Turn of Combat Reformulated - Velocity

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by Varyon

The issue with rapid fire weapons in a system like this is that, by its nature, you're breaking things up into fractions of a second, meaning each bullet fired should be its own action... but realistically, rapid firing a weapon and firing a weapon a single shot at a time are two very different actions. But it's not right to have someone fire a full second's worth of bullets in a single instant (if you have a foe who gets to act 40 times in a second, and you're shooting at him with a weapon that has RoF 10, he should get four actions per bullet that is fired, rather than getting 10 actions, then having a barrage of bullets come at him, and then taking his remaining 30 actions). So how do you handle it? That's the sticking point I couldn't really get past. Having the character roll once for all the bullets that second when he starts firing (like with the GURPS default) either means other characters' actions during the turn have no influence (making it function as though all the shots were fired in an instant) or they have too much influence (as the firer can't adapt to what their doing, like a real shooter - particularly one with good reflexes - could). Assessing each shot as it happens either gives the shooter too much control (they're basically shooting as though they hadn't just let loose a bullet a fraction of a second ago) or too little (you'd need to use mounting penalties based on Rcl to avoid the shooter having too much control, but those rapidly get to the point where the shooter might as well be shooting at the moon). If you've got a good solution to that, I'd love to hear it.

Someone that acts 40 times in a second (that would be... let me see... Velocity 400) would dodge the first bullet (with easy), catch up to the guy before the second bullet is fired and knock him up. As he flies away, probably the second bullet would fire too, but now with the weapon flying away from his hand.

The shooter rolls a single time, unless he's also a Superspeedster, in which case he could actually adapt to each single shot; the bullets however will be shot individually. The weapon itself would have it's own "Velocity", based on the RoF: for example, a gun with RoF 10 on full automatic, would be counted as "Velocity 100", meaning that each fire will be shoot in 0.1 seconds. If a char has V200, he can (easily) dodge the first bullet and cover the distance to the shooter in order to catch him just in time for the second bullet to get out.

Also, someone with V200 and a mere HT10 would be moving at 20×5 = 100 yards/s (roughly 100m/s), which means roughly 205miles/hour or roughly 360km/h. That's just 7.5 times slower than averages bullets themselves, and faster than Formula1 cars at top speed. If the shooter aint a Speedster himself, he simply cannot adapt - and if he is, he would be better served throwing knives.

(Now that I think about it, I probably should add Striking ST and remove Enhanced Move, since Altered Time Rate will already cover that).

Now, for normal humans (up to Velocity 15 at most), this doesnt mean much, except a Dodge penalty/bonus to hit the target; since ALL bullets will land before any single other action, the Dodge difference will be all that matters. For Speedsters, this might mean get 1, 2 or maybe 1/2 actions between bullets or some combination of that (1/2 action would mean 1 action for every 2 bullets for instance).

[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.

[KarlKost]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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, ... ?

The idea is to make it all into an app; you just type in the number of fighters and their respective Velocities, and the system do all the unpractical math. What will show will just be the actions orders. Than (hopefully) when it's your time to act, you choose a maneuver, and said maneuver could go a little faster or slower - which would also be automatically calculated.

So, all you would have to do would be to select over the screen the maneuver you'll execute - or use a ranged weapon, whatever, and those options would show in a single screen. You press, and the system tells which one goes next.

This would also open up the possibility to have a new trait for weapons, some sort of "Speed Modifier" or whatever.

As for "after acting twice in a single second, the slower guy will always act first", that's not a problem because there wouldnt really be a "turn" of combat" just sequence of actions, and there would not be a division of time; each part takes as long as it takes to do their thing. Keeping track of the seconds would just be for having a notion of how long the battle takes, but it truly would no longer have any influence. Granted, 99.99% of humans will still be very very close to the 1 second mark, and Velocities of 11.23 vs 10.52 are entirely possible. Division of time is not necessary, the system will calculate it all and just return the sequence. Im building a sheet to use as a basis for an app, and even that would be enough, but the commodity of not having to constantly change entries on a google sheet or excel table would greatly improve it's use. Now, I do have a problem of time, like I always do I've involved myself in some 20 different RPG personal projects, Im trying to develop my personal taste shamans, Im working on a final set of Alternate Attributes that pleases me, I still need to finish my adaptation of Wraith the Oblivion for Gurps but for some reason I developed "writters block", and every time I look at that I get sick and dont wanna do it, but I have to, and now Im also devoting my energies to create yet another sheet for Realm Management, with greatly expanded rules from the Gurps supplement, which I intend to put to full use on my next Fantasy game, and that's the project that is my focus right now. I wasnt even thinking about Velocity, that was a project of mine from years ago, which a friend of mine ressurected asking me to explain it a little because he just remembered, and he wanted to do something similar. And my brain is obscessive, when I begin something I cant get it off my brain, which is why Im hear, and I gotta say, Im glad I did it because it's been an improvement from previous attempts.

But I cant get my Realm Management out of my head; my spreedshets are almost done, Im fine tuning the details and I'll do some play tests; after that I'll see if my friend (who is in Asia right now, all the way across half of the globe) can help me breath life to those two ideas.

I just hope we can do it