Distance, Time, & FTL

To make a space journey, first determine the distance of the journey in parsecs. There are hex-based star maps available to help plan space travel. Breaking a longer journey up into sections can make progress easier.

FTL Speeds

Space travel times are shown in the table below. C refers to a multiple of the speed of light – the actual speed of a ship is the cube of its FTL factor (thus FTL-5 is 125 times light speed). A parsec is 3.26 light years. FTL-7 is very close to 1 day per light year; when local variations and other factors are taken into account, 1 day per light year is accurate enough for navigational use. This has made it the standard travel speed, and is referred to as “standard speed”, as in “set a course for Sirius X at standard speed”. FTL-20 is almost exactly 1 light year per hour.

The Milky Way is roughly 100,000 light years in diameter. Even at FTL-20 (8,000 times light speed) it would take 11 years to cross the entire galaxy. At FTL-100 (1-million times light speed) it would take roughly 40 days.

Range. A starship has a travel increment measured in days equal to its class, multiplied by its LUXURY percentage. Additionally, crew quality affects it as follows: poor 80%, experienced 150%, elite 200%. For every increment beyond the first, attribute checks suffer a -1d6 penalty. A Class VII ship can make a journey of 7 days with no penalty, but a journey of 10 days inflicts a -1d6 penalty, and a journey of 15 days causes a -2d6 penalty.  This count is reset when a ship docks at a space station, or enters orbit around a planet and allows the crew a day to rest.

Different Assumptions

In some settings, FTL travel occurs at vastly greater speeds than in others. Where one setting may have a Federation covering 20% of the Milky Way, another might have a Galactic Empire spanning an entire galaxy. In the former, it might takes days to traverse just one sector, while in the latter the entire galaxy might be crossed in the same time or less.

The former speeds are typically Advancement Level 9 technology, and the latter are Advancement Level 10 technology.

These two technology levels create different types of game setting. The slower assumption allows for more exploratory games, while the latter makes space travel a trivial aspect. A galaxy in an AL10 setting is likely fully explored, or nearly so.

For such speeds, FTL-X is a more cumbersome way to refer to travel velocity. Instead, some settings (such as the aforementioned Galactic Empire setting) use a simpler rating system where a Class 1 FTL drive is twice the speed of a Class 2 FTL drive, which is itself twice the speed of a Class 4 FTL drive. Conversely, a Class 0.5 drive (one which can, colloquially speaking, make “0.5 past light speed”) is twice the speed of a Class 1 drive.

The math conveniently works out to 1 parsec in 1 minute per FTL rating class.