Quote:
Originally Posted by another_nonsense
Anyway because of this less travelled routes have to be traversed using STL reaction drives. From what I can tell this really only really becomes feasible at TL 11 in play due to the sheer amount of time it would take.
Also has anyone run a game like this? And if so did you factor in Relativity and how did this affect play?
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If you mean because TL11 bio-tech offers effective immortality, then yeah it might look relatively practical then.
Relativity effects are a non-issue with hard science drives. Even with a 99% efficient drive getting up to near-C would require about 75% of ship mass in matter/antimatter mix. That's 50% to accelerate and 50% of what's left to decelerate.
The numbers on Bussard ramjets also don't seem to crunch when exposed to hard science. Our corner of the galaxy is too thin in interstellar medium and the drag from acquiring the fuel limits truly high speeds.
There are other problems with building STL ships and the realistic range of speed might be on the area of 1% to 10% and even this isn't going to be cheap or simple.
Then there's distance. Even the recent discoveries about hot Jupiters are looking at planetary systems in the 100 LY+ range (and systems with hot Jupiters are not good candidates for Earth-like planets) and not in the mere 10s of LY.
So an STL trip to a an Earth-like world looks like a one way trip into the future of a duration of centuries if not millenia.