[Spaceships] Voyage Time Calculation with Different Drives

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by teviet

I suspect nondescript is thinking of a human intuitive ability to predict solar activity [...] It's mildly cinematic, but probably less so than having a human pilot on other sorts of spacecraft. [...]

Yes, exactly.
"Plotting the best course through the ever shifting solar winds and reacting to the unpredictable fluctuations on helm is more of an art than an exact science. Human intuition has a little edge over computers here."
That isn't very hard SF and is probably factually wrong, but it is still within my willing suspension of disbelieve for this setting.
Especially if it serves a meta goal.

He should also consider making the FTL travel the more skill-based part of the trip. [...]

Of course. but I would really like to spread around the skill influence among the crew/party even more:
The FTL part will have two skill rolls (Navigation (Jumpspace) and Jumping [a psi skill, the jump drive is psi powered for this very reason]) which will actually govern how far the ship arrives from the destination planet, and two skill rolls for the STL part (Navigation (Space) and Spacer (for helm)/Piloting (Low-Performance Spacecraft)) which will vary real space travel time by +/- 5% or so depending on combined margin of success/failure.
Even with the small, cross trained crews/parties for PC-tramp freighters that should give three PCs influence over one of the cost variables (trip length) without being super soft space opera.