Monstro44122, stay tuned, I address your issues at the end.
phavoc said:
You are right, space is friggin vast. But so are the oceans, and the airways. Commercial traffic fly in corridors for a reason. Space traffic would be the same. Granted the corridors might be a bit more 3-D, but the concept remains the same. Because space is so big, if you want a chance of rescue, you are going to have to tell people where and when you are going, what path you are flying, and when you expect to get there. So 'stumbling' upon scheduled traffic is expected.
Except
1) other than near a destination/departure location, I'd think it would be hard to have dedicated flight corridors. For example, going from earth to mars: one ship at 1G constant thrust and deceleration vs 2G vs 3G and so on would have very different travel times, arrival locations (yes mars, but different locations in it's orbit) and thus different flight corridors.
2) with space traffic the flight corridors constantly change with time since destinations move about as they orbit and dance through the cosmos.
3) a ships course is determined based on acceleration and deceleration and if it is somehow disabled during this journey it will quickly go off course and out of the expected flight path
Monstro44122 said:
I'm not sure why systems would allow ships to zip around at near light speed near their planets.
The rules can not cover everything. That's why we have these discussions.
One thing I consider is that space is big and I see no reason for a ship to zip around at near light speed near planets. On the rare occasions where three locations are orbiting such that they are lined up you might go from point A to point C and come close to point B. I'm no math or physics or astronomy expert so I don't know the odds of this happening. My guess is that the distance between point A and C are great enough that the much smaller distance for going slightly out of the way around point B wouldn't be too much of a problem in regards to time or fuel waste.
Monstro44122 said:
I mean, you're going half the speed of light, someone disables your capacity to decelerate in space combat, aren't you pretty much a giant fusion bomb moving at unheard of velocities, which is, more than likely, on a collision course with the nearest starport?
Even if a ship was somehow disabled while on a course to the starport or other destination, if it does not decelerate it will be very much off it's original flight plan. My first thoughts are that any danger of this type would either be an extremely unlikely needle in a haystack accident or
Wil Mireu said:
theoretically there's nothing stopping you from attaching M-Drives to a small asteroid in the outer system and accelerate it to ridiculous speeds so that it hits a planet with enough force to obliterate a hemisphere
something planned.
Any system with the capability would probably be trying to detect what's out there. Location, distance, current speed, thrust, acceleration or deceleration, and so on. As indicated in earlier posts, a typical ship going very fast would have to accelerate for a long time. Hours. Days. Weeks. It would take about as long for the typical travelling ship to decelerate. If a ship (or asteroid with thrusters) is traveling too fast to be able to decelerate and appears to be on a destructive course there should be time to intercept. Again, assuming a system with the resources and not just some science outpost.
Back to Monstro44122's adventure
Monstro44122 said:
I'm planning an adventure where a prison ship has had a mutiny while passing a space station.
Although my first thought was that it would be very close, "pass" is a pretty vague term and can probably work. Within range to match course?
Monstro44122 said:
The characters come across the prison ship en route to the space station.
Was the premise that the prison ship is in route to the station or is it the characters or both?
Monstro44122 said:
The captain comes to a full stop so as to leave the ship hanging in space with red alert klaxons going.
As mentioned before, coming to a full stop is a pretty relative thing. In an emergency I could see the captain altering course to arrive near a source of assistance.
A) Perhaps lucky enough to come close to matching speed and course
B) or maybe just pass by it if there is not time to match speed.
Monstro44122 said:
So, how far away is the prison ship from the station? 1,000 km, 10,000 km, 1 million km?
If you go with A) above, then it is whatever the captain set the course to be. If you go with B) above, then it is whatever you want it to be and you will need to determine the rate the distance is changing as the adventure progresses since the prison ship and space station are not in synch with this option.