Hello Gamer Nation!

In the beginner game, it takes 6 rounds after the HMRI is installed, for it to boot up. Considering everything is happening simultaneously and the actions characters take do not take very long, I think 4 rounds is a perfectly reasonable amount of time for a navicomputer to calculate a jump. There is a lot of data to be processed.

Not only that but you have to account for the time it takes to clear the gravity well of the planet.

I was looking through the Beta rulebook just a couple nights ago for this very same thing, and couldn't find anything.

I think from the versions (particularly d20), plotting an astrogation course took about a minute, but could be done sooner if the astrogator was in a hurry, with the trade-off being that a rushed astrogation roll resulted in a higher difficulty.

My gut ruling would be to go by the same "at least one minute," although in EotE there's not really a set-in-stone definition of how long a combat round is (my current thinking is to say a combat round = approx 30 seconds in EotE). Of course, there's also the Galaxy Mapper talent, which lets you plot courses a good bit faster.

For the Beginner Box adventure, my read was that the delay was a combination of plotting the course and the HRMI coming up to speed, something that's not always going to be an issue for the party.

But in lieu of anything else, 4 rounds as suggested by TheBoulder is as good a guideline as any, especially if your combat rounds are substantially longer than the default 6 seconds employed by the d20 system.

When I ran Escape from Mos Shuuta, the PCs had managed to finagle things so they were able to install the HMRI before launch (long story). I wanted to keep the tension up though, so I ruled than an emergency plot took 6 rounds base, -1 round per Advantage, +1 round per Threat (I didn't give any thought to Triumph / Despair).

In reading the Escape from Mos Shuuta, after the drive is installed the number of rounds until the jump to light speed was 6. Additional advantages lowered the number of rounds by 1 for each additional advantage to a minimum of 2 rounds. While there was mention (from what I remember) of adding extra rounds for each threat that was not canceled, this seems reasonable as well.

If I remember correctly, back in d6 it took 30 minutes to do it normally (usually most of the work done even before take off). 5 minutes was a bit hurried, but fairly doable without too many consequences (I take this to be like Han Solo in the New Hope). 1 minutes was really rushed, and a bit dangerous. Less than that was rediculously dangerous.

I was sure I had seen something on this in the beta book, but I cannot find it now.

From what I recall I always thought about 3 rounds given ideal conditions (i.e. known route and all) - so about 3 minutes if going for the longer definition of rounds in this game. So anywhere between 3-6 rounds I think is fair as a starting point, to be adjusted after the roll is made.

On a related note: When trying to explore, i.e. make up your own routes from a system to another known or unknown system I was wondering how to adjust the difficulty. The chart in the beta says +[P] for ourdated, counterfiet - and so on - nav data. That would be average under ideal conditions and hard under duress. At first I considered using that for trying to find new routes, but I'm thinking that increasing is not enough, so add an upgrade too? Perhaps 2 increases (so hard under ideal conditions) plus 1 upgrade, so base pool is [PPR]?

Not to mention it is supposed to take somewhere between 3-6 minutes to get to a safe hyperspace jump point.

Heh, my group had a hard time installing the **** HMRI. The TIEs got the ship down to 2 hit points before they were able to jump

• 1 or 2 success	4 rounds before hyperspace
  3 success or 1 advantage	3 rounds before hyperspace
  2 advantage	2 rounds before hyperspace
  3 advantage or Triumph	1 round before hyperspace
  1 or 2 Threat	One of the stormtrooper minions is not dead, he attacks!
  3 Threat or despair	The PCs escape after 1 round, however they are being tracked, and Imperials will be alerted when they enter the Roon system.
  Failure	The navicomputer shorted out, easy (d) computers check to restart it, then another astrogation! Extra failure means extra (d) on the computer check.

  You can replace the 1 or 2 threat with something of your own, when I made this it was for a specific encounter in which there were unconcious authorities on board the players ship.

The problem I have with your chart Arkitan is that it makes Advantages way too valuable, far more so than successes.

To address the original topic, I think 6 rounds to calculate the jump is sufficient, with each success after the first reducing the time by one round, to a minimum of a single round. Galaxy Mapper in this instance would count as an extra success, so for a character with that talent that rolled 2 successes on their Astrogation check, they'd only need 3 rounds to calculate the coordinates and load them into the navicomputer.

In the Unknown Regions book for SAGA, the Astrogation check (Use Computers) DC is 20-25 for locally obtained astrogation data, with a time of 1 minute to make the check. For a jump with no astrogation data around, it takes an hour and is DC 30.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Okay, slight correction to the above, as I was confusing Galaxy Mapper's time savings (which is a flat one-half) with the 25% cumulative reduction offered by another talent.

So 6 rounds as the default (double it if working with no astrogation data), minus 1 round for each success after the first, and Galaxy Mapper reducing the base time to only 3 rounds (or 6 if working with no astrogation data), but it still takes a minimum of 1 round for the Astrogation check no matter how awesome you roll.

Sound about right for a basic framework?

Something I've done in my home games is have a given hyperspace jump require a set number of cumulative Successes to make, usually 5. That way it takes a little while, the rest of the Crew can shoot and fly/evade and feel useful, and the Intellect-high Astrogator gets a nice chunk of the spotlight. Add on some additional Difficulty for being under fire and poor charts (as mentioned above), plus some Setback from all those celestial bodies that are sure to be around nd Boom! That is a tense moment!

Something I've noticed with gamers is the unrealistic expectations of how fast things can be done. Thinking that moving 60' in 6 seconds shouldn't prevent them from doing anything else. Try this, see how fast you can cross a 6 lane road. I bet you can't do it at a walk. Same thing with shooting or doing most any other task.

Player: "It takes 5 rounds? ****, no way does it take that long..."

It's pointed out in various EU sources that it takes several minutes and that is very reasonable given the amount of data and calculations that the nav system is having to go through, which keeps changing while the ship is being maneuvered since that keeps changing your exit vector.

For other stuff, like shooting, I was watching Top Shot this past week. This episode was doing a shot in practice of 1000 yards. The best shooter there hit the target in the first try AFTER 16 SECONDS. They then moved the shot to over 1 mile out (1760 yards) and even then it took OVER 30 SECONDS for the shooter to get his hit in and that was with just one shot.

Something I've done in my home games is have a given hyperspace jump require a set number of cumulative Successes to make, usually 5. That way it takes a little while, the rest of the Crew can shoot and fly/evade and feel useful, and the Intellect-high Astrogator gets a nice chunk of the spotlight. Add on some additional Difficulty for being under fire and poor charts (as mentioned above), plus some Setback from all those celestial bodies that are sure to be around nd Boom! That is a tense moment!

Maybe a triumph can be that the calculations had already been done and are stored in the nav computer.

Something I've done in my home games is have a given hyperspace jump require a set number of cumulative Successes to make, usually 5. That way it takes a little while, the rest of the Crew can shoot and fly/evade and feel useful, and the Intellect-high Astrogator gets a nice chunk of the spotlight. Add on some additional Difficulty for being under fire and poor charts (as mentioned above), plus some Setback from all those celestial bodies that are sure to be around nd Boom! That is a tense moment!

My only reservation with this is, apart from rolling despair (which requires the GM to upgrade the difficulty), how is it possible for the party to fail. Not every Astrogation check is successful and some of the most memorable encounters I have had in my games have come from a messed up Astro check.

Possibly requiring a set amount of successes but in a limited number of rounds? Any thoughts?

E

Something I've done in my home games is have a given hyperspace jump require a set number of cumulative Successes to make, usually 5. That way it takes a little while, the rest of the Crew can shoot and fly/evade and feel useful, and the Intellect-high Astrogator gets a nice chunk of the spotlight. Add on some additional Difficulty for being under fire and poor charts (as mentioned above), plus some Setback from all those celestial bodies that are sure to be around nd Boom! That is a tense moment!

My only reservation with this is, apart from rolling despair (which requires the GM to upgrade the difficulty), how is it possible for the party to fail. Not every Astrogation check is successful and some of the most memorable encounters I have had in my games have come from a messed up Astro check.

Possibly requiring a set amount of successes but in a limited number of rounds? Any thoughts?

E

Any failure takes that much longer to take effect. I would suggest that the effects from messed up Astro checks could be part of the threat/dispair results.

The WEG rules were one minute when your position is known and you are following a commonly traveled route for which hyperspace coordinates have already been calculated, and can be reduced to a round in emergencies.

A few hours when your position is known, but the destination is one to which you have not yet traveled and the nav computer must recalculate coordinates.

One day when you must take readings to determine your ships current position and then compute the hyperspace coordinates.

Our group is probably going to follow those in general, upgrading difficulty dice if you want do it faster.

Any word from FFG about this?

We have rules (additional successes reducing time) and a certain talent (halving the time) but there is no actual time given in any main rulebook. What is an official, standard duration for such calculations?

I think 6 rounds is fair. It really is however long you deem the system needs to boot, calulate, get out of the gravity well etc. Then use advantages and/or excess successes as time reducers or overall trip time reducers.

Maybe every success trims hours/days off the trip and advantages can reduce the number of rounds it takes to calculate.

As for average calculating times I've done everything from one action (a preprogrammed input) to 10 rounds (never jumped that route, very little date, etc) all the way up to narrative time (entirely new route with no data).

I don't have my copy of Beyond the Rim. But I do recall it having info on astrogation. as does Fly Casual