News:Players Guide - HSpace

A look a the Raggedy Edge on Serenity (Hspace)

Mal's Notes on Hspace on Serenity MUSH

The concept I had when I created Hspace was simple, do it better then anyone else out there, leave it as simple as I can, and still keep to the theme. Serenity/Firefly backbone is space travel, which takes days at a time.

There are two schools of thought on Serenity/Firefly and its layout of space; one is a single solar, and two, a cluster formation with more then one sun. If you fly around in my formation of the universe you may look at it and think I picked one or the other, the truth is I picked neither.

Trips on Serenity MUSH will take no more then 5 hours in the slowest of ships to get from one side to the other, this is for playability of the game, over favor of realism.

I wanted the system to do everything we saw in the show and movie, from EVA recovery of cargo, to repairs needed to keep you Flyin', to keeping your ship fueled, to evading detection from Alliance patrols. I also went out of my way to make sure we had all of the worlds of Serenity/Firefly available for play. Flyin' on Serenity represents real space travel as in it is truly point and shoot, you find your course, point your ship on it, and you'll eventually get there. Slow down and land.

Hspace offers a clean looking system, and many consider it to be the standard in space systems used on games. But it is not the heart and soul of spaceflight on Serenity. It is a backbone, but you, the players are its flesh, mind, and soul. Much good RP happens, watching the worlds go by, or underway having dinner in a common room. Same as Serenity, and this is the goal of the system.

To introduce you to the system, I offer the following, created by Fallon Player, so credited here and used with her permission in the players guide.

Note: If you're using the Sim in the OOC Area, the 'plot all courses' method will not work for you. You need to use 'srep'. If you just wanna get power into the ship, you can always type power to power up a ship and power off to power down.

Fallon's Quick And Dirty Guide to Flying

First things first... This guide does not help in evasive maneuvers, fancy piloting, or any of that. Learn that on your own time. I cover the basics -- this will get you safely and easily to the planets you need to go to. Nothing more, nothing less.

On to the fun stuff!

Power on the Ship

Make sure your ship is powered on. This is important! You may need to run to your engine room -- or yell at your mechanic -- to do this.

• sysrep - This gives you information on the power status in your ship currently. May look something like the following:

.--------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Engineering Systems Report                               Serenity  |
 >------------------------------------------------------------------<
| System               Status    Power      Stress      Damage       |
| Engines              Online    100 (100)  0%          None         |
| Internal Computer    Online      9 (9)    0%          None         |
| Sensor Array         Online     50 (50)   0%          None         |
| Life Support         Online     25 (25)   0%          None         |
| Maneuv. Thrusters    Online     50 (50)   0%          None         |
| Comm. Array          Online     25 (25)   0%          None         |
| Damage Control       Offline     0 (10)   0%          None         |
| Comm. Jammer         Offline     0 (50)   0%          None         |
 >------------------------------------------------------------------<
|                        +- Computer Status -+                       |
| Power Usage: 9/9                       Surplus: 0                  |
| Consoles   : 2                         Powered: 2                  |
 >------------------------------------------------------------------<
|                        +- Reactor Status -+                        |
| Type  : Reactor                        Output: 350/350(91/350)     |
| Stress: 0%                             Damage: None                |
 >------------------------------------------------------------------<
|                          +- Fuel Status -+                         |
| Storage Level:        99%                                          |
`--------------------------------------------------------------------'

• sysperc reactor=100 - Use this if your ship is not powered on. Most ships will put enough power into the right places and that can be adjusted manually later (again, yell at your mechanic). This can take a moment or two for the ship to be fully powered. Be patient. Alternatively, if you know the exact number your output should be, you can use spow reactor=## where ## is the number you want to set it to.
• computer - This will turn the computer on. If you get a message saying insufficient power, just wait for the reactor to be ready.
• cpower on - This is important! You need your console working, don't you?

Laying in a Course

Now we get to the nitty-gritties. First? Laying in a course and getting started.

• stat - This is your friend. Stat is your navigation status display. And I know -- it looks horridly confusing at first. Let's just break it down a bit...

.---------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| Serenity (--)                 |                                  Firefly  |
 >---Navigation Status Report---+------------------------------------------<
|                   311        321        331     | X:          6           |
|   10__             |____._____|_____.____|      | Y:        492           |
|       |                    > 321 <              | Z:         -0           |
|      -|          ___________________________    | +- Course -+            |
|    0--> 0      /                             \  | C: 321/0    D: 321/0    |
|      -|      /                                 \| V: 0/0 (700)            |
|     __|     |                                   |                         |
|  -10        |                                   | Shields    *            |
|             |                 +                 |            |            |
| HP: 100%    |                                   |         * -+- *         |
| MR: 1000    |                                   |            |            |
|              \                                 /             *            |
`---------------\\.___________________________.//--------------------------`

- X, Y, Z: These are your current headings, on the 3-dimensional axis. X and Y are your two-dimensional planes: vertical and horizontal (in a sense). Z is your third dimension: up and down. XY can be from 0 to 359, while Z can be 90 to -90.
- C and D: C is your Current heading. D is your Destination.
- V: This shows your current Velocity and maximum speed.
- The + in the middle is you. Anything else on the screen are other contacts: ships, planets, the gunner you ejected...

• undock - You can't really fly if you're hanging out in the spaceport, can you? This takes a moment, so sit back, relax, and wonder what part of your ship just broke off.
• plot all courses - Where do you want to go today? This shows all of the contacts out there (planets) and their heading (XYZ) in relation to your current position.
• srep - This is useful anytime, but can also be useful here. It shows contacts right in the area you're in, with similar information to 'plot all courses'. You can also fly to local contacts using the information here. You'd just use it instead of 'plot course'.
• start here - This tells your ship to lock in your current location as your starting point.
• stop at <X> - This tells the ship to lock in the coordinates of X as your destination.
• plot course - Prints the following:

.--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
|         ORIGIN         |      DESTINATION       |      COURSE DATA       |
|   (Current Position)   |        Miranda         |  Bearing: 90/0         |
|    X:             6    |    X:          1000    | Distance: 994          |
|    Y:           492    |    Y:           500    |    Speed: 1400         |
|    Z:             0    |    Z:             0    |      ETA: 42m 36s      |
'--------------------------------------------------------------------------'

- Bearing: This is the bearing of the contact in relation to you -- basically, the direction you need to go in.
- Distance: How far until your destination.
- ETA: Self-explanatory. How long until you get there at your current speed!

• sh ###m# - This is the data from Bearing. '90' is your XY, '0' is your Z.

Flight

This is where the fun begins! Actual flight. Hold on tight, boys and girls... 'cause we're all gonna die.

• ss <X> - X is the speed you want to go. At this stage? Full speed is usually a good idea.
• afterburn - Once you've set in your speed, why not kick those afterburners on? Leave 'em in the dust...

Now that you're on your way, I'm going to break form a bit to describe what goes on now... Even though your ETA states 42 minutes, this isn't a good time to go and have a nap. Sure, you can kick back a bit, but you need to make sure that you stay on course. And, of course, that you don't crash into the planet.

Thus, every so often, check out 'plot course' again. You may need to make adjustments to your heading (using 'sh ###m#'). This will keep you properly on course. You will need to do this more regularly the closer you get to your destination.

Now back to the instructions:

• noburn - When Distance reads about 100, turn the afterburners off. This will begin slowing you down for entering atmo.
• ss 120 - Once you're around 20 "clicks" out, drop your speed down in preparation for landing.
• srep - Find your contact. It's going to have a rather low number for Distance.
• scan #### - This gives basic information on your contact. What you're looking for is the Landing Locations.
• land ####/# - When distance is around 5, land.

Kev's hints on figuring when to stop

Now you've figured out how to fly to a planet, now you might be wanting to know how to spend less time on your approach to the planet, knowing when precisely to cut off the engines. The good news is that you can figure out precisely when to do it, and it doesn't require all that tricky of math. For starters you need to get a bit of info about the engines on the ship youre on, you can do this with:

• specs engines - This tells you your max cruising velocity and your de/acceleration which is what you need, you'll see something like this...

.--------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| System Specifications                                                    |
 >------------------------------------------------------------------------<
|                              +- Engines -+                               |
|                                                                          |
| Stress Tolerance: 45             Maximum Velocity : 1080 MGLT            |
| Optimal Power   : 55 MW          Acceleration Rate: 45 MGLT/sec          |
|                                  Afterburners     : Yes                  |
|                                  Efficiency       : 1000 lt/fuel unit    |
`--------------------------------------------------------------------------'

Now for starters you're gonna want to know how many seconds it takes your ship to come to a complete stop. This can be done by dividing the your speed by the acceleration rate:

• 2160 (afterburning speed) / 45 = 48 seconds to fully stop

So now you know how many seconds it takes your ship to stop, now to figure out how far it takes your ship to stop. Because your ship decelerates at a steady rate, the average speed per hour while stopping is half of the starting speed. So given those specs, and assuming you're traveling at 2,160 clicks per hour, the math to figure out the average distance per second while stopping works as:

• 2160 (afterburning speed) / 2 = 1080 (average clicks per hour speed while stopping) / 60 minutes per hour / 60 seconds per minute = .3 average clicks per second traveled while stopping.

So now finish all this math, you just need to multiply the average distance you're traveling per second with the total time spent stopping:

• .3 cps * 48 seconds = 14.4 clicks to bring the ship to a complete stop.

Now HSpace is pretty forgiving, to land at a planet you need to be within 10 clicks of it. So in this case, as long as you cut afterburners and engines within a window of 24.4 to 4.4 clicks, you still would stop within landing distance of the planet. Saving you a few minutes of time slowly coasting up on the planet to land on it.

What to do if you overshoot

Sometimes you'll stop the ship either too early or too late. This isn't a big problem. First thing you need to do is set an intercept course with the planet you're trying to land on. This is done with the command inter <X> where <X> is the contact number that you get from srep. Next, you do ss 300 (if you overshot by a lot, you can do a higher speed and slow down when you get closer). Finally, when you're within 10 clicks of your planet, you're ready to land.

Done!

You're done! That wasn't so hard, was it? Of course not. That's the rookie (or lazy) way of doing things. You can, of course, from this extrapolate other methods for flying, but for that... well, you're on your own.