Tim Mossman
United States
Montgomery County
Maryland
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Truck Stop was one of the original “big” expansions to the initial release of Car Wars. As the name would imply, it added the capability to play with some serious equipment – 18-wheelers, buses and, of course, RVs.
What the expansion added (Playability): This expansion packed a lot into a small case. First and foremost, it enabled playing the “Road Warrior” scenario – a lone truck (or perhaps with an escort vehicle or two) against the road gang in a multitude of vehicles (ala the climatic scene from the post-apocalyptic movie classic). Roads were a natural backdrop for this scenario, although Car Wars Expansion Set #4 (Armadillo Autoduel Arena) also provided a venue big enough to maneuver an oversized vehicle.
Perhaps just as important to those of us who enjoyed the “engineering” aspect of the game, the Truck Stop expansion allowed the aspiring combat vehicle designer to build mobile fortresses, decked out with a tremendous amount of firepower. And for those folks who may used the Car Wars system to build characters and storylines around, Truck Stop expanded on the skill sets that their characters could develop and introduced “Gold Cross”, which was a cloning service used to “resurrect” auto duelists who may have met with an unfortunate end. [Note: We never used the “character development” aspect of the game, as better role-playing games are clearly available.]
The truck stop map provided in the expansion went to some detail to depict an outpost in a “bad neighborhood”. While the map was useable in the game, no scenarios are provided which explicitly use the map.
What the expansion added (Technical Detail): From a design / engineering standpoint, it added:
• 4 basic types of tractor cabs
• 4 types of trailers (for the tractors)
• 2 basic bus / RV chassis types
Obviously, all the hardware available from the original Car Wars game could be mounted on the oversized platforms. Additional equipment made available via the Truck Stop expansion – primarily turrets, cupolas and a rocket platform – significantly enhanced the firepower / lethality of the oversize vehicles. A couple of new weapons (heavy laser and surplus tank gun) also helped. [Note: The surplus tank gun brought a lot of potential sound and fury, but seemed to have limited practical application in many scenarios.]
The expansion’s new rules included “to hit” modifiers, as well as specific maneuverability and acceleration rules for oversized vehicles. One of the more entertaining new rules detailed “steamrolling” – the unfortunate result of a tractor colliding with a cycle or small car. To better simulate the action in the “Road Warrior” scenario, provisions for “boarding” oversized vehicles is also included.
Summary: I always found the Car Wars system to be highly entertaining, because I enjoyed the cycle of designing one’s own vehicles, play-testing them, and taking the results back to the drawing board for design modification. To that end, Truck Stop added a lot of playability to the basic Car Wars game by bringing in the heavy horsepower (and firepower) of the oversized vehicles. And the ability to recreate the “Road Warrior” scenario was easily worth the price of this expansion.
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Yoki Erdtman
Sweden
Södertälje
Handsome devil huh?
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That was a very nice review of Truck Stop. Car Wars is one of my favorite games, I would really like a good computer version of the game though.
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Tim Mossman
United States
Montgomery County
Maryland
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Thanks. Although my prime Car Wars days were back in High School (a lot of years ago), I still hold the game in very high regard.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any computerized version of the game either. Would be very interested in anyone has any leads.
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Adam D.
United States
Suquamish
Washington
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Steve Jackson games seems VERY protective of its licenses, so I only know of one indie-Car wars type game. It can be found at:
http://www.dark-wind.com/
I don't know anything about it other than the website address...
However, there are three really old computer games you could pick up (somehow...) Autoduel by Origin Systems was a licensed version of Car Wars which was live action (unfortunately imho) instead of turn based. While two unacknowledged descendants are Road Wars and Road Wars Europa from SSI games... Probably on 5.25 floppy if found (!), or on one of the abondonware sites out there.
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