Slow FTL Societies

[AlexanderHowl]

So, I was wondering what type of societies would evolved with a 'slow' FTL drive (100c or slower)? For comparison, a 100c FTL drive could travel from Sol to Alpha Centauri in less than 16 days and would take over 43 days to reach Tau Ceti. Have you used such a slow FTL drive in your campaigns? If so, how did it influence the campaign?

[Phantasm]

My own space opera setting has FTL with an average of 5 lightyears per week. This is coupled with a lack of FTL radio.

The result is a fairly decentralized Sirius Sector, with the four interstellar nations (United Earth, Self-Determination League (a loose confederation of rebel states), K'Hissh Empire, and Pondrur Free Trade Guild) that feels much like the Golden Age of Sail as far as contact between the colonies and the home worlds go. It still takes a week for news to travel between most nearby star systems, and couriers (most notably Pony Express, Inc.) do a good business moving mail between systems.

There is also a NATO/Interpol type force - the Colonial Defense Alliance, aka Colonial Defense Force - for protecting those systems that can't protect themselves.

The end result is that each system is pretty much on its own, much as the early American and Australian colonies were in the 1500s and 1600s, although not entirely cut off from the larger sector. Earth, Mars, Titan, and the plethora of orbital/Lagrange stations in the Sol system are in constant contact, but it still takes a week for a courier to deliver news from Earth to Demeter, Tatooine, or Hoth in the Alpha Centauri system.

The coming Unification Wars are going to be a logistical nightmare, though probably not the mess that the 150-year long Human-Pondrur Wars were prior to the hyperdrive's invention (fought using fast STL and lightspeed drives).

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

So, I was wondering what type of societies would evolved with a 'slow' FTL drive (100c or slower)? For comparison, a 100c FTL drive could travel from Sol to Alpha Centauri in less than 16 days and would take over 43 days to reach Tau Ceti. Have you used such a slow FTL drive in your campaigns? If so, how did it influence the campaign?

An important variable is cruising range. Just how far can a colony ship or a war ship travel before they need to stop and get some new tigers? Or you know, whatever. If they have slow speed and long cruising range, the wave of colonization will likely outstrip the ability of the central governments to effectively maintain control over their colonies once they mature enough to be relatively self-sufficient. With short cruising, you end up colonizing a whole bunch of crap systems just to serve as staging bases. Coaling stations if you will.

[AlexanderHowl]

I think that depends on the nature of the ships. The majority of ships will probably lack total life support, even military and scout vehicles, as it is more cost effective just to bring rations, as two cabins might provide total life support for one person forever while one cabin and one cabin's worth of steerage cargo holds 2500 days worth of food. I would suggest that most ships will spend a maximum of six months traveling though, as their crews will otherwise go stir crazy and paint the walls red with each other's blood, unless they are on very large ships (SM+16 or larger).

[mr beer]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I would suggest that most ships will spend a maximum of six months traveling though, as their crews will otherwise go stir crazy and paint the walls red with each other's blood, unless they are on very large ships (SM+16 or larger).

Submariners and space station crews tend not to murder each other immediately after the 6 months mark I believe. Of course, they are trained and selected for their ability to get on with other people in confined spaces for extended periods of time and 6 months+ would be an unusually long mission.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

An important variable is cruising range. Just how far can a colony ship or a war ship travel before they need to stop and get some new tigers? Or you know, whatever. If they have slow speed and long cruising range, the wave of colonization will likely outstrip the ability of the central governments to effectively maintain control over their colonies once they mature enough to be relatively self-sufficient. With short cruising, you end up colonizing a whole bunch of crap systems just to serve as staging bases. Coaling stations if you will.

I agree. The key feature of the 2300AD game's setting, for example, wasn't how fast FTL was (about 350-1400c), but that it had a fairly strict 7.7LY cap on range before you had to pull over in a significant gravity well for about two days.

Likewise, that ships took one week per jump, be it one parsec or six (or for most practical use 1-4 parsecs), wasn't the main limiter in Traveller. The important limit was fuel tankage, and few ships carried more than one jump's worth. Thus the limit was again range, not speed.

At 100c, just about any interstellar trip in our neighbourhood is going to be long enough that crews will want to stop in the destination system and stretch their legs, eat food that's not on the ship's menu, and so on. I think ships and their operational cycles and traditions would be built around that, and also the pattern of settlement of worlds - way stations will be set up not just to refuel ships, but to help their crews unwind (and relieve the crews of their pay in the process, of course). Crossroad stations where routes crossed would tend to become rich just off the ships passing through (and if the routes changed would become ghost towns).

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Likewise, that ships took one week per jump... wasn't the main limiter in Traveller... the limit was again range, not speed.

I agree that range is the biggest limiter in Traveller. But speed of travel is quite important to the setting. The fact that it's a year between Capital and the Spinward Marches carries a lot of implications, and setting details like the X-boat network wouldn't exist if speed weren't so limited.

Even range plays back into speed of travel, because one important reason the Traveller jump range matters is because you have to stop in that system, take the relatively slow maneuver drive in to a planet or station, refuel, restock life support, and come back out and jump again. That layover canonically took about as long as the jump, which is another way to say that it cut travel speed in half. If a Traveller ship still took one week in jump, and could rejump instantly upon arrival, the setting wouldn't feel quite the same. There's still a long delay to the frontiers, but everything moves faster, reducing local autonomy and uniqueness through improved communication and exchange.

When talking about the speed of FTL, it's not only about the actual peak translation rate of one ship through space. It's about the large-scale dissemination of everything -- goods, people, information. Range and speed-while-in-motion both matter to net effective transportation speed.

[AlexanderHowl]

There are other limitations that matter as well. If a FTL drive is velocity dependent, as in it 'consumes' kinetic energy to fuel FTL travel, then the time required to accelerate to travel velocity will be important. If the gravity of a star prevents FTL exit or entrance within 10 AU of a Sol-Mass object, then habitable planets will rarely be visited by FTL capable ships (in our system, Saturn would become the major port of the system, since its orbit is on the edge of the exclusion zone).

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

If a FTL drive is velocity dependent, as in it 'consumes' kinetic energy to fuel FTL travel, then the time required to accelerate to travel velocity will be important.

That actually has some interesting effects. Star systems that have a habitable zone that is closer than other systems become easier to access. Building electromagnetic catapult to launch starships is probable.

[ericthered]

My first Gurps setting, called strange neighbors, has such a speed. I've run a couple of different games in it, at different parts in its history.



The first game was at 4c, and was explicitly about space exploration. The players were crew on the first true FTL ship, and were the first to reach alpha-centari. The very slow speed of the ship created a sense of isolation, and it weirdly felt more like a hard science setting than many others. It also made the technology feel new and experimental.



The crew spent a lot of time on the ship, waiting to get from place to place, and I got blindsided by the time spent learning rules (as I said, this was my first gurps setting)


The second game was about several colonies making contact with each other after eath's destruction. We had the slightly higher speed of 100c. The setting changed as follows:

• Several less than ideal planets were colonized. This set up great opportunities for trade, because their environments were so different.
• Planets were very isolated, being months of travel apart. This was a great excuse to have them culturally diverge rapidly.
• The players never talked about going back to a previous world for a little bit. It would have just taken too long, so the adventure sequence became more linear.