Advanced starship combat question

[Apparition]

Hehe, I figure I may as well take advantage of this treasure trove of knowledge. My question:

I have been reading the section on advanced starship combat and I am very confused on the speeds. First and foremost the hexes are listed as 15,000km on the strategic plot, and 750km on the tactical. For simplicity, let us assume I have a 1-G maneuver drive. The part that may be screwing me up is that I am assuming that, as in physics, 1 G is equal to 9.8m/s. So lets assume I begin combat on the tactical plot with no velocity(unlikely but works well for this example). In a one minute combat round, the book says I can accelerate one hex with a 1-G drive. Now if 1G = 9.8m/s, then in one minute I can accelerate to 558m/s, or .558km/s at the end of the round, and given that a hex is 750km, it would be impossible to accelerate one hex in that period of time, in fact it would take about 13 hours for a 1-G ship to accelerate fast enough to cross a single hex on the tactical plot(15,000km). I am fairly certain my math is correct, so I must assume that the book contains errata, or 1-G is not the equivalant of 1-G on earth. So i suppose my question is....how does speed work in a tactical space battle in T20?

 

[Valarian]

You could always just use my tactic. G rating = number of hexes moved.
6G is faster than 1G, so a 1G ship can't outrun a 6G ship.
A 6G ship will close on you faster than a 4G ship.

 

[aramis]

not 9.8m/s but 9.8m/s/s

At 1G, you accellerate by 9.8m/s each second.

Distance covered during the accelleration is
D=ATT/2

thus
D=9.8 * T * T /2
a 60 second round you will thus cover
D=9.8*60*60/2
D=4.9*3600
D=17,460m
while the vector is
V=ATT=35280m/m (note: twice the distance covered, and a mere "588m/s" over 60 sec)

So, after 1 minute at 1G, without friction losses, you're doing 35km/m (2116.8km/h), and have moved roughly 17.5km.

 

[Valarian]

ARGH! Too much maths! Brain Hurts. :file_19:

 

[Apparition]

not 9.8m/s but 9.8m/s/s
So, after 1 minute at 1G, without friction losses, you're doing 35km/m (2116.8km/h), and have moved roughly 17.5km.

I am in total agreement with you, I wrote my post at 3am, so I probably didnt write out my calculations as well as I should have, but my results were the same as yours, after one minute of accelerating from rest at 1-G, your velocity would be 558m/s/s and you would have traveled 17.64km. This is still not sufficient to traverse a single 750km hex on the tactical battlehex in combat.

the second round continiuing acclererating would give you a velocity of 1176m/s(1.8km/s) and a distance traveled of 70.56km and i imagine the trend would continue.....

 

[Rover]

A long while back I made a spraedsheet to calcualte the Distance and velocity between two ships based on initial velocity of each ship and the starting distance between them.

This worked great since basically two ships repesent two points in space, and any two points make a line. Turns, elivation, heading don't really matter between two ships because you are either closing or retreating.

3 or more ships gets too complicated to calcualte. I'll dig around and see if I can find it. if I do I'll post it here.

R

 

[aramis]

Ship Combat in Traveller is 20 minutes per round in many editions.

Including T20: see page 159, right column. 35x20 is 700km/rd

Also note: The Traveller G is 10m/s/s, not earth's 9.8m/s/s


So one G-Burn gives 1200 sec (20 * 60)
D = 10 * 1200^2 * 0.5
D = 5 * (12 *12 * 100 * 100)
D = 5 * (144 * 10,000)
D = 7,200,000 m
D = 7,200 km traversed
Vms = 10 * 1200
Vms = 12,000m/s
Vms = Vms * Sec
Vmt= 12,000 * 1,200
Vmt= 14,400,000
Vkmt=14,400

So it works pretty close.

 

[Rover]

A long while back I made a spraedsheet to calcualte the Distance and velocity between two ships based on initial velocity of each ship and the starting distance between them.

This worked great since basically two ships repesent two points in space, and any two points make a line. Turns, elivation, heading don't really matter between two ships because you are either closing or retreating.

3 or more ships gets too complicated to calcualte. I'll dig around and see if I can find it. if I do I'll post it here.

R

I couldn't find the spreadsheet I was talking about, but I found an earlier version.

http://www.geocities.com/twilight.lightning/Accelerationworksheet.xls

put the round in the upper left hand cell and the left side will calculate the velocity and distance travelled for G's1-6 the right will calculate the difference in velociry and distance between ships of different G's.

R