Vehicles & Weapons

Along with Guards, every named Character in your employ needs vehicles and perhaps additional weapons to conduct his various Business Operations and carry out your Orders efficiently. As with Guards, gang vehicles & extra weaponry are stored in a 'pool' available to all named Characters. Likewise, any Character can be given instruction to purchase additional vehicles or weapons, which are then added to the 'pool'. This arrangement not only saves each Character from wasting time having to buy his own, it also allows those Characters with the right connections to use these to benefit your organization as a whole.

When a gang member purchases vehicles or weapons for the 'pool' he does so with his own 'Business Account' funds. This is the money he puts aside each week towards future rackets expansion. If he doesn't have enough on hand to cover the likely costs, the Boss can loan him the cash. When the vehicles or weapons are added to the 'pool', their total cost will be shown as owed to this Character by the Boss, less any cash you loaned him.

When any Character draws vehicles or weapons from the gang pool for his own purposes, the cost of these will be shown as owed to the Boss. Likewise, when (and if) he returns them to the pool their value will be owed to him by the Boss.

This system allows any Character to draw Guards, vehicles and weapons as needed, and as allowed by the Boss, without him needing to have the cash on hand to pay for them. Essentially, each Character has a 'Boss Loans Account' which will be either in the positive (this being the amount he owes the Boss at that time) or in the negative (this being what the Boss currently owes him). See the page on 'Boss Loans' within the section on 'Character Finances'.

The price of both vehicles and weapons will fluctuate over time.

Vehicles

Vendetta uses five overall types of vehicles, as follows:

Coupe

Fast, sporty 3-seater. Best used for drive-bys and getaways, but limits the number of Guards the Character can take with him unless additional vehicles are made available.

Sedan

Standard family saloon car, seating up to 7. This will be the most common vehicles used by most Characters in the early stages of the game.

Limousine

A general label for any high-quality car. Also seats up to 7 and is faster than a Sedan, but much more expensive. Not as fast as a Coupe. A symbol of wealth any self-respecting gangster would be happier driving.

Armoured Limousine

A purpose-built, custom-made limo with reinforced panels and bullet-proof glass, including secret gun compartments and a sliding panel in the rear window for shooting at pursuers. Seats 7. Very rare, very safe, and very expensive.

Truck

The workhorse of the mob. Seats 3 in the cab, 15 in total. Necessary for several racket types, especially those involving booze transportation. Being the slowest vehicle type it is not considered good for anything other than transportation of booze, goods or large numbers of men. Having a truck available also allows a Character to attempt a greater range of 'Other Crimes' than might be available without one.

Bear in mind that although each Character can have up to 12 Guards assigned to him no more than half would accompany him at any time, and sometimes fewer than this depending on his Orders. For most Characters a single Sedan or Limo would be the only vehicle he will ever need.

Note that severely bullet-riddled vehicles will often be abandoned. It would be wise to always have spare vehicles in the gang pool.

As with Guards and weapons, vehicles required for the operation of a particular Premise-based racket are always shown as assigned to the racket itself, not to the Character operating the racket. Any Guards, weapons and vehicles assigned to the Character himself are deemed to be for his personal protection and transport, and will not count as able to be used for the racket operation. This refers specifically to the assignment of trucks, this being the only vehicle type required by some of the racket operations. Similarly, where a particular racket requires the use of trucks in order to operate, the controlling Character will hire civilian truck drivers for his racket.

Weapons

Every gang member, whether a named Character or a Guard, requires at least a revolver for his personal use. Guards in the pool cannot be assigned a duty unless there are revolvers available for them to draw from the pool (which they will do automatically when assigned a duty).

Additional weapons quite commonly available for much of the game will be automatic pistols (superior to revolvers), shotguns (powerful close-range) and rifles (accurate long-range but slow rate of fire for the first half of the game). Other weapons will be less common, only occasionally available, and generally much more expensive. Any Character may draw additional weapons from the gang pool for himself and his personal Guards, and may assign extra weaponry from the pool to be available to the Premise Guards of a particular racket. In both cases these will be carried by those men currently 'on duty', meaning that no Character need ever have more than seven other weapons, nor any premise more than six. Guards and Premise Guards do not take this extra weaponry home with them - they have only their personal revolver when 'off duty'.

Specialist weapons will be available from time to time. These will be of use only in particular situations, not carried as standard weaponry, so should be assigned surplus to basic requirements. For example, a sniper's rifle will be of little use except during an 'Ambush' or a planned 'Ranged Weapons' hit.