PUSHING THE WARP ENGINES
Most of the literature about the Star Trek Ships warp capabilities is giving in three numbers.
The first number is the maximum cruising speed at warp which most ships can maintain indefinitely.
The Second number is considered emergency warp speed which can be maintained with no difficulty for a day after that the engineer needs to make a Reason + Engineering assisted by the ships Engines + Engineering the difficulty will increase by 1 per day. Speed’s above the second warp number is considered maximum emergency warp speeds up to the third number. This can be maintained for an hour without difficulty. After an hour the chief engineer will need to make task rolls mentioned above except at hour intervals. Below are 3 of the most obvious engineering cheats around keeping the ship at high warp speeds.
1st Option the chief engineer can use the power points to reduce the difficulty of staying at warp, but will not be able to regain power points until the ship drops out of warp. This represents the Engineer rerouting cooling from other systems to the warp core and straining those same cooling systems. This requires a Reason + Engineering assisted by the ships Structure + Engineering difficulty equals the current difficulty of maintaining warp. Success reduces Diff of maintaining warp by the number of power points spent. Difficulty can be reduced to 0 and be done more than once at warp, or until there is no more power.
2nd Option this can only be done once while at warp. A controlled dump of warp plasma, not recommended but doable. This Requires a Daring + Engineering assisted Engines + Engineering roll Diff equal to the current difficulty of maintaining warp. Success the Difficulty of maintaining warp is reduced by 1 + 1 momentum spent repeatable. This causes the complication venting warp plasma for the ship until the ship drops out of warp. Once out of warp it will require a cool down in hours equal to the number of hours the ship was venting warp plasma. This can be over ridden if necessary but any task that gets assistance from the warp engines will have a complication range equal to the amount of time in hours left for the cool down. One of the complication of dumping warp plasma is the ship is automatically detected out to the difficulty in light years to maintain warp. It’s one heck of flare.
3rd Option and least favorite fly her apart. Allow a random system breach to maintain high warp speeds. This represents the excessive stress and heat breaking something. This does not require a task. The random system breach will be the equivalent of being hit by starship weaponry. Use the random system hit chart for starship combat.
This is my take on the subject I’ve presented here to be used modified or ignored as other GM’s see fit have fun with it.