Subspace Communication

[Falconer]

How fast is subspace communication? I think, based on what I have seen in the show, a relay network can allow video conferences in limited situations (based on distance, interference, skill of Comms Officer), but usually you are sending a radio message which takes some time to travel.

The module Where Has All the Glory Gone? demonstrates the usefulness of knowing this speed:



If you let the players puzzle it out for themselves, it checks out:



The problem here goes back to using the speeds from the TOS Writer’s Guide, which are are all still much too slow compared to what I imagine from the show. 1.25 LY is supposed to be a puny distance, WF9 is supposed to be an insanely fast speed, and 3.25 hours to communicate one-way, I dunno, that would have to be several sectors away in my imagination.

Also, you don’t want to force the players to travel at WF9. Maybe in the movie era, but not in the TOS era, where the max emergency speed is WF8.

So here’s how I adapted it, using my own Practical Warp Factor Scale. I changed the distance to 22.5 LY so that the ship’s travel time in the module would match up.



As for the subspace communication time, it seems if I wanted to maintain the module’s timetable there, it should be that it should travel at WF11 (in order for it to take approximately 3.25 hours). However, the jury’s out. I kind of like how 25 minutes feels, here. But this is a tricky thing to eyeball, and I want to consider all implications.

[Falconer]

The Writer’s Guide has this to say:

[Traveller]

The speed of communication is dependent upon equipment: something era specific. In TOS: Balance of Terror a message from Enterprise to Starfleet would take over three weeks from the Romulan Neutral Zone. A century later and the communication between the Neutral Zone and Starfleet is in real time. In TNG: Where No One Has Gone Before, subspace communications between M33 (2.7 million light years) and Starfleet would take just shy of 52 years and would travel at warp 37.35 (TOS) / 9.999500000000019 (TNG).

The canon answer? "At the speed of plot." Roddenberry never pinned subspace communications to a particular warp factor because he didn't need to. The Writer's Guide quote above I think makes this clear. A lot of non-canon books tend to use warp 30 as a number, which compared to above is not too far off.

[ThrorII]

As said above, there is no "set" official answer. Each version of Star Trek has needed to speed it up to keep up with the expanding federation. Also as pointed out, FASA gave an 'arbitrary' speed of Warp 15 - which honestly seems fair. During the TOS, no ship ever gets above Warp 14.1 (That Which Survives) and the highest warp speed given is Warp 15 for Nomad's energy bolts.

The base assumption is that Subspace radio must travel at a speed far in excess of the ship's maximum speed, otherwise it would be inefficient. So since the Enterprise has a max emergency speed varying from warp 8 to 9 in TOS, it means that subspace radio is OVER warp 9. The Enterprise exceeds warp 11 twice, and no one states anything about surpassing subspace radio speeds. That would imply SSR is faster than warp 11. Since the Enterprise exceeds Warp 14 with no comment on SSR, it implies that SSR is faster than warp 14.1 as well.

The question then is, HOW MUCH faster than warp 14.1??

There is no answer in TOS.

Warp 15? Warp 20? Warp 30?

Personally, I like the FASA Warp 15. It allows roughly 10 ly per day, or crossing a 20 LY sector in 2 days. That seems like a fair lag time and indicative from we see in TOS.

[aramis]

I chose WF 25 for max Subspace radio regime.
15 was free; everything faster (to WF 20) took power.
Special sensors allowed speed WF 25

[Falconer]

Traveller: Let’s consider that “three weeks” remark. It would be reasonable to presume the Neutral Zone is set up with permanent jammers as an anti-listening measure. This would garble the Enterprise’s message, but it would eventually get through. Or the Romulans made a bunch of assumptions based on their own situation. Maybe the Romulans don’t have relays, since their empire is relatively small. Maybe all decisions need to go directly to the Praetor (remember the Centurion’s message from “Balance of Terror”). In other words, maybe they assumed the message would have to travel from the Neutral Zone all the way to Earth. 21 days * WF 10 (TOS scale) = 58 LY, which is exactly right… according to the Star Trek Maps layout… if you compress distances so that the UFP has a 50 LY radius (ThrorII-style). I don’t hate the idea of warp 10 SSR, perhaps as a lower end.

ThrorII: Appreciate the opinion. This is exactly the sort of “eyeballing” which is useful to me. Warp 15 by your UFP size and WF scale translates pretty cleanly to WF 11 by my size and scale, so that’s what I’m leaning towards right now.

Aramis: That’s a good approach, establish a baseline but let there be a chance for it to be variable, perhaps letting the Comms officer roll, perhaps letting the GM add or subtract based on behind-the-screen considerations. Helps with those “speed of plot” issues.

[ThrorII]

I like when the Big Kids let me play, too!!!

[aramis]

Part of it is that I used the SFU, so I had discrete power curves to work with.
And scoutships have special sensors, so why not let them comm faster. Bases all have special sensors, too, and lots of spare power, so they can send on the WF25 bands to the fleet easily.

One other thought - for one campaign I used WF^WF rather than WF³, In that one, I stuck with WF10 for Subspace radio.

WF	WFWF	notes
3	27	This is where it equals
6	46656 × C	Cruise ... 675 s/LY
8	16,777,216 × C	Emer 1.87 s/LY
10	10E10	317 LY/s

At that scale, things just got way too fast.

[Traveller]

The time estimate in TNG: Where No One Has Gone Before for a communication is the ONLY instance in canon where a concrete time frame (52 years) was given for a given distance (2.7 million light years). Needless to say, figuring the warp factor with that information should be simple. But, and this is NOT canon, keep in mind that it does depend on equipment AND era: a catch-all to account for the inconsistencies regarding the speed of communications. Remember that TOS writers for the most part had no sense of scale. If they did they would have known in Star Trek V that traveling to the center of the galaxy would take 50 years at warp 8 instead of X number of days.

I feel the communication speeds people use in a game aren't really relevant. Simply throw out a number and, if you want the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time, you can always say the estimate was wrong.

[Falconer]

Dec 22, 2021 20:36:58 GMT -5 Traveller said:

Simply throw out a number and, if you want the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time, you can always say the estimate was wrong.

Of course you could, but it seems to me it makes for a more immersive campaign and smooth session if the number has been decided on in advance, and distances and times calculated accordingly. And, I might add, more fun and interesting for all if there is a possibility for “the cavalry to arrive” early or late—and these contingencies can sometimes be planned for, as well.

[ThrorII]

Dec 22, 2021 20:36:58 GMT -5 Traveller said:

Simply throw out a number and, if you want the cavalry to arrive in the nick of time, you can always say the estimate was wrong.

For a FATE, character driven, type canon-lite game, that can work,

If you have a more campaign driven game with maps and rough distances, some sort of rough scale is needed for player consistency.

It might be excruciatingly precise (9.375 ly per day), or hand wavey (1 hour regardless), but you must have a consistency for the players to rely on.

[Traveller]

Even in a campaign a rough estimate is more than sufficient. There is no real need of a map giving the exact distance from point A to point B. The fact people want such a map is irrelevant.

Canon maps, e.g. TNG: Conspiracy, DSC: The Examples, don't have distances listed on them. Mainly because it makes the maps look like crap on screen, but also because the maps in question were general overviews of Federation space. If you need a map to figure out how long it takes to get to the next planet in your itinerary, you're doing it wrong. The ship is simply the means of getting to the next planet, nothing more. I believe that completely, so it boggles the mind why anyone would want to needlessly complicate this, especially when the writers themselves can't get it right.

Speaking of the writers, I already mentioned Star Trek V, where we have a trip to the center of the galaxy some 25,000 light years distant taking place in the space of days when it actually takes about 50 years. Let's go back to Star Trek II. After the battle in the Mutara Nebula, Kirk asks for the distance from Orion and is told 4,000km. 4,000km is 2,400 miles, or about 400 miles less than the width of the continental US. Somebody messed up, because at that distance protomatter would not be needed as the reason why the Genesis Planet destroyed itself. Gravity would do the work as the interaction between Orion's star and a star only 4,000km away would destroy both Genesis and Orion. Oh, and let's not forget that the V'Ger cloud was 82AU in diameter, resulting in a cloud so large that if the V'Ger probe were placed where the Sun is, the cloud would extend past the perihelion of 90377 Sedna's orbit. Thankfully, skillful editing in the Director's Edition of that film put the cloud on a diet, leaving it at only 2AU (186 million miles) in diameter.

Writers have no sense of scale, but in almost every case it wasn't needed for the stories they were trying to tell. So what makes a role playing game any different?

[Falconer]

If the thread doesn’t interest you, maybe move on to some other thread that does. There are a lot of people here who love space maps and thoroughly enjoy space exploration “wilderness crawls,” which is totally a thing in the realm of the RPG genre even if it is not something that a TV show might dwell on. But the fact is the characters on the show do care, deeply, about routes and deadlines and rendezvous. Charting space is the presumed baseline activity of the Enterprise, as established in The Corbomite Maneuver. Multiple episodes hinge on the idea of there being multiple possible destinations, and some disagreement on what the next destination should be. They care about speeds because time is often of the essence, but straining the engine can destroy the ship. These sources of tension work for TV and they work in a RPG. They work best in the RPG when the players understand the stakes and can make meaningful decisions—not when they are just told to pretend they understand and to just ham it up.

Some of the best Star Trek modules I have run have been The Triangle + The Triangle Campaign and The Lucanii Drift, both of which provide maps of vast areas for you to travel and explore. They have been hands down the most fun and nailed the Star Trek experience in different ways which were lacking in other modules.

Either way... Not sure why you would tell us we’re doing it wrong. Seems kind of strange.