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Old 09-30-2022, 11:07 AM   #11
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

Vectored thrust vehicles with thrusters on the bottom, as long as they have multiple thrusters, might be able to recover if they have lots and lots of distance to fall -- you have to apply sufficient asymmetric thrust to cause you to spin, and during that process you're falling.
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Old 09-30-2022, 11:59 AM   #12
Rolando
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

Those vehicles in science fiction are helicopter equivalents, the advantage is having no long blades, not greater maneuverability than a helicopter.

They just can't turn themselves right if toppled in the ground. In the air they may maneuver and be temporarily bottom up for a small time I can imagine but that kind of maneuvering sound very dangerous, specially inside the city.
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Old 09-30-2022, 12:34 PM   #13
Varyon
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
CP2020 has these vehicles with an armor rating of up to 40 SP, where SP 1 is equal to 1 Inch of Steel armor.
40 inches of steel armor in GURPS is DR 2,800. I'll have to check my books for comparison, but I think that's closer to "Main Battle Tank" than "Armored Vehicle."

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Originally Posted by hal View Post
Can a pilot be able to handle this task or will it require a program to instigate the righting on its own?
You'll either want a program to handle it or have your pilot jacked in and his brain overclocked (better have some good built-in cooling options). Making the right decisions in a timely-enough manner to not splat on the ground before you can right yourself when flying at most appropriate in-city elevations is something I expect calls for better reaction speeds than a baseline human possesses.

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Vectored thrust vehicles with thrusters on the bottom, as long as they have multiple thrusters, might be able to recover if they have lots and lots of distance to fall -- you have to apply sufficient asymmetric thrust to cause you to spin, and during that process you're falling.
If you're starting from being stably upside-down, yeah, you'll likely need a pretty long distance to right yourself. However, that shouldn't happen.

The typical situation for one of these to get flipped would be a nearby explosion or similar that hits the vehicle and causes it to flip over. With a properly-configured stabilization program, or a jacked-in, highly skilled pilot, when the vehicle gets hit with the force that flips it, it should be able to determine rather quickly the vector and power of said force. If this is something against which the vehicle can countermaneuver to remain upright, it will do so. If it is not, and there is no choice but to have a flip occur, the vehicle will thrust such that the spin is at the fastest rate the vehicle can recover from on the next pass when it's upright (which may mean actually thrusting with the spin initially to get through it more quickly). If the vehicle will require multiple spins to stabilize, it will thrust in a manner that keeps it upright in each instance that it can, which may result in it moving up and down (up when it can thrust against gravity, down when it cannot and thus falls) along the path while stabilizing.

If Magneto gets a hold of it, flips it upside down, then lets go, it's probably screwed. If it's getting close to where it needs to turn or hit a building and then gets destabilized, it's probably screwed. If it's really close to the ground when it gets destabilized, it's probably screwed. But if it's flying through open air at a decent altitude when it gets destabilized, it's probably fine.
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Old 09-30-2022, 01:35 PM   #14
hal
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

There is another option for flipping a VTOL...

Take out one of the four corner "thrust ports".

Just trying to visualize this craft, its weaknesses and its strengths. Maximum Metal does have helicopters in its arsenal and has not stated that AV's have become the dominant form of close ground support vehicles.

MAXIMUM METAL is not GURPS VEHICLES - so there is unlikely to be a one for one correspondence between the two systems. Having a flying tank as per the description and knowing that an SP 40 is like having 40" of steel armor - well, that's well over 3' of Steel armor.

Ah well, time to hit the hay. Will ponder the puzzle a bit more and see what happens. Once I finish it, I'll post it here so that others can look at it and say "ok, not bad, but why did you..." and possibly help me to improve it or have me defend it like a thesis where I say "well, 1300 Kg of cargo capacity is like having X number of cubic feet of volume for cargo at 50 lbs per cubic food". I'm also going to want to see how well I can build the "Trauma Team version of the vehicle with an operating theater in it, possibly some emergency life support pods, etc.
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Old 09-30-2022, 02:33 PM   #15
the-red-scare
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

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Originally Posted by Varyon View Post
40 inches of steel armor in GURPS is DR 2,800. I'll have to check my books for comparison, but I think that's closer to "Main Battle Tank" than "Armored Vehicle."
SP 1 is definitely not 1” of steel, because Cyberpunk leather armor has SP 4 on the same scale. Cyberpunk SP and damage tend to match about 75-125% of GURPS DR and damage until you get up to heavy weapon levels, then Cyberpunk flattens out much quicker than GURPS does.

In any case, SP 40 is probably fairly close to DR 30-50.
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Old 09-30-2022, 04:27 PM   #16
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

There are fundamental reasons no-one actually makes vehicles like these, but stability isn't the main one -- the main one is that the power requirement for a hovering thrust is proportional to (thrust)^3/2*(area)^-1/2, and thus generating large amounts of thrust from small nozzles winds up with hilariously huge energy requirements (Vehicles likes to assume that power requirement is linear in thrust. Like many things in Vehicles, it's an adequate assumption for a narrow range of real-world applications that falls apart when you try to apply it more broadly).
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Old 09-30-2022, 04:37 PM   #17
Mark Skarr
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

I always looked at AVs as less "the future of flight" and more "we're a megacorp with all the money and we're going to flaunt it!"

Sure, for Trauma Team, having to hover near the top of a building it could be effective having the wind disruption below the level they're on. And, I could see an argument for MaxTac dropping in and the thrust disrupting anything long enough for them to get a tactical advantage.

But, AVs are like the Concorde, a very interesting toy but far from efficient, or even effective. They're certainly cool, but they're not going to replace choppers without entirely new technologies being implemented (as Anthony has explained).
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Old 09-30-2022, 09:54 PM   #18
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

I always assumed that, contrary to the art, CP's AVs had the thrusters and engine at the top, so that the load would 'hang' and provide a little more stability. This also puts the exhausts further from the ground, so you get fewer angry complaints from the owners of the roads and footpaths about heat damage.
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Old 10-01-2022, 01:56 AM   #19
Anthony
 
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

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I always assumed that, contrary to the art, CP's AVs had the thrusters and engine at the top, so that the load would 'hang' and provide a little more stability.
Unless they are also mounted on struts or winglets so the exhaust doesn't pass along the side of the vehicle, this will cause problems.
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Old 10-01-2022, 10:42 PM   #20
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Default Re: Vectored thrust vehicles of CP2020

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Unless they are also mounted on struts or winglets so the exhaust doesn't pass along the side of the vehicle, this will cause problems.
I'm fairly sure having them right at the bottom will make for really exciting landing characteristics, so either way having the nozzles on the body is going to be bad.

I'm also sure that the illustrations assume way too little volume consumed by fuel, as those thing are going to burn it like crazy. They're a great example of brute force winning over common sense.
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