Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
It can dogfight better.
The (D)Evolution of the Piloting Skill
- Thread starter Nathan Brazil
- Start date
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Sums up MgT's ridiculous cartoon cinematic dogfighting rules rather nicely.
Code:
Here are some recent results from Car and Driver and Motorcycle
Consumer News. CD tests from 70 and MCN from 60.
Initial Stopping
Vehicle Tested Speed Distance Deceleration (g)
------------ -------- ------- -------- ------------
Triumph MCN 2/99 60 106.7 1.12
Speed Triple
Corvette Z06 CD 2/01 70 152 1.08
Suzuki MCN 1/01 60 117.6 1.02
GSX-R600
Harley MCN 3/99 60 122.2 0.98
Road King
Honda Civic CD 11/00 70 186 0.88
Land Rover CD 12/00 70 211 0.78
Discovery
> Would it be very different on the wet?
The ABS commonly found on cars would give them an edge in rain or on
snow or other iffy surface.
> Is there any theoretical basis for saying that a 4-wheeled vehicle could
> stop faster than a 2-wheeled vehicle or vice-versa?
Motorcycles--especially sportbikes--are stoppie-limited. Given
wheelbase, center of mass height, and weight distribution, the back
end will lift at a fixed deceleration rate. Attempt to brake any
harder and over you go. On a sportbike, that rate is a little over
1g, and it can't be improved upon without changing the key parameters.
Cars equipped with decent brakes are grip-limited. Fit the Corvette
Z06 with race rubber, and it will out-stop any motorcycle. Because
car people are wusses ;-) who would find 1500-mile tread life
unacceptable, even the best sports cars are fitted with rock-hard
hoops that last 20,000 miles or more.Now I can't speak to an 18 wheeler with 5 axles of braking wheels, but I don't honestly think they can outbrake a motorcycle.
Loaded they can’t. However the breaking efficiency needed to stop a 36 tonne fully loaded truck in a reasonable amount of time, will stop an 18 ton empty truck much quicker. As a first order approximation, Stopping distance varies directly with mass and with the square of velocity. Double the weight and you double the stopping distance. Double the speed and the stopping distance increases x4. That means that your motorcycle stopping distances are also very sensitive to the weight of the rider(s). Add a passenger and that is a high percentage of the total weight of the bike and rider. Add a passenger to a car and that is a small percentage of the weight of the car and driver.
Another way to look at it is that if the truck had brakes that were only as good as the Corvette, then the truck would need 36 times the stopping distance or 152 x 36 = 5472 feet (about a mile) to stop, while in reality a truck only needs about a tenth that distance (500 feet) to stop. So the truck must have better brakes than the Corvette.
If you look at that chart, they have the Corvette with a braking force of 1.08g.
The Land Rover is .78g.
According to this (random) website, https://www.hg.org/legal-articles/stopping-distances-for-commercial-vehicles-28265 , they say:
Those distances include a 1.5s reaction time. Taking that in to account, you come up with the passenger car pulling .81g when stopping, but the truck only .36g.
The .81g is close enough to the earlier chart.
.36g is nowhere close to 1.08g of the Corvette. It's hard to imagine a scenario where a stock truck (loaded, unloaded, trailer, no trailer) is going to out stop a Corvette.
The Corvette is a light car, very low center of gravity, with huge, sticky tires compared to the trunk with it crushing momentum and tires designed for 50,000 miles of desert highways.
A pilot of a military transport, also got his private pilot's license. It was easy for him to get the private pilot's license, had to take ground school, x number of hours with instructor, then pass his solo, just like every other private pilot prospective licensee applicant. But what he did NOT need to learn was how to fly, and how to communicate with air traffic control, and how to land.
BackworldTraveller
SOC-13
To widen the question slightly, If I drop a Trepida Grav Tank from Orbit I need Flyer skill. If I do the same along the ground I need Drive and if I call it a small-craft (which can be smaller than this mega-lump) I need Pilot. Grav gets weird.
This will depend on the rules version...
The only one I know where Grav Vehicles use the flyer skill is MgT, as in CT/MT they use the Grav Vehicle skill, and in both cases they use the same skill no matter they are moving from Orbit or along the ground (even on NOW flying).
As per using Pilot (or ship's boat, again depending the versión), this is more for vehicles designed for space operations, no for gravitic vehicles, even when making orbital interface movements.
Of course, there's a point where the border among them blurs, mostly in MT when using space vehicles under 20 dton, where the propuslion is by grav modules...
MT's skills are quite directly tied to the craft rules... and the craft rules are far less ambiguous.
Vehicles are 0-20 tons
Ship's boat is for small craft. Small craft are 20 to 100 tons.
Pilot is for space vessels (ships and large craft —both of which start at 100 tons)
Now, a few things to note: there are small craft under 20 Td in some MT supplements, but ISTR them all being 10+ Td, so there's the overlap.
When I run, anything with a maneuver drive (be it anti-grav or thruster plates) is either a Ship's Boat or Space Vessel.
Anything with grav plates (instead of a MD) is a grav vehicle.
Anything on wheels is Wheeled Vehicle when on wheels
Anything on tracks is Tracked Vehicle.
Anything on rails is a special case - IMTU, it's a separate skill.
Anything built with COACC is one or more flavors of air vehicle... unless it also includes grav plates, in which case, it's either the appropriate air type, and/or grav vehicle.
Note that 10-tons is about the size of a long bus. Aircraft have a different definition and design sequence...
Yet, the fighter given in MT:IE page 80 is 10 dton, and so his maneuver drive must be grav plates (as some other fighters seen in several modules, including the Rampart seen in RS page 77). Do you use the grav vehicle skill for them?
See that the Flight School, where all thsoe fighters' operators are assumed to be trained, trains in Pilot and Ship's Boat ,but not on grav vehicle...
Ramparts are specifically listed as space fighters, and thus ship's boats, but aren't legit RM designs...
I call an infraction! Several of the posters are trying to determine consistent rules for a topic that, like so many Traveller topics, were initially made by "common sense" decisions that proved, in light of later decisions and rethinking, to have been anything but consistent. . . .
Oh, I know it's common to try--and even needed on some level, but it (probably) can't be done according to canon. And hence, about 90% of the discussion on Traveller here and elsewhere . . .
Oh, I know it's common to try--and even needed on some level, but it (probably) can't be done according to canon. And hence, about 90% of the discussion on Traveller here and elsewhere . . .
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Vehicle handling.
I'd differentiate the creation of anti gravity as lift/glide, with the creation of gravity as push propulsion.
I'd differentiate the creation of anti gravity as lift/glide, with the creation of gravity as push propulsion.
