The last couple of issues have been running late for one reason or another. Hopefully, this issue will see us get back on track. We are preparing for Gen Con and the Dueling Worlds, always a fun thing to be sure. Will Mike Garrity win the championship again? Stay tuned, the answer will be in the next issue (along with the aftermath reports).
    In this issue, we will revisit the Fast Lane supplement for NOVA Works. There will be new racing vehicle designs in the showroom and the rest of our regular features.

In this issue, we cover some items recently dusted off from one of our oldest supplements, "The Fast Lane". We did this because they are coming back into use. Who knows, with all the changes over the last decade, we could even write a new version of the supplement.

Sport & Racing suspensions

Suspension Type	Price	Cycle/Trike HC	Car HC
Sports Car	800% of body cost	3	4
Racing	1,500% of body cost	4	5

    These suspensions are usually seen on racing vehicles only, although some unlimited-class dueling cars have them.

High-Speed Handling Package: 200% of body cost, no weight or space.
    This package is an enhancement to the body and suspension that increases stability at high speeds. It must be installed at the time of construction, no retrofits allowed. The HSHP reduces straight-line high-speed hazards by two and reduces the hazard of any maneuver performed at 60 mph by one. This package may be fitted to cars only (no pickups, off-road vehicles or oversized vehicles). Also, no car-top carriers or rocket platforms may be fitted to vehicles using this package. A side benefit of this package is that vehicles fitted with it have a -1 to be hit from all sides except the top and bottom (cumulative with sloping). Note that fitting a vehicle with a HSHP doesn't use any internal space.

The Lawn Mauler revisited: Enclosed Cabs
    These items protect the driver of a Lawn Mauler from the hazards of combat and the weather. They surround the driver on five sides (F, B, R, L, T) and use the same armor as the Lawn Mauler itself. Enclosed cabs may carry up to 10 points of armor per side. When a Lawn Mauler is hit in combat from the F, B, R, L, or T arcs, there is a 1-2 chance of the cab being hit instead.
 

Size	Cost	Weight
Light	$50	20 lbs
Medium	$75	25 lbs
Heavy	$100	30 lbs

    Note: Even though the cabs are enclosed, they are not equipped for use in hot or cold climates. An Environmental Control unit costs $500 and weighs 20 lbs. It will keep a driver comfortable within an external temperature range of -20 degrees to +110 degrees.

Thermal Body Armor: $350, 3 DP. An improved version costs $2,000 and has 6 DP. Thermal impact armor costs $2,500 and also has 6 DP. Blended thermal body armor costs from $1,000 on up. It is not available in an impact version
    Thermal body armor of all types will protect the wearer in cold climates and conditions down to a temperature of -100 degrees. Armor of this type is very bulky, enough so that the wearer has a -1 penalty on reflex rolls

Storage Battery: $100, 25 lbs, 2 GE. If carried as cargo, it takes up 1/4 space.
    This item is equivalent to a gas can for internal-combustion engines. It is a portable storage battery used to give partial charges to power plants when no other energy sources are available. The battery holds 25 power units and comes with ts own extension cord.

Former NOVA member Chris French has recently returned to the world of Car Wars with an article in CWIN about generic vehicles for adventure encounters.
    Mike Owen's Debate Board has passed the 5,200-message mark as discussions evolve on several different subjects. This is in contrast to the SJG board, which is nearly comatose.
    BLUR and the Neo-ASPs continue to terrorize parts of North America. KC-1, St. Louis, Denver, Chicago, and Atlanta have all been attacked by both groups at least once this year. In preparation, the defenses of New Omaha have been strengthened to better resist any attack. Police Commissioner Death Knight commented that "....the NOPD is ready for just about anything".
    We have been working on some revised rules for submarine construction. The biggest problem has been coming up with reasonable depth limits. We anticipate having the new rules available later this year.
    NOVA's home base Star Realm is moving to the next bay north of its present location. Bill Grush wanted to downsize a little. Lucky for us, he's keeping the table in back for our meetings. In the next couple of years, NOVA will be looking for a headquarters of its own.
    This summer, the TSR/WOTC/Hasbro collective will release the 3^rd Edition of the AD&D game at Gen Con. One wonders if we'll ever see a third edition of Car Wars. Years ago, SJG would do revisions regardless of whether or not they were needed. I don't know how many editions GURPS has gone through. What's it going to take to get the thing done? Last year, we were set to do the Third Edition of Car Wars, but Steve Jackson didn't want any part of it. We now think we were turned down because we didn't get his permission first (oops). A long story best forgotten.
 

Now Showing: Mission Impossible 2, Gladiator, Battlefield Earth, Titan A.E., Patriot, X-Men, Gone in 60 Seconds (remake).

Fall: Space Cowboys, The 6^th Day.

December: The Lord of the Rings, 2001: A Space Odyssey (re-release), Racer X

Prequels: Star Wars Episode II (the Clone Wars) and Episode III (Vader Rising)

Sequels: Godzilla Millennium, Batman 5, Alien 5, True Lies 2, Star Trek 10 (DS9?, Voyager?), Terminator 3

On Cubes: Galaxy Quest, End of Days, The World is Not Enough (James Bond film), The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Bicentennial Man.

Origins 2000, July 13-16, in Columbus, OH. Confirmed site for the WRC.

Gen Con 2000, August 10-13, in Milwaukee, WI. Confirmed site for the World Dueling Championships. NOVA will be running other Car Wars events here also.

Nuke-Con 2000, October 6-8, in Omaha, NE. NOVA will be running several Car Wars events here.

Origins 2001, July 5-8, 2001 in Columbus, Ohio. Possible site of the Racing Worlds.

Gen Con 2001, August 2-5, 2001 in Milwaukee, WI. Possible site of the Dueling Worlds. NOVA will also run 2051: A Godzilla Odyssey and a number of racing events here.
 

May 15, 2050: The Santa Anita racetrack closed for a month in order to widen the track and hopefully get AADA sanctioning. Racers and fans are looking forward to the change.

June 6, 2050: Radius Motors driver Marc Elliott set a new closed-course speed record of 617.5 mph at the Muskogee Dueltrack. He drove the Warp 10-YI to the new record, similar to the to the vehicle used to set the straight-line record in March.

June 7, 2050: The city of Los Disneys in Florida was officially reopened today by Governor Bart Lesion. This is significant because the city was virtually destroyed a few years ago by a massive terrorist attack. Florida officials are still hunting for those responsible.

June 8, 2050: Marc Elliott of Radius Motors set yet another closed-course record when he drove at jet-powered Indy Car (the Warp 10-Z) to 610 mph at the Muskogee Dueltrack.

June 14, 2050: On the salt flats of Deseret, Marc Elliott set a new land speed record of 960 mph using the Radius Motors Warp 10-Z1 jet-powered Indy Car. This broke the record set earlier this year by the Warp 10-Y.

June 15, 2050: The Santa Anita racetrack reopened its widened track today. Racers will be interested in the new layout of the maze track also.

June 24, 2050: Mike Garrity defeated Norman McMullen, Tim Jacques and Adrian Shipley in a duel held at the Diamond Acres Arena in Hawaii. Afterwards, he commented that "....they should hold the Worlds here".
 

Revised Acceleration

With the advent of newer, more powerful engines and power plants, it has become necessary to revise the acceleration figures for the various kinds of vehicles. Some of this information is presented below.
 

Vehicle Type	Power Factors/Weight	Acceleration/Turn
Helicopters	1 to 1.5	5
Helicopters	1.5 to 2	10
Helicopters	2 to 2.5	15
Helicopters	2.5+	20

 

Vehicle Type	Power Factors/Weight	Acceleration/Turn
Cars & Boats	.33 to .5	5
Cars & Boats	.5 to 1	10
Cars & Boats	1	15
Cars & Boats	2	20
Cars & Boats	3	25
Cars & Boats	4	30
Cars & Boats	5	35
Cars & Boats	6	40
Cars & Boats	7	45
Cars & Boats	8	50
Cars & Boats	9	55
Cars & Boats	10	60

Round: A single level of competition within the tournament. It is in one Division, but can have multiple arenas in it. The number of players advancing from one round to the next is determined by the duelmaster. There are two types of rounds: preliminary & final. Preliminary rounds can also be called elimination rounds or semi-final rounds. There can be two or more rounds in any tournament; the number is up to the duelmaster. Single-round tournaments can be held with a limited number of players. These are usually held at the chapter level.

Tournament: Any event that awards prizes to the top finishers. They may be held at the Chapter, Regional, National or World level. There are two types of tournaments; elimination and cumulative. Elimination tournaments advance the top finishers in each round to the next round, until a select number reach the final round. This is the most common type of tournament. Cumulative tournaments award each duelist points for accomplishing certain tasks in each round of the tournament, such as scoring checkpoints or shooting targets. The duelist with the highest point total at the end of the tournament wins. This is in the style of NASCAR, where each round is as important as the last.
 

Racing with trailers can take several forms. These are car/trailer, cycle/trailer, trike/trailer, truck/trailer and snomobile/trailer. The vehicle/trailer combination must be within the stated Division, with the trailer having the same restrictions as the vehicle towing it. For example, if only two spaces of aimed weapons (total) are allowed in a particular event, they could both go in either the vehicle or the trailer. Alternately, one space of weapons could go in the towing vehicle and the other in the trailer. Trailers may be fitted with racing slick tires at the normal cost and weight.
    Having a trailer in a race raises some interesting possibilities, such as the risk of jack-knifing. It should be noted that loss of a trailer disqualifies you from a top finishing position. Purposely dumping the trailer is grounds for automatic disqualification.

"Every battle is won or lost before it is fought"
--Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"

"To know and not to do is not yet to know"
--Zen saying

"The best way to become and old dog is to stop learning new tricks"
--Anonymous

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it"
--Yogi Berra

"Yes! Fight and you may die. Run and you will live at least a while. And dying in your bed many years from now, would you trade all the days from that day to this for one chance to come back here as young men and tell our enemies that they may take our lives , but they will never take our freedom!"
--William Wallace, "Braveheart"

"You wouldn't know a diamond if you had it in your hand"
--Lyrics from "Reeling in the Years" by Steely Dan

Trucks
    Lunar, Arizona is Ground Zero as a legion of driverless trucks attack. Timothy Busfield is a small-town gas-station owner who takes on the trucks with predictable results. This flick is based on a short story by Stephen King, along the same lines as Maximum Overdrive. Trucks tries to be a serious horror drama, but never quite gets there.*

Three Kings
    George Clooney is Colonel Archie Gates of the U.S Army is the final Days of Operation: Desert Storm. He and his men find information on stolen Kuwaiti gold in Iraq and set off to steal some of it for themselves. What they find instead is a horde of refugees, a bunch of troops from the Republican Guard and a whole lot of trouble. Three Kings is a 1990's version of Kelley's Heroes, with people not understanding what they're fighting for. It does show however that there's more to life than just money. For all this film's action, it seems to drag on for longer than it should. And, some scenes show more detail than you might want to see. Still, an OK film. *1/2.

Free Enterprise
    William Shatner stars in this film about a couple of lost Star Trek fans maturing in Los Angeles. It is full of all sorts of film quotes and is quite funny at times. This movie would go rather well at conventions. If you have a chance to rent it, do so.***

Trekkies
    Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) stars in this film about Star Trek Fans. Be ready to meet the fans of Star Trek in all their varied forms. This film is interesting to watch in a strange way.*

Gone in 60 Seconds
    The Jerry Bruckheimer remake of the 1974 classic car-chase film. It stars Nicholas Cage as Memphis Raines, Angelina Jolie as Suray, Giovanni Ribsi as Kip Raines and Robert Duvall as Otto.
    Kip has a job go bad, which puts him in dire straits with a fence by the name of Ray Calitri (Christopher Eccleston). Memphis tries to settle the debt with Calitri by stealing 50 cars in just four days. Accordingly, he gets his team together and starts scouting targets (taking three days). This leaves them just one day (or shall I say one night) to get the cars. As you can imagine, things get rather exciting.
    Car chases, gunplay and cheesy acting abound. The story isn't much, but the car chases and the action is worth the price of admission.***

Mighty Peking Man
    A huge ten-story tall ape and his jungle lady are found in the wilds of India by a Chinese hunter. The hunter and the lady get to know each other and he convinces her to bringing the ape back to Hong Kong. At this point, the cheese factor in this Hong Kong King Kong story escalates dramatically.
    This movie was made back in the mid-1970's to compete with Dino Delaurentis' King Kong film. It has MST3K written all over it (in 40' high letters of fire). Can you say "Riff Factor 5, Mr. Sulu"? This movie is a bomb, sure to have riffbacks on the first viewing. If you like MST3K-type material, rent it. Otherwise, stay as far away as possible.

Shanghai Noon
    Jackie Chan is Chow Wang, an Imperial Guard sent from Peking to rescue Princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) in Carson City, Nevada in the Old West. Along the way, he teams up with Ray O'Bannon (Owen Wilson) as he's thrown from one situation to another. He deals with Indians, Sherriffs, outlaws and other imperial guards.
    This movie has a lot of martial-arts action and gunplay throughout, along with the comedy we have come to expect from a Jackie Chan film.***

About ten years ago, most of the members of NOVA joined Star Fleet (the Star Trek International Fan Club) and formed a ship (the USS Ra). We survived in Star Fleet for about a year (including three command changes). Our original captain moved to Ohio, where she formed another ship and eventually joined the Romulan Star Empire.
    Our second captain took over from the first, but was much involved with the local sci-fi conventions (Impact, etc). Added to this was the fact that she worked nights at a 24-hour restaurant. All this meant that she couldn't run the ship or devote the time needed to do the rest of the work involved.
    In September of 1992, we attended a Star Trek Convention in Kansas City, where I met members of the Klingon Assault Group (KAG) and the Klingon Defense Force (KDF). This sparked my interest in the Klingons and I eventually became one. In the Spring of 1993, we had some paperwork problems with Starfleet. Our Fall commissioning didn't come in on time, and I rather think two changes of command had something to do with it.
    Originally, I didn't want command of the ship, mainly because NOVA (at the time) was almost a full-time job. The situation was exacerbated by conflicts among the members outside of the games. With some reluctance, I assumed command of the USS Ra.
    I wanted to go Klingon to get away from Starfleet and all its problems. We talked it over and decided to go Klingon, being commissioned as the IKV Bloodstar.. We picked up some new members while attending several conventions. For community service, we participated in fund-raising and recycling drives, highway cleanups and walkathons.
    In the meantime, I started building models of starships. A local modeling club had run some Road Warrior model contests, which got me thinking about Klingons in Car Wars. Eventually, I came up with the Klingon Autodueling Team (KAT) and the Klingon Racing Team (KRT). Over the next couple of years, I designed suitable vehicles for both teams (quite effective, I might add). During that same period of time, we had our differences of opinion with KAG and eventually went rogue; also because of the infighting in the Star Trek fan clubs in the area. We've been independent for years now, but still do the occasional cleanup or walkathon.
    --Norman McMullen

Lt. Donovan Thorne; Chief Engineer, USS Ra

Captain Hossigh Guljev, IKV Bloodstar

In this issue, we cover a couple of speed demons from Radius Motors. The newest versions of their famous Warp-series vehicles just recently set several new land-speed records. I'm now faced with the possibility of running out of letter/number combinations to name them with. What a concept......

Warp 10-YI: Indy car, x-hvy chassis, 1,300 lbs rocket booster (13 spaces), 4 PR racing slicks, driver, magnetic suspension*, high-speed handling package**, HD shocks, HD brakes, spoiler & airdam, 4 EWPs w/ 200 lbs rocket booster in each (R, L, B, T), 4 EWP ejectors, 3 links (EWPs to each other), Armor: F4, B4, R4, L4, T1, U4. Acceleration: up to 40 mph/turn, HC: 10 (11 at 60 mph+), Top Speed: 612.5 mph, 4,700 lbs, $58,312.
    *: NOVA Works catalog item,  **: Fast Lane item

Warp 10-Z: Streamlined Indy car, x-hvy chassis, 9-space HP jet engine w/ 20-gallon dueling tank (filled with jet fuel), 4 PR racing slicks, driver, magnetic suspension, high-speed handling package, HD shocks, HD brakes, spoiler & airdam, Armor: F5, B5, R5, L5, T4, U5. Acceleration: 40, HC: 10 (11 at 60 mph+), Top Speed: 890 mph, 4,700 lbs, $456,900.
 

It's over already. But, we're just getting warmed up. Next issue will feature articles on our annual road trip to Gen Con, including the fun-filled "Road Kill" count. We'll also have a write-up on the World Dueling Championships. Will Mike Garrity successfully defend his WDC title? We shall soon see, won't we? Until next time, remember to drem big. The bigger the dream, the bigger the person.

"DRIVE OFFENSIVELY"
 
 

Norman McMullen	Michael Garrity
NOVA President	NOVA Secretary

 

NOVA Works
    Sport & racing suspension, thermal body armor, storage battery: Norman McMullen

High-speed handling package: John Schuncke

The 10 O'clock News: Norman McMullen

Nuts & Bolts: Norman McMullen

Quotes: Norman McMullen

Cube Logs: Norman McMullen & Mike Garrity

The NOVA Files: Norman McMullen

The Showroom: Warp 10-Y and 10-Z by Norman McMullen

Typesetting & Page Layout: Michael Garrity

Editors: Michael Garrity & Norman McMullen
 

The Nightmessenger is published quarterly by the New Omaha Vehicular Association, 2524 Madison St., Bellevue, NE
68005. All material is copyright 2000 by the New Omaha Vehicular Association. All rights reserved. Car Wars, Dueltrack,
Boat Wars, Car Warriors, Crash City, Truck Stop, Convoy, Uncle Albert's Catalog From Hell, Autoduel and AADA are
registered trademarks of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated, or are used under license. The above trademarks, and the
characters and situations of the Car Wars background are the exclusive property of Steve Jackson Games Incorporated and
are used in Nightmessenger under permission. Reproduction of any material published in the Nightmessenger without the
express written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Any reproduction of Car Wars articles published in the
Nightmessenger, or any unauthorized publication of fiction using the Car Wars background without the express written
permission of Steve Jackson Games is strictly prohibited. Subscription rates (for 4 issues) are: Regularly attending club
members: $4.00, U.S. subscribers: $6.00, International subscribers: $12.00.

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