"Pulse turn sequence or movement?" Topic

I was reading through a rule set and they mentioned a "pulse" move phase. What exactly is a pulse sequence or pulse movement and are they the same thing?

Thanks

Unless the rules define them there is no way to know. Many rules call one step in the turn sequence a "pulse." Others use "Phase" and still others step. Some use more than one. Grande Armee, for example, has turns made up of phases, phases made up of pulses.

Which rule set were you reading?

If I recall Car Wars had a system where the turn was divided into a number of phases and depending on your current speed you were able to move in a number of them. For instance if there were ten phases and you were going a certain speed you might move in phase 1,3,5 and 7.

I've never heard the term pulse used for this. Impulse on the other hand…..

Star Fleet Battles used a system like Chuck05 describes. I think there were 32 per turn or something like that. The faster your ship was traveling, the more impulse/phases your ship moved. It was a way to simulate the constant movement of all ships, but required record-keeping for each ship. I've thought about trying a much reduced system for horse-and-musket -- maybe 6-8 impulses, with charging cavalry being the fastest at speed 8 -- but figured the table would bog down into a mass of incremental movement that would just slow the game to a stop.

Car Wars was/is pulse driven too; there are two ways for it: faster things (or those with more actions) activate more often, or a turn is broke up into quarters for example: instead of moving 12cm and firing like many a game, you may get 3 4cm moves and a shot in any order (a shoot and scoot , or for overwatch as target likely won't have the move to teleport from one cover to another in one pulse right in front of your guns).

Generally goes hand in hand with simultaneous activation.

I've come across (and played) various sets of rules have multiple and potentially variable numbers of unit activations within a turn (sometimes associated with a degree of risk). But as noted above, unless you can detail the specific context, it is impossible to know what a particular co-author had in mind.