brionl Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 So, having just seen the movie (loved it), anybody done any work on stating out the Thunderbird machines? How many inches of flight do you need to get from the South Pacific to London in an hour? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edsel Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Well Fiji is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the South Pacific and the distance from London to Fiji is about 16250 km. Assuming that each hex is 2 meters. That means that the distance is 8,125,000". If your vehicle's SPD is 4 it would need to have 6771" of flight (rounded to the nearest inch) to get there in an hour. Your gonna want to mega-scale the movement or buy lots of non-combat multiples. At sea level mach 1 is 751 mph. At 30,000 feet mach 1 is only about 678 mph. I'd guess that 30,000 feet is a much more likely cruising altitude. That would mean your vehicle would be traveling at mach 14.9. If you are in the atmosphere any currently known hull design would melt. But the Thunderbirds are science fiction. I have been curious about this movie and I hope I get to go and see it this week or next weekend. Glad to know someone has seen it and likes it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Yeah, I was thinking mega-scale too. It was Thunderbird 2 that went from Tracy Island to London in an hour. Thunderbird 1 took a lot less time, say 15-30 minutes. You could probably do it with a sub-orbital hop, but of course the movie showed them going nape-of-earth. You could have a multi-power, Thunderflight: Megascale flight for covering ground, then VTOL mode, since they can demonstrably hover, and move forward/backwards/sideways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowcat1313 Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! I remember the original series well, and I've always wondered if the Thunderbirds Vehicles and the Eagle from Space 1999 helped inspire the Modular Cutter of traveller fame. the vehicles and modules wont be hard to duplicate, ya gotta wonder how much equipment they had on the island that never saw use. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Well Fiji is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the South Pacific and the distance from London to Fiji is about 16250 km. Assuming that each hex is 2 meters. That means that the distance is 8,125,000". If your vehicle's SPD is 4 it would need to have 6771" of flight (rounded to the nearest inch) to get there in an hour. Your gonna want to mega-scale the movement or buy lots of non-combat multiples. OK, I admit it. I suck at figuring out real world speeds vs flight inches. Has somebody put up a table, or formula somewhere? I was looking at my DVDs of the original serices, and it does have stats for the originals. Thunderbird 1 Ht: 115 ft, Width: 12 ft, Wingspan: 80 ft, Max. Speed: 15,000 mph, Wt: 40 tons. If somebody can give me the secret for converting 15,000 mph to inches of flight, I can figure out the rest for myself. Well, I already did some of it, size 12 gives you a length of 32m, which is close enough. Hmm, looking at the stats for TB2, max speed 5,000 mph. That would take about 2 hrs to get from Fiji to London. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowcat1313 Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! ok, its going to vary by speed and NCM I figured it at Speed 4 and *8 NCM which gives it a flight speed of 1,257 per phase Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaeto Posted August 2, 2004 Report Share Posted August 2, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! I saw the movie and loved it too! F.A.B. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JmOz Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Let's assume the spped 4, you need aproximatly 13" with one level of Megascale, I would personaly raise it to 15" and give it Var Advantage instead (this way you can modulate your speed to 1"=10m, 1"=100m, 1"=1KM, also find a +1/4 advantage to allow normal speed flight, ala usable underwater) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edsel Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! OK' date=' I admit it. I suck at figuring out real world speeds vs flight inches. Has somebody put up a table, or formula somewhere?[/quote'] Attached is a nifty little windows utility for converting speeds to Hero System equivlants. For example, you can input mph and get inches per segement. This came from the old Red October BBS (an ancient Hero resource). EDIT: See later post for fixed attachment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaeto Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Let's assume the spped 4' date=' you need aproximatly 13" with one level of Megascale, I would personaly raise it to 15" and give it Var Advantage instead (this way you can modulate your speed to 1"=10m, 1"=100m, 1"=1KM, also find a +1/4 advantage to allow normal speed flight, ala usable underwater)[/quote'] Well both Thunderbird 1 and Thunderbird 2 are air breather aircraft so the useable underwater wouldn't be appropriate. The watercraft is Thunderbird 4. Personally I'd buy two flight powers, one for hypersonic flight and one for slow flight and hover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kaeto Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! I remember the original series well, and I've always wondered if the Thunderbirds Vehicles and the Eagle from Space 1999 helped inspire the Modular Cutter of traveller fame. the vehicles and modules wont be hard to duplicate, ya gotta wonder how much equipment they had on the island that never saw use. Lots of it. I just picked up the DVD of the first feature length movie they did of the original show. It was titled "Thunderbirds are Go!". $14.99 at Suncoast Video. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 3, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Attached is a nifty little windows utility for converting speeds to Hero System equivlants. For example' date=' you can input mph and get inches per segement. This came from the old Red October BBS (an ancient Hero resource).[/quote'] Doesn't seem to work under WinXP. I downloaded VBRun, but it's still missing SAXTABS.VBX. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 3, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! OK, this is what I'm looking at for Thunderbird 1: 50 pts Flight 30", x128 Noncombat, Sideways Maneuverability half velocity (+1/4) (112 Active Points); Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Jet Blast; -1/2), Costs Endurance (-1/2), Air Breathing Engine (-1/4) 11 End Thunderbird 2 is only about half as fast, so x64 Noncombat. Air Breathing Engine is so it can't go orbital. Costs Endurance, it runs off a fusion reactor (End Reserve) and uses heated air as the reaction mass. Although doing it that way would like you move sideways (and backwards, do you need a seperate advantage for that?) at non-combat speed as well. OK, 30" * 128 * 2 (meters per "inch") = 7680 meters per phase @ spd 4. Round off to 8 km per phase, That's 8" of flight at Megascale 1"=1km? Is that right? I still don't get this Megascale movement. I haven't really played a game of Hero since 3rd edition. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Carman Posted August 3, 2004 Report Share Posted August 3, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! I still don't get this Megascale movement. I haven't really played a game of Hero since 3rd edition. It is an Advantage to allow high velocity/long range powers without the cost getting too extreme; it redefines the scale of 1" in system terms. Megascaled movement is always considered to be noncombat, with all of the accompanying downsides. Megascaled attack powers (which the GM better examine very closely) have a lot of reach but no short-range utility, and are really only good against large targets. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edsel Posted August 4, 2004 Report Share Posted August 4, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Doesn't seem to work under WinXP. I downloaded VBRun' date=' but it's still missing SAXTABS.VBX.[/quote'] Oops! It had been so long since I used this thing I forgot that a readme and the saxtabs.vbx were part of the original zip file. The fixed version is attached here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 4, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 4, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! It is an Advantage to allow high velocity/long range powers without the cost getting too extreme; it redefines the scale of 1" in system terms. Megascaled movement is always considered to be noncombat' date=' with all of the accompanying downsides. Megascaled attack powers (which the GM better examine [i']very[/i] closely) have a lot of reach but no short-range utility, and are really only good against large targets. I know what it *is*, I just can't figure out how to translate it into real-worldish terms. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeropoint Posted August 5, 2004 Report Share Posted August 5, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! in real world terms, it makes a power work over longer distances at the cost of loss of resolution, so to speak. Some examples: Megascale flight: "I can fly REALLY fast--so fast that I have trouble stopping in the right county." Megascale energy blast: "This blaster cannon can relieably hit a target out to 30 light-seconds. Of course, to get that kind of precision, we had to gear the servos WAY down, so it can't move fast enough to track a target within 500 kilometers." I hope that helps. Zeropoint Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 5, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 5, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Still not my question. How many inches of what megascale flight to go 12,000 mph? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JmOz Posted August 5, 2004 Report Share Posted August 5, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Assuming speed 4 speed 4*5 turns*60 min=1200 * inches of movements gives you KMPH Multiply by .62 for mph gives you 745 * Inches of movement, or if you want something a little bit more useful: 186*Speed* movement gives you a good aproximation of MPH Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Major Tom Posted August 6, 2004 Report Share Posted August 6, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! I remember the original series well, and I've always wondered if the Thunderbirds Vehicles and the Eagle from Space 1999 helped inspire the Modular Cutter of traveller fame. the vehicles and modules wont be hard to duplicate, ya gotta wonder how much equipment they had on the island that never saw use. Considering that all of the special-purpose rescue vehicles that appeared on Thunderbirds were one-shots (used only for an episode's particular emer- gency), and given that there could only be so much hangar/storage space on their island, I'd guess that there wouldn't be more than 10 pieces of special- purpose rescue equipment available to them (not counting their primary ve- hicles). Major Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brionl Posted August 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted August 7, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! Considering that all of the special-purpose rescue vehicles that appeared on Thunderbirds were one-shots (used only for an episode's particular emer- gency), and given that there could only be so much hangar/storage space on their island, I'd guess that there wouldn't be more than 10 pieces of special- purpose rescue equipment available to them (not counting their primary ve- hicles). Major Tom Well, for Thunderbird Island base, I was going to make a largish VPP for "rescue equipment". All of it would be OAF, bulky, fragile. Also requires a skill roll. I don't know if extra time would be necessary or even a real limitation, since most of the action takes place away from the base. There are a few that were used frequently, like the mole machine, which should be seperate vehicles, but how often did they use the remote controlled elevator cars that were in the first episode (Fireflash)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Major Tom Posted August 7, 2004 Report Share Posted August 7, 2004 Re: Thunderbirds are Go! As I remember from the run of Thunderbirds on TechTV, the elevator cars were only used in that particular episode and in no other. Major Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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