04-28-2012, 07:07 PM | #41 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Quote:
He also spoke abbout knowing that real accelerations necessary to do what his ships did in Skylark would "flatten steel springs..... into a mono-molecular layer". In the first book, Duquesnses copy-ship exceeded light by a _large_ margin in only a day or two. Even without relativity it would take a ship pulling 10 Gs a month to hit c and Doc most definitety knew this. All this is what even though it is what we call "superscience" the Bergenholm is a much more robust gimmick. Mr Kaz is probably remembering something else. Even though it wasn't FTL there was a Venus Equilateral story where the only truly practical way to hit a spaceship was a targetseeking missile. The missile diodn't really have much of an AI but it did have a superscience seeker that made up for the lack of radar (and it was the lack of radar and computers that made aiming beams inpracitcal at long distances). I really don't have many candidates from other authors of the period. They tended to be fond of their energy beams and real "guided missiles" are a post WWII thing..
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
04-28-2012, 08:40 PM | #42 |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
For whatever meta-reason, in the early Buck Rogers comics, the Mongols were armed with 'disintegrator rays', while the American guerilla resistance used 'rocket pistols' instead. The latter fired shells with integral rockets that boosted them up to speed in flight.
|
04-28-2012, 08:47 PM | #43 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Quote:
You see the same sort of split in Doc's Spacehounds of IPC but the humanoids of the Galilean moons used rockets for stealth reasons. Not only was their no radar but their were no IR sensors either. Their enemies the Jovians used lots of beams though. No FTL in Spacehounds either of course.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
04-28-2012, 10:04 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Quote:
(He doesn't explain how the life on Venus, Earth, and Mars is akin.) In his other stories, Smith tends to populate the stars with what are for all practical purposes humans. |
|
04-28-2012, 10:08 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Not in the Lensman books...
__________________
I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
04-29-2012, 08:26 AM | #46 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Actually he does. In Lensman the assumption is that exactly how the Arisian life spores that fill the First and Second Galaxies express themselves depends almost entirely on planetary conditions.
So an almost entiely Earth-like world you get Earth-like (possibly to the point of being interfetrile) humanoids. See also his alphabetic classification scheme. Humans are Type AAAAAAAAAA and so are Aldebaranians but Rigellians are AAB-something (because of the gravity and other environmental differences) and Palanians are straight Zs. Incidentally, the inhabitants of the South Pole of Jupiter in Spacehounds are morphologically _very_ similar to Velantians.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
04-29-2012, 12:30 PM | #47 | ||
Join Date: Feb 2007
|
Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Quote:
It's an old concept, of course. Quote:
In the Lensman stories, it's mentioned that all life in the two galaxies derived from the life on Arisia via the spores, and that the Eddorian spores, 'while undoubtedly present' were too alien to thrive on any planet in our universe. |
||
Tags |
ftl, pseudovelocity, pseudovelocity drives, spaceships, technology |
|
|