Believe it or not, I only just noticed...

[CmdrBluejeans]

My players have been pretty good about pushing only certain rules in game, since we switched from ICON to CODA about, oh, a year ago (I was ready two years ago, but it took a year to convince them).

Believe it or not, we've never had a situation in the 19 episodes since we switched systems in which the PCs had to gun engines past sustainable and into maximum speed.

So, just now, while preparing a brief 'reminder hand-out' of the rules for transferring power, strengthning shields, making in-battle repairs, and all the little things that slow down play, I noticed something that made me go 'WHA?'.

That is this: no ship less than the LF-62 warp engine can push past sustainable and into Maximum speed for more than hour, without needing to roll a boxcars on that reliability roll.

This seems rather ... weak to me, I suppose, and I wanted to make sure I'm not reading things incorrectly.

Here's three examples at random.

LF-9X4 Engine: Warp Factor 3/4/5, Reliability BB (+3 reliability modifier). Exceeding Warp 4 to go to Warp 5 requires a TN of 15 on the roll. If the roll is only 2d6+Reliability Modifier, that means that only double-6s will yield the 15.

LF-12 Engine: Warp Factor 5 / 7 / 9, Reliability D (+6 reliability modifier). Exceeding Warp 7 to go to Warp 8 or 9 requires a TN of 18 or 19 on the roll. If the roll is only 2d6+Reliability Modifier, thatmeans that only double-6s will give you a chance at either.

LF-45 Engine: Warp Factor 6 / 9.6 / 9.9, Reliability C (+4 Reliability modifier). Let's not even talk about the odds of hitting a TN of 19 or 20 (dependingon whether you round decimals for the final difficulty) with only a 2d6+4 roll.

I guess I'm a little puzzled here. I mean, yes, I know, it's supposed to be hard to maintain maximum speed, but completely ruling out the skill of the engineers makes it almost impossible. One of my players pointed out the System Overhaul professional ability, and my concern is that a) it will get overused, and b) it specifically applies to maximum and not sustainable performance, anyway, which only compounds the problem.

Has anyone implemented any solutions to this? I know there's a Professional Ability for Flight Control Officers in the ESO Netbook that 'reflects' pushing the engines without really pushing them, but that seems to me a bit *too* powerful. Has anyone worked with some kind of homebrewed Professional Ability or other house rule that makes this easier without pushing it the other way? I'm curious to hear what folks have done here, since I do want to strike a balance.


BJ

[Tobian]

Hmm, the thing is, the information is reliable within the context of the show and the available Canon evidence.... It is simply not possible to travel at ludicrous speed for very long, if for no other reason than you are using up ALOT of your fuel in one go! To travel that fast you are running the engines VERY inneficiently and so you are using over and above the ammount for your sustainable 'cruise' speed. if players want to do this sort of thing regularly you are likelly to run out of fuel !

[RaconteurX]

Direct your attention to the two-year-old thread "Quick & Dirty Guide to Warp Speed" and you will note that the practical differences between various warp speeds can be very minor. The distance covered in one day at Warp 1, for your information, is a tad over 16 billion miles (172.043 AU, about 4.3 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto).

So you may not have a problem, because how often will a "typical vessel" (i.e., one sans player-characters aboard) need to maintain maximum warp speed for more than a one-hour period? At Warp 2, any ship could cross from one far side of the Solar System to the other in about an hour. At Warp 6, they could do it in a minute. Only when the distances are interstellar do the travel times become significant.

At Warp 9.6, you need less than an hour to cross one-quarter of a lightyear and, at Warp 9.9, you can cross one-third of a lightyear in comparable time. At Warp 9.99, you can cross a lightyear in less than an hour and. at Warp 9.999, you can cross twenty lightyears (an entire sector!). How many ships need to cover distances greater than that in an hour? Factor this into your scenario creation and you'll see that the rules aren't that odd.

[Ergi]

Originally posted by RaconteurX
Direct your attention to the two-year-old thread "Quick & Dirty Guide to Warp Speed" and you will note that the practical differences between various warp speeds can be very minor. The distance covered in one day at Warp 1, for your information, is a tad over 16 billion miles (172.043 AU, about 4.3 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto).

That can't be true. Since warp 1 equals the speed of light Pluto would have to be .25 light years away from the sun. Something about your calculations must be wrong.

[Owen E Oulton]

Um, Ergi, you better check your own calculations...

Warp 1 being lightspeed means you travel 1 lightyear in a YEAR, not a day. That's why they call it a light year.

[Ergi]

Oops! Guess who just got up and should probably get more sleep.

[Tobian]

Hmm Ok I am getting quite confused too!

Ok Pluto is about 40 AU - so that's arround 3,720,000,000 miles

Ok so that as a given, a lightyear is around 5,880,000,000,00 miles - that means the distance from the sun to mercury is only a tiny fraction of a lightyear. Which is giving me a real headache.. because I had always been told it was about .25 of a lightyear, or am I missing something ?

So at warp 1 it should take arround 0.0063265306122448979591836734693878 years - so traveling at the speed of light equates to (roughly) 5 months worth of travel!

Ok that's enough maths for me today - it's bloomin Monday morning and I have a cold

[Tas II]

Okay.....I think I got this right.

1 AU= 93,000,000 miles.
I LY= 5,880,000,000,000 miles

Thus, I AU is 0.00158163 (approx ) of a light year.

If Pluto is 40 AU away, that makes it 0.00632653 of a light year away. 0.00632653 of a light year is: 2.30918345 light days (Multiply the 40 AU figure by 365).

So, at Warp 1 or c it would take 2.30918345 days (2 days 7 hours 25 mins 13.45008 seconds, again approximately ) to reach Pluto.

Just dont ask me how far Mickey or Goofy is, though!



Cheers

Tas

[Tobian]

Yes that sounds better Otherwise my calculations would have made no sense hehe. There is a reason i didn't do Maths

[Owen E Oulton]

"1 AU= 93,000,000 miles.
I LY= 5,880,000,000,000 miles

Thus, I AU is 0.00158163 (approx ) of a light year.

If Pluto is 40 AU away, that makes it 0.00632653 of a light year away. 0.00632653 of a light year is: 2.30918345 light days (Multiply the 40 AU figure by 365).

So, at Warp 1 or c it would take 2.30918345 days (2 days 7 hours 25 mins 13.45008 seconds, again approximately ) to reach Pluto."

Well, again, no...

1 AU = 149,597,870.691 km
1 light second = 299,792.458 km/s
therefore
1 AU = 499.005 light seconds
1 AU = 8.317 light minutes

Pluto's orbit varies between 49.5 AU and 29 AU - call the average 40 AU

40 x 8.3 minutes = 332 minutes = 5.533 light hours.

You're off by a factor of 10 - that's really, really approximate...

[Tobian]

Uhm but don't forget Pluto is 40 AU from the SUN - not Earth, so depending on what time of year it is (be it Earth or Pluto, which has a much much much longer year!) it will be 1 more or less AU

[Tas II]

You're off by a factor of 10 - that's really, really approximate...

I was only going by the figures provided (I did not have the correct figures to hand)......so GIGO! LOL

Besides, just over two days was a helluva lot closer than 5 months!

Cheers

Tas

[RaconteurX]

I did my math, thank you, and I did it correctly. While my calculations are approximate (and I said as much in the original thread, two years ago), they do provide a useful benchmark for narrators whose players may at some point feel a need for speed. As not everyone wants to pause a game in order to calculate precise travel times, for scenario purposes it helps to know roughly how rapidly one can cover shorter distances. That was the purpose of the original thread.

[Ergi]

This whole situation reminded me of something.

[Tobian]

Hmm dubious, I notice how they call them 'English' units, when we in England use mostly Metric these days!

It probaboly doesn't help that an awful lot of the old 'Imperial' scale (as we call it here) is different elsewhere, notably Pints in America are smaller! (nothing will annoy 'English' people more )