Updated Vehicle Handbook in the works

[Geir]

Heck, give both. If someone wants to be abstract that's cool.

Earlier drafts had both. It was discouraged.
Which is... I can never remember what they mean without looking them up. Well, sub-, super- and hyper- sonic, those I can remember. The rest are just words. And.... this goes for task difficulties too, but 'very' in front of things is.... not very great.

(Well, we could go with 'not so fast', 'sort of fast', 'almost fast', 'pretty fast', 'really fast', 'wow, that thing is fast' all starting with 'not at all fast'.

 

[Grognardia]

Earlier drafts had both. It was discouraged.
Which is... I can never remember what they mean without looking them up. Well, sub-, super- and hyper- sonic, those I can remember. The rest are just words. And.... this goes for task difficulties too, but 'very' in front of things is.... not very great.

(Well, we could go with 'not so fast', 'sort of fast', 'almost fast', 'pretty fast', 'really fast', 'wow, that thing is fast' all starting with 'not at all fast'.

Well - can we, the actual customers, re-encourage it? Just having speed bands is pretty useless.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Well - can we, the actual customers, re-encourage it? Just having speed bands is pretty useless.

Yes -- how many hours does it take to fly from Cleon City on Capital to the imperial retreat on the other side of the globe? We can figure up the distance in kilometers, and them we have 'speed bands' which becomes a big 'divide by hand-wave' situation. Ugh.

Real units, please.

 

[agentwigggles]

Well - can we, the actual customers, re-encourage it? Just having speed bands is pretty useless.

I wouldn't call it useless. It's bland. It makes vehicle to samey. The vehicle tags that are being employed help with that but without engaging with them, the community can't say if they help alleviate that problem.

 

[CordwainerFish]

I wouldn't call it useless. It's bland. It makes vehicle to samey. The vehicle tags that are being employed help with that but without engaging with them, the community can't say if they help alleviate that problem.

If all you can say about a grav racer is that it's Very Fast the same as all other grav racers... yeah, I'm going to go with useless here.

 

[agentwigggles]

No, it objectively has utility. In the confines of vhb 2016, that rating is the only they we have to determine movement speed. It's just makes all grav racers the same. With all the grav racers the same it makes things racing them, boring.

 

[collins355]

What is the game mechanic reason for having only the speedbands and not the speed? I could never understand it. The combat rules specify a -1 to-hit DM for each 10 metres of target movement per 6 second combat turn. How do the speedbands help with this? The combat rules specify using a 1.5 metre scale hex grid map - how do the speedbands help with determining how far a vehicle can move on this hexgrid?

While I love that Vehicles is being updated, it does nothing yet I can see to fix up the broken combat system interface between the design system and the RPG rules.

 

[Geir]

No, it objectively has utility. In the confines of vhb 2016, that rating is the only they we have to determine movement speed. It's just makes all grav racers the same. With all the grav racers the same it makes things racing them, boring.

Depends on how you race them. I did put in the task for making your vehicle go faster than the max rated (just don't try to make something not supersonic-capable go supersonic in a atmosphere because... bad things™)

 

[Geir]

What is the game mechanic reason for having only the speedbands and not the speed? I could never understand it. The combat rules specify a -1 to-hit DM for each 10 metres of target movement per 6 second combat turn. How do the speedbands help with this? The combat rules specify using a 1.5 metre scale hex grid map - how do the speedbands help with determining how far a vehicle can move on this hexgrid?

While I love that Vehicles is being updated, it does nothing yet I can see to fix up the broken combat system interface between the design system and the RPG rules.

That part is in the back of the bus book, including turning rules. I can't contradict Core rules, but I can expand upon them and in some cases, I've just had to say: do this instead.

In Vehicle combat, the DM is based on differing Speed Bands, not 10 metres per round (p. 139 of the new Core - it says 'additional DM-1' but I'm assuming for sanity's sake that this is instead of the 10m/rd "Fast Moving Target" rule, which would make vehicles DM-8 even at Very Slow speed.

 

[Grognardia]

That part is in the back of the bus book, including turning rules. I can't contradict Core rules, but I can expand upon them and in some cases, I've just had to say: do this instead.

In Vehicle combat, the DM is based on differing Speed Bands, not 10 metres per round (p. 139 of the new Core - it says 'additional DM-1' but I'm assuming for sanity's sake that this is instead of the 10m/rd "Fast Moving Target" rule, which would make vehicles DM-8 even at Very Slow speed.

Speed bands just aren’t cutting it. "Medium (Slow)" tells me absolutely nothing. It's frustrating - Mongoose wants immersion, but they're holding onto this abstract system that feels like lazy design. Players want real numbers, real speeds, because it affects everything: combat, chases, travel time, and immersion. Without actual km/h or m/s, we’re left guessing, breaking immersion and stripping away tactical choices. This "speed band" nonsense isn't helping anyone; it’s just a bad idea.

 

[J. L. Brown]

Speed bands just aren’t cutting it. "Medium speed" tells me nothing. It's frustrating - Mongoose wants immersion, but they're holding onto this abstract system that feels like lazy design. Players want real numbers, real speeds, because it affects everything: combat, chases, travel time, and immersion. Without actual km/h or m/s, we’re left guessing, breaking immersion and stripping away tactical choices. This "speed band" nonsense isn't helping anyone; it’s just a bad idea.

Worse, it slows things down. There is a look up table for 'how many Km/h at each speed band' -- but it gives a wide range. So now, the GM has to (find! then) look at the table to see what the range of possible speeds is, declares the actual speeds, then do the calculations with that speed.

Just gives us real numbers in the vehicle data block.

 

[CordwainerFish]

I ever tell you about the time I got a ticket for going Very Fast in a Fast zone?

 

[J. L. Brown]

I ever tell you about the time I got a ticket for going Very Fast in a Fast zone?

I tell ya, 0.5 Km/h over & those Regina cops really bust your chops. Did I ever tell you about the time I got a ticket for going Medium Speed in a Medium speed zone?

I was doing 195 in a 105 zone; and I patiently explained to the nice officer that they were both 'Medium speed band', but he wasn't having any of it.

 

[Terry Mixon]

Whoever is married to the idea of speed bands needs to get a quickie divorce. It has to be one of the stupider ideas that I’ve ever seen implemented. No one can use it as written and has to look up whatever the speed might be of anything in particular and then make a judgment call on how it affects anything.

Seriously, since you are busy redesigning the entire vehicle handbook, which is where it is primarily used, this is the appropriate time to deep six that particular concept. You really need to run that back up the chain of command and get some buy in on that because no one—and I mean absolutely no one—likes it.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I feel the same way about vehicle speeds, and also about changing the conversion scale for spaces

 

[Grognardia]

The MGT1 Vehicles Handbook has speed in KM/H listed. Just go back to that.

 

[Arkathan]

I ever tell you about the time I got a ticket for going Very Fast in a Fast zone?

No, but I got a ticket for going Very Slow in a Stop zone once.

 

[Geir]

I got a strongly worded warning for being Idle (or was that loitering?)

 

[Shardan13]

Speed bands could get even sillier by being fractal. Can you imagine having a very fast, slow, hyper sonic vehicle?

 

[collins355]

That part is in the back of the bus book, including turning rules. I can't contradict Core rules, but I can expand upon them and in some cases, I've just had to say: do this instead.

In Vehicle combat, the DM is based on differing Speed Bands, not 10 metres per round (p. 139 of the new Core - it says 'additional DM-1' but I'm assuming for sanity's sake that this is instead of the 10m/rd "Fast Moving Target" rule, which would make vehicles DM-8 even at Very Slow speed.

Yes, I was aware of the contradiction residing in the Core Rules, I was just ignoring it for the sake of sanity!

I am amazed that we've had errata published for the 2022 update but it hasn't clarified which (or is it both?) of the modifiers you're meant to use - the one from the basic combat rules, or the vehicle section, and what does "additional" mean in the latter case??
Moreover, the list on page 139 says it applies to "weapons mounted on a vehicle". So what about weapons not mounted on a vehicle but firing at a vehicle? Which rules do they use?