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garhkal
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 Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 3:31 am Post subject: |
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Especially in areas where asteroids are!
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 5:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | There is something stopping a ship from coasting at a constant speed without inertial compensation – The crew and passengers of the ship are in danger of something bad happening. Going that fast, if anything affects the speed or direction of the ship even slightly, it could be drastic for the living beings on the ship, and even the ship itself, without inertial compensation. A slight vector change could be catastrophic. That is a major consequence. If they are drifting into empty space and there is no danger, or it is a low risk they are willing to take, then I have no problem with them coasting on Newton and not using fuel. I feel it is too risky to do it that much or often. Physics make space travel extremely dangerous, and physics-suppressing inertial compensation is what makes high speed space travel (relatively) safe. |
But as mentioned above, allowing ships to coast at speed allows them to side-step the Long-Distance Movement rules. If a ship can get up to All-Out (which requires relatively unobstructed terrain anyway) and simply shut off its inertial compensator and drive, they aren't having to thrust to remain at that speed.
My first thought would be to make it so that the on/off choice isn't instantaneous, and takes time to cycle up or power down, such that anyone attempting to use the coasting trick to side-step the Long-Distance Movement rules loses too much momentum during the power-down process and can't effectively maneuver for several rounds when the compensator is powering up.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 7:12 pm Post subject: |
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How's about when coasting, one slows, say 1su a turn of movement, showing the loss of inertia? So one Can't coast for too long before, you eventually stop?
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Whill
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| Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2021 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | There is something stopping a ship from coasting at a constant speed without inertial compensation – The crew and passengers of the ship are in danger of something bad happening. Going that fast, if anything affects the speed or direction of the ship even slightly, it could be drastic for the living beings on the ship, and even the ship itself, without inertial compensation. A slight vector change could be catastrophic. That is a major consequence. If they are drifting into empty space and there is no danger, or it is a low risk they are willing to take, then I have no problem with them coasting on Newton and not using fuel. I feel it is too risky to do it that much or often. Physics make space travel extremely dangerous, and physics-suppressing inertial compensation is what makes high speed space travel (relatively) safe. |
But as mentioned above, allowing ships to coast at speed allows them to side-step the Long-Distance Movement rules. If a ship can get up to All-Out (which requires relatively unobstructed terrain anyway) and simply shut off its inertial compensator and drive, they aren't having to thrust to remain at that speed. |
But as I mentioned in the text you quoted, it only allows them to side-step the long distance movement rules at great risk to all lives on board. A risk that would normally not be worth taking. There's no issue unless a GM has no grasp of physics and doesn't understand the danger of the slightest vector change at that speed. Inertial compensation is there for reason, and it is bad idea to intentionally turn it off. Splat, campaign over.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | But as I mentioned in the text you quoted, it only allows them to side-step the long distance movement rules at great risk to all lives on board. |
How does it do this? If the characters can just immediately turn their acceleration compensator back on and maneuver to avoid any detected obstructions, then there is no risk, at least not by any obvious method under the RAW.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 2:43 pm Post subject: |
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Then how's about they have to have TIME TO TURN Things back on. Ever been in a helo or airplain? How long does it take to turn THOSE ON to maneuver, after you powered it down...
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Whill
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| Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2021 3:49 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | it only allows them to side-step the long distance movement rules at great risk to all lives on board. |
How does it do this? If the characters can just immediately turn their acceleration compensator back on and maneuver to avoid any detected obstructions, then there is no risk, at least not by any obvious method under the RAW. |
Inertial compensation isn't any part of RAW. It is a handwave fluff sentence to sate more physics-minded fans who know that without it, high speed space travel (including space combat) would be impossible to survive. We are already going above and beyond RAW by introducing inertial compensation as an explanation for RAW's max sublight speed in light of physics. (I also went above and beyond the handwave fluff sentence by putting inertial compensators in my spaceship damage system, making it standard that all ships have two compensators and a failsafe mechanism to freeze controls and speed when they fail.) We are really beyond strictly maintaining RAW in this discussion, and this is a House Rules thread.
In my premise, RAW long-distance rules are still the norm anyway because it is extremely unsafe to intentionally travel without inertial compensation. You said "detected obstructions," but in space there is always the chance of undetected obstructions, such as small dust clouds, dark matter, ships coming out of hyperspace, etc. Even if traveling in a relatively empty part of space with little chance of interference, would captains very often take a 1% chance at suffering 99D damage? Sane ones would not. There is always the chance of the unexpected occurring, and physics-minded GMs who make the danger of traveling without inertial compensation correctly catastrophic should make it clear to players that they risk their own near-certain death if anything does happen to go wrong.
Also, in my system, I envision inertial compensation as a safety default on spaceships, so not easily overridden. So I would probably require a jury-rig type of technical rolls to intentionally deactivate the compensators, which means doing so would risk damaging it so it may be not be able to activate when needed.
| garhkal wrote: | | Then how's about they have to have TIME TO TURN Things back on. Ever been in a helo or airplain? How long does it take to turn THOSE ON to maneuver, after you powered it down... |
Good idea. If it takes time to re-activate the deactivated inertial compensation, then you may not have time to react to sudden danger, and that would be another determent to coasting on inertia for long distance travel. Spaceships have existed in Star Wars for dozens of millennia. Having it be a mere flick of a switch to turn inertial compensation off and on would be too dangerous because it would be too easy to accidentally deactivate it when you don't mean to. That would be illogical spaceship design they wouldn't have continued after the early days of inertial compensation in spaceflight.
| CRMcNeill wrote: | | allowing ships to coast at speed allows them to side-step the Long-Distance Movement rules |
Let's be totally realistic. Long distance subspace travel is something that appears in the game extremely rarely anyway. You are the one that pointed out to me that lightspeed must even be the normal mode of travel for in-system flight because of how long it would take to travel at sublight speed between planetary orbits in the same system. It wouldn't even be a super quick trip from Earth to our Moon at sublight. Long distance subspace travel is hardly ever in the game, so the odds of having long distance travel without inertial compensation would be even more rare. Hyperspace travel is the norm for long distance space travel.
All this being said, if you or any GMs feel that RAW's long-distance rules must be strictly maintained with zero chance of exceptions, and thus you need an additional fluff explanation for it, then go for it.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:26 am Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | In my premise, RAW long-distance rules are still the norm anyway because it is extremely unsafe to intentionally travel without inertial compensation. You said "detected obstructions," but in space there is always the chance of undetected obstructions, such as small dust clouds, dark matter, ships coming out of hyperspace, etc. Even if traveling in a relatively empty part of space with little chance of interference, would captains very often take a 1% chance at suffering 99D damage? |
Okay, so what are the rules for this? Unless it's part of the plot, it can't just be a GM handwave that the characters run into something; it needs to be based on a dice roll. The RAW has a framework for movement failures and terrain difficulty, so how does "encountering undetected obstructions" work from a rules standpoint? What is the reasoning as to why a pilot can't just flip a switch to reactivate the inertial compensator and immediately bring his ship back under control? It's perfectly fine to have the fluff say that a certain thing is hugely dangerous, but there also needs to be a framework where there are rules and dice roll results that make it dangerous.
| Quote: | | garhkal wrote: | | Then how's about they have to have TIME TO TURN Things back on. Ever been in a helo or airplain? How long does it take to turn THOSE ON to maneuver, after you powered it down... |
Good idea. If it takes time to re-activate the deactivated inertial compensation, then you may not have time to react to sudden danger, and that would be another determent to coasting on inertia for long distance travel. |
I agree. The question is, how long does it take? Taking 30 seconds (6 rounds) to power up the inertial compensator, and by extension the repulsorlift impeller and etheric rudder could be a useful explanation as to why ships don't often take off immediately, even under circumstances where they might wish to.
Another idea would be something along the lines of what I suggested here, where ships roll the dice-equivalent of their combined Terrain and Speed Difficulty, then compare it to the Movement Mishap Table. Apply the same rule to ships that deliberately shut off their inertial compensator and try to coast, then explain it away by saying that the inertial compensator doesn't power down evenly, and has a tendency to push the ship in random directions during the shut-down process, so it's normally done in a landing bay or somewhere that the ship can engage its docking tractor field projector.
That way, rather than simply saying "there's a random chance you'll hit something and take 99D damage", you can follow the progression of the movement rules until it ends in a major collision. Maybe even base the chance of a collision on what sort of terrain Difficulty the ship happens to be operating in.
| Quote: | | ...All this being said, if you or any GMs feel that RAW's long-distance rules must be strictly maintained with zero chance of exceptions, and thus you need an additional fluff explanation for it, then go for it. |
It's more about planning ahead on the off chance that a PC derails the plot and comes up with this as an idea under a random set of circumstances. As a GM, I'd like to have a reason why something can't be done that's more plausible than "you can't do that because your ship will hit something and you'll die."
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:03 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | I agree. The question is, how long does it take? Taking 30 seconds (6 rounds) to power up the inertial compensator, and by extension the repulsorlift impeller and etheric rudder could be a useful explanation as to why ships don't often take off immediately, even under circumstances where they might wish to. |
I asked about this before, WAY back in This thread, from WAY back in 2013....
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Whill
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 5:24 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | CRMcNeill wrote: | | I agree. The question is, how long does it take? Taking 30 seconds (6 rounds) to power up the inertial compensator, and by extension the repulsorlift impeller and etheric rudder could be a useful explanation as to why ships don't often take off immediately, even under circumstances where they might wish to. |
I asked about this before, WAY back in This thread, from WAY back in 2013.... |
In my SWU, you can keep power running on a ship without using the engines. Inertial compensators of course need power of some kind, but they would have to work with or without engines on to do what they are supposed to do. If engines get disabled in an attack and the ship was moving, the ship is still moving until it comes to a stop. If it was moving fast, then inertial compensation is vital to surviving. If inertial compensation goes offline when engines do, then could be splat. So, you could coast with power but without engines.
In fact, compensators are so vital to sublight that if the ship was moving fast and the whole power system goes down, I imagine emergency battery power would automatically go into inertial compensator until the ship slowed down to safe levels.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 1:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | In my SWU, you can keep power running on a ship without using the engines. Inertial compensators of course need power of some kind, but they would have to work with or without engines on to do what they are supposed to do. |
This works for me. A ship would likely have its reactor / engines up and running in "hot stand-by" yet still not have its inertial compensator up and running until just before take-off.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: |
In fact, compensators are so vital to sublight that if the ship was moving fast and the whole power system goes down, I imagine emergency battery power would automatically go into inertial compensator until the ship slowed down to safe levels. |
With how some folks love jury rigging the hell out of their ships, i can easily see some having removed those emergency back ups OR INSTALLED a lot more...
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Dec 13, 2021 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | With how some folks love jury rigging the hell out of their ships, i can easily see some having removed those emergency back ups OR INSTALLED a lot more... |
I have difficulty picturing why any sane captain would remove his emergency backups.
Another possibility would be to allow characters to reduce the number of rounds it takes to power up/down the compensator, based on how they rolled Piloting/Operations.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 3:19 am Post subject: |
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I'v had two players, who REMOVED the escape pods from their freighter, to add A THIRD turret to their ship... So its NOT that outlandish.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 10:58 am Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I'v had two players, who REMOVED the escape pods from their freighter, to add A THIRD turret to their ship... So its NOT that outlandish. |
No, it's still outlandish. Simply comparing it to another insanely unsafe thing your PCs did doesn't take away from that.
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