06-17-2009, 01:42 AM | #11 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
Depends. The Bergenholm makes the entire ship inertialess, with consequences for boarding actions: people inside the ship are inertialess too. Ships must usually be hold tractorbeams in combat to damage them, as most beams simply push them away. But Lensmen doesn´t care much about physics, so using it to design a campaign is much like using Tales of the Solar Patrol. Lensmen certainly is not bothered by relativity or stuff like that. Whether original momentum is retained is - IIRC - never discussed. And it is on a much larger scale: planetary bergenholms exist, and are countered by smashing the inertialess planet between two planets hitting it from opposite directions.
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06-17-2009, 01:53 AM | #12 | |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Dallas, TX
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
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06-17-2009, 07:14 AM | #13 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
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Internal inertialessness is only the norm in early versions (specifically the Rodebush-Cleveland device rather than the Bergenholm itself). Artificial inertia is rapidly developed. Patrolmen still train to deal with inertialess rnvironments in the era of Galactic Patrol and later books but it is seldom seen. SOP is to disable the Berg before you board.
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Fred Brackin |
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06-17-2009, 09:26 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
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If you bounce radar off a ship under PV drive, what does the Doppler shift look like? I'd assume that you get Doppler readings for the true velocity. The radar equipment would have to determine your PV by taking the difference in position over different samples in time. The display probably returns both values as a matter of course. Time dilation? It seems like half the point of PV would be to dodge such questions, so base it on true velocity. But Mach's Principle bugs me in that regard. |
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06-17-2009, 09:38 AM | #15 | ||
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
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Last edited by vicky_molokh; 02-19-2016 at 06:40 AM. |
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06-17-2009, 09:43 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
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Another option is to say that momentum is not maintained and that when PV is switched off the ship will be at rest relative to - for example - the mass having the greatest gravitional effect on this point of space. |
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06-17-2009, 10:00 AM | #17 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
I'd be tempted to go one further and put you in a stable orbit around Mars when you shut off the pseudovelocity.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
06-17-2009, 10:03 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
The result of course will be a bomb that vaporises in short order.
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06-17-2009, 10:28 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
True, but if you multiply those distances by 20 it works just fine...
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
06-17-2009, 12:48 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Nov 2008
Location: Bristol, UK
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Re: [Spaceships] Actually GMing a world with Pseudovelocity drives?
The problem with PV drives that just sort everything out for you (automagically! :-D What RoF do you get on that?) - is that it can unravel on you if you aren't careful.
If your drive leaves you at rest relative to the nearest large mass, that might be cool for giving ships the power to land and takeoff without rockets - but what happens if you want to rendezvous with an orbiting space station? You'll still need delta v good enough to match orbits with it. Or you could argue that nobody orbits anymore ("that's just so Newtonian") - and stations hover on their own PV drives - artificially maintaining a stationary orbit. Trouble is, the system is entirely non fail-safe. If a station's drives fail, it drops. Sooner or later there'll be an accident. If the drive doesn't let you land on the other hand, but does deposit you neatly into a stable orbit for the altitude you are at when you switch off... which orbit is that then? Perfectly circular for that altitude perhaps? Okay - but at what inclination? Are you going east or west? At the end of the day I have a nasty feeling that these thought experiments just prove the essential non-physicality of PV. Sigh. That's another way we won't be going to the stars to be added to the list.
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ftl, pseudovelocity, pseudovelocity drives, spaceships, technology |
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