Vehicles

Vehicles work similarly to regular player characters. They have HP, speed, agility, and only occupy 1 distance regardless of size.

• HP is how much punishment they can take before they are out of combat. Once HP hits 0, the vehicle is disabled and can no longer move; its speed is fixed to 0, but its weapons still function. Once HP hits its full negative, the vehicle's hull is entirely destroyed — crew is exposed and it now becomes cover. None of its weapons may be used.
• Speed is how many distances they can move in one turn.
• Agility is how much movement must be spent to turn it. If your speed is 3 and your agility is 2, you can move forward 1 distance, then spend 2 of your movement points to turn the vehicle one facing.
• Size represents how much space they take up inside a stomach. By default you can only carry 2 people inside your stomach, so any vehicle a size bigger than 2 cannot be eaten. A vehicle can only be eaten if its weapons and engine are no longer working; otherwise they would escape or shoot you from within. In that condition, a vehicle cannot resist being eaten — you still need to grapple it and swallow it as if it were a regular character. The vehicle's size is also its weight for encumbrance purposes.

You cannot digest a vehicle unless you have the Living Furnace perk. In that case, the vehicle's size also represents its digestion resilience.

Vehicles cannot run people over in combat. They can do it as an ambush, dealing as much damage as the vehicle's speed times its seats (speed × seats).

Vehicles have armor, and their armor can only be pierced by a weapon that has the adequate armor piercing stat. Armor ranges from light, medium, and heavy. A vehicle has 4 facings — its front, its sides, and its rear. Depending on which is facing the enemy, that is the one they will have to pierce through.

You cannot damage a vehicle if its armor rating is higher than your weapon's armor piercing value. You can pierce values equal or lower than your armor piercing value.

A vehicle has modules and crew, which can be internal or external. Damage dealt to a module also directly deals damage to the vehicle, but not the other way around.

Crew can also be targeted, and damage dealt to crew is also dealt to the vehicle, as you would still be piercing the vehicle.

If a module hits 0 HP, it stops functioning until repaired. Every time a module is hit thereafter, it will stop functioning again until repaired once more. If a module hits its full negative HP, it is entirely destroyed and cannot be repaired.

When attacking a vehicle, you can simply deal damage to its HP, or target a module or crew. Each module or crew has a difficulty rating, which requires more successes in order to be hit, depending on facing. Even if targeting a module or crew, getting a single success over the vehicle's cover will still deal damage to the vehicle; it simply will not damage the targeted module.

Explosions inside the vehicle damage all of its internal modules and crew equally.

If you are within distance 0 of a vehicle, you can exploit its gaps and holes — you can push grenades inside it as a Dexterity check. Failure drops it on your feet, exploding on your next turn.

It takes one action to enter or leave the vehicle. You may take any available seat immediately. Up to [doors] number of people can enter or leave a vehicle in a turn. A vehicle that has its doors open can be shot in or out of, even if the enemy is at distance 0.

It takes one action to swap seats. If there is a dead teammate sitting on it, an action must be spent pulling them out of there before the seat can be occupied.

There are many roles within a vehicle. Most are self-explanatory, but two in particular require explanations.

Commander

The commander is required for the functioning of certain vehicles. With the commander dead or gone, there is no coordination between the members of the vehicle.

Without a commander:

• Every action taken inside the vehicle takes a −3d6 to be performed.
• The roleplayers may not use out-of-character discussion or other means to decide what to do. Each must act on their own turns; they cannot communicate their intentions to one another.
• The vehicle is blind and cannot clearly see enemies approaching, making it automatically fail at spotting ambushes, traps, and hiding enemies.

The lack of a commander being listed in a vehicle's sheet implies that the vehicle does not need one to be operated properly, such as a car, truck, or motorcycle.

Engineer

The engineer is required to make sure the unwieldy machines keep working properly. An engineer can repair one internal module per turn. This is an Intelligence check, requiring 1 + (how negative the module's HP is) / 2 successes, rounded down. Without an engineer, malfunctions cannot be repaired. They do not heal the module; rather, they just make it work again.

The lack of an engineer being listed in a vehicle's seat implies you cannot repair the vehicle's internal modules from within the vehicle itself. You would have to go outside to do so. For a car, for example, you would have to get out to fix the engine or wheels.

A vehicle has many seats and roles. In order to fulfill a role, you must also occupy its seat: a gunner needs the gunner's seat, a commander the commander's seat, an engineer the engineer's seat.

If your engineer dies, you must pull them out of their seat, then occupy it, before you can start doing any repairs. Likewise, if the commander is gone, they must be taken out of their seat, then have it occupied by a live member, so as to command the vehicle while they are away.

Two crewmembers can swap seats if they hold their actions to do so at the same time.

A vehicle has five phases, which are always done in this order, without exception:

1. Commands given by the commander, if any.
2. Movement by the driver.
3. Shooting by the gunners and crew.
4. Repairs by the engineer, if any.
5. Miscellaneous crew does things (passengers enter or leave, shoot out of the vehicle, equip something, and so on).

A vehicle's initiative is decided by the commander's Charisma. If the vehicle has no commander, it is then decided by the driver's Dexterity. If a vehicle has neither, it goes to the bottom of initiative. A vehicle keeps its starting initiative even if its crew dies, so as to avoid rearranging initiatives mid-combat.

The crew of a vehicle no longer have individual initiatives. They act when it is the vehicle's turn, in the order described above.

Vehicles are tight and cramped. Two-handed weapons cannot be used inside.

Shooting while the vehicle is moving is extremely difficult. Any attempt by the gunners or crew to shoot immediately defaults to a single 1d6, which succeeds on a 5 or a 6. Perks do not change this. A weapon's rate of fire is the only way to increase the dice pool, using the standard rate-of-fire rules. If the vehicle is entirely still, there are no penalties.

Using the vehicle's weapons follows the same rules as operating any other weapon.

Vehicles have facings: front, sides, and rear. Vehicles can only go back and forward, so if a vehicle is on its side, you have to turn before you can start moving.

Any vehicle can only reverse 1 distance per turn, unless stated otherwise. Forward movement is stated in each vehicle's description.

A vehicle cannot attack targets in distance 0. They are too close for your weapons to be effective.

By virtue of flying, planes enforce that the battle becomes a 2D field instead of the typical 1D. How high something is is described as altitude. One could be, for example, in distance 5, altitude 13.

Planes have a maximum and a minimum speed threshold. If they are below the minimum, they immediately start falling. A plane starts falling by 1 altitude per turn, increasing by 1 altitude for every subsequent turn. The plane's nose is also considered to be pointing down once it begins to fall.

A plane falling and crashing is completely destroyed and its pilot dies, no matter how small of a fall it was.

It does not take an action to move a plane — they are always moving forward. It takes an action to switch their speed.

Planes can only go up or down 1 speed per action, unless stated otherwise.

If the engine is not working for whatever reason, the plane loses 1 speed per turn, until it hits 0.

Airplanes have 6d6 cover naturally for as long as they are moving, gaining +2d6 for every distance they have moved that turn. They can be targeted by small arms; however, any such attacks immediately default to a 1d6, with successes on a 5 or a 6. Perks do not affect this. A weapon's rate of fire can increase the dice pool, obeying typical rate-of-fire rules.

Boats work exactly like ground vehicles, but only move in the water. The same rules that apply for ground vehicles also apply to boats.

Ships, however, are an entirely different can of worms.

Ships, in spite of being realistically immune to practically every light artillery cannon in real life by virtue of their heavy armor, are not immune in this system. Sufficient artillery, even if light, can sink them.

The issue arises in sinking the thing, because ships have a lot of HP. It will never be cost-effective to destroy ships while using light artillery and whatnot.

Ships fight from extremely far distances, to the point that measuring them would be moot. Instead, ships have detection and stealth stats, which allow them to spot enemy ships and try to attack them, with varying degrees of prediction.

Ships also cannot be manned by single persons, requiring instead massive crews and coordinated efforts to manage. Ships require spotters, signalers, captains, coordinators, gunners, sailors, and much more.