From:	Marc Renouf renouf@********.com
Subject:	Firing at Passengers vs. Firing at Vehicles
Date:	Mon, 8 Mar 1999 09:27:59 -0500 (EST)

> ---Veskrashen <veskrashen@*******.com> wrote:

> > As far as regular vehicles go, though, the unarmored ones i mean, they
> > seem way too fragile. It is very difficult to render even a Yugo
> > inoperable using an assault rifle: the vehicle is usually damaged, but
> > also usually stops because the driver is seriously wounded or the
> > tires get blown out at high speed.

This is important enough that it should be pointed out again. You
can put plenty of bullet holes into something the size of a van, but
getting your hit to cause significant damage is actually quite difficult.
You have to know what you're doing and target vulnerable areas of the
vehicle. Your best bet in "destroying" a vehicle is to cause it to crash,
and not all crashes will destroy a vehicle.

> > My suggestion: rules for targetting the driver and passengers,
> > through doors and windows, causing damage to the and only armor
> > degradation and minor cosmetic damage to the vehicle itself. This
> > removes the problem of reworking the armor rules entirely (though i
> > think a rework of the 2nd ed rules to make them a bit tougher might
> > work), and would more accurately simulate real-life solutions.

If you look carefully at the rules for targetting passengers in
SR3, you will notice that this is exactly what they do. When targetting
passengers, you only subtract the vehicle's Armor from the Power Level of
the attack, rather than halving the Power Level to see if it'll do any
damage as you would for damaging the vehicle itself. So even though your
assault rifle may not be able to hurt a Bulldog Stepvan in any meaningful
way, you can still kill everyone inside it.
Further, if you cause Deadly damage to any one of the vehicle's
occupants, you automatically inflict a Light wound on the vehicle itself
(probably from rounds ricocheting around inside until they actually *do*
hit something important). This wound cannot be resisted with the
vehicle's Body - you have no choice but to take it and like it. While
it's not much, it's at least a start, and actually more realistic than
being able to hose down a van with a single 3-rnd burst from a submachine
gun and turn it into a crumpled mass of twisted broken metal - something
that doesn't happen unless you get an incredibly lucky hit and cause the
vehicle to explode or crash.

Marc