Devari said:
I'd agree that the distance the ship travels during the jump isn't particularly important since both jump points are fixed and the jump is essentially instantaneous. But it is still possible to calculate the "average" speed of jump point travel based on total time taken to get from one jump point to another and the total distance covered during the jumps. For example, the Hakaga fleet took rougly two weeks (let's say 15 days) to reach Earth from the edge of the Kilrathi Empire. That distance would have been at least 1500 light years from Earth, which gives them an average speed of roughly 100 ly/day (1500 ly / 15 days).
This is actually pretty fast compared to warp drive. Voyager would have taken 70 years to travel 70,000 ly to get back to the Alpha quadrant at their maximum sustainable speed (around warp 8, or 1000 c), which averages out to only around 3 ly/day by comparison. If voyager had a jump drive averaging 100 ly/day, they could have gotten home in about two years.
Leaving aside all the WC Movie stuff (already mentioned to have come from the WC bible, aka 'the source of all things Wing Commander'), I'll point out why your statement here makes no sense.
As Death has noted, that 15 days to travel from Kilrathi space into the heart of Confed space included ALL of the transit time between jump points - you don't just jump from system to system using the same jump points; you have to go from the jump point leading to Tyr to another jump point possibly halfway across the system at that time to make a jump to Masa, because a jump point only services a direct link between one system and another, where they 'touch' in jump-space. Therefore, to make a trip from Arcturus to Sol, you have to make four jumps - Arcturus to Weslyn, travel from the jump point to Arcturus to the jump point to Sirius, jump to Sirius, then make the transit from the jump point to Weslyn to the jump point to Sol, and finally jump to Sol before making the last leg of your trip to Luna.
Furthermore, some jump points may be closer together in a system than some others, which means that your 'speed' figures will be affected by this - if I have three jump points an hour apart, and they connect a total of four systems about a dozen light years apart, then if I can go from System A to System D in 5 hours, does that mean that my jump speed should be based on that? If I go from System A to System C via System B with a transit time of approximately 18 hours, for a total of 20 or so hours in transit, does that mean my average jump speed is slower if System C and System a were the same d istance as System A and System D in the previous example? If System C and System A were five hundred light years apart, does that make my average jump 'speed' a lot faster?
Also, given your logic, a trip that jump travel goes around 100 light years a day, then I should be able to go to Epsilon Indi (11.8 light years away) as fast as I can get to Alpha Centauri (4.22 light years away), Proxima Centauri, or Wolf 359 (7.8 light years away), or even Vega (25 light years away) with one jump, because it's 'that fast'. However, while it takes but one jump to go to Alpha Centauri, it takes two jumps to go to Proxima Centauri, three to go to Wolf 359, and four to go to Epsilon Indi or Vega. If I try to calculate jump speed based on these distances, then either jumping goes about 6 light years a day (if I'm coming from Vega and heading to Earth) or else it'll be about the rate of 2.45 light years a day. The jumps from Earth to Wolf 359 average a speed of 2.6 light years a day, if we're assuming that each jump point takes about a day to clear in terms of in-system travel.
Where this really breaks down is when we try to calculate how long a trip to Antares would be, based on your formula - Antares - aka Alpha Scorpii - is approximately 520 light years away, and 6 jumps from Sol, which means that, according to your method of calculating 'speeds', that the speed of a jump is around 86.7 light years/day.... well short of the 100 ly/day figure you calculated above.
Which one of these figures is the correct 'average speed' figure for jump? The answer is obviously 'none of the above' - jumps are instantaneous, and trying to calculate speeds based on realspace distance
between stars divided the travel time is the height of idiocy when that realspace distance is not a factor in the method of travel... and especially when you've ignored factors like the time devoted to in-system travel, which makes up the bulk of the transit time in WC. The space between stars is not going to matter, unless you're talking about something like the Moravan drive which actually transits that distance (albeit in jumpspace), or with something like warp drive (which doesn't exist in WC).
It's like trying to figure out how fast a car can go by measuring the size of its hubcaps - that has nothing to do with the method by which a car moves, nor does it take into account factors such as engine power, the mass of the vehicle's frame and engine, and various other factors which affect its speed.
Devari said:
And where is the Wing Commander Universe Map from?
From the WC map that came with Prophecy - you know, one of those official games which officially develop WC history. It also mentions how real-space distance is immaterial when it comes to jump point travel, so they discount it when discussing how far apart various systems are, and how 'fast' they can get anywhere.
Or is the game ALSO not-canon, because you dislike it? It's like saying that, just because Paladin was never announced to be a Special Ops type in WC1, that his appearing as one in WC2 and WC3 makes no sense; he had a history in Special Ops, and by SM2 was engaging in it on behalf a certain Vice Admiral, just as he did in a certain movie.