Hyperdrive classes and travel time.

By jhh3, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

I HATE new cannon travel times they make everything to dam small

yeah a weeks time would feel better.

Just now, Oldmike1 said:

I HATE new cannon travel times they make everything to dam small

You have to remember that there are different class hyperdrives. The millenium falcon is the fastest in the galaxy.

Just now, Daeglan said:

yeah a weeks time would feel better.

Technology has gotten probably better.

Just now, Daeglan said:

yeah a weeks time would feel better.

That's probably the way it was in the old republic.

But I do see your point.

While the nerd in me personally loves having a quantifiable x is y distance apart and it takes z hrs to get there with a class Q drive. The GM in me has decided that Pretty much any number you choose will be the right one.... from a certain point of view.

All the information, Canon and Legends, is equally fallible because there are so many variants (and retcons) across all the media that until Darth Mouse and the SW story group say: A Class one Hyperdrive Travels X Parsecs in Y Hours and this is the way it will always be from now on, you can make it up and still be right.

You have to remember that in the movies (and to a lesser extent comics and books), EVERYTHING moves at the speed of plot.. You need to get from Cantonica to Crait to get the macguffin? That's 2 minutes of film time.... as opposed to the likelihood of several months real time which would really be monotonous and boring to watch.

Another problem comes in with the concepts of distance and space. A lot of people, SW writers included (Lucas being one of them), can't grasp how big a galaxy really is.

Quote

Space is big . Really big . You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space .

- Douglas Adams

So when they see Point A and B on a map and want to connect them, They don't factor in the actual distance, they just go... ok Boom. You're now on Ahch-To, and we're left to do the math based on what we know of science and technology and the physics of the SW universe and can't make it work.

Myself, I make it up as the story requires it. Leaning strongly on a larger, slower galactic travel standard. Its one of the driving plot points in my game. Up until very recently my players were stuck with a Class 3 Drive that took them months to get from A to B and they've been constantly trying to upgrade it, by any means necessary. I love knowing the math to get from A to B exists but I'd rather worry about what my players are going to do when they get there than worry about how long it takes them to do so.

11 hours ago, jhh3 said:

UPDATE: According to the new canon novelisation of Star Wars: A New Hope , there was only a gap of a few hours, at most a day between the ship leaving Tatooine and their arrival at Alderaan.

Meanwhile, the old man had been lecturing Luke from the moment the ship had settled into hyperspace. They, Chewie, and the droids had migrated from the cockpit to the central hold area. Han told himself he was only hanging around nearby to make sure they didn’t get any ideas about throwing their lightsabers around.

...

Luke arched his back, and the pose was so strange Han couldn’t keep his chuckle in. The kid must have heard it because he scowled and switched the lightsaber off. “Oh, this is pointless. What can I really learn on a ship in a few hours?”
Exactly. Han dropped his mask back down over his face and returned to the circuitry in front of him.
“I do not expect you to master everything in mere minutes, and you should not expect that of yourself, either. That is a path to frustration, anger—and both are dangerous.”

The issue with this is that it is so vague. "A few hours" is not specific enough, and does not refer directly to travel times, only to the time during which Ben is teaching him. Bear in mind that they could very well have slept during the trip.

Just now, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

The issue with this is that it is so vague. "A few hours" is not specific enough, and does not refer directly to travel times, only to the time during which Ben is teaching him. Bear in mind that they could very well have slept during the trip.

Not everyone has a 0.5 hyperdrive, most people have 1.5 or higher.

Fixing

Edited by jhh3
Fixing
On 4/4/2020 at 3:14 AM, jhh3 said:

I must be mistaken. Like I said I don't have the book, but hope to get it soon.

I know legends gets time in hyperspace wrong. It took Han roughly 4 hours to get from Tatooine to Alderaan on a 0.5 hyperdrive, as it is stated in a canon book.

Part of the issue might be that on most maps north is at the top of the page whereas the core rulebooks maps have Galactic north to the left of the page. Threw me off a few times too before I noticed the key.

7 hours ago, BipolarJuice said:

Part of the issue might be that on most maps north is at the top of the page whereas the core rulebooks maps have Galactic north to the left of the page. Threw me off a few times too before I noticed the key.

That is because the Galaxy map is longer in on direction than the other. So to make the map bigger they rotated it 90 degrees to allow the page spread to allow for a larger map.

I've seen some works that suggest that speeds are slower the closer to the core d/t the physics of Star Wars. This means that moving one "square" on the map near the Core Worlds might take 24 hours (Class 1) but one "square" in the Outer Rim might only take 8 hours (Class 1). If it were used consistently, it might be interesting to try.

8 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I've seen some works that suggest that speeds are slower the closer to the core d/t the physics of Star Wars. This means that moving one "square" on the map near the Core Worlds might take 24 hours (Class 1) but one "square" in the Outer Rim might only take 8 hours (Class 1). If it were used consistently, it might be interesting to try.

That might not be a bad theory. In a clone wars episode it took at least 12 hours to get to Alderaan from Coruscant, because they slept in the ship. Maybe it was only a few hours and they were just tired.

Since people keep saying "I'm a nerd and I need this"...how about this for a nerd thought: distance doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the quality of the route. What are hyperspace coordinates? It's not just the end destination, it's how much data you have on what's between you and the target. If there is nothing, you can get across the galaxy in 20 minutes*. If your data is so complete you can thread multiple needles, then anything from a few minutes to a few hours suffices for any destination. If your data sucks, or is "baseline public", then you need a lot more time to get around anomalies, like a day per quadrant. There is also the "safety" concern: if your path crosses areas of considerable interstellar flux and movement you may want to slow down so you can eject from hyperspace in time if you run across something.

The multiplier is the dumbest legacy number invented by WEG (I think) to account for a stupid throwaway line by Han that he could do "point 5 past light speed"...a number which makes no sense because it has no context, and because Lucas wasn't enough of a science nerd. Consider that taken literally, "point 5" is still 2 years from here to Alpha Centauri, which is irrelevant in galactic terms. None of it makes any sense, and nobody here is going to solve it, since it hasn't been solved in 40 years of nerds trying.

So imho it's best to toss all that garbage and liberate yourself from mistakes made in the 80s. If it's about quality of route instead of sheer engine power, then everything in the media makes more sense...and maybe the Falcon's "point 5" was really about the quality of the computer or the data he had.

-------------------------

* example: Anakin gets from Coruscant to Salucemai in only a few minutes in the episode where they rescue Eeth Koth, so either they have great data, or they have 0.0000001 hyperdrives...which would make "point 5" a total joke.

32 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Since people keep saying "I'm a nerd and I need this"...how about this for a nerd thought: distance doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the quality of the route. What are hyperspace coordinates? It's not just the end destination, it's how much data you have on what's between you and the target. If there is nothing, you can get across the galaxy in 20 minutes*. If your data is so complete you can thread multiple needles, then anything from a few minutes to a few hours suffices for any destination. If your data sucks, or is "baseline public", then you need a lot more time to get around anomalies, like a day per quadrant. There is also the "safety" concern: if your path crosses areas of considerable interstellar flux and movement you may want to slow down so you can eject from hyperspace in time if you run across something.

The multiplier is the dumbest legacy number invented by WEG (I think) to account for a stupid throwaway line by Han that he could do "point 5 past light speed"...a number which makes no sense because it has no context, and because Lucas wasn't enough of a science nerd. Consider that taken literally, "point 5" is still 2 years from here to Alpha Centauri, which is irrelevant in galactic terms. None of it makes any sense, and nobody here is going to solve it, since it hasn't been solved in 40 years of nerds trying.

So imho it's best to toss all that garbage and liberate yourself from mistakes made in the 80s. If it's about quality of route instead of sheer engine power, then everything in the media makes more sense...and maybe the Falcon's "point 5" was really about the quality of the computer or the data he had.

-------------------------

* example: Anakin gets from Coruscant to Salucemai in only a few minutes in the episode where they rescue Eeth Koth, so either they have great data, or they have 0.0000001 hyperdrives...which would make "point 5" a total joke.

Yeah. George didn't know what he was talking about. L3 is the reason han has the best nava computer in the galaxy. I think Disney is trying to fix that.

Edited by jhh3

Those times are actually much faster than mine. They list the hyperdrive as 11,450 light years an hour, while mine clocks in at ~1,620 light years an hour. Another way to say that is 31.8 light years per second vs. 4.5 light years per second. In parsecs, that's 3,500 an hour, or two and a third grid squares.

I do like his modifiers though, and may borrow them. I think I'd add a x5 modifier to the Unknown Regions and a x2 modifier to Wild Space.

I'm going to update my hyperspace travel times calculator to add a space for modifiers on each leg of the trip.

I have now done so. There are now slots for modifiers on each leg of the trip, and a note on the cell telling you what those modifiers are.

Hmm... I had a thought. Should the major hyperlanes also allow you to ignore regional modifiers? For example, you're on the Corellian Run from Coruscant to Smuggler's Run. It's a straight shot, but the first 4,500 parsecs are in the Core, the next 1,000 are in the Colonies, 1,000 in the Inner Rim, 3,000 in the Expansion Region, 4,000 in the Mid Rim, and 3,000 in the Outer Rim.

To translate that to Hyperspace Units* (500 parsecs), that's 9(*3=27), 2(*2=4), 2(*1.5=3), 6(*1.25=7.5), 8(*1.1=8.8), and 6(*1=6).
From a practical standpoint, cutting out the modifiers on major hyperlanes would reduce the number of operations by 6 in this example.
From an in-universe standpoint, it makes the hyperspace lanes much more important to both trade and travel as it dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to get to destinations along the route, which adds a nice bit of world-building. It also makes sense (or can be excused) in that perhaps the major hyperlanes are such because they bypass many gravity wells and star clusters.
In this example, it would change the total from 66.3 HUs to 33.

*I just came up with this. Figured we should have a term for it. A Hyperspace Unit is the distance a ship with a Class 1 Hyperdrive can travel in one hour under ideal conditions on a standard hyperspace route (500 parsecs).

50 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Hmm... I had a thought. Should the major hyperlanes also allow you to ignore regional modifiers? For example, you're on the Corellian Run from Coruscant to Smuggler's Run. It's a straight shot, but the first 4,500 parsecs are in the Core, the next 1,000 are in the Colonies, 1,000 in the Inner Rim, 3,000 in the Expansion Region, 4,000 in the Mid Rim, and 3,000 in the Outer Rim.

To translate that to Hyperspace Units* (500 parsecs), that's 9(*3=27), 2(*2=4), 2(*1.5=3), 6(*1.25=7.5), 8(*1.1=8.8), and 6(*1=6).
From a practical standpoint, cutting out the modifiers on major hyperlanes would reduce the number of operations by 6 in this example.
From an in-universe standpoint, it makes the hyperspace lanes much more important to both trade and travel as it dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to get to destinations along the route, which adds a nice bit of world-building. It also makes sense (or can be excused) in that perhaps the major hyperlanes are such because they bypass many gravity wells and star clusters.
In this example, it would change the total from 66.3 HUs to 33.

*I just came up with this. Figured we should have a term for it. A Hyperspace Unit is the distance a ship with a Class 1 Hyperdrive can travel in one hour under ideal conditions on a standard hyperspace route (500 parsecs).

I would instead decrease the unknown and wild space multiplier on the routes. IE instead of x5 maybe x3 and 1.5

3 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

I would instead decrease the unknown and wild space multiplier on the routes. IE instead of x5 maybe x3 and 1.5

You're saying make the Unknown Regions x3, and Wild Space x1.5? That sounds fair.

Wait, are you saying decrease the modifiers on the major routes for Wild Space and the Unknown Regions, instead of waiving the modifiers? None of the major hyperlanes go through those regions.

Edited by P-47 Thunderbolt
9 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Wait, are you saying decrease the modifiers on the major routes for Wild Space and the Unknown Regions, instead of waiving the modifiers? None of the major hyperlanes go through those regions.

Im take the region into account. if a region has a x2 modifier give the major hyperspace lane a lower modifier for being well mapped. like 1.5. for a minor lane(the little grey ones) make it like 1.25. Because it is mapped.

2 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Hmm... I had a thought. Should the major hyperlanes also allow you to ignore regional modifiers? For example, you're on the Corellian Run from Coruscant to Smuggler's Run. It's a straight shot, but the first 4,500 parsecs are in the Core, the next 1,000 are in the Colonies, 1,000 in the Inner Rim, 3,000 in the Expansion Region, 4,000 in the Mid Rim, and 3,000 in the Outer Rim.

To translate that to Hyperspace Units* (500 parsecs), that's 9(*3=27), 2(*2=4), 2(*1.5=3), 6(*1.25=7.5), 8(*1.1=8.8), and 6(*1=6).
From a practical standpoint, cutting out the modifiers on major hyperlanes would reduce the number of operations by 6 in this example.
From an in-universe standpoint, it makes the hyperspace lanes much more important to both trade and travel as it dramatically decreases the amount of time it takes to get to destinations along the route, which adds a nice bit of world-building. It also makes sense (or can be excused) in that perhaps the major hyperlanes are such because they bypass many gravity wells and star clusters.
In this example, it would change the total from 66.3 HUs to 33.

*I just came up with this. Figured we should have a term for it. A Hyperspace Unit is the distance a ship with a Class 1 Hyperdrive can travel in one hour under ideal conditions on a standard hyperspace route (500 parsecs).

I think if it's a straight route, you only use the modifier for the current region your in.

That's why straight routes are the best.