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Old 09-20-2017, 08:58 PM   #91
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
. Great technobabble about the stutter warp, for instance.


I hate reactionless thrusters...
The quality of the technobabble for the stutter warp is a matter of opinion. I do not find it useful at all.

However much you hate reactionless thrusters I can guarantee you that there are many more potential players who hate fuel calculations. To the point of not playing any game that uses them and certainly not anything billed as "Space Opera".

In the Gloria Monday campaign I did use a fuel burning drive but it was total conversion with a non-realistic exhaust. It carried 2 weeks worth of fuel in a modestly-sized water tank too.

The normal space propulsion was also hyperdynamic so there was a speed limit. Players hate calculating trip times in accelerating spaceships even more than they do fuel calculations. I can do the math personally but do not think it a good use of game time.

So the players knew that their ship flew at a 2 million miles per hour and needed to be refueled every 2 weeks. Even this was a safety margin. Most trips didn't last over 1 week.

I would judge that this is about the amount of detail you can have ships for a Sapce Opera box that's supposed to have broad appeal.
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Old 09-20-2017, 09:02 PM   #92
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by awarnock;Besides, why would you want a reactionless drive anyway? You miss out on the lances of thermonuclear fire as ships desperately try to dodge out of the way of incoming fire, or as they try for a [URL="http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/prelimnotes.php#johnslaw"
Souza maneuver[/URL].
Never heard of a "hot" reactionless drive? It's in Spaceships.
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Old 09-20-2017, 09:10 PM   #93
awarnock
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
Never heard of a "hot" reactionless drive? It's in Spaceships.
Yup, and I am aware of it, but it still has that little 'reactionless' problem. As someone else pointed out, once you take fuel out of the equation, you get planet-crackers on the cheap. Admittedly, you can also do that with a powerful enough rocket, but at least to get the most bang for your buck, your Death Star is still going to be mostly fuel tanks with something heavy at the front and a big honking engine on the back.

Besides, if we were really trying to dump the heat out an exhaust vent, those hot reactionless thrusters are still going to need lots of tanks of coolant anyway to avoid melting the ship.

Anyway, that's my two cents on the whole reactionless engines thing. I'd rather not use them and just abstract the maneuvers with a piloting check.
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Old 09-23-2017, 01:45 AM   #94
Pomphis
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by acrosome View Post
0.1c in what frame of reference?

:)

See?
True, but we must "deal" with that problem anyway if we want to have FTL travel and causality and no generally available time travel.
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Old 09-23-2017, 10:31 AM   #95
awarnock
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

True, but I think most people are more willing to suspend their disbelief for that than for reactionless thrusters.

On another note, you could handwave the FTL issue by saying that a) the universe has mechanisms in place to protect itself from FTL related paradoxes, and b) the FTL drive uses part of the energy put into it to match velocities with the star you're going to.

For example, say you're going about 15 km/s away from and relative to Sol and aimed at Alpha Centauri. You make your FTL jump or warp or whatever it's called and appear at Alpha Centauri on the same vector relative to the Alpha Centauri system, but now you're just heading at the stars at 15 km/s relative to them. Basically, the FTL just translates you vector to the system and does whatever it needs to do to make that vector relative to that system.
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Old 09-23-2017, 01:04 PM   #96
David Johnston2
 
Join Date: Dec 2007
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by awarnock View Post
Yup, and I am aware of it, but it still has that little 'reactionless' problem. As someone else pointed out, once you take fuel out of the equation, you get planet-crackers on the cheap.
You just give your reactionless engines a maximum speed. They're magic so they can have any rules you want. For Stardivers I earnestly explain that the engines are actually jets that use "dark matter" as propellant and just like atmospheric jets they reach a point where drag balances thrust. (Technically of course that makes them pseudo-reactionless but that's a petty detail.) Fighters on the other hand use plasma rockets that have better acceleration and no set speed limit, but limited endurance.
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Old 09-23-2017, 01:30 PM   #97
ericbsmith
 
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Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by awarnock View Post
True, but I think most people are more willing to suspend their disbelief for that than for reactionless thrusters.
I think you are projecting your own issues with reactionless drives onto other people. There are countless RPG settings with reactionless drives, and while there are occasionally discussions of "aren't these world breaking" the truth is that reactionless drives rarely or never actually breaks the world - people just like to talk about it then agree to go "oh well" before handwaving the problem away.
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Old 09-23-2017, 02:57 PM   #98
awarnock
 
Join Date: Oct 2014
Default Re: Spitballing a Space Opera Boxed Set

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Originally Posted by ericbsmith View Post
I think you are projecting your own issues with reactionless drives onto other people. There are countless RPG settings with reactionless drives, and while there are occasionally discussions of "aren't these world breaking" the truth is that reactionless drives rarely or never actually breaks the world - people just like to talk about it then agree to go "oh well" before handwaving the problem away.
Maybe, in fact probably. If I caused offense, I apologize. I'll try to be more careful in the future.
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