Forums of the Megaverse®

I'm of the the opinion that you can have your FTL drive go in much smaller increments than 1, 2, or 5 light years per hour. If you wanted to go .5 c, then sure it could be used.

Now determining how long it takes to spool up the drives, well probably the more mass the ship has the longer it takes. To make it interesting I might say 1D4 melees for small ships say under 500 feet and add 1D4 for each additional 500 feet of size. Thats just off the top of my head, but its something I was considering writing about.

Carl

i'll respond with the same answer as i did over at nexusnine.net

at 1g of accelleration, 168 days (4032 hours).
divide the elapsed time by the square root of the accelleration.

now you have the accel figures, assign whatever accelleration you see fit.

though you'll be up in the hundreds of g's to reach it in under a week.

For a game I'm going to be playing in soon, we decided to go with a compiled version of things from various books:
Conventional Drives: Direct Travel
Mach 1 = 670 mph/1072 kph
Distance in 1 min = 12 miles

Sublight Drives: Direct Travel
.20 lightspeed = .20 ly/hr = 32,000 miles/second.

CG/P/R-Drive: Jump Travel
1 ly/hr = 160,000 miles/second
Short Jump: Any distance less than one light year. Must make Space Navigation check (40%) or miss target by 4D6x10000 miles (roll 1D12 for direction). If you have Ship-to-Ship Combat skill, add +5% per level to the Space Navigation check.
Long Jump: Must make Space Navigation check or miss target by 1D6 light years per every 10 light years traveled.
Cannot be used within 20,000 miles of a planet.

Fold Drives: Jump Travel
Takes 2D6 minutes to charge the fold drive.
Variable time for travel, the further away the destination, the longer the trip. A couple hundred miles could take several minutes, across a solar system up to an hour, or hundreds of light years away in a dozen or more days.
Even if the Space Navigation check succeeds, there is a 15% chance of a faulty space fold. If a mis-fold occurs, roll on the following chart:

* 1-14 Off course by 2D4 hours by light speed.
* 15-29 Off course by 1D4 days by light speed.
* 30-43 Off course by 2D6 days by light speed.
* 44-59 Off course by 1D4 weeks by light speed.
* 60-72 Off course by 3D4 days by light speed, plus fold system is damaged and can not be used without increased risk (40% chance of mis-fold. Roll on table again if another mis-fold).
* 73-87 Fold system has vanished into thin air. Impossible to fold again. Off course by 2D4 weeks by light speed.
* 88-00 Right location, but fold system explodes destroying the entire deck level it is on and damaging main drives. Only auxilary drives work.

Manueverability
Time to turn 180 degrees = 1D4 rounds (per 500ft of length) - 1 round for every +1 Dodge bonus in space.

I forgot where we got this section from:
Eventhough starships use inertia-less drives, they still require time to accelerate. This is due to the fact that the drive field requires a bit of time to be brought up to full power. This also means that a starship completely turning around will require several minutes in some cases.

Missiles accelerate to maximum speed near instantly and travel at full speed from launch.
Starfighters and Power Armors accelerate to maximum speed in one melee round. For the first melee round, their maximum speed is half of normal.
Starships accelerate to maximum speed in two melee rounds per every 500 feet of ship's length. For the first half of the acceleration time, their maximum speed is half of normal.

devillin wrote:For a game I'm going to be playing in soon, we decided to go with a compiled version of things from various books:
Conventional Drives: Direct Travel
Mach 1 = 670 mph/1072 kph
Distance in 1 min = 12 miles

Sublight Drives: Direct Travel
.20 lightspeed = .20 ly/hr = 32,000 miles/second.

CG/P/R-Drive: Jump Travel
1 ly/hr = 160,000 miles/second
Short Jump: Any distance less than one light year. Must make Space Navigation check (40%) or miss target by 4D6x10000 miles (roll 1D12 for direction). If you have Ship-to-Ship Combat skill, add +5% per level to the Space Navigation check.
Long Jump: Must make Space Navigation check or miss target by 1D6 light years per every 10 light years traveled.
Cannot be used within 20,000 miles of a planet.

Fold Drives: Jump Travel
Takes 2D6 minutes to charge the fold drive.
Variable time for travel, the further away the destination, the longer the trip. A couple hundred miles could take several minutes, across a solar system up to an hour, or hundreds of light years away in a dozen or more days.
Even if the Space Navigation check succeeds, there is a 15% chance of a faulty space fold. If a mis-fold occurs, roll on the following chart:

* 1-14 Off course by 2D4 hours by light speed.
* 15-29 Off course by 1D4 days by light speed.
* 30-43 Off course by 2D6 days by light speed.
* 44-59 Off course by 1D4 weeks by light speed.
* 60-72 Off course by 3D4 days by light speed, plus fold system is damaged and can not be used without increased risk (40% chance of mis-fold. Roll on table again if another mis-fold).
* 73-87 Fold system has vanished into thin air. Impossible to fold again. Off course by 2D4 weeks by light speed.
* 88-00 Right location, but fold system explodes destroying the entire deck level it is on and damaging main drives. Only auxilary drives work.

Manueverability
Time to turn 180 degrees = 1D4 rounds (per 500ft of length) - 1 round for every +1 Dodge bonus in space.

I forgot where we got this section from:
Eventhough starships use inertia-less drives, they still require time to accelerate. This is due to the fact that the drive field requires a bit of time to be brought up to full power. This also means that a starship completely turning around will require several minutes in some cases.

Missiles accelerate to maximum speed near instantly and travel at full speed from launch.
Starfighters and Power Armors accelerate to maximum speed in one melee round. For the first melee round, their maximum speed is half of normal.
Starships accelerate to maximum speed in two melee rounds per every 500 feet of ship's length. For the first half of the acceleration time, their maximum speed is half of normal.

Two answers;
#1) OW!!!!!!!
#2) WAY too much number crunching for what is supposed to be gaming "phun tyme". but I guess if a player or GM really REALLY needs the numbers *shrug*.

Just remember boys & goyles; don't let the facts get in the way of a good story!

DhAkael wrote:
Two answers;
#1) OW!!!!!!!
#2) WAY too much number crunching for what is supposed to be gaming "phun tyme". but I guess if a player or GM really REALLY needs the numbers *shrug*.

Just remember boys & goyles; don't let the facts get in the way of a good story!

My buddy is a math major and extremely analytical. He's not having fun unless he's crunching numbers of some form. I wrote all this stuff down so that I have a really good idea of where stuff is supposed to be during combat, and so he won't pester me about how realistic and accurate such-and-such is. If he's got an issue about something, I point him to the list. He's happy, and I'm happy to continue the story. To each his own.

gadrin wrote:huh ? you confused me on this one...

Sublight Drives: Direct Travel
.20 lightspeed = .20 ly/hr = 32,000 miles/second.

.2 lightspeed does not equal .2 light years per hour

Light speed = 186,000 miles per second
1 Light Year per hour = ~63,000 AU per hour (which equals ~63000 * 93 million miles per hour -- a very big number). Divide that by 3600 to get time in seconds. Then multiply times .2 to get the figure.

.2 Light speed = 186,000 * .2 = 37,200 miles per second (near to your figure)

<crosses fingers on my own math>

Hey, I'm not going to try and figure it. I'm just using the numbers from Zentraedi. If you can verify it, I'll change the number. Cause otherwise, I know I'm going to hear about it.

umm...Korentin, the debate is over how long it takes to reach half lightspeed.



and regarding the FTL drive question, .5c is .00005707763 light years per hour. (rounded up from a repeating decimal.)

1 ly/h is 8760 c

There's not enough oxygen available for me to answer this question.