Best Way to Travel (Overland)
 

In your experience as a player or Ref, what is the best way to travel over land in Twilight 2000?

Is it because of roleplaying considerations, rules/mechanics, or both?

Please share your reasoning, if you have a minute.

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I voted for tracked vehicle, specifically the M113 series. I have the most experience with the 577, and you can put a lot back, and you can stand up in back, and the electrical system can handle a lot of electronics.

However, the 577 is top=heavy. You have drive over rough ground gingerly. Not good for high speed turn and burn driving off-road.

So, I go to the next vehicle I have a lot of experience with, the M113A2. Tillers are rough, but soon you will know exactly what they'll do. And you'll quickly build upper body strength, especially in the arms.

So the 113A2 is my choice for cross-country travel. It's easy to drive once you get used to it, still carry a lot stuff and personnel, and it doesn't gobble fuel. I'd add a layer of hillbilly armor or the up-armoring kit they make for it, though,

I'd say by hoof. When you run out of fuel and parts, a horse or donkey will keep going as long as you feed and water it, and you're a lot quieter on a horse than in a vehicle.

No options for hovercraft, rail, or road-rail vehicle? This poll is useless!

(I picked hoof for reasons articulated above, plus you can't eat the M113 when it becomes a casualty.)

- C.

Partially rectified.

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I haven't voted yet, but;

In game i prefer my PC to move on foot, just suits my personal view of what i'd do in a T2K environment.

I think horse has some benefits.

But if required to nominate a vehicle, I'd say Grizzly or Couger. I like the combination of being wheel based (longer range, less maintenance than tracked vehicles), armour protection and 30mm odd direct fire weapon. Crew of 6 or 8 feels about right. Big enough for a T2K party, not too big to be a large target or suffer getting bogged or hung up negotiating a forest.

By bike or by skis. During winter time skis give you an excellent off-road mobility and you can observe your surroundings and move easier and faster than on foot. Bikes are easy and much faster way to move than marching. Off course you need hard soil or some kind of trail to use bikes.

Basic rules give players way too much equipment and gold. There are also too much emphasizing vehicles in the game. Probably that stems from us military thinking where APC or IFV is “home” for squad.

In the 90s when I was conscript the was only one armor/mechanized brigade in army. 95 % of troops didn’t enter battle field with IFV. Even if your battalion was equipped with APC like Pasi XA-180 or Btr-60 they were vehicles to move troops and only in very rare opportunities they were used in infantry combat.

What you didn’t find Twilight 2000 Poland were large mine fields that could easily block traffic on roads. There were some tows and military camps that had extensive mine fields protecting them, but there were no mine or minefield encounters in rules.

Generaly I'd prefer horses for flexibility and as a last ditch food source.

A BTR or BMP is often useful for the amphibious qualities.

Crossing rivers is very valid point!

In my games all major bridges are controlled by one faction or other. Europe is slowly descending to new feudal age, where are all choke points of traffic are used to control population or to collect taxes.

I could be mistaken but I don't think I've played in a game in the last ten years that has used anything other than wheeled vehicles as the primary mode of transport so I voted accordingly (from time to time pc's have had motorbikes and there was one experience that I can remember with a tracked vehicle - a BMP ambulance variant - but the motorbikes were only used for scouting and the Krankenwagen ended up getting traded for a Humvee). I can only recall ever using horses once, again as a temporary thing for a scouting excursion.

I do think wheeled vehicles - particularly something like a BTR or LAV 25 variant - give a good combination of range, protection (armour), carrying capacity, and firepower. Amphibious capacity as mentioned is also a bonus.

I answered Other, because my answer is “Bicycles” and I don’t consider them “Wheeled Vehicles”.

Bikes, especially good rugged off-road bikes free you from needing to stick to prepared roads, which let you bypass a lot of bottlenecks that hostile forces might blockade.

They are also incredibly efficient in terms of “fuel use” compared with the weight they can transport and their speed of movement. Having a set of good off-road bikes with a couple of towed trailers would easily be worth more than an APC or Humvee if your goal is movement and avoiding fighting.

Would go with a mountain bike too. I would probably opt for a hardtail (no rear suspension) so I'd have less maintenance and then put panniers on it in the back (I dislike front panniers). BOB Trailers makes both a single-wheeled and a dual-wheeled trailer that connects to the seat post.

For vehicles, I'd look for a Toyota Tundra. It's reliable, fuel-efficient, and has good carrying capacity. Or a Russian Ural motorcycle with the sidecar.

E-Bikes!
 

Of course, in a modern or Merc campaign, you could have the E-bike.

https://youtu.be/pPZbYLN9dmo

Swag.

I voted horses, because my best campaigns were cav campaigns. They're useful, become NPC's in their own right, and I always hated running vehicles as a GM.

in real life i'd have to pass a personal coolness under fire check before even approaching a horse.

I hate horses.

Wheeled vehicle, likely at some point transitioning to "on foot". But it depends on what level of realism the campaign is set to. Our long, long debates about fuel types in T2K here on this forum have me seriously doubting that very many large vehicles would be rolling around the middle of Poland after 3 years of WWIII.

I'd say wheeled, but I'd want to be doing a lot of foot scouting first, and not jeopardizing the transport as much as possible.

Devil's Advocate
 

Vehicles seem like such an integral part of T2k, it almost feels like heresy to suggest playing without one. As a kid, I spent hours pouring over the US and Soviet vehicle guides, imagining which vehicle my PCs would use to high-tail it out of Kalisz, and/or encounter in battle while doing so.

Motor Vehicle Pros:

• Increased speed and range of movement
• Increased firepower from mounted weaponry
• Increased cargo carrying capacity
• Armor (if present) provides good protection from small arms fire and shrapnel

Motor Vehicle Cons:

• More or less road-bound
• Not particularly stealthy
• Requires time, effort, and additional resources to maintain
• Requires time, effort, and additional resources to produce/acquire fuel

Bicycles are stealthier, and don't require fuel. On the other hand, they don't offer increased firepower or protection. The other cons listed above still apply.

Horses are very similar to bicycles, but offer better off-road performance. I would argue that another con of horses is the emotional bond between rider and mount. Considering how attached some players get to their IG motor vehicles, I'd feel like an absolute heel Ref if/when I had to kill their horses.

In imagining the Escape from Kalisz scenario now, it strikes me that movement On Foot might be the best option. It offers a couple of advantages of foot travel over vehicles and/or horses:

• Stealthiest mode of movement
• Least road-bound mode of movement
• Least additional maintenance
• No additional fuel requirements

It's not fast or particularly glamorous, but in some ways by foot is a better way to travel. Also, no vehicles means less bookkeeping and, as a Ref, that's something that I really appreciate.

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Travelling overland
 

In my ongoing campaign (on hiatus during the pandamic) the PCs travelled in wheeled and tracked vehicles. Scouting and short raids were mainly on foot, but the M113 with the mounted grenade launcher was relatively close for indirect fire purposes.
Keeping track of fuel consumption is a nightmare, from my personal point of view.

Using vehicles has some more benefits, not mentioned above:
1. What do you do with wounded (N)PCs? A tracked vehicle like the M113 enables the group to transport wounded members of the group.
2. If you have still some radios or other battery-driven equipment, there is no alternative to vehicles. You have to recharge the batteries. Without a vehicle, this will get nearly impossible.
3. NBC protection.

Some of the considerations depend on the goal and setting of the campaign, obviously. The most stealthy way to go (Pardon the pun) is on food. But the increased protection against small arms fire, indirect artillery and the points I've mentioned above scream for at least some vehicles. The amount of extra bits and additional equipment is really limited without vehicles.

I don't know, if horse-drown vehicles could be an alternative (I hear you, kcdusk!:D), you still had the problems with batteries and the lack of protection.

Yeah, for the moment I voted for "other", but not fully convinced ...

As an aside, I offered the players in my current campaign a dog. They turned it down because they didn't want to deal with the emotional fallout of the dog getting shot. I'm like, "... what kind of a monster do you think I am?"

- C.

MEDEVAC
 

Great points (especially #1- I'm ashamed I didn't think of it myself). I think you've won me over to the vehicle (as opposed to foot) side.

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I took a palanquin in Maharashtra once, from the train station to the hill station bungalow we were staying at. It beat walking, but I would be remiss in not saying that I felt more than a bit of guilt as two Indian gents did all the work. They were both tipped very well for their efforts.

http://harbinger.twilightwar.net/p-ride.JPG

I think after the apocalypse I could easily come around on the palanquin as a full-time mode of transport however.

One of the issues for horses will be fodder. In World War I, the British standard for feeding a working horse each day ranged from 21 pounds of fodder (for a pack horse or a riding horse of less than 15.1 hands) to 33 pounds (for a heavy draft horse), with roughly half being oats and half being chaff (a 50/50 mix of hay and straw). Horses carry about 20% of their body weight, so a pair of 1,000 pound horses will carry a 200 pound rider on one horse, 5 days of fodder for the two horses on the other horse, and nothing else. Any equipment carried for the rider will cut into the number of days before the horses need provisioning. Wagons can help with that, but then you're slower and more limited in the terrain you can cross. Don't get me wrong, horses are still likely to be easier to keep "fueled" than petrol vehicles (although wood gas conversions are always a possibility...), but they'll still have more logistical issues than on foot or bicycle.

I imagine that most civilian bicycles one would find in Central/Eastern Europe c. 2000 wouldn't be suitable for prolonged military use. I reckon that civie bikes wouldn't be able to hold up for very long under the weight of a modern infantryman, with his/her weapons, ammo, LBE, pack contents, and body armor. In the absence of purpose-built military bicycles (were any produced during the late Cold War?), some sort of field expedient structural reinforcement would be necessary.

Another consideration for any mode of transportation/movement (but for bicycles, especially) is the condition of roads in active and/or recent warzones. I imagine that one would have to be very careful whilst riding a bicycle over Polish roads, for example. Many would be cratered, torn up by tracked vehicles, and crumbling from years of neglect. Also, I imagine that a bicycle- even a mountain bike- carrying a fully kitted out soldier couldn't get far off-road, especially on soft ground. And pedaling uphill on or off road in full kit would be exhausting, to say the least.

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All I'll say is... spoken like somebody who has never meaningfully ridden a mountain bike. :p

I'll post this video of a "Walmart special" being used on a downhill course to demonstrate the durability of a turn-of-the-century mountain bike (because the current "low tech" was state-of-the-art in the 90s). Keep in mind, that the abuse these bikes are taking is much greater than you would sustain just riding through the woods... BUT... since a soldier would be "laden" with equipment, the strain on the bike's suspension and rims (the weakest parts of a mountain bike) would be nearly the same as seeing this bike jumped.

The bike in question would have been priced between $500 and $1,000 in 2000. By comparison, my top-of-the-line PIVOT cost me $6,000 a few years ago. Yes, a high-end MTB costs as much as a Japanese dirt bike today.

Anyway, enjoy the video

https://youtu.be/MON3RAap_FU

Swag.

In 2000, recumbent bikes and trikes were just coming onto the market in the late 90s. They would exclusively be road bikes and were EXPENSIVE ($2k+) at the turn of the Century. Also, keep in mind that recumbents come in Bicycle and Tricycle arrangements. THIS AIN'T NO "BIG WHEEL!" (although I'd probably buy an adult Big Wheel because they are just a LOT of FUN!)

https://youtu.be/_x4a44qWero

You got me there. :o

Fair points all. I could see repurposed [for military use] mountain bikes featuring in a CONUS-based campaign, but would they have been widely available in Central Europe, pre-exchange? I don't imagine so.

A typical infantryman's battle gear and pack (w/ contents) weighs in at 50+ pounds. I would wager the average mountain biker doesn't carry nearly that much weight in clothing/equipment during a typical weekend afternoon trail ride. A decent quality mountain bike might be able to handle that much extra weight, but how well is the rider going to be able to control, maneuver, and/or propel said bike, especially cross-country?

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Yes, mountain bikes were widely available in Europe in the late 90s. Hans Rey (of Germany) was one of the pioneers of mountain biking and was riding PROFESSIONALLY for GT bikes in 1987. The MBT "world cups" were already being held in the 90s. You would also have CYCLOCROSS bikes (which were big in Europe) which are road bikes beefed up for offroad riding.

As for military operations on mountain bikes, you'd need to ask the Finns. as far as I know, Finland had her ski troops riding bikes in the summer since the 90s. They were a functional part of finland's TO&E.

Good to know. Thanks. I guess one would probably see some bike-mounted NATO units, at least, late in the Twilight War (but I'm still not convinced that mountain bikes would make good cross country vehicles for heavily-laden soldiers).

I imagine that mountain bikes were much less common in Warsaw Pact nations. IIRC, the Germans made extensive use of bicycles- especially in Volksgrenadier and Volksturm units- in the last year or so of WW2, but the Soviets did not. Perhaps there's some sort of historical aversion at play.

I can't recall if it was explicitly included in the module or whether it was a detail I came up with myself (I'll check the book when I get home), but in my Pirates of the Vistula Campaign ("Twilight Cruise"), part of the Wilsa Krolowa river tug's cargo was an allotment of bicycles manufactured in Krakow.

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A few thoughts... I haven't voted because I'm not sure where I fall.

I agree on the logistical burden and lack of awareness/channeling to avenues of approach that come with wheeled or tracked vehicles. But they do have the advantage of giving significant carrying capacity, which I think is of vital importance.

Simply, moving on foot really limits what you can carry. I'm sure many of us have gone backpacking; once you get beyond about a week's worth of food your pack gets too heavy to manage, and that's without a rifle, ammunition, grenades, night vision, radios, binos, a helmet, flak jacket etc. and with purpose-built backpacking gear. With heavier (and more durable) mil-spec gear the weight goes up and the amount of food you can transport goes down.

Medieval military leaders discovered the limitations of horses for strategic mobility... again, after a few days from home base the need to move fodder forward takes up all your horses' carrying capacity. Their solution was pillaging, which is an all-too T2k approach to things!

Here's an interesting piece about the Vietnamese use of bikes... they modified them to carry up to 200 kilos of supplies. I'm leaning this way, except to note that anyone pushing 200 kilos on a bike isn't going to have a whole lot of energy to leap into action at the first sign of enemy activity.