On 30Dec2021 1113, Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk
(via tml list) wrote:
> HI there,
>
> I was going to bed but this is bugging me.  (And my apologies if I've asked
> before.  I still struggle.)
>
> Animal speeds in Mongoose 2?
>
> The text says:
> "How far the animal can move in a single combat round with a Minor Action."
>
> So, a combat round is 6 seconds.  Easy enough.
> But you can do three minor actions in a combat round instead of one
> significant and one minor action.
> So does that mean the figure is for one 2 second minor action or all three
> of the minor actions (i.e. 6 seconds?) in one round.  If the latter, then
> presumably I can take a kph speed and divide by 3.6 to get metres per round.
>
> But I seem to get rather large numbers compared to any of the examples
> given.
>
> I have a Terran animal that google tells me can go 16kph (briefly) or
> 4.44mps; thus 26.6m.
>
> I have a Terran bird that google tells me can cover 15 to 27m/s on the
> ground.  Even if I just take the lower figure, that would be a 'Speed' of
> 15 * 6 = 90m.
> Google tells me it can fly at just short of 100kph, which I make 162m (97 /
> 3.6 x 6).
> Even if I just take the 2 second Minor Action (and multiply mps x 2) I get
> 30m (ground) and 52m flight.
>
> Any of these numbers seem way out of line for examples given.
>
> Does anyone know where I'm going wrong, please?
>
> (And why couldn't they just have put a kph figure in the box?!?!  Something
> I can relate to a lot better than a "speed" of "metres".)  (Being English,
> mph would have been ideal but I can live with kph).
I interpret the rules as meaning how far the animal can move with one
minor action, but the wording is certainly not as clear as it should be.

As for speeds, the rules say humans move at 6m per action, which comes
out at 10.8 km/h if they use all three actions in a round to move.
That's 33.33 seconds to run 100m, which is not especially fast for a
healthy young adult. Thus I'd not use maximum speeds for animals when
stating them up, but more typical ones if you can find them, and then
knock a bit off to allow for acceleration, less than perfect ground,
etc. Unfortunately this really ends up being little better than 'make it
up'. :(

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>