Hiking Fatigue Costs - more detail?

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by ClayDowling

Other than the actual jungle, you've perfectly described hiking in Michigan in the summer. Trust me that heat and terrain definitely take it out of you.

If you're not feeling like heavy calculations, some quick rule of thumb numbers from experience. A person of average fitness under medium encumbrance (35 lbs pack) can go about 10 miles in five hours, on cleared trails with mildly challenging terrain (temperate zone forest). Someone who is very fit can make fifteen miles per hour in that same period of time and carrying that load.

That sounds... unlikely to say the least. A marathon is 26 miles and 385 yards, normally on good roads and the fastest marathon ever run took 2 hours 3 minutes and 23 seconds. You're talking about someone who can go 30 miles in 2 hours on mildly challenging terrain carrying a 35 lbs pack.

[ClayDowling]

What you're taking exception with is a typo, not a statement. A very well conditioned hiker can make 15 miles in five hours. They're making an average of 3 miles per hour. Which doesn't seem like much more than the 2.5 miles per hour that I can make, but is in fact quite the challenge.

[NineDaysDead]

Originally Posted by ClayDowling

What you're taking exception with is a typo, not a statement.

Fair enough.

Originally Posted by ClayDowling

A very well conditioned hiker can make 15 miles in five hours. They're making an average of 3 miles per hour. Which doesn't seem like much more than the 2.5 miles per hour that I can make, but is in fact quite the challenge.

That's realistic

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by ClayDowling

What you're taking exception with is a typo, not a statement. A very well conditioned hiker can make 15 miles in five hours. They're making an average of 3 miles per hour. Which doesn't seem like much more than the 2.5 miles per hour that I can make, but is in fact quite the challenge.

Easy for the first hour or two, but killer for the last three, I imagine. My shins hurt just thinking about it.

[Pragmatic]

Having read some of the preparations that went into forays into the New Guinea interior, to find the highland tribes, are you taking into account the massive amount of buildup that has to go into such a trek?

IIRC, they had porters establish (and continually replenish) supply depots about a dozen miles in. From that first supply depot, they had porters travel a dozen more miles in (drawing on the supplies piled in the first depot). And so on, many chains of porters, in order to be able to get deeply enough into the jungle to meet the isolated tribes.

[ClayDowling]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Easy for the first hour or two, but killer for the last three, I imagine. My shins hurt just thinking about it.

I'm going to give it a try this summer. There's a nice state recreation area near my house with a camp site that is 10 miles from the starting point, with an optional five mile loop that you can also take. For a thrill, the lady at the park office tells everybody that it's only five miles to the camp. Which is true, as long as you don't mind walking the wrong way on the one way trails and getting run down by mountain bikers. We had a good laugh about it at the camp site once we finally realized what had happened.

[BraselC5048]

Personally, and this is my opinion, the rules in High Tech assume light? encumbrance. if you're not at that, multiply distance by 1.25, then reduce for encumbrance and terrain as in Basic (so medium encumbrance for move 6 in average terrain would be 6 * 0.5 * 1.25 * 1 * 0.6 = 2.25 miles each hour). A hiking roll can increase this by 20%, as in Basic. This brings High Tech's rules in line with the (unrealistic for nearly everyone) assumptions in Basic.

Fatigue per hour would be as in Basic Set, or 3 FP per hour, 4 if the day's hot. Generally after every hour or two you'll need to rest to recover lost fatigue - this will drive your mileage well below Basic Set. This is where Fit and Very Fit really shine.

Hope this helps!

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by kdtipa

<snip>
I understand how to do the math for the rule, but the travel distance is for a day of travel, which presumably doesn't mean 24 hours. Does it assume pushing yourself for 16 hours? Does it assume a normal 8 hour "work day"? Something in between?

Also, would pushing through jungle for an hour be more tiring than walking on even ground for an hour? Even if the distance traveled is already much lower to account for the difficulty in the jungle, wouldn't you be working harder cutting with a machete, pulling your gear through branches, and climbing up and down the uneven ground and roots? Should the terrain factor into the fatigue cost? I think it probably should, but it's not accounted for in the rules as written.

What are the thoughts on this?

The first sentence of the sub-section Time Required and Fatigue Cost of the Hiking section on B351 is pretty cut and dried about it. You are either resting (including sleeping), getting ready to hike or hiking if you want to make the distances allowed. This means, for example, that the characters are not foraging for food, water or shelter.

This is purely personal interpretation but I wouldn’t include stopping for a mid-day meal or taking time to blaze the trail so the characters can find their way back as things they could do and still make the maximum allowed distance. If they want something to eat between breakfast and dinner, they need to rely on trail mix, jerky, pemmican or something else that can be eaten cold while on the move.

I would envision the characters as being somewhat like soldiers on a day-long march when they stop for the night. Not falling down tired but grumpy and short-tempered. TL hasn’t been mentioned but if it’s post-1985, the tent(s) will probably have collapsible fiberglass sections joined by bungee cord and snap hooks for attaching the tent to the frame. I’d expect them to put those tents up without much argument. But if it’s pre-1985, any four-man tent they’re lugging will probably weigh eighty pounds including canvas tent, guy lines, poles, pegs, fly and cover. Unless there are over-riding considerations, they will probably argue whether they really need to put the tent up, if the night is nice, always assuming they didn’t decide to abandon it by the wayside early on as wasted weight.

In a similar vein, cooking meals will either require a camping stove with fuel or foraging for firewood (though they could be packing their own). Emphasis will probably be on meals that can be cooked in a hurry, although if they have a Dutch cooker, they might prepare a breakfast meal before going to bed and let it cook in the coals overnight.

Fatigue costs for Hiking are already pretty steep (p. B426 Hiking), 2 FP/hour, more likely 3 FP/hour for hot weather (anything over 91° F, see the section Heat, p. B434, first three black text paragraphs) so travelling the full sixteen hours would cost 48 FP or close to five times what they would have if they were HT 10, 10 FP characters. So if they are 10 FP characters, they should stop for 70 minutes to fully recover their fatigue as soon as they reach 3 FP (1/3 FP or less category). I.E., they should be stopping after about two hours and twenty minutes for 70 minutes. That totals three and a half hours which would give four hike and recovery cycles totalling 13 ½ hours plus another 1 ½ hours of hiking to make up the sixteen hours. The actual time hiked is only 10 hours 50 minutes or, being a little generous, eleven hours actual travel during the sixteen hours to get eight miles plus whatever bonus distance they make. It seems reasonable.

There are two things that should be played up to the characters as considerations that might slow their progress. First, the rules are effectively declaring an entire day’s hiking to be pretty close to sixteen hours, but except in summer at higher latitudes, the daylight will go before the sixteen hours are up, so the characters will need to decide whether they want to start hacking through the bush before “can-see” and keep going past “can’t see.” Related to the shortness of the day is the length of the twilight periods at dusk and dawn. The closer in latitude you get to the Equator, the shorter the period of twilight becomes. Twilight in Cyprus lasted about twenty minutes and it isn't as close to the Equator as the characters may be. They will need to stop before it starts to get dark if they don’t want to set up camp in the dark.

Assuming the characters don’t have a map(s) or not very good ones, the other consideration will be finding a spot to stop for the day. If they see a suitable site, should they stop now and set up camp or chance pressing on and not finding a place as suitable and if they don’t find a suitable spot should they camp where they end up or backtrack to the better stop? If they plan to backtrack, should they drop their gear at that spot and come back for it if they do find a suitable spot ahead, which would mean they wouldn’t be as tired as they would coming back to retrieve it as they would be if they dragged it with them and then had to tote it back with them?

One of the biggest problems the characters will face will be the consumables. Not just food but water and fuel as well. Assuming the slowest moving character (if they hike as a group, that’s the speed they’re limited to) has a move of 4 (Basic Move 5, -1 for Light Encumbrance [a backpack would average about forty pounds which is twice the BL of a ST 10 character, p. B17), they can make eight miles a day and will be through the jungle in five days. Assuming they pack their water with them and that there are four characters in the group, they require (2 quarts/character/day [p. B426 Dehydration sub-section] x 4 [number of characters] x 5 days ÷ 4 quarts/gallon =) 10 gallons of water which is two × five gallon jerry cans. “A pint’s a pound the world around” so each gallon weighs eight pounds and a jerry can weighs forty pounds not counting the jerry can itself, which may be plastic after the 1960s but would be metal prior to that. So a full jerry can of water would replace a character’s backpack load completely (there are backpacks [usually military] that adapt to carry a jerry can in place of the pack).

They may not require ten gallons of fuel, unless they’re running a stove and lantern through the hours of darkness, (and if they do and have them inside the tent, someone needs to stay awake on stove/lantern watch, both to make sure they don’t go out and get refilled as needed, but also to ensure that no one succumbs to carbon monoxide poisoning,) but they shouldn’t get away with less than two gallons of fuel. Naptha weighs almost as much as water, so call it fifteen or sixteen pounds.

If they do pack the fuel in jerry cans as well, they need to distinguish the two types of jerry cans once they’re set down. Odour will probably give away which is which if the characters manage to pay attention, but naptha isn’t a very refreshing drink and will contaminate the cup for a long while thereafter. Stoves and lanterns don’t run very well on water, either.

Assuming four days rations at two meals/character, they need ten meals/character with a volume around 1620 cubic inches (not quite a cubic foot) and a weight of about ten pounds/character (this assumes something close to CF MREs which are mostly freeze-dried foods), assuming each character carries his own rations. If one person carries all the rations, that’s another backpack load given over to consumables.

One other point, the Very Bad terrain modifier on p. B446 is for jungle not dense jungle, though the dense forest entry just ahead of it probably accounts for the confusion. Ordinary jungle is Very Bad terrain under RAW, dense jungle is probably impassable.

[Tema69]

Originally Posted by BraselC5048

Generally after every hour or two you'll need to rest to recover lost fatigue - this will drive your mileage well below Basic Set. This is where Fit and Very Fit really shine.

Hell, I remember walking for ten-twenty minutes at a time between five-ten minute breaks. Then again, that was during the worst part of a 16ish hour hike in freezing temperatures with 100lbs of gear (and no food).
I wasn't in the best of shapes when we walked that, a year ago, but a lot of it was mental (it's a required part of "NCO School" here in Denmark, so if you quit, you're out). Extra Effort definitely applies, and any character with a hint of Lazyness, Extra Sleep, etc should be rolling often. I failed "my rolls" once or twice, literally falling asleep as I was walking.

[Flyndaran]

With my very limited experience, I found that not having eaten that day made walking much harder without a pack than carrying my maximum at the time of 68 pounds.