SWAT HQ
Archived Resources
Ireland Autoduel Association
Unofficial Car Wars Compendium 2.5 Errata Sheet



Car Wars: Autoduelling on the Highways of the Future

Posted by David Gregg, August 1996
Reprinted by the Seattle Washington Autoduel Team, March 08, 1998
Updated February 15, 2010


The following is an errata sheet/rules clarification for Car Wars arena dueling.

Because of the competitive nature of arena dueling, it requires a more precise set of rules than role playing or adventures with a referee. The advantages of more precise rules include that it is fairer for the players to know in advance what the rulings on certain common ambiguities in the rules will be, they result in fewer rules arguments, and unscrupulous players will find it less easy to exploit ambiguous rules especially in car design. This sheet relates only to those rules and items available in AADA-Sanctioned Events. Boats, helicopters and even passengers will not be considered, since they are illegal under the AADA rules in ADQ 9/l. Actually, it was originally intended that instead of an errata sheet, that this would be a full rewrite of those Car Wars rules used in arena dueling. However, the probability of the AADA accepting and publishing a rewrite is minimal, and I could hardly distribute the rewrite myself, since this would be tantamount to giving the Car Wars rules away free.

Unfortunately, Steve Jackson Games appear to be giving up on producing new Car Wars products. Some roleplaying and GURPS material is being produced but arena combat material seems to have been dropped. This is a terrible pity, since the Car Wars rules have become exceptionally complicated and inconsistent and the game is crying out for a more precise and consistent (but not necessarily much less complicated) set of rules for tournament style arena combat between cars. The current rules are too ambiguous, have been written by too many people, are incomplete and are full of useless information about all varieties of baroque and esoteric vehicles that are totally irrelevant to the arena duelist.

These rules correct, clarify and add to the rules in CWC2, UACFH and ADQ 9/l, to bring these texts into line with the car wars rules as I understand them. Where possible, I try to quote the source of the ruling, although there are so many contradictory rulings that knowing which is correct is difficult. In addition, a number of unofficial clarifications and changes are included in this sheet. These are clearly marked as such, and do not form part of the official Car Wars rules. They may be useful as they make some clarifications on ambiguous rules on which I am not aware of any AADA ruling. They also suggest some changes to the official Car Wars rules which I think would be good.

These rules are not appropriate for roleplaying or adventures, the rules for which should always take second place to player interaction and speed of play. It should also be noted that these rules are appallingly ambiguous. To write a properly precise set of rules, they would need to be written in a formal language. If there are any computer scientists or linguists out there who are interested in such a project, feel free, but I doubt that the AADA would be willing to use them.

David Gregg
IADA President
June 1996




This document is considered unofficial. It has not been published nor endorsed by Steve Jackson Games.

The original version of this document was written with Car Wars Compendium Second Edition First Printing.The page references have been changed to correspond to Car Wars Compendium Second Edition Fifth Printing.

Car Wars Compendium 2.5 is now available for purchase in Adobe Acrobat format on e23.

e23 - Car Wars Compendium Second Edition Fifth Printing
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG30-7142

Michael P. Owen
SWAT Webmaster
February 15, 2010

 


Car Design

p.67    Fireproof Armor

If a vehicle catches fire, fireproof armour takes one point of damage per turn, like normal armour.

 
p.68    Metal Armour

If a vehicle catches fire, metal armour takes no damage from the fire. (There are a number of contradictory rulings on this, but this is the latest I am aware of). -- ADQ X/X
Clarification: The only way to use metal and plastic armour together is with the metal outside and the plastic inside. It is no longer possible to layer it arbitrarily as was allowed by Dueltrack.

 
p.68    Rubber Armour

Rubber armour is omitted from CWC2 altogether.
A point of rubber armour costs and weighs the same as a point of normal plastic armour. Rubber armour takes half damage from collisions, but takes five times the normal damage from weapons fire.

Unofficial Clarification: Rubber armour may be made fireproof, laser-reflective or radarproof at the same cost and weight as plastic armour.

It takes a full five points of rubber armour to stop a single point of weapons fire. If there is less than five points remaining, then all of those points of rubber armour are destroyed and the point of damage goes through.

Laser reflective rubber armour takes 2.5 times (rather than 5 times) normal damage from lasers. It takes a full 2.5 points to stop a single point of laser fire. Rubber armour cannot be bought in half point increments.

Weapons fire is defined to be any damage from any direct fire weapons, as well as damage causing dropped weapons, such as mines, flame clouds, etc. Rubber armour takes no damage from and weapons that do not damage vehicular components.

Rubber armour may be used as a layer in composite armour, with metal and plastic. The outermost layer must be metal, but the designer may choose which order to place the rubber armour and plastic armour in. There may be only one layer of rubber and one layer of plastic.

If a vehicle with rubber/plastic composite armour catches fire, the one point of fire damage each turn is taken from the innermost layer of armour.

Rubber armour takes normal (one point per turn) from vehicular fires.

 
p.68    Carbon Aluminum Frames

Just in case anyone is still in any doubt, CA frames are legal in AADA events.

 
p.68    Streamlining and Armor Sloping

Clarification: You must round up the number of spaces lost to streamlining and/or sloping. You cannot keep fractions of spaces.

 
p.68    Six-Wheeled Frames

"You can either place the tires side by side or one in front of the other. In the first case, one wheelguard and one armored wheelhub protect both, but any excess damage on the outer tire (when shot at from the side) goes to the inner tire. In the second case, two separate wheelguards and two armored wheelhubs are required, and excess damage only goes on to the next tire if fired at from the rear (front)." --
ADQ X/X.

Unofficial Clarification: It is suggested that the extra $100 for a six-wheeled frame should be added to the base cost of the frame, that is before adding CA frames, chassis modifications, etc.

 
p.69    Extra Power Cells

Unofficial Clarification: It is suggested that the cost and DP of extra power cells be calculated on the base cost and DP of the power plant as it appears in the table on p.69 rather than the cost and DP after PCs, SCs, and ISCs.

 
p.69    Improved Supercharger Capacitors
Unofficial Clarification: It is suggested that the number of DPs lost by triggering an ISC should be based on the DPs of the power plant as listed in the table on p.69.

 
p.70    Loss of Engine

Unofficial Rules Change: There is an enormous number of different decelerations for a car that loses power, depending on whether it loses its plant, driver dies, runs out of ISCs, N2O tanks, etc.
It is suggested that any time a car loses power, it decelerates at 5 mph/turn. This can be the result of the power plant/engine being destroyed, or the driver removing his/her foot from the accelerator.

If at any time, a vehicle finds itself above its top speed then the driver must, on that phase, either push the plant or remove his/her foot from the accelerator. If the driver pushes the plant then it takes damage as normal on p.71. If the driver removes his/her foot from the accelerator, the car decelerates 5 mph/turn.

The 5 mph/tum deceleration from plant loss or letting up on the gas is considered part of normal deceleration. It is not in addition to braking.
Consider rocket boosters and jump jets.

 
p.52    Internal Combustion Engines

Note that according to official AADA rules presented in ADQ 9/1, gas engines are, by default, illegal in the arena. ("If the arena is to be open to gasoline powered vehicles, this must be specified.") This rule is rarely enforced, but it might be wise to seek further clarification, or design two cars, if no statement is made on gas engines. Furthermore, all vehicles must have a range of 150 miles at cruising speed.

Unofficial Rules Change: All gas engines bigger than 30 cid take one extra space. Gas engines take far too little space. The new gas engine rules actually reduce the amount of space that gas engines take. Note that this is not in any way official. It also represents a serious change in the balance of the game. Consider it carefully before you use it.

 
p.71    Fuel Tanks

According to p.72, cargo is any internal component other than weapons, crew and engine. Thus, gas tanks are cargo for damage allocation.

Unofficial Rule Change: For damage allocation purposes, gas tanks are part of the engine compartment. Allowing zero space gas tanks to be part of the cargo gives an unfair advantage to gas engines. Gas tanks may be placed in cargo space. -- ADQ X/X.

 
p.71    Engine Critical Damage Table

Unofficial Rules Change: If the suggested unofficial rules on power loss are used, then in item 8 (Transmission!), the car loses 5 mph of top speed per turn, but need not necessarily decelerate to meet the lower top speed. Similarly, under item 12 (Disaster!), all power is lost and the car decelerates 5 mph/turn.
 

p.72    Plasticore Tires

Unofficial Clarification: When a plasticore tire has taken 4 DP the rubber exterior strips off revealing plastic. At this point it is visible to other cars that the tire is a plasticore which has lost its rubber layer.

 
p.72    Steelbelting

CWC2 and UACFH both say that steelbelting increases a tire's DP by 25%. However, it has been repeatedly asserted in ADQ that the proper amount should be 33 and l/3%. It seems likely that the CWC2 and UACFH  values are incorrect since the change from 33 1/3% to 25% was not on any of the SJ Games Car Wars Errata Sheets. Therefore, the "official" ruling is that steelbelting adds one-third to tire DP.

 
p.72    Tires

The order of tire modifications:
A. Take a tire (std, HD, PR or solid)
B. Steelbelt it, if desired (+50% cost, +50% weight, +33 l/3 DP)
C. Add one handling modification, if desired:
    1. Radial (+150%cost, +20% weight, -l DP)
    2. Off-Road (+20% cost, +5 1bs. weight, no DP change)
    3. Racing Slick (+300% cost, +100% weight, +l DP)
D. Fireproof it (+100% cost)
E. Put it on a cycle (-50% weight)

 
p.73    Weapons

"Up to two spaces worth of dropped weapons (four spaces on a oversized vehicle) may be comer mounted." In this case, dropped weapons include dropped weapons, gas weapons, gas streamers and flame cloud gas streamers.

 
p.72    Cargo

Gas tanks may be placed in cargo space. -- ADQ X/X

 
p.73    Placing Weapons and Armor

No more than l/3 of total spaces in a vehicle can be devoted to weapons that fire from any one side.

How do you calculate the number of spaces allowed per side?
A. Slope and/or streamline the chassis
B. The total number of spaces is the sum of the remaining regular and cargo spaces.
C. Divide the total number of spaces by three and round down. The result is the maximum number of spaces per side.

For each of the six sides of the vehicle, add up the space taken by all the weapons on that side. The space taken by magazines is added to the space taken by the weapon to which it is attached. The space taken by component armour is also adds to the weapon(s) it protects. The space taken by weapon concealment also counts. The space taken by rocket boosters and jump jets mounted on each side is added to the the number of spaces mounted on each side. Weapons and magazines mounted in the corner count against the l/3 space rule for both sides that make up the comer it is mounted on.

It is not clear whether turret mounted weapons count against the number of spaces of weapons that can be mounted in the top arc. The 2038 Wombat III took advantage of this ambiguity to attach eight spaces of weaponry to its turret.

Although the l/3 space rule is part of the official rules, and is enforced in most Chapter and Regional events, it is virtually never enforced in the World Championships. If you are competing in the World Championship Tournaments, ignore the l/3 space rule. Countless published illegal World Championship designs demonstrate that the number of spaces per side is never checked. It may seem unfair to use an illegal car, but your opponents will probably be driving illegal designs, so if you follow the rules you will be at a disadvantage.

 
Accessories

p.84    Smart Link

There is a rather bizarre ruling on smart links in ADQ X/X which says that two smart linked, identical weapons, one in the turret, one on the front can be fired together with a cyberlink and both get the full +3 bonus. Considering that p.107 says that a cyberlink works like an SWC and a SWC "must be set on installation to aid a single weapon type in a single position" (p.105 and p.106), this ruling seems to almost certainly be in error. If it is correct, one wonders whether it applies to SWCs and HRSWCs. In my opinion this ruling is incorrect.

Unofficial Clarification: SWCs and smartlinks may not be combined. Although one (or both) of the smart-linked weapons may have an SWC attached, the bonus from the SWC only counts when that weapon is fired alone. If both smart-linked weapons are fired, neither gets the SWC bonus. To get a computer bonus for smart-linked weapons, you need a full targeting computer.
 

p.86    Roll Cage

Midville enthusiasts will remember that the MONDOs were allowed to build a single vehicle with a few points of armour per side. One option for this vehicle was that it could have an open roof, allowing a 360-degree arc of fire to passengers and crew, at no extra cost, as long as it didn't have any top armour. Of course this was long before there was any argument over official and unofficial rules. If such vehicles are still legal, do they have five or six armour facings? Rules lawyers?

 
p.106    Laser Battery

Clarification: A laser battery is required if a gas powered vehicle is going to fire lasers or run power draining electronics (radar, IRSS, etc.).
 

p.106    Laser Guidance Link

Type the huge number of rulings on laser guidance links.
 

p.106    Magazine Switch

Unofficial Rules Change: It is suggested that the player must specify before the arena starts the order in which the shots in different magazines will come from if the weapon is put on automatic. If the player does not specify, then it is decided randomly.

 
p.106    Ramplate

Clarification: The entire front armour is taken into account when deciding how much a ramplate costs and weighs. You cannot make only part of the front armour a ramplate.

 
p.106    Rocket EWP

Unofficial Clarification: A rocket EWP is treated like a normal EWP for the purposes of wind resistance, being hit, ejection, etc.

 
p.107    Rocket Platform

If a rocket platform is carrying a targeting laser, the targeting laser is destroyed if the rocket platform is destroyed.

 
p.107    Rotary Magazine

Unofficial Clarification: If a weapon with a rotary magazine is put on automatic, the shots are fired in the order that they were loaded. If a shot is due to be fired on automatic but has already been fired in regular combat, then the shot in the next chamber is fired instead.

 
p.108    Component Armour

Component armour is one of the most useful and abused accessories in Car Wars. There are countless ruling on specific cases of using component armour, but there has never, to my knowledge, been any clean-up-type ruling on component armour, to iron out all the ambiguities and abuses.

In a gas-powered vehicle, the gas tank and the engine may be component armoured together or separately.

The driver and the gunner in a vehicle may be component armoured together or separately.

A component may have a maximum of 20 lbs. of component armour per space. This corresponds to 2 points of metal armour or 9 points of laser reflective armour or 10 points of normal armour.

A volatile weapon that is protected by component armour will not explode from fire unless the weapon actually takes damage from the fire (i.e. after the component armour is destroyed).

Component armour may not be placed on comer mounted weapons.

A turreted weapon may be component armoured, but the component armour takes space inside the turret.

Component armour need not match the armour on the outside of the vehicle. Fire extinguishers, ISCs and nitrous oxide must be component armoured with the engine.

Dischargers may not be component armoured.

Items in rocket platfroms or rocket EWPs may not be component armoured.

Unofficial Rules Change: The rules change that has been most badly needed on component armour is to delete the line "It effectively increases the DP of the component in question". This may have been a useful analogy when people just used plain old plastic, but not anymore.

For damage allocation purposes, components are divided into crew, cargo, engine and weapons. Within the crew cargo and engine compartments, components may be armoured in groups or together. Thus, if a compartment holds three components -- A, B and C, then each may be component armoured separately or A and B can be component armoured together, and C armoured separately, or all three can be armoured together, and so forth. Under no circumstances can any component be protected by two or more layers of component armour.

Components from different compartments may not be component armoured together. Thus, unless the IADA rule stating that gas tanks belong in the engine compartment for damage allocation purposes is used, gas tanks may not be component armoured with the engine.

Items of 0 DP composition may not be component armoured.

Weapons on the same facing may be component armoured together, or a single weapon may be component armoured on one side or some weapons on a side can be component armoured and others not. The
important thing is there is no more than one piece of component armour per side.

A volatile component armoured weapon will not cause a vehicle to explode as long as it is component armoured, however component armour provides no such protection against gas engines exploding.

 
p.109    Fake Wheelguards/Fake Armoured Wheelhubs

Unofficial Clarification: When fake wheelguards or fake armoured hubs are hit by weapons fire and destroyed, it is visible to everyone that they were fake.

 
p.109    Fire Extinguisher

Unofficial Clarification: Any turn that a vehicle has a positive Fire Modifier total, the fire extinguisher will attempt to extinguish (reduce to zero) the existing Fire Modifiers.

If a vehicle is on fire, check to see if the extinguisher puts out the fire before applying fire damage.

 
p.109    Heavy-Duty Shock Absorbers

Clarification: HD shocks cost $400 per wheel, not $400 total.
 

p.111 Antilock Braking System

How about oil on ice?

 
p.111 Car Top Carriers

Unofficial Clarification: Car top carriers and fake car top carriers are illegal in AADA events.
 

p.113 Jump Jets

Excerpted from ADQ 9/l: "Jump jets: $150 per 20 1bs., 1 DP and 1 space per 100 1bs. or fraction thereof. Volatile. 20 lbs. of jump jet will lift 1,000 1bs. of vehicle l/4 inch (3.75 feet) off the ground. 50-lb jump jets are available, costing $375, taking  up 1 space, having 1 DP. A 100-1b. jump jet would cost $750, take up 1 space, have 1 DP and lift the car to l/2" altitude. A 200-1b. jump jet would cost $1,500, take 2 spaces, have 2 DP and lift the vehicle a full inch (15') of altitude.

When a jump jet is ignited, the car lifts from the surface at l/4" per phase until the maximum altitude is reached, and then descend at l/4" per phase until it reaches the ground. The vehicle is not considered to reach the altitude it is heading for until the end of the movement phase. Thus a vehicle at l/4" altitude at the beginning of a phase.