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Old 05-31-2016, 06:32 PM   #1
Calvin
 
Join Date: Jan 2014
Location: Calgary
Default Good ways to limit space travel?

I'm working on a new campaign for my group and need some help. TL9, hard scifi, and somewhat more serious.

The campaign is set in a trinary star system. The two primary sun sized stars orbit each other at ~144 AU, leaving them both enough room for their own set of interesting planets. Further out, at 288 AU is a smaller star orbiting the barycentre of the two larger stars, it also has it's own set of planets.

The plan is to have each of the two primary stars host a separate colonial empire, with the two not hostile, but not exactly friends either.

The third star is supposed to be either mostly or totally unexplored. What I want is for it to be currently inaccessible, and for some technological advance during the game to make it accessible. It's supposed to be a "captured" star, and is much older than the first two. (5 billion years compared to 11.5 billion). I basically intend it to be a Schrödinger's star. Maybe one of the habitable planets used to have a now dead civilization on it, maybe there's bronze age aliens going about their business, maybe there's the remnants of an FTL drive system to be found in that dead civilization if I want to expand the scope of the campaign.

But how would I even do this? My current plan for space travel is to have some as yet undetermined drive allow for constant 1g acceleration, with that providing "gravity". But even if ships need to stop to refuel, what's stopping them from just flying off to the third star, only expending fuel part of the time there and back? Alternatively, if I go to a very hard scifi approach and only have the engines in use at the very start and very end then they can still get to the third star, it just takes longer.

Basically, how do I stop two empires that are currently competing for habitable planets and useful resources from either wanting to or being able to travel to the star to see what goodies are to be gotten? I can't hide the star, I can't really stop anyone from getting there at TL9 if they're willing to take the time, and whatever is stopping both empires needs to have held up for the past 100-200 years. (I'm not certain on how long these two empires have been at TL9 with spaceflight, etc)
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