Warp Speed?

[stule]

I use the Star Chart Book for Star Trek (Great Map Resource btw). It lets me gauge distances from one place to another. I also use online references as well as the book to figure out distance, warp speed, and the time it would take to get there.

With all that said, I have a little problem.

I was watching Generations last night and the Ribbon was three light years from the ship (Excelsior Class). When they distress calls came in, they raced to the ships. It took like 5-10 minutes to get there (faster on screen actually). According to every resource I can find, It would take 15 hours to get there at Warp Speed.

Then there was First Contact. The Enterprise was patrolling the Neutral Zone and of course the Borg attacked. Data even said it would take 3 hours to get there. When they decided to go (and the fleet was engaged), they were there in moments.

My point is this. I was thinking of shortening the time of Warpspeed so that it more accurately reflects the show. I know that on hte show, it's just a bunch of writers who could care less about consistency, but I want some kind of consistency for my group. At this site, http://www.ditl.org/, It takes 2 days at Warp 9.9 to go 20 light years (Shortest distance from the Neutral Zone to Earth). Instead of days, I was going to change that to hours (As they did in Generations).

Sorry if this post seems strange, but how do you guys do it?

I would reallly like to know.

[First of Two]

Go ahead and do it if it works for your game. Remember the saying "The starship travels at the speed of plot."

[LUGTrekGM]

I have my own starcharts, that I made up based on the old FASA Triangle Campaign, before I converted it to LUG. Each sector is 20 LY across. The Federation is thus only about 150 LY in a sphere.

I did not like the idea that Early Trek did not match travel times with whjere stuff really was located. Nor would the old Enterprise been able to see alll those places in the three years we saw.

Plus, absolutely hated the idea of mapped and traveled routes allow you to go faster, like a transit corridor of sorts. Star wars d6 had that idea, hated it there too, but it made a bit more sense in the way it was presented.

I myself would not change warp 9 or whatever to 20 LY in a few seconds or minutes, because that's how long it is for enemy ships to hit , say earth, at full speed. give the fleet time to react, counter move, etc.

It's also the flavor of Orders, Action, now. That works for the TV show but again, they got their Trek Starcharts maps book (I have it too) and I thought it just slightly worse than useless. The positioning of their stars is STILL all jacked up from real world. Sure, it's pretty but pretty useless, all the same.

What I do is have encounters occur at close range, near the actual battle range.

So that the good guy ship picks up ships emerging from a nebula, or uncloaking or as they enter a system, bad guys round a planet from the sensor shadow.

Things like scenario action on planets, etc, I start the scenario just before they arrive, or if the system is friendly, As they beam down.

A good example of this is the TOS Episode "The Return of the Archons." As I recall, in the teaser, Sulu, and one other guy are walking along the street in local victorian clothes already. The rest of it (the cultural study) is assumed to have already happened. Bam. Start the story.

It is a tenet of screenwriting get into the scene as late as possible, and get out as early as possible and move on to the next scene.

Often, in the past, when I have tried doing the 10 day trip, I would ask what is the crew doing? They's say, Eating breakfast, look at the schedule of the day, or Perhaps run a battle drill. So none of those things really added to the theme of my plot. So the 10 day trip happens in two words.. "Time passes." there went 10 days. It's just not worth playing out. I recall how boring transits between ports was in the real navy. Dull routine.

So I just say: "Days pass, and as you enter the system the Science officer is on the bridge looking at the sensors readout and..." Start the story.

But if they look at a strategic map of the galaxy, and want to redeploy ships, (MY lead PC is a Commodore) they know it's days and days to cross a sector. So they make plans a week or two ahead.

Reinforcements are far away, if at all. So they are on thier own.

Subspace radio travels at something like warp 15 or warp 16 (4,096 X c) old style depending on who you talk to. and has a range of 23 LY between relay stations.

So right there, you have a strategic situation.

At Warp 16, it takes a subspace radio message 1 Day, 18 hours, 46 minutes to cross an entire sector block, that is 20 Light years across. Figure about 2 days for a message to jump from relay station to relay station about 23 years apart.

Any planet sending a distress call by subspace radio, the time delay lag between sending a message and the responding ship receiving it is something like 2 hours and 8 minutes for a planet just ONE SINGLE LIGHT YEAR AWAY.

A TOS Ship responding to the message can say, "Hello, we are here", go to warp 8, and arrive in about roughly 16 hours, going the paltry distance of one light year. En route, about 3 and a half to 4 hours later, with 12 hours left to travel, the planet says "Gee, thanks, please hurry the help up, Kirk."

Nothing like the show. So, as suggested above go for realism or go for story, or "On-Screen Reality" Whichever you prefer.

I like the time delay and lag time in Communications and travel time, I just don't game it out, strictly. Just saying: "ETA to planet 12 hours. They sent another message "Etc etc lease hurry, people are dying, here."

Or I just have them enter the system. 2 or 3 minutes away. Depends on what flavor I want.

But given that most stars are 5 - 6 LY apart, I never have an emergency happen 2 star systems (~ 10 LY) away, since by the time the planetary tsunami has washed across the planet when the crew arrives, the disaster already happened 160 hours ago...

So 6 days later the survivors are picking up the pieces the feds arrive, the waters have receeded. hm, pass out some food and rebuild buildings. Dramatic in one way, sure but too late, really.

So I am a fan of stuff happening on top of them, right there, right now.

Nebular travel at less than light speed to avoid hull overheat / friction is even worse. It would take months, sometimes Years to map a nebula of a few LY, max speed Sublight.. But hey, that's what it takes. So scouts in my game are assigned those jobs. Map the Boron Nebula, see ya in three years.

The crew of the series gets to do things like:

Be at the Trade negotiations in 4 days at Planet P.
Follow the Romulans Fleet movements along the RNZ for a week.
Take a few weeks, patrol the sector, stopping at outposts, relay stations, nav beacons, etc. Very much a Next Gen feel.

The crew has stopped at Donus IV to repair a malfunctioning nav beacon, when ... Spacial rift opens, etc etc."

That's how I've done it for over 10 years of Trak gaming, starting with FASA, now LUG.

[spyone]

Well, there is some wiggle room in the events you cited, but really the truth is that Trek is not very good about speed/distance consistancy.

I could cite hundreds of examples of Trek contradicting itself about how far (or how long) a given trip is, but a few of the obvious ones are:
If farpoint Station is where most folks think it is, it would have taken the Enterprise-D about a year to reach it from Earth. Then, by the end of the first season the Big E is on the Romulan Neutral Zone, which is on the opposite side of Earth. Not an impossable trip in the time give, but hardly "Boldly going where no one has gone before." More like "quickly going back the way we came."

In the beginning of DS9, Bajor was a long trip from Earth: folks coming from Earth took weeks or even months in transit. In late seasons, Sisko can run back and forth in a few days.

On Enterprise, the transit time and speed given in Broken Bow for Earth to the Klingon homeworld is not enough to reach ANY other star from Earth: You'll get less than halfway to Alpha Centauri.

Ironicly, Voyager was more consistant about how much distance a ship could cover over long periods of time than any of the others.

And, of course, the DS9 technical manual has a mention that, while higher speeds can be sustained for several days or longer, no Federation ship has so far covered 1000 lightyears in a single year.

In short, trying to match canon will only make your head hurt. just come up sith something consistant that you like, and try to remember it's not carved in stone so you can fudge the numbers when it helps the story, just like the professional Trek writers.

[Ergi]

I believe this might be relevant for the discussion:



From Wikipedia - Warp Drive:

This discrepancy between the behavior of warp speeds in the show and the simple formula of the warp factor cubed (this refers to the TOS Warp scale) was picked up by fans in the 1970's and 80's who published books like Star Trek Maps—all published material is considered non-canon, even if it is by Paramount-approved Pocket Books—where the idea of an additional factor, referred to as the Chi factor or the Cochrane factor, was used in the warp calculations. The idea was that since warp drive pulls in space, you get higher speeds in areas where there is high density of mass, and lower speeds in areas of low density. If we take a warp factor and cube it, we take that product and multiply it by the number 1292.7238 (the Chi or Cochrane factor), to get the actual speed that the ship travels at—this is the number that was factored out of the factoids from "That Which Survives" (1969). The Cochrane factor represents an "average" density of space in the UFP. Other areas of space will have different values for it. This is one way to explain the relationship between stated warp factors and actual calculable speeds as given in the dialogue in the episodes. Although it is not actually canon, it at least explains how the ships behaved as they did, without having to find higher exponents to factor the warp base numbers by, as Star Trek artist Michael Okuda did later for TNG (which nobody on the show ended up paying attention to anyway).

[LUGTrekGM]

Personally, I loathe the cochrane factor. I use LY^3.

I just made the Federation a LOT smaller on my maps. *shrug*

[stule]

Cochrane huh?

I have come to the conclusion that the shows could have cared less about the warp factors.

In the Voyager, Scorpion I, they detect a debris field 3 light years away.

Janeway gives the order to proceed at warp 3.

136 days later (according to the Cochrane Scale) they arrive at the debris field.

(It actually took them 5 minutes)

Yeah.

So, in my opinion, although we Star Trek fans care, the producers and directors are above that sort of thing.

So I get it.

Speed of Plot.

Was just kinda wishing there was method to this madness.

Oh and one more thing.

To all you Star Trek directors....

*Stule moons the directors and producers*

[Sea Tyger]

Well, I don't think that was really called for. Seriously, these guys are there to make sure we have an entertaining story, and things such as consistency of travel times is not the highest of their priorities (rightfully so).

I'm rewatching Enterprise's first season, renewing my appreciation of the series. Trust me, how long it takes the ship to get from point-A to point-B is the last thing on my mind. The shows have always been (or, at least, are supposed to be) about the people. The technology is only there to get them to where the story is.

[stule]

Yeah, I just wish they made more sense for travel times.

I remember Enterprise (please don't get me started).

4 days to Qo'nos at Warp 5.

*Stule Cries*

Anyway, your right. It's really not that big of a deal.

Sorry if I offended you.

My bad.

[LUGTrekGM]

Well to those of us that it is a big enough deal, we make our own maps.

What's funny to me is, this is why hard sci fi writers generally look down on star trek. not that that is a correct position, it just is a fact.

Some of them know how far altair is and what kind of a star aldebaran is. And star trek could care less about consistency.

Many of the more modern gamers turned authors though, like to have that consistency. I know I do. Thus the fans are not always damn confused and arguing about what is canon, and what is not.

TRAVELLER is a lot more consistent, by far. It has arguments, too, but nobody argues about the scale, size, or tavel times in the Imperium. I think that's great, because I can make, and use consistent maps for that setting.

I know Lucas and Roddenberry didn't want to write themselves into a corner, bt hey, guys, let's get a few basic facts straight, okay? Nope. Mitoclorians, or however you spell that crap. pfft.

make it difficult to run an rpg based on their setting without totally trashing it and bashing it to fit (like I and so many other have had to do.) Forget about researching it for consistency. Okuda is at odds with blish, is different from fandom, etc etc.

So I do my own.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Speed of Plot.

Was just kinda wishing there was method to this madness.

I think the real problem is that someone created a warp scale in the Technical Manual which had nothing to do with on-screen evidence : P

[Owen E Oulton]

I think the real problem is that someone created a warp scale in the Technical Manual which had nothing to do with on-screen evidence

Exactly so. In fact, the WF³ warp scale was created by a guy who was doing some material for his daughter's Star Trek fan club 4 or 5 years after the original series ended, completely without the benefit of such things as videotapes or the Internet. His name was Franz Joseph Schnaubelt, and most of us have his book and plans

As for the oft-repeated statement that there's no way the Enterprise could have travelled the distance it did in three years in TOS, take it with a small Siberian salt mine. Actual stars the ship visited during the series are very, very few; there is no speed scale defined in the show; and very often there is no indication of how long they took to get most places.

When the TNG show bible was written, a travel time chart was done up using WF⁵ as a basis. This was deemed too fast when they realised that the ship could get just about anywhere real fast, and was revised to WF^10/3 (though not before the original revised scale was supplied to FASA). It was still never used on screen.

Further, elapsed time as seen on screen is not reliable - a simple cut from one view to anoher of the ship's bridge, can also be a cut forward in time, of minutes or even hours. A trip which takes the characters 10 hours may only take 20 seconds of screen time.

In the final analysis, the show always went with "the speed of plot" (as mentioned above.The PCs should be "far" enough away that Starfleet can't routinely rescue them, but "close" enough that reinforcements arrive either just in time to back up the PCs' bluff, or just in time to mop up after the PCs have saved the day.

[stule]

I bow to the wisdom of the forum.

[LUGTrekGM]

Well, yeah. That's basically making it up as they went. Which is...So Very Uneccessary.

Make a map, have travel times. It's a setting. Tolkien did this in the age before computers.

Did not Robert E. Howard have maps of Hyboria?

In the end, the fans get a half dozen ways to do it, and none of them match.

Thus, Films are Canon, but not the animated show. Even though James Doohan did voices for it. *shakes head*.

So Unneccesary.

That's okay, Star Trek Star Charts is here, as the final pull together of Trek history and maps, "The Complete Atlas of Star Trek". Except...that's wrong too. Yet more divisiveness.

I can't wait to hear the there is no warp drive, it's all miticlorians, has been all along, we were just not told.

Or that the whole thing is a holodeck episode in the mind of a writer. I think someone was saying an episode of ds9 alluded to that.

[Owen E Oulton]

Thus, Films are Canon, but not the animated show. Even though James Doohan did voices for it. *shakes head*.

That's because the movies were made by Paramount. The Animated Series was not. It was a licensed product made by a third party, Filmation Associates, and distributed by Paramount. It was Roddenberry himself who decided the animated series was not part of official continuity.

Oh, and BTW, all the main cast except Grace Lee Whitney and Walter Koenig did voices for it.