I seem to have some problems with my perspective. Warp travel seems to bee too fast. Using the rules for Navigators found on pages 183-186, most travel times begin at 5-10 days. This is then adjusted for the results of the Navigator's checks. In my experience, the Navigator is almost always good enough to cut the time down further. So far not a big issue, but still travel times to places within the same sub-sector (such as within Winterscale's Realm) are often taking less than 1 week.

So what happens with ships intended to get there fast? Things like the Markov warp engine and the Skittish machine spirit oddity can make even a cross-sector journey into a day trip. Is this the intention?

Overall, the warp journey seems very short to me. I've even ruled that the warp engines can't engage until the vessel is far enough away from planetary bodies. This typically means the ship needs to spend a few days moving towards/away from a planet before jumping. This sometimes means that there's more time in real space transit than in the warp. Is this the intent of the rules?

It might seem short for the crew, but for every day that passes in the warp roughly 12 days pass in the universe. So a trip of 10 days would mean that 4 months have passed....

I prefer the tall-ship type times seen in Abnett's books, where journeys of months are common.

I work on a rule of thumb baseline of a week to cross one of the squares on the front-piece pictorial style maps at the fronts of the books. This gives that kind of timescale. Unless there is a specific warp event, I don't tend to play with the difference between perception of time as it's just too confusing and problematic narratively imo - it basically only presents problems for the GM.

As I use BRP rules, training up skills is quite permissable during long voyages, and pcs regularly take advantage of that possibility.

Can a ship with the Markov 1 Warp Engine (-1d5 weeks from base travel time) reduce the travel time below 1 week? If not, this item is almost total overkill with most travel times taking only 1 week already. If it can go below 1 week, then we start having a vessel that can routinely travel back in time, and that's just too much of a PitA to consider.

In case anyone is interested, here's my house rule on reaching a Translation Point.

1) Determine the base minimum translation distance based upon most significant celestial body in proximity:

Star, Large: 5d10x150 AU

Star, Small: 5d10x100 AU

Gas Giant, Large: 5d10x90 AU

Gas Giant, Small: 5d10x60 AU

Terrestrial Planet, Large: 5d10x30 AU

Terrestrial Planet, Small: 5d10x20 AU

Other (Planetoid, Comet, etc.): 5d10x10 AU

2) Make a Navigation (Stellar) Test. For each Degree of Success, reduce the distance by 10%. For each Degree of Failure, increase the distance by 10%.

3) Vessels travel to/from the Translation Point at (Speed) AU per 30 minutes.

Example: Leaving from the moon of a small gas giant, the PC's frigate wants to head to Warp. The gas giant is the most significant celestial body, so the base distance the vessel must travel is 5d10x60 AU. The roll determines that the frigate will need to travel for 1200 AU. The helmsman makes his Navigation (Stellar) Test and gets 2 DoS, reducing this by 20% (to 960 AU). At the frigate's Speed 8, it will take 120 Turns (60 hours) to reach the Translation Point.

I use the following guidelines to determine base travel time in my games.

Travel between nearby systems - 1 week

Travel across a sub-sector - 1 month

Travel between two adjacent sub-sectors - 3 months

Travel between two distant sub-sectors - 6 months

Travel across a sector - 1 year

Interestingly, the Explorers in my current campaign traveled back in time twice in a row during last weeks session. Despite some heated debate among the players, they didn't abuse knowledge of impending events or attempt to change the past. They simply returned to Footfall a few days after they left and made a big public appearance to create plausible deniability.

Instead of making the travel time more predictable, have you considered making it more random? That's kind of the essence of the warp. Not just dangerous, but you never know if you'll end up getting there a century too late (or too early).

If your player's are always getting there in a week (or less), throw in some more random multipliers. I'm pretty sure the 4 Powers wouldn't like anyone especially PCs treating their realm as reliable as a modern toll-road. And the idea of using actual distance between points to estimate travel times may sound good on paper, but I'm sure if the people at Google ever tried making an app for that, they'd be reduced to a bunch of slavering recidivists faster than you could say "Slaanesh sells sea shells by the sea shore." Heck, that's probably what created the lesser Eye of Terror (or whatever GW calls it... Kiddie Pool of Terror maybe...)

Now, I'm sure physical distance probably does have an effect on warp travel time. However, I'm also pretty sure the Navigator Houses have the equivalent of master's courses on what that exact correlation is. Remember, the warp is a mysterious and frightening place. The only rule of thumb is don't step outside the Geller field, and, for the Emperor's sake, don't try to understand the whispers.

Oh, and p.s. (as I'm fond of doing) I'm pretty sure the fluff supports the idea of warp travel being supplemented by a significant amount of sublight travel. If I remember right, in the Eisenhorn series, they consistently mention warping to the edge of a system, then sublighting the rest of the way in. On the other hand, I don't think they ever mention having to leave a system before entering the warp. Likely because it's not hard to end up several million kilometers from your intended destination, and it's not fun exiting the warp 50 meters from the surface of a planet -- or star. Although legitimately, you still wouldn't warp to the edge of the system, you'd just use the z-axis and warp in out or the plane of the ecliptic. Also, I suppose it's probably not polite to slip past the gates of hell when you're too close to a populated planet. Even if there's no factual basis, I'm sure there's plenty of superstition about it.

p.p.s. HappyDaze, I do hope you mean VU (or at least the AU from vehicle combat) when you're talking about traveling to translation points. If you're really mean AU, then your travel time in bullet point 3 means a Hazeroth class privateer travels 2.77 times the speed of light when cruising.

Etheric said:

Yep. I did mean VU. i was reading the vehicle combat rules earlier and AU must have stuck in my brain.

HappyDaze said:

It's really a crime for FF to call the aeronautic units AU. Especially since I've already had to correct my GM that VUs aren't astronomical units, and he hadn't even read Into the Storm yet. Although it'd be kind of nifty if the system worked out that they were. You could actually dodge lasers, because they took a few seconds to get to you.

Problem with the RAW, I dont think anyone would last 3 months in the warp without having their ship/people wrecked by hazards every 5 days. Thats a dozen and a half or so rolls on the table, most of which range from bloody horrible to 'we're so screwed'

Admittedly, the warp is as bad a place as you'd ever not want to be, but statistically you're probably not going to make it... entirely intact

HappyDaze said:

I would tweak rules as written - in my game successful Navigator rolls can shave off days from the travel time, one or two days a week off can mean a significant time saving. I also use my own warp events table (which you can still find online at Dark Reign I believe) to check if there are any noteable events during the voyage. Often there aren't.

I would say in the case of that warp engine you mention it shaves 1-2 days per week travelled off travel time.

One thing to consider is that the example travel times, in many cases, are for clear, well-established stable routes within the Warp. While that's fair enough within an established sector, it's an inappropriate assumption for any part of the Koronus Expanse, IMO.

The conditions of the route are as important, if not more important, than the physical distances being crossed. That should, ideally, be the main factor that influences the base travel times a GM determines.

As for translating out of a system: according to some fluff (Bill King's Farseer , iirc), there's almost always some psychic fallout from a ship translating to/from the Immaterium. Dumping that on an unsuspecting planet is really asking for Bad Things™ to happen.

So it's not just for the safety of a ship that things make their warp entry and exit well away from anything.

There's also fanon and some hints in canon that it's less stressful on the drives/easier to make the transition when you're well away from gravity wells (which incidentally creates a wonderful bit closer to the galactic core where there are plenty of resource-rich worlds, but the stars are too close, so you're locked out of the warp and have to travel interstellar at slower than light speeds [ Fanatic! Magazine #2 ]), which explains why people don't wake up to find a space hulk has appeared outside the window.

For game reasons, there should be a lengthy realspace transit to give pirates a chance of raiding ships and the Imperial navy something to patrol. Remember that ships in warp are (RAW*) impossible to intercept. So pirates whether human or xeno will need to intercept their targets in realspace which can be at certain well frequented waypoints but more likely at the edge of systems at translation points where transport ships warp. The pirates need to be far enough to lure the targets in, run down their prey, overwhelm the target's defences, loot the ship and then run for their life and all before patrolling ships arrive. Personally, I think the looting part should take a whole day to steal enough loot to justify the munitions expense and repair cost.

*Which I happen to disagree with as implies that the IN has no reason to patrol warp lanes. I think there should be some way of forcing other ships out of warp.

With regards above to forcing ships out of the warp I don't know of any examples of that but there are examples of ships being affected in the warp by outside interference. In a gaunts ghost novel a shrine world is under attack. The shrine is to some saint I forget the name but the saint died after taking 10 wounds. As the fight over the main shrine was going on a gaurdsmen who I believe was having visons/dreams, was injured throughout the course of the battle in the exact same place as the saint. As the final wound hits the gaurdsmen he touches the shrine and it results in a massive psychic shockwave in the warp. The shockwave just happens to hit a chaos fleet on route to that world (the imperium was aware of the fleet), the fleet is scattered in the warp some ships are destroyed some ships are thrown months of warp travel away.

Now the above example required a miracle in order to happen but it may be possible create a more focused affect. If I were to use it I would have a small space station in the extreme outskirts of a solar system. The station would have no shields no weapons and be "protected" by 5 frigates. The station would be full of psychers who would attempt to cause increased turbulence in the warp. This would be incredibly risky and the moment the frigate captains even suspected and warp incursion they would blow the station away.

The issue with forcing a ship out of the warp is that it is so hard to enter and exit the warp as it is. The warp engines of ships are quite large and I believe there are examples in lore where ships have actually had a hard time exiting the warp at certain areas.

Another recent source for the "coming out of the warp too close to a planet is dangerous" idea is Frozen Reaches. In that book

SPOLIERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

a trio of Ork ships makes what is in effect a suicide attack on Damaris by leaping out of the warp bank up against the planet's orbuital defences. This is described as "suicidally risky" and indeed leads to the destruction of one of the three ships immediately.

The mechanic for this risk is not explained, (gravity disruption, psychic disruption from the world's inhabitants etc etc) but if one of three ships exploded, this suggests that there is at least a 33% chance that translating out of the warp close to a planet is lethal.

Personally I like to think that the risk is much higher, perhaps 50% or even 75% lethality.

As a desperate tactic, players could opt to translate their ship into real space right next to a planet, thus bypassing several days of slow travel to the planet's orbital range. This could be done by rolling a single D100: anything less than 75, and the players are all sucked into the warp, literally dragged screaming into hell, as their Gellar fields fail. Not even Fate Points can save them.

I rather like this idea, as it remains an option for players...albeit a nightmarishly lethal and dangerous one.

If following the 'tall-ships' idea further is helpful, the basic idea as already mentioned are the travel times for clearly established and stable routes are very different than something unknown: similar to a vessel going up the Thames for a refit: the Thames itself is not some pleasant channel for a novice to traverse: the various tidal effects and ocean and river currents, the movement of the sand bars, specific but sporadic seasonal effects, the location of navigational hazards that can shift or become a concern depending on tidal and seasonal influences, etc. However, because going up the Thames is extremely important and well-used all of these minutiae of details are well-known and documented, patrolled and reported. Navigational buoys and astropathic transmissions are all represented to make your arrival and departure as fast as possible.

Now, if you knew about London and its various docks, and that the river Thames connects from the English channel and had very little else you are in serious trouble if you think you could navigate it easily: the dangerous conditions of the English channel itself and its seasonal concerns for wind and currents, crossing the river delta safely (being sure to pick the one true passage, and not the myriad others that lead into rocks or sandbars) and then finally navigating the river itself, with its shoals, shifting seabeds, river speeds and turns, etc. The only way to make that journey safely is slowly, methodically and with painstaking effort: and that doesn't guarantee you've charted the region, as much as you have charted a single passage to a destination, as the conditions have likely changed as you've progressed through them.

All of these little details are readily translatable into warp related issues and can seriously increase your travel times - and potentially provide lots of fun for a navigator and an astropath as they try to dead reckoning their way through. Establishing a stable and predictable warp route is worth a random in itself: safe warp routes outside of the Emporium are worth killing for.

Well, the IoM is prevalent across the galaxy because they can move ships and people across the galaxy. The Navigator Gene allows humans to traverse distances of thousands of light years in relative safety whereas most other races can't. The Tau are not so fast and have a small, isolated Empire as a result.

The Markov drives are for fast 'courier' vessels. If they make times too quick over short hauls don't allow them to be used by the players.

If something makes transit time too quick on the short haul (skittish) don't allow its use (retcon it away if you want).

I say this because the galaxy is much more VAST that a sub-sector.

If the warp is roiled and seething make things slower. Developing special rules to make things slower can bite you in the end when your RT's want to go visit Holy Terra on a pilgrimage and you tell them it'll take a hundred years. Ragnar got there faster.

i tend to go with the speed of plot for in system travel, i believe it uses the rough guideline in non combat travel that it should take 1 to 2 weeks to get anywhere of importance in a system, sure fast lil frigates can do that faster, and lumbering bulk freighters slower

as for the speed of warp jump, its the advantage of having a navigator, and id only wory about hard fast travel times if they need to get somewhere fast, and even then i temper it with the above plot speed,

warp travel is by no means short. counting that every 5 days in the warp you will have to test for anomalies. trust me, if your caption is a bad rolled and ends up with dangerous encounters frequently. than a month in the warp is a bad call for basic travel.

One note: remember, if your navigator succeeds his check you add 25 to the result on the mishaps table, making it unlikely anything really bad will happen.

I forget where I read it, but traveling across a sector should take around 120 days of warp travel under optimum conditions. In real-time 1440 days will have passed on such a journey, which is almost 4 years. I'm not sure why you think this is too fast. In the books, especially space marine stories, they are often traveling across several sectors which is why it seems to take so long.

As for translating out of warp close to a planet, I think it's the gravitational stress as your ship is half in the warp and half out. The two halves of the ship are being subjected to different forces. This can potentially just twist the ship in half. (That'd be my explanation anyway.)

sketchesofpayne said:

Using the information from the RT Core, travel across a sector is 30-60 days under good conditions. That's one-quarter to one-half the time you suggest. That's a base time, and it's not hard for a good Navigator (and what RT worth a **** doesn't have a good Navigator) can expect to halve or possibly even quarter that again. That doesn't even take into account engines and qualities that can reduce this time by a flat amount (often by 1d5 weeks).

Now if we take a journey with a base time of 30-60 days and halve it for a good Navigator we get only 15-30 days. If we take 1d5 weeks off of that number, we might well get a ship that can routinely cross the sector in no time (literally!). That's where the "too fast" part comes in.

HappyDaze said:

The part I've marked in bold is the important part, IMO. Conditions within the Warp, with regards to the game, are entirely a matter of GM's discretion, and consequently the base travel time for any journey within the Warp is as long or short as the GM wants it to be.

And, looking at the rulebook, I feel that you're still underselling 'good conditions' - the example in the table is 30-60 days for "A journey across the body of a full Imperial sector using accurate information and known warp routes". I'd argue - in fact, I am arguing - that the second half of that text is more important than the first. Accurate information and known warp routes are, in my opinion, a huge advantage when it comes to travelling through the Warp, while relative distances are a comparatively trivial matter (because distance doesn't actually exist in the Warp, and you're entering the Warp to circumvent those distances in the first place).

Thing is, though, there are plenty of situations in the Imperium where Warp Travel does need to be fast. The League of Blackships and the fleets of the Adeptus Astartes, to name two important examples, are better served by swift vessels than slow ones (both being required to appear all across the galaxy; the former on their long but time-sensitive patrol routes, the latter to respond swiftly to grave threats), employing skilled navigators and the finest technologies the Martian Priesthood can provide to allow them to cross the void far more quickly than most. Even when not dealing with necessarily-swift vessels, common travel along major routes for the purpose of moving around tithes and supplies should be swift and safe enough that it can be relied upon.

The only places, really, where warp travel should be slow and perilous are when taking a voyage away from the charted routes or out into the unexplored wilderness.

Also note that the 1:12 ratio for time passed is not a certainty, but rather mentioned in the rulebook as an average for "open warp"; it's then noted that more stable routes will have a better ratio, while more turbulent routes should have a worse one.

The point - which everyone seemed to ignore first time round - is that the values in the rulebook should not be adhered to slavishly, but are rather vague examples of something that is better defined by circumstance than by determining a travel time based on distance.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

The point - which you seemed to ignore - is that some of us would prefer less vague examples and more defined travel times.

While I admit the rules for time in the warp are vague that is the point, The warp does not allow for such things as regularity. There are examples in lore of a ship entering the warp and exiting it three days later. However on board, 6 years went by and the crew had to resort to canabalism to survive. Another example that is repeated in most table top books is how an entire imperial fleet was sent to retake a planet held by chaos invaders, the fleet never arrived and was presumed lost. Then 100 years later the chaos held world is being consumed by the tyranids and then said fleet emerges and engages and defeats the tyraninds. The point is you are asking for the impossible, accurate travel times in the warp are impossible by its nature, the closest thing you will get to regularity is navigator skill, the more skill a navigator has the less time it takes to traverse the warp and the ratio of days in the warp to days outside the warp will narrow ie. instead of 14 to 1 it will be 3 to 1.

I will admit I also think warp travel is a bit to fast in the game but then I also think that the number of warp incurisons that can happen is also to high by game rules.