Starships: FTL Travel and Fuel

In the Drago’s Reach Campaign, there are four FTL drives.

Warpspace Drive

In the Drago’s Reach campaign, commercial starships commonly use the Warpspace Drive, known as the “Turtle” or “Bender.” This reliable stardrive requires minimal maintenance and allows travel at speeds of up to 1 parsec per day. Warpspace travel relies on the planetary Hill's Sphere distance, or 1 AU distance from a planet or moon, to engage the drive, and it must be disengaged before reaching 1 AU distance from a planet or moon. It is considered old technology, so a new Warpspace stardrive costs 20,000 Credits.

Class 9 Hyperdrives

Class 9 Hyperdrives are the most popular upgrade for spacecraft, enabling them to make jumps of up to 6 parsecs per day. Unlike Warpspace drives, ships equipped with Hyperdrives must travel at sublight speed for several hours to escape their solar system's gravity well before they can initiate a jump. The gravity well ends just past the outermost large planet or gas giant of a solar system. 

In a G5V star system, such as Earth's solar system, Tortoise, or Cotswold, the gravity well extends to just past Jupiter, at a distance of 5.2 AU from the sun. In contrast, for an F5V star like Olympia, the gravity well reaches 20 AU from the sun. For a K0V star, such as Red Horizon, the gravity well ends at 4 AU from the sun. Lastly, in a B5V star system like Blue Shroud, the gravity well extends to 130 AU from the sun.

After a jump lasting 24 hours, the crew will resume sublight travel from a location outside the sun's gravity well to reach their destination. Additionally, each jump requires a cooldown and maintenance period of 24 hours before it can be used again. The cost of a new Class 9 Hyperdrive is 70,000 Credits.

Class 10 Hyperdrives

Class 10 Hyperdrives are available at a higher cost. These drives allow for jumps of up to 18 parsecs in one day while still adhering to the same gravity well, cooldown, and maintenance requirements as Class 9 Hyperdrives. The retail price of new Class 10 Hyperdrives is 200,000 Credits.

Displacer Drives

Displacer Drives are expensive and mainly used by large organizations, such as the Terran Empire's military and certain megacorporations. They take 4 hours to charge and plot a course, enabling travel of up to 100 parsecs in one second. After each jump, they require another 4 hours for cooldown and maintenance, but sublight movement is possible during this time. New Displacer Drives retail for 2 million Credits, while some are available on the black market for around 500,000 Credits.

Note: In Drago's Reach, some wealthy megacorporations operate ships that are equipped with both Class 9 Hyperdrives and Warpspace Drives. This dual-drive system allows for quick escapes while waiting for the Hyperdrive to cool down. In regions infested with pirates and smugglers, sacrificing some cargo space for a second drive can prove worthwhile.

Fuel: Getting Around

Fuel at quality Starports costs $50 per ton. Poor or frontier worlds are unlikely to have starports with fuel, so ensure you have enough or find a nearby gas giant from which to scoop fuel.

Sublight Speed

Ships traveling at sublight speed use their antigrav fusion-powered drives. The cold fusion battery lasts 20 years before requiring maintenance/refueling, and thus does not consume hydrogen fuel used by warp and jump drives. These antigrav drives have a maximum flight speed of  2 AU per hour (the speed of light is 7.2 AU per hour). 

Stratford is 2.9 AU from the sun Olympia, and Peking is 6 AU from Olympia. If the two worlds are at their closest, that trip takes (6-2.9)/2 = 1.5 hours. If the two worlds are on opposite sides due to rotational times, the trip takes (6+2.9)/2 = 4.5 hours. 

Sublight travel in larger systems such as Blue Shroud is even worse. Dracarys is 238 AU from Blue Shroud, and Edenvale is 25 AU from Blue Shroud. At sublight, that takes (238-25)/2 = 106 hours, or 4 ½ days. 

Turtle Drive Warp Speed

When traveling at warp speed, each ton of fuel allows for movement of 1 parsec within 24 hours (which equates to 8594 AU per hour). The journey from the Olympia system to the Red Horizon system requires 1 ton of fuel and takes 24 hours, plus additional time at sublight to reach the specific planet, which adds a few more hours of sublight travel. 

Note: Turtle drives are disengaged routinely at 2 AU from the target world, so only 1 hour is required to reach the world after that.

Jump Drive

To make a jump, a ship requires 1 ton of fuel for each unit of its size (SIZ), regardless of the jump's distance—whether it's 1 parsec, 6 parsecs, or 18 parsecs. For example, a Beetle-class starship, which has a size of 8 (SIZ 8), will need 8 tons of fuel for a jump. In contrast, a Bumblebee-class starship, with a size of 6 (SIZ 6), requires 6 tons of fuel to make the jump.

Note: Since jump drives cannot enter into a system's gravity well, jumping to a system with a large star like Blue Shroud means being 230 AU or more from worlds in that system. At sublight speed, that's a week of travel. 

Refueling

When a ship is near a gas giant, it can "scoop" fuel from the planet's atmosphere. This process takes 1 hour to scoop and refine each ton of fuel. For a ship with a fuel capacity of 60 tons, a full refuel would take 60 hours ( 2.5 days). However, this can be worth the time investment, especially considering that the alternative could cost 60 tons at $50 each, totaling $3,000. The situation could be even more challenging if there are no high-quality starports available in the system.