Actual Speed for ships

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Kalfor

Spaceman
You know, its raining a lot, and Im sick. After been stuck at home for the whole day, I got bored enough to go make some calculations

What I realized is that the speed for ships in wc is simply too little for in system movement as fast as they are supposed to

Lets think a capship, going at, bleh, 200kps
as an idea of distance, say going from the sun to outside pluto's orbit, which is a about under 6.000.000.000 km away
As ship would take almost a year to cross that distance at 200kps!
For reference, it would take like 5-10 days to go from Earth to Mars

Of course its far faster than today's tech, duh
but it doesnt seem to fit at all with what its supposed to be in the games or books

The only think I can imagine is that the autopilot and/or going "scoops closed" gives the ship far greater speed
The thing is, for you to take, say, 40 hours, it would need to go at over 540 billion kps

Ill have to rethink how things work for my rpg... :/
 
man 200kps is fucken fast for any galaxy....... look at starwars ships on sub light drives alone they can only get a fe thousand KPH thats why they have light engine.... and jump gates for that matter

even startrek ships travle only about 20Kps so if your calculations are right then even though the wing comander ships travel faster then any other galaxys ships, there still to slow?

and 50 billion Kps? thats hundres of times faster then light more hundreds of thousands, even millions, nothing can go that fast
 
Kalfor said:
What I realized is that the speed for ships in wc is simply too little for in system movement as fast as they are supposed to
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I could be wrong here, but I thought that the K in "kps" is an unknown unit of measure.

Which would sort of make the ships however fast they need to be. Y'know - since it's made up and all.
 
I thought the speed of 200Kps is only intended for use within the game itself. Capships can go much faster by closing their scoops (scoops are the reason that WC ships act like they're in an atmosphere and suffer air resistance). So when someone says that a particular ship is fast they are really referring to that ship's acceleration.

On a side note, star trek ships seem to go much faster than 20Kps in the series (well TNG and afterwards) as ships seem to be able to cross solar systems at sub-light speeds without much difficulty.
 
Ok, I really didnt consider that K could stand for another unit, but if it is, it just defeats Nathrak's comment of it being too fast, as it would still have to beat our measure of space (no matter what unit you use, the distance remains the same)

I really dont know about speed in SW or ST, but if you want to talk reason, its because in both those universes you can jump/warp inside the system from any spot to any other spot (bah gravitational barriers)

So, its possible that the system means something else, true, but if it does, it makes ships astonishingly fast anyway
the ships still need to go 540 billion kilometers per second, no matter what unit you use, to fit into the stories
 
In the books, we are told that they are kilometers per second. Also, I think Col. Halcyon (sp?), the Tiger's Claw Wing Commander during WC1 actually calls out a distance in klicks (kilometers).
As for the speed, you've stumbled across a pretty hotly debated topic here at the CIC. The books say that with scoops closed a capship is capable of tremendous speeds (I can't remember a top speed off the top of my head, but I remeber the Tarawa had enough time between two planets to get up to 10,000kps on their final run on Kilrah).
In the games, every measurement you get is in KPS, but you know that wouldn't be true (if this were the case, you would shoot past the 700meter long Victory in less than 1 sec if you had your speed set to 1kps). So I think that what the concensus is here is that the speeds you see are relative, in combat situations (scoops open) these numbers default to mps (which is about right if you've ever used leech missiles or guns on a target thats about 1000meters in front of you, it takes about 2 sec to be on top of it). The KPS comes into play as a top speed a fighter can reach if his scoops are closed (think of it this way, if a fighter can travel between 0 and 500kps, if a speedometer was used, when at combat speeds, the dial would barely register and you wouldn't know how fast you were going. So during combat, you can think of the speed number as being zoomed in on the extreme lower part of the speedometer - which is kindof a stretch since it is all digital readouts so why couldn't it just change over to mps, but hell as I've said before during combat you can tell your flying at mps). A fighter can reach its top speed (say 520kps for the Arrow) with its scoops closed - this has been put forth that this is what happens when you autopilot.
As for a capships top speed in game being around 200kps instead of the books version of around maybe 20,000kps. I have no idea. :)
If I'm wrong in any of my statements, I'm sure someone will come along and rectify them. There have been many nice discussions of this topic, if you will use the search option you can find many of them.

C-ya
 
I just imagine a dual speed thing for combat--during combat speed is in meters per second instead of kilometers per second (so like an Arrow is going at 520 mps). That brings combat into scale, while the fighters are traveling at kps speeds when traveling between locations.
 
That would be an interesting explanation
It is what I take in account for planetary flights, as the ship's computer would detect atmospheric entry or planetary gravity, whatever, and automatically reduce the fighter's speed in such a way that reaching escape velocity in a second cant happen :)
So, the speed in KPS would still be used as relative measure, same reason why tanks and atmospheric ships in my game still register top speed as KPS

The idea about auto=scoop speed is interesting, but it takes me to wonder what stops someone from doing it to escape a fight
I can imagine 2 things. The first being that maneuvering at that speed is probably hazardous, and a ship's internal structure may break up if the pilot tries to make a turn
The second is that doing it may take a few seconds (like in Freelancer) or energy must be reverted to the engines, causing the shields and/or guns to power down
Interesting considerations...
 
Viper61 said:
In the books, we are told that they are kilometers per second. Also, I think Col. Halcyon (sp?), the Tiger's Claw Wing Commander during WC1 actually calls out a distance in klicks (kilometers).
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WC2 Jane's Fighting Spacecraft also refer specifically to kilometers per second.
 
Ships in the Wing Commander universe travel at Kilometers Per Second (KPS) relative. This means that the listed speed (in kilometers) is that which a ship can achieve in the absolute optimal conditions... but it also means that it is the speed in comparitive units (speed undefined) which it will always achieve compared to ships in the same situation. What sort of factors effect a ship's speed? Here are some:

- Availability of Fuel. Wing Commander's spacecraft maintain their speed using spaceborn hydrogen, which is collected via electromagnetic fields. Available hydrogen is significantly limited two important factors. First is location: spaceborn hydrogen is far less common 'in-system' than it is in deep space. Second is competition. Ten ships in the same area will each recieve only a portion of the fuel that would otherwise be available to a single ship. This aspect is further complicated by the fact that large ships mount significantly more powerful ramscoops - so a group of fighters around a carrier will recieve only a tiny fraction of the available fuel.

- Maneuvering Requierements. A ship which is travelling in a straight line with its scoops fully open is taking in significantly more fuel than ships which are maneuvering in any way. During any sort of maneuver, scoops are 'resized' to allow ships to change direction. During this time, less fuel is taken in. A group of fighters engaged in combat will therefore travel significantly more slowly than a formation traveling from one point to another.

- Proximity of Objects. In deep space the effects of gravity generating objects is almost zero; therefore, a ship does not need to compensate for them. As craft travel deeper and deeper within a solar system, they must expend more and more thruster power negating the natural pull of things like stars and planets.

Our example will be the P-64C Ferret. According to Joan's Fighting Ships (2664), the Ferret has a maximum speed of 500 kps. Traveling in a straight line with scoops fully open in deep space, the Ferret may actually travel as fast as 500 kilometers per second. However, once we put it under normal circumstances it will move much, much slower. Near a planet engaged in combat our Ferret may move as slowly as 500 meters per second (watch the targetting VDUs in Wing Commander or Wing Commander 2... distances to targets in combat are listed in meters, while distances to Nav Points are listed in kilometers).

Now lets put our Ferret up against a Kilrathi Sartha. The Sartha has a listed speed of 400 kps. Therefore, in deep space with no factors affecting it the Sartha will travel at 400 kilometers per second. But it's fighting a Ferret now, and they're both mixing it up in combat... and their speed may be decreased by a factor of ten or one hundred. It will, however, always be relative. As long as they are under the same set of variables, the Ferret will always move 20 percent faster than the Sartha.

So far, so good! So how do ships travel quickly from one place to another? Simple -- they close their scoops and use stored onboard fuel. In this way, they can speed up to levels approaching the speed of light (in one particularly desparate incident, a Terran Confederation fleet crossed the Sol System in under half an hour). There are several caveats. 'Scoops closed' travel must be meticulously planned. A ship must know beforehand that it intends to travel exactly from Point A to Point B in a specific amount of time, so that it can spend half its voyage speeding up and the second half slowing down. Such travel cannot be interrupted, and absolutely no maneuvering is possible. It is therefore not something that can be used in a combat situation. Finally, since it uses onboard fuel ships must spend time 'recharging' their fuel supplies in open space before traveling normally again -- which can take days or weeks (or, of course, no time at all with the aide of a tanker or drydock facility).
 
Finally LAOF posted!!!

That's all well and good...I got down to the fifth or six post and wondered why LOAF hadn't posted yet...

...just a quick question though, does this mean that you can never stop between Nav Points? That seems to happen to me in WC2 (maybe I'm wrong).

I always assumed that when your carrier sent you out on a patrol, your radar could cover the entire area along the path you fly, meaning that you scan alot more space then just the nav points (it may just be me but some of the patrol paths they have you take aren't exactly optimum for detecting enemy forces).

Any thoughts?
 
Maybe I'm completely wrong here, but the way I always figured it was that the radar was constantly scanning along the route that the ship would travel through, and when it detected something that could prove hazardous through a collision (such as asteroids or enemy fighters), it would begin to decelerate the ship early, so that the pilot could then take action to avoid the obstacle.

As for the comment on the patrol routes looking poorly designed, the nav maps were 2-D, so a nav point could be plus or minus elevation in relation to the carrier/base, but on the map, it would look like it was right next to the location.
 
Even taking into account that they were three-d I don't think the patrol points were tacticly sound. But that's a seperate issue, such as why the carriers always seem to blunder around unescorted when they're so precious.

I have serious problems with the way the Confederation deployed and used it's forces in a strategic manner, if anyone can't tell.

According to LOAF the Nav patrol points have to be planned so that the ships spend half the time speeding up and half the time slowing down, thus, even if the Radar detected something and the ships started to slow by the time it did it would be past whatever it was that it detected.
 
540 billion kps? are u shitten me? thats hundreds of millions of times faster then the speed of light, man ud reach another galaxy in under a half hour at that speed mabey less, thats just not right
 
Lord_Nathrakh said:
540 billion kps? are u shitten me? thats hundreds of millions of times faster then the speed of light, man ud reach another galaxy in under a half hour at that speed mabey less, thats just not right
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Considering the nearest galaxy is something like 946,728,000,000,000,000 kilometers away, I seriously doubt that.
 
Oh, no, I don't think patrols are planned out like that -- I'm talking about fleet movements. Fighters run patrols with scoops open... and patrols take a few hours.
 
Thanks for clairfying. That's kind of a cool concept...that would explain why the Capital ships we see don't move much except when you escort them.

I assume when you escort capital ships they don't run at full speed because the fighters wouldn't be able to catch up?

Basically from this, I assume that Confed fleets wouldn't move around system very much spontaniosly, say, to chase down a Kilrathi ship that they detected.
 
Jason_Ryock said:
I assume when you escort capital ships they don't run at full speed because the fighters wouldn't be able to catch up?
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It's also because they would'nt be able to turn.
 
Well, I suppose fighters *could* travel at such high speeds (one even does, in Fleet Action)... but having escort fighters that can't really maneuver sort of defeats the purpose. :)

Plus, ships shouldn't travel at such high speeds when there's a chance for combat (as there is whenever *we're* escorting a ship)... since they'd be sitting ducks.
 
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