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Should Capital Ships Have Slower Hyperdrives?
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 2:49 am    Post subject: Should Capital Ships Have Slower Hyperdrives? Reply with quote

I've been playing around with this idea for a bit now...

As I'm redoing stats, I've been thinking about the analogies of strengths and weaknesses between real world aircraft and naval vessels. The main balance is one of speed vs. endurance, in that aircraft can fly at higher speeds (both relatively and absolutely), while naval vessels have much greater endurance, and can stay on station for weeks or months at a time. Since the stats already show the massive disparity in endurance between starfighters / space transports and capital ships, I've been thinking about capping the Hyperdrive Multiplier for Capital Ships at x2, with some exceptions for dedicated high-speed pursuit platforms that have to be fast enough to keep up with their prey.

I'd like to hear opinions on this, as well as suggestions as to how to apply this, and which ships should be the exceptions...
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 3:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

While i see the logic in that, i feel their hyperdrives since they have more power to push it, shouldn't be limited..
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Zarn
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 8:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I could almost argue that the other way. Though there probably is an optimal size to speed ratio for hyperspace, one could easily visualize something that is pretty much a set size (or perhaps increases in size linearly as compared to the hyperdrive field) - which could mean that bigger ships could very easily be faster in hyperspace while being much more lumbering in realspace.

There might also be some economy of scale in there, what with the infrastructure necessary to support a hypermatter generator.

One could consider the case of the Long Shot, a number 4 General Products hull that contained the Quantum II drive used in the short story "At the Core" by Larry Niven. Here, one imagines that the Quantum II drive is just barely smaller than the number 4 General Products hull, and something similar might be the case for, say, a class 1 hyperdrive.

Using real-world examples, one might consider the size of a SR-71 as the fastest manned aircraft, while a dogfighting arcraft is somewhat smaller. Then again, supercruise seems to require a certain power-to-weight ratio, so that's probably along the lines of the sweet spot you're looking for.

So I might argue that the Corellian Blockade Runner could be a good candidate for a potentially very fast ship, while an A-wing might be very fast in realspace but lack the room necessary to have a particularly fast hyperdrive.

Which might actually make a case for a space transports-size hyperspace collier, come to think of it.

You could also suppose that the economics of scale is part of the reason why the Empire chooses to use a non-hyperdrive fighter as their primary fighter - it is simply more efficient to have a (fast hyperspace) carrier deploying fast realspace fighters rather than having to choose a fighter that tries to both be reasonably fast in realspace and reasonably fast in hyperspace.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 13, 2016 2:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zarn wrote:
I could almost argue that the other way. Though there probably is an optimal size to speed ratio for hyperspace, one could easily visualize something that is pretty much a set size (or perhaps increases in size linearly as compared to the hyperdrive field) - which could mean that bigger ships could very easily be faster in hyperspace while being much more lumbering in realspace.

If we are going strictly by the WEG example, it actually tends the other way, with smaller craft capable of greater speeds than larger ones. The fastest capital ship already caps out at Space 8 and a x1 Hyperdrive, whereas the fastest space transport is at x1/2.

Quote:
There might also be some economy of scale in there, what with the infrastructure necessary to support a hypermatter generator.

But then, with E=MC^2 applied, the power required to push greater mass to greater speed will be an exponential factor

Quote:
So I might argue that the Corellian Blockade Runner could be a good candidate for a potentially very fast ship, while an A-wing might be very fast in realspace but lack the room necessary to have a particularly fast hyperdrive.

Which fits with the stats. However, also per the stats, the Corvette has a Multiplier of x2. Which it had to have to make the opening scene of ANH add up (the Devastator had chased the Tantive IV through hyperspace, after all)

Quote:
Which might actually make a case for a space transports-size hyperspace collier, come to think of it.

Tender might be a more appropriate word choice, as colliers were generally considered a precursor to modern fleet oilers, carrying coal instead of oil. I wrote up stats a while back for a Sentinel-class shuttle variant that stripped out the troop transport bay and replaced it with four hard-docks for TIE fighters that it could carry through hyperspace. Something similar might work for the Alliance; maybe poaching the V-Wing Speeder Transport from Dark EMpire and making it a starfighter tender...

Quote:
You could also suppose that the economics of scale is part of the reason why the Empire chooses to use a non-hyperdrive fighter as their primary fighter - it is simply more efficient to have a (fast hyperspace) carrier deploying fast realspace fighters rather than having to choose a fighter that tries to both be reasonably fast in realspace and reasonably fast in hyperspace.

Yet the X-Wing, with Space 8 and x1, doesn't really give up all that much in performance to a TIE, and is still as fast or faster than any ship in the Imperial Navy.
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Zarn
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 2:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think you're being disingenuous. You first explain that you've been toying with the idea that capital ships might be capped at a higher hyperdrive multiplier than smaller fighter, to further enhance the perceived gap in roles and real-world analogies. And then, you ask for opinions.

I then give a counterpoint, suggesting that if hyperdrives scale better than realspace engines one might actually argue the other way - having starfighters faster in realspace, while capital ships might be faster in hyperspace.

I did mess up my word choice regarding the collier - I didn't mean collier, I meant collar - but I guess I was too caught up in maritime nomenclature to think of the correct word at the time. What I was trying - and failing - to suggest was the capital scale version of a hyperdrive docking ring.

Basically, for operational security, one might think that a system like Kuat might have dedicated hyperdrive docking rings - but on a capital scale - that would ferry bulk cargo freighters into and out of a secure system. Sort of like the Nkllon shield ships, but more hyperspace and less parasol. Or it might be for keeping costs down, allowing ore freighters in a system with active mining to forgo the cost of a hyperspace drive and rather rely on a ferrying system.

The disingenuous part is arguing against my opinion using WEG examples (which your initial position argued changing - I could use exactly the same argument against your opinion), using Einstein's famous equation to argue a point in hyperspace, and then using a point from the movies to argue the correctness of the hyperdrive multiplier assigned to the Corellian Blockade Runner (while the encounter took place in realspace rather than hyperspace - and I could use exactly the same argument against your position as well). You're also using the X-Wing with its assigned WEG stats as a comment, or possibly an argument against, my suggestion. Again, I could mirror that argument exactly as you, too, suggest possibly changing WEG stats.

When it comes to the point of using Einsteinian physics for hyperspace - they likely break down, either partially or completely, in the case of hyperspace travel, as is obliquely addressed in the Legends entry on hyperspace - http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperspace/Legends - in the sentences about baryonic vs tachyonic matter. At the very least, it underscores that the equations for tachyonic matter likely would be different from what one is used to for baryonic matter.

For E = mc^2 to be correct, one would have to use the speed of light as a limit; indeed, that equation is predicated on that notion. Arguing that particular equation in a superluminal context is extending the equation into an area where the prerequisites for the equation are not met.

We both know that we're reading way too much into this. Star Wars ships travel at the speed of plot. No more, no less. The X-Wing is comparable to the TIE fighter in speed and howls as it flies past the screen because it made for more exciting storytelling.

Ultimately, deciding to enhance the difference between capital scale ships as big, lumbering oafs with extreme endurance while small fighters become even faster - perhaps both in hyperspace and realspace - is a matter of taste. Personally, I find the idea of huge ships being fast in hyperspace while small ships being fast in realspace an interesting juxtaposition.

Your opinion seems to lie elsewhere. Which means that opening the floor, as it were, wasn't a true invitation to a discussion or even a sounding of different opinions - you seem to have sought consensus for your initial position. And that was the disingenuous part, to my mind.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 2:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, I'm pretty undecided on this one. AFAIAC, I'm just raising counterpoints, but if you want to take that as being disingenuous, it's a free internet.
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ForbinProject
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 3:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zarn wrote:
You could also suppose that the economics of scale is part of the reason why the Empire chooses to use a non-hyperdrive fighter as their primary fighter - it is simply more efficient to have a (fast hyperspace) carrier deploying fast realspace fighters rather than having to choose a fighter that tries to both be reasonably fast in realspace and reasonably fast in hyperspace.



Or you could suppose that the Empire uses short range non-hyperdrive fighters because pilots are notoriously independent and the most likely to join the rebels.

So the Imperial military minimizes pilots defecting and supplying the rebels with desperately needed hyperspace capable fighters.

And even if defecting pilots managed to take their fighters with them, the rebels are forced to dedicate a hyperspace capable ship to ferry the fighters around on missions.
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Zarn
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 4:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

ForbinProject wrote:
Or you could suppose that the Empire uses short range non-hyperdrive fighters because pilots are notoriously independent and the most likely to join the rebels.

So the Imperial military minimizes pilots defecting and supplying the rebels with desperately needed hyperspace capable fighters.

And even if defecting pilots managed to take their fighters with them, the rebels are forced to dedicate a hyperspace capable ship to ferry the fighters around on missions.


I'm not sure I agree there. The first generation of TIE fighter pilots were clones, conditioned into loyalty - and subsequent generations, though not clones, were also conditioned.

To quote the wookieepedia article, "Drawing from the graduates of Imperial academies, the fleet conditioned their best prospects to be fanatically loyal to the Emperor and willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their fellow wingmen to complete their assigned missions, explicitly considering themselves expendable."

Essentially, they leveraged the fighter pilot machismo and massaged it into a mindset that didn't really help the survival rates of their pilots.

Furthermore, digging into the SIE-TIE article, "Despite the success of the SIE-TIE, Republic Sienar Systems reported that power-yield compatibility issues with current hyperdrive, life support, and shielding technologies could prove prohibitive in incorporating the engine into their starship designs. This fault was not rectified with the later P-s4 model."

So it seems that the design of the TIE fighter was at least partially due to technological constraints.

Though your point is well taken - making the main fighter a non-hyperdrive fighter does put a rather big damper on any ideas of desertion.
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 6:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zarn wrote:
ForbinProject wrote:
Or you could suppose that the Empire uses short range non-hyperdrive fighters because pilots are notoriously independent and the most likely to join the rebels.




Though your point is well taken - making the main fighter a non-hyperdrive fighter does put a rather big damper on any ideas of desertion.


Even if not a design go, it is certainly a nice side benefit, from the Imperial perspective.

Ad res, I'd say that, more likely is that you run into larger ships using proportionally more of their hull to reach the higher hyperdrive multipliers, until you reach a loint of diminishing returns somewhere before Death Star scale... Where any hull increases are simply to hold the larger engine you'd need to move the bigger hull.

So, something like the Ebon Hawk has about an eighth of its hull given over to engines and hyperdrive. An ISD might see that increase to a quarter. How much of the Death Star was given over to drives?
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ForbinProject
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 11:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Zarn wrote:
ForbinProject wrote:
Or you could suppose that the Empire uses short range non-hyperdrive fighters because pilots are notoriously independent and the most likely to join the rebels.

So the Imperial military minimizes pilots defecting and supplying the rebels with desperately needed hyperspace capable fighters.

And even if defecting pilots managed to take their fighters with them, the rebels are forced to dedicate a hyperspace capable ship to ferry the fighters around on missions.


I'm not sure I agree there. The first generation of TIE fighter pilots were clones, conditioned into loyalty - and subsequent generations, though not clones, were also conditioned.

To quote the wookieepedia article, "Drawing from the graduates of Imperial academies, the fleet conditioned their best prospects to be fanatically loyal to the Emperor and willing to sacrifice their lives and the lives of their fellow wingmen to complete their assigned missions, explicitly considering themselves expendable."

Essentially, they leveraged the fighter pilot machismo and massaged it into a mindset that didn't really help the survival rates of their pilots.

Furthermore, digging into the SIE-TIE article, "Despite the success of the SIE-TIE, Republic Sienar Systems reported that power-yield compatibility issues with current hyperdrive, life support, and shielding technologies could prove prohibitive in incorporating the engine into their starship designs. This fault was not rectified with the later P-s4 model."

So it seems that the design of the TIE fighter was at least partially due to technological constraints.

Though your point is well taken - making the main fighter a non-hyperdrive fighter does put a rather big damper on any ideas of desertion.



To me the SIE-TIE sounds more like disinformation. Especially when you consider that the Old Republic and early years of the newly formed Galactic Empire were using the Incom/Subpro ARC-170.

But there is a valid point to the conditioned loyalty and expendable mindset the Empire indoctrinated into it's pilots that validates the decision to use cheaper starfighters.

If your pilots (and their commanders) consider themselves expendable then it is economic insanity to spend money on top of the line, hyperspace capable, shielded starfighters.

Cannon fodder gets equipped with only the basic minimum that they need to do the job.

The Rebels consider pilots to be a highly prized commodity and invest in fighters that give them the best chances of surviving.

Edit 4:08 pm: Oh as to the clone issue. The Clone Wars clones had a short shelf life and needed to be replaced in a few years. The Empire started replacing clone troops with naturally born recruits which didn't have the loyalty conditioning from birth that the clones did so normal pilots were
more independent and more likely to defect.


I think a good comparison of star wars starfighter design is WWII Japanese vs American fighters. The Japanese had the Imperial philosophy of expendable pilots, while America treasured it's pilots.

The Zero was a fantastic fighter, but was tissue paper compared to the armored Hellcat and other American designs which put pilot survivability as a priority design feature.

Another sign that the Allies valued pilots was that they rotated experienced pilots out of combat to train new pilots and get much needed breaks. The Japanese/Germans didn't do that. This resulted in Axis aces having impressive numbers of kills, but they didn't pass that combat experience on to new pilots like the Allies aces did.

The same training or lack of training can be seen between Imperial and Rebel forces.


Last edited by ForbinProject on Wed Sep 14, 2016 4:14 pm; edited 2 times in total
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 11:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

And that analogy would go along with Lucas's inspiration for the space fight scenes.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 7:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another question on hyperdrives is criteria for what ship has what sort of multiplier.

For instance, the ISD I has a x2, while the ISD II has a x1, literally twice as fast. So what criteria should be set as to what sort of ship can be equipped with a x1 drive, as opposed to a x2.

Also, just out of curiosity, do any of you use alternative modifiers as interim steps between the existing modifiers?

What I mean by this is, while a x2 hyperdrive is 33% faster than a x3 hyperdrive, a x1 is 50% faster than a x2, and likewise with a x1/2 over a x1. It seems a little bit off to me that hyperdrive speeds would scale up so much more quickly as they get faster; I would think that, at the higher speed levels, the increases in speed would get closer and closer together, due to incremental improvements in technology.

For myself, adding in a x1.5 and x.75 modifier results in an alternating progression of 33% and 25% increases in speed when progressing from x3 to x1/2 (and continues if you decide to add in x1/3 and x1/4 modifiers for advanced tech).

Anyway, weigh in.
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shootingwomprats
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 14, 2016 9:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I absolutely think that larger ships should be slower in hyperspace as well as real space and have low if not negative maneuverability scores.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Another question on hyperdrives is criteria for what ship has what sort of multiplier.

For instance, the ISD I has a x2, while the ISD II has a x1, literally twice as fast. So what criteria should be set as to what sort of ship can be equipped with a x1 drive, as opposed to a x2.

Also, just out of curiosity, do any of you use alternative modifiers as interim steps between the existing modifiers?

What I mean by this is, while a x2 hyperdrive is 33% faster than a x3 hyperdrive, a x1 is 50% faster than a x2, and likewise with a x1/2 over a x1. It seems a little bit off to me that hyperdrive speeds would scale up so much more quickly as they get faster; I would think that, at the higher speed levels, the increases in speed would get closer and closer together, due to incremental improvements in technology.

For myself, adding in a x1.5 and x.75 modifier results in an alternating progression of 33% and 25% increases in speed when progressing from x3 to x1/2 (and continues if you decide to add in x1/3 and x1/4 modifiers for advanced tech).

Anyway, weigh in.


Not yet, but i have been a player in a few games where the DM had x1.5, x2.5, x.75 and iirc a few other intermediate speeds.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 1:04 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Not yet, but i have been a player in a few games where the DM had x1.5, x2.5, x.75 and iirc a few other intermediate speeds.

I know there are one or two stats drifting around that use those numbers, too. The Outrider, IIRC, has x.75...
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