[DSII] Burrowing Vehicles

Grav and hover vehicles travel above ground.  Tracked and wheeled
vehicles 
travel ON the ground.  But what about UNDERground?  Why should this mode
of 
travel be neglected?  Sure, it's slow.	And inefficient.  And dangerous.
 
And you can't see what you're doing.  Or where you're going.  But hey, 
sometime you have to just shut up and live the adventure.

Burrowing must be purchased in addition to another mode of movement -- 
usually, although not always, tracked -- and costs the same as
anti-gravity. 
  Burrowing vehicles are limited to a maximum speed of 9" (I know, I 
know...that's too fast.  But it's playable....), although this can be 
increased or decreased according to the density and composition of the
soil.

To burrow, the player must announce the fact, and place a marker to show
the 
vehicle's original position. He must then write down his target location

("18 inches north, 6 inches west", for example, or "23 inches to 11:00")
on 
a piece of paper which is then sealed and placed aside.  The burrower is

then removed from the table, and the player measures his movement from
this 
marker, always moving directly towards his objective point.  At the end
of 
each turn of movement, another marker is placed to indicate the current 
location of the vehicle.  Each turn, the player must repeat the process 
until he reaches his target point and emerges from the ground.	The
burrower 
may not pass under streams, rivers, swamps, or lakes.  In addition, each

turn the burrower must draw one chit from the damage counters -- if he
draws 
a "Boom" the tunnel collapses and the vehicle is destroyed.  Burrowing 
vehicles cannot attack, or be attacked, by any weapon (although nukes
should 
do a good job taking them out, and I intend to come up with some
burrowing 
torpedos sometime soon).

I'm not going to debate how realistic this idea is -- it isn't, not even
a 
little.  Although it's probably still more likely than FTL....	But even
so, 
I think that it would be a fun thing to play around with.  I know that
GW 
made some burrowing vehicles, and I don't think that the ability would
be 
entirely inappropriate for some of the organic forces out there, like
the 
Bugs or Tyrannids.  And I have a Thunderbirds burrowing vehicle in 25mm 
scale somewhere....

John Crimmins	  john1x@hotmail.com   johncrim@voicenet.com
	http://www.voicenet.com/~johncrim/index.html
    Home of "Destroy All Monsters!" and other nonsense.

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