Zerohour said:

For the Navigator's skill to really grant any kind of regularity, there needs to be some base regularity. Otherwise the Navigator that gets 3 degress of success still might come out worse than the other guy with 3 degrees of failure. That's why there needs to be a stronger base in the rules even if the characters' view it as random. I am not a fan of GM fiat.

HappyDaze said:

Nice to see that people read the whole post before responding, rather than just picking a short section and focussing on that...

All that aside, whether you want hard-and-fast numbers or not, focussing on the distances involved is the last thing you should be doing when it comes to determining the duration of a voyage through the Warp, in my opinion. Warp travel is employed to circumvent the vast distances involved, so there is no reason save for perhaps laziness to rely on distance as a significant factor for determining travel duration.

The Warp is not - and shouldn't be boiled down to for the sake of simplicity - a place easily defined by any rules a human mind understands. If it could be easily described or given a semblance of structure... it wouldn't be the same. It's not necessarily random, but it is meant to be beyond the understanding of mortals.

As I see it, were any effort made to create a more solid (not completely hard-and-fast, not free from GM Fiat, but more than the short table in the rulebook) would involve two main steps:

The first step would be determining duration for that particular distance - it's the first step, but far from the most crucial factor. Assume for this instance that crossing a subsector has a base time of 2 weeks.

The second step is to multiply or divide that number based on the conditions in the Warp along that route. A clear, stable route, well-charted and with plenty of information about prevailing conditions may halve that base time, allowing for swift and safe journeys. Translating into the Warp to journey along a route charted only in stories and legends... that may multiply the base time by 4 or 5, while diving blind into the Warp with no route, into the midst of a Warp Storm may push that value up to x10 or more.

Just because I only quoted a small portion of your post doesn't mean I didn't read it all. Your ideas just posted for a system are a good base, and I'd have liked it if you had put that out first rather than just trying to be imperious and declare that we don't need such things.

HappyDaze said:

Go and get specific with the warp. It'll eat you. A trip to Terra from Ultramaar could take a week or a thousand years. You arer the GM, make it take as long as you want it to take. The warp isn't specific.

bobh said:

My players won't accept it as being that random, and it blows my suspension of disbelief too. The IoM can't function if there is no rhyme or reason to determining a travel time. I accept that what is in the book is an incomplete accounting, but something more function could be created without so much reliance upon GM fiat.

HappyDaze said:

For humanity to travel the stars they must tear a hole into reality and enter the realm of chaos and your players and yourself are complaining there is no laminated time-table? And that you specifically want a guide to the realm of chaos for purposes of an accurate measurement of distance and time involved, so the players can schedule their appointments better?

Could you please textually explain what you expect, from the warp, that you couldn't do for yourself if you were truly interested? A chart with destinations and the length of time between them? a few additional percentile tables with random stuff?

Really? This is too hard? And just so you know, it's already been done.

Citizen Philip said:

Why the attitude? If it's been done then why not provide a link? Or, just go on being an unhelpful ****.

I think I'll have a try at rewriting Navigating the Warp (pages 183-186 of the RT Core). I want to include the following skills:

Scholastic Lore (Astromancy) for getting a "lock-on" to the real space destination. I consider this a key first step. Since this is real space based, distance will matter here, and thus it will adjust modifiers for further steps based upon DoS/DoF (thus longer journeys will tend to be more hazardous and longer).

Forbidden Lore (Warp) for determining the likely effects of warp conditions along the planned voyage as well as the best point of Translation (both in space and time). This sets the difficulty for the Navigation (Stellar) test to reach the point of Translation. This also allows for estimates on the duration of the journey and insight into possible hazards. This test will be modified by familiarity with the route (common, well-traveled routes will give a bonus, the unknown areas will give a penalty).

Navigation (Stellar) for successfully reaching the proper point of Translation at the proper time for the voyage (I view Translation points as flexible rather than fixed). DoS/DoF here will adjust the Navigation Warp test.

Psyniscience for locating the Astronomicon. This is primarily to set a modifier for the Navigation (Warp) test.

Navigation (Warp) for the obvious and most important test. Most of the above are modifiers to this final test.

That's the basic outline.

HappyDaze said:

You've got two pages worth of responses and you've only complained or complained about the responses, and at the same time, been given any number of plausible methods of resolving the issue yourself. You're the GM, if it doesn't work for you: house rule it, or define what is otherwise not specific. Your entire hang-up seems to hinge on at most, 5 sentences; a collective short paragraph.

If you want additional resources, then http://darkreign40k.com/ is a good place to start. Search for warp, and quite a few interesting things should come up.

HappyDaze said:

If you are looking for additional flavour text, try the Main RT book (pg 311-312) and read what is says about warp navigation. I find that, as written, travelling can be entirely too slow, and that in opposition to what it says, in well used systems the travel time to a safe jump range is much less.

I'll get specific for you:

Sail in real life on the ocean. There are currents you can use to GO FASTer than if you sailed against a current. There are places that are BECALMED. There are KNOWN NAVIGATION LANES in the ocean. Safe and Hazardous. Sometimes that is turned upside down on its head and sideways...and its all REAL LIFE. You can go the safe way pretty fast and safe in the assurance that a naval unit will be nearby to save you in case mother nature decides to sink your ship. Or you can sail out of the safe lanes and get lost and never be heard from at all. And it can take one boat of equal speed and crew longer to get there (your destination) than another exact crew and ship. All in real life.

Rogue Trader is a game. The rules are a sandbox. If you feel the need to make your sandbox out of concrete with no possible deviation go ahead. Don't expect me to agree with you.

The warp is an ocean in turmoil. Just like our oceans. We have sea monsters too. I've seen some.

Also, take into account IoM speeds in the warp have to be fast or the IoM would fall apart faster than it is already.

I think one of the biggest bugs is the engines (and Skittish) that adjust the time with a flat -1d5 weeks. If these are changed so that they adjust the time of th journey as if 2 additional DoS were achieved (or 1 added DoS for the light cruiser engine) then routine time travel isn't a common occurance.

Don't forget that arriving before you leave isn't uncommon.

HappyDaze said:

Well the Markov 1 Warp Engine reduces the base travel time by 1d5 weeks. Then it is further modified by the results of the Navigation Warp Test.

If you subtract the 1d5 weeks after the Nav test then the engines are too powerful and Warp Travel is too fast.

pvhammer said:

Even if you do it before the Navigation (Warp) test results are calculated, you still end up with base times in the negative since it avergages a reduction of 3 weeks and a typical journey often starts with a base time of 10 days or less.

bobh said:

Since this is noted as a trailer to something that is described as extremely rare (arriving centuries late), I would conclude that it too is extremely rare and should not be as common as you are suggesting.

I do really like the idea (from Traveller) that you can't jump in near a massive body (planet, star, etc). So typical travel is a day or two of moving away from a planet on thrusters, a week in the warp, then a day or so of using thrusters to get close to your destination. That of course gives pirates a chance to strike with fast thruster ships hanging around near the jump in spots.

As for the time in the warp, the chart can probably use a little tweaking. Warp time should always be a function of GM discretion anyway.

It depends on how far away from any celestial bodies you believe the ship has to be before jumping into the Warp. One person made a program to calculate how long it would take a ship based on it's max acceleration in gravities and the distance it needed to travel.

For instance, if you were in a Sword-class Frigate, and you needed to get around 5AU away from a celestial body before jumping to Warp, it'd take you 3 days to get to the jump point. If you decided you had to be at the edge of the system to jump out, it'd take you about 8.65 days. If you were just in a Jericho-class, that'd take a just over 2 weeks instead.

HappyDaze said:

All events, over time, are common.

bobh said:

No, they are not. The amount of times people get in their car and arrive safely to work are far more common than the amount of times their vehicle has a roll over crash (a specific mishap). So much so, that I've never found myself seeing that an employee is running late and assuming that they've been in a roll over crash.

MILLANDSON said:

That would be my program, for any who are interested, here is the download link.

Bilateralrope said:

That's the one Cheers for making it man, I've been putting it to good use in my RT games!

Bilateralrope said:

Interesting program, i have been running with something similiar for my group - though in excel and no fancy java.

I have a few questions regarding sub-warp travel i have been mulling over and would be curious to hear what other people thought off.

a) What to do about maximum speed. Since the ships seems to have rather endless energy and anti-gravity whatnots i ended up with making a limit of no travel faster then 99% or 99,99% of light speed. I notice that your java-program, which i except is primarily made for travel within a system, has no light speed barrier and that the ships can easily achieve speeds of 1-5 times the speed of light if traveling between star systems. I originally ran with this too, but since the warhammer universe has no faster then light travel that i am aware of (and should not have IMO) i went back to the conservative 99% lightspeed. Arguably this might suck a bit for the group if they ever get stranded between star systems with no warp-drive, but for the "realistic" nature of it + how much it woul change the nature of warp travel if any ship in the imperium could easily(and safer) travel faster outside the warp then within it and start exploring the close galaxies today.

b) What acceleration/distance to allow to the small inter-planatery craft (arvus, aquila etc). As far as i know the acceleration is not listed in any books - but the strategic VU speeds are and one can at least ball park figure the acceleration based on this. I ended up with giving all the small fliers a relatively high acceleration (5 for halo barge, 6 for Arvus/Guncutter, 9 for Aquila, 10 for Interceptor) and then instead giving them a "delta-v" budget between re-fueling and choice of speed. Meaning they cant operate for great lengths of time by themselves, but are more then capable of racing around a system relatively faster then the big clunky ships - and will have to make the choice whether they want to go fast and short (unable to travel consecutively/return) or slow, but stay around for years.

No ships, other than Necron ships, can hit light-speed or faster. Journeying between star systems without the warp would be incredible unpractical, not to mention impossible since you'd run out of food, water, and other supplies.

The acceleration stat in that program uses the acceleration stat for each of the hulls in the RT rules.

But yea, the setting is incredible firm that the Necrons are the only race with access to FTL technology.

What to do about maximum speed.

The fastest acceleration given in the core rulebook is 5.6 gravities. An acceleration of 1g is 9.8m/(s^2), so that ship has an acceleration of 54.88 m/(s^2).

The speed of light is 299,792,458m/s. Generally relativistic effects can be ignored below 10% of that.

For a ship with an acceleration of 5.6g to reach 10% of the speed of light it will take 546,269 seconds, which comes to 6.3 days. If a chase has allowed you to go that long while keeping the engines at full burn, then we are looking at a race where both ships are going full burn, not a race involving complex manoeuvring. In which case you can see how long the chase goes as follows:

- Find the difference between the velocity of each ship. This is the only velocity that matters.

- Find the difference between each ships acceleration. That will tell you how fast the difference in velocity changes.

Calculate how long it will take for the difference in velocity to hit 0. The ships will still have to close the distance between them, but that will come down to how well each ship is piloted, so have players roll to determine how they close the distance.

As for how long it will take them to get back to the start point:

- They must now spend the same amount of time slowing down.

- Then they must do the whole trip over in the other direction.

So if they resolve the chase then return to the starting point using only the main engines, resolving the chase will only take a quarter of the total trip time.

Relativity will mean that they can never hit the speed of light, no matter how long the chase goes for. The only other effect it could have is that people who stayed on a planet for the whole thing would experience slightly more time than those on the ship, but it shouldn't be enough to be noticeable.

The only other complication is deciding if the ship being chased is far enough out to enter the warp or not. My program assumes that a ship will spend half the time pointed towards the target speeding up, the other half pointed away to slow down. So to calculate the distance travelled with my program find the distance that my program says will take twice the time the ship spent chasing, the ship travelled half of that.

b) What acceleration/distance to allow to the small inter-planatery craft (arvus, aquila etc).

Do ships that small normally have grav plating ?

I ask because there are only a few differences between inertial dampeners:

- grav plating produces a weaker effect.

- they might produce their effect in a different direction

- grav plating can be on constantly. Inertial dampeners (the things that stop the crew being splattered against the back wall when the engines are at full power) need to vary their strength to keep it matched with the engines, making them more complex.

So if a ship lacks grav plating, it probably lacks inertial dampeners. Meaning you have another limitation: How well the humans inside can survive the accelerations.

But yea, the setting is incredible firm that the Necrons are the only race with access to FTL technology.

I'd call warp travel a means of FTL.

Though warp travel does have one thing that a lot of FTL systems don't, a reason for anyone writing for it to ignore the consequences of FTL being equivalent to time travel, because the warp screws with time on its own.