I do agree that the way speed works in SARP isn't quite consistent. It is kind of broken; but in a way that we've become good at turning a blind eye to.
I've been the spearhead of the last major change that was made to speeds in SARP. I did entertain notions of trying to fix it further, but I didn't feel up to it: I didn't want to have to deal with Zack. Zack would have raised arguments like "well, last time you did something it obviously didn't fix it for good since it's being brought up again, so, you fail. Why should we let you handle this again?"
I've heard this before. I frankly didn't want to subject myself to this again. x_x
The thing that's easy to miss is that the last fix was never meant to be the final fix so far as I was concerned. It was more an adjustment "so far as we could make it" without causing too much of a gross difference if the roleplay that was done before, and the roleplay that ends up being done afterwards. Dividing FTL - for the most part - by 20 seemed serviceable enough as most ships still reached their destination within the hour... but if we had gone further, getting ships to their destination within the day or even within the week would've been too big of a difference.
Can't make the cure deadlier than the disease. Or else, there's no point.
STL was given a gentler treatment of 'divided by 3' so stuff at 0.9c ended up around 0.3c - from nearly light speed to 100 000 km/s - so, it's take a ship 4 seconds to reach the Moon from the Earth instead of just one (assuming no atmosphere).
* * *
I'm not too thrilled by Rizzo's suggestions myself. Like Frost said, we have inertialess drives, and I like my inertialess drives. Don't mess with them, dang it >_<
If speed standards 'require' a revision, this time, it should end up resolving the underlying issues for good. But for that to happen, you can't just make a blanket "just switch this to X in general and we'll call it a day". Ship speeds are intricately linked with two other elements: weapon ranges/delay-to-impact and sensor range and efficacity.
Regarding intrastellar travel:
- you need to be cognizant of what you can perceive, how far, and how well. Likely on a faction-based perspective first of all. And if you see something, how fast are your assets meant to go out and intercept said threat? What kind of delays are desirable for the intended narrative of the setting, which will empower events like distress calls and how fast you can get there/on time/of that your plotship is the only available ship in the sector that can respond in time, etc etc...
Regarding intraplanetary travel:
For the most part, beyond Hill Spheres, there's not much stopping ships from using the best method of travel possible, meaning that travel within a star system is done in a blink. Any actual piracy is likely done around the periphery of the central points-of-interest in a starsystem. The further you are inside an Hill Sphere, the more you're committed to taking a longer time to get out using only STL propulsion.
Regarding travel around a planet or other bodies:
As I see it, ships need to have an STL speed that's inside a sweet spot where it's capable of travel around an Earth-like planet is a feasible-yet-not-too-fast way while also being able to maneuver around a Jupiter-like planet again under an acceptable amount of time narrative-wise. then possible pursuit needs to be taken into account: if you're stuck within the Hill Sphere of Jupiter, how long should you be expected to hold out until you reach a point where you can possibly escape?
It's possible two speed modes may be required here: cruising speed and normal thruster speed. It's kind of ludicrous to have vessels fight at 0.3c while using lightspeed weapons - 0.3c heavily trivializes most Earth-vicinity distances. In my eyes, sublight cruising speed is the ideal speed to travel across a Hill Sphere, but not one you can support in combat. Which means that there needs to be a way/reason why ships can stop sublight travel from happening to commit other vessels to combat. In example: a caveat of STL travel can be that your barrier does not function, making you extremely vulnerable to lightspeed weaponry.
Thruster speed would kind of need to remain in a realm where it offers speed capable of breaking out of the gravity of planets - not just Earth-like too; it needs to be able to deal with bigger gravity wells. not everything would have STL drives, meaning that it likely needs to be good enough a more of travel to travel ship-to-planet, planet-to-orbit, orbital maneuvering from ship-to-installation - that sort of thing. The speeds offered probably ought to be identifiable with on a basis of atmospheric travel. It's likely the speed most of your non-lightspeed weapons are meant to interact with (railgun/missiles)
...
Frankly, this wasn't something I wanted to push forward. My intent was to first houserule my solution in my plot so that I could test it out on a smaller scale, both tweaking it and 'leading by example', if it was actually a good solution.
Perhaps this is a good solution. Perhaps it is not. What I do know is that a lot distance-wise is not consistent in SARP and that's where things are arguably broken up.