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[6e] Vehicles - crashing, ramming, etc

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MercilessMing

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« on: <04-12-21/1546:20> »
Last night we had a full four-dimensional fight, with regular combat, matrix, magic, and vehicle rules all coming into play each round.  Can you guess which one of those left us scratching our heads and second guessing everything?  Of course.  Boy I hate the rigging chapter.

First let me say I hate that Crashing and Ramming (Using the vehicle as a weapon) are two completely different mechanics with different damage calculations for what is basically the same thing, hitting something with your vehicle.  Scratch that, three if you count hitting a Barrier.

Crash: The vehicle and everyone in it resists Speed/10 P damage. "safety features may reduce this damage" (No guidance given/completely GM fiat)

Ram: The vehicle inflicts (Bod/2) + Speed/Interval P damage to its target.  No word about occupants if the target is a vehicle. 

We've discussed before how un-smart it is for Ram damage to be dependent on the vehicle's speed interval and I'm in favor of making this a 'standard 20' instead.  However it's still not a good damage formula IMO.

My players wanted to ram a Physical Barrier spell that was in their way with their Bentley.  I'm inexperienced with vehicle combat. There is no clear way to resolve this in the book.  I had to combine rules from three different places to resolve this.  It was messy, time consuming, and ... well in other words, everything that's wrong with Shadowrun.  So what we ended up doing is taking the Ram damage from Using the vehicle as a weapon, applied it to the Barrier rules from the Combat section to judge the barrier's reaction, and then applied Crash damage to the Bentley and the occupants when we judged that the Barrier won.  All that just to poke a wall with a car.

Later I want to get in to what could be better ways to ram stuff...

Xenon

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« Reply #1 on: <04-12-21/1633:13> »
It seem as if they are aware of that rigger rules came out a bit messy. Plan seem to be to hopefully try to unfuck them somewhat in the rigger supplement that is about to finish.

If you ram a soft target then the soft target deal their Body rating / 4 (round up) physical damage back on the vehicle. Perhaps the intent is that if you ram (or crash into) a not target that is not soft then the vehicle (and its passengers) take speed in meters per turn / 10 damage.


A physical barrier spell is typically only as strong as chain-link fence, ballistic glass or a sheet of metal (8-9 structure or so). A body 14 Bentley should probably not have to drive very fast to instantly collapse the barrier spell. Perhaps it is enough to collapse the physical barrier spell if damage exceed structure (in this case 2-3 speed intervals).


(I am no expert on SR6 vehicle rules though)

MercilessMing

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« Reply #2 on: <04-12-21/1849:35> »
Quote
A physical barrier spell is typically only as strong as chain-link fence, ballistic glass or a sheet of metal (8-9 structure or so). A body 14 Bentley should probably not have to drive very fast to instantly collapse the barrier spell. Perhaps it is enough to collapse the physical barrier spell if damage exceed structure (in this case 2-3 speed intervals).
Yeah, in this case the Bentley was accelerating from 0 (so speed 20, damage 8) and the Barrier was brick-wall like at 12.  GM fiat for what is enough to collapse a barrier, but text implies it should be at least a power greater than the barrier rating before even considering it.

Anyone ever play Car Wars?  It's appropriately crunchy for a game all about vehicle battles, but it's doing some basic things Shadowrun could be doing like adding speeds together for head on collisions, subtracting them for rear end and sideswipe collisions.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #3 on: <04-13-21/1355:34> »
I'm a fan of Car Wars, too.  That was, iirc, the first game I got into that wasn't D&D.  I was playing Car Wars before Shadowrun was even released! Lots of good times with that game... and I still consider it the gold standard for vehicular combat games.  Although, I've heard very interesting things about Gaslands... but alas I haven't had the opportunity to try it.

At any rate, Shadowrun has too much "theater of the mind" to make a Car Wars style vehicular combat system to integrate well.  Heck, a Shadowrun combat round is 3 seconds... which is quite plausibly an entire Car Wars game where the time interval is 5 moves to the second (or 10 moves to the second, back in the 1e Car Wars days when I played!)  I daresay the degree of granularity is incompatible between Shadowrun and Car Wars.  Of course, for all Car Wars did well it didn't do 3 dimensional movement particularly well.  Using planes/choppers in Car Wars was an absolute nightmare... imo the best aerial combat table-top game I ever played was Crimson Skies... but that essentially treated any differences in elevation between aircraft as being irrelevant and therefore climbing/descending was also irrelevant... and its initiative and damage systems would be basically impossible to make compatible with Shadowrun :(

One of the things I rather liked about 5e was treating car chases/combats with abstract values.  How many meters per turn am I travelling?  Largely doesn't matter.  What does matter? whether the scene is a Speed or Handling environment, and your vehicle as a corresponding Limit.   I also liked the 5e rule giving movement TYPES higher top speeds than anything below it... anything on wings is faster than anything with rotors, and anything with rotors is faster than anything on wheels, and anything on wheels is faster than anything on foot. Of course, this begins to have problems when you introduce superpowered shadowrunners who can more or less move at vehicular speeds INTO a vehicular scene, but nothing's perfect, right?

Of course, 6e is back to concrete speed and acceleration/braking values.  Other than the fundamental difference in the size of time increments this is indeed Car Wars-esque, but only in a 1 dimensional sense. There's no discrete turning radii, so even a more or less one dimensional chase down a highway necessarily has GM fiat involved due to lateral motion involved in drifting across lanes and/or swerving to avoid obstacles.

Anyway.  back on topic.

With regards to Crashes vs Rams: I'm personally ok with those being two different mechanics/damage calculations.  While they both involve collisions, they're fundamentally different in the former is an accidental collision, and the latter is an intentional collision.  You can reasonably maximize the damage to the target while minimizing the damage to yourself when you're colliding on purpose.

But is it necessarily THAT cut and dried?  If I "ram" a building or a wall, is that truly any different than accidentally driving into it?  To that I'd say "Maybe.  It depends."  6e depends on GM discretion, and I'd say this is yet another example.  If you drive nose-first into a solid barrier, I'd say it's a crash.  Even if you meant to do it.  OTOH, if you go to the bother of hitting it rear-end first or in some other way that would reasonably minimize the damage you suffer in the collision, I might call it a ram instead.  Or, have you make a piloting test and if you pass it's a ram and if you fail it's a crash.

In the case of colliding with a moving target, I think the "did you do that intentionally" rule of thumb is pretty solid.  But I agree that the damage should be calculated as a difference between the two, rather than solely on the ramming party's speed.  Yes, as Car Wars would do.  I think it's reasonable to infer that the calculation as written is presuming a stationary target for a ram, and in the event the target is NOT stationary you go ahead and use the relative speed.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.

Typhus

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« Reply #4 on: <04-13-21/1637:54> »
Old hand with Car Wars here too.  Spend a day making a car, then another day playing.  Good times. 

I have a copy of Gaslands, but I've had a chance to play Auto-Destructo-Rama a few times.  Its fast, fun, and simpler on rules than Gaslands.  I'd recommend it to anyone looking for that kind of game. 

I think I would definitely house rule a simpler vehicle system.  That and gas grenades are ones I find I wouldn't be able to use in their current state.  Fortunately, other systems exist that handle both in simpler ways.  I will probably just convert a suitable one.  If anyone does something I'd be interested to see it.  Hard to do vehicles in an RPG, but not impossible.  D6 Star Wars had a decent system, or so I recall.

MercilessMing

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« Reply #5 on: <04-13-21/1703:19> »
Quote
With regards to Crashes vs Rams: I'm personally ok with those being two different mechanics/damage calculations.  While they both involve collisions, they're fundamentally different in the former is an accidental collision, and the latter is an intentional collision.  You can reasonably maximize the damage to the target while minimizing the damage to yourself when you're colliding on purpose.
I'm cool with them not being the same exact formula, but their components should be standardized.  It's too much minutiae for one to calculate damage from speed as Speed/10 and the other Speed/Speed Interval.
I think this is how I will houserule:
Speed = Speed of the impact (add together for head on collision, subtract for rear/sideswipe, use acting vehicle's speed for T-bone or collision with static target)
Crashing: Speed/20 
Ramming: Speed/20 + Body/2
Occupants of a vehicle ramming/getting rammed: Speed/20. 

Squishy things inflict Body/4 instead of Body/2
+ some caveat about size differences that are so significant that they inflict reduced damage or no damage (like microskimmers "ramming" APCs).
« Last Edit: <04-13-21/1705:53> by MercilessMing »

Typhus

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« Reply #6 on: <04-13-21/1722:08> »
You could probably use the vehicle classifications, and maybe establish a DV reduction/increase value between them.  So, for example, reduce the DV by 2 if a drone rams a truck, but increase the DV by 2 if the truck rams the drone.  Or something like that.  Maybe just a heirarchy of vehicles sizes that adds 1DV for each step of difference.  So Drone > Bike > Car > Truck > Big Rig, etc.

MercilessMing

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« Reply #7 on: <04-13-21/1759:59> »
I'd tend to something simpler... looking at the vehicle list I might just say microdrones and minidrones do no ram damage.

That Chrysler-Nissan Pursuit V though.. top speed 280 Body 4: 16P missile

Typhus

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« Reply #8 on: <04-13-21/1819:23> »
Can't beat a hard "no" for simplicity.   :D

MercilessMing

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« Reply #9 on: <04-14-21/1323:56> »
Right, I mean the increase in Body as things get bigger is supposed to account for the extra damage from mass... I think the problem is just on the low end where body is at or near 0 since they went with a Body + Speed formula instead of a more "accurate" Body X Speed formula.  So setting the lower limit at "what's worth calculating if it ran into a human sized target" in a game like this is probably all we really need to do.

funkytim

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« Reply #10 on: <05-06-21/0143:03> »
Car Wars!! That's a blast from the past.  I think I played that in the 80's.  Loved the big rigs.  Also had the gas rules.

ammulder

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« Reply #11 on: <05-06-21/0941:31> »
Loved Car Wars.  :)  I'll be interested to see how the sixth edition of THAT goes!

I think this is how I will houserule:
Speed = Speed of the impact (add together for head on collision, subtract for rear/sideswipe, use acting vehicle's speed for T-bone or collision with static target)
Crashing: Speed/20 
Ramming: Speed/20 + Body/2
Occupants of a vehicle ramming/getting rammed: Speed/20. 

I guess my concern here is the occupants line.  I feel like modern cars are pretty safe in many high speed collisions assuming seatbelts, airbags, etc.  I would think a vehicle with substantial body and armor would be safer still.  I would expect that the vehicle should be totaled before the occupants were severely damaged.  I'm not suite sure how to reflect that, though.  Maybe the formula is OK but it should be one of those mechanics where it's stun unless greater than Body?  In this case, maybe stun on the occupants unless the damage (Speed/20) is greater than the Body of the vehicle?  Vulnerable on a bike or in a Jackrabbit, but in a bus or APC the worst case is you get knocked out?

The exception would be if the occupants were leaning out the window to shoot handguns instead of belted down and etc.  Then maybe physical damage no matter what.

MercilessMing

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« Reply #12 on: <05-06-21/1308:17> »
The CRB gives us the very generic "safety features can modify this, GM discretion".  Hopefully Double Clutch (the Rigger book) will flesh that out. 

Well, it is half of what the CRB recommends.  If you crash your car in SR6 occupants suffer Speed/10 P damage.

I agree with you... in a game where blunt force trauma is just stun damage, Stun is more appropriate than physical unless the guy is half out the window or something.
Since it's all personal taste, GM discretion, I might do Speed/20 Stun for a base safety feature vehicle, Double it if there are little to no safety features, and double it and make it physical if they're exposed outside of a vehicular crash cage.
« Last Edit: <05-06-21/1310:37> by MercilessMing »