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	Archive through April 28, 2011	25		09/16 07:19am

Thank you Jean for clearing up why the cargo boxes are different sizes. I was assumeing that cargo boxes were the same size ship to ship and I needed an explanation as to why they were not. Now I can more accurately use them in my campaign.

I also wanted to add on to your explanation that when a SFB scenario uses cargo boxes to determine victory points that even though the cargo boxes represent different sizes one can assume that the cargo value of each cargo box is the same. The reason is that a Free Trader carries more valuable cargo than a freighter does on average, and even if it is the same type of cargo the Free Trader does not sell at the same "bulk price" as the frieghter might have to. Also any rules that state that a cargo box can carry a certain amount of drones, shuttle craft,est... is based on the cargo box size of a freighter cargo pod and may differ on other ships. I hope that this helps support what you have already said Jean.

I do understand where you are coming from. I hope you understand that I am just using sfb ssds and rules to conduct space battles and tactical movement and record ship damage. As well as use the deck plans for placing miniatures. I needed to be sure that they were compatible. The only reason why I got to be a stickler about the shuttle sizes at first was because I was trying to determine the size of a cargo box and someone told me that that somewhere in the rules it says how many shuttles can fit in a given cargo box, and I didn't read fully what the dimensions under the civilian hand book were just internal dimensions. I apologize for my ignorance.

By Jean Sexton (Jsexton) on Friday, April 29, 2011 - 08:18 am: Edit

Marshall, you're fine. I had to do some research, too, to learn what was going on. Learning the business end is hard for me -- I work in a library and we give information away. (The back end is that taxpayers support our mission as a Good Thing (TM).)

It's gamers like you that give us something new to look at and make us evaluate our stance. We may not change it, but evaluation is always good.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 03:03 am: Edit

I just noticed an error in the Warp Factor chart. It says at Warp 8.5, the ship will go 1004 parsecs per month or 108.41 parsecs per day. All the other lines are correct when you divide by 30, but 1004 / 30 = 33.47 and 108.41 * 30 = 3252.3 I'm not sure which entry is wrong, but obviously one of them is.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/documents/Warp_Speed_in_SFU.pdf


Garth L. Getgen

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 06:26 am: Edit

The speeds produce a constant when divided by good old warp factor cubed, except wf 9+ are about 10* too high. 1004 parsecs/month falls in with that constant.

The next question is whether the speed constant is supposed to be increasing in the higher regions, and whether the warp 8 parsecs/day being about three times the constant was meant to be part of that.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 07:19 am: Edit

Jack, That's why I noticed. I've been trying to reverse-engineer the formula. I have a theory why 9.25 and 9.5+ don't fit the rest of the listings. It's too long to post right now.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 08:51 am: Edit

Doing the math, I got the feeling I'd done it before. So I searched for a previous conversation, first with "cubed" and then with "warp factor". I see in Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS: GPD Small Craft: Archive through August 13, 2002 a post by David Lang is a bit confusing, but differentiates between "tactical warp" as the speed on the SFB map and "high warp" as the speed on the F&E map, and an acknowledgement that the "dash" speeds were arbitrarily tweaked to keep the numbers (warp factors?) from being 20ish.

My impression is there are three (maybe four) regimes, each with its own equation: Tactical Warp, used on the SFB,; "High" Warp, used in SFB disengagement rules and F&E, I'm not sure if this is the same as Non-Tactical Warp, or the impulse-engine-driven FTL (if those are the same); and "Dash" Warp. With warp 8.5 given as "Aux Dash," could that mean the 108.41 parsecs/day is "Dash" Warp, but can only be maintained on the order of days, and 1004 parsecs/month normal "High" Warp, if one can get that high and run for a month?

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 01:33 pm: Edit

What's the formula?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 01:43 pm: Edit

maybe the conversion from LY to Parsec acidenatlly got skipped?

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 02:12 pm: Edit

Umm, faster speeds may mean more pitstops.

By James E. Goodrich (Jegoodrich) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 07:05 pm: Edit

Garth,
WF 8.5 is for Aux Warp vessels at dash speeds. They cannot exceed 1004 parsecs per month (2 F&E hexes) at those speeds -- which is also equal to their F&E strategic movement rate over a turn (12 hexes). There is a note about this in the paragraph on dash speeds just below the chart.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 07:15 pm: Edit

Okay, as I said, I was trying to reverse-engineer the formula for high-warp speeds. I do not know if there was an actual formula, or if the numbers were picked out of thin air. It seems as if there may have been, but something got munged for the higher end of the chart, either by accident or on purpose.

Starting with warp 4.5, the chart says 149 parsec / month or 4.97 parsecs per day. 149 / 30 = 4.9667, so that's right. At 3.261564 light-year (LY) per parsec, that's 16.21 LY/Day. Multiply by 365.25 light-days per light-year, and it's 5920.69 LD/Day. Ergo, the ship is going that much faster than light-speed. Taking the W^3 formula, we find that the chart is 5921 / (4.5^3 = 91.125) == 64.97 times faster,

Running the same math for the other speeds:
Warp 5.5 = 272 Par/M = 9.07 Par/Day = 29.58 LY/D = 10,804.97 LD/D. Divide by 5.5^3 = 166.375 is 64.94 times faster.

Warp 6 = 353 Par/M = 11.77 Par/Day = 38.39 LY/D = 14,021.44 LD/D. Divide by 6^3 = 216 is 64.91 times faster.

Warp 6 = 353 Par/M = 11.77 Par/Day = 38.39 LY/D = 14,021.44 LD/D. Divide by 6^3 = 216 is 64.91 times faster.

Warp 7 = 561 Par/M = 18.70 Par/Day = 60.99 LY/D = 22,277.05 LD/D. Divide by 7^3 = 343 is 64.95 times faster.

Warp 7.25 = 623 Par/M = 20.77 Par/Day = 67.74 LY/D = 24,743.01 LD/D. Divide by 7.25^3 = 381.078 is 64.93 times faster.

Great, those all work fine. It's the last three that are a bit screwy.

Warp 8.5 = 108.41 Par/Day = 353.59 LY/D = 129,147.33 LD/D. Divide by 8.5^3 = 614.125 is 210.295 times faster.

What if the parsecs / day wasn't converted from light-years, and the 1004 parsecs per month is correct?

Warp 8.5 = 1004 Par/M = 33.467 Par/Day = 109.16 LY/D (pretty close to 108.41) = 39,872.35 LD/D. Divide by 8.5^3 = 614.125 is 64.925 times faster. Wow. That fits with the other speeds.

Continuing on with the last two lines:

Warp 9.25 = 13,088 Par/M = 436.267 Par/Day = 1422.92 LY/D = 519,722.4 LD/D. Divide by 9.25^3 = 791.453 is 656.67 times faster.

Warp 9.5 = 14,094 Par/M = 469.80 Par/Day = 1532.28 LY/D = 559,666.25 LD/D. Divide by 9.5^3 = 957.375 is 652.76 times faster.

Something to consider here is the fact that there are (60 * 24 * 365.25) 525,960 minutes per year. This means that at Warp 9.25, the ship is going on light-year every minute, and at warp 9.5 it's one every 56 seconds. Do we really want ships going that fast?

I got thinking, what if the person who wrote the chart accidently multiplied instead of dividing to convert light-years to parsecs. That would mean that the "13,088 parsecs" started as 4012 light-years, and "14,094 parsecs" started as 4321 light-years. Reversing the path, perhaps these lines should have been 1278 and 1376 parsecs per month, respectively. Running the math with those numbers:

Warp 9.25 = 1278 Par/M = 42.60 Par/Day = 138.94 LY/D = 50,748.79 LD/D. Divide by 9.25^3 = 791.453 is 64.12 times faster.

Warp 9.5 = 1376 Par/M = 45.87 Par/Day = 149.61 LY/D = 54,644.30 LD/D. Divide by 9.5^3 = 957.375 is 63.73 times faster.


It looks to me as if the intent was to make high-warp, anything above W=pi (pi^3 = 31.006, by the way), faster using the formula: Speed = 64 * W^3, but it also seems that the math got screwed up and/or the numbers were manually adjusted in the last three lines of the chart.

Why would anyone adjust the numbers? Let's look at the time to cross one 500-parsec / 1630.87 light-year F&E hex. Using the warp-cubed times 64 math:

4.5 == 100 days
5.5 == 55 days
6.0 == 42.5 days
7.0 == 26.74 days
7.25 == 24.07 days
8.5 == 14.94 days
9.25 == 11.74 days
9.5 == 10.9 days

Going by the chart as-is, the last three times change to:

8.5 == 4.6 days
9.25 == 1.14 days = 27.5 hours
9.5 == 1.06 days = 25.5 hours

I guess the issue is one that only SVC can resolve. Does he really want ships going one F&E hex per day / on LY per minute? Does he want to revise the chart in the next set of books? Or maybe he didn't like the original numbers and tweaked them intentionally. His call. I'll go by whatever he says.


Garth L. Getgen

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 07:26 pm: Edit

James, I didn't see your post before sending mine up. Okay, I see that now. It's still a little confusing, especially in light of my analysis above.

For what it's worth, I was trying to come up with some math that made the higher numbers come out. I have one that works "okay" at the mid and higher ends, but it drops the speed at the lower end of the chart. It's kind of an ugly formula that involves taking the square-root of the log of Warp divided by pi, so anything below Warp 3.14159 results in an imaginary number and thus is ignored. The "real" warp drive math is Speed = (W+Q)^3 where Q = 0 when W <= pi, and Q increases drastically as W increases. That's just -MY- idea of how it works.

The techno-babble says that the warp bubble is not a sphere but rather a football shape (American football, not soccer!!), and as speeds increase, the shape stretches. This is why the FedEx is a football, and fast ships have pointy noses.


Garth L. Getgen

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 10:45 pm: Edit

The incredible dash warp speeds are deliberately high. It's intended for those dramatic "we have to get the ambassador to Organia NOW or there'll be a devastating war" situations.

The use of dash warp comes at a high cost. At dash warp speeds, the ship is virtually blind and can't turn to avoid obstacles. That means that while you can go 1 ly/minute you need a pre-surveyed route and some kind of external traffic control (such as a base) to do it. You also burn huge amounts of fuel and the engines need servicing at the end of the trip.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 02:54 am: Edit

Sorta like the Andro routes!

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 03:12 am: Edit

That's what I was thinking, too, Mike.

As much as it doesn't make sense, physics-wise, I understand that for purposes of fiction, you have to have a way for a reacting ship to get there quickly.

Freighter calls for help, starship arrives in three weeks. Hmmmm...not good. Realistic? Yes.

By Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, September 17, 2013 - 04:41 am: Edit

Yep, Andro RTN routes are similar.