What distance is a space unit?

[ZzaphodD]

Well, as the title says. What distance is a space unit?

The only clue I have found is this:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DBY-827_heavy_dual_turbolaser_turret

This Turbolaser can hit a target vessel at 179,875,475 km (10 light minutes). Lets assume this is the maximum effective range. The in game range for a similar turbo laser is 75 space units. This would mean that a Space Unit is 2,398,340 kilometers.

A Space 10 starfighter can then travel 95,933,600 km in 10 seconds (40 space units), or 9593360 km/second, which is almost 318 times the speed of light...



Well, seriously. Do you have any other idea of what distance a 'space unit' is?

[bobenhotep]

spatial units are not an actual distance. they are relative and used for story telling purposes. but they do not actually correspond to a distance measurement.
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D&D 5e DM and WEG Star Wars GM for two kids who will hopefully carry on with RPGs for years to come

The Chijawa said so, that's why.

[Gry Sarth]

Yes, they are variable. But if you want a number, while doing Star Warriors conversions, I arrived at a measure of 1 Space unit = 400 meters which worked for a lot of things.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[ZzaphodD]

[Ankhanu]

Using internal game consistency, rather than later published material concerning ranges, and comparing, for example the atmosphere and space ranges and speeds of different weapons and ships, it's pretty clear that there's... well... no internal game consistency on speeds With this in mind, I've generally gone with the idea that 1 space = 100m

I base this off of measures like the range of things like the A-Wing targeting jammer:
Space: 1-3/7/15
Atmosphere: 100-300/700/1.5km
And other similar stats where the ranges seem to have that 1:100 consistency.

Of course, there are a lot of examples where that consistency doesn't apply... but hell, very rarely does a ship's Atmosphere move rate equate to the speed rate it give. For example, the Headhunter has an atmosphere speed of 400. 1,150kmh. A move of 400m in a round is equivalent to 288 to 478km/h, depending on whether you use the lower or upper recommendations of a round being 3-5 seconds. That's just one of many examples... it gets even worse if you compare rates among ships.

Simply, it's nebulous, not well defined, and, as with many things in Star Wars D6, not meant to be too nit-picky... it's relational and that's about all you can say about it.
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[atgxtg]

In the game it is mentioned that space units get larger the father ships are away from planets and other gravity wells. This actually makes sense since gravitation forces are inversely proportional to the square of the distance.

For example:
Using the benchmark figures for travel, it take a half a hour for a ship to fly from a planet to a moon. If we use the Earth-Moon distance as a standard (since most worlds in Star Wars seem to have 1g gravity), then a ship would need to travel about 769,000 kph!

-This would be roughly 1000 times the atmosphere speed of a freighter)



Flying to a nearby planet takes about 2 hours according to the benchmarks. again using Earth as a example, the average distance to Venus is about 150 million km, so a ship would need to be traveling about 75million km/hr.

-This would be about 100 times the "to Moon" speed, or 100,000 times the atmosphere speed.


Flying to the outer limits of a star system takes about 15 hours. Using the solar system as a model, the distance to the heliopause is about 145 billion km, so a ship would need to travel about 15 billion km/hr.

-That's about 2 million times the atmophsere speed.


But if you want a fixed size, Gry 400m/space unit works out well for a lot of things (like Star Destroyer counters in Star Warriors).



As far as being able to break out of a gravity well:

1) Ships also have contra-gavity. So since ships can cancel out the pull of gravity and hover, there is no reason why they coun't do the same to get out of a planet's gravity well. In fact, it would be a lot more energy efficiency that the other way. Assuming a ship can cancel out the pull of gravity, then a ship that can fly at 1kph could get out of the gravity well of a planet. It would just take awhile.

Assuming the typical habital world has 1g gravity, and a typical atmosphere, then the atmopshere would be about 100km thick.

So a TIE fighter (Speed 10/1200kph) could get out of a atmosphere in about 5 minutes.




2) In reality, there are not max speeds in space. As long as a ship has the means to accelerate, it can do so. Some sources actually list ship speeds in terms of acceleration (delta-v) rather than as max speed.

So you could simply consider the speed factors to be relative acceleration in comparison towards the other ships.

[schnarre]

...I tend to stick with Speed Dice for movement ( a hold from 1st Ed.) only resorting to units in combat, whereupon Star Warriors comes into play.

...I read somewhere (I wish I could remember where, as it was a WEG book) that a unit was 30m roughly. I stick to point-blank/Extreme Long as far as ranges, but that's me.
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[garhkal]

The size of a space unit is equal to plot times Phi!~
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[jmanski]

A space unit is like hyperspace speed. It is what it is. Star Trek defines everything and tries to explain everything.

In Star Wars Han Solo says "engage hyperspace!"
You say, "how fast is that?"
Han Solo says, "shut up, kid."

I personally like the lack of pseudo-scientific explanations. Star Wars has a real-world feel. No one really cares exactly how fast the speed of sound is, but everyone wants to know how fast the airplane is. If someone says it flies Mach 2.7, how many people know (or care) how many miles per hour (or kmh) that is?
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[atgxtg]

[ZzaphodD]

To be honest, its not very important to know what a space unit is. The result of matching the above Wookiepedia info and the in-game range of a turbolaser just got me going...

However, a between X and Y approximately would have been nice. The above examples of flying to a planets move seems to be the best answer so far. Elastic tape measure it is then...

BTW, how do you hit a 'target vessel' 10 lightminutes away given the fact that the blast will take at least 10 minutes to get to the target...is Darth Vader at the trigger shooting using his Sense skill?

[jmanski]

[atgxtg]

[bobenhotep]

there should be some kind of in game reasoning for why things happen. that is why it is a game.

so a ship may be able to cut in aux power, but you should have some kind of game mechanic for this. the ship would hae to be set up for this before hand. otherwise, the fail safes on the computer will not allow it. (thats what id say)

i also try not to mention spatial units too much. just ranges "hes at long range" or " she is gaining on you , fast"
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D&D 5e DM and WEG Star Wars GM for two kids who will hopefully carry on with RPGs for years to come

The Chijawa said so, that's why.

[jmanski]