Does Megascale always have to be non-combat?

[Jujitsuguy]

Gang:

I have a game which genre shares the use of Star Hero in that there will be spaceship combat.  As a practicality, my universe won't allow combat at FTL, but most ships in space if not going FTL, they travel at Megascale speeds.

 

That said, I read that any use of Megascale automatically makes it non-combat when it is applied to movement.  (If I am wrong on this, please point me to the rules for such)

 

In this case, an Megascale be used as non-combat as ships have immense power and can handle combat at much higher than normal speeds.

 

Is there a ruling on this in the RAR, or may I need to make a general exception as a GM in my game?

 

I appreciate any and all wisdom here...

 

Jujitsuguy aka "Chuck D"

[Grailknight]

So just the the scale of a hex to a much larger area. That will give you ships that are moving fast enough to move within a solar system without invoking Megascale  by just buying 2x Multiplier Adders.

[LoneWolf]

The big problem when moving at megascale speeds is that you end up out of range of the other ships weapons and sensors when you move a single hex.  When you take a -14 penalty to OCV, and perception rolls for a target that is 1hex away it makes combat kind of difficult.

 

The way I would handle it is to have the weapons and sensors of the ship buy the same level of megascale as the movement.  At that point everything is about equal and combat should be able to be run normally.  You can also scale up the sizes at the same time so that the ships are not getting penalties because of size. This is probably going prevent some weapons from being used.  This is similar to what they did in Robot Warriors.  

 

One thing I have noticed in a lot of your post is you are pretty focused on the rules and are often looking for rulings.  The Hero System has a complex rules system and for the most part the rules are fairly well written.  But the philosophy of the Hero System encourages the GM to modify things to suit their campaign.  When Steve Long was answering the rules questions, he almost always added a line like “This is how I would do it, but the of course the GM is free to alter if they choose”.  Most people on the forums also go by this idea.   We may argue on some aspects of the rules, but almost everyone here expects there to be a lot of house rules.   In the Hero System you will almost never see some of the ridiculous RAW arguments that other game systems have.  You are not going to see someone here arguing that a dead person can take an action like I have seen in other games.       
 

[unclevlad]

What Grail said.  Redefine a hex for ships.  To go a step further, don't bother specifying it, like 1 hex = 10,000 meters.  A core mistake in sci fi is over-defining;  it just comes back to bite you with inconsistencies.  Space is HUGE.  1 astronomical unit (AU) is the distance from the earth to the sun, 90 million miles or 150 million km.  So to cross 1 AU per hour, you need to move 2.5 million km per minute, or 500,000 km per turn.  That's not meters, it's km.  Let's say SPD 5 for the ship, so it's 100,000 km per phase.  So you're looking at +2 Megascale, 1" = 10,000 km unless you want to assign a really large base level.

 

And that's just 1 AU per hour.

 

The problems get even weirder if you insist on megascale for the ship movement and the weapon ranges, because you kick in the combat penalties for noncombat movement...OCV 0, DCV half.  Oh, and if you use it...the ships have velocity-based DCVs from hell.  DCV 1/2 has the nasty aspect that you do it absolutely LAST...so that cuts the DCVs down, but they're crazy high to start with.  MegaRange takes care of the range mods, but velo DCV is meters per turn...and our 1 AU per hour pace shows that's 500,000,000.  500 is 7;  x1000 is +20 (10 doublings).  So it's DCV 47.

 

Nooo thank you.  Redefine and abstract.  Sci fi does it all the time.  Military sci fi may not...but e.g. Glynn Stewart's ship combats include "we'll know in 15 minutes when the missile salvos reach"...and that doesn't work for a game.  

[Jujitsuguy]

15 hours ago, LoneWolf said:

The big problem when moving at megascale speeds is that you end up out of range of the other ships weapons and sensors when you move a single hex.  When you take a -14 penalty to OCV, and perception rolls for a target that is 1hex away it makes combat kind of difficult.

 

The way I would handle it is to have the weapons and sensors of the ship buy the same level of megascale as the movement.  At that point everything is about equal and combat should be able to be run normally.  You can also scale up the sizes at the same time so that the ships are not getting penalties because of size. This is probably going prevent some weapons from being used.  This is similar to what they did in Robot Warriors.  

 

One thing I have noticed in a lot of your post is you are pretty focused on the rules and are often looking for rulings.  The Hero System has a complex rules system and for the most part the rules are fairly well written.  But the philosophy of the Hero System encourages the GM to modify things to suit their campaign.  When Steve Long was answering the rules questions, he almost always added a line like “This is how I would do it, but the of course the GM is free to alter if they choose”.  Most people on the forums also go by this idea.   We may argue on some aspects of the rules, but almost everyone here expects there to be a lot of house rules.   In the Hero System you will almost never see some of the ridiculous RAW arguments that other game systems have.  You are not going to see someone here arguing that a dead person can take an action like I have seen in other games.       
 

@LoneWolf Yes I agree on the use of Megascale and implementing such to accommodate.  I am using a hybrid of Star Trek and Traveller Hero rules to design ships, so all is consistent, instead of 80 different means to implement things.  Movement, Weapons, Sensors are all at Megascale and I am making it a General Rule in my campaign.

As for your observation on my rules request, it is because I am not one of those folks that memorizes all the rules, and during the game I get occasional Rules Lawyering occurring during gameplay, bringing the game to a near halt.  One of the players in my group--who left the game partially due to this--indicated that the GM rulings are end-all and let's keep the game moving forward.
I am trying to put down the law such that if there is a solid statement that we can implement quickly, then we do it..otherwise, I rule and get the game moving.  If later and OFFINE we can discuss the rule and I can review to learn it and implement it reasonably.

I do appreciate your input and wisdom here...hope to implement this successfully in my campaign.

 

Cheers...

[Jujitsuguy]

3 hours ago, unclevlad said:

What Grail said.  Redefine a hex for ships.  To go a step further, don't bother specifying it, like 1 hex = 10,000 meters.  A core mistake in sci fi is over-defining;  it just comes back to bite you with inconsistencies.  Space is HUGE.  1 astronomical unit (AU) is the distance from the earth to the sun, 90 million miles or 150 million km.  So to cross 1 AU per hour, you need to move 2.5 million km per minute, or 500,000 km per turn.  That's not meters, it's km.  Let's say SPD 5 for the ship, so it's 100,000 km per phase.  So you're looking at +2 Megascale, 1" = 10,000 km unless you want to assign a really large base level.

 

And that's just 1 AU per hour.

 

The problems get even weirder if you insist on megascale for the ship movement and the weapon ranges, because you kick in the combat penalties for noncombat movement...OCV 0, DCV half.  Oh, and if you use it...the ships have velocity-based DCVs from hell.  DCV 1/2 has the nasty aspect that you do it absolutely LAST...so that cuts the DCVs down, but they're crazy high to start with.  MegaRange takes care of the range mods, but velo DCV is meters per turn...and our 1 AU per hour pace shows that's 500,000,000.  500 is 7;  x1000 is +20 (10 doublings).  So it's DCV 47.

 

Nooo thank you.  Redefine and abstract.  Sci fi does it all the time.  Military sci fi may not...but e.g. Glynn Stewart's ship combats include "we'll know in 15 minutes when the missile salvos reach"...and that doesn't work for a game.  

@Grailknight & @unclevlad:

I do such in my game to accommodate MegaScale, just as @LoneWolf referenced.  The OCV vs DCV at that level I am scaling to put it at the same reference as we would for players at lower speeds and same relative size, to help gameplay move.  Also, I make it mandatory all ships at that level have computers to indicate flight and fire control are managed at this layer.

 

Weapons have a MegaScale for range to accommodate this, so it matches the MegaScale movement, as well as sensors have this as well, in my game/campaign rules.  Also, I say in my gaming rules for ship combat--as per my game's "physics"--combat speeds for MegaScale are at max 1% LightSpeed(LS), which is flight at 3m, MegaScale 1m=1000km, base, depending on ship speed.

0.1LS = 3000Km/sec for reference.  If you had SPD 12 that would accommodate base movement at that rate, which is 36000Km/Turn...

So, a SPD 3 ship would be at 12m, MegaScale 1m=1000km, which would be the max for combat speed....just some quick numbers here for reference.

My map uses each "hex"--I don't use a grid on Roll20, but freeform calculations--which each "hex" is roughly 50-100km for scaling purposes.  I might change this to 1000km per hex w/ a huge scale map to accommodate, as indicated before.

Even if the above doesn't go, I make the Combat speed to under 0.1% LS...makes the scale 1/10 the original.

I appreciate both of your observations and wisdom here...

Cheers...

[unclevlad]

If everything is at megascale, then nothing is at megascale.  You've simply redefined the fundamental scale

 

What Grail and I are saying is that you simplify EVERYTHING in the rules by making this even more fundamental...change the scale and DON'T use Megascale, which is supposed to be very much non-combat.  Your combat speed is 36,000 km/turn...which, BTW, is 0.01 C, 1%.  C is 300,000 km/sec, so .1 C is 30,000 instead of 3,000.  That's why I say, DON'T specify.  It just comes back to bite you.  But that's your combat speed, so changing the scale fully leaves you within the combat rules.

 

And another advantage is, you don't have to pay extreme costs for your sensors, since MegaScale would triple THEIR cost.  Same with the weapons.  You get to express everything in much simpler terms.

 

Hex is fine, in fact a WHOLE lot easier, but 50-100 km is not ship scale, not even at 0.01 C.  That's eyeblink scale...you cover 100 km in 1/30th of a second.

 

The point that the computer controls everything's a given.  There is no choice at the speeds involved.  Human reaction variation is much too high.  Maintaining suspension of disbelief is hard enough for direct-fire weapons like phasers, shooting at a 1 km-sized box or so, from 10,000 km away, when that box is moving at 3000 km/second.  The accuracy required is *obscenely* high.  Humans process information and react 2-3 orders of magnitude too slowly, at least.  So this is just a given.

[megaplayboy]

Useful map scales depend upon the movement rates of the vehicles involved.

 

1 meter per hex is fine so long as nobody is moving faster than about 30m/second (about 67mph).  10 meters per hex works fine for fast cars and subsonic aircraft.   100 meters per hex works fine for fighter jets.  1km per hex is good for vessels in or near orbit.  10km per hex for vessels relatively close to a planet.  100km per hex for maneuvering inside a planetary system.  1000km per hex for encounters at the fringes of star systems, and 10k km per hex for deep space combat (30 hexes per segment is lightspeed!).   If you're going to permit FTL combat, I'd just abstract it out since the distances involved are immense, and ships too far apart in speed simply won't be able to stay in range of each other.  

If you want to model realistic effects of collisions at high speeds, simply use the optional velocity factor rules and work out the relative VF of vehicles based on their speeds.  Fair to say that collisions at near-light speed are ones that nobody is walking away from.  

[Jujitsuguy]

10 hours ago, megaplayboy said:

Useful map scales depend upon the movement rates of the vehicles involved.

 

1 meter per hex is fine so long as nobody is moving faster than about 30m/second (about 67mph).  10 meters per hex works fine for fast cars and subsonic aircraft.   100 meters per hex works fine for fighter jets.  1km per hex is good for vessels in or near orbit.  10km per hex for vessels relatively close to a planet.  100km per hex for maneuvering inside a planetary system.  1000km per hex for encounters at the fringes of star systems, and 10k km per hex for deep space combat (30 hexes per segment is lightspeed!).   If you're going to permit FTL combat, I'd just abstract it out since the distances involved are immense, and ships too far apart in speed simply won't be able to stay in range of each other.  

If you want to model realistic effects of collisions at high speeds, simply use the optional velocity factor rules and work out the relative VF of vehicles based on their speeds.  Fair to say that collisions at near-light speed are ones that nobody is walking away from.  

@megaplayboy:

THANK YOU for the observation and wisdom on this...I was thinking in these lines relative to the speeds used.  In my campaign, I left the physics in general to allow ships up to 0.1-1% Light Speed (LS) at a Combat Speed rate, to accommodate these velocities for combat, and will scale it as necessary.

 

Cheers to all...

Edited September 9, 2022 by Jujitsuguy
Updated statement