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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GuardianLurker" data-source="post: 9337852" data-attributes="member: 786">Aw darn. Still a respectable drive.So, 10 Minutes to travel 1 AU is actually (a little bit) slower than light speed. (1 AU ~= 8 light minutes) Unhappily it is also fast enough to actually experience time-dilation (not much, but noticeable) - barring hand-wavium technobabble. A really low FTL multiple (2x or 3x) isn't unreasonable as a High-Impulse (in ST terms) either (and implicitly includes technobabble).Basic Rocketry terms. SKIP if you already know what "specific impulse" and "delta V" mean.[spoiler]As an aside - modern day rocketry uses the term "specific impulse", which essentially is a very jargon-ny way of saying how efficient a given engine/fuel is at producing thrust. In practical terms, high specific impulse engines also tend to have high "delta V", which is more jargon for how fast the rocket can accelerate. Which is ultimately what you care about, as it is delta V which controls how fast you get around.[/spoiler]Also ST's "Impulse Engines" are actually "I-M Pulse Engines" which have nothing to do with "specific impulse". And are thus, confusing.Honestly, ST:TOS actually has a good example of "resource intensive" interstellar travel. Warp 4 (the early cruising speed) was 64x Light Speed. Which works out to a little under a week (5.7 days) per light year. They needed those Starbases! By the end of ST:TOS they had a cruising speed of Warp 6 (216x), or a little under 2 days per light year. By ST:NG and Voyager, I believe the warp factors were log10 - so Warp 6 would be 10^6 Light Speed - a million times light speed. But I could easily be misremembering.As to whether or not, or how much "resource expenditure" is required for your FTL is going to depend on the genre you want to emulate. Near-Future, "Hard" Sci-Fi (like the Expanse)? Crank that cost UP! Something like the 'Verse from Firefly where you have a great-big-grand-daddy of a multi-stellar sytem? A cost is probably appropiate. Space Opera like the Honor Harrington series? MacGuffins (Wormhole Junctions) that are strategic resources for rapid-long-distance interstellar travel, but hand-wavium FTL is still in the low hundreds for the multiple. Ditto for something like the Vorkosigan saga. B5 uses the Jump Gates and Hyperspace, in conjunction with Slower-Than-Light drives to enable its space opera setting. By the time you get to Star Wars, though, that cost is basically neglible, and intra-system FTL basically boils down to "come out of hyperspace far enough away to hit the brakes, and not the planet."Ultimately, the bigger you want/need your setting, the more you have to turn the speed up, and the costs down. And that's leaving aside the many, many, many variants of dodging Einstein. All of which can radically change how the setting feels. Supporting all the differences is a BIG sell. And there's nothing wrong with saying something like: VRC is intended for use in settings similar to "The Expanse", "Firefly", or even "Avatar". Other, future supplements will detail settings that cover a significant part of a galaxy (like all those famous Space Operas you just thought of).To use a semi-British analogy - just don't promise a pound's worth, and only give me a shilling.</blockquote>

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