Traveller V2 Vehicle Combat ????

[nats]

Can anyone explain to me how vehicle combat is meant to work in the V2 rules?

Because it says that they function as the personnel combat rules which have 1 minor and 1 significant action per round. But if you have to spend the minor action keeping control and driving/flying and you spend the significant action either getting into position/changing firing arc/moving out of the enemy firing arc or dogfighting when exactly are you meant to actually attack (assuming its a single pilot craft with fixed front weapons and no extra gunner/turret)? Because that would be the end of your actions and there are none left to actually attack.

I mean the personnel combat rules work well and the starship combat rules look ok but the vehicle rules just seem nonsensical to me.

And what about movement - as vehicle movement is based on km/h how does that relate to 6 second rounds? Do I have to recalculate all the speeds for rounds by dividing by 0.6 to get movement rates in metres per round? Because that is very fiddly and a bit daft.

What does everyone here do with vehicle combat. Do they just 'wing it' and make it up using some of the rules for evasion /dogfighting when appropriate because the more I look at it the more of a headache I am getting trying to decipher the rules into some sort of usable state that would work along with the normal combat rules. I was hoping that the vehicle design book would have a nice simple new rule system in the front that made sense of it all but it doesnt ...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Dogfighting is not well defined in neither Vehicle Combat nor Space Combat. We have to guess and house rule it...

Dogfight: A vehicle within 1 km and within one Speed Band of another may initiate a dogfight. This is a series of manoeuvres whereby the driver of one vehicle attempts to gain a position of advantage over another and, hopefully, destroy it.

The dogfighting action includes attacking with all fixed mount weapons in the right firing arc (I assume).

The driver must spend a minor action every round to keep control of the vehicle under normal circumstances – a straight road or simple manoeuvres – or a significant action to navigate obstacles, conduct evasion or pursuit, or dodge incoming fire.

A Traveller can try to do two or more things at once, like firing a spacecraft’s weapons while also flying, or disarming a bomb while hiding from guards. For every extra thing the Traveller is doing, the level of difficulty for each task is made one level harder.

I would say that flying a vehicle while at the same time attacking with fixed mount weapons (dogfight) is a significant action with two tasks.

Note that it is a minor action OR a significant action, not both, to control a vehicle.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

And what about movement - as vehicle movement is based on km/h how does that relate to 6 second rounds? Do I have to recalculate all the speeds for rounds by dividing by 0.6 to get movement rates in metres per round? Because that is very fiddly and a bit daft.

Yes, I do not see any way around it.

 

[MongooseMatt]

And what about movement - as vehicle movement is based on km/h how does that relate to 6 second rounds? Do I have to recalculate all the speeds for rounds by dividing by 0.6 to get movement rates in metres per round? Because that is very fiddly and a bit daft.

Yes, I do not see any way around it.

Use the vehicle speed bands instead - put another way, if you are needing to break down kph into rounds, you are probably going into too much detail What is important in vehicle combat is not absolute speed but relative speed (pedestrians will be at Idle speed).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Use the vehicle speed bands instead - put another way, if you are needing to break down kph into rounds, you are probably going into too much detail

Sorry? Any movement and attack action needs the absolute range to resolve, hence we need to keep track of speed and range in metres?

The vehicle speed band only governs acceleration and deceleration, as far as I can see.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Sorry? Any movement and attack action needs the absolute range to resolve, hence we need to keep track of speed and range in metres?

Remember that you do not need to be metre perfect any more, as range is broken down into categories (short, long, extreme). You _can_ get into complex situations (12 people on 12 different vehicles, all shooting different weapons), but for 95% of combats involving vehicles, you just need to worry about relative speed and a rough idea of which range category can be used.

If you are leaning towards being metre perfect, I would advise backing off a bit on the detail - and waiting for a Traveller miniatures game!

 

[TrippyHippy]

...and waiting for a Traveller miniatures game!

Yay!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Remember that you do not need to be metre perfect any more, as range is broken down into categories (short, long, extreme).

Range is defined per weapon system.

If we flee in an air/raft, chased by another air/raft with a HMG, and we return fire with whatever long-arms we have available, we need to know the range (at least to the nearest 100 m) every round. The relative speed (in m/round) is very useful for this, speed bands are not.

I may be unimaginative, but I do not see how I can use speed bands for anything else than acceleration.

 

[baithammer]

Taking into account the difference between personal scale rounds and ship based ones ( 6 seconds vs 6 minutes), the speed numbers can act like the range bands at spaceship scale. ( Also using 10% of the speed band number gives a thrust value with speed band 10 = thrust 1)