How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

I have a character capable of transforming into something like an eldritch abomination and I'd like to give it a power characteristic of such creatures. My first thought was to have it create black holes, which is not only tactically stupid and irresponsible, but prohibitively expensive to do, even small ones. So rather than create a permanent hazard that might destroy the planet, manipulating the (theoretical) force carrier particle of gravity on a smaller scale might be more reasonable.

Here's what I have so far:
Crushing Attack (2) [Graviton Pulse Field] (Area Effect (16 yd); Cosmic: Irresistible attack; No Blunt Trauma; No Wounding; Double Knockback, (Feature: Reversed Knockback +20%); Elemental: Gravity; Partial Dice (+2); Persistent; Rapid Fire (+10); Very Rapid Fire) [93]

Here's what I think it does, and what I'd like it to do:
The user specifies an area (+4 to hit) and makes an attack roll. If successfully landing all 10 very rapid fire shots, that one hex is the origin point for a 2d crushing implosive force that repeats over the next 10 seconds, 10 times per second, each set of ticks occurring in the same effective instant, in a 16 yd radius. On a minimum damage roll of 2cr+2cr, victims are subject to a total of 40cr damage (No wounding or blunt trauma) in one second.

Here's what I'm uncertain about:

1) Should the crushing damage be summed before knockback is calculated, or for each tick separately? My hope is that it should be summed before knockback since all ticks in each second occur simultaneously for all practical purposes, thanks to the Very Rapid Fire enhancement (Powers P.105). Otherwise, the ability is virtually useless against enemies with a strength higher than 12 on the very best possible damage roll, unless they're standing in a room full of unreasonably sharp knickknacks. My logic is that if you were hit over every square inch of your body with the force of a hard-chucked basketball, it might not move you, but it'd certainly give you a noticeable kick. However, if you were hit with the same force 10 times in the very same instant, its not unreasonable to say that all those forces would add together into one big shove.

2) Does this ability even need the Cosmic: Irresistible Attack enhancement (Powers, P.128)? Could the Elemental limitation cover the desired behavior? The only property I think this version of Cosmic contributes, is the RAW ability for the effect to ignore walls and cover as an obstruction, but I'd be sending it around enemy cover anyway and hitting potential allies behind walls I can't see through is undesirable. Besides, it doesn't actually need to penetrate enemy damage resistance, even cosmic DR, since the goal of the attack is to shove everything in its area of effect towards the center and cause damage through collisions and debris impacts. Perhaps, since the attack is based on the idea of manipulating gravitons, which wouldn't care about walls anyway, would this attack pass through walls without this version of Cosmic? I mean, I want enemies to be able to counter this with anti-gravity tech or abilities, but since those abilities don't seem to require taking a Cosmic enhancement or modifier to have, I don't see why this one should, if it can be countered by non-Cosmic measures.

3) Does the Very Rapid Fire enhancement remove one's ability to determine how many shots to fire? I couldn't get an explicit read on how this enhancement is intended to work. Given that it's an enhancement, I'm thinking it still lets the user choose to fire any amount of shots up to RoF, but all shots happen together, almost instantly. I'm hoping you can still choose how many shots to fire, so this ability can be adjustable in strength.

4) If an enemy is in the center of the area of effect and pressed against another object being affected by this attack, should they take collision damage based on how fast each object would have been moving toward each other? Basically, the victims are being mashed together by a powerful force, surely that should produce a damaging effect.

As far as whether damage should be summed, I found a discussion about a character making multiple attacks, but nothing specifically about the Very Rapid Fire enhancement being taken into account. However, I think the thread indirectly makes a case for summing the damage before calculating knockback: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=87960

Annoyingly, I could find nothing regarding how to build implosion attacks in the books, but I did find a Kromm post regarding the price for reversing the direction of knockback that I found very reasonable: http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...74&postcount=8

So, this all describes a graviton pulse effect that someone can escape if they moved out of the AoE between pulses or passed through within less than a second. How would you model it if you wanted to create an attack that produced a continuous gravitational pull towards a central location, something you'd have to try to resist even if passing through for only a moment? e.g Zarya's Graviton Surge ability from Overwatch

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

What happens if you fail to do this?

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

Scatter, of course. There'd be multiple fields of implosion effect and only the overlapping fields might have cumulative effects, but how that plays out would be up to the GM, I suppose. I plan to include an Accurate enhancement and only ever use the ability after an Aim maneuver which, according to my stats, would only ever have any misses on a roll of 17 or 18. I didn't include this for the purposes of brevity and ease of reading.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

Why not just make it a leveled attack with the center at a distance. The number of attacks visible is just a special effect in my version.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

I'm not sure what you mean; is there an example power in a book you can point me to, or can you sketch one up with the core modifiers here?

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

The basic idea's pretty close to what I came up with, which was a Crushing Attack with an armor divisor of infinity.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

1) I'd think that each attack should be calculated separately. Just from a mechanical sense. In gurps you buy the effect of what happens, not the description. If you want them all to be one implosion, they should all be one attack, I'd think.

2) No, you don't need cosmic. Area effect will do all the stuff you need it to.

3) I don't think so.
4) No. You explicitly took No Wounding and No Blunt Trauma. Buy the effect, not the description. If you want the center to be damaging, you can add a linked damaging effect only at the center. I would allow damage from things flying into the center though.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

Makes sense, thanks for the input! With that approach in mind, seems this sort of ability isn't very cost-effective, but a single, big, continuous area-effect crushing attack with a linked binding effect and constriction damage in its center might be the most efficient the way to go. A TK build could do something similar, but probably for way more points and less tactical flexibility if you don't already have multiple levels of compartmentalized mind.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

Crushing Attack (5) [Graviton Pulse Field] (Area Effect (16 yd, +200%); Cosmic: Irresistible attack (+300%); No Wounding (-50%); Double Knockback (+20%), (Feature: Reversed Knockback +20%); Dissipation (-50%); 27 points per level.

I removed No Blunt Trauma, because I don't think it is compatible with No Wounding. I added Dissipation.

Re: How Do I Build This? (Graviton Pulse Field/Graviton Surge)
 

Dissipation is very logical, but man does it look brutal as a limitation. I mean, it seems like the utility and cost effectiveness of this attack would be easily matched or exceeded by a cheaper area effect binding attack with the One Shot and Unbreakable modifiers and Constricting, or just some kind of TK since the damage numbers are hardly significant outside the first 2yds of radius. Unless the GM wants to track the effects on loose objects and gear and let those fly around to do damage. Looks like the dissipation or the +150% explosion attacks are only attractive options when nothing else in that realm of effects is allowed or available, but I've never used it so I guess I can't rightly judge.

EDIT: Hmm, actually maybe the Fragments enhancement with something like an [accessibility, needs loose debris] limitation on an explosion, plus Persistent could simulate this...