Folks,

So, I’ve been doing some research on these forums, and looking at various previous work in this space. I’ve got a game coming up this week, and I’d like to try out a concept I’ve got for some basic hyperspace travel times.


First off, everything here assumes you have a Hyperdrive multiplier of 1x. You’d need to adjust appropriately, if yours is faster or slower.

One thing I’ve noticed is that the basic size of the Star Wars galaxy appears to have been fairly consistent over time, and people seem to have worked fairly hard to keep the grid references the same. So, we have that to our advantage.

Also, keep in mind that the basic rules here assume that you don’t run into any unusual phenomena, such as nebulas, black holes, pirates that push a very large mass into your path so as to force you out of hyperspace, etc…. Let’s first figure out what the basic rules are, before we add any complications.

What I’m thinking is that the average time to travel across one grid is three days, if you’re doing it without following any known hyperspace routes. If you’re following a minor hyperspace route, then that goes down to two days to cover that same amount of distance. Using a main hyperspace highway would cut that down to just one day for the same distance.

Of course, if you follow one of the existing routes, you may travel a greater distance than you would have done if you had simply followed a straight line trajectory.

And there are some routes that are especially fast (or slow), above and beyond what the hyperlanes might normally be able to deliver. Those are the ones called out in the FFG books that disagree with the basic calculations we’ll be doing here.


So, let’s look at some examples. To help us, let’s use the interactive map at http://www.swgalaxymap.com/ and the travel time calculator at http://d6holocron.com/astrogation/

So, to travel from Coruscant (at the intersection of K9/L9 and K10/L10) to Alderaan (M10, just slightly south of the border with M9) would take about four days (all the way across one grid and about one-third of the way across a second grid), if you were to go the direct non-hyperlane route.

To travel from Coruscant to Alderaan by hyperlane, you could take less than a half day to go from Coruscant to Brentaal, on the Perlemian Trade Route, and then take the secondary route from Brentaal on the more winding path past Tepasi, Korfo, Caamas, and ultimately to Alderaan. Just visually estimating, that second half might take a day-and-a-half to maybe two days. It would easily be two days to go the full distance on those two legs.

Alternatively, at Brentaal, you could switch over to the Hydian Way, and go to Aldraig in about a half day, and then you’d only need to cross directly from Aldraig to Alderaan, probably taking something close to a day.


If we plug in the starting location of Coruscant and the ending location of Alderaan into the Astrogation Computer site, we come out with 70.5 hours or 2.94 days. Which jives well with my visual estimate of the straight line time.


So, how about Coruscant and Corellia? The Astrogation Computer site says 35.2 hours or 1.47 days, but the normal hyperlane rule above would say something more like three days, and the straight-line rule would be more like eight days.

IMO, this is one of those “special cases”. Sure enough, 1.5 days is referenced on page 78 of “Fly Casual” as the flight time between these two planets.


Okay, so how about something a bit further, and more involved? Like Arda (grid Q6) to Ryloth (grid R17)? Simple straight-line math with the unimproved Mark I Eyeball would say something like 33-36 days, but then you’d also be cutting straight through or very close to Hutt space, among other things.

The Astrogation Computer site says 697.6 hours, or 29.07 days. So, a little off from what the straight line rule would say.

For the hyperlane route, we could take about four or five days to go straight to the Perlemian Trade Route, probably picking it up at Budpock (in the Meridian sector, in grid R7 but close to the border with R6), taking maybe seven or eight days to get down to Brentaal, where you could switch over to the Hydian Way, about four days to get over to Denon where you can switch to the Corellian Run, and from there about six-and-a-half to seven days to get to Ryloth (you’re travelling diagonally across the grids, so it would take ~1.414 days to cross that distance that way on a major hyperlane). In total, that would be about 24 days.

You might cut about a day off that by going from Arda to Lucazec, and then the Salin Corridor over to Columex, where you could pick up the PTR.

What about FFG? Well, page 78 doesn’t directly mention the route we’re looking at, but it gets pretty close — Ossus (on the PTR) to Tatooine (on the Corellian Run) is apparently just nine days. So, much faster than our calculated hyperlane speed. Hmm.

Anyway, I’m just trying out some ideas, and I’d love to hear what others may have come up with in this space. I know earlier versions of the SWRPG had a lot more crunch in this space, and I’m not looking to resurrect all of that, but I’d like a bit more details than FFG has given us so far.

I don’t mind coming up with a house rule in this area, if I can keep it fairly simple and easy to apply.

Thanks!

Taking a look at the times we were given in the back of Fly Casual, I put together this map: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6YAswfr4VXQTEo2TjhhN0xNVU0/view

Dots are approximately 1 day apart (at HD speed 1). The arrows point in the direction where there's (for whatever reason, at least according to the chart) at 25% speed boost (can travel 4 days distance in 3 days).

I like to think of hyperspace as fluid. You have eddies and currents based on some bizarre gravitational negative of the physical universe. These currents aren't detached from the traffic either. What was once simply smooth sailing, over centuries of travel, can turn into a swift current as thousands of thousands of ships transit that particular corridor, dragging the stuff of hyperspace along with them, creating an artificial flow. In the same way, once-fast but now-forgotten lanes may still be clear, but lack of traffic has robbed the current of its strength.

TL;DR - I kinda want to do a 'hyperspace currents' overlay for the standard galaxy map, but am far too lazy and unskilled to do so.

This is very much IMHO, but...

There seem to be two types of FTL travel: wormhole/insta-jumps, like in Battlestar Galactica; or warp drives like in Star Trek.

Star Wars looks a lot like "warp drives", but given that travel times are highly variable (like, Anakin jumping from Coruscant to Saleucami in a couple minutes, or Palpatine to Mustafar), I think it's really more of a mix. It's all about the quality of the coordinates and the route. If the coordinates and route are really accurate and clean, you'll get wherever you're going almost instantaneously. If the hyperdrive has to make course corrections and avoid obstacles, travel time will be a lot slower.

So I'm not sure you can really come up with a solid rule, and anything more than a couple days to get just about anywhere feels less like Star Wars and more like Traveller or something.

Hyperspace travel moves at the speed of plot. It does it in the movies & it does it in the older versions of the RPGs.

In this case, there are two options the PCs should debate on, and the plot will shift according to which route they choose. So, speed of plot doesn’t really work in this case. I need a somewhat harder/crunchier number to put out there, and something to back that up.

For now, I’m thinking that the map done by Braendig does everything I really need, so I think I’ll go with that.

Now I just need to figure out where the hell Arbooine is on that **** thing….