Hey .45cultist, I meant to post a Thank You for your suggestion but yeah the one in Dark Conspiracy is too big for what I had in mind. I know T2k was a military themed game and all, but the complete absence of buses is frustrating. Even a generic offering like they did for sports cars would have been helpful.
I kinda see my new game, at least in the beginning, playing out like a "wagon train". That is, the PC group pick up and drop off people on their travels and they acquire and lose vehicles along the way.
So in a sense, the bus
would be like the Partridge Family's bus, a central & long-term element in the group and as much a character itself as any of the NPCs.
I've found some examples of the type of bus I'm thinking of and to give it a reasonable ability to travel over damaged roads I've narrowed it down to a few buses from Russia. These buses have all seen service during the Soviet era and were found across many Eastern Bloc countries.
They are: -
the PAZ-3205
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAZ-3205
the PAZ-3201 (apparently it uses the same running gear as the GAZ-66 truck)
the KavZ-3976
and the KavZ-685
My biggest source of frustration is that I have found very little technical info on these vehicles so I'd be guessing at the game stats. There is a little bit of help though as many of the buses are derived from particular trucks e.g. the PAZ-3201 being derived from the GAZ-66.
Saving the best for last
Now aside from buses and although it will have extremely limited use (and assuming I get enough players to even start the game!), if the group ever decides to use the railways at all, I simply must have this as well (and at least the game stats will be a lot easier to create considering how well known the baseline vehicle is!)
I stole the picture of the Kombi from a Flickr site called The Rail Bus, many more images of some interesting rail buses can be found there particularly road vehicles refitted for railway work
https://www.flickr.com/photos/765218...7632961966913/