I've talked a little bit about how the vehicles in the new Hammercalled will work, but today I want to talk about a couple examples.
I haven't yet written final versions of the rules, but I feel confident enough in giving these examples that I can present something that will look like the final examples.
Each of these is built on Types and is indicative of what player characters might use, or things that could be sent in as opponents in play.
Vehicles and Roles
The way that vehicles work in Hammercalled is that they're built on the principle of extending characters.
In this sense, they function like gear.
One of the changes in the new Vehicle system is that characters get a role when they enter a vehicle. This matches whatever crew the vehicle needs to function (pilot, gunner, loader, etc.), or whatever spaces the vehicle offers to riders (passenger, prisoner, patient, etc.).
Vehicles' occupants are divided into Crew and Passengers.
Each Crew character may invest their actions in the associated options chosen by the vehicle. Passengers are passive, but having them around can be useful (for narrative reasons, or with the use of something like Gun Ports).
The idea behind this diversification is that it allows for a number of things:
- High-octane play in, say, space games or other vehicle-focused games where different party roles become important (for instance, only an Engineer can operate a particular tool that boosts the vehicle).
- Let characters who are the best at something use that, but not have the whole vehicle at their disposal. Being locked into a single role prevents a one-man vehicle operating army.
- Provide for a more clear representation of how vehicles operate in a mechanical sense, removing some abstraction without really slowing down play a whole ton.
Gear Damage
I've removed gear damage from vehicles entirely. The reason for this is that it was causing more harm than good in the sense that vehicles could invest in really weak weapons to get more durable, and it was causing perverse incentives with regards to how points were being spent.
One counter-point to this is that vehicle designers can choose to add a gunner or operator to any Gear they add to the vehicle. Crew members draw from the passenger pool.
Gear Scaling
Gear scaling has been removed, and replaced with qualities. For instance, a Groundcraft can purchase the Cannon quality, which increases the damage of a weapon by +2 but decreases its Accuracy by -10. This reflects the old Scale system's penalties and bonuses, but doesn't cause problems in other areas.
HMMWV (5)
Type: Groundcraft (2 VP)
Core Damage: ○ ○ ○
Damage Threshold: 6
Maneuver 0, Accuracy 0
Crew:
Driver
Gunner
• M60 (costs 2 VP): Weapon, Ranged, 5 Damage, Automatic
Passengers: 3 (Base 4, -1 for Gunner)
Qualities:
Gun Ports (1): Passengers in this vehicle may fire out of it, but may not be individually targeted by enemies outside the vehicle and do not suffer the effects of Blast weapons.
Description
Although not originally intended as a frontline combat vehicle, the HMMWV's mobility and decent flexibility have made it relatively popular among the troops using them, at least in the early days of the war. Capable of operating in almost any terrain, rugged, and relatively reliable, they don't hold up well in combat but they are capable of operating on the mountain roads of Segira.
Note: this is an excerpt for Segira: 1985, which features the original 1984 HMMWV, not the more modern up-armored versions. Do you know how hard it is to figure out the actual original configurations of many of these vehicles? I finally found a blurry photo of what looks like a HMMWV from Operation Just Cause with an M60 mounted in its turret.
Scorpion Battlesuit (4)
Type: Battlesuit (1 VP)
Core Damage: ○ ○
Damage Threshold: 6+4 Armor (1 VP)
Maneuver +10, Accuracy 0
Crew:
Operator
• EX-34 Chaingun (2 VP): Weapon, Ranged, 5 Damage, Automatic
Qualities
Mobile (1): The battlesuit is designed to enhance the wearer's agility, granting them a +10 Maneuver bonus.
Description
Description
The Scorpion Battlesuit is a terrifying force on the battlefield because of its heavy armor and incredible mobility. However, it was only produced in small numbers for the Segiran Royal Guard. A handful of units found their way into other factions' arsenals at the beginning of the war, though many were reverse-engineered.
Wrapping Up
All-in-all, I think that this system provides a lot of solutions to Hammercalled's issues as a system with regards to vehicles. For one, it lets us explore some of the territory that had previously been "Well, that's not going to work" within a relatively common framework. While some vehicles like spacecraft will always be largely unique in how they're handled by the rules, this ruleset scales well for any vehicle, in part because very large vehicles can be simulated without too much stress on the system by making them a new Type (either unto themselves or following rules).
Basically, we don't have the old limits, and you can easily layer on additional vehicle rules like maneuvers and special roles if you want (e.g. to emulate any of the major sci-fi games out there that have multiple roles on spaceships), but you also have enough simplicity to just say "Okay, this is what the HMMWV needs to function, and this is what it can do."