Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I’m currently looking for some PDF resources for keeping track of things like Turns, Phases, Speed, HC, etc. That sort of thing would make it easier for those who don’t own the rules.

-brian

I’ve been thinking something like this would be good, too.

I use laminated vehicle sheets and it’s difficult to remember to erase the markings on the handling track at the end of each turn. If I have trouble keeping up with my handling track… then maybe my oppenent is as well. Does it make sense that maybe everyone’s current handling status should be public?

There’s one problem with the new sets here…. The counters are not named or numbered. The cars are easy enough to remember I guess, so little markers with the names of each of the cars on them will do in a pinch.

The original Car Wars pocket box and the first Deluxe Edition came with vehicle sheets that had fairly good Speed and Handling Tracks on them. These can be used as a model for the PDF design. The printout could be cut out and the taped into the center of the arena as an obstacle in order to prevent undo paper shuffling during the game. The PDF should include counters with each of the 5th edition vehicle names on them.

Along the same lines, I often wonder if everyone keeps up with their armor depletion during the game. Maybe the amount of damage that has been done to each side should be public as well? Optionally, a similar chart could be made for tracking this as well and it could be placed as a second obstacle in the arena.

The referee that uses these tools can take care of the tedious bookkeeping type stuff so that new players can focus on driving and shooting. With the referee tracking these stats publicly, duelists won’t have to worry about everything being up to date. Some of the “double blind” parts of the game can be sacrificed this way to keep everybody honest and keep the game running smoothly.

And as you say, one more item that would come in handy is a turn/phase track– the one in the SFB Cadet rules is very handy and it even includes all of the steps of the sequence of play on it. (I don’t know why it is, but none of the Car Wars rules ever spelled out the sequence step by step– it was always seperate rules for movement and fire even though they happen concurrently.)

The ground rules were $25,000 for each of two teams. Each side could have as many men and vehicles as they wanted.

I chose the Dragon and the Napalm HT. My opponent chose a Terminator-X, a Sprocket, and an Assassin. The arena had a large square obstacle in the middle of a fairly big table. There were 4 smaller square obstacles that could be driven around in each corner.

We rolled into the arena from opposite sides and both teams veered to the right. I turned to circle around the small square obstacle on my right side as my opponent cut accross to meet me. We were going to intercept each other about 4 inches from my starting gate.

My Napalm cut the corner fairly strong in order to stay in formation with my Dragon– but it rolled a 6 for its control roll. The Napalm skidded straight towards the wall and recovered almost exactly next to the wall. This broke up my formation– now the Dragon was ahead of my Napalm by a few inches.

As our forces met, I focused all of my vehicles’ firepower on the Terminator-X scoring fire markers. We were all so close together that my Napalm could ram one of my opponents cheap cars. We applied the confetti rules and I took only minimal damage– but my Napalm’s speed dropped to practically nothing and debris covered the field choking up the passage between my gate and the small square obstacle.

My opponent’s cars circled around to make another pass while my Napalm slowly tried to turn around to avoid the debris. As my opponent’s other small car came in to take pot shots at my Napalm, the collective hazards of the drebris, maneuvering, and weapons fire caused him to loose control and ram the wall. He was out of the game.

Meanwhile my opponent’s Terminator-X was punching it up to 80 and taking d3 maneuvers to get rid of his fire markers. He took off to the other end of the arena. I pulled around my Dragon hoping to get back in formation with the Napalm. Both my cars were damaged and I figured they’d be defeated if they were taken one at a time.

The Terminator managed to make a pass at my Napalm and then wheeled around for another attack. My Dragon cut speed to attempt to stay near the Napalm. Things were ugly as we maxed out our Handling Tracks to keep our guns on each other. We both chose to keep our cars’ weak armor facing towards the enemy in order to keep piling on the weapons fire.

In one final exchange, my Napalm triggered his rear RL at the Terminator. The Terminator’s return fire destroyed the Napalm’s power plant, but the crew of the Terminator took a direct hit. The Terminator had taken exactly enough fire damage throughout the game for the shot to put them completely out of commission.

The stunned Napalm driver could not believe that he’d even survived– much less that he’d scored 3 kills! Incredible!!

This game took about four hours to play out– and every moment I was sure my guys were about to die. Intense!

Don’t use the ” Modifiers to hit due to speed ” rules. It might just be me, but CW existed for a long time before those rules were written, and I think they just led to the fact that guns have become less effective. CW works just fine without those rules, and you will find your Recoilless Rifle is that much more fun to use.

–Peter D Bakija

http://www.sjgames.com/car-wars/questions.html

(This page is a great list of advice that I had to learn the hard way…)

The first guide is probably one of the best resources for getting a picture of what the roads of the Car Wars future history are like. As of 2034, there were at least 5,000 examples of each of the Guides’ car, trike, and cycle designs on the road! The descriptions of the vehicles also provide a lot of hints and details regarding what the vehicles in ther years leading up to 2034 were like.

Here’s a summary of some of the info we can glean:

Cycle Concepts’ best selling design was the Road Miser which debuted in 2028. The Rocket Road Miser began production in 2032. Cycle Concepts also produced the Spider, the Tornado, and the Maxi.

Crane’s most popular design was the Popper. If the FOJ wasn’t available until 2033 (ADQ 1-1), then the Hawk could not have been produced until that date. Crane also produced the Santa Cruz, and the Mantis.

Mystic Motor’s Aquarius was the first of their best selling “Zodiac” series. When we assign dates for other vehicles in that line, we’ll have to remember to place them as being later on. The Guide also describes the Taurus as well. (Perhaps the designs should debut in the same order as the signs of the Zodiac?)

Wheeler Motors’ Scrapper should not be available until 2033 because of its use of the CTS (ADQ 1-4).

The Guide does not tell us the name of the company that produced Samson’s vehicle designs, but we do know that the Flash was his first model. The Samson used a FOJ, so it probably should not appear on the roads until 2033 (ADQ 1-1).

The Gazelle comes in a pre-2033 model and a later model. The Guide also mentions Courier Services’ Tomcat and Amex Combat Autoworks Slasher. (The Guide also neglects to reveal the Company that produced these three cycles.)

I recently noted here that the SFB Module that included “Battle Cards” was out of print. I was right at the time, but that’s about to change. This module represents the best approach to dealing with any sort of “Secret and Simultaneous” game action. Car Wars players that prefer that kind of mechanic could pick up some good ideas from this package– and SFB players will get the tools to help preserve their sanity when they attempt to play with their incredibly complex system!

“Captain’s Module A+ includes: Impulse cards (improved over the old version with
the next movement impulse listed for each speed, in addition to whether it moves
on the current impulse). Command Cards (improved with 18 cards per set,
providing more control over what actions you commit to without actually making
written notes). Step Cards (12 cards outlining the steps taken each impulse).
216 die-cut counters for play aide use, including monsters, point of turn and
slip, wild weasel, EM, etc. SFB Rules Cross Index. New and updated play aides
including Reverse Impulse Chart, Pseudo-speed chart, Tactical Intelligence chart
and work form, Unit Tracking Cards, planetary landing display, Klingon firing
arcs, useful charts and tables, particle cannon energy form (revised for the new
rules), speed change calculation form, drone tracking form, fighter tracking
form, enemy energy tracking form, advanced EA form, Fleet Command tracking form.”

http://www.starfleetstore.com/MERCHANT2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=S&Product_Code=5625

Module A+ Expanded Edition:

http://www.starfleetstore.com/MERCHANT2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=S&Product_Code=5625-X

GURPS books on sale: BIG SAVINGS!

http://www.starfleetstore.com/MERCHANT2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=S&Category_Code=GSJG

I would love to see a program that would allow you to design a vehicle by “dragging and dropping” icons on your computer screen. I’m not a programmer so I don’t know if this is possible, but it would certainly bring vehicle design into the 21st century.

– a reader

Car Wars equipment can be drawn with arrays of rectangles on top of a polygon. The basic vehicle outline, spoiler, airdam, ramplate, etc. would also be drawn with polygons.

Here are screen shots from a programming toolkit that provides drawing functionality similar to Visio:

http://www.syncfusion.com/products/diagram/features/diagram_feat_25.aspx

http://www.syncfusion.com/products/diagram/features/diagram_feat_44.aspx

This toolkit has more features than we need. The trick is to strip it down and to make it expose only what we need and then adapt it to do the specialized needs of designing Car Wars stuff.

Notice the “Symbol Palette” on the left. These would have weapons and accessories in them. You would choose a vehicle outline when you open a new document. When an item is dragged onto the car, it should highlight an area for front, back, left, and right. When you drop the item, the program would know based on the item and the outline where exactly to place it and how big it should be.

Armor could be dragged on in 1, 5, 10, or 25 point increments. Alternately you could type in the amounts that you want… or nudge it in place with up/down tabs.

…

Now if you really wanted to make it neat…

http://www.syncfusion.com/products/diagram/features/diagram_feat_43.aspx

You’d add a part to the program to allow users to draw their own weapon profiles… set their own costs, weights, DPs, and spaces… and then extend the palette as much as they want.

…

The only catch is how long it would take to do it. Over-30 gamers may have more money than their teenaged counterparts, but the don’t have even a quarter as much free time… so its kinda hard to squeeze in projects into their schedule. (They hardly have time to get in a game of Ogre now and then… at least until their kids are old enough that they can pass that off as ‘quality time’!!)

Anyway… I’d estimate this project to take…

2 days to get a “proof of concept”
3 more to get it to do cars and cycles like the original black pocket box rules
3 more days to add in additional equipment that is used in the 5th edition
2 more days to address whatever gets pointed out by the testers and the initial users

So I’d say about 10 days total. But a working demo could be had in just 5– that would give you an in-color Combat Showcase diagram with any necessary charts and stats. Vehicle design should be faster and more intuitive than the usual spreadsheet approach.

Back in the day, Car Wars Designers were disappointed when everyone hunkered down in their 3 ton luxury cars at a measely 30 mph. Then the Combat Showcase debuted with several designs featuring HD transmission. Suddenly cars could accelerate just as poorly as an oversized vehicle. This did not help. There had to be a way to encourage people to go faster!

So when the Compendium was being put together, they threw in some new speed mods. They were complicated and time consuming– but they worked. Everyone began loading up with spoilers, airdams, and HD Shocks just to try to hang on.

5th edition takes a different approach. First, all accelerations are pretty much doubled. In the old game, most electric powered cars had accelerations of 5 or 10. Now they accelerate at 10 or 20! In addition to this, a vehicle’s handling track resets completely at the end of each turn. (In the old game, it simply went up HC + Driver’s skill– so it could take a few seconds to recover from dropping to -6 if your HC was only 2 or 3.) Finally, the fastest car has initiative, so everyone is vying to be the fastest one in the arena.

Collectively, these changes eliminate “grandma’s” from the game without adding additional complications the way the old speed mods did. Games play faster, people drive faster, and duels have a much more of a dogfight feel to them as opposed to the “tank war” feel of the old days.

Actually… there are some “grandma’s” left in the game…. Just the ones with lead feet!

-

Here’s comments from two GM’s (on the GURPS list) explaining how to get a game going without getting bogged down in the technical details of character generation.  GM’s have to do this sort of glossing all the time when they make up NPC’s on the fly.  When I think of characters in other games, I generally think of the stats as actually being the character– this is especially so in computer games like Diablo or Ultima.  But GURPS is different in that you think of the character and his background first and then cobble together whatever stats are reasonable based on that. No 3d6 rolls necessary at all!

Of course, if GM’s can run games pretty well without any character stats, why formalize it at all?  Why bother to nail it down?  Why buy all of the extra rule books and stuff?  This is one of those things about role playing that boggles my mind…. On the other hand, I remember many gaming sessions back in the day that did not go very far because we spent so much time fiddling with our character sheets. If I had known about this, we could have played more– and more adventures would have been completed and played out over several sessions.
Susan Koziel:

“I usually have my players run the first couple
sessions with out character sheets (if they feel
comfortable doing that) just to get a feel for a
chracter. They we go back & adapt a character sheet to
what they’ve done. Usually they work out to ~150
boints with 50 in disadvantages.”

Andrew Dawson:

“My method for doing this is:
1. GM announces the setting and suggested types of characters.
2. Players discuss the types of characters with the GM and each other,
eventually developing a character concept.
3. Players and GM cooperatively create the character (this includes
determining the GURPS stats).
4. Players and GM, as a group, comment on each other’s characters and how
they fit together (some changes may be made here).
5. Start playing (always allowing character changes if something was
inadvertently forgotten or if changes make sense).”

There’s a new RPG out to compete with the GURPS hegemony. Unlike a lot of games from the 80’s, this one features miniatures rules. (That’s one reason I never really liked other games back in the 80’s and early 90’s: most games skimped or omitted miniatures rules– or worse, they gave only partial information for running them. I just can’t stand the imaginary d20 type combats that were so prevalent.)

Here’s an excerpt from a review:

“Just as advertised, this game turns mass battles into a breeze for the GM, I recently ran a Star Wars based game in Savage worlds, and even with a party of 4 PCs, 5 Additional Rebel troops on their side, 10 Stormtroopers, a Sith warrior, a High level bounty Hunter and a patrol of Speeder bikes the combat took a little under an hour to run out, with almost no slowdown. The card-based initiative told everyone EXACTLY when he or she went without having to remember or quibble over ties.”

– Jamie Herbert

http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/9/9637.phtml

For me, the question is… how well could it do a Midville type cycle raid? I wonder how much of the tactical flavor would be lost in the translation…. On the other hand… I wonder if there might be some good ideas in here that could be ‘borrowed’ to speed up large Car Wars battles….

Has anyone tried this system?

Here’s the warehouse 23 page:

http://www.warehouse23.com/item.cgi?PNC10000

“Car Wars became the first ‘monster microgame’ when it spawned a line of micro expansion sets, three Pocket Box supplements, a magazine, and eventually a deluxe boxed set.

“Car Wars was also one of the few microgames to be selected for the Games 100 list in Games Magazine.”

– From the Classic Microgames Museum

http://maverick.brainiac.com/cmm/carw.html

I found this while checking out S.W.A.T.’s links. I get all choked up just looking at it…. What a game!