Space Campaign, revisited
 

A while back, I did some work on a GURPS Space campaign setting. I set that aside to work on other projects, and am now ready to return to it.

I'm going to sart by laying out a basic set of guidelines. This is intended to have some retro elements.

Time? Not sure, but far enough in the future for there to be multiple colony worlds, some settled for at least a couple of centuries.

Technology: The dominant human civilization[s] = TL 10, leaning towards safetech. I don't want to emphasize transhumanist stuff, although bionic limbs and the like will exist. No nanofacs/replicators. No contragrav. No reactionless drives. FTL travel is via a web of interconnected jumplines, using a jump drive. No FTL radio, so courier ships are used instead. Only limited superscience, mainly in the form of FTL.

Aliens- Multiple species, several of which are not humanoid. Life on most planets shares certain fundamental similiarites to life on Earth- suggestive of a common origin. Some people explain this in scientific terms, others turn to religion for answers.

Magic, Psi, etc- Nope. Danger sense or luck is fine, telepathy and TK are right out. That doesn't mean there aren't people who believe in this stuff, of course.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Big Assumption # 1

Folks in the future will still be human beings as we understand them. Technology will solve some problems and create others. Basic human needs won't change. There is no 'singularity'.
This does not necessarily mean the setting is full of people with early 21st century European or American cultural and political values.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Other ideas-

One thing I've noticed is the negative spin a lot of SF puts on religion [yes, I am well aware there are exceptions to this]. I think I'll flip that around in my setting by having a prominent religious order operating across the starlanes whose members help out spacers and colonists alike. They might be like the Franciscan friars- heck, they might be Franciscans!

Gun, guns,guns! I like guns. Not so fond of blasters and such. While I won't ban beam weapons entirely, I think slugthrowers and needlers will be pretty common in this setting. Maybe lasers are military weapons, and off limits to civilians in many star systems? Maybe the power cells for beam weapons are bulky and heavy?

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

As in Traveller, communications are limited to the speed of the fastest ship. This means merchants, travelers, space bums, etc are also newsmen and letter carriers -even bards. Dirtsiders look forward to the arrival of a new ship because it brings news, rumors, 'new' movies,etc.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I think your biggest decision will be

A) How efficient are my spaceships reaction drives?

Are you going to track fuel usage religiously, or just handwave most of it?

Also, how fast does it take said spaceship to get to jump distance?

That will affect speed of communications, obviously, altho you might have 'Pony Express' stations ala the old Starfire game, where somebody would send a radio/lightspeed message to the Warp Point, and a station (manned or automated) orbitting said Warp Point would send a ship/courier drone thru the point and begin transmitting the message ASAP to another relay/dispatch station, if necessary.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Well, I'm thinking of using 'torch' drives, probably fusion powered. It might be a little rubbery, but my players won't care. These would be powerful and fuel efficient, but not really capable of approaching light speed [not planet busters].

-There will be other manuever drives, of course. Different TL societies and different alien species may have their own approaches to space travel.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

That Pony Express system sounds good. It doesn't negate all the things I said about merchants and travelers, so I'll probably use it. Thanks.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Jump point travel: instantaneous or slow???

Fuel use? I dunno how strict I'm going to be. Things may move at the ''speed of plot'', or I may be more stringent. I'll have to consider the players- if none of them care, I'm not going to waste a lot of time on technical details. If someone enjoys resource management, it'll be there.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Note about jumplines:

These are naturally occuring features of space [as far as anyone knows]. They are alway linked to another jumpoint. Often , there is only one jumpoint near a given star. Some point lead to a sister point in deep space. Sometimes points appear in clusters, making a natural crossroads of space travel. Most jumplines run both ways, but not all. Some are erratic, but most charted points are reliable enough.

This all leads to trade routes, the possibility of space pirates, and all that good stuff. Charted but secret points exist.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Though jumppoints also are natural chokepoints that can be comparatively easily patroled, defended and controlled. I would think that a warpdrive creates more possibilities for pirates, as they can intercept everywhere along the way.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

On top you will have very fast (!) communication. Messenger ships will just use the jump lane, then send the data out via radio. If you have close jump points, that will result in a pretty fast transport system, like our postal system today.

YOu will naturally hae space stations close to jump points which can maintian the messengers, but also serve as tax / traffic control and military posts.

In general I do not see jump points going for pirates - they are way too easy to control. And instantenous jumps mean communication by courier network will be faster than you want. You may end up with a message crossing the known space in a day.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Good point. I avoided warp drive because it tends to allow you to go anywhere, and that doesn't support the trade network I want.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Maybe I should switch the instant jumps for slow jumps- like in Traveller? That would slow down communications nicely.

Classic space pirates are not absolutely necessary to the setting, really. Some pirates may raid planets, not ships- Space Vikings! Raiding an enemy world may get overlooked by friendly port authorities [or ones you've bribed].


Keep in mind there is not a single star empire controlling all these various jumplines.

Edited previous post to reflect this question of time involved in jumps.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

You might want to check out STARFIRE.

I have no idea what edition its in now, but it uses a 'warp line' system very similiar to what you are thinking of using.

Dave Weber got his start writing STARFIRE novels, in fact.

Another thing you want to consider (using STARFIRE as an example) is whether or not your Jump Points can be fortified.

A common tactic in STARFIRE (and perceived by many as a major weakness of the game) was the ability to place ungodly amounts of mines, asteroid bases full of missile launchers/fighters/energy weapons, and defense fleets on top of/near the Warp Point.

Assaulting said Warp Points was like very much like trench warfare in WW1.....bloody as hell.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Another possibility that some jump points may lead to more than one location. Combine this with clusters and one way trips, and things get a bit more interesting.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I'll have to google Starfire. Sounds cool.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Yes and no - in a roleplaying scenario I would expect similar anti-tactics to materialize. Just make small jump capable missiles - they jump (with fast speed), then select a target and go there.

It WILL get bloody, though - it is terrible bad for a role playing scenario. It is worse than the real world. In the real world, the government can control the roads into a city (population center), but it can not really put up a total block for anything else - you can always TRY hiking outside the roads.

With jump lanes, you HAVE to use the warp points, which means there is no way to go through - smuggling is out, mostly. Criminal checks can be done. There is no alternative to bypass that. I would be severely carefull about the side effects.

What I did do in a campaign was:

* Slow jumps like traveller, but ships used less fuel - they started with traveller like fuel at TL 8 (early jump) and halved that for every TL The drive hat higher, so a ship at TL 10 could do a lot more distance.
* FTL communication WAS possible, but required HUGH installations in deep space and a lot of energy. Bandwidth was also limited. In fact, it created an unstable wormhole, that needed to be kept open, and pulsed the energy level - resulting bandwidth was in the range of 2Mbit. Systems also needed calibration and were point to point, so you could not really "dial somewhere else" - both sides needed to sync, which took a lot of time (about two weeks).

The result is that news could travel fast, but only between certain points. Messages still took some time (radio to the station), and only major colonies or military installations had access. The fleet had hugh ships that had comm equipment with them - one or two per fleet, for communication with base, when operating far outside.

For anything practical, this means FTL communication was out. THere were maybe 3 dozen non-military FTL links, and a dozen military ones - in a couple of hundred colonized worlds. But it also meant that important news travelled faster.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

You can force warp ships to go through certain spots. The 2300 AD stutterwarp drive needed to enter a planetary gravity field every 7.7 light years. Any warp drive might use fuel and have to refuel every few parsecs, much like the traveller jump drive.

One could combine the two: warp drives exist but are slow, and jump points don´t exist in every system, only in a few ones. The warp drive can use those jump points to jump. So most traffic will go through the few major systems with jump points, but then spread out using warp drives to go to/from the actual destinations. And smugglers may avoid those major systems, but take much longer to get somewhere.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

How big are drones/automation in the setting ? Will the equivalent of Warp Torpedoes be making regular comm runs or only sentient-piloted vessels ?

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

You might want to read the Vorkosigan Saga from Lois McMaster Bujold for a good take on jump point warfare.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

To answer Shrale's question: I suppose there will be drones and bots, but I don't want to negate the role of human crews. Will have to think about this one.


Here's what I'm going for with FTL:
Starships fly between planets, but there are no reactionless drives and no relativistic potential planet busters.
Limited or no FTL commo, other than courier ships.
Trade routes exist.
Possibility of smuggling and piracy.
Living sentient pilots and crews are not obselete.
Limited superscience- mostly just the FTL drive.
No contragrav
No psionics


I'll check out the stutter warp. Thanks, Pomphis.

This is exactly what I was hoping for; lots of feedback on FTL and its effects on travel,trade,communication,etc.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

If you want to go so far as to make living, sentient pilots necessary (as in, no robot FTL pilots at all), you might want to read Modesitt's "Gravity Dreams" novel. The FTL was similar to jump lines, but had very abstracted, almost metaphysical imagery that the pilot had to interpret in order to navigate past hazards. While much of the ship was automated, the piloting itself seemed to require someone who could figure out that the "pulsating red spiky swirly thing on top of what seems to be a hill" was a supernova remnant that would be better off not being collided with.

I also must echo the Vorkosigan comment; lots of jump point tactics, and darn good reads regardless. :-)

Your universe sounds like it will be very interesting!

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Thanks for the tip.
I'm unsure exactly how I want to do it, but I know what I'm going for.
I like Traveller's Age of Sail feeling. I want something a bit like that. Space voyages takes weeks, months, maybe even years for really long trips.


Once I get the FTL figured out, I'll move on to defining the rest of the universe in greater detail. There will be aliens. No humans in rubber suits [although some of the more common alien species will need to be close enough in thinking to humanity that commerce is possible].

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Check out Voidstrikers' FTL system.

Pretty neat.

Base speed is 1 light-year a month, but massive stars give you a 'boost'. So a ship leaving Antares is going to be going much faster than a ship leaving Earth or Alpha C.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Google returns hardly anything for Voidstriker - care to provide some more references?

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

CM,

I've been thinking up a similar setting (and am right down the street from you, apparently). The way I'm planning to do it is have jump be instantaneous: when you arrive at the jump point, you activate your jump drive, and you instantaneously emerge at the corresponding jump point in the system on the other end of the jump line. If a system has multiple jump lines coming out of it, it also will have multiple jump points. These are not generally situated near each other, so if your trip involves multiple jumps, you will have to spend a lot of time using old-fashioned maneuver drives to go from one part of the system to another, and space travel will still be pretty slow, even though jump itself is instantaneous. How slow depends on how fast the maneuver drives are, how far apart the jump points are in a given system, and how many systems you need to travel through in a typical voyage.

The approach I'm looking at is one where typical military starships are capable of putting about 1 G of thrust on average over the course of a trip. (They can go up to 2 G for short periods of time in combat but can't sustain it, and fighters can go much faster--5 Gs or so--because they're all engine and weaponry, but they're strictly short-range and don't have FTL capability. I realize that this is an unreasonable amount of thrust for a fusion torch drive that's not reactionless, but whatever, I'm waving the hand.) In a typical system, the jump points are spaced more or less evenly around an orbit out where the gas giants are (just past Saturn's orbit in the case of Sol), so if I have the math right, in-system travel from one jump point to another will usually take a week or two.

If you don't want contragravity or artificial gravity, one thing you may want to think about is how gravity is going to work on the ship. If the ship is capable of putting out 1 G of thrust, then this isn't a problem as long as the ship is accelerating, because in that case the ship will have regular Earthlike gravity and "down" will be in the direction of the ship's engines. If the ship stops accelerating, there's no gravity, however. This has implications for how the ship is laid out, because it means long ships are going to have to be built like skyscrapers, with relatively small decks stacked on top of each other. This is different from most sci fi deck plans, which have layouts similar to modern naval vessels. Jovian Chronicles is the only game I can think of that consciously designs its ships the other way.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

We had a discussion, not that long ago, about this very topic. That thread has a good description of a lot of different stardrives, as well as their implications and limitations for a campaign. I like the 2300 AD stutterwarp drive, a lot, myself. A description of that drive appears in post 47 of the thread:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...highlight=2300

You are correct, in that you have to resolve the travel question, before you do anything else, in an interstellar science fiction setting. :)

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Playtest comment: you may need to explain why in settled systems you don't have smaller and cheaper dedicated jump ships (standing room only) that toggle to and fro between two adjacent systems with a fleet of smaller and cheaper in-system shuttles that take you between the jump points and planets.

This also allows FTL comms with toggling jump ships acting as relay stations. You could send an urgent message to the next system and get a reply in around 6 hours.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

An FTL system I used in a couple of campaigns had jumplines but avoided a number of problem areas some people have mentioned.

First, the jumpline was a _line_ and not a point. You could enter or exit anywhere from 1/10 of an AU out from a Sol-size star to probably over 2 AU. Too big an area to squat on top of. You could have an interception fleet with decent distance of anyone coming out but you do need interception capability. If you just sit somewhere (except the target planet's near orbits) bad guys will just avoid you.

Second, jumpline travel was instantaneous but except as a very great rarity you had to make 3-5 jumps to go from one inhabited world to another.

All of the systems between 2 major worlds might be occupied with asteroid miners but usually there will be substantial amounts of wilderness space that no one guards. That's where your pirates hang out.

Also, there was a need to make substantial normal space trips between different jumplines. No real "toggling" messenger drones. For a 5 jump route you'd need 5 drones (and not that smaller or cheaper than a manned ship) and 10-15 relay stations (sometimes the system's sun will be between 2 jumplines and you need an extra relay). You might have such a pony express between 2 major worlds but certainly not everywhere.

These are the two major points to bear in mind to avoid some of the mentioned problems. No single jump "point" and multiple jumps required.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Thanks for the advice, guys. I've been reading and re-reading articles on Atomic Rockets, sections of GURPSSpace, and various web pages- trying to settle on what works best.



Different civilizations will build different sorts of starships, naturally. I do want there to be some 'technical box' style flying skyscrapers with big-damn fusion rockets stucking out the rear end.

Don't care if there are manned space fighters or not.

Now I must go to sleep. Study all day tomorrow.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

A little update....

I've been reading an anthology for inspiration- The New Space Opera, editor is Gardner Dozois. It's got some Alistair Reynolds, Stephen Baxter,etc in it. Pretty good stuff.

Anyhoo, I've been giving some thought about the faster sorts of STL drives, for trips when FTL isn't possible or isn't safe [such as between unconnected jump points, within a solar system if being to close to big objects is a hindrance to FTL,etc]. I like the antimatter torch drive, and also the Bussard ramscoop. You guys think a ramscoop would work in a region of space like a nebula, where there was more stuff for it to suck up?

I've also been looking at various designs of ships that use thrust and spin to provide ''artificial gravity''- since I am leaving gravitics out of this particular universe. I like the technical box style, and also the whole ''flying skyscraper with 'gravity' provided by thrust from a really powerful drive [like a torch drive]. Those cool looking Earth ships from B5, with the rotating mid section- yeah, something like that may work its way in, as well.

I'm pretty much using all the cool space habitats that don't require god-tech.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Yup. Even limited superscience fusion torch drives take a while to get around - typically over a month between planets (like Earth-Mars). You need to go to TL11 to get it down to a couple of weeks.

Or allow in-system micro-jumps to planets.

It certainly adds techno-babble why it might. Though nebula is probably very patchy stuff.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I ran a game under similar conditions (I didn't use much in the way of aliens, however, and I did have psi, which was mandatory for the jump drive). One thing that helped me was GURPS Space Atlas, which gave me a ready supply of worlds.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

The power of maneouvre drives and ship-detection technology will be important in whether pirates can stake out asteroid belts etc. in-system and prey upon ships travelling to and from jump points.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Good point. Pirates will want fast ships with good long range sensors- warships, in other words. Maybe some of the pirates will be leftovers from the losing side of an interstellar conflict.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Well, I might go to TL11 for some tech, but probably not. A month between Earth and Mars is fine. I'll want some lag in communications and transit time, to keep the right feel for the setting.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Be careful, though -- in system distances jump up quick sharply as you move out of the inner area. Earth-Mars might be okay at a month travel time, but if you've got people out on Saturn's moons, you're looking at many months at that speed.

Also, consider whether that Earth-Mars month is when they are close in thier respective orbits or whether they're around the sun from eachother.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

With this fusion torch scout ship, with hydrogen fuel (rather than water), the Earth-Mars travel time is 36 days (that is orbit to orbit, median distance of 1.8 AUs, with full tanks)

200 days to do the 10 AUs to Saturn.

At TL11 this goes down to 13 days and 67 days respectively. Still fairly mind-numbing travel though. Not really conducive to maintaining pace and tension - apart of course from the GMs tension with the players insisting their characters are spending every spare second cramming for skill points ;-)

Which is why I would favor micro-jumps in a house campaign (if not using reactionless drives) as players get bored easily. Climb out of the local gravity well to the top of the planet's Hill Sphere and then jump to the top of the target planets hill sphere. You still have to travel a fair distance at either end, perhaps 1% of an AU and maybe a day in total, but it's the exciting 1%.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Well, whatever the case: no reactionless real space drives in this universe.

Micro-jumps for rapid intra-system travel might work fine. I like that bit about climbing to the top of the Hill Sphere and then jumping to the next world. I might adapt something like this, if it's cool with you. Gravity dependent jump- you have to be on ''top'' of [or bottom of- no up or down in space] a planetary/stellar gravity well to initiate jump. If you misjump to deep space- good luck getting home. Instead of jump points, I could always say that the jump drives are limited in range, as in Traveller. That could help create trade routes. Factor in possible refueling/recharging needs, repair facilities, planetary economics,etc and I think I can still have the trade routes I want [no trade routes= no tramp steamers, no pirates,etc].

If I used something like that- jump would definitely not be instantaneous. If it were, travel might be too fast and easy.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I like to keep the superscience to a minimum too. But realistic drives take too long to go anywhere. So using the one superscience device (the stardrive) in multiple but limited ways helps the speed of plot.

Of course it's cool with me. It's something I have been pondering to mesh with SF tropes and typical plot speed but to wrap it up in plausible sounding science.

Yes, I shouldn't really have said "top" as the "Hill" in Hill sphere is someones surname rather than a descriptive term - but it sort of alliterates.

Yup. Maximum stable wormhole length or some such. You could perhaps say that both ends of a jump route had to be at some large mass or gravity well? Which makes routine travel easy, but "interesting" travel off the beaten track a challenge.

Remember you have to aim for your target star system where it is now, in 3 dimensional coordinates, rather than where you can currently see it with the light that left it several years ago. Star systems have typical relative velocities of 50-100kms to each other so they can have significantly moved laterally and away or towards you from their visual position. You are aiming for a microscopically small dot on a 3 dimensional sphere and getting the distance right too. It's easy to come up with limits on drive accuracy and astrogation limits over multiple parsecs.

However in-system jumps with a 2 parsec drive should be simple. Though if required there might be a minimum jump length based on the cycle time of the drive. If you can say jump 1 parsec (200,000 AU) in 20 hours, then jump time for the 2 AU to Mars is under a second.

Sounds good to me, though personally I always felt the Traveller 7 day jump was too long (and too conveniently matched Earth units). Many hours to a small number of days just "feels right" IMO.

Aside: Another idea I have been toying with (to encourage a small ship universe) is making jump speed dependent on ship mass. So a 1000 ton ship might make a 1 parsec journey in 33 hours and a 2000 ton ship in 66 hours. With the fuzzy lower mass limit for jump (whatever that is for your universe) being the size used for express courier ships with highly tuned drives on precise routes. Then next size up your free traders and frontier scouts.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Well, I'm finally back to working on this setting.

Now that I've got a pretty solid idea of how FTL works [gravity affected, not simultaneous, limited range, requires refueling/recharge and often multiple jumps to get from one world to another] , I'm moving on to sketch out some of the other aspects of the setting.

Since I don't have gravitics as part of the setting, I think I will include humans adapted to different gravities: light worlders, heavy worlders, and possibly spacers.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I'm on to looking at aliens and how to work them in...

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Not sure how many sapient species there will be, but I am sure that numerous other planets will have native lifeforms. I think I will adopt a panspermia approach, with protean life [or its building blocks] having been transported from world to world by comets or meteors.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I used a variant on this approach inspired by At The Mountains of Madness, where life in various forms similar to ours sprung up on worlds where the Elder Things had bases as a result of their biotech experiments and basic dumping of waste. Essentially, life on earth and other worlds came about as a result of extraterrestrial garbage dumps.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I've used a varient of this idea also, where life on Earth originated from a disease ancient aliens accidentally left behind.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I wonder how humanity would react to the knowledge that life on Earth is ultimately the result of the Elder Things getting careless with their lab sanitation procedures?

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

Knowing humans, they'd find some way to be proud of it.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

So far, I'm looking at using a couple of species from GURPS Aliens and from Traveller:

Bwaps - retrotech civilization, punch card computers and rocketships.

Memer & Saret- belters, freighters, etc. The Memer/ Saret dislike dealing with other species directly, so they make heavy use of robotic go betweens and audio links.

Pachekki- rivals of the Bwaps.

Re: Space Campaign, revisited
 

I've worked out more material for spaceship and jumpdrives,working with a freind from school. Basically, there's going to be a time-and-range-limited, gravity dependent jump system. Ships slingshot themselves along, taking advantage of large bodies like planets and stars. There's more, but I'll wait to post it til I have it in a a clearly written form. It's just a jumble of notes on paper, right now.