[Psionics] [Space] Psi Trek - Worldbuilding

[Prince Charon]

First Contact answer

OK, the consensus seems to be something like a First Contact with the Vulcans, but possibly done after human have been using warp drive for a while.

Vague timeline of Warp Drive and First Contact

2040s: Earth's population exceeds 8.9 billion in 2040, and 61,024 humans live in space, most of them on Luna or in Earth orbit, though a significant fraction live on Mars. Colonization of the Main Belt asteroids and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn begins. Martian Colonial Police founded to deal with inter-colonial crimes and mobile criminals, as well as performing search-and-rescue work; Creeping Featurism sets in, as the MCP provides all emergency services outside of colonies that have their own (and some that do, if the emergency is bad enough). First meeting of what will become the Martian Assembly takes place over the Martian internet. University of Mars founded at Olympus Mons.

2050s: Earth's population exceeds 9.5 billion in 2050, and less than one million humans live in space, most of them on Luna or in Earth orbit, though nearly a third live on Mars. Genetics Wars begin, as many 'young supermen,' the children designed by the Human Enhancement Project, seize power in various countries. They rapidly begin to quarrel among themselves, and to provoke their neighbors. Nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons will all be used by the time the wars end. Lunar and Earth-orbital colonies are unable to avoid being pulled into the wars, along with some, but not all, of the Near-Earth Asteroids. More distant colonies watch in horror. Lunar Colonial Militia formed. First physical meeting of the Martian Assembly occurs at Olympus Mons. Several more universities and colleges are founded on Mars, including one at Utopia Planitia.

2070s: Earth's population estimated to be less than 3 billion in 2070. About 2.1 million live in space, mostly on Mars. Lunar colonies are recovered to the point of being able to join and contribute to the Solar Cooperative. Earth's colonies (still generally called that, despite being free and independent states, and planning to remain that way) have improved manufacturing and resource extraction to the point that they can offer significant aid to the peoples of Earth. Project Manna begins: single-use landing-craft, almost always unmanned, are loaded with supplies and sent to various locations selected by Project Triage. Spacetime warping experiments begin at Utopia Planitia University.

2080s: Earth's population estimated to be less than 2.47 billion in 2080. Roughly 2.5 million live in space, mostly on Mars. New Zealand is the first Earth territory to join the Solar Cooperative. Test-capsule Phoenix achieves a pseudovelocity of just over light-speed on September 8, 2086.

2090s: Earth's population estimated to be less than 2.4 billion in 2090. Around 3 million live in space, mostly on Mars and Luna. 79 Earth territories have joined the Solar Cooperative. Mass production of spacetime warp drives connects the Solar System like never before. In 2096, Earth's population rises for the first time since the Genetics Wars, from 2.37 billion to 2.38 billion. The Post-Atomic Horror ends, not with a bang, but a whimper.

2100s: Earth's population estimated to be more than 2.5 billion in 2100. Around 3.7 million live in space, mostly on Mars and Luna. Spacetime warping allows explorers to visit the Alpha Centauri trinary star system, and other nearby stars. First landings on Proxima Centauri b occur, though the planet will not be colonized for some time.

2110s: Earth's population estimated to be more than 2.9 billion in 2110. Around 4.2 million live in space, mostly on Mars and Luna. A peaceful First Contact with Vulcan explorers occurs in orbit of Alpha Centauri A. After a volunteer agrees to telepathic contact, communication speeds up significantly. The Solar Cooperative establishes trade and mutual non-hostility treaties with the Interplanetary Confederacy of Vulcan by the end of the decade.


Does this look acceptable? If it needs changing, what would you suggest?

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

OK, here is my first attempt at a 'young supermen' template.

Potentially add Bloodthirsty, Compulsive Behavior (Politicking, Strategizing, etc.), Intolerance (Non-Augmented humans and/or "lesser minds"), Obsession, OPH (Behaves like a classic space-opera villain, Power Hungry, Shameless, Sociopathic, etc.), Paranoia, and Sadism to the disad list.

Secret is appropriate for "unregistered" or unwitting supermen.

Potentially add "good" mental disadvantages to the list of Taboo Traits.

Potentially add more "mastermind" type skills such as Administration, Intelligence Analysis, Politics, Strategy, and Tactics. (Add Psychology to get a Talent worth 5 points per level.)

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Do you want them to exist at all, and how powerful should they be?

Most energy beings in Star Trek are pretty close to god-like, with the exception of entities such as Redjac which are dependent on human (or sapient) hosts.

Cost goes up fast if you give them powers which allow them to survive in space or on hostile planets for long periods of time (Minimum of Immunity (Metabolic Hazards) and Vacuum Support). Cost goes up really fast if you give them the ability to quickly travel across interstellar distances.

Cost approaches ridiculous if you give them the sort of powers that energy beings routinely display in the Star Trek series, such as instantly teleporting a large starship millions of light years from its former position, draining a starship's power systems, preventing a starship from moving, creating complex materials, attacks which can punch seriously damage or destroy a starship, and/or psi powers which can affect 1,000+ people at once.

You can sort of limit cost with suitable Dependencies, Restricted Diet, and Vulnerability. Insubstantiality (Always On) is another good way to bring point costs down, and is a great way to represent entities which are "out of phase" with the rest of the universe, but kind of sucks for PC races.

The weakest energy beings might come in at ~500 points. Don't bother calculating points for entities such as Q, Trelane, or the Bajoran wormhole aliens/Prophets.

[Flyndaran]

Most energy beings tend to be hazards or plot points rather than fully developed characters. Even Q is more like a DM setting up the story rather than a player in the story, to my mind at least.

A few are out of phase as said, but often physical in certain situations that the crew discover to exploit and win the day with. Or just happen to be vulnerable to never before mentioned gobbledy**** radiation.

It's probably easier if not overall more conducive to player fun to avoid a character sheet all together and just play them as mysterious temporary and/or recurring threats or allies.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Does this look acceptable? If it needs changing, what would you suggest?

I think its a solid working framework. You mention other stars, which is good.

There is some detail that would be nice (like political movements), but I don't know that its actually a good use of time.

[Prince Charon]

Phasers and other energy weapons question

Ray-guns have been a staple of science fiction since quite early in the genre, and Star Trek has a variety of them: Lasers in the first pilot, 'phasers' since then (someone on staff decided early on that they didn't want people writing in and saying 'Hey, that's not how lasers work!' so they came up with a new word), disruptors (both sonic and 'generic streaks of light' versions), polaron weapons, and in ENT, 'phase pistols' (which may or may not have been early phasers, but certainly seem to be), and generic plasmoid blasters like the EM-33, or the various pulse rifles. There are a decent number of ways to simulate these in GURPS. Phasers specifically do present something of a problem, though, as they are the 'Swiss Army Knife' of energy weapons; not everyone wants to simulate that, but enough will that this post is useful.

* One option that gets most of the functions of the phaser using pretty realistic technology is to combine two types of Pizard's beam weapons: Remote Electroshock Stun Guns with Pulse Lasers (TL10 selected for convenience, it's not a requirement; Pizard will come up more in this post, because he's got a lot of useful stuff). You have a variety of stun-like effects, you have a laser for killing opponents, starting fires or heating rocks, using as a signalling device at long ranges, and even cutting, drilling, and welding if you fudge it a little (Pizard has laser cutters in that page, and welding shouldn't be much harder to stat out). It isn't a perfect representation, of course, it doesn't have a 'vaporise/dematerialise' setting, but you might not want that. If I were doing a Hard-SF or 'Very-Firm-SF' version of Star Trek, it would be ideal (and polarized anti-glare goggles would be standard issue), but I don't think it's the best fit for Psi Trek.

* Swinging in the other direction, phasers could be weaponized psychotronic generators, like the Mind Disruptors in GURPS Psi-Tech p27. There are a few ways to do this:

-As above, most of the functions of the phaser can be done with Ergokinesis. Indeed, the lowest stun setting (seen in one episode of TOS, and possibly only then) leaves the target dazed rather than unconscious, like the Confuse ability with the Daze technique (Psionic Powers pp32-33). A weapon that imitates Confuse, Lightning (pp33-34, drawing from the power pack), and a few light-based Innate Attacks (not worked out in the book, but mentioned under Additional Ergokinesis Abilities on p37) could plausibly do everything the 'Pizard combination' above could, with some additional abilities like keeping the reflections confined so that you don't damage your eyes just seeing the weapon in use. Still can't dematerialize people, though... but you could perhaps make them explode by tearing away the electrons in the outer shells of their atoms (probably a Crushing or Burning Attack, with 'Surge, +20%' and 'Explosion, +50% per level'); nasty, but fits some scenes in Trek, IIRC (not limited to the shows, I believe there were a few like that in the comics and books).

-Teleportation can be stretched to cover this: Beaming electrons and other particles into the target can produce stunning effects, and could be used for heating with some precision, creating most of the other effects we've seen phasers used for. Additionally, this could be used to disintegrate a target in a way that might look like something out of Star Trek: Like a cleaner, much finer, but much scarier version of Innerportation (Psionic Powers pp70-71), each molecule of the target - or perhaps even each atom, or subatomic particle - is teleported a semi-random distance and direction away from the target's position. Thus, the target is converted into a hollow, very sparse cloud surrounding the place they were when the beam hit (a Corrosion Attack with something like 2d+110 damage or higher for roughly human-average targets).

-Finally, the weapon could generate abilities from several powers, pretty much whichever power the designer feels would be more efficient for that task. Either it's a single, highly versatile psychotronic generator, or like a Swiss Army knife, it's a single, portable item containing several devices. The stun setting probably uses Telepathy or Biokinesis (equivalent to Sleep 4 or higher, Psionic Powers p49, with Increased Range instead of Malediction), the Heat/Kill/general damage settings would use Psychokinesis (similar to Pyrokinesis, pp56-57, with different modifications depending on the setting) or Ergokinesis (as above), and the dematerialize setting would use Teleportation (as above). This is my preferred option.


There's also the question of other energy weapons. Are they all variants of the same technology that became the phaser? If not, what are they? What energy weapons are common? Along with the Mind Disruptors mentioned above (perhaps developed by a telepathic race, or one with telepathic enemies... or enemies that are particularly vulnerable to Telepathy), you could use psychokinetic effects to imitate Pizard's Space Fantasy Disruptor Beam Weapons. Biokinetic technology could lead to ray-guns that produce a variety of toxic effects. Another teleportation-based weapon that you may or may not want to use is the TR-116 Projectile Rifle with transporter assembly - a sniper rifle that teleports the bullet from the muzzle to the vicinity of the target (and is only an energy weapon because it does that - without the transporter, it's 'just' a very advanced version of a modern 'chemical explosions propelling bits of metal' rifle). Depending on what sort of teleporter tech you prefer, this may be useful, interesting-but-unneeded, ludicrous, or impossible. An option for any weapon which normally has recoil is to make it recoilless by adding a psychokinetic Inertia Dampening Field.

For non-psionic weapons in general, Pizard's Equipment page has a lot more, both with and without his house rules. I tend to like his stuff better than what's in Ultra-Tech 4e, at least when it comes to weapons, even though I'm not totally sold on his house rules.

Vehicle-scale weapons would most likely be larger and more powerful versions of the personal-scale weapons. Melee weapons and grenades will have separate posts.


Thoughts?

[Prince Charon]

OK, it's been a few days, should I just declare my preferred option (the multi-power version) the correct one as of the time that the setting has phasers?

[ericthered]

I'd lean towards phasers being psychotronic generators, and having a strong swiss army knife component. I don't think making them do hard science things is all that good of an idea, and it plays back into the original conceit. I wouldn't make them too flexible for all but the most ingenious of users though.

Other factions should have their own psychotronic generators, mostly stronger individually but less flexible.

I wouldn't lean into the details of the powers too hard, and I'd look for a unifying power that makes all the phaser functions hang together.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'd lean towards phasers being psychotronic generators, and having a strong swiss army knife component. I don't think making them do hard science things is all that good of an idea, and it plays back into the original conceit. I wouldn't make them too flexible for all but the most ingenious of users though.

Other factions should have their own psychotronic generators, mostly stronger individually but less flexible.

OK, so about what I was thinking.

Originally Posted by ericthered

I wouldn't lean into the details of the powers too hard, and I'd look for a unifying power that makes all the phaser functions hang together.

Some sort of Modular Abilities variant (probably under Meta-Psi)?

[Daigoro]

My suggestion would be to go with standard tech lasers and blasters, and then have some big scary psychotronic guns as special limited devices with related drawbacks. Otherwise you'll have to come up with a reason for why there's a divergence from the "default techpath" and laser guns are used.