Vehicles

[kato13]

DeaconR 12-03-2005, 09:15 AM I was wondering about the trends in vehicle use in people's games, especially when you consider some of the ones listed in the Vehicle Guides that you wonder at having there save as targets. Does anyone actually have a group that has maintained anything like a tank or self propelled artillery?


I'm also wondering if anyone like myself has either tempted players with unusual vehicles or else foisted them on them upon generation just to do a sort of 'take what you get' thing.


In my current campaign apart from a couple of WWII restored vehicles I have made most available military stuff soft skinned. My players gave the WWII vehicles to a village they have befriended, reasoning that the villagers can use them to impress and intimidate without likely having to use up too much ammunition or fuel, while they have to have vehicles that are fuel efficient and rugged enough to travel over difficult roads.

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Grimace 12-03-2005, 09:43 AM I ran a Greek based game once where I gave the PCs a tank. M48 or something of the sort...I forget what the book listed as being used by Greece. They had fuel, they had a whopping 3 rounds for the main gun, and a fair supply for the machineguns. Then they also had a Land Rover or Jeep or something rather old...for the rest of the group.


The group liked it because they found themselves involved in more actual "battles" against organized forces, with some assistance of their own, but they were the only armor asset in the area, so they had to use their main rounds sparingly.


Other than that, the most extravagent the group ever got was LAV-25. Most times it was just 5-ton trucks, old deuce and a halfs, humvees and the rare motorcycle.

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TR 12-03-2005, 11:30 AM My group maintained a LAV-25 (like so many others before us of course), a Scout Motorcycle, and a Stingray LBT... now the question was did we take the Stingray into battle? Not if we could help it! We spent a lot of campaign times doing maintenance work, scrounging, distilling fuel, and all the rest to keep the vehicles in good working order so we didn't want to get into heavy conflicts.


The Stingray was great though in the seige against the Black Baron we used the 105mm cannon on the tank to shell his positions, very effective use of a tank, and considering it was dug in away from the battle it was safer than the assault force going in.

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ChalkLine 12-03-2005, 02:44 PM We ran a micro campaign of light armour, based loosely on 'Oddball's' situation in Kelly's Heroes. Each player had his PC and the crew of their vehicle, the three vehicles were a TH-301, an M551* and a Scorpion RV. There was a lot of brewing fuel, we found ourselves establishing bases a lot, and the game was a lot of fun. The PCs lived in fear of T-80s, they're one fast beastie and only the M551 could hope to get a frontal arc kill with what we refered to as the '+5 vorpal shilelagh' for it's rarity, the 301 could still get a kill in from behind. The poor old 76mm on the Scorpion meant that it was bait and an APC killer, even though many APCs had better armour!

In fact, as the campaign went by all the vehicles got spaced applique armour and ERA (we didn't have infantry), we were still outgunned and outarmoured by everything, when we got a Mk-19 for a short time it proved the biggest killer of everything, the TCs kept operating as dismount spotters for it.


(*Guess who had that! )

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TiggerCCW UK 12-04-2005, 07:58 AM The biggest I ever used was a LAV 75, and the most common larger vehicle was a LAV 25. Other than that it was soft skins all the way. I did once play briefly in a game where our main transport was a VW Micro Bus :-)

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graebardeII 12-04-2005, 08:25 PM Gun Trucks.. need I say more Chalkie and I had an awesome mother of all gun trucks for one campaign, that never went very far as I recall, but it was one hell of a truck.. more of a land battleship LOL


Grae

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kcdusk 12-04-2005, 08:58 PM I had a 4 man team in modern day Afgahnastan using a Bradley AFV. It may not be historically accurate but its fun having those TOW's ...


I make them maintain it (harder given they are always off road and driving in sand). Have been lucky so far since the armour isnt that great and they havnt come under fire from anything larger than rifles.


I often have "enemy" in jeeps armed with m60 types for the PC's to come up against.


I dont mind issueing vehicles or having PCs come up against them, i think the game can be richer for them and the extra rules it brings into play. So vehicles shouldnt be overdone. I even have PCs come up against helecopters at times ...


Some PCs wont use a vehicle, prefering instead to be on foot so they have a better chance of seeing the enemy first in any encounter (vehciles subtract 5 from their asset per vehcile to spot and the PC can add 5 per vehcile in the other party to observe).

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Targan 12-04-2005, 11:08 PM TiggerCCW UK, during his pre-game in Germany and Poland one of the (now deceased) PCs in my current campaign drove a VW micro bus, too, packed to the eyeballs with assorted salvaged loot (mostly things like wiring, mechanical parts and automotive consumables). When that PC joined the rest of the party they bartered the VW to some villagers for a variety of goods. This was back in a time when the party was still prepared to trade fairly with strangers. Despite its high wear value, the VW was one of the most reliable and easy to maintain vehicles the party ever had.

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DeaconR 12-04-2005, 11:30 PM My players (bearing in mind that they are part of an expedition, not just the player group) have access to the following:

a NOAA research vessel (belongs to the research team, not the players)

a Bell 222 helicopter (actually belongs to the larger group and is mostly being worked on or lacking fuel)

2 ATVs

a one ton truck

a standard van

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Targan 12-05-2005, 01:12 AM The first scout vehicle used by Po's group upon their return to the CONUS was a speedway super sedan car retro-fitted with an ASP-30 autocannon over the roll cage. It was a real fuel hog and pretty loud, but it moved out and loved the mud! Po transferred the vehicle to the 78th ID as a sweetener to a deal for the 78th to store some of his party's unused equipment without its own personnel looting it before Po returned.

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DeaconR 12-05-2005, 09:41 AM Very Mad Max of your group, Targan.

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Targan 12-05-2005, 11:21 AM Yeah, all that was missing was a chainmail miniskirt-clad Tina Turner singing 'We Don't Need Another Hero'.

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kcdusk 12-06-2005, 09:51 PM What about using an old Chubb Security truck? Might be heavy on the juice, and also hard to get into and/or start if you dont have keys .. but might have some useful armour and take some knocks before it could be stopped?

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Targan 12-06-2005, 11:19 PM In my campaign the remnants of the NYC city Govt and Police Force operating out of the Bronx Zoo use an armoured security truck as a "technical" or gun truck.

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graebardeII 12-08-2005, 08:09 AM I think my all time favorite 'vehicle' now that I've thought about it was the 90' on-deck two-masted schooner our part 'aquired' on the Baltic coast. Over a period of severl months we had managed to fit her out with an armory of a Thumper (Mk19), 2x MaDuce (M2HB HMG), 2x Pigs (M60 GPMG), a SAW (M249), and actually had a Bushmaster off a Bradley at one time, though never mounted. We traded it for some more useful items and ammunition.


We sailed from the Baltic coast with the original five 'man' Polish crew (one was acutally the wife of the skipper) and four PCs. We over-wintered in southern England. Actaully did some smuggling into France which got hairy.


We sailed for America in the spring, with another group of PCs on the Tug with barge we aquired on the Vistula. We got seperated in a storm in the Atlantic off the east coast of America. The schooner made landfall in Nova Scotia south of Halifax.


It was here we did some wheeling and dealing, becoming merchants of sorts.

We had a load of clothing (new manufacture) and shoes (new manufacture) from mills in Halifax area. Our goal was to sail the coast to Texas, trading as we went, and to get raw material (hides, cotton, wool, linen/flax) to take back to Halifax, but alas the campaign which had been going for a year sorta fizzled, partly because of the tug crew going to war with the IBF in Boston.


A fun encounter in that game was when the schooner sailed into Boston. The crew of the tug was ready to sink us on site. They had been attacked by a vessel that looked alot like ours, unbeknownst to us. As we put off a couple of guys in our 16' center-consol Boston Whaler with 90hp Johnson outboard (our shore boat we picked up in Halifax by trading.. as I said we got a LOT of good useful items for the Bushmaster and other assorted weaponry we brought with us from Europe) one of the PCs on the tug, when asked what he was doing, stated he was firing a burst at the Whaler.


Well he missed, and the Whaler ducked behind the schooner, while the other PCs on the schooner broke out the armory. We were seconds from raking the tug and barge (which had a 2000 gallon tanker of scavanged gasoline.. yes they went and scavaged gasoline from a fuel dump in the 'hot zone' in southern England. They paid the price for the fuel too, as two of the PCs suffered heavy Radiation sickness.. dumb ass, but this was the same kid that fired at the whaler later). Communications was finally established between the tug and schooner. A few turns later, two of the PCs from the schooner kicked the crap out of the PC that had fired at them. (there was also some heated OC discussion on the topic as well. The shooter kid usually went to a session with at least two backup characters in hand.. He always had a new character in the party nobody trusted, the rest of us veterans that had been together for the entire campaign, and longer by history.)

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ChalkLine 02-11-2006, 04:34 PM Okay, I have an official favourite new jeep. All other jeeps beware, be they hummer, rover or even my earlier favourite, the cruiser.


Yes, I'm talking about the mighty Terraengbil 11!


Unfortunately, I can't read the Swedish at this site (http://www.soldf.com/tgb11.html) that has exhaaustive info, but Antti has great info on it over at his site (http://www.ludd.ltu.se/users/antenna/t2k/index.htm) under 'softskinned' in the vehicles section.

I'm officially henceforth going to try and come up with wierd reasons why my PCs should have this vehicle. As it has less cargo than a lot of others, it shouldn't be too hard as perhaps GMs won't feel I'm rorting the system.

The AT carrier version is extremely cool, and it's twin pintles (passenger, cargo) make it a great scouter!

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DeaconR 02-12-2006, 07:25 AM grae, I never even noticed your great post about the schooner. That sounds like a really fun nautical campaign. One thing that is cool about that is that they seem to have really gotten around, and yet had to deal with the harsh realities of TW2000 all the same.


And thanks for the new post Chalkline, that is indeed an intriguing vehicle. It makes me almost wish I wasn't running a nautical campaign. Let us know what kind of reasons you come up with.

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Antenna 02-12-2006, 12:08 PM @Chalkline


I think the civilian version of Tgb11 is named as C303 ?


Antenna

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firewalker 02-12-2006, 07:16 PM graebardeII, change the sconer to a fartrader and you could have had a traveler game going there.


you know i think this shows why it's so cool to get a hold of a ship. there big and it's so much fun to accessories em.

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Ed the Coastie 02-12-2006, 10:13 PM After my group finished playing Gateway to the Spanish Main and the pirates of Carriacou had been destroyed, we turned most of the sailing ships over to the Navy and kept one of the 120' "Zodiac-class" staysail schooners -- the Scorpio -- as our own. (The Navy renamed them from what the pirates had been calling them.)


No permenantly mounted weapons, but we did set up pintel mounts to take M2HB machine guns and Mk-19 grenade launchers and had several old bazookas in the armoury.

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DeaconR 02-13-2006, 12:02 AM In the case of that vessel your pintel mount makes sense. Did you continue to campaign in the Caribbean?

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Ed the Coastie 02-13-2006, 09:49 AM It served as our base of operations for several small adventures in the Caribbean, as well as Urban Guerilla and Armies of the Night. We turned it back over to the Navy following Armies of the Night because we were heading inland.

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DeaconR 02-19-2006, 11:41 PM New vehicles in my game include:

Fox NBC Vehicles (four of them were found in good repair in a bunker near Fort Detrick; my players were sent to obtain these among other things for the purposes of USAMRIID/CDC. One of them is currently carrying the player group along with two CDC field researchers as they check for the spread of the plague)


Soviet hovercraft. A small group of these were staging a raid at Cape May as the LCM carrying the players returned in the most recent game session. They were astonished: Soviets? What the hell? Where could they have come from?

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