OT: Tank Design Game

[Webstral]

Does anybody know of a game in which the player can design his own tanks

[LBraden]

I do not know of a full on "Tank designer" per-say, but

Warzone 2100 had it where you took elements and put them together, that was then copied for the Earth 21XX games.

Spore has a quazi-design system for vehicles and spaceships, but that is kinda moot

Sorry I cannot help much, but if ya find one, post it here

[copeab]

Does anybody know of a game in which the player can design his own tanks

Car Wars had a tank supplement about 20 years ago.

BattleTech included (at some point) tank design, but they were deliberately made inferior to 'mechs.

The Striker rules for Classic Traveller included ground vehicle design and combat for the tabletop. Incarnations of this showed up in later editions, but weren't quite as wargame directed.

[Targan]

Fire, Fusion and Steel allows you to design virtually any kind of vehicle, in a wide range of tech levels. And the results are easily converted to T2K or any other GDW game.

[Legbreaker]

BattleTech included (at some point) tank design, but they were deliberately made inferior to 'mechs.

Not if you run them with a fusion plant rather than ICE.
Made a couple of really nasty little hovercraft that moved so damn fast the mechs didn't have a chance to hit 'em.

[pmulcahy11b]

Car Wars had a tank supplement about 20 years ago.

And I missed it, didn't hear about it for years, and I've been looking for it ever since!

[copeab]

And I missed it, didn't hear about it for years, and I've been looking for it ever since!

There was also an extremely unofficial Car Wars tank design article in Dragon magazine a few years before that.

[raketenjagdpanzer]

Hands down absolutely positively the best vehicle design system - particularly for AFVs - is Dream Pod 9's Silhouette System.

First you start off with a desired size, and speed, and desired range.

Speed is very easy to do - Silhouette's hexes are 50m. Size is usually figured last; adding weapons and various capabilities increases the size and if you want a smaller frame you pay for it on the back end when you're figuring everything up.

Range is a perk that's added up later during configuration.

The coolest part is armor because its based on real-world systems so you can model anything from an Imperial German A7v tank to an M1A2 TUSK (and beyond). What you do is you take the square root of the vehicle's frontal armor thickness (or equivalent) millimeters. That's your base armor rating.

So in the case of the Abrams if we assume about 650mm of RHA equivalence then the square is 25.

Here's the significance of that: Every weapon in the game has a base Damage Multiplier. Every point of success over the target number needed is multiplied by that number. The total is then compared to the base armor of the vehicle. If the total damage is equal to or less than the base armor of the vehicle, no damage is done. If the total is greater than 1x the base armor but less than 2x, a LIGHT hit is done, and the vehicle's base armor is reduced by 1 and the Light Damage table is consulted. If the total damage done is 2x the base armor rating, but less than 3x, the Heavy Damage table is consulted (where all kinds of horrible things can happen), and the vehicle's base armor is reduced by 2. If the damage result is more than 3x the base armor rating then it's Overkilled and the vehicle is destroyed.

Here's an example...let's take a T72, which per the rulebook (they use the '72 as an example in the book even though the game is sci-fi). They say the BAR is 15...so it's armor ratings are 15/30/45

A TOW is fired from an ambush position at the T72. The gunner firing the TOW has a good gunnery rating, so he rolls 2 dice. The '72 isn't sporting reactive armor for our example. The Difficulty needed to hit is, after all modifiers (range, movement) a 4. The TOW gunner rolls 2 dice, and because he's average in his stats, adds no further modifiers. He rolls a five and a six. As the six is the higher die, he uses it as his "success" die. The 6 is two points higher (a margin of success) than the target of 4, so it's a hit!

The TOW is a Heavy Anti-Tank Missile, which has a Damage Multiplier of x20. The margin of success success of +2 is multiplied by this for a total of 40. Ouch! The T72 takes a terrific wallop.

The 40 points is greater than 2x the base armor rating of the target, but (only just!) less than 3x. We roll 1d6 and get 4: Structural Damage, check the Heavy chart, and see that the damage done is -2 to Movement (all movement - acceleration, turning, etc.)

So our now very hurt T72 has a Base Armor rating of 13 and is going to be pretty slow to move from here on out...

Sorry, I hope I didn't oversell that, and the system is a LOT more elegant than I'm making it out to be.

[Panther Al]

DP9's system is fantastic. I've used it many a time for quite a few games. I highly recommend it to anyone who is looking for a quick, fun, and accurate rule system that covers both tactical and role play in the same format.

[Tegyrius]

And I missed it, didn't hear about it for years, and I've been looking for it ever since!

Only $85 at Noble Knight.

[ArmySGT.]

Car Wars had a tank supplement about 20 years ago.

Damn, where is my Car Wars boxed set That would make for a fun friday night sit down game.

[pmulcahy11b]

Only $85 at Noble Knight.

You might as well say, "Only a million dollars..."

[copeab]

You might as well say, "Only a million dollars..."

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

[Tegyrius]

You might as well say, "Only a million dollars..."

Oh, that was just information, not an endorsement. I like NobleKnight but I generally don't advocate paying their inflated collector prices for OOP gaming material.

- C.

[Webstral]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. I'd forgotten all about Car Wars. What a great game that was!