Appreciate the response!
Helped me see aspects that I was overlooking and confused by. This works great, except one aspect that I need for these mid-air jumps, is that when not using the forward vector, the player cannot change direction when mid-air with the jumps, as the velocity is carried over from the current jump, so if one is to jump twice, even when changing the rotation/direction of the player before the second jump, they persistently jump towards the previous/last direction, as the velocity is still driven that way.
But this def helps, I’ll test out a bit more to see where I can apply the influence of the change in forward vector/direction