Ship Acceleration and You
In the far future year of 23XX, ships have a tremendous amount of power available to them through fusion reactors. Often having the power to accelerate isn't the most restrictive factor on acceleration. Instead, ships are often restricted on their speed based on structure concerns, crew survivability, or fuel/reaction mass for the engine to consume.
Why Acceleration instead of Top Speed?
Speed works differently in space. Without friction and atmosphere, a starship doesn't really have a top speed. To make matters more complicated player characters won't really have a sense of speed in a starship since traveling at 30,000kms will feel just like not moving at all.
What is more useful for players is a ship's acceleration, since that is what their characters will feel as a sense of speed. Everyone knows what 1g feels like in real life, and it is easy to imagine what accelerating faster or slower would feel like based on that. Similarly, knowing a ship's acceleration gives the players an idea of which starships can outrun others.
What is more useful for players is a ship's acceleration, since that is what their characters will feel as a sense of speed. Everyone knows what 1g feels like in real life, and it is easy to imagine what accelerating faster or slower would feel like based on that. Similarly, knowing a ship's acceleration gives the players an idea of which starships can outrun others.
Ship Acceleration
0 to 0.1g - Space Stations and ultra-efficiency craft
Travel at less than 0.1g won't get you anywhere fast, but going slow is one of the most efficient ways to transport cargo. This can be done through ion engines, solar sails, or even just small thrusters, opening up this level of acceleration to just about any form of propulsion. Often this low acceleration will be used for slowly nudging asteroids, or for keeping space stations in orbit.
Examples
Ossatura Class, 0.01g
The Ossatura is a massive ship that uses a faster than light system to transport ships between star systems. As such it doesn't need to move much, and uses its engines mainly for station keeping.
0.1g to 0.8g - Economy Craft
Ships that travel in this range are still slow, but put out enough energy to still get places relatively fast while keeping the crew relatively comfortable. These speeds are gentle on starship's space frames and often large scale transports or utility craft will travel at this speed to reduce the costs of operation.
Examples
Paramour Class, 0.6g
The Paramour was designed with versatility and modularity in mind. Ship components can be attached at all sorts of angles with minimal structural reinforcement. This makes the ship cheap to operate, easy to modify, and easy to repair as it does not suffer the same amount of structural stress as its faster counterparts.
0.8g to 1.2g - Comfortable Human Craft
'Earth-like' acceleration is highly desirable in starships with human occupants. With a large enough reaction-mass tank a starship can accelerate at 1 g, and then decelerate at 1g, allowing the crew to experience earth like gravity for the entire duration of the trip. Luxury ships and large scale personnel transports will often max out their speed around 1g as any faster would require making the ships much more sturdy to survive those accelerations.
Examples
Journey Class, 1g
A freighter and general purpose ship designed for the civilian market, the Journey is a solid ship with a respectable 1g acceleration. This was chosen mainly to appeal to customers, as being able to maintain earthlike conditions inside of the ship is a popular selling point even if it requires additional engineering to make the ship more structurally sound and thus heavier.
1.2g to 3g - Fast Warships
Acceleration in the 1.2-3g range is usually reserved for ships that need to launch themselves into orbit (often from earth), or military ships that require the increased acceleration and can afford both the discomfort for the crew and the increased mass from creating a ship that can withstand the acceleration.
Examples
Statesmen MK3 Class, 1.34g
The Statesmen has a massive cluster of engines, but also has to push a large amount of mass including weapons, crew, supplies, and armor. With a large ship, there are always concerns that unrestrained equipment could cause damage under acceleration, and the large human crew aren't all highly trained pilots. Despite all of this ISOC still demands the ship have a 'high' speed. The compromise between these requirements conspire to make the ship faster than most normal ships, but not by much.
3g to 9g - Interceptors and Racers
High performance craft, require special reinforcement and design along with specially trained crew to maintain acceleration above 3g for extended periods of time. These ships are often the domain of military interceptors with highly trained crews, Daqin warships who's crew can be specially configured to handle the stress, missiles, or attack drones. It is rare to see a large ship capable of this high level of acceleration because of the physical stresses involved in accelerating a large mass.
Examples
Steward Class, 8g
The Steward is a small craft with powerful engines designed for use in interception work. The ship is only ~20 meters long, and has a reinforced structure designed to withstand the high acceleration. The ship itself can withstand a massive 8g of acceleration, and is really only limited by what the Human crew can withstand. While the ship itself could withstand more than 8g, the human crew would be end up dead after more than a few seconds of 8g+ acceleration.
9g+ - Inhuman acceleration, drones, and missiles
Above 9g is not really survivable for humans. Craft with this level of acceleration tend to not have human crew. This means either drones or high performance Daqin craft with genetically engineered pilots capable of surviving the strain.
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