I have read the fly/drive maneuver and tried to find out how long it takes for a ship to get from close to extreme as part of research for our next game.

As I understand it, distance has to be relevant to starting point when it comes to travelling between the planetary ranges.

Getting from one range to the next takes 2 maneuvers, but the travel speed makes exceptions to this and tells you how far you can get in 1 and 2 maneuvers.

Close has to be set at starting point for this to work, not always be relevant to your ship, then the math doesn`t add up.

So....

Speed

5 - 6: 1 maneuver within close, close to short or close to medium. 2 maneuvers from close to long. +2 maneuvers to get to extreme range.

2 - 4: 1 maneuver within close or close to short. 2 maneuvers from close to medium. +2 maneuvers to get to long. +2 aditional maneuvers to get to extreme

1.... 1 maneuver within close. 2 maneuvers from close to short. +2 maneuvers to medium, +2 maneuvers to long, +2 maneuvers to extreme range.

So this means it takes a ship flying at 5 - 6 speed takes 4 maneuvers to get from close to extreme. travelling 2 - 4 speed will take 6 maneuvers, travelling at just one will take 8 maneuvers.

Right?

Offhand that looks right.

Also remember that bigger vehicles (Sil 5+) can only take one pilot only maneuver per turn, so you'll have to spread those maneuvers out over more turns and there will be some times when the vehicle is "on the way" having spend one maneuver to move, but needing to spend a second before you actually see results.

Don't forget that the chart assumes you already fly at that speed. If you, say, come out of hyperspace or start from a carrier, you may need to accelerate first.

You're probably at Speed 0, so you need at least one "Accelerate" Maneuver to get to Speed 1, or you can use the "Punch It" Maneuver. (Especially useful if you can get to Speed 5 right away.)

I hijiack this topic to ask something related i always had problem figuring out

i hope this could rise some question/explain some doubts also for the OP so please forgive me if i'm creating confusion and clearly say to STFU in this scenario...

let's assume ship A and B are at extreme range

first scenario: ship A is flying at speed 3, ship B are speed 0

ship A need 6 maneuver to get to ship B, thus 3 round (if doing 2 maneuver per turn)

this also mean:

- at start of round 1, A and B are at extreme range

- at end of round 1, A and B are at long range

- at end of round 2, A and B are at medium range

- at end of round 3, A and B are at close range

second scenario: ship A is flying at speed 5, ship B are speed 0

- at start of round 1, A and B are at extreme range

- at end of round 1, A and B are at long range

- at end of round 2, A and B are at close range

it just "accumulate maneuver until got enough to reduce one range band"?

Enter: The Chase.

The range-band-move-manoeuvre-model doesn't work that well, when one side is fleeing.

Anyhow, from the information we've got, one could deduce range increments (RI) of 1 manoeuvre (M) at speed (S) 1.

What we know:

Close to Short: S1 => 2 M, S3 => 1 M , S5 => 1/2 M;

Close to Medium: S3 => 2 M; S5 => 1 M;

Close to Long: S5 => 2 M.

So, speed 3 is getting you twice as far as speed 1, speed 5 even four times as far. If 1 RI = 1 M at S1, then, counting from a fixed close origin,

Short is 2 RI, Medium is 4 RI, and Long is 8 RI. S1 will cover 1 RI with each manoeuvre, S3 2 RI, S5 4 RI.

I just turned it the other way around. Making it all relative to exit/end pointo and not to start point. It all makes it much more clear and understandable

I just turned it the other way around. Making it all relative to exit/end pointo and not to start point. It all makes it much more clear and understandable

It is, if you aim at providing a set of manoeuvres related to distance. But, as you already had accomplished that conclusively, my intent was something (not so) completely different:

When you're transforming to a grid with a fixed Origin (of a coordinate system, not a starting point), you can use just that: a grid, and translate manoeuvres into movement on that grid, and calculate range bands according to the distance on it.

So, by the rules, actually, when dealing with structured (IE turn-based) time, the speeds do EXACTLY what they say on the tin - a speed 1 vessel simply can't do more than change from close to short range, period, even if it stacks maneuvers over several turns. While this definitely seems strange if you are imagining your range bands as a roughly linear set of distances, that's not actually how they work, as written. I actually had to write this all out the other night to really wrap my head around it, but once I did it was a bit of an epiphany. See, the range bands are (at least in space) probably more properly considered to be logarithmic scale, not linear. Ground isn't quite the same smooth log scale, but it's definitely still not linear, so the same general concepts apply. If you look at the descriptions of the range bands for planetary scale, in space, you can end up with something roughly like this:

close = 5km

short = 50km

medium = 500km

Long = 5000km

Note these are max ranges, so, for example, 51km to 500km would all be "medium" range, functionally. Already, it should be clear why the fly/drive rules work the way they do - if we're talking about a speed 1 vessel, and we assume it can take only one pilot-only maneuver per turn (limiting it to covering the 5km distance per-turn of close range), it would take 100 turns at least to cover the distance to a stationary target that started at long range (501km away). Heck, it would take at least 10 turns to get to something that was at medium distance (assuming MINIMUM medium distance of basically 51km). Put simply, if you are speed 1, then in structured time, you can move about a bit in your local space, but you're not going to be covering long distances. The same holds true for ships which can take 2 pilot only maneuvers - even if you assume taking a second fly/drive represents a 10-fold increase in "real" speed (which, in fact, is what the math works out to), that would STILL mean at least 10 turns to get to something at long range, so it's still not that practical.

Here's the really eye-popping thing, though - if you assume a turn averages out to about 30 seconds of "real" time, then covering 5km in one turn still represents a speed of 600km/hour, or 1/2 the speed of sound. I feel like few people would call that "slow". If you take 2 fly/drive maneuvers in a turn (or you are speed 2), that ends up working out to covering 50km (potentially) in one turn, or 6000km/hour (AKA ~mach 5) Needless to say, speed 5 gets all sorts of crazy - if you can cover "long" distance in basically 30 seconds, that works out to 600,000km/hour, which might sound like an absurdly high number until you realize that space is so big that at that speed it would still take over 1/2 hour to get to our moon.

All that said, I know my personal experience was that initially I chafed mightily at the restrictions on changing range, as it felt "unfair" and absurd to say that a speed 1 vessel could never get to medium range, but my epiphany was to realize that really what this system is telling you is that you shouldn't be using structured time for everything. If your players detect a derelict station at extreme range, you should probably narrate most of the potentially hours long flight to the station, rather than trying to play it out turn by turn. You can even use this to potentially build tension - an Imperial I star destroyer might have gotten a lucky hit on your players's ship at medium range, and knocked out the power - but now it has to cross the distance to scoop them up - this gives them maybe 5 minutes to come up with a plan, and might make it more "realistic" for them to do some more major repairs to get the ship operational again, while still letting you narrate the looming star destroyer getting closer and closer...

To me, then, I feel like the rules as written actually work great for setting up very cinematic scenarios that match the movies - Imagine a star destroyer chasing down a small freighter - the Star Destroyer really only moves in narrative time, meaning that in the context of the structured time chase, it's really more of a prop, or a backdrop - it's the looming threat, but in terms of gameplay it's the TIEs that can catch you in structured time that provide the "meat" of the encounter. The trouble is I don't think the rules on this do a very good job of explaining themselves to players/GMs, which I think leads many to try to fit the rules into something we're more used to in terms of linear measures of distance/speed. I think the advantage of the rules as written (as I understand them, at least) is that they can give you a more balanced set of how long it takes for things to happen - two speed 2 capital ships that detect each other at extreme range are maybe 45 minutes to an hour away from getting to medium range of each other, where the combat can really start. It doesn't make sense to play that time out turn by turn, for sure - but maybe it's worth considering the narrative potential of giving players "about an hour" of "real" time to make plans, make repairs, get ready, etc, instead of assuming all the distances are linear and giving the players 1 to 2 turns to prepare.

Just my thoughts on this!

Narrative game.

Narrative game.

Forgive me, but this seems like a dismissive non-response. I mean, yes, I get that it's a narrative game, but I was pretty clear about how following the rules as they are written can actually provide better narrative opportunities. My issue here then is two-fold:

First, when you started this thread, you started it with a post in which you discussed attempting to research how long it took to move a certain distance per turn, based on the fly/drive rules, and attempted to extrapolate the rules out into a framework of linear ranges, and asked if this was the correct reading of the rules. I'm here to tell you that it is not. Certainly you are allowed (even encouraged) to change the rules to better suit you and your group, but you should acknowledge that you are doing so, rather than asserting that you are extrapolating correctly from the rules. Further, I think you are mistaken if you think that your way is more "narrative friendly".

In fact, this is my second point - following the rules as written probably allows for more narrative options, not fewer, but it takes realizing that you aren't supposed to be spending the entire "encounter" in structured time to take advantage of that. Your system serves the groups that want to limit the game more to what can reasonably done as an "action" per turn, as it means that you can deal with covering long distances in a relatively slow ship without having to drop out of structured time. The cost of this, though, is that it probably limits the options that the players (including the game master) are willing to consider. For example, if I was told my character had 5 minutes to solve the problem of a disabled hyperdrive before the star destroyer got to him, I'd probably try some more elaborate forms of damage control, like pulling spare parts from a fighter stowed on board and/or kludging something together from odds and ends. If I'm told that I have 1-2 "turns" before the star destroyer reaches my character, I'm probably not going to be thinking in terms of more involved solutions, because those might seem beyond the scope of taking 1-2 actions.

Good day fellow space-pilots

So, by the rules, actually, when dealing with structured (IE turn-based) time, the speeds do EXACTLY what they say on the tin - a speed 1 vessel simply can't do more than change from close to short range, period, even if it stacks maneuvers over several turns.

No, this not RAW. It is a common mistake because I think the paragraph was missing in the first print von the EotE CRB, but it's in the errata and it definitely has been added to the other CRB and the reprints of the EotE CRB. In the section of the drive/fly maneuver it says something like: "Changing rangebands always costs 2 maneuvers with the following exceptions: [...]".

So, for a vehicle at speed 1 it always takes 2 maneuvers to change from one rangeband to the next. Only moving within close range can be done for one maneuver. Which is important because it means a vehicle at speed one can cover all rangebands at personal scale with one maneuver.

I wouldn't try to calculate actual speed or distance covered (there have been plenty of discussions about this in these forums, they never end well...), because it is a narrative system and the duration of one round or even one action may vary significantly. So while changing from extreme to long range might take 10-20 minutes in-game-time, it would simply not be interesting to stretch this out over 10 rounds, because the ships can't interact and you would just have to repeat the fly/drive-maneuver over and over. That's not interesting. It's like in the films. They don't show ships closing in on each other for 10 minutes just moving through space. They say "Let's close in on them", and the next minute they start shooting at each other or are dogfighting or you get some boarding action or something.

So yes, the range bands are laid out somewhat exponentially, but you don't need exponentially more maneuvers to cover them, because that would be boring. But you can (and should) always narrate, that it took you much longer to go from extreme to long than it took you to get from long to medium, although both times it used up 2 maneuvers.

To me, the actual distances are not really important. The range bands are only important to tell if you are within weapons and/or sensor range. And in personal scale I see the range bands rather as the difficulty to shoot someone than an actual distance. Because that difficulty depends not solely on the distance but also on the location and terrain. On an empty field medium range would be wider than on a crowded street, because on the empty field it is easier to shoot and move around.

Speed in this system really is a strange thing and I had huge problems with the whole vehicle movement stuff in the beginning. With the way speed and movement/rangebands is handled, you can really get some strange cases: E.g. two ships one with speed 4 and one with speed 6 start at close range from each other and move towards a point at extreme range (without racing each other). Then, after two maneuvers each, they both are at long distance from their target, but at medium distance from each other. Even weirder: after 4 rounds they both reached close distance from the target, but are at either short or medium range from each other, depending on who went first.

But, although it is easy to construct these weird scenarios, they hardly erver matter in actual play, because either the distance between friendly ships is not improtant, so there is no need to track it, or you enter a chase scene.

Also, one should only enter structured time, when absolutely needed. For space-stuff that's normally the case when an actual fight starts and shots are being fired or a chase/race is going on. If the PCs are just going somewhere in ships with different speeds, the faster ship will get there faster. Done. No need to use maneuvers or rangebands outside of encounters.

Tl;dr: fly/move costst 2 maneuvers per rangeband unless otherwise stated in the speed section. Range is abstract and relates more to ranged attack difficulty than actual distance. Speed is weird -> make chase-scenes or stay narrative.

Cheers

GM Fred

I wouldn't try to calculate actual speed or distance covered (there have been plenty of discussions about this in these forums, they never end well...), because it is a narrative system and the duration of one round or even one action may vary significantly. So while changing from extreme to long range might take 10-20 minutes in-game-time, it would simply not be interesting to stretch this out over 10 rounds, because the ships can't interact and you would just have to repeat the fly/drive-maneuver over and over. That's not interesting. It's like in the films. They don't show ships closing in on each other for 10 minutes just moving through space. They say "Let's close in on them", and the next minute they start shooting at each other or are dogfighting or you get some boarding action or something.

This right here is EXACTLY my point, and why I think linear maneuvers to cover log distances is bad for a narrative style game. To me it's much, much, much more clear to simply say that covering longer distances CANNOT be done in structured time than it is to limit your players to thinking that they have only 1-2 "turns" to do something, and then expecting everyone to recognize that those 2 turns represent an hour of "real" time, while "turns" during combat only represent a few seconds each. Every experience I have had with people who play that way has resulted in players ending up being limited to only "combat" style actions, even when logically a "turn" represented a much long stretch of time. Thus, my argument is that saying "Okay, the TIEs have been dealt with, but your engine is out and the star destroyer is closing in - you have about 5 minutes before it gets to you" results in much more narrative play than saying "Okay, the TIEs have been dealt with, but your engine is out and the star destroyer is closing in - everyone gets two actions before it gets here".

Instead of thinking that you start in close range and the goal is at extreme range, think that YOU are at extreme range to the goal and just take it from there. It makes it all very easy and understandable.

In a combat you always move up and down, spin and fly fast, her and there and all that, but distances are meaningless in a combat if you or any ship involved aren't tryingoing to get away from something.

This right here is EXACTLY my point, and why I think linear maneuvers to cover log distances is bad for a narrative style game. To me it's much, much, much more clear to simply say that covering longer distances CANNOT be done in structured time than it is to limit your players to thinking that they have only 1-2 "turns" to do something, and then expecting everyone to recognize that those 2 turns represent an hour of "real" time, while "turns" during combat only represent a few seconds each. Every experience I have had with people who play that way has resulted in players ending up being limited to only "combat" style actions, even when logically a "turn" represented a much long stretch of time. Thus, my argument is that saying "Okay, the TIEs have been dealt with, but your engine is out and the star destroyer is closing in - you have about 5 minutes before it gets to you" results in much more narrative play than saying "Okay, the TIEs have been dealt with, but your engine is out and the star destroyer is closing in - everyone gets two actions before it gets here".