Decelerating vs. Coasting

[CRMcNeill]

So, the RAW has long allowed ships and vehicles to accelerate or decelerate at a rate of one Move Level per round, so long as the pilot makes the appropriate Piloting roll for the new level. However, nothing is said about what happens when said pilot simply lets off the throttle and lets the ship / vehicle coast.

Now, under Newtonian physics, a ship operating in vacuum would theoretically just keep on going at whatever speed the ship was traveling when the pilot let off the throttle. However, the rules don't really seem to work like this, particularly when it comes to the Long Distance Movement rules, where ships take progressively increasing damage the longer they travel at Full or All-Out Speeds. For that rule to work, a ship at Full or All-Out must be under constant thrust in order to generate the strain being put on the engine. Now, relative SUs could represent acceleration, but it would make tabletop combat very strange for anything other than one-on-one fights or chases.

For my part, I've been going with the headcanon concept that the culprit is the inertial compensator, which is standard equipment aboard pretty much every starship. The idea is that the compensator dumps the inertial energy externally, which creates a space-time anchor effect that must be constantly thrust against or else the ship will gradually coast to a stop, but do so at a slower rate than it would if the ship were decelerating under its own power (car metaphor: coasting to a stop instead of applying the brakes).

So what would be a good rate of reduction for "coasting"? Right now I'm thinking 1 Move Level every 4 rounds, as in, if a ship is traveling at All-Out, and the pilot simply lets off the throttle, as opposed to braking, it takes 4 rounds for the ship to drop from All-Out to Full, then a further 4 rounds to drop from Full to Cruising and so on. Pilots still have to make their Piloting rolls against Terrain, so this will have to be used selectively; sometimes it will be better to decelerate from All-Out to Full in one round in order to be able to negotiate difficult Terrain. And of course, when you coast, rounds spent coasting no longer count against Long-Distance Movement Damage.

Thoughts?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

For me, i've usually just said they 'coast' along at what speed they have, TILL EITHER they turn (thus shave ff some momentum), OR slow down..
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[CRMcNeill]

Doesn't that effectively allow them to side-step the Long-Distance Movement rules? If you can just thrust up to All-Out, then coast along at the same speed from there, the ship's engines aren't really doing anything.

The "slowing down when turning" thing does fit with the technobabble I have going, as my explanation for "etheric rudder" is essentially just redirecting the ship's inertial energy laterally, forcing its course to curve in the specified direction.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

[Whill]

You're right. The rules don't work like physics, and ships don't move in the films according to physics either. Your explanation of inertial compensation being a resistance to accelerate against is a good one to make the rules make sense.

In my starship damage system, there are a couple things relevant to this discussion.

I was also inspired by your ion damage chart to have a minor temporary ion damage effect that reduces speed, but since these effects are not in effect beyond the round subsequent to the damage, I just made the rule that the max speed the following round is one less than the current speed. It makes sense that coasting takes more rounds than braking, but this was one of several different effects that all expire after the subsequent round, so the speed reduction has to occur on the next round. But I guess that effect can be thought as a forced braking. Multiple sequential effects of this could eventually stop a ship in my rules, but it is unlikely that same result would keep being rolled.

I have a 'controls ionized' cumulation effect like 'controls frozen' in RAW where the ship is stuck moving the same speed and direction. Multiple subsequent results of this will also expire eventually. I think we talked about this elsewhere and I posited that the ionization could effect the inertial compensators, so I don't have to worry about the ship coasting to a stop under the resistance effect. Ionization in this case could be allowing more Newton to have effect.

I have it that all ships have primary and backup inertial compensators, and a damage result that can knock them offline. If both are knocked offline, the ship has a failsafe to freeze the controls of the ship, for the safety of all aboard. To then slow down slow enough to be safe without inertial compensators (which if going fast could take a long time in space with only Newton), the failsafe can be deactivated to effect that.

Since it didn't come up in my rules (or any circumstance ever in play that I can remember), I don't think I ever thought out how long a coasting ship should take to slow down. I don't know that it should be four rounds per level, but it makes sense to be more than one round per level. Maybe two rounds per level?
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[Ray]

Space Opera, not Hard SF.

All the space battles are based off guncamera footage from WWII.

Well, at least, in the Original Trilogy.

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

Wow.. Must have missed that all this time.
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[Whill]

[CRMcNeill]

[Whill]

You've come around quite a bit.

I actually started with a much crunchier ionization system and now it is very short and only crunchier than RAW in that there is a 1d6 roll to determine minor effect. Other than that it is only tweaked from RAW and not more complicated.

And based on other discussions, unless you've changed on this too, shouldn't it be -1D to piloting checks and not maneuverability? This still penalizes pilots of ships with zero (or negative maneuverability). But it would equally penalize a pilot on movement rolls too, not just evasion.
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