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Starship Speed discussion thread

Alex Hart

Alex Hart

FM of NDC
🎖️ Game Master
So I've recently been noticing two things:
  1. No one is abiding by the starship speed standards for STL speeds
  2. Those speeds are still mind bogglingly high.
Currently in normal operation our ships reach up to about an average of 30% of the speed of light, and they can still maneuver with ease. I'd like to suggest a ideas I had for changes. Obviously everyone will need to use the starship speed standards anyways, but the rest of this is just some ideas.

  1. Starships are limited to sub-relativistic speeds during normal operation or combat, meaning slower than 1% of the speed of light
  2. Relativistic slower than light drives can only work in straight lines (by which I mean that no course corrections can take place during relativistic flight.), though drives can switch between operating at sub-relativistic speeds and maneuvering normally to operating at relativistic speeds and moving only in straight lines.
 
Yeah but in space there's no drag to speak of or pull outside of gravity based stellar objects like planets or suns. You can hypothetically just keep burning until you reach any speed and cut off your thrusts and just coast at STL. You can also possibly adjust like this. There arent the kind of G's that affect us in space. You can likely turn your ship completely around using retros or adjustment based thrusts.

Im sure you're end up spinning like a top most times and would actually build up G-forces, But its possible to adjust in STL and move in not a straight line but more of a diagonal one i think

There are people more versed on this subject than me (And alex is one of them~) But its just something that comes to mind looking at it, Ye?
 
Another point, not to be rude about this but who actually keeps track of speeds in rp, who is single handedly mobilising entire fleets and flying across the map, who particularly neds to know how fast it goes when our rp isn’t even running parallel in time to real life

Personally i have never understood why people argue over speeds that never get used and are rarely referenced. I made a standard drive just as an easy excuse for making ships because without the useless speed value it cant be approved.
 
One big reason for starship speeds back in the day boils down to submissions and the tech race. Clubby refers to it.

If we had no "standard" by which to judge submissions, people would (and did) put in whatever they could, regardless of what was technologically possible IC or otherwise. The SSS prevents that kind of tech racing. The links at the bottom to Yamatai's and Nepleslia's speed standards points to that.

Though it's called a "standard," no one is duty-bound to follow it within their own RP. As it says in its first sentence, the SSS is a "guideline."
 
Currently in normal operation our ships reach up to about an average of 30% of the speed of light
Click to expand...

So their reaching fast advanced? I'm not sure that's a problem.

Regarding relativity, .3c is 99.99955% of regular time, loosing less then a second per day. So I wouldn't really describe it as relativistic.

More importantly, changing out speeds and manuvering to less then a percent of light speed would have a dramatic impact on the setting that I'm not sure we need. While we perhaps should pay closer attention to enforcing the rules about speed, I don't think they need to be changed.
 
The reason I personally want to change this stuff is so that it jives with how we RP. During combat ships tend to be moving slow and despite long range weaponry we always fight at short range in RP and fly kind of slow.

So I wanted to have it set up that there's a technological reason that we do this, as well as a way to make sure that it doesn't suddenly end up with people using different speeds during combat.
 
Never had a problem with the current standard myself. So why change it? The values are used in the submissions, yes. However, it is up to the GM of each plot to determine how fast their vessels, power armor, and other vehicles go while holding to the the already approved speeds and maneuverability. If I want my ship to go .375c, I'd have it go that fast, if I want it to go slower, I'd have it go slower. Honestly I believe the standards we have right now work well enough as a guideline and GM/Player option to not necessitate a change beyond anyone's personal opinion since these sorts of threads crop up every year or so. I just don't see the problem myself.

TLDR: If it ain't broke... just my quarter of a quarter of two cents.
 
I’m sensing that this thread is more about you (alex) trying to explain things that have already happened. Not a bad thing in itself.

But if the guides were lowered across the board or these changes put in place it’s more likely to just become a hassle in the submission process and deter people from rp ship combat if all the ships got nerfed.

Personally I’ll probably never gm ship combat and I don’t share any plots with you to see where you’re coming from. However I’m sure you could talk to your gm or gm your plots with longer range battles, without having to lock the site into a single form.

If that makes sense, summary is kinda like “just because we rarely do it doesn’t mean we will never do it”
 
i think people GM ship combat the way they do because they don't know any better way. Plus rule of cool of brining your ship capable of hitting them from half a sector away, Right up to their windows to broadside them...
 
What I want to make sure we have is consistancy. Just because ships are slow doesn't lock people into a range for battles. If suddenly someone says "Yeah we're all moving slow right now but suddenly I ACTUALLY AM MOVING AT 30% of the speed of light lol you can't hit me" there's nothing to stop them from doing that, and that's kind of crazy that they can.

Also it appears that the speed guide on the DRv3 page does not match up with the Starship Speed standards, and this has led to a large increase in speed site-wide. Should we fix the DRv3 page, or at least redirect users to the correct page for speed standards and remove the misleading/incorrect info?

[edit] I was told by @Ametheliana that Fred was still active, even though he had made a post about leaving the site. Please don't make me look like a fool next time in front of the site by giving me info like that. As many people have said, "Why you gotta do me like that?"
 
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We should probably fix the discrepancy, yes. DRv3 vs SSS. For those of you who don't know, the DRv3 lists bonuses to speed for light or no armor up to .075c which brings the max up to .45c The question is which to edit.
 
The SSS was made in an attempt, according to the article, to bring down speeds. It ought to still be abided by, and additionally, DRv3 only lists the bonuses for the very top tech bracket of speeds.
 
I'm not exactly sure why Alex Hart seems so up in harm about my presence or not. It's not like I was asked anything about this.

Anyways.

I did my research. It's about what I try to use in my own plot. I'm actually beyond caring if it fits SARP or not; I just wanted something that worked with weapon speeds, sensor pings, non-uber communication methods, so on and so forth. Also, I was trying to shove CDD speeds out of the equation. Basically, I made my own houserules. I didn't share because I have a trend of trying to spearhead (what I believe to be) positive change in the community and then get shouted down.

So, here's my writeup. Though it's not terribly consistent with other values around: by contrast a Plumeria's main gun's cone-blast affects a stupidly large area. Enough to make a plan like "Let's hide in these ore-laden asteroids for some cover and to confuse their sensors" entirely irrelevent if the Plumeria can cone-blast your asteroid cover, your ship, and 2/3's of a planet's asteroid ring while it's at it. Meh.

In Normal Space​
​
Orbital Cruise​
​
Thruster-powered maneuvering, usually sufficient to reach escape velocity to escape a planet's gravity. This is usually refered to as Sublight travel.​

  • Space shuttles needing to escape Earth's gravity well typically output from 3 to 5 Gs.
    • It takes roughly 2 minutes for a space shuttle to ascend from Earth and reach a low orbit.
    • In low earth orbit, space shuttles need to go at 8kps (28,800 km/h) to reach and then maintain orbit.
    • Apollo astronauts went at 11kps while traveling to the moon. These kind of trips took, at a minimum, 70 hours to complete (3 days). This is the fastest humanity has ever travelled up to 2018.
    • Jupiter's gravity requires 59.5kps to reach escape velocity.
So, by extrapolation, humanity's propulsion technology needs to have advanced to having conventional engines capable of going at a minimum of at least 8kps (28,800 km/h) to deal with an Earth-like environment; and upward to 60kps (216,000 km/h) in order to safely maneuver around the gravity wells featured by all planetary bodies in the Sol system. Reaching and surviving the G-forces implied by the accelerating to such speeds fall under the umbrella of technology relating to life support and gravity control systems.​

  • Earth's moon is 384,400 km away from Earth. Assuming we had the best sublight engines possible (60kps), we would be able to do the Apollo trip to the moon in roughly 1 hour, 46 minutes.
    • The closest Jovian moon to Jupiter is Metis, roughly 130,000 km away. One of the furthest Jovian moons is Megaclite, about 24,700,000 km away, with an orbital circumference of about 143,000,000 km.
    • Assuming a top speed of 60kps, we can expect travel time between Jovian moons to take from half-an-hour and up to 331 hours (nearly 2 weeks) depending on how close and how accessible the moon would be.
Interplanetary Fast Cruise​
​
Ships can go upward to 0.1c (30 000 kps) to travel within a star system. This is the ceiling point for humanity for mixed reasons including technologies relating to life support, inertia and thrusters. As this usually involves minor application of hyperspace principles, it is refered as Subspace travel.​
Vessels typically range from 0.05c to 0.1c depending on the class of their hyperspace drive; civilian ships on the lower end and military ships at the upper end. The smaller and lighter, the faster.​
​
Assuming a vessel is capable of going up to 0.1c…​

  • Transit time from the Earth to the Moon (~1.3 light-seconds away): 13 seconds.
    • Transit time from the Sun to Earth (1 AU, ~500 light-seconds away): 1 hour, 23 minutes.
    • Transit time from Earth to Jupiter (3.95 AU at closest, ~2000 light-seconds): 5 hours, 28 minutes.
    • Traversing half of the Jovian moon Megaclite's orbital circumference at one-tenth speed (12,350,000 km): 1 hour, 9 minutes
Ships reaching this speed typically can perceive very little of their environment, effectively going blind due to factors such as time dillatation. Since some of their hyperspace systems are active, they become fairly obvious on sensors.​
​
Like hyperspace travel, jumping to subspace requires a spooling time to then hurtle ahead in a linear direction (either a line, or a calculated curve). Furthermore, subspace travel 'chokes' just the same as hyperspace travel as a vessel gets closer to a gravity well, speed going down to one-tenth when upper orbit is reached, one-hundreth mid-orbit, and becoming entirely unsustainable once low-orbit is attained.​
If navigating within the gravity well of any significant planetary body, the best 0.1c subspace travel can achieve is:​

  • In high-orbit, one-tenth of 0.1c is 0.01c (3 000 kps)
    • In mid-orbit, one-hundreth of 0.1c is 0.001c (300 kps)
Since the hyperspace drive is engaged, little to no defensive systems are available and sensors remain unreliable, which renders a vessel extremely vulnerable to directed energy weapons - most well capable of leading a target with a predictable heading. When closing on an hostile situation, it is highly advisable to return to sublight speed in order to effect combat maneuvers.​

...

So, yeah. Enjoy.
 
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I was annoyed because I tagged you because I was told that you were around, and then was told minutes later by Wes that you had left the site, which I felt made me look like a total fool.

Now, what I'm more concerned with at the moment is fixing the values on the DRv3 page, or at least linking people to the correct ones.
 
If you follow my essay as outlined above, where I kind of put interplanetary fast cruise between the bracket of 0.05c to 0.1c, the following factor seems of influence:
  • Civilian or Millitary
  • Vehicle Tier (perhaps by category)
  • Armor Weight (unarmored, or armored)
Working with the tools we have, I'd grab the DRv3 Tiers and put the best base value as being the medium mecha class (Tier 8) as the best mix of power-to-size/weight ratio (it's usually the tier for long-range shuttles). Such a unit, unarmored and with military spec drive equipment, would go at the top of 0.1c.

Then, as it gets armor, I'd tone it down to 0.095c. Civilian tech? Further down to 0.090c

Off the top of my head, we could see results like:

0.100c medium mecha military unarmored
0.095c medium mecha military armored, medium mecha civilian unarmored, heavy mecha military unarmored
0.090c heavy mecha military armored, heavy mecha civilian unarmored
0.085c light starship military unarmored, heavy mecha civilian armored
0.080c light starship military armored, light starship civilian unarmored,
0.075c medium starship military unarmored (you get the idea)
0.070c medium starship military armored <-- Plumeria is here
0.065c heavy starship military unarmored
0.060c heavy starship military armored
0.055c light capital military unarmored
0.050c light capital military armored
0.045c medium capital military unarmored
0.040c medium capital military armored
0.035c heavy capital military unarmored
0.030c heavy capital military armored
0.025c heavy capital civilian armored

(to determine actual speed in kilometers-per-second, just grab the 30 000 kps from 0.1, divide by 100, and multiple by the two last digits. ex: A Plumeria going at 0.070c is going at 30 000 divided by 100 and then multiplied by 70... so, 21 000 kps)

...that dipped below my 0.05c, but truth be told, most of the capital vessels shouldn't be getting anywhere very fast anyways. Them being slower gives credence to ships like the Plumerias being destroyer-sized craft to intercept larger vessels and punch over thier weight in squadrons thanks to their very powerful main weapon. The value of fighters and bombers is also much increased, as they become extremely good at interplanetary interception; their carrier might be slower, but it'd also be their only mean of interstelar travel; or covering larger interplanetary distances via Hyperspace.

Speaking of Hyperspace, I've personally houseruled it around similar criteria to a margin of 1 to 5 light years per day. I figure larger shuttles have the fuel and supples to attend their passengers for extended stays. You might not want to stay in a fightercraft's cockpit for days on end even if it is hyperspace capable, not to mention fuel and supplies could be an issue. Therefore, the Light Starship would probably be the benchmark. So while smallcraft could hyperspace travel, maybe they shouldn't, giving a logistical importance to motherships and carriers.

This also sets hyperspace communication around similar speeds (but faster by a factor of 3 to 5; so, from 3 to 25 light years per day depending on oboard assets, tech and so forth). The faster something travels in hyperspace, the faster its eddies spread, and a picket ship could pick them up and then report back its findings. There'd be no such thing as invisible hyperspace, but you could volontarily 'move slower' so that your eddies wouldn't spread far and therefore wouldn't reach picket ships. That makes it possible to make a stealthier trip to a system (even though once in system, an hyperspace defold is super-obvious with emissions likely traveling at a minimum of the speed of light).

Security wise, this gives value to warships patroling to insure the safety of their borders. Scoutships being, you know, scouts - in order to pick up those trying to get by stealthily. It'd also make it important for civilian vessels to actually plan out an itinerary with what passes for air control so that ships patroling are aware of them and can verify passage on top of insuring they're not waylaid by renegades, pirates or a potential enemy force that could overtake the civilian freighter and force it back to normal space through interference to their hyperspace drive (gravity wells being something that causes the drive to choke and not perform as it should). This gives value to both having escorts on top of vessels with interception roles.

...

Maybe this will help. :)
 
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I personally like these values a lot, but I'm not sure which tech bracket they'd be applying to, or if 60 kps would be the maximum orbital cruising speed. It seems like 60 kps would be the absolute minimum required for maneuvering in all environments.
 
It depends on how dangerous you actually want environment to be for ships.

At 60 kps, you kind of have to take Jupiter seriously. Jupiter's gravity is the extreme figure because it'll likely symbolize the more extreme, non-Sol-like environments you might have to deal with out there. At least, one we 21st century humans can understand at this point in time with the points of references us civilians can process.

60 kps is just enough to escape Jupiter's gravity. Only just. It's fast enough that you cover 3600 km in a minute too - so you can fly across the width of the United States in 2 minutes (assuming atmosphere wouldn't slow you down or pulverize your ship while going at such ludicrous speeds). So, it's enough so that an asteroid the size of the United States is actually an obstacle that your speed can contend with. It's not insignificant. It actually matters in your maneuvering if you choose to take cover behind it.

The more you increase the speed beyond that, the less Jupiter's gravitational attraction matters, and the less the size of obstacles matter.

The chosen thruster speed really goes hand-in-hand with scope, An unified scope was really SARP's biggest failing when it adopted the very best values from other settings to trump them. SARP lost its scope and unified vision that way, and it never quite recovered from that damage in more than 10 years. So, if you want to increase thruster speeds, you need to know why, and you need to know what else this will impact on if you actually care about avoidng similar pitfalls.

I'm not saying the value I determined was the best. I don't care enough for that. But I can tell you why it was chosen. If you care for another narrative, then I just want you to realize what you actually champion for. :)
 
I'm just trying to work out in my head how things would work across different tech brackets. For example, is 60kps the fastest orbital cruise speed for the highest tech level, or the lowest tech level? Stuff like that is what I'm not quite clear on yet.
 
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