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Old 11-08-2012, 11:35 AM   #20
RogerBW
 
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
Default Re: [IW, Yrth]"You arrive ... where?"

Quote:
Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
A scheme I've thought about using is that you don't really arrive at an equivalent point, but in the same spacial relationship to a set of equivalent atoms (I guess three of them, for orientation). Conveyers for some reason normally use reference atoms deep in the ground, which on worlds with equivalent geology will *usually* be in the same place, but there could be occasional surprises. In principle you might use others - perhaps some jumpers always travel to an equivalent "object" even if it's been moved. And of course if the geology is radically altered, or you lock onto something like air or water, you could end up anywhere. Note this also means that conveyers are unreliable to worlds that have "new" continents, which is fine. An inability to run a conveyer directly into downtown Atlantis, but only to places on one of the older continental shields, is a positive benefit for most plots involving it.
My problem with "equivalent atoms" is that by definition there's no way of sticking a label on an atom - once you've established that it's 12C, there's really nothing to distinguish it from all the other 12Cs in the universe. Breaking that has implications for e.g. radioactive decay that could start snowballing quite fast. (Not to mention information storage! If each hydrogen atom is meaningfully unique, it's carrying around enough information to distinguish it from the other 1E53 hydrogen atoms...)

The "same arrival place" is clearly a direct borrowing from H. Beam Piper's Paratime stories, where it's used primarily for comedic effect (in the first one, our hero's conveyor head is set up in what's normally the ladies' shower room at a factory; after that it's barely mentioned). In that setting, there aren't any worlds with radically different geography or astronomy, so he can get away with it. As far as I can see, the only real virtues in the IW setting are (a) to stop PCs translating into para-Fort-Knox without someone on Homeline knowing about it and (b) to restrict them mostly to the surface of Earth. Except that that doesn't work.

I've gone on before about my idea of "staging worlds". One per quantum, find a world with a breathable atmosphere but otherwise as safe as possible. Build a few big, airmobile conveyor stages for one-off missions. Whenever you find a place that matches somewhere you want to go repeatedly, build a permanent stage there. Presto, no more hurried cross-Quantum jumps.

But this applies to everyone else too. If I want to break into any world's Fort Knox or Hermitage or Bank of England, I just find a sufficiently empty world on the same quantum, get my conveyor there, and hop across.

As for the surface of Earth, how important is that? It's mostly where things are happening anyway. A scenario that forces the players to use local travel because the conveyor on Homeline can't be put where it's needed can be flipped so that putting the conveyor on target would cause other problems ("we can't drop you straight onto that Lucifer-5 space station because they'd notice the mass imbalance").

So I think, on balance, I'd be inclined to dump the "must arrive at same point" requirement. Here's an alternative: for a new world, the first few arrival locations (by automated probes, usually) are random. Once some of them have sensed the local geometry and reported back, arrival can be anywhere the navigator likes.

What does this break, in setting terms?
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