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

[AlexanderHowl]

Damaged FTL engines should be dangerous to use. For example, a FTL system that was in a section dealt damage during combat might be at -2 to use, a jury-rigged system might be at -5 to use, and a disabled system might be -10 to use. Critical failure would result in a disabled system, a destroyed system, or a destroyed spacecraft respectively.

[Phantasm]

There's a possibility of going at near-light STL instead of FTL, with time displacement. Depending on how things can go, years could pass in realtime while hours pass in the ship.

Of course, this seems more like a plot device to pull folks from the past to the present rather than folks in the present going to the future with no way back.



One thing a GM threw at me with a prize ship (the start of the session after I captured it no less *grumblemutter*) was damaging a heat regulator which routed excess heat from re-entry to realspace away from the ship. (More angry over his flat "no" when I asked if there was any way to save the ship....)

[Agemegos]

Yeah, something producing heat is an interesting damage-control challenge in a spaceship. You have to get the heat to the radiators and shut down the production of heat, otherwise all sorts of things are going to reach temperature limits and stop superconducting, demagnetise, shut down, burn out, or cook.

[Anthony]

In general, a damaged superscience device will either be damaged in some way irrelevant to the superscience, such as power supply, fluid lines, etc, or it will damaged in a way specific to the superscience.

In the first case, the hazards are generally the same as a non-superscience device with the same power and material requirements.
In the second case, the hazards are likely to be superscience hazards, not hazards that exist in the real world. They should just be hazards that are related to how the superscience works.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

Noxious gases could be released from the damaged electronics/batteries. If you're using spin gravity, the emergency breaks could kick in sending everyone dragging across the floor.

Damaged Batteries. That's a great source of danger, and of cascading damage. What else can we do with that idea? Does anyone have ideas beyond noxious gasses for what happens when you damage an ultra-tech battery?

Originally Posted by khorboth

My first thought is aligning the FTL drive with the STL drive and/or the artificial gravity. A small misalignment will mean a sudden apparent gravity shift and some crushing damage. A major misalignment will mean a sudden apparent gravity shift and massive crushing damage. Going back into FTL before alignment is perfect could be fatal.

A problem could also be had with the databases. We need to rebuild them before we can safely travel because gravitational waves (a real thing) can throw us light-years off-course and we may not have enough fuel to get home. To rebuild them, we need... Computer Programming. Astronomy. Electronics Repair. Astrogation. A working telescope Etc.

Well, I was looking for troubles that will destroy the ship and endanger crew even if nothing is done. A wonky gravity gradient could easily be the result of a malfunctioning ship drive though, and it will make it harder to repair the rest of the ship. It also gives the iconic "List" of a damaged ship.

What if the FTL drive won't come fully off-line? .... Every (random) minutes the ship lurches in/out of warp throwing everybody around and damaging the ship further until it's shut down properly.

Partially engaging the FTL drive is a nice thought. The ship is running an FTL spiral through the middle of a battle. Or just stressing a specific part of the ship and it will eventually tear the ship in two and take the drive to who knows where. Anyone fixing the drive is in danger of going on the ride when it finally happens.

The Fredrickson Actuator (not a real thing) came loose from its housing and careened through several other parts. They can be scrounged from other systems, but.... do you want to do without weapons? shields? Life support? Navigation? Sensors? Choose wisely.

Cannibalizing one system to feed another... that's a nice option to give the players. Or to slap them with after they've made things safe for themselves in one spot.

Originally Posted by Antiquation!

Related, if you haven't already I'd recommend checking out an article called "Spaceship Malfunctions" in Pyramid #3/103, Setbacks as well as "Things Fall Apart" in #3/40, Vehicles.

I hadn't noticed those. Thanks! 103 is looking very useful. I'm probably going to use it as a checklist and see how many of those problems I can justify from a few weapons hits to a spaceship.

Originally Posted by Anders

It could be on fire. Plastic burns quite well.

Yes it does. Incidentally, it is my goal to set as much of this ship on fire as possible. Fire has so much character when compared to a one-off explosion or simple hard vacuum. I'm having a bit of trouble justifying just how flammable this ship is though. Historical Military vessels were crammed full of ammunition and petroleum, which seems a little less likely on this vessel. But I'm absolutely burning everything I can.

Originally Posted by (E)

A drive that warps space or creates a wormhole of some variety could be misfiring and creating small random holes in space time around the "drive core", if left alone these holes will further damage the containment systems. The repair crew sent in will have to repair or temporarily shut down the drive safely while dodging the emerging rifts and dealing with the new damage they cause. Added complications could ensue if there is additional damage like hull breaches or electronics failures. Other players could be involved to act as look outs for the engineers or to perform urgent repairs on new damage while the engineer repairs the core.

Tiny misdirected wormholes could be a lot of fun, and cause a lot of continuing damage. A wave of warped space traveling through a ship... takes some imagination to work out the effects of, but feels like a great way to damage all sorts of things in a ship.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Visuals for FTL can be literally anything you want. But of course that's not really helpful.

That's why I came here!

For malfunctioning warp fields, there could be pockets of visual distortions that pop into and out of existence. Stars could appear to wobble or switch positions as similar or dissimilar to a kaleidoscope as you wish.
Messing with fields of view could be dangerous on their own without having to invoke the matter twisting destruction normally used in fiction.

Mostly Visual effects... that could be a lot of fun to deal with.

[khorboth]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Damaged Batteries. That's a great source of danger, and of cascading damage. What else can we do with that idea? Does anyone have ideas beyond noxious gasses for what happens when you damage an ultra-tech battery?

Acid. It's corroding the insulation on the pipes and wires. While draining the ultimate potential storage capacity. Who has an NBC suit?

And, perhaps by itself or perhaps once the acid reacts with something, explosive gas or liquid. No sparks. No welding. And the ship is damaged, so there are a few places where there are fires or sparks so we need to contain that gas before it gets there.

[Johnny1A.2]

In my world, some FTL drives contain a coil of metal alloy. Under operation, it gets very hot, and so has to be actively cooled to avoid melting.

The coolant is dangerous because it's a deadly toxin. If the vessel around the coil is breached, the liquid coolant will emerge, volatize, and make the surroundings very dangerous. Depending on the concentration, a few breaths could make one violently sick, producing unconsciousness, or kill. It's also odorless and invisible in low concentrations, meaning you could get several breaths, enough to be big trouble, before you know it.

It's also carcinogenic, but that's kind of secondary to the immediate effect.

The coil itself is dangerous in three ways:

1. It runs hot, and if things go wrong in certain ways, it can start to melt fairly quickly, and spray liquid droplets of metal. This can be esp. nasty in free fall.

2. If things go wrong in certain other ways, it can catch fire, buring with a very hot flame and consuming oxygen very quickly. Metal fires can be a nightmare to put out, too.

3. if things go wrong in one particular way, rare but possible, the coil can vanish...taking anything in its immediate area with it.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by ericthered

Damaged Batteries. That's a great source of danger, and of cascading damage. What else can we do with that idea? Does anyone have ideas beyond noxious gasses for what happens when you damage an ultra-tech battery?.

Well obviously electrical discharge. Anything that disrupts its ability to keep it's power contained means that it will will flow out to any conductor in contact with the battery. If the conductor can't handle the amperage, then electrical fire. If it can, you'll have something electrified that will be potentially lethal to touch. Possibly you'll see electric arcs as the power discharges.

[Joseph Paul]

Things that burn on a ship? Aluminum. Pretty sure foamed aluminum will be used in the future.

Non-structural interior dividers in plastics are a good bet as well. Beds made with foam. Seats. Lubricants.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Non-structural interior dividers in plastics are a good bet as well. Beds made with foam. Seats. Lubricants.

If they regulated against flammable foam in airplane seats in the 90's, I'd have trouble accepting that most spacecraft materials would be flammable. That danger would be limited to things like explosives, fuel tanks and unavoidably flammable stuff in engineering.