how hyperspace works

[Reno]

A couple of you may know how it works, but for the benefit of those who don't (and anybody else who wants to read it), I'll explain how hyperspace travel in the Star Wars universe works.

Hyperspace is basically an alternate dimension through which ships can travel to move faster than the speed of light, which is impossible in our universe, according to conventionally held physics beliefs.

Objects large enough to generate their own gravity in normal space (stars, planets, very large moons, probably Death Stars, and black holes, among other things), create "mass shadows" in hyperspace. Flying into a mass shadow in hyperspace is a surefire guarantee that you won't come out alive. This is why hyperspace routes have to be so precisely plotted.

Nearly all ships have failsafe mechanisms that will cause a ship to revert to realspace (as our universe is known, compared to hyperspace) if it's about to run into a mass shadow. This is what allows the gravity well projectors on an Interdictor Cruiser to work. Interdictor Cruisers use their projectors to create an artificial mass shadow in hyperspace, causing any ships passing through hyperspace there to revert to realspace and preventing them from jumping back into hyperspace.

Traveling through hyperspace actually uses very little of a starship's fuel. However, the acceleration of jumping into hyperspace (which is something like the DeLorean in Back to the Future having to accelerate into time travel), eats up massive quantities of fuel.


In hyperspace, it isn't possible to steer a ship. Therefore, travel can only occur in straight lines. A single trip from one system to another will usually consist of several jumps. Essentially, a ship will jump in a straight line, drop out of hyperspace at a certain point to make a course correction, and jump back into hyperspace, repeating this process as many times as necessary to reach the destination. All this is glossed over in the Star Wars RPG rules, but it's still happening.

In fact, systems commonly used as transit points on routes between major systems are favorite ambush points for pirates. If you know that there's a lot of traffic between Coruscant and Corellia, for existence, you can calculate the most likely route it would take between those two systems. This allows you to wait in one of the transit points and attack ships that drop out of hyperspace for course corrections.

So that's the basics of hyperspace. Hopefully it wasn't TOO boring of a read.

[fenris]

Not that it matters a whole lot at the moment seeing as how were not pirates or going to ambush an imperial supply convoy or anything. Anyway, how wxactly in game do you know where one stops to make a corse correction?

[Reno]

You don't. The Star Wars RPG doesn't even mention these course correction stops, so it obviously considers them unimportant. Probably 99% of the time they're uneventful. It's just that once in awhile where some pirates are at the right place at the right time. Or maybe Imperials have gotten ahold of a travel route for a Rebel ship (or vice versa) and set up an ambush.

[Reno]

FYI, I just realized that I've been calculating astrogation DCs wrong. Specifically, I've been using the Quality of Data table, which determines the base DC for the astrogate check, incorrectly. The idea behind that table is that the GM is supposed to figure out how often traffic moves along the route the ship wants to jump. In other words, how many people have made this exact jump, or the jump from a nearby system to the same destination, and how long ago was it?

Instead, I've been having the astrogator (usually) roll Computer Use against the same DCs (but in reverse, so better data has a higher DC) to determine the quality of data they can get. This is because the HoloNet is restricted to Imperial use only during this era. But there's already a listed +5 modifier to the DC for campaigns set in the Rebellion Era.

So my apologies on that. Now I understand how the chart is meant to be used and will start doing it right. The effect of this on the campaign is that jumps made by a lot of people (to any of the Core worlds, or between well-known Rim planets like Naboo, Eriadu, and maybe Ryloth, will generally have fairly easy DCs. But going to places like Onderon, which are almost NEVER visited, will be pretty hard.

[black heart]

...so...nagai is gonna be a bit*h to get to again huh...?

[Reno]

Possibly. There's no traffic between the galaxy at large and Nagai. You HAVE been there before, which means that if you went there from the same system you left from the previous time, you could use your old astrogation data. The problem is that it's probably more than a month old now, so it isn't going to help very much.