Vehicle Actions

When The Artifact was first being written, the idea for vehicles was to have a system for tracking their power for things like shield generators and movement. That proved too cumbersome in early playtests and it had to be abandoned.

Now in 4th Edition that concept is making a come back but in a much more manageable way. We were calling these Vehicle Actions for a while but we think Performance Rating is a bit more descriptive of what’s being modeled here.

Vehicles like the TF and Delta are getting a Performance Rating of 4. Something like the Rall 4 could (terrifyingly) get a Performance Rating of 8. Large vehicles like the Chezbah Cruiser would have dozens of points to spend.

Here’s the current text for describing this concept.

What is Performance Rating?

To take actions, vehicles need their pilot to spend successes from rolls or spend a Performance Rating (PR). The PR of a vehicle is a measure of how easy it is to manage the vehicle’s systems. This can be from the vehicle having plenty of power available for it’s systems, it can come from having extra pilots to help manage systems or from sophisticated software controls. The difference to the player is not important but looking at the stats of the vehicle can give some clues.

If the vehicle has multiple crew, it will often get a PR from each additional crew as long as the vehicle isn’t especially large or difficult to control.

When a power guzzling system like a shield generator or laser is fully powered by the vehicle, it will often get a PR for it’s operation.

Some vehicles like E-Suits and Anti-Gravs are inherently difficult to control and require extensive computer guidance. When the computers are powerful enough and their software is well designed, they may gain PR from them.

Performance Rating can be used move without having to roll for piloting, to keep shields up each turn, keep a sensor lock going, Add a Boost 2 to the performance of a system or link the fire of several weapons together on the same target.