How to Depict a Broken FTL Drive (and other Superscience)

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The theoretical maximum energy density of all ordinary matter power sources is limited by the strength of chemical bonds, and the highest achievable energy densities are from chemical reactions; a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell (which is a type of chemical battery) is pretty close to the upper limit on energy densities for systems that don't rely on nuclear or (at extreme scales) gravitational storage. The reason you use things like capacitors is for power density.

Not that it matters here. Any system capable of powering energy weapons is going to have one or more exciting failure modes, it's just a question of which.

Capacitors store charge directly, not indirectly within chemical bounds, so they are hypothetically only limited by electron degeneration pressure.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

If you have a fire on a spaceship that is oxidised by the breathemix both it and the fire-fighting methods are going to be very strange (to the players, not the characters)—shut off the ventilators; shut off the artificial gravity (if you have that) to suppress convection: now the problem is to cool the fuel to the point where it won't simply reignite on contact with oxygen when airflow is restored. Yellow-hot charcoal will stay hot enough to burst into flames for a long time without a convection current to remove heat. (Fire with a liquid oxidiser and solid fuel is a whole different ball of "Priest! We're screwed!"

So if you go with fire as your main problem there is a serious danger of hard SF. You might spend some time in session of a physics lecture. Some players might argue (so line up YouTube video of astronauts demonstrating flames in free-fall.) A player might suggest something you hadn't thought of and therefore haven't researched and won't know how to adjudicate.

Exotic behavior for fires is interesting. Especially the potential to start things back on fire by turning on the gravity, starting up ventilation, or running through the room too fast.

You point out a serious danger of hard SF. That's a good danger to be aware of. I think in this case that's an acceptable danger. It adds to the sense of wonder and the panicked confusion from a piece of exotic technology pushed past where it was meant to go. But you're right: preparation and player buy-in is important to this case.

Originally Posted by Anthony

Familiar to the players, possibly not (though you would normally expect them to be labeled as electrical hazards), but PCs with relevant technical skills would know, and non-technical PCs are likely to overestimate the risks because electrical systems blowing themselves apart make for great graphics in ultratech action movies (or whatever equivalent entertainment they have).

So I haven't started up this game yet: I'm working out a short game based on damage control. I'm torn about how much warning and knowledge to give the PC's, and what kind of background the crew in general should have: are they technical experts, picked conscripts, or working stiffs?

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Ok, I guess anything might be flammable if you hit it with a 3GJ laser, but we're not talking about space combat. If they're in combat, the PCs have bigger things to worry about than whether their bedding might catch fire. The topic is about how dangerous a shipboard fire is, and how likely it is to spread.

Well, the scenario is supposed to start with the ship getting hit in one reactor by an enemy weapon, so its not quite out of combat, but its not in combat either. People will have been at battle stations with guns and missiles out of storage when the fires start. But I don't plan for them to be hit much after the initial disabling shot.

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

I grew up on Star Wars and my lens of space travel will always be shaped by it. I remember the Millennium Falcon making it's spin up noises then something mechanical breaks and you hear the sound of some kind of spooled engine winding down along with grinding gears.

So the description would start the same as what you want FTL to look like, aural lights surrounding the ship, frost growing over the exposed ports, a powerful vibration that makes everything unsecured rattle, Probably a jump alarm, a dull boom, that falling sensation in the pit of your stomach, then the sound of clattering parts and frustrated systems, maybe some lights blowing out as electrical systems overload.

If you want not-tearing the ship apart consequences to a failed jump a lurch is good, enough kinetic inertia to do serious damage to crew if they're not secured, maybe you can make a DX save for half damage by grabbing hold of something or covering your head. The ship would probably have a problem, like a light damage result. Maybe you loose life support efficiency from a power surge or turret two takes on a quirky bug that's only a problem in emergency situations. Easy to fix with parts, but one more problem on the list.

Moving Parts, vibrations, and "lurches" That's a great feature to work into the FTL drive.

Originally Posted by dcarson

The Things I Won't Work With chemist blog has some fun stuff. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin...wont-work-with

Things not just deadly but stuff like selenium compounds that smell so bad that opening a bottle for a few seconds causes nausea and vomiting in a lab 100 feet away in a different building.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Another hazard that could exist, if your FTL system involves any kind of gas or liquid under very high pressure, is thrust.

oooh, that's interesting.

Speaking of electronics...if your damaged FTL system is putting out charged particles, not even necessarily very many of them, that could be inconvenient for delicate unshielded electronics. A level of ion emission that wouldn't be a problem for human health for quite some time can be enough to mess with some more delicate electronic systems.

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. I'm also a touch curious how compartments with iron or aluminum walls will inhibit EMP's, radio, radiation, and ion emission.

Originally Posted by LokRobster

I haven’t studied acid and batteries a lot, but at it looking now, it’s weak: for a car battery it is typically 30-50% sulphuric acid, the lower concentration allows produce a smaller current of electricity over time. In comparison, the vats of boiling acid (120C) that I work hands-on with in the semiconductor industry are 85-95% H2SO4. It heats up fast in contact with water or H2O2. The smell is notable and the hydrogen let off by many reactions (if it’s out dripping on things) can lead to more fire/explosion risk. For exposure, You feel it it immediately if you get it on you, and much more than a tiny drop will be acid damage from GURPS High Tech. Cloth turns into goo right away. If it’s dilute, you may not notice until you do the laundry and there’s holes in your clothes. It won’t eat steel bulkheads as much as discolor and etch the surface and edges, even at full concentration. Plastics used in electrical applications resist it fairly well, so immediate degradation of wire insulation is unlikely. Acids are used in many ways industrially, batteries need not be the only source.

Other systems might also use NH4OH, a strong base (liquid), and lots of its reactions put off ammonia gas. Ammonia gas goes from irritating to deadly depending on density, mildly noxious air would make a good “dangerous over time, but not immediately deadly” device. The damage or effects vary, so you can dial it either way as the crisis continues and needs more or less pressure on the PCs.

A very nasty acid to encounter is dilute (1-50%) HF. (Hydrofluoric Acid). Used for etching glass, or silicon chips, and probably has some uses on a ultra tech ship. No smell, looks and feels like water. It doesn’t burn when it gets on your skin. If you breathe mild concentrations of the odorless vapor, you’ll get nauseous (but may not know the source). If it gets on your skin, and you ignore it (like water or sweat), you’ll start feeling pain a few hours later. That’s the calcium in the bones decaying. Treated quickly, it can be countered by giving a stronger source of calcium for the HF to react with. Untreated, the extra calcium in the blood leads pretty quickly from the intense pain stage to cardiac arrest
...anyway typing this, I realize you probably don’t want to inflict real-life HF dangers on PCs. The stuff is very much a “hey that’s not fair” substance that doesn’t make a for a fun plot or challenge.

The good news is that the 5 gallon jug of water successfully put out the fire. The bad news is that it wasn’t water. And you die.

No, I haven’t used HF in-game yet.

HF might work if its a known issue that puts on pressure to get medical diagnostics back up. Some people have been exposed to HF, but we don't know who and how much, and we won't unless we save medical and get it running again.

Originally Posted by Michael Cule

I think what the GM needs to do is design the control interface and allow them to figure out what is wrong from the error messages.

Don't make it just winken-blinken-und-der-flashing-lights. Have actual text turn up.

The next problem is finding someone who can read that language or at least a multi-lingual manual.

"'When the sprurtzmakker is infobulated the Ping-sensor will flash bright Tongspitzen-fruit colour.' Does that look like Tongspitzen fruit to you?"

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

What if whatever damaged the drive also damaged the systems diagnostic?
"Error 17956-A-154. Error XYJ-X-008" "That means a mutiny and we're under water?! The A.I. is borked."

Yeah, interface design is a good place for humor. I was mostly thinking about dangerous obvious from being right in front of you, but faulty error messages can make knowing what needs to happen much harder. It can also entice mission-critical engineers away from their comfy control consoles into the thick of the danger.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by doctorevilbrain

I love that crazy technobabble! You should watch the video after it.It's pretty funny too. Thanks for posting it.

No accounting for taste. The problem was that in Civil Defense, and indeed a lot of Treks, the technobabble turns into a deus ex machina.

Note that saying a show is not perfect is not the same as saying it is not a great show. DS9 was one of the best and that was one of the better episodes. But the technobabble sometimes made you wonder what the heck was going on.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Capacitors store charge directly, not indirectly within chemical bounds, so they are hypothetically only limited by electron degeneration pressure.

The amount of energy that you can store without breakdown is dependent on the chemical properties of the conductors and the dielectric; exceed those limits and it will short out, leak charge, or explode.

[doctorevilbrain]

No accounting for taste? I was just joking. I thought it was really funny.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The theoretical maximum energy density of all ordinary matter power sources is limited by the strength of chemical bonds, and the highest achievable energy densities are from chemical reactions; a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell (which is a type of chemical battery) is pretty close to the upper limit on energy densities for systems that don't rely on nuclear or (at extreme scales) gravitational storage.

Speaking of nuclear, isotope decay isn't the only source of nuclear power. You could have nuclear batteries based on using different nuclear excitation states to store energy, and which theoretically can reach an energy density 10^6 that of chemical storage.

That would make for some exciting failure states, and you get to call them "Lutetium batteries".

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Speaking of nuclear, isotope decay isn't the only source of nuclear power. You could have nuclear batteries based on using different nuclear excitation states to store energy, and which theoretically can reach an energy density 10^6 that of chemical storage.

The problem is less the theoretical energy density than with the fact we don't have an efficient way of triggering state changes and there's no guarantee an efficient means exists. Still, it's more possible than what GURPS calls TL^, we don't have strong reason to think it's impossible, just lack of evidence for it being possible.

[Johnny1A.2]

Another 'mundane' hazard that can arise with malfunctioning high power machinery is plain old electrical shock.

If whatever went wrong broke the insulators in the wrong place, or bridge high-power conductors, then any given conductive surface or object that's been shorted to the power source might be highly charged. Depending on what the bulkheads and walls and hull are made of, this could be quite an issue.

Sometimes a highly-charged object will show signs of this, sometimes it will not, depending on exact conditions. The effects will depend on how much juice is involved and local conditions, and can range from a painful shock on contact, to serious burns and injury, to insta-kill.

Also, such charged surfaces can mess with electronics and equipment. Imagine a space-suited character touches a charged wall or structural member and is protected from the current by the insulating layers of his suit, but loses all the suit's electronic systems.

[Flyndaran]

If Star Trek has taught me anything, it's that everything is an electrical explosion waiting to happen. No surge suppressors or seat belts in the future.

[acrosome]

Something that damages the radiators? So the ship starts getting slowly hotter and there a few tubs of liquid sodium heat sink laying around? That sounds dangerous but repairable. Obviously, the FTL drive makes far too much heat to be used during the crisis...