FTL rate of movement for GURPS SPACESHIPS

hal · 02-19-2019, 10:49 PM

Hello Folks,
In digging up some of my older material from FULL THRUST, and jogged by a memory elsewhere in this forum, I thought I'd bring up the idea of making smaller ships move more quickly via FTL than larger ships.

In a nutshell, the rate a ship travels is equal to its mass^.2 such that a 1000 ton ship would 3.98 days to travel 1 light year. A 1,000,000 ton ship would take 15.85 days per light year to travel.

It is an easy enough formula to utilize - but you can always customize it to some extent. For instance, if you want a 1,000 ton hull to be able to travel at about 1 light year per day, you could simply make the formula as being .25 * Mass^.2.

Thus, smaller ships can fast without needing to do much to change how the game works when designing ships in general.

If you really want to have fun? Make it simply that the ship moves at a rate of Mass^.20 days per light year PER FTL engine. Thus, with two such engines, you halve the time required to travel 1 light year.

If you don't like the fifth root of mass, then use some other value such as cube root or log of, etc.

Just a way to maybe fiddle with the formula to make things work in a manner that might be more fun. Maybe.

02-19-2019, 10:49 PM	#1
hal Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Buffalo, New York	FTL rate of movement for GURPS SPACESHIPS Hello Folks, In digging up some of my older material from FULL THRUST, and jogged by a memory elsewhere in this forum, I thought I'd bring up the idea of making smaller ships move more quickly via FTL than larger ships. In a nutshell, the rate a ship travels is equal to its mass^.2 such that a 1000 ton ship would 3.98 days to travel 1 light year. A 1,000,000 ton ship would take 15.85 days per light year to travel. It is an easy enough formula to utilize - but you can always customize it to some extent. For instance, if you want a 1,000 ton hull to be able to travel at about 1 light year per day, you could simply make the formula as being .25 * Mass^.2. Thus, smaller ships can fast without needing to do much to change how the game works when designing ships in general. If you really want to have fun? Make it simply that the ship moves at a rate of Mass^.20 days per light year PER FTL engine. Thus, with two such engines, you halve the time required to travel 1 light year. If you don't like the fifth root of mass, then use some other value such as cube root or log of, etc. Just a way to maybe fiddle with the formula to make things work in a manner that might be more fun. Maybe.