Vehicles: "Cruise Performance"?

[OrdosMalleus]

Am I missing it in the book? The sample stat block on p. 131 of the Core Book mentions the vehicle's "Cruise Performance" but I see no mention of it elsewhere.

 

[Geir]

It's on the next page: Cruising Speed:
"However, most vehicles will rarely travel at their maximum
speed, and will instead cruise to maintain a better
balance of speed and endurance. The cruising speed of
any vehicle is assumed to be one Speed Band lower than
the vehicle’s maximum speed and if it maintains this rate
of movement, its Range will increase by 50%."

 

[OrdosMalleus]

It's on the next page: Cruising Speed:
"However, most vehicles will rarely travel at their maximum
speed, and will instead cruise to maintain a better
balance of speed and endurance. The cruising speed of
any vehicle is assumed to be one Speed Band lower than
the vehicle’s maximum speed and if it maintains this rate
of movement, its Range will increase by 50%."

I saw that, but it didn't mention "performance" specifically. So for the sample vehicle, it's saying that it can go Medium or Slow and its range at Medium speed is 150 and at Slow it's 225?

 

[Geir]

It's on the next page: Cruising Speed:
"However, most vehicles will rarely travel at their maximum
speed, and will instead cruise to maintain a better
balance of speed and endurance. The cruising speed of
any vehicle is assumed to be one Speed Band lower than
the vehicle’s maximum speed and if it maintains this rate
of movement, its Range will increase by 50%."

I saw that, but it didn't mention "performance" specifically. So for the sample vehicle, it's saying that it can go Medium or Slow and its range at Medium speed is 150 and at Slow it's 225?

Yes.
Is that what you where asking or did I misunderstand the question?

 

[OrdosMalleus]

It answers it fine. Now I know what they are referring to.

 

[paltrysum]

This rule results in negligible performance benefits unless a vehicle has a long recharge time. For example, if your vehicle's maximum speed is 300kph (high), and your range is 400, you can travel for 1.33 hours until it's time to recharge. If you go at its cruising speed of 200kph (medium) with your increased range of 600, you can travel for three hours until recharge. Let's imagine that a recharge requires two hours since exact times are not specified. With the arbitrary two-hour recharge time applied, at maximum speed, you can travel ~120.12km for every drive/recharge period (400km/3.33 hr.). At cruising speed, you can travel the just about the same distance for every 120km drive/recharge period (600km/5 hrs.).

So at max speed, this vehicle would cover 676.7km every three hours if it did not have to recharge, while at cruising it covers only 600km every three hours, but the two-hour recharge time evens things up. However, if the recharge time increases to say, four hours, you started to see more benefits for cruising speed. In this case, you get ~75km for every drive/recharge period (400km/5.33 hrs.) vs. ~85km at cruising (600km/7 hrs.).

The vagaries of the speed vs. range bands probably produces broader variation, but I haven't toyed with it that much.