Or, How I Learned to Stop Rushing and Love the Medium Quantum Drive.
As mentioned in a few of my other posts, I've been noodling around the idea of intersystem travel in this game. With the usual caveat of everything is subject to change without notice, reason, or communication, let's take a look at this with some simple math.
As we are STILL confined to Stanton, I needed a reference of some kind to SWAG from. The ARC Starmap provides 'close enough' values for our purposes today.
First question is simple; Since Starmap routes are shown in AU, how big is an AU in SC? Solar systems are stated to be 1/10th scale; let's do a little verification.
Crusader to Microtech was the first attempt, but it has a different physical orientation in game than in the Starmap. So I got the 315p and the sunscreen out to do some flying around. With allowance for variance in the QT points and resulting geometry, these numbers verify the 1/10th value for an AU.
Let's pick a ship to work with. The FL Max is a crowd favorite:
This is pretty straightforward. But what does it mean? How far is that in the SC universe?
Time for more math! How far is it to say, Levski or Ruin Station?
Right away we can see that the Max is going to need to stop for gas before it gets to Levski. But Ruin Station is easily within reach with fuel to spare. NOTE that the overall distance is shown, then a breakout of each leg below that. This becomes important, as SOME legs are by themselves much longer than smaller ships can travel.
How about other places, and other ships? Here is a sampling across the range of what is available.
Again, this is fairly self explanatory; compare the range of the ship/drive combination with the distance to the destination.
Takeaways:
1) Fighters ain't got it. In fact, there are only a handful ships with small QT drives that do: Terrapin, 315p, Defender, Eclipse, Hull-A.
2) To be useful, any navigation tool that is developed will need to be able to break down individual legs of the journey.
3) Medium quantum drives as they exist in the game today are VERY efficient for size.
4) Large quantum drives ARE NOT efficient in comparison to medium. How much this matters will depend on fuel cost, availability and whatever shenanigans you happen to be up to at the time.
4.5) Travel times are long, perhaps a significant portion of a game session for most. So intersystem travel will not be trivial.
5) TEST Aurora's are gonna need a ride.
6) Todd Papy has stated that once Pyro comes into the PU, that they expect to rework quantum travel fuel usage and probably quite a bit more of the system; I think there have been comments made recently about the QT system getting further development. So this post will likely be out of date when 4.0 drops (values shown here are 3.17.2).
Ayeteeone out.
As mentioned in a few of my other posts, I've been noodling around the idea of intersystem travel in this game. With the usual caveat of everything is subject to change without notice, reason, or communication, let's take a look at this with some simple math.
As we are STILL confined to Stanton, I needed a reference of some kind to SWAG from. The ARC Starmap provides 'close enough' values for our purposes today.
First question is simple; Since Starmap routes are shown in AU, how big is an AU in SC? Solar systems are stated to be 1/10th scale; let's do a little verification.
Crusader to Microtech was the first attempt, but it has a different physical orientation in game than in the Starmap. So I got the 315p and the sunscreen out to do some flying around. With allowance for variance in the QT points and resulting geometry, these numbers verify the 1/10th value for an AU.
Let's pick a ship to work with. The FL Max is a crowd favorite:
This is pretty straightforward. But what does it mean? How far is that in the SC universe?
Time for more math! How far is it to say, Levski or Ruin Station?
Right away we can see that the Max is going to need to stop for gas before it gets to Levski. But Ruin Station is easily within reach with fuel to spare. NOTE that the overall distance is shown, then a breakout of each leg below that. This becomes important, as SOME legs are by themselves much longer than smaller ships can travel.
How about other places, and other ships? Here is a sampling across the range of what is available.
Again, this is fairly self explanatory; compare the range of the ship/drive combination with the distance to the destination.
Takeaways:
1) Fighters ain't got it. In fact, there are only a handful ships with small QT drives that do: Terrapin, 315p, Defender, Eclipse, Hull-A.
2) To be useful, any navigation tool that is developed will need to be able to break down individual legs of the journey.
3) Medium quantum drives as they exist in the game today are VERY efficient for size.
4) Large quantum drives ARE NOT efficient in comparison to medium. How much this matters will depend on fuel cost, availability and whatever shenanigans you happen to be up to at the time.
4.5) Travel times are long, perhaps a significant portion of a game session for most. So intersystem travel will not be trivial.
5) TEST Aurora's are gonna need a ride.
6) Todd Papy has stated that once Pyro comes into the PU, that they expect to rework quantum travel fuel usage and probably quite a bit more of the system; I think there have been comments made recently about the QT system getting further development. So this post will likely be out of date when 4.0 drops (values shown here are 3.17.2).
Ayeteeone out.
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