Flight Turn Mod question

[BNakagawa]

Is your turn mod based on inches moved or inches expended? IOW, if you are moving vertically, is your turn mod based on how many inches your character moves or how many inches of flight your character has expended, given that it will be different based on if they are moving upwards or downwards (while in a gravity well)

[Greywind]

Velocity. The faster you go the wider your turns.

[BNakagawa]

so, how does this account for the immelmann turn?

[Derek Hiemforth]

It's Total Distance Moved This Phase / 5.  The first 60-degree turn is free, then you have to move the Turn Mode distance before you can make the next 60-degree turn.

 

[Duke Bushido]

2 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

so, how does this account for the immelmann turn?

 

The Immelmann turn is several turns, actually, and a temporary drop in forward momentum.

 

The first turn is not left or right, but _up_.  As Derek pointed out, this one's free.

 

The second turn is up again.

 

The third turn completes the pattern: you turn up.  You have now "turned" three hex faces, but in a direction that is only available to you because you are in the air.  You will be upside down, of course, but you have effectively done a 180.  Your GM (unless that's you) will have to determine if rolling back over counts against adjusting your facing or if it is in fact another turn of a different sort (note: I am not familiar with 6e; it may well that barrel rolls are now covered under the rules; if so, then do that).

 

Regarding the tightness of the "turn":

 

The machine or its pilot may have special "immelmann turn" Skill levels.  Technically, you can allow a drop in forward momentum after the first turn-- actually, you can drop it before your first turn, if you want--  which will drop your inches / Phase, reducing your turn mode.  You can continue to drop your speed (up to whatever your max decel happens to be), tightening the turn more.  Typically, when mapping dog fight combat (man I hate doing that-- oh: we are playing space ships; not biplanes.  The greater speeds, etc....  Kind of a pain), my players figure out rather quickly how much they can pick up with a burst of speed coming _out_ of the final turn, and drop their speed that much prior to the first turn.  It's an awkward conservation of motion, but if you're okay with coming out of the flip slower than you went into it, keep dropping speed every chance you get.

 

 

[Duke Bushido]

Almost forgot-- but I suppose it's self-evident, really, that a Split-S is the same thing, reversed:  roll upside down, then pull up on the stick to reverse direction and level out below your original altitude.

[foolishvictor]

Hero system is a set of guidelines.  It is not intended to mimic reality perfectly.  I once got upset with a GM regarding his interpretation of how IR vision worked.  Part of the problem was that I had worked with IR systems and most people (including GMs) have not.  At a certain point I stopped myself and wondered, "What am I doing?"  The answer is that I was not being fair to my GM.  (In my own defense, the GM told us that if we were playing Call of Cthulhu the entire party would have been killed and my character's IR vision would, in my opinion, easily have detected the threat based on what the GM told us about the encounter after the fact.  That said, the GM and I did discuss our expectations for enhanced senses to hopefully avoid future confusion.) 

 

Just because the GM is responsible for presenting the world to your character does not mean the GM suddenly understands how IR vision works beyond the brief description given in the book.  Similarly, a GM who is not a pilot probably would not know what an Immelmann maneuver is.  The Hero system rules are already long enough as it is.  

 

If you want to simulate an Immelmann turn and other aerobatic maneuvers then the player and the GM should discuss those things in advance.   Alternatively, the player should buy the advantage that allows any turn at any time and then apply a disadvantage to the that advantage: (Limited: Only to simulate real world aerobatic maneuvers -1/?, optionally combined with, Requires a combat pilot skill roll -1/2)  This relies on the player to enforce the limitation but it means the GM does not need training as a pilot to be a good GM.

[Derek Hiemforth]

40 minutes ago, foolishvictor said:

Alternatively, the player should buy the advantage that allows any turn at any time and then apply a disadvantage to the that advantage: (Limited: Only to simulate real world aerobatic maneuvers -1/?, optionally combined with, Requires a combat pilot skill roll -1/2) 

 

Probably even easier to buy Movement Skill Levels for use in decreasing the Turn Mode.

[BNakagawa]

part of the mechanical question is how to handle vertical flight with turn mods. Can you just take a regular turn and be considered to be going straight up or down or should you have to move 1.5 your turn mod before being allowed to go vertical?

[Christopher R Taylor]

A roll is like changing your facing in a hex, it doesn't require a turn mode.

[Derek Hiemforth]

10 hours ago, BNakagawa said:

part of the mechanical question is how to handle vertical flight with turn mods. Can you just take a regular turn and be considered to be going straight up or down or should you have to move 1.5 your turn mod before being allowed to go vertical?

 

Let's say you have Flight 40m and you want to do an Immelman. To finish it you obviously need to turn 180 degrees, so you need to make three 60-degree turns. For simplicity's sake, I'd say you'd need to halve your movement distance for fighting gravity until you level off after the third 60-degree turn.

 

The first turn (presumably right after the start of your Phase) is "free," and now you have to halve your movement speed, then you have to move at least X meters before making the second turn, and then X more meters before making the third turn. After this, you no longer have to halve your movement speed.

 

Crunching some numbers, it comes out to needing to allocate 24m of movement distance to account for the halving that comes with climbing, leaving 16m unmodified for flying level after the Immelman. So the total distance traveled this Phase is going to be 28m (24m halves to 12m for climbing, plus 16m remaining of our original 40m = 28m).  That gives us a Turn Mode of 28/5 = 5.6, rounded to 6. So you make the first 60-degree turn, fly 6m up, turn again, fly 6m further up, turn the last time to level off, and fly 16m more.

 

All of that is for a Full Move.  If you only want to do a 20m Half Move, then it would be free turn, fly 3m up (which uses up 6m), turn and fly 3m further up (which uses up another 6m), then turn to level off and fly the remaining 8m for the half move (14m total distance moved / 5 = Turn Mode of 3).

 

[BNakagawa]

12 hours ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

Let's say you have Flight 40m and you want to do an Immelman. To finish it you obviously need to turn 180 degrees, so you need to make three 60-degree turns. For simplicity's sake, I'd say you'd need to halve your movement distance for fighting gravity until you level off after the third 60-degree turn.

 

The first turn (presumably right after the start of your Phase) is "free," and now you have to halve your movement speed, then you have to move at least X meters before making the second turn, and then X more meters before making the third turn. After this, you no longer have to halve your movement speed.

 

Crunching some numbers, it comes out to needing to allocate 24m of movement distance to account for the halving that comes with climbing, leaving 16m unmodified for flying level after the Immelman. So the total distance traveled this Phase is going to be 28m (24m halves to 12m for climbing, plus 16m remaining of our original 40m = 28m).  That gives us a Turn Mode of 28/5 = 5.6, rounded to 6. So you make the first 60-degree turn, fly 6m up, turn again, fly 6m further up, turn the last time to level off, and fly 16m more.

 

All of that is for a Full Move.  If you only want to do a 20m Half Move, then it would be free turn, fly 3m up (which uses up 6m), turn and fly 3m further up (which uses up another 6m), then turn to level off and fly the remaining 8m for the half move (14m total distance moved / 5 = Turn Mode of 3).

 

So you're calculating turn mod based on the actual number of hexes moved, not the number of flight capacity used to achieve them? But how do you know how much  you need to move before turning if you haven't picked out your path yet and don't know how many actual hexes your path will stretch? What if you can't decide where you are turning because you can't see what's behind a wall you won't reach until your first turn? Is your turn mode 3 or 4? Might even be 5 if you fly downward.

 

[Duke Bushido]

I am not being flippant when I say "them's the breaks;" I promise you I'm not.  That's the exact same real-world predicament we face when we choose to run around a corner, or walk through a shopping center with our eyes glued to a cellphone screen (Man... I _love_ those security cam videos...    )

 

The key is in what Derrick said already: he didn't say "your movement distance," but your movement _speed_.  You determine your movement speed by determining how many hexes you are going to _attempt_ to move in this action (Phase or Half-Phase).  You will be traveling at a speed sufficient to carry you the exact number of hexes you wish to travel in the exact amount of time you wish to get there, assuming both are within your limits.  While the case can be made that Half Moves should be considered half-speed because you will only move that distance the entire Phase, it doesn't work that way because, while the System doesn't _mandate_ that you must move, then stop, then take your second Half-Phase (after all, you can declare a Half Move _while_ straffing the room on your way through, right?), it _does_ model it that way when you put figures on maps, so to speak.  Because of that, the distance you have opted to move is your Movement Speed.  Yes; it is also your Movement Distance, but because we know exactly how long it is going to take you to move that distance, it is also your actual speed, since it is the rate you will have to travel to move the distance you have announced in the time required (your Phase).

 

That speed is your speed, even if something goes wrong.  If you opt to make a 20" dash around a corner just 6" away, only to find that as you round the bend, you have run face-first into a brick wall hidden behind the lovely details of the facade, well your movement speed is still 20".  In this case, it determines how badly you hurt face when you roll for damage. 

 

A Character in the game need not see his entire path: if I decide to ride to the grocery store on the edge of my neighborhood, I am doing it knowing that there are a number of twists and turns I have to follow, and the only part of the path I can see when I leave are my driveway in my rearview mirror.  That's why I declare a "movement speed" for that Phase that will only take me to the end of the driveway, where I can check for traffic, stray dogs, or whatever.  I still _totally_ have the option to back down the driveway at 35 mph, make a hard reversed right into the street before beginning my deceleration and stop, throw it in first and floor it to eighty or so, ignore the stop sign and blindly slide around the first hard right---

 

If I shoot off the side of that curve and hit a tree, we can all accept that I was running 85.  If I miraculously don't slide off the road at that hard right and plow dead on into a garbage truck-- well, my motorcycle is _going_ to stop, ending my movement _way_ before I planned when I decided my movement speed, but that speed is still 85 mph; I just don't get the distance I was planning on, and a lot of damage I wasn't planning on.

 

As for your other question: do I need to make one or two 60-degree turns before I can be considered to be at 90 degrees to my original trajectory? (I am not putting words in your mouth; I am rephrasing for clarity  . )

 

Per the rules, you turn 60 degrees at a time.  That hard limit is set by examples of Turn Mode and Turning given in the rules.  What is not even mentioned is a minimum required Turn (unless this has changed for 6e, of course).  Because of this, and because it fits into the general sensibilities of the HERO System-- three levels of growth mean that you can be "up to this big," but you don't have to be _all_ of that big, for example.  Even in the case of movement: if you have 60" of running, you can run _up to_ 60", but you can certainly run slower if you want--

 

At any rate, I tend to rule that you must enter your second turn before you can be considered to be moving at 90 degrees to your original path.  There is a corollary to this:  if you are pulling a 180 or an Immelmann or a Split S or whatever and change your mind-- you have entered into your second turn and decide "you know what?  I am going to head in this direction for a few hexes-- even if you have _not_ outrun your turn mode-mandated minimum inches, you will have to make two Turns again: your first one is free (as always), and you will have to travel your mandated speed-based minimum to enter your second turn and finish the 90 degree maneuver.

 

Why do I do this?  Why do I do it even when you change you mind right after you entered your second turn?

 

Because the modeling -- the figures, the maps, the minimum inches, the 60 degree turns are only broken up so that they can be represented on paper at speeds relative to the speeds and actions of other things going on in the scene.  On paper, it's turn-straight-turn-straight-turn, but this is _representing_ a continuous, smooth arc.  Once you declare that you have left that arc-- "I think I'm just going to straighten out here," you have announced that you have completed your maneuver and are now moving straight, even if it looks identical on paper.  You will have to begin another maneuver to get back to your original plan.

 

But that's just me; I have wargaming roots, as does the mapping system used in the HERO System.  My wargaming roots don't run as deeply or as strongly as Scott's or likely many others on this board, but they run deeply enough that if you declare that you have completed or broken a maneuver, then that is what has happened.

 

Other GMs may rule completely differently or allow "backsies" or whatever.  Maybe they require you to keep your finger on your pawn or something; I don't know.  I do know that they aren't wrong, either: it's just a decision regarding how you are going to handle modeling and how attentive you want your players to be when they make decisions.

 

 

It's all a bit long winded, but I was trying to be as clear as possible, with an example or two.

 

I hope something in there helped