ship agility and speed?

[freedomhater]

How do ship Speed and Agility play into the game?

Most importantly, how much are they weighed when changing range in combat?

im starting a spell as dogfighter with high pilot/stealth/tactics, but w/o knowing how Agility/Speed factor in, I can't tell if +X increas in engines/sails are worth it at the cost of Agility:Fast to Agility:Medium, etc.

Also, does hull size affect how difficult it is to change range?


Every time i switch out of my Verak Mordi Pirate on Crazy i start having a bad time, even though im upgrading to a lot more sails/engines. Either im hitting high Pilot enemies or the increase in Hull + loss of 'Agility' is killing me?

I can't make decisions unless i know #s!

[slayernz]

Typically (but not always) the Speed/Agility is based on the ratio Engines to Hull and Sails to Hull respectively.

Slow means Engines/Sails are less than Hull size
Medium means Engines/Sails are between one and two times Hull size
Agile means Engines are two or more times the Hull size
Fast means Sails are two or more times the Hull size.

What does this mean in reality?

Sails
A ship with 30 sails and 10 hull is going to be more agile than a ship with 30 sails and 20 hull (and much more agile than a ship with 30 sails and 40 hull).
Agility allows you to (a) be more accurate with Torpedoes (you can position more effectively), and (b) be more effective at DODGING torps.

Offset by Tactics skill for firing torps. IE, if you have Sails=30, Hull=15, Tactics = 20, you are more likely to hit your target than if you had Sails=30, Hull=15, Tactics = 10

Offset by Stealth skill for avoiding torps. Again, all things being equal, you are more likely to avoid being hit if you had higher Stealth.

Engines
A ship with 30 engines and 10 hull is going to be more effective at changing ranges (advancing/retreating) than a ship with 30 engines and 20 hull.

Offset by Pilot skill. If you have identical ships but your Pilot skill is higher, you have a better ability to change or control ranges.


One last thing for Sails ... you may notice that the first thing that gets in combat damaged is sails. This is actually by design. The game uses your sails as the sacrificial lamb, meaning your sails get damaged first, then your engines and crew (and not the other way around). So even if you are wanting to focus on a Fast ship (high engine/hull ratio), having a reasonable number of Sails will help you avoid casualties.

[Lesleyr]

How does the Pilot Officer factor in? Obviously a pilot bonus but how does he affect agility and speed. Also does his presence get added to the captain's pilot skill for a boosted figure when calculating or is a flat rate Pilot officer figure used?

[shallowthought]

Agility / speed do not change and simply reflect the ratio of sails/engines to hull size on the unmodified ship. As such, you can pretty much ignore them as these ratios will change based on upgrades.

Pilot officer gives a boost to pilot and stealth, I believe a percentage bonus to the character's stats which can be increased by carrying spice. He also gives a minor improvement in water-fuel consumption, urban landing bonus, avoids radiation storms and a contract bonus for transporting passengers.

[starfixer]

Considdering high sails make the ship more agile (dodge enemy fire easily) and high engines make the ship more fast (advance enemies easly and escape enemies easily) it would make more sense for a ship with high sails to hull ratio to be called "quick" in terms of agility and for a high engines to hull ratio be called "fast" in terms of speed, as opposed to what it is currently which is the other way around .

I hope cory will fix this

[Cory Trese]

You've got it backwards. Solar Sails are used for long distance travel (speed) and Engines are used for In-Gravity, In-Orbit, Close Range Maneuvering.

Engines = Agility (Quick)
Solar Sails = Speed (Fast)

[starfixer]

Jul 3, 2012 1:59:17 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

You've got it backwards. Solar Sails are used for long distance travel (speed) and Engines are used for In-Gravity, In-Orbit, Close Range Maneuvering.

Engines = Agility (Quick)
Solar Sails = Speed (Fast)

Oh okay, so when you say its fast/quick, you mean in terms of deep flight and landing, not in terms of combat. You should maybe put in your help section what it means when it says a ship is fast/quick, otherwize players won't know what it really means.

[starfixer]

Jul 3, 2012 1:59:17 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

You've got it backwards. Solar Sails are used for long distance travel (speed) and Engines are used for In-Gravity, In-Orbit, Close Range Maneuvering.

Engines = Agility (Quick)
Solar Sails = Speed (Fast)

Wait, but if that's true, why does every space take the same amount of time?

[slayernz]

Having more sails still means that you take the same amount of time, but travel costs (W/F consumption) is less

[starfixer]

Jul 3, 2012 17:18:03 GMT -5 slayernz said:

Having more sails still means that you take the same amount of time, but travel costs (W/F consumption) is less

So then its not speed, its efficency. It would make more sense for a "fast" ship to take less time, if by "fast" its referring to deep space travel, and not combat.

Also, I thought fast/quick ships were NOT fuel efficent.

[Cory Trese]

Correct -- ships which are rated as Fast or Quick for their structural size will consume more fuel.

Having a large number of Solar Sails or Engines is efficient.

[starfixer]

Jul 3, 2012 21:26:16 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Correct -- ships which are rated as Fast or Quick for their structural size will consume more fuel.

Having a large number of Solar Sails or Engines is efficient.

So then back to my original question, why is many base solar sails to base hull considdered "fast" if each space takes the same amount of turns? Also, cory, your saying on one hand many solar sails/engines makes fuel effency, but fast/quick ships (which is defined by having many sails/engines to hull) is not efficent. I'm very confused right now.

[Cory Trese]

Long distance travel is all about the same speed when the ship is running long distances in space -- upper velocity of the ships are assumed to be similar enough to have static travel time. These rules were original devised to provide pacing for the pen & paper edition of the game.

The macro travel has a maximum speed that all interstellar ships can reach.

Micro travel which is controllable on the scale of 10s or 100s of kilometers have a number of different graduations of maneuverability and speed.

From an implementation standpoint the fuel use equations yield a series of curves because SPEED and AGILE are ranges based on the starting ratio between various properties of the ship.

Those ratios (at time of inserting into the game) are then fixed and can be adjusted using upgrades or damage.

There are many different combination of different ability, speed, hull size class, crew size and overall ship structure size which combine to give the game a large number of ship configurations which can be utilized.

[starfixer]

Very interesting. But I'm still confused why high engines are agility and high sails are speed. Considdering space travel is the same speed with all ships, it makes sense to call high engines fast (as it helps to advance and retreat on opponents) and call high sails quick agile (as it dodges torps). I still don't understand why high sails are "fast" especialy with deep space speed being the same. I'm not getting a clear answer to this. I don't know if what you just said answers my question, probally because I didn't understand all of it. Prehaps someone can dumb this down a bit for me, you know like maybe a "fast and quick ship explanation for dummies".

[grävling]

I thought that a 'fast' ship could overtake (and board) a slower one if it wanted to. Correct? And is it my engines or my sails or some combination of this that makes it so?