GURPS Space: I want larger star sizes.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On the other hand, if I wanted to emulate older science fiction, which tended to have galactic "sectors" or "provinces" based at highly visible stars whose names most readers would know (Aldebaran, Procyon, Sirius, Vega, and so on), I would just assume away the issues with stellar lifespan.

That's headed toward "It was raining on Mongo that morning" territory, for which you may not want to use the GURPS Space world creation chapter.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Rupert

One conceit I like for such universes is that massive stars have more FTL links (of whatever sort that universe has) to other stars than less massive ones, so they tend to end up as hubs. Thus even if they have no habitable planets there's a incentive to set up stations and/or terraform any planets that are candidates for such processes.

One FTL concept I've considered is that maximum jump range is based on the depth of the gravity well at the destination. That makes big stars obvious regional traffic hubs. Sectors would then organize around the biggest nearby star, through which most incoming long-distance travel would logically flow. A region with few large stars might require several jumps to navigate around, and a small star with no close neighbors could be completely isolated (or require very high-end equipment to open a jump window).

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by RyanW

One FTL concept I've considered is that maximum jump range is based on the depth of the gravity well at the destination.

I devised one a bit like that once, in which you had to arrive at a point with the same gravitational potential as you left from, and in which your chance of a safe arrival depended on the solid angle subtended at your location by the (spherical) locus of suitable arrival points. The idea was to encourage ships to more well out from their origin stars before jumping, while forcing departures to occur from widely-scattered points and making arrivals rather unpredictable — with a view to making port facilities in the jump zone uneconomic. That led to a lot of two-leg long trips: ships would jump to a massive star near their destination, then make a safer short jump to a less-massive destination. But rather unfortunately it made jumps to coreward surprisingly easy and jumps to rimward hard or impossible, owing to the gradient of the galaxy's gravitational field being surprising steep when considered over a scale of interstellar distances.

[AlexanderHowl]

Strangely enough, I go the opposite route, with spacecraft not being able jump to and jump from a target within (Fifth Root of (Object Mass/Earth Mass) AU), with objects without a minimum mass of 0.001% of that of the Earth not interfering with the jump capabilities. A B-type star would actually not be as annoying as a lower mass star, as it habitable zone is close to its jump radius than that of a smaller star (for example, the jump radius for a mass 5.0 star would be 17.5 AU while the habitable zone would be 5.14 AU).