Not to be confused by the medical instruments of the same name, Boosters were developed on the grav-racing circuit popular within the Commonwealth areas. Boosters are incredibly simple devices--large solid-fuel rocket motors used to provide a massive, albeit temporary, boost in acceleration.

Game Notes: Boosters cannot be retrofitted equipment, as they must be strongly tied in with the vehicle's internal structure. A designer may elect to devote as many tons as they wish to boosters, and often place enough for several boosts. During the race (or combat) a pilot may, at the start of the turn, decide to use a certain tonnage of boosters. This provides an immediate gain of thrust points that can only be used to increase the vehicle's velocity. The thrust points gained are determined by this formula: (Tons of Rocket Used x 75) / Weight of Vehicle, rounding fractions off. A piloting roll is required when the boosters are ignited, modified for the safe velocity of the terrain (consider the acceleration to be instantaneous for this purpose), plus a -1 per 3 points (or fraction thereof) of acceleration gained. Booster's are one shot items--each ton of booster can be used but once during a race.

Commander's Turrets (CTs or 'seats' as they have become known) are not a new idea, once having been popular on many tank designs. CTs are exactly as they sound: small turrets mounted atop the main turret, essentially giving the commander a cupola from which they can get a better battlefield sense as well as direct their own fire towards targets of opportunity. As time progressed, however, their use grew more limited as the weapons they could carry became more and more superfluous, and as better mechanised sensors rendered the added sight capacity less and less of an advantage. Commanders were once again relegated to the main turret, riding next to the gunner and directing painting laser fire via more remote means.

With the advent of powerful, low-recoil weapons though, some designers are once again beginning to take a second look at the idea of a Commander's Turret. While there remains little need for an 'improved battlefield view', the capacity to direct fire at a third target has sparked the interest anew. While the choice of arms is indeed limited to low-recoil weapons, this by no means implies low-power weapons. Lasers, MDCs, Missiles and Recoilless Rifles are all eligible to be used on a CT.

While it can take a few combat exercises for a commander to learn the use of their CT, Commonwealth trials have found that once this occurs, the CT adds great flexibility to split fire when the need arises. It is quite probable that new designs with CTs may begin cropping up on Commonwealth drafting tables within a few years.

Game Notes: The CT is constructed in exactly the same manner as is a regular turret, save it may only carry the low-recoil weapons outlined above. Remember to add the weight of the CT and its components when calculating the weight of the primary turret. In combat, the CT operates independently of the main turret, giving the vehicle the ability to fire at three targets at once, if it so desires. However, because it is the tank commander who is operating the CT, weapons mounted in the CT may only direct their fire at the same target the tank painted that turn (which may limit overall target selection somewhat). All other rules pertaining to turrets and weapons fire still apply.

The operation of a grav vehicle is vastly different compared to the physics behind the operation of a conventional aircraft. The grav vehicle functions on the principle of warping gravity planes, using these fluctuations for levitation, propulsion and turning. Conversely, the aircraft relies solely on the interaction of its lifting structures and the atmosphere. While grav vehicle is completely independent of any atmosphere, and could happily operate on a vacuum world, in most cases the grav vehicle does operate within an atmosphere and must therefore interact and force its way through the gaseous medium.

Recently, this has gotten some gravitic engineers to thinking. Since the tank must travel through this blanket of gas, and since that consideration is already taken into account with streamlining and careful layout, instead of just burrowing through the air, why not take advantage of it? The tank doesn't need to use the atmosphere for it's flight, yet, since it's there, is there a reason not use it?

The end result was a series of vanes, fins and small winglets which the design team nicknamed Maneuver Foils. These computer adjusted control surfaces bite into the air and help to bring the tank to bear, improving its handling above certain speeds. This greatly decreases the tank's turning radius as well as reducing the strain on the gravity vector vanes. It can also reduce the effects of certain weather conditions, easing out turbulent airflow. Unfortunately, Maneuver Foils must be original equipment, and cannot be retrofitted to existing grav vehicles. They are, however, relatively lightweight and are not to power-demanding.

Maneuver Foils have already created a stir in the grav-racing circuit, where their benefit and effectiveness is constantly being demonstrated with often spectacular results. The inventors have already presented their creation to the CAF, and await nervously for the decision whether the CAF will begin trials or no. They are confident, however, and are already looking at ways to further improve on the design.

Game Notes: When a grav vehicle is designed, one can choose to add Maneuvering Foils. MFs are added during the same stage as the Grav Drive, but are included when the weight of the Grav Drive is determined. MFs weigh 4% of the vehicles current weight, not including the digging cannons, and use one point of power per ton of Maneuver Foil. During play, a vehicle gains the benefit of the MFs only when the tank's speed is over 5 (equal to or greater than 6). Once over 60kph, the turning requirements on the Facing Change Table are reduced by one. So, a tank travelling at a speed of 12 would normally require 3 hexes between facing changes, while with maneuver foils it would only require 2. MFs also allow a vehicle to descend from LAF to NF in one hex. Lastly, a grav vehicle equipped with MFs reduce the Safe Velocity Penalty of turbulent weather (High Winds, etc..), suffering only half the regular penalty. MFs are destroyed when all the armour off either the left, right or rear side is destroyed, at which point all benefits are lost.

Any vehicle can carry a mine laying attachment. Actually, the term "Mine Laying" is somewhat deceiving, as this piece of equipment is much more versatile, being able to drop/place much more than just mines. The MLE (mine laying equipment) unit encloses two pods that contain the items to be dropped. Each pod can hold four hexes worth of mines, four ABSs (P 22), four HELL charges, four ADEC (ECM, P 8) or two resupply pods. (Page numbers in brackets refer to pages in the Tech Update) Therefore, a GEV equipped with a MLE unit could carry 8 hexes worth of mines, or four HELL charges and four ADECs, and so on. All other rules as stated in the Tech Update apply.

HELL charges are simply the HELL warheads from an artillery piece mounted on a drop-pod with new detonation circuitry. They can be programmed to detonate via remote-command (the owning player says BOOM! and the charge goes off-- unless being jammed by an ADEC) or by proximity sensor (similar to an ABS going from passive to active mode--only it blows up instead of activating some nasty electronics). A resupply pod is essentially a container holding four TVLGs, armour patches and Omni-Weapon blocks, for resupplying infantry troops. It takes one round for an infantry unit to re-equip themselves from a resupply pod. Of course, whichever side gets to it first...

Though it is rare, it is quite possible for a tank to be equipped with more than one turret. Many formats are possible for this, and suffer either some form of benefits and/or penalty for doing so. In mounting more than one turret, each turret is constructed as per the regular turret rules for weight (rounded individually) and power usage.

Two turrets can be installed side by side, with their motions/weapons meshed (as on the Pallas). Assuming the hull is designed and angled right, the two turrets can turn a full 360 degrees without interfeering with each other. Special computer programs use the angled nature of the hull to be best utilized, giving the guns a better range of elevation and depression. This system, however, can be overly complicated. In game turns, an extra 2 tons must be allocated to the tank's weight. The standard game, does not provide any penalties or restrictions on elevation or depression--in this case, give the tank a bonus of +1 for firing on Aircraft and Interceptors. The record sheet will have two turrets, but each will be smaller than the standard, so a maximum of 70 points of armour on each.

More common will be two turrets 'in a line', that is one behind the other, and with the 2nd elevated compared to the first. This gives the rear turret a full 360 degrees rotation, while the forward turret will have a 300 degree rotation, unable to face the rear hexside. Both turrets can be of maximum size if desired. However, an extra gunner must be carried for the extra turret, adding another ton and another point of power to the crew requirements. This does give the tank the ability to split it's fire even more between multiple targets. The commander usually rides in the rear, upper turret to be afforded a full view of battle, and to paint.

One more common extra set of turrets is to place a smaller set near the front of the tank, using smaller weapons. MDCs, Missiles, 1.5 class-lasers are all capable of being placed as such. Depending on how they are mounted, they will either have a 180 degree fire arc off the front of the tank, or an arc extending the 'standard' 120 forward arc as well as the 120 degree arc defined by the front-side hexface of the tank (see the example on P 19 of the rulebook for this arc--it is the same as the tank's (in the figure) forward arc and its turret's left firing arc (and, of course, the overlap)). These weapons are fired normally by the gunner, as are hull-mounted weapons, though an extra gunner as above can be installed.

Lastly, a rear-firing sponson mount can be fitted, giving the same arc as the above mentioned front-mounted turret (180 degrees) This weapon can be fired by either the gunner or the commander, and is limited again to the smaller range of weapons.

Page design/contents Kannik, 1997