Using FTL Drives In A Star System

The travel times within a star system can be drastically shortened by simply using a vessel’s FTL drives, if it has them. FTL travel reduces an AU to a trivial distance, as can be seen in the following table.

At FTL-10, travel from the Sun to Pluto is a journey of a mere 20 seconds (in comparison, at the same speed, it would take 29 hours to reach the nearest star).

Travel at these speeds inside a crowded star system is difficult and dangerous, however. Star systems often contain large amounts of clutter – planets, asteroids, comets, and clouds of ice and rock such as Sol’s Oort Cloud, which surrounds the entire system. There’s no physical law preventing it, but the FTL calculations are much more complex than those for interstellar travel.

In populated systems, the danger is even greater. Many civilized systems will have local laws determining the permitted speeds or usage of FTL drives.

FTL 1 AU

1 8 mins

2 1 min

3 18 secs

4 7.5 secs

5 3.8 secs

6 2.2 secs

7 1.4 secs

8 0.9 secs

9 0.7 secs

10 0.5 secs

Within a charted star system, the navigator’s FTL checks take a -2d6 penalty. Within an uncharted system, the checks take a -3d6 penalty. And in a crowded, populated system, an additional -1d6 penalty is applied.

Failure on this check dumps the ship unceremoniously out of FTL as automated systems avoid a collision. This badly damages the FTL engines and the superstructure. The ship takes 2d6 damage to its SS, and the FTL engines go offline until they are repaired, which requires a Difficult [16] minor science.