Steve Jackson Games - Site Navigation
Home General Info Follow Us Search Illuminator Store Forums What's New Other Games Ogre GURPS Munchkin Our Games: Home

Go Back   Steve Jackson Games Forums > Roleplaying > GURPS

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Old 11-24-2022, 12:51 PM   #1
Kaslak
 
Join Date: Oct 2022
Default [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Hi,

I am currently looking at the movement costs in The Last Gasp. I am aware of the Gaming Ballistic article and considering to use that variant. However, while I like the additional cost to maintain movement, and the free anti-step deceleration, I am not sure if it goes too much on the "Ferret on Crack" side of the game type spectrum.

If I understand correctly the rules for the simplified acceleration based cost (with no Move/limit, and 1 AP / (20% move) cost):

- There is no minimum free acceleration. That means that moving from 0 to max Move in 5 seconds or 1 second has the same total cost.

- A HT 10 creature (let's say an animal) with Enhanced Move 2 cannot reach its maximum velocity without spending FP, regardless on how much time it takes to accelerate, unless it has AP related advantages or higher HT.

Am I understanding correctly?

What is your experience using the three different proposed movement AP cost systems (Movement based, acceleration based and Gaming Ballistic article)?
Kaslak is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-26-2022, 11:30 AM   #2
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaslak View Post
I am aware of the Gaming Ballistic article and considering to use that variant. However, while I like the additional cost to maintain movement, and the free anti-step deceleration, I am not sure if it goes too much on the "Ferret on Crack" side of the game type spectrum.

If I understand correctly the rules for the simplified acceleration based cost (with no Move/limit, and 1 AP / (20% move) cost):

- There is no minimum free acceleration. That means that moving from 0 to max Move in 5 seconds or 1 second has the same total cost.
It seems like if you can get a free step you should be able to get a step's worth of free acceleration each turn, not sure if that aligns with the text though.

I never liked anything being free, I'd rather everything get a cost and if people can't maintain their cadence we just give them better AP regeneration to handle it.
__________________
what this forum is
(17 March 2020 forum rules from Hackard)
Plane is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-27-2022, 11:57 AM   #3
Kaslak
 
Join Date: Oct 2022
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
It seems like if you can get a free step you should be able to get a step's worth of free acceleration each turn, not sure if that aligns with the text though.

I never liked anything being free, I'd rather everything get a cost and if people can't maintain their cadence we just give them better AP regeneration to handle it.
Thank you for your answer!

I kept thinking about it. One thing that I agree on is to allow 0 to 20% (1 step/turn) of acceleration, and up to 20% of move speed maintenance as free. In fact I would go further and award it as a recovery action, in order to seal the inconsistency caused otherwise by the "I evaluate the ground + step" exploit.

On the other hand, it might be too much to allow cost-less acceleration of 20% speed/s at running speed, or award some discount when accelerating abruptly from zero to higher values of velocity in 1 sec.

I eventually realized that most of these questions popping out when reading the system came from trying to extrapolate the AP rules outside of the short time and tight spaces combat scale, and follow-up questions like like "what happens when a clerk starts slowly accelerating to catch the bus?".

Perhaps the simplest thing to do is to rule that anything happening sufficiently slower than the second to second scale might be awarded as AP -free. For instance acc = 5% * BM / s or so - (not being a sporty person myself, probably my guesstimates are not good).

1 AP regeneration was something I also thought about, but I have still to make my mind if would be a cinematic advantage for humans, or might be marginally realistic for very fit, HT >= 12, or gen-engineered (at high TL) characters (The peculiar avian respiratory system might qualify perhaps). In fact, not only it gives essentially a free 20%*BM accel/turn, but can be also more flexible and award a free attack/turn.
Kaslak is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-27-2022, 04:02 PM   #4
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Instead of a free step maybe we should just have AP for legs and have that regenerate separately from AP for arms.

That way someone could opt to spend it for walking indefinitely or for being stationary and stamping on someone.
__________________
what this forum is
(17 March 2020 forum rules from Hackard)
Plane is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-28-2022, 07:21 AM   #5
DouglasCole
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
 
DouglasCole's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaslak View Post
I eventually realized that most of these questions popping out when reading the system came from trying to extrapolate the AP rules outside of the short time and tight spaces combat scale.
For the record, I did try to unify this over short and long time scales, and never found something that worked. Even a complex something that worked. And given the complexity I was willing to embrace in the article, that's saying something.

Were I to do it over again now, I'd try and approach it differently to make it smoother at the table, but at the moment my hands are full with other things.
__________________
My blog:Gaming Ballistic, LLC
My Store: Gaming Ballistic on Shopify
My Patreon: Gaming Ballistic on Patreon
DouglasCole is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-29-2022, 12:46 AM   #6
Kaslak
 
Join Date: Oct 2022
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Plane View Post
Instead of a free step maybe we should just have AP for legs and have that regenerate separately from AP for arms.

That way someone could opt to spend it for walking indefinitely or for being stationary and stamping on someone.
That creates the free kick issue, doesn't it? But I get your message, I guess you mean one for striking and one for moving.

To be honest, there are also cases where your idea as written, of a limited location based ap regeneration definitely makes sense and is needed as an advantage, such as bionic limbs at high tl.

Quote:
Originally Posted by DouglasCole
For the record, I did try to unify this over short and long time scales, and never found something that worked. Even a complex something that worked. And given the complexity I was willing to embrace in the article, that's saying something.

Were I to do it over again now, I'd try and approach it differently to make it smoother at the table, but at the moment my hands are full with other things.
The article does already more than many game system dare to try on such a complex topic, and in a very playable way (using tokens for instance) and I am happy to have added the issue to my collection.

On the GM side, knowing that it is meant as a "local aporoximation" gives some leeway to house rule the extrapolations, without going into the analysis paralysis loop :)
If I ever get to make a consistent set of house rules I'll be happy to share.
Kaslak is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-02-2022, 09:23 AM   #7
zoncxs
 
zoncxs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: earth....I think.
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

This was my house rule for The Last Gasp:

First off: AP = HTx4
Everything cost 4x AP amount

Those two things makes sure the "cost" is the same as vanilla, but makes movement better:

Action Movement
First "step" cost 0 AP. 4 AP after.
Acceleration up to Move/2 costs 4 AP.
Acceleration up to Move costs 8 AP.
Acceleration from full Move to Sprint speed costs 4 AP.

Constant moving up to Move/2 costs 1 AP per turn.
Constant moving up to full Move costs 2 AP per turn.
Constant sprinting costs 4 AP per turn.

Deceleration over 20% cost 4 AP if you were moving up to your full Move.
Deceleration cost 8 AP to stop from a sprint.
Deceleration cost 0 AP from a step.
Deceleration up to 20% of your Move per second cost 0 AP.

If you’re moving more than one step at a time and wish to maintain that speed, make a HT roll. Success, cost of your movement goes down by 1 AP. Success by 5+ AP cost goes down by 2. Failure, cost remains the same. Critical failure or failure by 5+, you slow down by 20% of your move. If you move no further than your "Step" in a turn and do nothing else, roll vs HT to recover AP on your next turn.
zoncxs is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-04-2022, 10:50 AM   #8
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaslak View Post
That creates the free kick issue, doesn't it? B
True, if you remain stationary. We could give some free "arm AP" to balance it out too I guess.

I'm thinking just "limb AP pools" which maybe pull from your general AP at a max of 1 AP per second.
__________________
what this forum is
(17 March 2020 forum rules from Hackard)
Plane is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-06-2022, 12:33 AM   #9
Kaslak
 
Join Date: Oct 2022
Default Re: [The Last Gasp] Acceleration based AP cost and Enhanced Move 2

Thanks to both of you for the additional replies and for sharing your house rules! The additional granularity seems a goid idea to inject small movement maintenance cost on a turn by turn basis, and perhaps introduce the effect of terrain slopes, and track some fractional costs even though the given cost is consistent with the "improved movement" article.

Just to be more clear, however, for the kind of campaigns I run, I don't have a specific issue with strong accelerations, or actions in general, being too costy on a second-by-second scale, (at least the 1ap/20%BM) for an untrained civilian -perhaps even adding the variant limiting the max acceleration to move/2, but without doubling the cost to 1ap/10%BM... see, my baseline is the overweight chain smoker private investigator ;)

The issue I had initally is how to stitch long range movement rules with second by second costs (e.g if you sprint on the ap scale, second wind reduces on average your fp expenditure, while very fit gives advantages to the basic set sprinting on the 15s scale, or as another example, where on the paced movement speed spectrum, ap does not make sense anymore and the cost is fp only, such as in hiking, and so on).

So as things are now the GM is entitled to use some common sense, knowing where thelast gasp rules are intended to be used, but I understood this is by design, and a system overhaul covering from combat through swim competitions, to "how much is the blacksmith arm strength reduced after a full week of work" would require its own manual I think :)

Last edited by Kaslak; 12-06-2022 at 04:03 AM.
Kaslak is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
ap cost, enhanced move, last gasp

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Fnords are Off
[IMG] code is Off
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -6. The time now is 03:16 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.9
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.