Getting about, and getting shot at

Reference rule — not active yet

The vehicles the source lists, with their statistics.

Characters rarely travel on foot, and a vehicle is the usual answer. Every vehicle in the catalogue is described by the same eleven traits, and you read them the way you read a weapon row: the tech level tells you whether the world you are standing on can build it, the skill tells you what you throw to drive it, and the rest tells you how fast it goes, how many people it carries, and how much punishment it absorbs before it stops being a vehicle.

The cost column is in thousands of credits, so the Ground Car at 6 is KCr6 and the Grav Floater at 0.5 is KCr0.5. Agility is a DM you add to every check you make driving the thing, which is why a Speeder at +2 forgives a mistake a Destroyer at -5 will not. Armour subtracts from the damage of every hit before that damage is turned into hits on the vehicle, Hull is what runs out before the vehicle is disabled, and Structure is what runs out before it is scrap.

Two vehicles in the catalogue come armed. The AFV is a heavily armoured ATV — an Armored Fighting Vehicle — with a triple laser turret: the lasers use the Energy Rifle skill, do 4D6 damage each using the Ranged (rifle) range modifiers, and one, two or three of them may be fired at the same target with one attack action. The G/Carrier is effectively a flying tank and the standard fighting vehicle of many military forces; its turret-mounted fusion gun is a vehicle-mounted version of the TL 15 man-portable fusion gun and uses the same “serious firepower” rules, except that its advanced containment systems mean it does not leak radiation with each shot the way the man-portable version does. The ATV carries no weapon as standard but has a hardpoint for a turret.

Four of the grav vehicles can leave the atmosphere. The Air/Raft, the G/Carrier and the Grav Floater each reach orbit in a number of hours equal to the world’s Size code, and the Speeder does it in one hour. The vacc suit requirement is printed against the Air/Raft alone — its passengers must wear one at that altitude, which is a real constraint on an open-topped machine. Nothing is printed either way about the other three. The Grav Belt is a harness fitted with artificial gravity modules; its internal battery runs for four hours before it needs recharging, or twelve hours if the belt was built at TL 15. Options cannot be added to the Grav Belt at all.

Seven vehicles carry no printed cargo figure — the Ground Car, Air/Raft, ATV, AFV, G/Carrier, Grav Floater and Grav Belt — so what any of them can haul is a referee’s call rather than a number you can look up. That matters more than it sounds, because the damage rules have a Cargo hit location: a vehicle with no stated cargo has nothing there to destroy.

The rest of the catalogue is what you would expect, with two limits worth knowing before you buy. The Hovercraft rides a downward blast of air and is only usable on worlds with a Thin atmosphere or thicker, so it is useless on the airless rock where you most want a vehicle. The ATV is enclosed and pressurised, floats on calm water, and carries built-in sensors and communications equipment — usually a laser transceiver — which is what makes it the exploration vehicle rather than the Ground Car. The Submersible is built to work under an ocean’s surface and is the usual transport between domed cities on a waterworld.

Reference rule — not active yet

The equipment a vehicle can be fitted with.

Eight options can be fitted to a vehicle, and with the single exception of the on-board computer each of them can only be taken once on a given vehicle. Most are priced as a percentage of the vehicle’s base cost rather than as a flat figure, so the same option costs a great deal more on a G/Carrier than on a Ground Car.

The on-board computer is the only option priced by pointing at something else: it costs the same as a hand computer, which is priced in the equipment catalogue rather than here, so read the figure there. It is also the only option you may fit more than once, which is what makes a vehicle with several computers legal at all.

An autopilot is often mandatory on cheaper commercial models, and in many areas — primarily urban — autopilots are required to be in use rather than merely fitted. A higher law level polity may go further and require a slave modification to the autopilot, so that centralized or emergency traffic control can take the vehicle over. That is worth knowing before you fly something into a high-law world you intend to leave in a hurry.

Two options change a statistic you will use in play, and both change it in the direction the table above prints rather than in the direction you might hope. Enclosed buys you a roof and costs you a point of Agility and a tenth of your top speed. High Performance buys you a fifth of your top speed for half the price of the vehicle again. Heavy Armor grants five points of armour whatever the vehicle, and that is the only flat thing about it — the price is a quarter of the vehicle’s own cost, so the same five points cost KCr1.5 on a Ground Car at KCr6 and KCr37.5 on a G/Carrier at KCr150. Flat benefit, proportional price, which is why it is worth far more to a Ground Car at armour 6 than to a G/Carrier at 25.

Reference rule — not active yet

What a hull does and does not keep out.

There are two main types of vehicle, open and closed, and the difference decides two things at once: how much cover you get sitting in it, and how many of you can shoot out of it. A closed vehicle protects you and limits you; an open one does neither.

The trade is real in both directions. Riding closed, you are behind cover and only two of you — one, in a military vehicle — can engage into any given arc, so a full passenger compartment contributes almost nothing to a firefight. Riding open, every passenger can attack in any direction and not one of them has anything between them and incoming fire.

Reference rule — not active yet

Arming a vehicle, and firing from one.

A weapon bolted to a vehicle is limited in what directions it can fire. A weapon mounted in the front arc, for example, can only fire into a 90-degree area in front of the vehicle. A weapon in a turret can fire in any direction.

That single rule is what makes a vehicle’s facing worth tracking. A fixed mount does not care where the gunner wants to shoot; it cares where the vehicle is pointing, so bringing a target into a fixed weapon’s arc is a driving problem and the driver solves it by manoeuvring. A turret takes the problem away entirely, which is why both armed vehicles in the catalogue carry theirs in one.

Reference rule — not active yet

Hitting something at speed.

When a vehicle collides with something else, everything takes damage. Roll 1D6 for every 10 kph of the vehicle’s speed, rounding up, and apply that as damage directly to whatever was hit — and, if the thing struck is solid enough, to the ramming vehicle as well.

Collision damage

1D6 for every 10 kph of the vehicle’s speed (round up)

Thrown distance, unsecured passenger

three metres for every 10 kph of speed

Read those numbers before you plan anything around ramming. A Ground Car at its top speed of 150 kph does 15D6 to what it hits, to itself if the target was solid, and to every unsecured person inside it — which averages well over fifty points, against characteristics that start in single figures. A seatbelt reduces your share to a quarter and stops you being thrown forty-five metres. Collisions at vehicle speeds are not a tactic, they are an ending.

Reference rule — not active yet

What a driver and crew may do in a round.

Combat in and on vehicles is much the same as ordinary combat, with three differences. Facing matters, because mounted weapons — and, to a lesser extent, armed passengers — are restricted to certain fire arcs. The vehicle moves on the driver’s Initiative. And attackers gain a +1 DM to hit most vehicles, because of their size.

The +1 DM is worth taking seriously from both sides. Anything shooting at your vehicle is a point better off than it would be shooting at a person, so a vehicle is not cover in the way a wall is — it is a large, easy target that happens to have people inside it.

Five actions belong to the driver, and all five are significant actions taken when the driver’s turn in the initiative order arrives. Three of them — Evasive Action, Ram and Weave — throw the skill determined by the vehicle, which is the Skill column of the catalogue, so the same driver is a different driver in a Ground Car and in an Air/Raft. Manoeuvring throws nothing at all. Stunt is the odd one: the source calls for a vehicle control check rather than naming the vehicle’s skill, and it is published in those words rather than folded into the other three.

Evasive action is what a vehicle has instead of a dodge. Vehicles are not typically manoeuvrable enough to dodge as a reaction, so rather than reacting to an attack the driver declares evasive action on their own turn and lives with the result until their next one. Note the cost written into it: the Effect is a penalty to attacks made from the vehicle as well as to attacks made against it, so a driver protecting the crew is also spoiling the crew’s shooting.

Weaving number

as low as one, as high as one per 20 km/h of speed (round up) — applied as a penalty to the check

A weave is a bet you make against a pursuer, and you choose its size. The driver names the weaving number before throwing, and it becomes a penalty on their own check as well as on every pursuer’s. Fail and you have crashed into something; succeed and your pursuers throw at the same penalty with the same consequence, or give up the chase and try to reacquire you later. Ram, by contrast, is a driving check the referee may grant bonuses on, or waive entirely if the target is particularly large.

Reference rule — not active yet

Taking hits, and what a vehicle loses.

A vehicle has a Hull value and a Structure value, and together they measure its structural integrity. When Hull reaches 0 the vehicle starts taking damage to its internal systems; when Structure reaches 0 the vehicle is reduced to scrap. Along the way it also suffers damage to its onboard systems as it takes hits.

Armour is what makes the table survivable. Every point of armour comes off the damage before you read the row, so an AFV at armour 18 shrugs off an attack that would put three separate hits into a Ground Car at 6. That is also why the Heavy Armor option is best value on a cheap vehicle: what it grants is flat — five points, the same five on any machine — but what it costs is a quarter of the vehicle’s price, so those five points are cheapest exactly where they matter most. Five points off every incoming attack moves most attacks down a band or two, and the bottom band is “No damage”.

Each hit is then located, and the ladder below says what that location loses. A location with several rungs remembers how many times it has been hit — the second Drive hit is worse than the first, and the third disables the drive outright — so a vehicle degrades in a recognisable way rather than simply losing points.

Two locations put damage straight through the hull and into people. A Passengers hit picks a passenger at random, and a Cockpit hit takes the pilot; in both cases the source says only that the person takes damage equal to the damage inflicted on the vehicle.

Running out of Structure is not simply the vehicle stopping. If the attack that destroys it reduces its Structure to a negative score, the vehicle explodes: 4D6 damage to everyone within six metres, including the occupants, and 2D6 to everyone within twelve. The occupants of a closed vehicle cannot dodge or dive for cover from that explosion. The occupants of an open vehicle can — which is the one place in these rules where an open hull is the safer one to have been sitting in.

Damage beyond the printed bands

+1 Single Hit for every extra three points; +1 Double Hit for every extra six points

Reference rule — not active yet

The systems a serious hit disables.

Every hit lands somewhere, and where it lands is thrown on 2D6 against the hit location table. The table has three columns rather than one: an external column and an internal column for vehicles, and a third for robots and drones. Read the column that fits the target and its condition, and the ladder in the damage section above tells you what the location loses.

The two vehicle columns are the same eleven rows read twice, and the difference between them is the whole shape of a vehicle fight. The external column is mostly Hull — four of the eleven rows — with the drive, sensors, weapons and armour around it. The internal column has no Hull row at all: it is Structure, the power plant, the cargo, the computers, the passengers and the cockpit. So while a vehicle still has Hull you are chewing through its skin and its systems, and once the Hull is gone every subsequent Hull result becomes the same row of the internal column and you are into the crew, the cargo and the frame.

Locate once per hit, not once per attack. An attack that produced two Single Hits is two throws on this table and can land in two different places; a Double or Triple hit is one throw applied two or three times to the location it found. That distinction is why the damage table bothers to distinguish “Two Single Hits” from a “Double Hit” at all — the same two hits either spread across the vehicle or stack on one system.

The robot and drone column is the same idea rebuilt for a machine with limbs and no passengers. It keeps Hull, Power Plant, Sensors, Armor and Drive, drops the cockpit and the cargo, adds a Computer result at 12, and replaces the vehicle’s Weapon rows with “Weapon or Limb”. A robot has no separate internal column: its overflow goes to Structure directly.

Reference rule — not active yet

Fixing a vehicle, and what it takes.

Damage to a vehicle or drone falls into three categories, and each is repaired differently: System Damage, Hull Damage and Structure Damage. Only the first two take a skill check; the third takes a workshop, a great deal of time and a great deal of money.

A jury-rig is exactly what it sounds like. A damaged system can be put back into service, and it will stop working again after 1D6 hours — so it is a repair you make to reach somewhere, not a repair you make to keep. Getting it back for good means the destroyed-system path, or a workshop.

Spare parts are their own small economy. They can come from a scrap yard, a workshop, systems on another vehicle, or systems on the same vehicle — and when you take them from another vehicle system, each “hit” of damage that system has taken provides enough spare parts for a single repair check. So a wreck is a parts bin measured in the hits it absorbed. Two systems are excluded: the Passengers and Cockpit locations cannot be stripped for parts, although cybernetic parts might provide enough material to repair minor damage.

Destroyed system

2D6 × 10% of the system’s original cost — full workshop and specialist materials, no spare parts

Structure, per point repaired

10–60 hours and 20% of the base cost of the vehicle

Structure is the expensive one, and deliberately so. Twenty per cent of the vehicle’s base cost per point means an ATV that has lost all five points of Structure costs its own price again to rebuild, and 10–60 hours a point means it is off the road for anything from two days to a fortnight. There is no check to fail; there is only the bill and the calendar.

Reference rule — not active yet

Scaling a vehicle weapon against a starship.

Shooting a starship with a ground weapon is allowed, easy to hit and almost always futile. Ground force weaponry gains a DM +4 to hit anything on the starship scale, and must then divide its damage by 50 before comparing it to a starship-scale target’s armour.

To hit a starship-scale target

the attack roll, with a DM +4

Damage against a starship-scale target

(the first weapon’s damage + half the damage dice of every additional weapon) ÷ 50, then compared to the target’s armour

The division is the point. A single ground weapon will obviously be unable to punch through starship armour — the source says so in terms — so one rifle, one laser or one rocket against a hull is not a threat, however well it is aimed. What makes the rule worth having is that multiple weapons may all target the starship at once and their cumulative effect can inflict damage: every additional weapon beyond the first adds half its damage dice to the total before the division. So the way ground forces hurt a ship is with a battery, not a marksman.