
You can move in a
blur (astrally running), at a rate of 5 kilometers
per combat round, which does not
allow you to see anything you are whizzing
past. Or you can slow it down to an astral
walk, moving at 100 meters per combat
round, which allows you to take in in the
surroundings you pass.

a Combat Round is 3 seconds.
That means astral max speed is 1,6 km/second (5760 km/hour). So you need 2 hours to move astrally from Europe to the UCAS for example (i think that's really a setting change ? used to be almost instant. But i am no expert on the old editions)

The "walking" speed of 100 m/combat round translates to ~119 km/hour. That seems a bit slow but at least its without acceleration ... 0 km/h to 119 km/h in one second

what would have been nice:
It makes sense that the metahuman mind cant travel at the speed of 6000 km/h and see anything while doing so. But the "walking" speed is a bit harsh, i think an inbetween speed like lets take 500 km/h "astral sprinting" would have been nice ... for that speed you would need to roll for example "Astral" skill if you turn out where you wanted to be.

So you would have:
-astral  walking 100 meters /combat turn
-astral sprinting ~410 meters /combat turn
- astral "unprecise wishing where to go" 5000 meters/combat turn

[Typhus]

OK, that's what I was seeing too.  That wouldn't seem to preclude a spirit chasing down any land vehicle from the astral.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

OK, that's what I was seeing too.  That wouldn't seem to preclude a spirit chasing down any land vehicle from the astral.

Well, depends on how fast the car is going.  if the car is going faster than 100mpt, (100 meters per turn is 120 kilometers per hour, which is 75 miles per hour in American).  Granted there's no guarantee a car is going faster than 120kph/75mph, but those are speeds that are certainly plausible during a chase.  And in excess of those speeds, astral forms can no longer differentiate their surroundings.  So, no, there's really no way for a spirit to just materialize inside a car going 80+MPH.

[Typhus]

As though a spirit or other astral entity couldn't gauge the difference enough to "jog" ahead of where vehicle will be, stop and wait for it, and then manifest inside it?   One half-second of travel carries you the same distance every time.  Thus future location is entirely predictable.

This edition strains credulity enough elsewhere.  If that is how the rules are intended work, they need to explicitly say so.  There's no rule that says it's not possible, therefore it is.  I see no reason to disallow it.

[Leith]

As though a spirit or other astral entity couldn't gauge the difference enough to "jog" ahead of where vehicle will be, stop and wait for it, and then manifest inside it?   One half-second of travel carries you the same distance every time.  Thus future location is entirely predictable.

This edition strains credulity enough elsewhere.  If that is how the rules are intended work, they need to explicitly say so.  There's no rule that says it's not possible, therefore it is.  I see no reason to disallow it.

A spirit would have to time that carefully to not get hit by or miss the vehicle.  Perhaps an Astral+Reaction roll? Something like that anyway.