Quick & Dirty Guide to Warp Speed

[RaconteurX]

Came across these the other day and thought others might find them handy. These figures are not exact, just reasonable approximations rounded for ease of use.

One day of travel at Warp 1 roughly equals:

• 2.5 hours at Warp 2
• 30 minutes at Warp 3
• 15 minutes at Warp 4
• 7 minutes at Warp 5
• 3.5 minutes at Warp 6
• 2 minutes at Warp 7
• 1.5 minutes at Warp 8
• 1 minute at Warp 9
• 45 seconds at Maximum Warp

[Sea Tyger]

TOS or TNG?

[RaconteurX]

TOS or TNG?

The phrase "Maximum Warp" should be clue enough... you never heard Kirk say that.

[Sea Tyger]

Originally posted by RaconteurX


The phrase "Maximum Warp" should be clue enough... you never heard Kirk say that.

And if Patrick Stewart recited the list, I might have picked up on the subtle hint. For all I know, though, you might just prefer that term over "Best Possible Speed" or something else -- hence, I asked.

For those of you who prefer wf^3 to wf^(10/3), here's the TOS version of that scale.

1 day at wf1 equals
3 hours at wf2
1 hour at wf3
20 minutes at wf4
10 minutes at wf5
6.5 minutes at wf6
4 minutes at wf7
3 minutes at wf8
2 minutes at wf9 (normal best possible speed for most TOS ships)
1.5 minutes at wf10
60 seconds at wf11
50 seconds at wf12
40 seconds at wf13
30 seconds at wf14
25 seconds at wf15 (I seem to recall the Andromedans sending the Enterprise hurtling along at wf15 or something)

[Sea Tyger]

Invoking the "He Started It" clause of KIDINST 1610.3, paragraph 3, supported by Enclosure (a): "How to Get Mom to Believe Someone Else Did It," I took the chart out of the NG (p. 101 or something like that) and made a rough drawing of a curve that follows the established numbers for TNG warp factors over wf9. I learned a couple of things:

1. Yes, someone just made this damn thing up.

2. A ship speed effectively doubles between wf9.0 and wf9.9, and a little more than doubles between wf9.9 and wf9.982 (about a factor of 2.33).

3. It would take at least three separate equations to try to even estimate given values (and given that they were made up, it would be a Herculean task), so I'm not even going to try (trust me, I wanted to ).

Once I estimated the speed-of-light equivalent for each tenth of a wf from wf9.1 to 9.9, I went and did it for each hundredth of a wf from wf 9.91 to 9.99, also including wf9.982 (max speed for modern warp drives). But when I started calculating the "equal to 1 day at wf1" figures, I realized that the travel times were so similar, I didn't need to actually use many of them.

The top chart just gives a rough estimate of the significant (i.e., published in the NG warp speed chart and top speeds in the starship construction section) wf's. The bottom chart is my extrapolation of the warp speed chart.

1 day at wf1 =
50 seconds at wf9.2
45 seconds at wf9.6
30 seconds at wf9.9
20 seconds at wf9.95 (maximum upgradable speed for warp drives)
10 seconds at wf9.982 (current maximum of modern warp drives)
10 seconds at wf9.99
0.5 seconds at wf9.9999 (speed of subspace transmissions)
--------------------------
1 day at wf1 =
56 seconds at wf9.1
52 seconds at wf9.2
51 seconds at wf9.3
49 seconds at wf9.4
47 seconds at wf9.5
45 seconds at wf9.6
39 seconds at wf9.7
33 seconds at wf9.8
28 seconds at wf9.9
27 seconds at wf9.91
26.5 seconds at wf9.92
25 seconds at wf9.93
23 seconds at wf9.94
22 seconds at wf9.95
20 seconds at wf9.96
18 seconds at wf9.97
17 seconds at wf9.98
11 seconds at wf9.982
11 seconds at wf9.99
0.5 seconds at wf9.9999

[RaconteurX]

I recommend a visit to the splendiferous Daystrom Institute Technical Library (http://www.ditl.org/) for further explorations of warp theory, including permiability of subspace and other crunchy goodness. The warp formula alone (V/c = WF[{(10/3)+a*(-Ln(10-WF))^n}+f1*((WF-9)^5)+f2*((WF-9)^11)]) is worth the trip.

I only wish I could find the URL for a site I came across about a month ago, which contained what can only be described as the ultimate distillation of a decade or more of fan efforts to arrive at a definitive warp speed formula. Truly stunning work, solid mathematics too, but not quick and dirty in the least!

[Anomaly]

There's a nice chart in the Encyclopedia, too.

[Capt.Hunter]

Well, I always worked out travel times this way:

No. of light-years to destination X 365 = No. of days travel at Warp 1 (= lightspeed).

Divide this by how many times faster than light the warp factor is to find out how many days the journey takes.

So, Sol system to the Pleiades Star Cluster (~430 light-years) at Warp 9 would take ~103 days.

So a quick hop to Alpha Centauri would be about a day at Warp 9.

Unfortunately, this doesn't square too well with travel times seen on the shows, even though it is the mathematically correct way of calculating them based on the "Warp X = X times Speed of Light" figures in the TNG Tech Manual. For example, in one VOY ep, Janeway tells Paris to take Voyager out to half a light-year's distance. About twenty seconds later he says "Done". Even at ~2100 times the speed of light (I don't have the exact formula for working out fractional TNG warp factors but I'll assume this is about right for Warp 9.975, Voyager's top speed), this would take about two hours. "Your actual mileage may vary", indeed...

[RaconteurX]

Originally posted by Capt.Hunter
Well, I always worked out travel times this way:

No. of light-years to destination X 365 = No. of days travel at Warp 1 (= lightspeed). Divide this by how many times faster than light the warp factor is to find out how many days the journey takes.

Ah, but this is neither quick nor dirty... it is slow and precise.

This doesn't square too well with travel times seen on the shows...

This is why all the "permiability of subspace" and "warp highways" fan theories have arisen. Voyager allegedly supports this to some extent, although I'm not familiar enough with the series to comment. Warp 9.9 is 3053c and traveling half a light-year would take 1 hour, 26 minutes. Warp 9.99 is 7912c and the same trip would take 33 minutes, 15 seconds strictly by the math.

Wasting valuable on-screen time with blocks where no one does anything, however, is a lot like "dead air" in radio... not good for business.

[C5]

Resurrecting this thread because of a link in a more recent post...

What I mostly used for warp speed was something like :
Warp 1 is the speed of light
Warp 2 is 10 light day per day
Warp 3 is 1 light month per day
Warp 4 is 4 light months per day
Warp 5 is 8 light months per day
Warp 6 is 1 light year per day
Warp 7 is 2 ly per day
Warp 8 is 3 ly per day
Warp 9 is 4 ly per day
...
Warp 9.9 is 8 ly per day

Definitely not what we see on screen, but good enough in a RPG, where your players can use the time to fool around in the holodeck, perform extended tests or justify their stat increases

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Warp 9 is 4 ly per day
...
Warp 9.9 is 8 ly per day

So what's the 'we're 4 ly away but need to get there in a minute!' speed? : P

Here's what I use:

A HANDY CHART!

Warp 1 to 3 is a slow, ambling walk that you talk when you don't care how fast you get anywhere and you don't want to strain your feet. Alternately, this is the shuffling 'I'm sick and cold and I can't move any faster' speed for when the engines are on fire.

Warp 4 to 7 are increasing amounts of fast walking, ranging from 'I don't want to miss the streetcar' to 'It's almost at the stop.' Some people walk at 4 normally, some at 7. It depends on the individual.

Warp 8 and 9+ are breaking into an all-out run. This is the 'don't leave without me!' or 'diving to catch the baby!' speed.

[RaconteurX]

So what's the 'we're 4 ly away but need to get there in a minute!' speed? : P

To cross four light-years in one minute would require a velocity of just over 2.1 million times the speed of light. You would need to hit Warp Ten for a 24th Century game, or Warp 128 for a 22nd or 23rd Century game. Short of using ancient technology left by some long-dead alien civilization, it just isn't possible given Trek physics. Better to not declare specific distances in many cases, and just let the PCs arrive when the plot dictates. This means you sometimes can't choose a pair of canonical locations without tossing all semblance of science (even the rubber stuff used in the shows) although, if your technobabble skill is high enough, you can natter on about the local permiability of subspace and hope your players don't call you on it.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

This means you sometimes can't choose a pair of canonical locations without tossing all semblance of science (even the rubber stuff used in the shows) although, if your technobabble skill is high enough, you can natter on about the local permiability of subspace and hope your players don't call you on it.

Well... there's not that many canonical distance/speed statements in the show. Malcor III is about 2000 ly from Earth. K7 is 200 ly from Cardassia Prime. The UFP is 8000 ly across. Vulcan is 16 ly away from Earth. In a year and a half of travel, the NX01 travelled approximately 100 ly from Earth. That's all I can remember off the top of my head, and unless your players have laptops, wireless and command all of Memory Alpha with their search fu at the game (and if they do, why the hell are they surfing the internet instead of paying attention to the game) then it's probably gonna be a minor issue.

[RaconteurX]

Where it gets messy is when your Crew travels the aforementioned four-light-years-in-a-minute in one episode, yet takes a week to make the jaunt from Earth to Alpha Centauri in the next. Many of my players are ardent fans of verisimilitude as well as barking-mad continuity pornographers (to use Brannon Braga's term), so I typically do research before I run any game (Trek or otherwise) where canon or real-world facts may contradict my in-game assertions. Or I simply create entirely new places for my Crew to visit, so as not to break my players' suspension of disbelief through gross contradiction of canon and/or reality. No one can complain too much when I tell them that Maven III in the Fanboy system is a week's travel at Warp 6 from Starbase Epsilon 9, since none of those places have ever appeared in canon.

[C5]

The advantage of having a fixed warp scale is that it allows you to add plot twists (for instance, having to race between two systems, or having to wait for a message to reach Starfleet command) without the players feeling cheated, if they care about that sort of thing.
And if the speed of travel is not an issue, then you can simply decide the time needed for the players to reach their destination and let it at that.