Tag Archives: logistics

MBT Viability in Twilight: 2000 4e, Part 2

Continuing from the original post here, based on the Juhlin.com forum thread here. I realized I’d never recorded my follow-up thoughts on the blog. Let’s rectify that.


Twilight: 2000 in all its editions is much more post-apoc adventure survival fantasy than excruciatingly-accurate simulation (Apotheosis Saga, anyone?). So treads and lube aren’t usually tracked to the level of tank extinction. But let’s talk about the mechanics of mechanical issues for our hypothetical T-72 owners.

Maintenance

v2

A T-72 requires 14 hours of maintenance per week. Potential breakdowns occur every 8 hours of movement or combat, rolled against the vehicle’s Wear value (10% for like-new, to 100% if it’s on its last legs). If there’s potential for a breakdown, the mechanic who did the last maintenance rolls a Difficult Mechanic check to see if his work prevented the breakdown.

Assuming a well-optimized but not maxed mechanic PC (Strength 8, Mechanic 8), a Difficult Mechanic check has an 80% chance of success.

v4

Every vehicle requires the same amount of maintenance: 6 hours per week in which it was driven at least one hex on the overland map. Maintenance requires a successful Tech roll. Failure reduces Reliability by 1 (with most vehicles maxing out at Reliability 5, so you have some margin for error).

Assuming a well-optimized but not maxed Mechanic PC (Intelligence d10, Tech d10), a Tech roll has a 75% chance of success.

Parts and Repair

v2

A well-buried rule indicates that parts need to come from a vehicle identical to the one being repaired. Furthermore, there’s some text indicating that parts are also component-specific (engine, main gun, radio, etc.). There are no explicit rules for scrounging or buying parts.

No roll is required to cannibalize a donor vehicle’s component for parts. However, if the component is damaged, there’s a 30% chance that the part is useless.

A character who’s a capable machinist (or gunsmith, for ordnance repair) may also fabricate mechanical parts with a successful skill check andaccess to a machine shop.

Most repairs require 1d10 parts (1d5 for minor breakdowns).

Damage is tracked by vehicle component, with most components having two states: OK or inoperable/destroyed. A few have an intermediate damaged-but-still-partially-functional state.

v4

“Vehicle parts” are generic – when needed, a bolt, brake cable, or turbocharger materializes out of the quantum foam of your mechanic’s spares box.

A successful Tech roll when scavenging a vehicle yields one part per success rolled, -1 for a destroyed vehicle. Parts are considered to be “common,” which means a 67% chance of availability in a typical settlement.

Only one part is needed to repair a destroyed item, though each repair only restores 1 Reliability per success, so thorough work will likely consume more than one part. Restoring reduced Reliability on an item that wasn’t fully destroyed doesn’t consume any parts.

A vehicle’s Reliability score covers its overall structural integrity, its transmission, and its engine. Weapons, radios, and other subsystems either have their own Reliability tracks or have OK/inoperable states.

Ammunition

v2

2nd edition provides varying availability levels for different ammo types.

125mm HE is common (80% chance of being available in cities, 70% in towns, 30% in villages).

125mm HEAT is scarce (60% in cities, 40% in towns, 20% in villages).

125mm sabot is rare (20% in cities, 10% in towns).

12.7mm and 7.62x54mm for the MGs are both common.

v4

As a broad category, all non-guided heavy weapon ammo is scarce (33% chance of availability in any settlement).

All small arms ammo is common (67% chance of availability in any settlement).

In both cases, chance of availability is for the broad category of item. The referee decides whether a specific sought-after model/type/caliber from that category is available. The West Possum Trot Trading Post may be fresh out of 125mm HEAT, but surely 122mm howitzer mustard agent shells are close enough for government work, right?

(Really, that last paragraph captures it. Ammo availability, perhaps more than any other resource, will be subject to referee judgement and fiat, even with strict adherence to the framework of the rules.)

To close it out, here’s a price comparison for main gun ammo:

Expanded Hunting Results (Twilight: 2000 House Rule)

Although Kaserne on the Borderlands is on vacation right now, I still have campaign thoughts. One of them is that the default in 4e is to separate non-threatening-but-edible animal encounters (hunting results) and dangerous animal encounters (card draw results), and I mislike that. I’ve been wanting something a bit more in-depth for both random encounters and Pettimore’s hunting expeditions. Here’s a first stab at it, informed by Wikipedia’s inventory of Polish wildlife:


Yeah, that’s a percentile table. Don’t judge me. Right-click it and select “open image in new tab” to embiggenate.

MBT Viability in Twilight: 2000 4e

Originally posted to the Juhlin.com Twilight: 2000 fan forum.


Once every 1d6 months or so, I’ll raise periscope over on RPG.net to see if anything of interest is being discussed. Back in November, I noticed this thread on running a tank-focused campaign in a post-apoc world. This prompted some thoughts on the viability of such a campaign in Twilight: 2000.

Long-time denizens of the usual fora and mailings lists, or capable search engine operators, will no doubt recall or find several threads on this topic from previous editions. The fan base has generally concluded that running a tank is a loser’s game for PCs due to the logistical issues of fuel, parts, and main gun ammo, as well as the tactical issue of being a huge effing target. However, I don’t think we’ve taken a detailed look at the issue in the light of the game’s fourth edition, so let’s see if the dead horse has a few more resonant thumps left in it.

With a limited selection of tanks available in the 4e core rules, I chose to focus my initial work on the T-72.

Fuel Economy

… so, in terms of fuel economy, the 4e rules give us roughly equivalent fuel economy over distance when running on diesel, but are much more favorable if we retain the conceit of diesel engines being converted to alcohol fuel. Interestingly, 4e’s road movement speed is significantly lower than 2e’s.

Fuel Production

But what about those stills? Well, let’s look at the means of alcohol fuel production in 2e and 4e:

Again, 4e is considerably more generous/forgiving, assuming both a 2e party and a 4e party are using mobile facilities. What becomes a crushing logistical impossibility in 2e is actually kind of feasible in 4e… at least, from a strict numbers perspective.


Edited 02 Jan 2024: Part 2 of this post is now up here.