02-25-2020, 11:24 AM | #51 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
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In most games that will range from 'customer' (only cares about the broad results and maybe the price) through 'advanced user' (needs to know the behavior in detail so that they can use or abuse it in special circumstances), with maybe some forays into 'technician' (some knowledge of what's in the box and what happens if you mess with the components). This can vary between different kinds of tech, and different play groups using the same setting are likely to have different priorities. It's probably very rare for a game to actually want to deal with tech, especially superscience tech, at what I might call 'engineer' (advanced knowledge of the effects of all the components, and how they work together to produce the device behavior) or 'scientist' (can explain the principles by which the finest level of components produce their effects) levels. Even if the PCs do work on that level, the people at the table probably won't.
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02-25-2020, 11:28 AM | #52 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
Of course, an interesting application would be coolant for FTL. If normal radiators have diminished functionality during FTL, then venting coolant may be the only way to survive FTL travel. Strangely enough, this may also function as a fuel tank multiplier situation if the FTL 'impulse' (and the waste heat) is reduced by the reduction in mass.
If we assume one component of coolant is vented per three parsecs traveled, with a speed of three parsecs per week, then we end up with a situation similar to Traveller (smaller systems allow for slower travel). Coolant depots will be a valued part of any system and any spaceship without refineries will depend on them for survival. Emergency FTL systems would presumably take up one space and include a FTL drive capable of traveling one parsec per day, an emergency power plant capable of powering it, and enough coolant for one week of travel, allowing them to travel up to one parsec. |
02-25-2020, 12:08 PM | #53 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
What kind of emergency would that be useful in? For reference, the nearest stars to Sol are more than one parsec away...
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
02-25-2020, 01:52 PM | #54 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
One parsec per day and seven days of endurance gives a range of nearly 23 light-years. In my setting the average nearest-neighbour distance of inhabited planets is about sixteen light-years.
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02-25-2020, 02:07 PM | #55 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
This is true, and I overlooked the self-inconsistency in the post. However, the part of it that's incompatible with the rest of the paragraph is the "one week of travel", not the "up to one parsec" conclusion.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
02-25-2020, 02:16 PM | #56 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
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GURPS Overhaul |
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02-25-2020, 02:28 PM | #57 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
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I've had a geography student challenge me about the population of a planet, two linguists go off for months about linguistic diversity, three lawyers argue about details of the laws and court procedures, a statistician calculate the minimum suicide rate among Imperial heirs that could be distinguished from baseline, and an economist engage me in a searching inquistion about the Imperial budget and the financial economics of the Imperial crown. The linguists are a particularly interesting case, because they played happily for years in the setting while it had no representation of multiple languages. But they cavilled sharply when I added a couple of sentences to the history explaining about a couple of centuries of language loss on Old Earth, early colonies getting diverse immigrants with International Standard as their language in common, late immigration from the monoglot Earth of 2350, and the importance of references and recorded materials in Standard during the Age of Isolation. They were happy with a universal language until I tried to explain it.
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02-25-2020, 09:23 PM | #58 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
Are you in a University town? That all sounds terribly diverse. Ther closest I've come is a wide variety of computer geeks. Plus the many college students from back in the day, a lady with a Bio degree who did hazmat for NASA, a couple of house moms, a retail clerk, a nursing student and a travelling salesman. No, the travelling salesman isn't interested in math either. He uses GPS for route planning. I'm not even sure he'd get the joke I was trying to sneak in there.
Anyway, when it comes to interest in geeky detail; I've got jsut a couple of people with something like my compulsive reading habits but mostly just for urban fantasy these days. Beyond that and computers that it's pretty much taken as a given that I have more details about "stuff" then anyone else really wants to listen to.
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Fred Brackin |
02-25-2020, 09:48 PM | #59 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
Quote:
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
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02-25-2020, 10:22 PM | #60 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Coolant [Spaceships]
Back in my hometown, we have a gaming group at the local college that's almost forty years old, and we still have some of the original members drop in on occasion. With fifty active student members and around a thousand alumni, it is quite easy to get a game. I would run two games a semester and be beating people off with a stick, and I was only the third most popular GM (the most popular was running four games a semester).
Anyway, I think I like the coolant idea for FTL more and more. Combined with a gravitation exclusion zone equal to (40 × [square root] of objects mass in Sols]), you end up with the edge of a system being a very busy place. The majority of the action would occur within 1 AU of the edge of the exclusion zone (to prevent suprise FTL attacks) where the refueling depots would be located due to access to volatiles. Pirates and smugglers would have their own refueling depots in interstellar space, protected by anonymity and by distance, and they would prey on ships as they came out of FTL and run before the authorities could catch them. Of course, the authorities could easily come knocking, so most such depots would be temporary, just operating for a couple of months before relocating a couple of light months away. Abandoned depots, with buried cargo or hidden nanostasis hostages, would be a prime adventure location. |
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sci fi, spaceships |
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