Cave Racers

[MkCollins93]

Wow, how come I miss all the cool building trends *grumbles* I'm thinking about making an Imperial inspired Kave Racer, driven by a way-ward stormie. Heh

Well, last night I whipped out my bins of Legos and started building. This is my Cave Racer, KT-XLR8 'Stealth'





It has adjustable wings to act as sort of a landing gear. The pilot is an Air-Force dropout.

[IVhorseman]

i thought of an extra addendum to my version of rules that i think adds a healthy spice into kave racing, one which promotes stunts, danger AND mayhem!

Kave racers may attempt to do dangerous, life-threatening behavior in order to get ahead. Partaking in stunts is one way that they can accomplish this. any time a kave racer comes within 1" of two different obstacles on the racecourse (for example, flying between two narrow poles), they are attempting a stunt. while attempting a stunt, roll 1d6. any opponent who wishes to see the stunt fail also rolls a d6. if the player attempting a stunt rolls higher than his opponent, the stunt is successful, and their racer immediately earns 1d10 action points, to spend however they want. if the stunt is NOT successful, the player rolls on the ker-kave! table for an appropriate ill-effect. if there is a tie in rolls, the stunt is assumed to have been done, but no action points are earned.

(lolwtf 1000 posts)

[Atomsk]

(lolwtf 1000 posts)

Grats. This is a pretty momentous event in this history of the Brikwars forums, definetly worth hijaking this thread.

[Almighty Benny]

Congratulations you magnificent bastard!

[sinestus]

i stumbled on the Cave Racers just recently and my mind went into overdrive on the idea of statting it out... (to be specific, I started remembering the fun of the 40k racing game that was fan-made ages ago, and the mods that i tried with it...)

before i got pointed here, i had a couple ideas on the matter (started with the Racing enging, then was gona work backwards to spec out the Racers...)

dunno how well these fit into brikwars engine, but here's was the idea...

Basic Racing

A d10 is kept next to the racer each turn. This is the racer's "Velocity" rating.


Each turn the racer gets an automatic Movement, and 3 "Actions".
Actions can be "spent" on the following:

- Extra Movement
- Turn
- Hard Turn
- Overshift
- Attacking other racers.

Handling Rolls - All handling rolls are a d10 attempting to roll less than the Racer's Handling score. If ever a Racer fails a Handling check and collides with something, their activation immediately ends. Additionally failed Hard Turns also end the Racer's activation.



Turn Order:

1."Gear Shift" - The racer may change their Velocity rating by 1 up or down to a maximum of their Racer's Speed, and a minimum of 0. A racer at a Velocity of 0 floats to the ground at the end of it's turn.
1a. Drafting - If the active Racer has the same Velocity as a racer up to 2" in front of them, they can declare Drafting and hold their turn. When the other player's Racer goes (now the "Lead" racer), both Racers will go, with the first playing as normal, and the Drafting player recieving a +1 Handling as they Mimic the lead car's turn. If the Lead Racer fails a Drift or Maneuver (Hard Turn or Shift) that the Drafting player succeeds, the Drafting player may finish any actions they had left. (If the Lead attepts to Drift in their first Extra Movement and hits a wall instead, the Drafting Racer moves past and may make their other two actions immediately...)



2. Automatic Movement - Movement is generally in a straight line. The racer is moved 3 inches times it's Velocity Rating. During any movement the Racer may attempt to Drift, Climb, or Dive by 2" by rolling a d10 Under their Handling Rating. Each time they attempt to Drift during a movement, their Handling suffers a cumulative -1 Penalty for the rest of the Movement. If the Handling roll fails, the racer continues moving forward. If the Drift
succeeds, the Racer may move up to 2" Left, Right, Up, or Down during its movement but maintains the same facing during the movement.
If the Racer's movement brings it into contact with another racer, both racers make Handling checks to avoid collision and the active Racer applies appropriate Drift Penalties. If the Racer contacts a wall or obstacle it makes a normal Handling check with any Drift penalties. If the Handling check is failed, the Racer's action ends and they move on to "crashing".


3. Additional Actions
- Extra Movements follow the same rule as #2.

- Turn - With a basic Handling check, the Racer may turn up to 45 degrees. Each normal turn must be followed by a Movement or the end of the racer's activation.
- Hard Turn - Thrusters are fired hard to the side causing the racer to turn up to 180 degrees. For a turn of 90 degrees or less, the Handling check takes a penalty equal to its current Velocity. (A racer moving at Velocity 4 would take a -4 check) For a 180 degree turn, the penalty is twice its current Velocity. If the Handling check fails, the Racer manages to make half the turn, but ends it's activation.

-Overshift - The racer tries to slow rapidly, or speed up excessively. The racer may shift their speed up to 3 (up or down) by making a Handling check at an equal penalty. (Thus a Up Shift of 3 is a -3 penalty. A Down Shift of 2 is a -2 penalty) Failure does not change gear but moves the racer forward half a normal movement with a -1 to Drifting.


- Attack Others - The driver tries to bump, push, kick, or otherwise directly hinder the other pilots. If within 2" of another Racer, the active player makes a Handling check at -2 to Drift into the other racer forcing them to make a Handling check at a penalty equal to its Velocity immediately or be forced away. If the active player succeeds (meaning the attacked model fails it's check) the targeted model is moved away from the active racer a number of inches equal to both Racer's Velocities. (A Velocity 6 Racer hitting a Velocity 4 racer would push the hit racer 10" away)


Crashing...
In basic racing Crashing (hitting something) simply causes the loss of a turn. (your turn ends) and makes the model "grounded" ... Grounded models land, reducing their current velocity to 0.

The idea here is it would have Speed, Handling, Energy, and Durability stats...
Speed and Handling are covered here,
Energy would cover "extra actions" and/or fuel (as in, the racer would have a set number of "bonus" actions it could use out of turn or the like that would have a limited supply and was recharged on a pit-stop) and Durability would cover its reliability and ability to withstand crashes... (Energy might play into crashes if shield generators are used...)


I'm thinking, "basic" statting would look at the Wing:Engine ratio... to determine the Handling:Speed ratio...

So a racer with 2 wings (both the size of the engine) would have wings:engine 2:1...
then we divide 10 points into that ration (thus our example would go 6:3) and put any remaining points wherever the creator wants (prolly engines here, so Speed 4, Handling 6.)

making the default racer capable of covering up to 48" in a single turn on a straightaway

[Rody]

hold on there, have you ever tried moving anything 48" that is rather much, I'd bring it down a little

[Carda]

Yeah, four feet is far more than half the length of a pool table, and most of my BrikWars scenarios happen on a dinner table. Might wanna rein that in a bit.

[sinestus]

the 48" is on a total straightaway... (something that's rather unlikely on a race track in the first place) at maximum speed...

at a race start, you're at Velocity 0, so turn 1 you're getting about 12" if all you do is race straight ahead...

each turn of more than a couple degrees drains basically 1/4th your movement for the round...


so on even a basic figure 8 track, you're looking at more like 24" of movement along the arc at best...

the 48" is just an example of the speed these things could attain...

now atop this, if players wanted to run a room-wide scenario for it (set a series of numbered slalom rings around the room that the racers were attempting to maneuver through....) then getting from checkpoint to checkpoint wouldn't take a dozen turns... but getting there at full speed improves the odds of a crash...



...

then we tag on that at a Handling rating of even 6, that means more than 2 maneuvers during a "movement" action has more than a 50/50 chance of failing...
which again, at the basic level will bring flight speeds down since players won't want to risk crashing by trying to take the obstacles too fast...
...

even at good rolls,
starting at Velocity 1 for the turn (gear up) taking standard movement (3")
Upshifting 3 (meaning a 1/3rd chance of success) to Velocity 4 and two movements (12 + 12) gives 27" ... which is notably much (a little less than the average 3 foot table) but gets them into the first turn....

at a 3' table, this means they have 9" to initiate a turn if the turn is at the egde...
their second turn, they Gear down, (Velocity 3) and oh, look... they're at 9" of standard movement,
just in time for a Hard turn to try and avoid the wall... (again, at -3 to their roll, so roughly a 1/3rd chance of success...)
(perhaps a Hard turn will force a downshift...?)


i'm working on evolving this to a 4-stat system to give the racers a chance of exploding, and improve the chances of making Handling checks...

[Rody]

but should they reach superluminal speeds to do that?

following nicely copied from the rules as a comparison:
Speed Examples
2" spiders, scorpions, hot air balloons, rowboats
5" minifigs, alligators, monkeys, blimps
8" tanks, dogs, submarines
10" horses, bicycles, boats
12" cars, birds, trains, helicopters
16" sports cars, planes, motorcycles
(upper limit for regular propulsion types)
20" fighter planes, spaceships
24" rocket jets, starfighters, superheroes
(upper limit for flight propulsion)


just to show that you might want to bring it down... A LOT

[sinestus]

but with all those, that speed is with the ability to change direction at any time... (unless I'm remembering rules wrong...)

these racers, by the system I'm throwing together, move in straight lines...they can slide to the sides a little... but not notably enough to be considered turning...

continuing to the 4-stat idea...

DASH system - Intermediate Racing

Rather than use a default 10 points distributed between Speed and Handling, the Racer now

has 20 points to distribute between 4 stats. the Speed and Handling ratio stays the same,

but now Drive and Armor are added.


Drive - Drive represents the racer's Energy score. Drive is determined by using "left

over" points from the Ratio construction. Drive "recharges" each time the Racer is

activated (once each round).

Armor - Armor is the sheer bulk of the Racer, maximum Armor is determined by the ratio of

Engine to Non-Engine mass. (The Average Racer with a 2:1 Wing/Engine ratio usually has

about a 2:1 Armor ratio) The Racer can be declaired to be made of "Lightweight" parts

reducing the Armor side of the ratio by 1.

The Drive Rating can be reduced to raise any of the other ratings an equal ammount.

Back to the example racer, it would have an A:S:H ratio of 2:1:2 ... which means maximum

ratings of 6:3:6 leaving 5 points left for distribution. If the Racer was "lightweight"

the ratio would be 1:1:2, 4:4:8 leaving 4 points for distribution.
As a standard racer, this would leave the default DASH rating at 5:6:3:6...
As a lightweight racer, a default DASH of 4:4:4:8...



Using Drive -
- Crash Avoidance - If the Racer has Armor left, and fail a Handling check resulting in a

crash, 1 Drive point may be spent to instead cause the racer to glance off the obstacle,

wall, or other racer. The racer "bounces" off the crash object at a random angle a number

of inches equal to its current velocity (taking a new facing of the direction it bounced),

then reduce the Racer's Armor and Velocity by 1 and continue its turn.
- Adaptive Handling - Before rolling a handling check, any number of Drive points can be

spent to reduce a Handling penalty (from drifting, shifting, or the like) by 1. The

adjustment only affects that one roll.
- Boosted Speed - During a Movement action, any number of Drive can be spent for an

additional 1" of movement forward.
- Maneuvering Thrusters - During a Movement Action, up to 2 Drive can be spent to extend a

Drift. Each 1 Drive gives half an inch of Drift.



Crash Table
When the Racer fails a handling check and collides with something, and cannot use Drive to

avoid the crash, roll a d6. and consult the table.
1 - Drive is permanantly reduced by 1.
2 - Armor is permenantly reduced by 1.
3 - Speed is permanantly reduced by 1.
4 - Handling is permanantly reduced by 1.
5-6 - Racer shaken off, lose next turn and reroll ignoring 5,6.

The racer is reduced to Velocity 0, but may have any facing on its next activation.
If any aspect of the Racer is reduced to 0 the result of the crash is a firery explosion,

removing the racer from the game.

this really isn't a "put the racer directly into a brikwar scenario... more a separate engine itself...

although,
if you really want to pull the speed down to keep it in line with the ones you listed,
then instead of 3 times the Velocity rating, just make it just the Velocity rating (thus at 4 straight moves, the average racer pulls 16 inches...)
and go to regular turning rules...

[IVhorseman]

I don't like these rulesets. it's a bit interesting with upshifting, and i really like how speed affects ability to crash, but other than that, i much prefer the rules Carda and I came up with.

i do NOT want to keep track of what gear my cave racer is currently in each turn, and these rulesets miss out on the standard THREE stats kave racers have (thrust, speed, agility). for everything we've seen, kave racers have stats in these three categories and ONLY these three categories, in a scale of one to six. i'd like to keep it that way.

[sinestus]

thrust = drive
speed = speed
agility = handling

simple enough...

without the Lightweight rules, 6 is the best you can realy hope for (really, you could then drop the rolls to d8s or d6s, but d10 makes the game so much more dangerous...)

but whatever...

twas a basic idea... once i have more time i'll run more tests and see where it goes...

[Almighty Benny]

Here's my first attempt at a Cave Racer.

It's a heavyweight racer called the SX8 Phantom. I put guns on it because I like to put guns on Lego models, but you can just pretend they're air intakes if it bothers you.

I'll give you this pic to start off with because this is the most commonly seen view of the SX8.


This is a link to more pictures!

[Joetrillion]

http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=318141
My cave racer
(Sorry for bad pics)
Yeah i know it looks gothic and thats the look i was going for i think Trans orange and black goes well.
(Weapons.Dual light machine guns and grenade launcher with axe blades on the wings.)

[IVhorseman]

anyone know of sets where i can get like... 12 of those handlebars? kave racing suddenly has massive appeal to me. i need moar.