"Ultimate" vehicle? Really?

[cbullard]

Hey, there.  Back after a plague-induced hiatus from TTRPGs!

Superhero group is going to be doing some interplanetary stuff (think X-Men and the Shiar Empire, etc.) and yours truly has been tasked with designing the vehicle for Our Heroes to travel back and forth, etc.  
 

Looking at some of the stuff in "The Ultimate Vehicle," I'm hoping some of you have house rules that you've had a chance to work out and playtest, that you'd be willing to share so that we don't have to reinvent the wheel.

 

For example, for space travel, how do you guys handle movement?  Do you use the "constant acceleration"/Cumulative Advantage option they mention on p.87, or have you found something better?

 

I don't think the authors took the time to consider just how freaking BIG space is.  Either that, or they never bothered to actually look at what their own numbers mean.

Take the "Space Merchantman" on pp. 95-96.  For "In-System Maneuvering Thrusters" they've given this ship Flight 20 x4 non-combat.  The Merchantman has a Speed of 2, so a standard interpretation of Flight movement would mean it travels 80" on each of its 2 phases, or 160m every 12 seconds.  At that speed, it would take them 2.9 years to complete a single orbit around the Earth at the lofty altitude of 200km above the surface.

Using the "constant acceleration" option, a trip of that same distance would take about 3 hours if you wanted to stop at the end of the trip, or about 1.5 hours if you just wanted to keep going.  The acceleration wouldn't even be too bad: just 1.3Gs.  For three years, the passengers might get tired of that.  For 3 hours?  Not a big deal!

I'm also wondering if I'm misunderstanding something (probably!) or if there's an error in the text.

 

Ultimate Vehicle, p. 23 says: "Vehicles may buy the Rapid Noncombat Movement (+1/4) (Hero System 5th Edition, Revised, page 124) Advantage for their Movement Powers.  However, they may not buy the Combat Acceleration/Deceleration or Noncombat Acceleration/Deceleration Advantages to improve the number of inches they can accelerate/decelerate per hex"

 

But one of the examples, the Nuclear Space Missile on p. 132 includes this in the list of powers:

Engine: Flight 40", x1000 Noncombat, Non-Combat Acceleration/Deceleration (+1)

Doesn't that say, "Hey, you can't do this, but we're going to give you an example of doing it anyway"?  Or am I missing/misinterpreting something?

I hope this finds all of you well, and thank you in advance for any input you may have!

[Grailknight]

Glad to see you back!

 

For movement at interplanetary distances, you going to want to look at the Megascale Advantage rules for movement. They change 1m. increments into kilometers and additional levels increase this by factors of 10 per step. It can still get rather pricey, but it is doable.

 

For interstellar travel, you'd use the FTL Movement rules.

[Lord Liaden]

2 hours ago, cbullard said:

I'm also wondering if I'm misunderstanding something (probably!) or if there's an error in the text.

 

Ultimate Vehicle, p. 23 says: "Vehicles may buy the Rapid Noncombat Movement (+1/4) (Hero System 5th Edition, Revised, page 124) Advantage for their Movement Powers.  However, they may not buy the Combat Acceleration/Deceleration or Noncombat Acceleration/Deceleration Advantages to improve the number of inches they can accelerate/decelerate per hex"

 

But one of the examples, the Nuclear Space Missile on p. 132 includes this in the list of powers:

Engine: Flight 40", x1000 Noncombat, Non-Combat Acceleration/Deceleration (+1)

Doesn't that say, "Hey, you can't do this, but we're going to give you an example of doing it anyway"?  Or am I missing/misinterpreting something?

 

 

An error is definitely possible based on precedents from other 5E books; but there are also a number of occasions when published write-ups bend or disregard the letter of the default rules to achieve a particular desired effect.

 

I don't have access to UV right now, so I'll ask: Is the Nuclear Space Missile intended to be manned, or is it just a guided weapon? If the latter, it's a "vehicle" per system build rules, but not in-game use. Also, is there anything about how the missile is described in terms of its function, for which N-CA/D would be necessary?

[cbullard]

19 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Is the Nuclear Space Missile intended to be manned, or is it just a guided weapon? If the latter, it's a "vehicle" per system build rules, but not in-game use.

 

Well, I suppose it COULD be manned, in the same way that the WWII Japanese Zeros were, but like them it would be a suicide ride.  No, it's a "system build rules vehicle" but not a "in-game use vehicle."

 

19 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

Also, is there anything about how the missile is described in terms of its function, for which N-CA/D would be necessary?

Not that I see, which puzzled me even more.  Although given how fast most real-world missiles accelerate I could certainly see a justification for N-CA/D for all but the largest of them.

[cbullard]

21 hours ago, Grailknight said:

Glad to see you back!

 

For movement at interplanetary distances, you going to want to look at the Megascale Advantage rules for movement. They change 1m. increments into kilometers and additional levels increase this by factors of 10 per step. It can still get rather pricey, but it is doable.

Thank you, it's good to be back!

And I agree, Megascale movement is definitely the way to go -- and yet they didn't do that in the example I mentioned.  On that part, I guess I was just firing Frustration Energy Bolts from my mouth (or fingers, in this case) ;-) about them including things that are supposed to be examples of how to do things where those examples are basically unworkable.

 

 

21 hours ago, Grailknight said:

For interstellar travel, you'd use the FTL Movement rules.

Yeah, I'm still doing some juggling to see if we want to use straight FTL, mega-scaled Teleport, or even Dimensional Travel.  (He's already told me we don't have stargates or wormholes.) 

 

I'm personally inclined to the greater flexibility of FTL, but I need to pin down the GM to see how far away the Shiar Empire is so I can know how many levels of FTL to buy in order to make the trip duration somewhere between "We'll be there in time for supper" and "We'll be there for Christmas... of 2025." ;-)

[Lord Liaden]

If it helps, I got this off the Marvel Fandom Wiki: "Unlike the Kree and Skrull Galaxies, which are identified as the Large Magellanic Cloud and Andromeda Galaxy, respectively, the Shi'ar Galaxy has yet to be associated with a real-life galaxy. Annihilation: Prologue stated the Shi'ar Empire to be located in M31; however as M31 is another designation for the Andromeda Galaxy, this is unlikely. A similarly-named galaxy such as M33 - the Triangulum Galaxy - may have been intended, but so far the error is yet to be corrected."