Combat in and on vehicles is much the same as ordinary combat. The differences are as follows:
Unlike people, who are mobile and maneuverable, careful track must be kept of which way a vehicle is facing. Vehicle-mounted weapons – and armed passengers, to a lesser extent – are restricted to certain fire arcs.
Vehicles are considered to move on the driver’s Initiative. The driver must spend a minor action every round to keep control of the vehicle under normal circumstances – a straight road or simple maneuvers – or a significant action to navigate obstacles, conduct evasion or pursuit, or dodge incoming fire.
Attackers gain a +1 DM to hit most vehicles because of their size.
Types of Vehicles
There are two main types of vehicles: open and closed. Closed Vehicles
Closed vehicles grant cover to the occupants – unless the description mentions otherwise civilian vehicles grant ½ soft cover and military vehicles full hard cover.
Only a few people in a closed vehicle can shoot out, depending on the number of windows or other firing ports and the internal space available. Unless the description mentions otherwise up to two people can fire into each arc from a civilian vehicle and one person in each arc in a military one.
Open Vehicles
Open vehicles grant no cover to the passengers.
Any passenger in an open vehicle can shoot (or otherwise attack) in any direction.
Vehicle-Mounted Weapons Weapons mounted on vehicles are limited in what directions they can fire. A weapon mounted in the front arc, for example, can only fire into a 90? area in front of the vehicle. Weapons in turrets can fire in any direction.
Collisions When a vehicle collides with something else everything takes damage. Roll 1d6 for every 10 km/h of the vehicle’s speed (round up). This is applied as damage directly to anything hit and, if the thing struck is solid enough, also to the ramming vehicle. Any unsecured passengers in a vehicle damaged in a collision take the same damage and, if possible, are thrown three metres for every 10 km/h of speed. Secured passengers (those wearing seatbelts or something similar) are not thrown anywhere and take one quarter damage.
Vehicular Actions These are all significant actions that the driver of a vehicle can take when his turn in the initiative order arrives.
Evasive Action Vehicles are not typically maneuverable enough to dodge as a reaction. Instead, the driver may declare that he is taking evasive action when his turn arrives. He makes a skill check (skill determined by vehicle) and the Effect acts as a -DM to all attacks against the vehicle or its passengers. The Effect also acts as a -DM to any attacks made from the vehicle as well. This lasts until the driver’s next action.
Maneuvering
A driver or pilot can maneuver his vehicle without making a skill check. This allows the vehicle to avoid large or obvious obstacles, to get where it is going, to move out of one fire arc of an enemy vehicle and into a different one, or to change the fire arc that a single target is in.
Ram
Deliberately driving a vehicle into someone or something requires a significant action and a successful skill check (skill determined by vehicle). Rams are affected by dodging and evasive action as normal. The Referee may grant bonuses to a ram attempt or declare it automatically successful if the target is particularly large.
Stunt
With a significant action and a successful vehicle control check the driver or pilot of a vehicle can do pretty much anything it is possible to do in his vehicle – stand a car up on two wheels, perform stunning aerobatics in a jet plane, or skim a speedboat over a low sandbar. A stunt can be used to put a single target into one additional fire arc for one round, to set up some other skill check using the rules for task chains, to achieve something that would normally be difficult or impossible in your vehicle, to achieve up to three maneuver actions in one go, just to show off, or anything else you can imagine.
Weave
In an environment with many obstacles, such as an inner city or tight underground caverns, a driver or pilot may choose to weave his vehicle in and around the obstacles at high speed in order to evade pursuit. The driver chooses a weaving number, as low as one or as high as one per 20 km/h of speed (round up), and must then make a skill check (skill determined by vehicle) with the weaving number as a penalty on his roll. If he fails, he has woven into an obstacle and crashed. If he succeeds, any pursuers must choose a weave action when their initiative count comes up and make their skill test at the same penalty with the same consequence for failure. Alternatively, they can choose to break off pursuit and either give up or try to reacquire the target later.
Vehicle Damage
Vehicles have a Hull value and a Structure value, which measure the vehicle’s structural integrity. When Hull is reduced to 0, the vehicle starts taking damage to its internal systems. When Structure is reduced to 0, the vehicle is reduced to scrap. Vehicles also suffer damage to onboard systems as they take damage. To determine the effects of an attack on a vehicle, first determine how much damage the vehicle suffers as normal. Many vehicles will have one or more points of armor that reduces the damage. Consult the Vehicle Damage table to determine how many ‘hits’ the vehicle suffers.