Speed Standard Conversion: Phase 3: Other starships

Can a fighter have a significantly higher top speed than a battleship, due to it being a tiny fraction of the mass and thus being able to accelerate considerably faster with much less structural strain?

Or the inverse; Battleships having higher FTL speeds due to it's much more generous FTL system, in comparison to the ones that have to be small (and therefore low-powered) enough to fit in fighters?

And does "style" count towards speed as tech does? Can a racing ship count as a higher tech bracket than a military craft of the same size? Lightly armored ones have faster STL speeds than heavily armored ones of the same type?

Click to expand...

IMO..
A fighter should have a higher top speed than a battleship. Being able to move in and out of larger ships that are heading into battle, as a protective measure.

A battleship on the other hand would indeed have a more powerful FTL engine, and be able to move to battle sites on its own power while, fighter would need a carrier of sorts.

Racing ships would have a higher speed than military ships due to lack of weapons and military grade armor and shields. Less mass to slow the ship.

To Jessica's question: YES

That was how I had originally sort f wish it would be. Unfortunately... everyone wants to be topdog without a care for balance usually.

The Gypsy was originally, and still is an antique ship, so remains far below the starship standard. I don't think there would be any objections so I left it as is.

The Divine Comedy was already compliant with the speed standard as par Toshiro's request at the time of submission, so is unchanged. It remains in the higher speed brackets, as it was designed as a hit-and-run craft that cannot stand blow-for-blow with most military ships of similar size.

The Phantasm I took the liberty to put in the STL high speed region while its FTL is in the very crude region. The ship itself is a cross between a very heavy fighter or very light starship, so it was hard to place. But since 'Spacer design philosophy is heavily vested in more fragile higher speed craft and it lacks most of the components of a true starship, I thought it should more appropriate to classify its speeds as that of a fighter. Therefore it has relatively high STL speeds, but awful FTL speeds.

I like real physics for STL, which means that the to speeds are very very high, but acelleration of battleships is very, very low. On the other hand fighters would have higher acceleration, but because of more limited fuel, lower top speeds.