a.) You need to check your engineering. Whether or not the ships have power to break orbit and stuff like that is irrelevant. They can have the ability to move at realistic fusion drive speeds and it still won't matter to interstellar travel. They do not seem to carry enough fuel.
b.) Subspace is totally irrelevant to this discussion. The issue is whether intersystem transit is realistic using FS designs. The ships probably do not carry enough fuel to make the transit in a reasonable period (within their own operational longevity.) You do, indeed, need a ludicrous fraction of the ship for fuel storage, even with the high specific impulse of a fusion engine (the type of which is left to the imagination.)
c.) The fact that no STL transit to Sol was attempted during Reconstruction probably indicates it is not practical using existing FS ship designs. A specially designed vessel might be able to make the transit.
In the end your decision to ignore in-game speed measurements, while believable, simply opens the door to making up whatever we want. Canonical speed is all we have. Anything else is fanwank.
Go through your, post find every sentence with 'probably', 'ideally', 'hopefully', and remove them. See how the argument holds up.
FreeSpace is a setting defined by subspace travel. The ships do not appear to have the ability to move faster than a few meters per second at sublight speeds. Change that and you need to discard fighters and turn the entire thing into another iteration of Alastair Reynolds or Transhuman Space.
Although mostly intact, your arguments for your points are a little fractured due to the fact that that you've seemed to have changed your opinions slightly from previous discussions. That's fine, but please be sure not to be so seemingly condescending in your response or defense.
That said, there is some merit to your response to point (a.). Standard FS ships would probably never attempt... well, never attempt intersystem travel with fusion drives. If I stated they could, then I take that back.
Though, for the record, I don't believe I ever have... A colony ship would be massive, to say the least, and wouldn't be going anywhere fast. If you could cover a light year in 10 years, you'd be doing a pretty good job. That's the only example of a reasonable intersystem-without-subspace travel vessel concievable in FS, and the only flavor of which I'd advocate if necessary.
Point (b.) was born of the fact that we're talking about fuel and power. The argument is primarily based upon the fact that the discussion covers the question of mobility technology in FS.
It is a little off-topic in the sense that it's tied to the argument in point (a.), where movement is considered without the use of subspace drives. The only real value to the argument is to validate that,
if absolutely necessary, FS ships could move of their own accord. In which, power/fuel usage would be comparably inefficient, but not unreasonalble. In terms of escaping a system to another without subspace, however, you are indeed correct. The fuel fraction aboard a FS ship would not be high enough to yield a reasonable transit velocity between systems.
I feel the economical/political reason for not transiting to Sol during Reconstruction in point (c.) was better laid out than yours, but I agree with your listed sentiments completely. You'd need specialized vessels for a trip like that, and a standard FS fleet (unless it's in "tow and stasis" or something like that) will not make such a journey in common reason.
Your statement about "ignoring in-game speed measurements" does not in fact open the door for making up anything we want... though as every campaign out there (apart from
's campaigns) is fanon anyway, the respective authors would do anything they wanted anyway...
A standard FS mod uses standard FS data. That means an Oriion still paruses about at 15m/s, a Leviathan is a turtle, and all the other fun stuff you can recall. It's the mod author's duty to write a workable stroy which meshes with game mechanics - that's FreeSpace. It's no different from retail in that regard.
And now to the last: the first point is absolutely correct. FS wouldn't be FS without subspace. The second part is a grey area, though you could definatively say that the measured speed is a relatavistic value. That aside, it is again a game mechanic that makes the game fun and playable.
That's why ships in FS move the way they do. I know you know this well.
The last part of the paragraph in question is your own fanon. The FS-verse is the same so long as it is recognizably so: as long as the fiction can be made to mesh with gameplay in some fashion, it's fine. Story-wise, canon FS only goes into using speeds with a light tread. "This ship is faster" or "this ship is more maneuverable" are about as in-depth as breifings and the like go. The numbers are only viable from the player standpoint: in-game mechanics. Stating that the ship is moving "from this planet to the other without subspace" doesn't break the story - there's no numbers involved as it's just a given. Giving the FS universe a more realistic feel is a help, not a hinderence, and it breaks emersion no less than considering the Orion you're escorting is moving at 15 m/s. The only thing the author needs to be wary of is the execution of the elements involved. Yes, it's fanon.
But everything else on this entire board is.
