Turn of Combat Reformulated - Velocity

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

If we're felling funny, considering HT 20 and DX 20 (Basic Move 10), I'll round yards for meters (each yard is 0.91 something meters) as per Gurps recommendations, and the light speed being (more or less) 300 millions of meters per second, that means that the Flash would need 30 millions of levels for Enhanced Move alone, which would cost 600 millions of CP alone.

Okay, Base Move 10 and we want to hit 300,000,000. The important thing is that Enahnced Move is a _multiplier_ of x2 per level. A simple x 30,000,00 only needs 25 levels of EM (probably a little elss with exact calculations). The Enhancements from Supers are +50% each and considered forms of Cosmic.

The result is 10,000 pts which is a lot but more than 3 orders of magnitude less than the answer you got.

The Enhancement from Supers is called simply "Super-Speed" and costs +20% and if we gave this to our Flash-y character it would let him go from (say)ATR 20 for 20x the number of combat Maneuvers to the number in the Speed/Range Table for a x5000 multiplier for non-combat activities.

This is another 2400 pts but actually lets us take about 5 levels off the Enhanced Move.

So we're in the low tens of thousands of pt rather than millions or billions.

.....and once I take enough time to think it over 20 x2 x25 is only 1000 rather than 10,000. So we're in the mid-thousands rather than millions or billiopns

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Okay, Base Move 10 and we want to hit 300,000,000. The important thing is that Enahnced Move is a _multiplier_ of x2 per level. A simple x 30,000,00 only needs 25 levels of EM (probably a little elss with exact calculations). The Enhancements from Supers are +50% each and considered forms of Cosmic.

The result is 10,000 pts which is a lot but more than 3 orders of magnitude less than the answer you got.

The Enhancement from Supers is called simply "Super-Speed" and costs +20% and if we gave this to our Flash-y character it would let him go from (say)ATR 20 for 20x the number of combat Maneuvers to the number in the Speed/Range Table for a x5000 multiplier for non-combat activities.

This is another 2400 pts but actually lets us take about 5 levels off the Enhanced Move.

So we're in the low tens of thousands of pt rather than millions or billions.

The ten thousand point range is of course a perfectly reasonable base for a starting member of the Justice League.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Okay, Base Move 10 and we want to hit 300,000,000. The important thing is that Enahnced Move is a _multiplier_ of x2 per level. A simple x 30,000,00 only needs 25 levels of EM (probably a little elss with exact calculations). The Enhancements from Supers are +50% each and considered forms of Cosmic.

The result is 10,000 pts which is a lot but more than 3 orders of magnitude less than the answer you got.

The Enhancement from Supers is called simply "Super-Speed" and costs +20% and if we gave this to our Flash-y character it would let him go from (say)ATR 20 for 20x the number of combat Maneuvers to the number in the Speed/Range Table for a x5000 multiplier for non-combat activities.

This is another 2400 pts but actually lets us take about 5 levels off the Enhanced Move.

So we're in the low tens of thousands of pt rather than millions or billions.

.....and once I take enough time to think it over 20 x2 x25 is only 1000 rather than 10,000. So we're in the mid-thousands rather than millions or billiopns

Yeah, I was going to say it's in the thousands.

That's what you get when you try to get from the memory advantages that you never actually used before.

Now, every level of Enhanced Move actually doubles all those before? It's an exponential advantage thus?

I guess that's why I mistook it in my head, I dont remember any other advantage that is like that, with multiplicative levels rather than additive

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Y
Now, every level of Enhanced Move actually doubles all those before? It's an exponential advantage thus?

Yes, the total multiplier doubles with each level. The Powers section is all over the place as far as basic principles go though some Powers do increase logarythmically. It's sjutt he Speed/Range tale logarythm instead of a simpler doubling..

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Yes, the total multiplier doubles with each level. The Powers section is all over the place as far as basic principles go though some Powers do increase logarythmically. It's sjutt he Speed/Range tale logarythm instead of a simpler doubling..

Oh yes, the Speed Range Im familiar with, particularly for Super Strenght, I just never used Enhanced Move or ATR before thou, I always glanced over them, and just as much as glanced over those in both Powers and Supers, so I mixed it all up

[whswhs]

I've taken a long time to comment on this, because it seems incredibly complicated and hard to understand. It seems as if you're trying to introduce a new stat to take the place of Basic Speed. I'm not seeing what function that new stat performs that isn't already covered by Basic Speed, but it seems to me that what you describe has some problems:

* When you say that Velocity 10 equates to Altered Time Rate 1, that seems to point to the idea that +1 to Velocity gives you an additional 1/10 action. But what is a tenth of an action? I don't see how that would have any relevance in combat. If the one-tenth actions are supposed to add up over the span of many terms, that's a lot of extra bookkeeping; if they just get dropped, they don't seem to be worth anything.

* If you are assuming actual increased speed as part of velocity, you're overlooking one important implication of speed: kinetic energy. If your fist is moving faster it inflicts more damage. If you suppose that a normal person inflicts on the order of 1d, then +1 damage on top of 1d would be on top of 3.5, which would be +(2/7)d, which would be 1.29x kinetic energy; +2 would be 1.57x; +3 would be 1.86x; +1d would be 2x. Velocity 11 would give you 1.21x kinetic energy, Velocity 12 would give you 1.44x, Velocity 13 would give you 1.69x, and Velocity 14 would give you 1.96x; rounding down, I would say that Velocity 12 gave you 1d+1, Velocity 13 gave you 1d+2, and Velocity 15 gave you 2d+1.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

* When you say that Velocity 10 equates to Altered Time Rate 1, that seems to point to the idea that +1 to Velocity gives you an additional 1/10 action. But what is a tenth of an action? I don't see how that would have any relevance in combat. If the one-tenth actions are supposed to add up over the span of many terms, that's a lot of extra bookkeeping; if they just get dropped, they don't seem to be worth anything.

Actually it would be Velocity 20 that would equate to ATR 1, V10 would be normal average human, but yeah, this is basically it.
+1 Velocity would indeed be 1/10 of ATR; yes, a fight between someone with V10 and V11 would indeed be a close call, however the V11 would eventually act over the course of 10 seconds a total of 11 times, while the V10 only 10 times.
It's going to be a small difference, but that small difference - 1 action every second vs 1 action every 0.91 seconds - but that small difference can in fact be the difference between life and death (and in truth, +/-1 Velocity has a huge impact). It garantees that the faster fighter will have a privileged sequence of actions before the slower one.

There's more that it does than just that thou - the full meta-trait describes all that each round Velocity value does. It gives a bonus of +1 to all active defenses per +1 (above 10) of Velocity, and applies -1 to the active defenses of the adversaries.

And it does one more thing...

Originally Posted by whswhs

* If you are assuming actual increased speed as part of velocity, you're overlooking one important implication of speed: kinetic energy. If your fist is moving faster it inflicts more damage. If you suppose that a normal person inflicts on the order of 1d, then +1 damage on top of 1d would be on top of 3.5, which would be +(2/7)d, which would be 1.29x kinetic energy; +2 would be 1.57x; +3 would be 1.86x; +1d would be 2x. Velocity 11 would give you 1.21x kinetic energy, Velocity 12 would give you 1.44x, Velocity 13 would give you 1.69x, and Velocity 14 would give you 1.96x; rounding down, I would say that Velocity 12 gave you 1d+1, Velocity 13 gave you 1d+2, and Velocity 15 gave you 2d+1.

...each level of Velocity has also 1 level of Striking ST, exactly to simulate the increase of kinetic energy. Granted, that would not form such precise correlated table, but I guess it's good enough. And yes, the idea would be to have indeed actual increased speed.

That's the reason why this ended up being so expensive, it's because it has a segmented ATR - for 10 points per lvl, it has increased defenses, which ended up being the most expensive part, 30 points/level, it has the "Deceptive Attack" sort of meta trait, which is more of a "DX applied to combat only", which would in theory be 9 CP/level; deceptive attacks give a -2 to skill to inflict a -1 to the active defenses of the oponent, so each lvl of Velocity has 2 levels of that "Combat Only DX", for 18 points/lvl, so that can be converted into a -1 to the adversaries active defenses, and it also have Striking ST for 5 points/level. The total would be 63, but I rounded to 60, particularly because the "Combat Only DX" is being used exclusively to deliver Deceptive attacks, thus the character wouldnt be able to enjoy any other benefits (in fact, that discount may even be bigger than that).

So, in truth, the most expensive parts of it all aint even the ATR part; the ATR is in fact the least expensive one.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Actually it would be Velocity 20 that would equate to ATR 1, V10 would be normal average human, but yeah, this is basically it.
+1 Velocity would indeed be 1/10 of ATR; yes, a fight between someone with V10 and V11 would indeed be a close call, however the V11 would eventually act over the course of 10 seconds a total of 11 times, while the V10 only 10 times.
It's going to be a small difference, but that small difference - 1 action every second vs 1 action every 0.91 seconds - but that small difference can in fact be the difference between life and death (and in truth, +/-1 Velocity has a huge impact). It garantees that the faster fighter will have a privileged sequence of actions before the slower one.

How is that to be kept track of?

Suppose that X and Y are fighting, and X has Velocity 10, and Y has Velocity 9. Velocity 9 gives one action per 1.11 seconds.

Second 1: X acts; Y does not.
Second 2: Y acts at .11 seconds; X acts at end.
Second 3: Y acts at .22 seconds; X acts at end.
Second 4: Y acts at .33 seconds; X acts at end.

... and so on, till second 11, when Y acts at .99 seconds and X at the end—or when you round Y up, and X and Y act simultaneously?

It seems as if you are going to be doing a lot of bookkeeping to keep track of who acts when. There's a reason that RPGs other than GURPS split combat into discrete rounds/turns (for example, Champions has a 12-second span of time, in which Speed 1 lets you act on phase 7, Speed 2 on phases 6 and 12, Speed 3 on phases 4, 8, and 12, and so on). It seems as if you would be adding a lot to the GM's load.

It also seems as if, in every second after the first, the slower fighter actually acts before the faster one.

Or do you want to segment combat into, say, centiseconds, and count off: .01, .02, .03, .04, .05, ... ?

[Anthony]

A method I've seen in a small number of games (mostly not RPGs, though classic Feng Shui had a variant on it) is by having a fairly high granularity initiative track, and every time you take an action you move your counter forward by the cost of the action; once the timer reaches your counter, you're free to take another action (video games may use something similar to this, where taking an action puts you on an animation lockout, but they usually also don't have instant activation). This allows you to do a number of things that are quite hard to do in a one action per turn system -- not only does it let you have characters at different speeds, it lets you have characters have different speeds when taking different actions -- but it's significantly harder to use than regular round robin initiative.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by Anthony

A method I've seen in a small number of games (mostly not RPGs, though classic Feng Shui had a variant on it)

Also at least one version of Shadowrun, iirc.