[Space] The Benefit Of Building A Single Big System

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by scc

The Liquid Water Zone extends out to about 3 AU max

And yet, there's almost certainly liquid water on Europa which is at about 5.2 AU from our sun.

This actually boosts your idea considerably. There could well be interaction zones between your stars where planets are habitable, though tidally locked. Maybe they freeze over but the surface melts when the complex orbits are right.

Maybe the radiation from the gas giants keeps a moon or 12 just warm enough despite the distance from the stars. Others are in a freeze-thaw-boil cycle where they are habitable for months or years at a time due to complex orbital mechanics, but never evolved their own life beyond some seriously hardy bacteria-analogs. Many, though, could be entirely stable in a habitable zone.

I wouldn't say this is superior in any sense, but it can absolutely be a great setting. Since you're not going for any particular narrative, replace what I said earlier with themes. The FEEL you want.

Maybe it's 20 generations away by slow-ship from the nearest inhabited star system and they have a constant beaming of information back and forth from the extra-solar arrays, so they're sharing scientific advances and current events on a light-speed delay. They're just constantly beaming info, but it's a years-long gap, so not really a dialog.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by scc

This doesn't really work, the infinite map problem still exists. Using Space Atlas and Space Atlas 2 as an example, if I place the map for Space Atlas 2 below the one from Space Atlas, Sheba (from Space Atlas) is closer to Fasgrin (from Space Atlas 2) then to any (other) system from Space Atlas.
.

I'm sorry; I don't understand what you mean by the infinite map problem. Or, for that matter, why you'd choose to place one map under another. But I don't have Space Atlas. Are the maps intended to be stacked as slices of a 3D map?

If not, isn't that (a) a self-inflicted problem; and (b) not really germane to the point, which was limiting the scope of a campaign by limiting the travel speed. It doesn't matter if there's an infinite 3D map of the entire universe if no one can get out there (or vice versa). Want one system? FTL speed = 0. Want a bunch of systems from this Space Atlas map, but want to exclude Sheba for some reason? Just ignore it -- or adopt a tramline / warp route type of FTL system that just doesn't go there. It's your map, so it's only going to have the number and type of systems on it that you want.

Many people I know will answer the question "how far away is the grocery store / work / school / some other local place" by saying something like "about 20 minutes", not "about five miles". Even in real life, what really matters to people often isn't the distance; it's the travel time. You have control over that knob. If it's a generational campaign, then successive generations can even have different settings: no FTL in the first game, some slow poky generation ship thing in the second (which the PCs might even not be on, but just know about), some faster FTL drive of your choice.

Or you can keep it all in one system if you like. Unless you give the game world a drive with a high, sustained, acceleration, many places will be pretty remote. Compare with the Age of Sail -- months to get places means they're not completely isolated, but still have a lot of independence. Or the Age of Jets -- hours, not months, plus telecommunications.

Avoiding having the PCs or NPCs just calling Starfleet Command is one reason to opt for multiple systems rather than one. Consider the difference between Kirk generally being a couple of weeks away by subspace radio, with Picard having real-time interactive conversations with admirals back at Starfleet Command. Do you want remote parties to still be able to easily interact with others "back home", or are they on their own? If you choose multiple systems, do you want FTL comms along with a drive -- or FTL comms without an FTL drive? As with travel speed, comms speed has narrative implications, so think about what you need in the story.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

I'm sorry; I don't understand what you mean by the infinite map problem. Or, for that matter, why you'd choose to place one map under another. But I don't have Space Atlas. Are the maps intended to be stacked as slices of a 3D map?

Basically what scc is doing is taking two maps like this:

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
0					X	X	X			X
1		X								X
2		X	X					X		
3		X		X			X			
4										
5										
6	X				X					
7		X								
8										
9						X				
										
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
0					X					
1										
2						X				
3	X									
4					X					
5				X			X			
6		X			X				X	
7			X	X						X
8							X			X
9		X				X

And turning it into this:

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
0					X	X	X			X
1		X								X
2		X	X					X		
3		X		X			X			
4										
5										
6	X				X					
7		X								
8										
9						X				
10					X					
11										
12						X				
13	X									
14					X					
15				X			X			
16		X			X				X	
17			X	X						X
18							X			X
19		X				X

And concluding that a finite speed stardrive doesn't work because two systems end up closer to each other than they do to any other system. This is flawed because there no reason that the maps would be arranged like this. It could just as easily be:

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
0					X	X	X			X
1		X								X
2		X	X					X		
3		X		X			X			
4										
5										
6	X				X					
7		X								
8										
9						X				
…										
100					X					
101										
102						X				
103	X									
104					X					
105				X			X			
106		X			X				X	
107			X	X						X
108							X			X
109		X				X

With nothing of note between 9 and 100.

[AlexanderHowl]

Star maps are a waste of time unless you have ascension and descension noted. Imagine a sphere 100 ly in radius. A star light be only 10 ly galactic east and 10 ly galactic north but 90 ly galactic up, giving it an effective distance of 91 ly, even though it only appears 14 ly on a flat map.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Basically what scc is doing is taking two maps like this... And concluding that a finite speed stardrive doesn't work because two systems end up closer to each other than they do to any other system. This is flawed because...

Thanks for taking the time to create those diagrams. I appreciate all the effort.

Two systems being close in that way isn't even a flaw if the two maps are intended to be adjacent along matching edges.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Star maps are a waste of time unless you have ascension and descension noted.

Or unless you aren't interested in an accurate representation of three-dimensional space, being content with only an abstract representation of "how long does it take to get from here to there?"

Lots of games are perfectly good with two-dimensional star maps and would only suffer from the unnecessary complexity of adding a third dimension. The addition of a third dimension simply doesn't add much value to the game.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Star maps are a waste of time unless you have ascension and descension noted.

Two points:
1) The same point is made as effectively with a 2D map as it is with a 3D map.
2) The Space Atlas series includes a Z axis.

[Tyneras]

On Planets:

Just because a planet will freeze/lose it's atmosphere/burn up in a few thousand or millions of years doesn't mean it's uninhabitable right now. If the planet was terraformed, then keeping it habitable was (hopefully) factored in to the design. My house can last hundreds of years if properly maintained, or be a ruin in a decade if abandoned, maintenance is a natural part of artificial systems, including terraformed planets. Maybe the steamy jungle world in perpetual twilight out past the orbit of pluto has an armada of closer in infrared mirrors focusing light on it to keep it dark but warm because someone wanted it that way.

On Starships:

The flying bomb problem is a serious one, but things to keep in mind. If you have a power plant on a ship that can get you up to that speed, planets and cities and stations have bigger ones, bigger telescopes and tracking systems, and can likely reduce any ship determined to be a bomb into a spray of harmless gas if they choose to do so weeks before impact.

Another alternative is the Laser Highway. The ship doesn't have any super potent onboard power source, instead relying on holy moly powerful lasers and precisely tuned mirrors to push them around. You can't change course without authorization because that would either result in the laser missing you (and a possibly huge power bill because someone was expecting to receive that laser that wasn't reflected properly) or it hits the not-mirror part of your ship, and you are now a cloud of plasma.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

On Planets:


The flying bomb problem is a serious one, but things to keep in mind. If you have a power plant on a ship that can get you up to that speed, planets and cities and stations have bigger ones, a.

Generaally no. Of the UT high output power plants only systems based on stored antimatter have much potential as bombs.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Generaally no. Of the UT high output power plants only systems based on stored antimatter have much potential as bombs.

I'm talking about a spaceship crashing at interplanetary speeds, which easily gets into the large nuclear weapon range, not the ship blowing up like a bomb.