Vehicle speeds in m/s

[Thot]

Obviously, vehicle speeds in Mythras and M-Space are abstract values and cannot be directly translated into an actual real-life speed value.

But as soon as I have people on foot and vehicles interact with one another, I need some kind of actual, non-abstract speed value for a given vehicle. How have you guys solved this problem in your campaigns? Have you just declared a rough range for each vehicle class (such as 100-200 km/h for cars, and 100-850 km/h for propeller-driven airplanes), and placed any given vehicles in that range according  to their speed?

[Ian Absentia]

I haven't actually dealt with vehicles at speed in Mythras yet, that's an interesting question that I'm going to have to address soon.    My thought, and i doubt this is remotely original, is to list a safe Cruising Speed (fast, but still maneuverable at Standard difficulty grade) and a Top Speed (full capable speed, but with significant shift in difficulty).  For instance, a common passenger car might be listed as 100/160 kph.  In fact. I might even consider increments of speed corresponding to successively higher difficulty shifts to the Drive skill, perhaps 60/100/130/150  (Standard/Hard/Formidable/Herculean).  Appropriate mods for improved mechanics that aid maneuverability, etc.

Wait, but the title of the thread mentions meters per second, more or less the scale used for strategic movement on foot.  Did I miss something?

!i!

Edited May 22, 2022 by Ian Absentia

[Baron Wulfraed]

The key word was in the second paragraph of the original post: INTERACT

Which I'd take to mean things like jaywalkers popping out from between obstacles into vehicle paths, etc.

Unfortunately, the OP didn't really define any particular time period of vehicles... There is a significant difference between some urchin running out in front of a farmer's ox-drawn wagon vs some farmer's 1 1/4 ton class (2500) pickup truck (the pickup might throw the urchin across the way, while the ox might result in getting trampled).

 

[Ian Absentia]

Yeah, I did look past that and straight to Difficulty Grades for vehicular maneuvering.  A common car is 11/28/44 meters per second (street/cruising/full throttle) vs a common human at 1.2/3.6/6 mps (walk/jog/sprint).

Agreed that the type of vehicle is going to dictate the interface with a pedestrian, though I reckon your ox cart example might default to the Trample creature ability if it's the oxen that make contact before the cart and wheels.

!i!

[Thot]

11 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

[...]  For instance, a common passenger car might be listed as 100/160 kph.  In fact. I might even consider increments of speed corresponding to successively higher difficulty shifts to the Drive skill, perhaps 60/100/130/150  (Standard/Hard/Formidable/Herculean). 

Also an interesting thought, in fact  I am going to steal it for my planned vehicle-centric campaign!

 

11 hours ago, Ian Absentia said:

Wait, but the title of the thread mentions meters per second, more or less the scale used for strategic movement on foot.  Did I miss something?

!i!

Well, kph or m/s is just a matter of computation, of course. The key is: The abstract speed stat of two different vehicles (of the same type or of different types), how do they translate to actual speeds in concrete numbers?

[Thot]

To explain this maybe a bit clearer.

 

Say, I have a car with speed stat 2 and one with speed stat 19. How would you determine what precise top speed they each have, knowing that cars can go up to 400 km/h?

And what about a car with speed 18 compared a jet airplane with speed stat 3?

And so on. In a vehicle-centric campaign, that could become rather important. Especially when using M-Space's vehicle construction system.

 

I think I am going with the following approach:

I define a range of movement in a given medium, say, 50-400 km/h for a four-wheeled internal combustion car. Speed stat 1 then represents the 50 km/h, while speed stat 120 defines the theoretical maximum (a hypothetical car that is only engine of the best quality).  The range between my set speed boundaries of 100 to 400 is 300, so adding one speed stat point roughly equals 3 km/h. So speed 10 would be 130 km/h, speed 20 would be 160, and speed stat 40 would be 220 km/h.

 

Another example: Say, I have a space ship with a fusion torch drive. Ships with that drive type usually do accelerations of 0.001 m/s² and 0.01 m/s². That means a spread of 0.0099, distributed evenly among 120 theoretically possible speed stats is about 0.000075. So a speed stat of 20 will be equivalent to roughly 0.0025 m/s² of acceleration.

 

But I would love to read how others have approached this? Or what do you think of the above approach?

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by Thot

[Thot]

Only now I found the table for vehicles in M-Space. 😄

But that doesn't make sense, does it? With that,. I could build a car breaking the speed of sound.

 

[Baron Wulfraed]

22 hours ago, Thot said:

Only now I found the table for vehicles in M-Space. 😄

But that doesn't make sense, does it? With that,. I could build a car breaking the speed of sound.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercar_(TV_series)
http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~bat/GA/supercar-overview.html

Quote

we see it rise majestically through the hangar roof doors and zoom off at around 1500 miles per hour

I believe that's about Mach-2... and that show was created in the early 60s.

Admittedly, I don't know if "M-Space" is assuming a car must have wheels 🤔

 

[ThornPlutonius]

Remember to account for the medium through which/across which the vehicle is moving.  High traction?  Low traction?  Visibility? A Lamborghini will fly down a long straight smooth highway, but will relatively quickly become undrivable on soft wet uneven ground that is full of vegetation.

[Baron Wulfraed]

4 hours ago, ThornPlutonius said:

Remember to account for the medium through which/across which the vehicle is moving.  High traction?  Low traction?  Visibility? A Lamborghini will fly down a long straight smooth highway, but will relatively quickly become undrivable on soft wet uneven ground that is full of vegetation.

Never seen the LM002, have you? https://carbuzz.com/news/before-the-urus-arrives-let-s-look-back-at-the-lamborghini-lm002

 

[ThornPlutonius]

On 6/3/2022 at 4:48 PM, Baron Wulfraed said:

Never seen the LM002, have you? https://carbuzz.com/news/before-the-urus-arrives-let-s-look-back-at-the-lamborghini-lm002

 

Busted.  I was, of course, thinking about the classic high performance "sports" cars. 

[Thot]

On 6/3/2022 at 7:13 PM, ThornPlutonius said:

Remember to account for the medium through which/across which the vehicle is moving.  High traction?  Low traction?  Visibility? A Lamborghini will fly down a long straight smooth highway, but will relatively quickly become undrivable on soft wet uneven ground that is full of vegetation.

Hence my conclusion that the same table cannot possibly apply for all types of vehicles and my proposal to define speed ranges for each type of vehicle, say, a walker, a grav speeder, an airplane, a car, a spaceship.

 

How do you handle it?