FSD vs WARP

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Ophion

Ophion
I'm sure this has been discussed before but I found an interesting video today and this made me wonder about SC speeds in the game.
FSD is slow, so slow... Imagine what the game would look like if we had almost instant "acceleration" like warp drives do? Much better IMO. You could change warp number during flight using throttle. And I know it's never gonna happen because of current interdiction mechanic and whatnot (I happen to have a solution for that too) but one can dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSyfpUyzQGU
 

Siobhan

Siobhan
Fsd is certainly not slow compared to trek warp drives.

Voyager was sad to need about 70 years to get from the far side of the Galaxy.
Elite: Dangerous buckyballers could do the same trip in about 70 hours.
 

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
The FSD can go to 2001 times the speed of light.

Unfortunately, it simply takes too long to reach it.

It would be absolutely amazing if we could somehow jolt our acceleration up insanely fast.
At the cost of increased heat, fuel use and almost no ability to steer.
And hitting something at those speeds is simply catastrophic, instant rebuy. Just like if you boost in to a cliff at maximum speed sometimes. Lol
(I did that once in a Python... :D).

CMDR Cosmic Spacehead
 

Ophion

Ophion
Siobhan said:
Fsd is certainly not slow compared to trek warp drives.

Voyager was sad to need about 70 years to get from the far side of the Galaxy.
Elite: Dangerous buckyballers could do the same trip in about 70 hours.
Click to expand...

Star Trek ships don't have hyper jump capabilities and ED does. I'm not talking about that. It's about SC, not HJump.
 

Loskene

L
Yaffle said:
I don't really do Star Trek, but the table here: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Warp_factor

Equates the maximum warp (11) at 1,331 times the speed of light. FSDs go faster than that.
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Seems you don't really do reading either. That's neither the maximum speed nor even the largest warp factor listed on the page you linked. FSD is slow. Voyager topped out at around 6000c, but with enough power at your disposal there's no real upper limit on warp speed, just diminishing returns at the higher end. The only speed advantage the FSD has is making hyperspace jumps at speeds somewhere between ludicrous and plaid. Supercruise is downright pedestrian in comparison.
 

Siobhan

Siobhan
Loskene said:
Seems you don't really do reading either. That's neither the maximum speed nor even the largest warp factor listed on the page you linked. FSD is slow. Voyager topped out at around 6000c, but with enough power at your disposal there's no real upper limit on warp speed, just diminishing returns at the higher end. The only speed advantage the FSD has is making hyperspace jumps at speeds somewhere between ludicrous and plaid. Supercruise is downright pedestrian in comparison.
Click to expand...

Well, tng said Warp 10 was infinite. However, trans warp, as the borg used was faster, giving the lie to the statement.

Also, someone said how slow it is to accelerate to 2001c in E: D. Try it outside a gravity well...
 

Vasious

Vasious
Star Trek is a terrible example of having technical manuals telling you how fast each ship is then that being ignored in the show to give a false impression of speed.

A journey that should take weeks will take as short as the plot demands eve n if it is mere hours for the crew of the ship
 

Loskene

L
Siobhan said:
Well, tng said Warp 10 was infinite. However, trans warp, as the borg used was faster, giving the lie to the statement.

Also, someone said how slow it is to accelerate to 2001c in E: D. Try it outside a gravity well...
Click to expand...

Borg transwarp is faster than the Enterprise-D's maximum speed of warp 9.6 but in between warp 9 and 10 the speed and power requirements rapidly increase towards infinity, you just keep adding decimal places after warp 9, and Borg transwarp lies somewhere in there. This is on the revised TNG warp scale, the TOS scale used a cubic function and had warp factors higher than 10, but from TNG onwards warp 10 was considered infinite velocity. So while transwarp might be warp 40 or something on the TOS scale, it's still warp 9.99-something on the TNG scale.
 

Siobhan

Siobhan
Loskene said:
Borg transwarp is faster than the Enterprise-D's maximum speed of warp 9.6 but in between warp 9 and 10 the speed and power requirements rapidly increase towards infinity, you just keep adding decimal places after warp 9, and Borg transwarp lies somewhere in there. This is on the revised TNG warp scale, the TOS scale used a cubic function and had warp factors higher than 10, but from TNG onwards warp 10 was considered infinite velocity. So while transwarp might be warp 40 or something on the TOS scale, it's still warp 9.99-something on the TNG scale.
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Which is not as described in voyager. Warp 10 leads into trans warp.
In any case infinite speed is impossible (not to mention undesirable) to reach. Effectively it's teleport.
Star Treks Federation propaganda notwithstanding, elite's high wake is faster.
 

Loskene

L
Siobhan said:
Which is not as described in voyager. Warp 10 leads into trans warp.
In any case infinite speed is impossible (not to mention undesirable) to reach. Effectively it's teleport.
Star Treks Federation propaganda notwithstanding, elite's high wake is faster.
Click to expand...

I don't know where you heard that, warp 10 doesn't "lead into" transwarp, whatever that means. Warp 10 is equivalent to occupying every point in the universe at once, and is rightly impossible to achieve since it requires infinite power. Transwarp (at least the kind the Borg use, it's a bit of a catchall term for anything faster than traditional warp drive) is just a different method of FTL travel, involving dipping completely into the trek equivalent of witchspace as opposed to the alcubierre drive used by alpha quadrant powers. It's nowhere near infinite velocity. There are many kinds of FTL travel in trek, such as quantum slipstream, space folding, wormhole generators etc. and many of them are faster than plain old warp drive but none go faster than warp 10.
 

Ophion

Ophion
777Driver said:
Exactly, the FSD is capable of going from 30km/s to max speed instantly when outside of a gravity well.
Click to expand...

I know.
But when you drop into Sol system and want to go to Pluto, there are... wait for it... bunch of gravity wells. They are the problem of "slow" SC to begin with. My point is warp drive doesn't care about them at all and that is why I would prefer it over FSD.
 

Achibot

A
WARP and SC are essentially the same thing, both being based on the theoretical Alcubierre Drive. In other words, all are based on a theoretical solution to Einstein's field equations and work, in theory, by creating negative mass within a configurable energy-density field. This would contract space in front of the field and expand space behind it and so at no point, from a local frame of reference, does an object within the field actually break the speed of light. Very simply put, it adjusts the distance you have to travel instead, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel without ever actually exceeding c, thus maintaining general relativity.

However this technology may never be physically meaningful as general relativity does not take quantum physics into account and, as this technology would also possess the theoretical ability to create closed timelike curves (ie. time travel), it is now considered likely that, even if the massive energy requirements of creating such a field could be met, quantum forces would render it inherently unstable and unsustainable. We'll only know for sure (in a theoretical sense) if someone manages to develop a unified theory of quantum gravity. Mine is almost ready, coming soon.TM

With this said, we can now see that from the OP perspective both WARP and SC will have acceleration curves, with the mass of nearby spatial bodies being very relevant. It's simply the case that in Star Trek there was no storyline reason to tell you about it. The ship got where it needed to be just in time, as always, which is what mattered for the story. A five minute sequence of the ship slowly accelerating through WARPS 1-X had no value.
 

Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
Current technology maxes at about 0.00025C (Juno probe 165Kmph).


Juno Sol-Earth = 32800 minutes or 546 hours or 22 days
Light Sol-Earth = 8.2 minutes
Elite max supercruise Sol-Earth = 0.25 seconds

FSD speeds are insane on that scale :) It's all relative....

Siobhan said:
Fsd is certainly not slow compared to trek warp drives.

Voyager was sad to need about 70 years to get from the far side of the Galaxy.
Elite: Dangerous buckyballers could do the same trip in about 70 hours.
Click to expand...

Also the current record is 6hrs 35 minutes from Sol -> Beagle Point
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...Beagle-Point?p=5818021&viewfull=1#post5818021

:D Did it a few weeks ago.

And I can't remember where but someone worked out the 70year trip is very roughly 1076C for Voyager from Beagle to Sol, we can travel twice as fast at 2001C.

imski said:
Is this another Fast Travel thread?
Click to expand...

Not yet but it'll come shortly.


Personally I want a supercruise slingshot type thing, I know the lore doesn't support it but it doesn't support orbital cruise slingshot either. In all fast travel threads my vote goes to making supercruise more interesting rather than cutting it entirely.
 
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