Star Cruiser Scale?

[elbmc1969]

I'm hoping that Bryn or someone will jump in here ...

What's wrong with the time scale in Star Cruiser? For interstellar travel, Warp Efficiency 1 is 1 LY/day, or 365 LY/yr. That means that the "365" stays the same as you move up and down units: 365 LD/day, 365 LH/hr 365 LM/min, and 365 LS/sec. Now, inside the "shelf" you slow down by a factor of 10,000, so you end up doing 0.0365 LS/sec. Each hex is 600,000 km across, which is close enough to 2 light seconds that it doesn't matter. That means that it takes about 55 seconds for a Warp Efficiency 1 ship to cross a hex.

OK, so that WE 1 ship has a movement of 2, so that makes the game turns two minutes long, not one, but it's right in the ballpark. Bryn has suggested that the correct time scale is 20 minutes per turn. How does that fit with the rest of the information?

 

[shaunhilburn]

I'm hoping that Bryn or someone will jump in here ...

What's wrong with the time scale in Star Cruiser? For interstellar travel, Warp Efficiency 1 is 1 LY/day, or 365 LY/yr. That means that the "365" stays the same as you move up and down units: 365 LD/day, 365 LH/hr 365 LM/min, and 365 LS/sec. Now, inside the "shelf" you slow down by a factor of 10,000, so you end up doing 0.0365 LS/sec. Each hex is 600,000 km across, which is close enough to 2 light seconds that it doesn't matter. That means that it takes about 55 seconds for a Warp Efficiency 1 ship to cross a hex.

GDW published movement rate figures that are inconsistent and cannot be reconciled.

OK, so that WE 1 ship has a movement of 2, so that makes the game turns two minutes long, not one, but it's right in the ballpark. Bryn has suggested that the correct time scale is 20 minutes per turn. How does that fit with the rest of the information?

Instead of reconciling "slow down factors" and such, just calculate them yourself. The figures most consistent figures, in 1st and 2nd editions as well as Star Cruiser, are:

FTL = 1 LY/day = 109,499,061.8 km/s
STL = 2 hex/min = 20,000 km/s

So it drops-off by a factor of 5,474.95. That's what I'm sticking with.

 

[BMonnery]

Ah, already replied on etranger, but essentially using the settled rate (0.645 AU/day) and the hex size then the turn length is actually a classic traveller 1,000 second (about 18 min) turn. I think this was intentional.

I use 20 mins as an easy abstraction, like TNE.