Warp Drive vs Hyperdrive: Star Trek and Star Wars comparative speeds (WOIN)

Morrus · May 2, 2015

Warning: ultrageekery game design ahead, part of the What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. (WOIN) roleplaying game. Matching up Star Wars and Star Trek FTL speeds is an interesting process. The former is a couple of orders of magnitude faster than the latter. This corresponds to base levels of advancement levels 9 and 10 fairly neatly.

A Class 1 hyperdrive from Star Wars (in SW, lower is better, with fast ships having ratings of 0.5-0.9 or so and slow ships having ratings of 2,3, or 4) is equivalent to about 2,000,000 times light speed, or 1 parsec per minute, or Warp Factor 125 in Trek language (using old Trek, where speed in multiples of c are the cube of the warp factor, not NextGen+ Trek where Warp 10 is infinite speed).

Add in some Doctor Who stuff where TARDIS's can travel between galaxies as easily as you or I pop to the corner shop, and we're looking at another level entirely.

So you can essentially use two different scales. FTL-X for tech level 9 (Trek level) stuff, and Drive Rating for tech level 10 (Star Wars level) stuff. Or you can use the same rating, which means the USS Enterprise effectively has a SW drive rating of 3906 in a setting where ratings tend to go up to 4 or so, or where the Millenium Falcon (0.5 past light speed is regarded as being its drive rating of 0.5) goes at effective Warp 159.

This puts the Falcon able to cross the Milky Way in 10 days, and the Enterprise in nearly 200 years...

Generally speaking, I think it's fair to say that the GM will peg the overall setting advancement level in advance.

In the table below, FTL-X is basically old-Trek Warp Factor. C is the actual multiples-of-speed-of-light column.

FTL-X	C	1 PARSEC	1 LIGHT YEAR	1 DAY TRAVEL	CROSS GALAXY**
1	1	1190 days	365 days	0.003 light years	120,000 years
2	8	149 days	45 days	0.02 light years	16,000 years
3	27	44 days	14 days	0.07 light years	4,444 years
4	64	19 days	6 days	0.15 light years	1,875 years
5	125	10 days	3 days	0.3 light years	960 years
6	216	5.5 days	1.7 days	0.6 light years	555 years
7	343	3.5 days	25 hours	1 light year	350 years
8	512	2.3 days	17 hours	0.5 parsecs	234 years
9	729	1.6 days	12 hours	0.6 parsecs	165 years
10	1,000	29 hours	9 hours	0.8 parsecs	120 years
11	1,331	21 hours	6.5 hours	1.1 parsecs	90 years
12	1,728	17 hours	5 hours	1.4 parsecs	70 years
13	2,197	13 hours	4 hours	1.8 parsecs	55 years
14	2,744	10 hours	3 hours	2.4 parsecs	44 years
15	3,375	8 hours	2.6 hours	3 parsecs	36 years
16	4,096	7 hours	2 hours	3.4 parsecs	29 years
17	4,913	6 hours	1.75 hours	4 parsecs	24 years
18	5,832	5 hours	1.5 hours	4.8 parsecs	20 years
19	6,859	4 hours	1.3 hours	6 parsecs	17 years
20	8,000	3.5 hours	1 hour	6.9 parsecs	15 years
30	27,000	1 hour	20 mins	24 parsecs	4.5 years
40	64,000	25 mins	8 mins	57.6 parsecs	1.8 years
50	125,000	12 mins	3.7 mins	120 parsecs	350 days
63 (class 5)*	250,000	5 mins	90 secs	180 parsecs	175 days
79 (class 4)*	500,000	4 mins	72 secs	360 parsecs	88 days
91 (class 3)*	750,000	3 mins	54 secs	540 parsecs	58 days
100 (class 2)*	1,000,000	2 mins	36 secs	720 parsecs	44 days
125* (class 1)*	2,000,000	1 min	18 secs	1,440 parsecs	22 days
130 (class 0.9)*	2,222,222	54 secs	16.2 secs	1,728 parsecs	20 days
135 (class 0.8)*	2,500,000	48 secs	14.4 secs	2,016 parsecs	17.5 days
142 (class 0.7)*	2,857,142	42 secs	12.6 secs	2,304 parsecs	15 days
150 (class 0.6)*	3,333,333	36 secs	10.8 secs	2,592 parsecs	13 days
158 (class 0.5)*	4,000,000	30 secs	9 secs	2,880 parsecs	11 days
200 (class 0.25)*	8,000,000	15 secs	4.5 secs	5,760 parsecs	5.5 days
500	125,000,000	1 sec	0.3 secs	89,856 parsecs	2.3 hours
1,000	1,000,000,000	0.125 secs	0.04 secs	718,848 parsecs	17 mins

*In tech level 10+ settings FTL speeds are much faster; FTL 125 is categorized as a Class 1 drive
**Assumes a Milky Way sized galaxy with a diamater of 120,000 light years (36,809 parsecs)

Of course, narratively there are lots of different FTL methods, from warp to hyperdrive to jump drive, etc., and they all do different things. The thing they all have in common, of course, is that they let you reach your destination quicker.

Dannyalcatraz · May 2, 2015

There was a BIIIIIG discussion about SW tech vs ST tech- including their drive speeds- over at stardestroyer.net. some years ago, which drew me to that site in the first place. Some good discussion. A lot of math. A lot of attitudes.

Too much of the latter, though- kind of like a civcuvs maximvs for Sci-Fi fans- so I don't go there anymore.

But it probably is still going on. Probably not the same one- though that is a real possibility- but some kind of discussion on the topic, no doubt.

Umbran · May 3, 2015

There is an interesting difference between Star Wars and Star Trek propulsion - manuverability.

For most intents and purposes, Star Wars FTL drive is "do the calculation, push the button, and go", fire and forget. You are flying along a known or calculated space lane, and don't interact with your drive system while in flight. You can walk away from the control board, and you don't turn or adjust after you start.

In Star Trek, you can maneuver at FTL speeds. They have weapons that move at FTL speeds (torpedoes) for anyone trying such shenanigans, even. You pilot the ship at FTL just as you would at sub-light speed.

Morrus · May 3, 2015

It's mainly just a few quick sums. I think the only basic figure that needs debating is how fast the Falcon moves, because the rest of the SW stuff can all be derived from that in a couple of minutes. The Trek speeds have always been clearly stated, so they're easy.

Morrus · May 3, 2015

Umbran said:
For most intents and purposes, Star Wars FTL drive is "do the calculation, push the button, and go", fire and forget. You are flying along a known or calculated space lane, and don't interact with your drive system while in flight. You can walk away from the control board, and you don't turn or adjust after you start.

Yup! In fact, you actually leave space and travel in another space. You can't interact with real space at all.

In Star Trek, you can maneuver at FTL speeds. They have weapons that move at FTL speeds (torpedoes) for anyone trying such shenanigans, even. You pilot the ship at FTL just as you would at sub-light speed.

I think ST is a bit vague on this stuff depending on the script at the time. But yeah, it seems like you can "turn" at Warp speeds.

Dannyalcatraz · May 3, 2015

No "seems"- they do all kinds of banking/evasive maneuvers at warp speeds. Remember the original Romulan plasma torpedoes are warp-speed homing weapons.

garrowolf · May 3, 2015

Here's the catch to all this. There is no speed to hyperspace. Hyperspace is an alternate dimension, not a speed. Hyperspace has a compression ratio with normal space. So if you travel 1 meter in normal space then you travel only 1 meter. If you go into hyperspace and and travel one meter but that hyperspace has a compression ratio of 100:1. Then you will have traveled 100 meters when you come out. The problem is that George Lucas used a real term and then didn't show it very accurately.
If the Star Wars galaxy is the same size as our galaxy then, for the speeds of the ships that are shown it would take a compression ratio of 1X10^11:1 to accomplish that. So they are traveling at say 5% of the speed of light then that would be the same as traveling 5 billion times the speed of light.
However if Star Trek and Star Wars were in the same universe then the Star Trek ships would be able to use a hyperdrive just as well and go a lot faster! If a ship with a war drive entered hyperspace and went 100c then it would be going 7X10^13 times the speed of light!

garrowolf · May 3, 2015

Actually there is no reason that they shouldn't be able to manuever in hyperspace. It's just another place.
In Babylon 5 they show this better but they say that combat in hyperspace is a bad idea but never give a good reason why.

Umbran · May 3, 2015

garrowolf said:
Actually there is no reason that they shouldn't be able to manuever in hyperspace. It's just another place.
In Babylon 5 they show this better but they say that combat in hyperspace is a bad idea but never give a good reason why.

Um... hyperspace isn't real. Each fictional universe defines it differently.

In Star Wars, it is one thing, in Babylon 5, it is another thing. They are not the same thing, despite the same name.

garrowolf · May 4, 2015

They are both referring to a concept of a different dimension coming out of Einstein's theories. Some people believe that it is the set of dimensions that wormholes are moving through.
However since they are referring to a different dimension of space then having the space have a set speed like Star Wars makes no sense. However having a different spacial correspondence ratio like a compression does explain some thing in quantum mechanics and wormholes.