Savage Worlds Vehicles

Been thinking a lot lately about a new set of vehicle rules for Savage Worlds. The system's lack of a system regarding vehicles is one of the biggest stumbling blocks I have to full incorporation of Savage Worlds into other games. For instance, to effectively do Star*Drive I would need a set of rules that allowed for the characters to upgrade their vehicle in ways that they want. Beyond that having a definite rule set I think would go a long way towards larger adoption of the system in the gaming community at large. I hope.

Towards that end I've been tinkering. The basic idea I started with was that vehicles have attributes just like characters. SW has five basic attributes that define characters and NPCs: Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor. Two of these (Agility and Vigor) port over easily. The other ones I had difficulties coming up with comparisons.

Initially then I came up with three new, vehicle specific attributes - Bulk, Power, and Tech. That worked, but there were a lot of good criticisms to that system when I posted the rules skeleton at Pinnacle's forums. Sean Preston also pointed out some things, and made the suggestion that I look at other games to see how they handle it. Not to copy them, but to get an idea of how a vehicle system could be integrated.

In searching through the many games on my shelf, I was surprised at how many of them had proprietary vehicle systems completely separate from characters. This makes sense, and was where I wound up at with my first pass. But what if there was a way? A few games actually had the basic idea of "vehicles=NPCs" that I wanted so I decided to look closer at those. In doing so I came up with the following definitions for vehicle attributes:

Agility: How agile the vehicle is
Smarts: How many automated systems are aboard the vehicle, can be 0
Spirit: How many defense and redundant systems are aboard the vehicle, can be 0
Strength: How powerful the vehicle is, for speed and ramming
Vigor: How resistant to damage and upkeep the vehicle is

This requires another attribute that would equate to the critter score of the same name - Size Modifier. This would allow vehicles and creatures to be rated on the same scale. The SM would help to determine crew requirements and Toughness (just like critters).

Here's the other rub: vehicles can have an Arcane Background. Well, kind of - it would be called something else (like Advanced Systems or something similar) but it would function exactly the same as an AB. You could make some powers permanent by sacrificing Power Points, or require a check.

It is important to note that vehicles do not make rolls on their own (unless there's an onboard intelligence). Instead, the vehicle attributes would replace the Wild Die for character skill rolls. A character driving a vehicle with an Agility d8 for instance would roll d8 for their Wild Die instead of d6. Still working that out for definitions, but that's the basic idea.

Also, all of this I think would require a new character skill which I'm tentatively calling Tech. It is a generic skill for handling the character's use of computers. Maybe a Knoweldge (Tech) skill instead? I don't really like using Knowledge skills for active use but that might be the best solution.