To hit # for attacking vehicles

[FroBodine]

I am playing the vehicle basics tutorial. When my Sd 222 attacks with its machine gun and cannon, the combat window shows the to hit # to be 7.

Where is this 7 coming from? Is that the standard to hit # with vehicle weapons? I could not find anything in the game manual that explains vehicle attacking, and what they need to hit.

Thanks!

[Tom Proudfoot]

Vehicle MGs basically use the same rules as small arms, any to-hit numbers are for the main guns. The main guns get their specific to-hit number from that table on the back of the counter, based on the range. You can also hover over the counter in the unit box to pop up a (giant) box of unit stats, it shows them there as well.

[Barthheart]

On the back of the vehicle counter is the TO HIT table. You can do this by hovering over the vehicle counter, it will flip for you.
It will look something like this:

5 9 18
7 5 4
2 1 0

The top row is the range values.
The middle row is the TO HIT values.
The bottom row is the penetration values.

So if your target is 5 or less hexes away you would use the first column,
and your TO HIT value would be 7 or less on 2D6 and you shot would have a penetration strength of 2.

If your target was 11 hexes away you would use the 3rd column because the range is greater than 9 but less than 18.

You could not fire at targets more than 18 hexes away.

[FroBodine]

Thank you both. That To Hit table on the back of the vehicle counters is not explained at all in the manual. How are we supposed to know what the three rows mean, and how to use it, without Barthheart explaining it here? Or am I missing the explanation in the manual?

[Tom Proudfoot]

Actually, I thought it was in that tutorial, but I didn't want to say anything. [;)]

At some point it should say this (hooray for ctrl-c, ctrl-v):

"Things are a little more complicated now. First your turret turned because the target was not in front of the turret. That gave you a +1 penalty to hit, which is canceled out by the tank being Open instead of Buttoned. The shot was again in the second range bracket, with a to-hit number of 6, ending up at a 6 with the cancelling modifiers. Then, if you hit, your Penetration of 4 is added to one die, and the halftrack's side armor of 0 is added to one die, and if you got higher, boom!"

[Tom Proudfoot]

Wait, you said manual. Yeah, it looks like it just basically shows the back of the counter there.

[FroBodine]

Yeah, I was playing the vehicle tutorial before the one where it explains the to hit matrix. I had not gotten there yet. Still, it should be explained in the manual, but it is missing.

Actually, the manual does a rather poor job of explaining vehicle counters. It shows a picture of a vehicle, then talks about the different factors. But, it does not call out what each number on the counter corresponds to what factor being described.

A couple questions:

1. What does PPO mean on some vehicle counters? At the bottom of the counter, next to the name of the vehicle.

2. In game, in the popup description of a vehicle, there is a range #, then another number next to it in parentheses, e.g. Range: 14 (26). What does the number in parentheses mean?

[Tom Proudfoot]

PPO is an indication of how many passengers can fit on the vehicle. I forget why it is abbreviated like that, but the popup info says how many squads/half squads/etc will fit.

If there's two ranges, the first one is MGs, the second main gun.

[roeddog]

PPO, Portage Points Outside of the vehicle? The number of squads that can ride as passengers on the outside of a vehicle

pg 75-76 in the manual describes the reverse side of the counter

[markhwalker]

Ha, actually it has been so many games/scenarios/novels/articles/years (13 to be exact) ago that I forget why I labeled the vehicle portage as PP and PPO. Obviously the "O" stands for outside. PPO vehicles ride their passengers on the outside of the vehicle, where they are pretty, dang vulnerable. PP or P ride on the inside.

[FroBodine]

Excellent! Thank you for the clarification.