Flight and forced movement

[kirbwarrior]

So, one thing I've been wondering is how Flight interacts with any form of forced movement from things like being thrown, falling off a cliff, gravity suddenly turning off or getting very strong, etc.

Let's say that we have two supers, someone with insane strength and someone with Flight and Air Move 15. The strong super throws the flight super in a single direction from atop a large tower with a distance of a thousand yards. Can the flier stop the throw instantly? Can they "decelerate" the throw and eventually come to a stand still? Do they get thrown the full distance and then come to a stop mid air if they don't get pulled down enough by gravity to hit the ground?

Similarly, let's say someone with Flight is not flying for whatever reason. They've fallen a good two hundred yards and now decide they want to stop falling. Do they stop instantly? Do they 'fight gravity' to slow down to a halt?

Thank you ahead of time.

[Refplace]

I would say they need to decelerate in each case, I think supported by the High Speed Movement rules in GURPS Basic. I think Dive is especially relevant.
As to can they use Flight to resist the throw or the distance moved? I would say yes if they had taken a Wait maneuver and probably even without as long as they hadn't taken an All-Out Attack.

[Lovewyrm]

If basic lift capabilities limits flight, aka, a flier can't just hoist a train over his shoulder and fly away.
Then if thrown sufficiently fast, and having a human like mass, then coming to a stop instantly might not be possible?

My unsureness is derived from not knowing and only hoping that the BL angle might be an aspect of consideration ^^ and thus bringing it up.

Basically: If the direction the flier is being thrown at can be seen as some sort of artificial gravity, and his movement as some sort of weight pressing down that has to be overcome by the ability.
Then maybe there's something in there that can give you the maximum deceleration even a magical ability can bring (cause you can totally trash something physical like wings with enough force)

[Farmer]

Work out the velocity at which they are being thrown. Work out the acceleration of the flyer. They will need to accelerate opposite to the direction of travel after being thrown. Each turn, that will reduce their velocity until it reaches zero or changes direction.

So if they have flight 15 and can achieve that from a standing start, and they are being thrown at a velocity of 15 yards per second (about 30mph), they could effectively stop their movement in a turn - or somewhere between 0-15 yards. If they were being thrown at twice that, it would take them 2 turns. It's not exactly 1 turn, 2 turns, etc., but for the granularity of the game, that's the easy maths version. Round any fractions of a turn as the GM sees fit, but probably up or down based on what's nearest.

[Varyon]

I'd need to check the books to conform with existing rules, but offhand, I'd say a character who has been thrown or is in an uncontrolled fall must first reorient themselves to gain control, which would call for an Aerobatics or DX roll; failure means they continue on their current path in an uncontrolled fashion, success means they immediately gain control (to conform with existing rules, treat a character who has been thrown the same as one who has lost control due to a failure when Pushing the Envelope). The direction of reorientation is usually going to be "reorient so you are as you would be if flying in that direction on purpose," but characters who don't have a minimum flight speed could opt to reorient in the opposite direction so that they can simply fly "forward" to decelerate. Once they've gained control, they are treated as having got to that speed on their own, and are under the High Speed Movement rules for making turns, decelerating, etc. I suspect it will often be the case that the character is best served making a turn while decelerating, getting themselves heading back toward the battlefield as quickly as possible (unless they've decided to escape, in which case they might as well use the velocity they were given by their enemy to good effect).

I don't know if there are any rules for going faster than one's Top Speed (but there absolutely should be - while Flight is the biggest case where this is likely to come into play, running downhill or while holding onto/being dragged by something that moves faster than you could normally manage are also cases where this could occur); it seems this should be harder to maintain control than doing things otherwise. Note you could have some characters able to treat speed well beyond their personal Top Speed as though it were such, particularly when Flight is involved (because using gravity to boost your speed above what you can reach on your own is absolutely a thing flyers do); I'd imagine that would be something like Enhanced Move with a significant discount, and would allow the character to ignore the drawbacks of going faster than Top Speed... whatever those are.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I would say they need to decelerate in each case, I think supported by the High Speed Movement rules in GURPS Basic.

I agree though I'm not sure how to detemrine velocity, do we assume that with the throwing distances we're told that all thrown objects arrive at their destination in exactly a second?

It seems like the higher you could throw something, the more delay you could get between it arriving at the apex of the throw (gravity takes longer to neutralize your momentum the faster it's going) and in turn to arrive at the ground.

Gravity has to be harnessed to get an ideal horizontal throwing distance, I think the ideal is usually something like a 45 degree angle. You could fire at a lower angle or higher angle if you wanted something to arrive sooner/later in exchange for sacrificing that distance (or to do stuff like fire over walls or under low ceilings)

[kirbwarrior]

All the answers about deceleration and "fighting" the velocity sound good, thank you! To further expand on things, how would Cosmic: Complete Maneuverability and Cosmic: Instantaneous acceleration each change things? How would they change things when bought together (or as part of Second Nature)?

[whswhs]

There seem to be two cases here.

* You are thrown for a distance of X. That gives you a certain velocity. In turn 1, you can subtract your base flight speed from that velocity. If you are still moving in turn 2 (rather than having hit something), you can subtract your base flight speed from your NEW velocity. And so on.

* You are being continuously pushed with a velocity of X. You can subtract your base flight speed from that velocity. (This would work must better using Flight to counter Telekinesis than using it to counter ordinary physical strength.) Each turn you move a distance equal to the difference, but not less than zero.