Accelerate

[Sean Waters]

Do we need acceleration and deceleration rules? We only ever use them if we are about to smack into a wall or you want to do a move through. We ignore then far more - for example - if you have a 30" move and you do a full move starting from a standing start and finishing up not moving then the maximum move is 30". You accelerate/decelerate at 5"/phase per 1", so it takes 6" to get up to max velocity and another 6" to stop. In those 12" you are only moving at an average half full velocity, so you cover those 12" in the time it would normally take you to cover 24", leaving only 6" left at full velocuty - so in fact you should be moving 12+6=18", not 30".

 

I'm thinking we ought to either get rid of the rules entirely or make more of them - perhaps even base movement on acceleration not velocity. Any cunning thoughts?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Accelerate

 

I think you overthought the issue...

 

You start at V=0", travel 1" and V=5"; travel 2" and V=10" (you're moving at 10"/Phase, but have traveled 2"); by the time you've traveled 6" you are at V=30".

 

Having moved those 6" you have 24" of your V left before you've reached the Phase Maximum. You use the last 6" to slow down to V=0" (assuming you want to slow down). That meants 18" are at V=30".

 

The acceleration is important to determine your Actual Velocity when you reach a specific Hex. If you only have 4" to reach a target you can't hit that target at V=30", only V=20".

 

Your math, it is flawed within the mechanics of the system.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Accelerate

 

I think you overthought the issue...

 

You start at V=0", travel 1" and V=5"; travel 2" and V=10" (you're moving at 10"/Phase, but have traveled 2"); by the time you've traveled 6" you are at V=30".

 

Having moved those 6" you have 24" of your V left before you've reached the Phase Maximum. You use the last 6" to slow down to V=0" (assuming you want to slow down). That meants 18" are at V=30".

 

The acceleration is important to determine your Actual Velocity when you reach a specific Hex. If you only have 4" to reach a target you can't hit that target at V=30", only V=20".

 

Your math, it is flawed within the mechanics of the system.

 

Well I'll give you that it is not straightforward as a phase is not necessarily a set length of time, but if we assume someone with a SPD 12 we know that we are moving per segment and we know that 1 segment=1second.

 

Now my maths may well be flawed*, but I know one thing, in a game where we have acceleration and deceleration rates you can not move as far in a set unit of time starting and ending at zero than moving at max velocity throughout.

 

Whether you end a phase moving or not is something we tend to ignore in Hero but it is in fact vital for things like turn mode, and if you can say you've stopped with no movement penalty then turn mode becomes much less of a factor for flight and other modes that use it.

 

 

*Although the way you put it is the way I started thinking about it - but you move 12" at half speed, that does not leave enough time for 18" at full speed if you think about it. Either way though, you still can't cover 30" starting and ending at a velocity of 0".

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Accelerate

 

Movement in HERO is always something that annoyed me and so I tended to ignore it and fudge velocities etc for what seemed dramatic and appropriate. Most of the time I haven't needed to get into the details.

 

The fact that someone moving more slowly in velocity but in bigger jumps can catch someone because their phases overlap - an artefact of moving in phase jumps rather than smoothly over time is just jarring.

 

I am all for the simplicity of some of the rules as written but when they are examined in any detail, I do think they cause a lot of problems...

 

 

Doc

[ghost-angel]

Re: Accelerate

 

Movement in Hero is done so you can quickly game with it, not so it matches reality.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Accelerate

 

Movement in Hero is done so you can quickly game with it' date=' not so it matches reality.[/quote']

 

Absolutely, but the quick gaming sometimes throws up some odd results as a result of the different aspects of movement and the phase system.

 

It would be nice to have an quick gaming system that did not throw up the oddities.

 

Indeed, the fact that I do not use it often while gaming probably indicates that for me at least, it doesn't do the initial job of quick easy gaming very well either.

 

 

Doc

[nexus]

Re: Accelerate

 

Do we need acceleration and deceleration rules? We only ever use them if we are about to smack into a wall or you want to do a move through. We ignore then far more - for example - if you have a 30" move and you do a full move starting from a standing start and finishing up not moving then the maximum move is 30". You accelerate/decelerate at 5"/phase per 1", so it takes 6" to get up to max velocity and another 6" to stop. In those 12" you are only moving at an average half full velocity, so you cover those 12" in the time it would normally take you to cover 24", leaving only 6" left at full velocuty - so in fact you should be moving 12+6=18", not 30".

 

I'm thinking we ought to either get rid of the rules entirely or make more of them - perhaps even base movement on acceleration not velocity. Any cunning thoughts?

 

What do you mean by "we", Paleface?

 

Personally, I like the acceleration/deceleration rules and I wished there was some expansion to cover Megamovement. I find the handwaviness involved in going from normal scale to megascale more or less instantly in combat time off putting though I confess I don't have firm ideas of how to handle it so I've made Megaacle movement "out of combat' only in my games.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Accelerate

 

What do you mean by "we", Paleface?

 

Personally, I like the acceleration/deceleration rules and I wished there was some expansion to cover Megamovement. I find the handwaviness involved in going from normal scale to megascale more or less instantly in combat time off putting though I confess I don't have firm ideas of how to handle it so I've made Megaacle movement "out of combat' only in my games.

 

You and me, baby! Get that mojo flowing! Acceleration? Who needs it? You? Me? We?

 

What?

 

I thought megascale acceleration was pretty slow as it is treated as noncombat, but to be honest I almost never use megascale so I'd have to check.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Accelerate

 

I just realized your biggest issue...

 

Reality measures acceleration as a factor of velocity over time.

 

Hero measures is as a factor of velocity over distance.

 

You don't say a porche does 0-60 in 12 meters. You say it does 0-60 in 4.2 seconds.

[Hyper-Man]

Re: Accelerate

 

You and me, baby! Get that mojo flowing! Acceleration? Who needs it? You? Me? We?

 

What?

 

I thought megascale acceleration was pretty slow as it is treated as noncombat, but to be honest I almost never use megascale so I'd have to check.

 

Megascale acceleration works exactly like combat acceleration except that each inch of movement and acceleration represents whatever mega 'scale' is being used for the movement at that time.

 

A character with 10" of megascale movement (say flight where 1" = 1 km) takes 2" (2 kilometers) to reach his top speed of 10" (10 km/phase). It is a much faster acceleration than the basic non-combat doubling. This is usually balanced out by it's lack of precision and inherent danger in some situations.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Accelerate

 

I just realized your biggest issue...

 

Reality measures acceleration as a factor of velocity over time.

 

Hero measures is as a factor of velocity over distance.

 

You don't say a porche does 0-60 in 12 meters. You say it does 0-60 in 4.2 seconds.

 

That's right - but Hero uses a set time frame as well: a 12 SPD charcter moves their full move each second, a 3 SPD character moves their full move every 4 seconds. The calculation is solveable though - 0-60 in 12 metres, assuming uniform acceleration, still yields a lower velocity over that distance. If your total move is 60 metres and you have to accelerate for the first 12 metres and decelerate for the last 12, given that the time you take to move does not vary, you have to be travelling faster than your maximum velocity in the remaining 36 metres to cover the distance.

 

I think it is truer to say that Hero does not do velocity at all, it just does movement, and that the movement mechanics are not an accurate expression of real world velocity. The question then becomes: are the mechanics we are using the best compromise between realistic simulation and playability or not?

[Sean Waters]

Re: Accelerate

 

Megascale acceleration works exactly like combat acceleration except that each inch of movement and acceleration represents whatever mega 'scale' is being used for the movement at that time.

 

A character with 10" of megascale movement (say flight where 1" = 1 km) takes 2" (2 kilometers) to reach his top speed of 10" (10 km/phase). It is a much faster acceleration than the basic non-combat doubling. This is usually balanced out by it's lack of precision and inherent danger in some situations.

 

once more - thank you. Much more of this information gathering and i'm going to have to start paying you

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Accelerate

 

Movement in Hero is done so you can quickly game with it' date=' not so it matches reality.[/quote']

 

Agreed. I used to mentally struggle with it when I started with the HERO System, but eventually realized it was because I was over thinking it. Once I stopped trying to map reality, and used it as a mechanic i discovered that it actually works pretty well.

 

My only real complaint is that it doesn't handle movement across segments very well, from a logical perspective.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Accelerate

 

What do you mean by "we", Paleface?

 

Personally, I like the acceleration/deceleration rules and I wished there was some expansion to cover Megamovement. I find the handwaviness involved in going from normal scale to megascale more or less instantly in combat time off putting though I confess I don't have firm ideas of how to handle it so I've made Megaacle movement "out of combat' only in my games.

 

Megascale is NCM, so that's actually not unreasonable.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Accelerate

 

Also, preventing Megascale in combat prevents the "I grab them, then NCM flight into space and let them go" problem, as evidenced in the classic "Nova vs Namorita" fight.

 

Action

By: WilyQuixote

Posted: Sunday, February 19, 2006 09:06:06 PM

Viewable By: Killer Shrike (GM) , WilyQuixote

Nova smirks...

 

Action:

Nova switches flight to space flight mode and taking Namorita with him flies straight up oh a 150,000 Kilometers or so. Give or take. Game,set, and Match!

 

PHASE 8 DEX 17

By: Killer Shrike (GM)

Posted: Sunday, February 19, 2006 09:08:51 PM

Viewable By: Killer Shrike (GM) , Zed-F (GM)

REDUCED VISIBILITY!

Well...in future we should define a ceiling for the battle map.

 

Nova smirks at your comment and takes off into space, to roughly 1/2 way bewteen the Earth and the Moons orbit.

 

I could look up the Environmental Effects, explosive decompression, and so forth, but I don't think it really matters at this point.....

 

Unless you can think of something really clever, going to have to give this one to Nova.....

 

Map