Why won't my ships sprint?

[invaderzim]

I have this captured frigate (no hyperdrive) I'd like to take back to my base and scrap for tech:



It can sprint at 34, but it only wants to cruise at 19. So instead of 6 months, it's going to take a year to arrive. It has more than enough energy and fuel to sprint, but it won't.

I can only upload one picture, so here are the ship specs: i.imgur.com/tIK8qp1.jpg

So how do I get it to sprint?

[Osito]

Can't see an explanation in the game manual, but I think I read somewhere that they only sprint when chasing other ships in combat (and maybe when escaping, too). I'm not aware of any way to make them sprint in other situations.

Osito

[OzoneGrif_slith]

Yes, they only sprint in combat.

Note that it's possible to have a sprint speed lower than your cruise speed if you don't provide enough energy.
Sadly, the AI isn't smart enough to disable the sprint speed in this case, which can lead to Fun.

[YourConscience]

Then tell it to attack your space port.

[Plant]

Sadly you cannot.
Anybody got an explanation for this though? Constant speed, wasn't accelerating or decelerating.
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/5647/20130530170640.jpg

[invaderzim]

Then tell it to attack your space port.

The funny thing is that you can actually do this in a way. Tell your ship to attack an independent freighter near the spaceport and it will sprint at top speed for a while. The only problem is that it will return to cruise speed a few seconds so you'll have to tell it to attack again. So if you really want to get that extra speed, you could order your ship to attack something in the general direction or where you need to go every two seconds... or maybe they should just allow ships to move at top speed out of combat. Also one other thing, ships will not use sprint to run away when told to escape from combat. [&:]

By the way, what is impulse speed used for? I couldn't find any mention of impulse in the manual either. It's not the speed you get if you run out of fuel exactly, this seems to be double impulse or 6 in the case of my ship.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: Plant

Sadly you cannot.
Anybody got an explanation for this though? Constant speed, wasn't accelerating or decelerating.
http://imageshack.us/a/img69/5647/20130530170640.jpg

I see nothing weird in that image.

Cruise speed? 37
Speed? 37
Enough energy for cruise? Yes.

So what is supposed to be the problem?

[invaderzim]

So what is supposed to be the problem?

Normally a ship moves at half it's maximum speed. Plant's ship is moving at nearly top speed. So it's possible he found the only ship captain in the universe who can drive stick.

[Bingeling]

ORIGINAL: invaderzim

So what is supposed to be the problem?

Normally a ship moves at half it's maximum speed. Plant's ship is moving at nearly top speed. So it's possible he found the only ship captain in the universe who can drive stick.

I guess my game is never normal. I see them move at cruise speed, unless out of fuel, of course.

[Plant]

My mistake, I was confused by the Ion Thrusters, since I never played a prewarp Empire before. I couldn't figure out why my cruise speed was so close to my sprint speed. I guess Ion thrusters have a totally different Cruise/Sprint Thrust ratio to every other engine in the game.