01-09-2014, 10:14 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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01-12-2014, 02:01 PM | #22 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Hamilton, Ont. CANADA
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
Technology Timelines: Honorverse vs. Mine I've always found the timeline below to be a bit stetched out and (largely due to my own "grav screen" tech sequence) in dubious order. Of course DW wanted a well settled galaxy with lots of history for HH to play in, but twelve centuries of STL colonization (with a bit of high-risk FTL scouting for the last five) seems a bit much. Quote:
The first crude hyper drive is tested in the Solar System.731 PD: Development of the first "hyper log" (known as the "HL" by spacers) allowing hyperspace navigation accurate to within no more than 10 LS per light-month. By 1900 PD, HLs are accurate to within .4 light-second per light-month.1246 PD: The first phased array gravity drive, or impeller, is designed on Beowulf in the Sigma Draconis System.1273 PD: Adrienne Warshawski, of Old Terra, develops grav Scanners and “alpha node” arrays to produce circular, plate-like gravity “sails.” *1384 PD: Shigematsu Radhakrishnan develops the inertial compensator.1447 PD: First wormhole junction is discovered.1502 PD: The first practical counter gravity generator is developed by the Anderson Shipbuilding Corporation of New Glasgow. *1581 PD: Dr. Ignatius Peterson, building on the work of the Anderson Corporation, Dr. Warshawski, and Dr. Radhakrishnan, mates countergrav technology with that of the impeller drive to created the first generator with sufficiently precise incremental control to produce an internal gravity field for a ship.1903 PD: Grav pulse communicators developed by Naval R&D of the Star Kingdom of Manticore are used for the first time by recon drones during the Battles of Blackbird and Second Yeltsin. Maximum range is four light-hours with a pulse repetition rate of 9.5 seconds. ("The Honor of the Queen")If you are interested in using a different tech sequence applied to the same cosmology, here is mine (intervals between inventions should increase geometrically):
Dalton “who wonders if his tech sequence has sufficient gravity” Spence
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01-12-2014, 04:27 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
For someone who has just started reading HH (on book 6 now), this thread is awesome (and informative; I admit I never quite understood how the whole "band" thing worked).
But, if this is another setting, I see no reason to adhere to the HH timeline as stringently. To me, it feels a bit like a joke, and driven primarily by genre conventions and metatext reasons - mainly to get a "ye olde"-looking year that calls back to age-of-sail fiction from which HH draws inspiration, even though the plot is actually occurring around 4000 AD. And the technology can't really be said to be "developing" as much as "having fits", depending on the system - computers might as well still use punch cards for all the good they do; naval history is preserved in detail, yet people don't know what "samurai" are and think they're just characters in movies; even though personal weapons can level a building, people are still impressed with a M1911 .45 ACP; duels and trial-by-combat are a-ok, but genetic engineering is a taboo that has endured for millennia, etc. etc. Really, any of the technological (non-)developments in HH might have equally plausibly occurred in a century or two as they did over two thousand years, especially seeing how closely they resemble our own society. EDIT: Also, I'd like to say, DaltonS, you have really prettily-formatted posts. Last edited by Seneschal; 01-12-2014 at 04:30 PM. Reason: brown-nosing |
01-12-2014, 05:42 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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01-12-2014, 06:55 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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01-12-2014, 06:56 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
Huh? I'd say it's probably more conservative than in most sci-fi. "Lots" relative to what? They're 2000 years in the future and the most I've seen is TL 9 longevity treatments. The only planet where it's remotely acceptable to mod yourself is Beowulf, and even they follow a strict code of staying far away from transgenic modifications. When it does crop up, it's never casual or commercialized, and only accepted on a societal level if needed to adapt to a hostile environment. If it becomes the focal point in the later books, I stand corrected.
Oh, it is genetic engineering, I think it's stated outright that the Prolong treatment is genetic, not just pharmaceutical. It's just "safe-tech" genetic engineering, that's why I said there's a taboo. Last edited by Seneschal; 01-12-2014 at 07:03 PM. |
01-12-2014, 07:43 PM | #27 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
....and this is why the gentleman thinks there's almost no genetic engineering. It would be "Spoilers!" to tell you how much genetic engineering there is later in the series but trust me it is there. :)
You've mentioned Prolong and even that is more than TL9. It'd have to be at least a TL10 Proteus Virus and there have been three generations of it so third gen Prolong might be TL11. Even first gen Prolong might be more than 1 level of Extended Lifespan. Or at least EL + Longevity. Third gen obviously does more and seems to be lacking the full levels of the Early Maturation feature (at least for physical traits). I think even only as far as you've gotten a careful reading would have come across Honor's ancestors having been engineered to live on a high grav planet. That's why she's so strong. There are other Heavy Grav types in the series too. But more than that there's an enormous amount of genetic engineering later in the series and this is why your comment has confused some other people. I will say no more because of Spoilers.
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Fred Brackin |
01-12-2014, 07:56 PM | #28 | |
Join Date: Jul 2009
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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01-12-2014, 09:34 PM | #29 | |||||
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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Honor is a naval history buff. Admittedly, the references to 20th century and earlier wet-navy stuff rather than the space navies of the next several centuries are a bit silly, but making historical references to history your readers don't know is questionable writing even if it's good worldbuilding. Quote:
The things about it that impress people are its loudness and its recoil, not its performance. The fact that it's an M1911 in particular is, of course, rather silly fanservice. Quote:
Manticore and Grayson both have a rather silly tendency to maintain and cherish their ridiculously backward customs. It is rather questionable why Manticorans consider themselves obligated by dueling custom even if they and all their friends think it's stupid. Quote:
But... On the one hand, they did have their eugenics wars first. On the other, there is more modern genetic engineering. Not just prolong. Honor's status as genetically augmented is well-documented, but not unique.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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01-13-2014, 01:48 AM | #30 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: [Space] Adapting "Honorverse" Concepts to GURPS
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