Assembly Hall

As it stands, all an increased warp speed changes is the maximum au/s you can achieve in the middle of the warp. This is absolutely useless, however, for any warp shorter than about 20 au. Most of the time spent warping is in the acceleration and deceleration phases, which are identical in length no matter how big your ship is/ what its warp speed is. Long warps shouldn't be the only time that higher warp speed actually helps.

I did a highly scientific test with a stopwatch to get these numbers. Bear in mind this is only time in warp, not align time.

Distance in au = time in seconds.

Stiletto (13.5 au/s warp speed)

0.5 au = 26
1 au = 27
5 au = 30
10 au = 30.5
15 au = 31
35 au = 32
70 au = 35

Hurricane (3 au/s warp speed)

0.5 au = 27
1 au = 28
5 au = 31.5
10 au = 32
15 au = 34
35 au = 40
70 au = 52

As you can see, the only time there was a substantial difference in warp times was on the longer distances. On any warp shorter than 15 au, the difference in warp time was less than 10% better for the Stiletto, despite its warp speed being 4.5 times higher.

It's a simple solution. Scale the acceleration and deceleration speeds with warp speed. This actually makes interceptors and faster ships more viable tackleboats than recons in one area. This would require some tweaking, but it's something that should be looked at.

yes

I like my idea, and I don't see A. how it would be too much for current code, or B. how a reduction in warp speed across the board would help anything.

You do understand what the phrase throwing a fit means, right? But I'll answer your poorly spelled question anyway.

Right now, the time it takes to get to actual advertised warp speed is 10 seconds, regardless of the ship you're in. The deceleration time is 20 seconds. That means with a warp speed of 3au/s, regardless of the size ship you're in, a 20 au warp will take about 36 seconds, 30 of which are eaten by acceleration/deceleration. All i'm saying, is that the accel/decel times, which make up the largest majority of time spent warping, scale with the warp speed of the ship. This would make warp speed a viable factor in choosing a ship, especially for tackling/ chasing down gangs. So yeah, I would call that useful, and constructive.

Well, since all I'm suggesting is to scale the accel/decel times, it really wouldn't affect freighters because they warp so slowly to start with. But I agree, there would need to be tweaks to account for what the average warp speed is.

Sincere question:

Isn't warp accel/decel somewhat balanced by align times and accel to warp time?

I know in my Interceptor, that align times are real fast as are the accel time to enter warp. Times get longer as ships get bigger. If these factors do balance warp times, how would you recommend changing them?

I was originally picturing an increase in warp acceleration for ships that currently have a high max warp speed, and a reduction in warp acceleration for ships with low max warp speed. Which would have required the suggested tweaking to balance. However, if you arent reducing any of the warp accelerations then my point was moot. I will add however that if you make the high max warp speed ships get to their max speed faster, you will need to reduce that max speed some, otherwise they will be way too fast at the longer warps.

It doesn't really answer my question, but i appreciate the numbers. I'd like to see some examples of total warp time, starting from beginning align time to landing time.

It does seem reasonable that less mass would be able to accel faster in warp as it does any other time.

+1

+1