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Old 05-07-2021, 01:10 PM   #1
Prince Charon
 
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Default [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

A 'FTL Bottleneck' is any volume of space that you must pass through to go Faster Than Light (whether that means only for arriving, only for leaving, or both), which is also small enough to be controllable. How small that needs to be depends on your setting's tech assumptions.

Jump-points or some jump zones, wormholes, artificial 'jump-stations/gates,' and so on qualify as bottlenecks. An example from another role-playing game would be the pirate jump points in BattleTech, though the main 'jump points' don't count (those are just two convenient points just beyond the jump limit of a system, within the huge jump zones that surround it). The important part is that these are places where you can station a fleet or a defence station or similar, and thus have a chance at stopping a hostile force from invading your system, or blocking their retreat.

The specifics will generally depend on the setting, since you need a different strategy for points that you can only leave from (but can arrive in-system from anywhere) than for points that you only need to arrive in (but can escape into FTL from anywhere), and a different strategy for points that bottleneck you both ways. Likewise, you need a different strategy for settings where the jump-point only leads to one other system than for a setting where the same point connects to several other places, or to anywhere at all.

For example, in Irar, the Jewel in the British Crown (which inspired this thread, but this discussion works better here), the known form of FTL is wormhole travel. Each wormhole allows travel both ways, but only connects one system to one other system. Each system can have several wormholes, with the exact number varying by system. The wormholes are believed to be artificial, having been constructed by some ancient civilization tens of millions of years ago at the latest. Civilizations thus prefer to control both ends of wormholes leading to their home system and important other systems, where possible.

Mainly, this thread is to discuss settings with FTL bottlenecks, and how they are handled in the source material (if any), and how they have been or might be handled in-game.


Thoughts?
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