Nerding out: Supercruise Vs. Warp speeds.

[killerofstars]

So recently as I was flying across a system in supercruise I glanced down at my speed and noticed I was doing 500c.

"That's a lot faster than most warp factors IIRC" I thought.

I looked it up, and figured I'd post it here. Since Elite is 1:1 scale, it's interesting to get a feeling for how fast ships are traveling in various sci-fi shows. Honestly, considering this, warp speed feels pretty slow to me.

(This is in The TNG scale. The TOS scale is slower. Also, this is from the show's bible, aka what warp speeds are SUPPOSED to be, not how long they actually seem to take to reach their destinations on screen. There's a whole thing on that over at memory-alpha.org)

Impulse = .25c (Max impulse is repeatedly stated to be 1/4th lightspeed.)
Warp 1 = 1c
Warp 2 = 10.079c
Warp 3 = 38.941c
Warp 4 = 101.594c
Warp 5 = 213.747c
Warp 6 = 392.489c
Warp 7 = 656 (normal cruising speed of the enterprise-D IIRC) 2.41 days to travel from earth to alpha centuari)
Warp 8 = 1024
Warp 9 = 1516.381 (5.77 hours to travel 1 light year.)
Warp 9.6 = 1909 ( Compare to supercruise top speed of 2001c)
Warp 10 = turn into a salamander and mate with the captain.

 

[DaveL]

i left my clipper flying while goin to grocery store.... i guess i finally managed to hit that magic "top speed" limit..

 

[killerofstars]

I haven't tried flying that far out in a system yet, so far I've topped out around 500c.

Heh, do you think the 2001 top speed is a reference?

I felt like this during my first hyperspace jump:

 

[Vasious]

Consider those people who did the day trip to Sagittarius A* at 27000 light years, vs the USS Voyager's estimate time to get home at maximum warp if they hadnt gotten all the Deus ex Machina help hands.

SLOW!

 

[VanQ]

Consider those people who did the day trip to Sagittarius A* at 27000 light years, vs the USS Voyager's estimate time to get home at maximum warp if they hadnt gotten all the Deus ex Machina help hands.

SLOW!

Because the Voyager lacks a Jumpdrive ...

 

[carniak]

Because the Voyager lacks a FRIENDSHIP DRIVE...

Fixed that for you...

 

[Vasious]

Because the Voyager lacks a Jumpdrive ...

Whilst this is true, and comparing different Universes is a pointless exercise, it does make one appriciate the capabilities of the Sidewinder.
A,What 40 ton, scout ship capable of crossing the Galaxy in a matter of weeks.
For the Sidewinder the trip to the Maia Black hole is a Sunday afternoon Drive
For a Federation starship at the Warp Seven cruising speed noted above, Months

We see human space in ED as a tiny island in the vastness of the Galaxy.
How would that make the Federation, tiny or greatly disconnected.

 

[mossfoot]

I haven't tried flying that far out in a system yet, so far I've topped out around 500c.

Heh, do you think the 2001 top speed is a reference?

I felt like this during my first hyperspace jump:

View attachment 26224

It's why explorers call it the "Bowman Boogie" when you hit 2001c

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So recently as I was flying across a system in supercruise I glanced down at my speed and noticed I was doing 500c.

"That's a lot faster than most warp factors IIRC" I thought.

I looked it up, and figured I'd post it here. Since Elite is 1:1 scale, it's interesting to get a feeling for how fast ships are traveling in various sci-fi shows. Honestly, considering this, warp speed feels pretty slow to me.

(This is in The TNG scale. The TOS scale is slower. Also, this is from the show's bible, aka what warp speeds are SUPPOSED to be, not how long they actually seem to take to reach their destinations on screen. There's a whole thing on that over at memory-alpha.org)

Impulse = .25c (Max impulse is repeatedly stated to be 1/4th lightspeed.)
Warp 1 = 1c
Warp 2 = 10.079c
Warp 3 = 38.941c
Warp 4 = 101.594c
Warp 5 = 213.747c
Warp 6 = 392.489c
Warp 7 = 656 (normal cruising speed of the enterprise-D IIRC) 2.41 days to travel from earth to alpha centuari)
Warp 8 = 1024
Warp 9 = 1516.381 (5.77 hours to travel 1 light year.)
Warp 9.6 = 1909 ( Compare to supercruise top speed of 2001c)
Warp 10 = turn into a salamander and mate with the captain.

I'd rep you for this bit of trivia, but I already repped you elsewhere. Consider this a stealth rep.

 

[Philip Foster]

So recently as I was flying across a system in supercruise I glanced down at my speed and noticed I was doing 500c.

"That's a lot faster than most warp factors IIRC" I thought.

I looked it up, and figured I'd post it here. Since Elite is 1:1 scale, it's interesting to get a feeling for how fast ships are traveling in various sci-fi shows. Honestly, considering this, warp speed feels pretty slow to me.

(This is in The TNG scale. The TOS scale is slower. Also, this is from the show's bible, aka what warp speeds are SUPPOSED to be, not how long they actually seem to take to reach their destinations on screen. There's a whole thing on that over at memory-alpha.org)

Impulse = .25c (Max impulse is repeatedly stated to be 1/4th lightspeed.)
Warp 1 = 1c
Warp 2 = 10.079c
Warp 3 = 38.941c
Warp 4 = 101.594c
Warp 5 = 213.747c
Warp 6 = 392.489c
Warp 7 = 656 (normal cruising speed of the enterprise-D IIRC) 2.41 days to travel from earth to alpha centuari)
Warp 8 = 1024
Warp 9 = 1516.381 (5.77 hours to travel 1 light year.)
Warp 9.6 = 1909 ( Compare to supercruise top speed of 2001c)
Warp 10 = turn into a salamander and mate with the captain.

Nice find.

Don't forget ED is set 1000 years after STV/TNG. Thats a lot of development time.

Also I think that speed in ED is only relative to the speed of light. You can't travel faster than the speed of light and because of relativity and time dilation you woudn't want to most likely but apparently you don't have to.

In my imagination (because I haven't read anything about it in any ED related text) I imagine in ED that I am travelling inside a warp bubble created around my ship and I am using engine power and negative energy to shape the bubble in order to stretch time and space behind me and compress it in front of me. If my HUD is telling me I am doing 500c I am in fact not going very far at all in my little bubble of warped time and space, maybe just a few hundred miles relatively speaking but I am travelleing from A to B in a period of time that would require me to travel at 500c if I was in normal space. It is a simple point of reference and all the the sights and sounds are just what warped time and space looks and sounds like.

I also have to keep saying to myself things like 'pseudoscience' and 'it's just a game' or else I think I might be doomed.

 

[SurrenderOrHAHA]

Consider those people who did the day trip to Sagittarius A* at 27000 light years, vs the USS Voyager's estimate time to get home at maximum warp if they hadnt gotten all the Deus ex Machina help hands.

SLOW!

Well, Voyager DID travel 75,000 ly pretty fast one way.. ;-) But if I remember correctly, they claimed it would take approx ~75 years at max sustainable warp to get back, so roughly 1000ly / year. (So about Warp 8 according to the OPs chart. I also seem to remember they claimed Voyager could sustain a speed of warp 9.975, so I guess warp 8 was a projected average cruising speed. (Because they need to stop and cause trouble every so often.)
As for ED, I have to say, I was somewhat surprised, disappointed even, that someone got there so quickly (relatively speaking).
The hyperjump mechanism nullifies the REAL agony of space travel.
Then again.. If supercruise was the only way to travel in ED, very few people would have the time and patience to play it.
Space is simply too big to be "simulated" in any sort of believable -yet still enjoyable- way.

 

[Mephane]

Warp 10 = turn into a salamander and mate with the captain.

This is at the top of my list of stupid things in Star Trek that I simply pretend never happened.

 

[mossfoot]

This is at the top of my list of stupid things in Star Trek that I simply pretend never happened.

You and everyone else.

 

[EAGLE 5]

Neat comparison hoever OP forgot that at Warp 10 you become the universe or at least as big as it.... that could be catastrophic.

Im thinking our hyperspace is basically Transwarp which seems to make a ton fo sense if you use that scale because that was the "other" way to travel in Trek without taking forever.

 

[killerofstars]

@Mephane I got angry at Voyager when Janeway went off on Kim for sexing some alien girl from a species they'd never encountered before, when that's a long, proud tradition in Starfleet.

Voyager barely even feels like it takes place in the same universe as TNG and DS9.

@Eagle 5 Heh, good point, hyperspace definitely feels more like transwarp conduits.

Is there in universe fiction I can read about the hyperspace jumps by the by? I love how you blast through what look like nebulas and dust clouds, but I can't decide if that's meant to be a literal representation of your journey, or if you're traveling through some weird kind of "other" space (which to me seems to be the case, especially with how the jump screw with your compass and speed indicators.

 

[EAGLE 5]

@Mephane I got angry at Voyager when Janeway went off on Kim for sexing some alien girl from a species they'd never encountered before, when that's a long, proud tradition in Starfleet.

Voyager barely even feels like it takes place in the same universe as TNG and DS9.

@Eagle 5 Heh, good point, hyperspace definitely feels more like transwarp conduits.

Is there in universe fiction I can read about the hyperspace jumps by the by? I love how you blast through what look like nebulas and dust clouds, but I can't decide if that's meant to be a literal representation of your journey, or if you're traveling through some weird kind of "other" space (which to me seems to be the case, especially with how the jump screw with your compass and speed indicators.

It's other space... in star trek I'd say you're almost to fluidic space but not really, in Doom you're crossing the thresholds of hell in ED well you're so far past our familiar 3D universe that you can't comprehend what you're seeing... the 84s call it Witchspace for a good reason. Some say the Thargoids know it better than us in that they can exist in that dimension and operate like your "typical" 3D reality but I'm not sure. Nobody is.

 

[Tryst]

So recently as I was flying across a system in supercruise I glanced down at my speed and noticed I was doing 500c.

"That's a lot faster than most warp factors IIRC" I thought.

I looked it up, and figured I'd post it here. Since Elite is 1:1 scale, it's interesting to get a feeling for how fast ships are traveling in various sci-fi shows. Honestly, considering this, warp speed feels pretty slow to me.

(This is in The TNG scale. The TOS scale is slower. Also, this is from the show's bible, aka what warp speeds are SUPPOSED to be, not how long they actually seem to take to reach their destinations on screen. There's a whole thing on that over at memory-alpha.org)

Impulse = .25c (Max impulse is repeatedly stated to be 1/4th lightspeed.)
Warp 1 = 1c
Warp 2 = 10.079c
Warp 3 = 38.941c
Warp 4 = 101.594c
Warp 5 = 213.747c
Warp 6 = 392.489c
Warp 7 = 656 (normal cruising speed of the enterprise-D IIRC) 2.41 days to travel from earth to alpha centuari)
Warp 8 = 1024
Warp 9 = 1516.381 (5.77 hours to travel 1 light year.)
Warp 9.6 = 1909 ( Compare to supercruise top speed of 2001c)
Warp 10 = turn into a salamander and mate with the captain.

According to http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Warp_factor

Warp 9.96 = 2,922c As achieved by Voyager for 40 LY.
However, it also states that The Enterprise in TOS managed a whopping 765,000c at only Warp 8.4 for 990 LY. One assumes that the warp engines don't have a fixed speed and that distance is also a factor of speed. The longer the distance, the higher the speed. Since you wouldn't be travelling in normal space, but in a bubble of warped time/space, it would be reasonable to assume that standard laws do not apply.
Also, in TOS, the Enterprise managed a speed of Warp 14.1

 

[Thogapotomus]

I really wish that instead of traveling through witchspace, that we could actually see normal space on the way to another star. For example, in Space Engine, if you target a nearby star and select "go to", that's what I wish it looked like.

You'd actually get a real sense of scale as you traveled through the galaxy, and it'd make long journeys while exploring, or whatever, beautiful to watch. As it is now, you get ripped out of the world when you jump, so you have no perception of the movement going on around you.

If you saw the targeted star from light years away, then it suddenly rushing up on you as you drop out of a hyper jump, it'd be way more exhilarating than it is now. It would impart a much better perception of speed and the accuracy/capabilities of your ship's FSD.

 

[Mephane]

@Mephane I got angry at Voyager when Janeway went off on Kim for sexing some alien girl from a species they'd never encountered before, when that's a long, proud tradition in Starfleet.

Yeah, or when Harry fell in love with a hologram and everyone was like "get real it's just a hologram" while an entire subplot of the show is about how a hologram can be a person, too, and Data in TNG had already been established as a precedent for an AI being officially accepted as a real person, and not a thing (and Data had an actual relationship with a human and no one really cared, which is the way it should be).

 

[mossfoot]

Yeah, or when Harry fell in love with a hologram and everyone was like "get real it's just a hologram" while an entire subplot of the show is about how a hologram can be a person, too, and Data in TNG had already been established as a precedent for an AI being officially accepted as a real person, and not a thing (and Data had an actual relationship with a human and no one really cared, which is the way it should be).

I think Futurama handled all that way better

 

[EAGLE 5]

Yeah, or when Harry fell in love with a hologram and everyone was like "get real it's just a hologram" while an entire subplot of the show is about how a hologram can be a person, too, and Data in TNG had already been established as a precedent for an AI being officially accepted as a real person, and not a thing (and Data had an actual relationship with a human and no one really cared, which is the way it should be).

Guess they forgot about Riker and Minuet.

Me I got angry and Voyager when Kess said the first sentence. Then I got REALLY angry when Neelix became a regular thing.... Then the show peaked my interest when Kess self immolated and then really got my attention with the Borg timeline.

done nerd out.