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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yora" data-source="post: 8708842" data-attributes="member: 6670763">I also think that given the setting, in most situations where you have an hour to work before new trouble arrives, you'll also have ten or a few days. If your enemy could call for reinforcements, they will either arrive soon while you're still trying to put out the flames, or they won't be showing up for a day or two.If you have to get the ship ready for another enemy ship that has appeared on the radar, the engineer might be able to quickly get two or three systems running again, but the ship will still be full of holes.I was thinking about how I want to narratively interpret the engagement ranges for my own campaign. I think doing it logarithmic would be fun. Each increase in range means ten times larger distances.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Given that soldiers with hand held weapons aiming by sight already shot at each other at distances of 1 km or more in some situations, I think 1 km would absolutely qualify as "contact" for space battles.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">10 km was considered close range by warships even in the 30s and 40s. A 100m diameter sphere would still look as big as the Moon from Earth. So that easily qualifies as "short" for space battles.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">At 100 km, a sphere with 100 m diameter would still have a tenth the diameter of the moon seen from Earth. That would be much brighter than any star and probably even Mars and Venus seen from Earth. Futuristic targeting computers should have no issues at all making such a shot with an accelerator cannon. I think that would be a good benchmark for "medium" range, if you model space battles on early 20th century sea battles.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">All that considered, 1000 km as "long" range doesn't seem out of place. That's where there's basically only torpedos left on the available weapons list.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That would leave "extreme" sensor range at up to 10,000 km.</li> </ul>I think for sensor ranges this would be actually silly. It's 400,000 km from the Earth to the moon. Geostationary orbit is 36,000 km. Detecting a 100 meter metal object at those distances would be trivial. Though I guess ground based sensors or orbital stations tracking traffic could have ranges a hundred times or even a thousand times larger than what can get installed on a ship.</blockquote>

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