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

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I've seen things about free-floating balls of flame that are only burning on the surface. The thing about free fall is that all sorts of junk that would drop to the ground in gravity just floats about with the air currents in zero G, potentially getting into trouble.

Yeah, I've just spent half an hour watching cool videos on YouTube: Clarke underestimated gas diffusion and the retention of heat in the absence of convection.

As I said: a real danger of hard SF breaking out.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Yeah, I've just spent half an hour watching cool videos on YouTube: Clarke underestimated gas diffusion and the retention of heat in the absence of convection.

I was thinking of hunting some of those down. Any suggestions?

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I was thinking of hunting some of those down. Any suggestions?

It's hard to avoid examples that cut all over the place and show you footage of pans over photos of gridlocked traffic, and just show the damned experiment. Try this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qQQ1OHW1_F4

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eiJAZSc-IQM

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CE7Nz78rkfQ

[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.

[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.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Some players might argue (so line up YouTube video of astronauts deminstrating flames in free-fall.)

This is why I always recommend GMs keep a rolled up hardback handy and let the Players know that it will be deployed judiciously to quell arguments with the Game Master.

A player might suggest something you hadn't thought of and therefore haven't researched and won't know how to adjudicate.

Those are always my favorite kinds.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm trying to lean away from giant explosions that can instantly wreck the ship: I have enough places to get them from already. I am looking for a source of small, continuous explosions, and batteries that explode under extreme heat might be a nice source of this. If I get battery tech just right, it may end up as the new "jet fuel" for lighting the entire ship on fire.

Here's a possibility: superconducting magnetic batteries. That is, power storage with loops of superconductive material. That can be a good way to conveniently store a lot of energy in a readily accessible form, if you have superconductors that are cheap enough and work at reasonable temperatures (and other conditions). I could easily imagine a scenario in which an FTL system that sometimes needs high power levels fast could use such 'batteries'.

However, the same magnetic field that makes the circulating current work is also trying to push your loop apart. The more juice, the more the loop-battery wants to come apart. So you probably need strong structural containment to hold the things together. Also, interesting things might happen if the magnetic field gets strong enough to interfere with superconductivity itself, or the temperature gets high enough to quench it.

But the interesting thing about these things is that there are no obvious signs of danger. No flammable chemicals or other familiar danger signs. So it might catch everybody by surprise when that containment vessel suddenly gives and there is shrapnel flying everywhere.

[Johnny1A.2]

Another hazard that could exist, if your FTL system involves any kind of gas or liquid under very high pressure, is thrust. That is, if a leak to the outside forms, and the 'stuff' starts spewing out, it'll apply thrust to your vessel. Maybe not much, but it doesn't take a lot to throw off an orbit under some circumstances.

It might also impart a spin to your ship when you don't want one. If the spin was fast enough you might get inconvenient 'gravity' effects, and if you're near a star it might cause parts of your ship that you don't want to be exposed to sunlight to be exposed to sunlight (which could lead to heating issues, or mess with delicate electronics).

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.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

Here's a possibility: superconducting magnetic batteries. That is, power storage with loops of superconductive material. That can be a good way to conveniently store a lot of energy in a readily accessible form, if you have superconductors that are cheap enough and work at reasonable temperatures (and other conditions). I could easily imagine a scenario in which an FTL system that sometimes needs high power levels fast could use such 'batteries'.

In general any energy storage sufficient to power energy weapons has the potential to explode, though the details will be somewhat different depending on the system. The normal failure mode of a SMES is loss of superconductivity, at which point they short out abruptly with possibly considerable heat and plasma formation (depending on the amount of energy being stored).

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

But the interesting thing about these things is that there are no obvious signs of danger. No flammable chemicals or other familiar danger signs.

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).

[Flyndaran]

Or their fiction so over uses the plot that non-technical PCs loop around back to underestimating it. "That only happens in 'movies'."