Uh, looking at the starship speeds and map

[Eistheid]

Reading it as "maximum attainable velocity" works until Yamatai's CFS is applied with its boasted inertialess instant change of direction. Using the technology that they have a Mindy can quite literally change direction at a whim and continue barrelling along at just over a third the speed of light.

Your point that likely a pilot would have to slow down to actually engage a target still stands and that is a valid way of looking at things that I admittedly hadn't considered, since to me the way PA articles are written it often feels more like a statement of "this is the best effective performance you can get out of the machine" rather than what the maximum possible is. So my opinion is a result of misinterpretation on my part.

Relating to the suggestion of function in atmosphere I would hope that there are aircraft that can beat a Mindy's mach 1.8 in atmosphere.

Given that there is no species restriction at present and that Nepleslians have piloted even the older armors in combat situations successfully, I have some reservations about reaction times in combat unless it is implied that they were functionally a passenger while the AIES did all the work. Which is something that I don't believe players would be fond of.

I understand that a lot of it comes down to effective representation and how it is written rather than the raw statistics, however I'm really not sure what situation would call for a PA to need to travel at 0.375c.

Anyway, thank you for the clarification in relation to my issues with PA operation as they are written in the setting. I still have a lot to learn so it's nice to have my mistakes corrected.

Also I feel that I have derailed the conversation from the subject of inter-system FTL and the challenges that are caused both by the present state and what might happen should modifications be made to the travel times. So I'll quiet down and let people get back to that.

 

[Moogle]

I have. . . AN IDEA!

Course it might not be a good idea, but it's still a damn sight better.

You know that thing we're doing with damage? Do it with speed. Make a sort of. . . not a scale, but like, comparisons. So like, speed level 1 might be 1-10 MPH, and jump down the scale to I don't know, 10, and you'd have things from 100-200 MPH or something. And then we make a separate page with these scale guidelines.

I forget what this has to do with our ftl problem but hey this might solve *A* problem.

 

[Nightowl]

Eist, Mach 1.8 is actually a pretty decent slow speed, the old Cold War interceptors before multi-role aircraft became the norm had speeds of Mach 2+. They needed it to get to nuclear armed bombers over the Atlantic before those things came anywhere near the homeland, both the US and the USSR.

I don't see the "max possible speed" as a problem on land, after all, taking a Ferrari at 120 mph in a forest road is more likely to end up with you wearing a tree as a hood ornament than you reaching your destination, so I doubt most people will be stupid enough to do a max speed run on planet and in atmosphere, you can just handwave it as going Mach speed in the air might get you a lot more attention than it is worth on a contested planet. Same thing as a guy running in the open vs someone in cover. The guy in the open is more likely to get noticed and shot than the guy keeping a low profile. Only time I can see anyone doing a "max speed run" on planet is if they had air dominance of an area and a huge arse invasion fleet behind them.

 

[Eistheid]

@Nightowl as good as your intentions may be, you're addressing an issue that was dealt with over a week ago. Had you read my last post completely you would have seen that my reservations had been addressed and that I wanted to return to the conversation addressing the nature of FTL travel in the setting and the difficulties it poses in relation to creating dramatic tension in the narrative. So thank you for your time, but your efforts have been misplaced.

As for creating a sliding scale as suggested by @Moogle for the purposes of speed, I'm not really sure that is needed since most things in the setting go 'at the speed of plot' meaning that most distances will be covered however fast the GM wants them to be covered. I don't mean to imply that it is useless, I'm just not exactly sure what we would do with it since retconning speeds is out of the question.