Quote:
Originally Posted by tshiggins
A pseudo-velocity drive, such as the "blink-warp" (a version of 2300AD's "stutter-warp" drive rendered in GURPS rules) or something would do the trick for you.
The discussion re-emerges periodically, so here's a link to the thread on these boards where I first went into it. It's post #35.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...n+stars&page=4
Basically, forbid the FTL threshold and just say that, once a ship gets far enough out of a gravity well, the stutter-warp allows for the useful pseudo-velocity to allow it to travel around the system. |
This very closely matches my own conclusions about the "perfect drive" for a space-opera setting. In short, I think that GDW got it right in
2300AD with the mechanics of the Stutterwarp. It falls short in only a couple of places.
Basically, in most Space Operas you want all of the "tropes", right? And they all come down to cheap space travel at ridiculous velocities, without world-destroying power in the hands of every skipper. (You also need cheap launch fees to orbit.) Such tropes include interstellar trade, individual ownership of tramp freighters, piracy, non-geriatric travel times, a reason that interstellar travel is space-based rather than using projectors on a planetary surface, space mining, combat being something other than 100% mutual destruction (so spaceship armor has to be a thing), etc. Arguably, in any "realistic" setting none of these are very likely to exist. And it is nice to have a reason for ships to zoom all around a system rather than just pop into existence very close to the destination world as happens in
Traveller, because that just leaves you playing your games in tiny bubbles around inhabited worlds.
With a Stutterwarp-like (in GURPS terms)
pseudovelocity warp drive with subwarp capability all you need is power, no propellant (or at least very little). You can make the acceleration (or even top speed) be whatever you need it to be
arbitrarily. I personally like the idea of quantized gradients a la
2300AD: there is a limit close to a gravity well where the drive does not function, beyond that a limit in which it functions at low efficiency, maybe one more higher-efficiency quantum gradient, and finally a gradient way out in low-gravity regions where it achieves superluminal travel. And an Alcubierre drive makes
excellent technobabble for this!
So, there is your cheap space travel! Now you just need cheap launch fees to orbit and suddenly interstellar trade becomes a possibility, and there are lots of ways to handwave cheap launches, especially if you ignore the radiation hazards of fission/fusion/antimatter drives. Or heck, just make elevators or Lofstrom loops ubiquitous.
So, where does this model fail?
Well, one place is that it doesn't innately make your tramp cargo ship able to land and take off from planets easily and cheaply. Under this pseudovelocity warp model there would almost certainly be trans-shipment in orbit to some sort of system for launching/landing the cargo. So you would need a ship's shuttle or somesuch for landings. Due to my sensibilities I personally find this to be a feature rather than a bug, but opinions will differ. You will
never somewhat realistically get your tramp freighter to land on or take off from an inhabited planet cheaply, unless you resort to unfortunate things like reactionless drives or antigravity, because any
remotely realistic drive that can do it spews radioactive death.
Another is that pseudovelocity drives realistically would not be able to be used to simulate gravity, so while zooming all over the place these ships are still in free fall. Thus you probably either need artificial gravity (which should leave a bad taste in your mouth, and usually leads to heartrending stuff like antigravity and antigravity drives)... or spin gravity in your ships.
2300AD tended to have spin gravity in its ships, FWIW. To me this is an annoyance, but a minor one. I would prefer to have crews deal with high Gs, etc.
This system also does lack the need to refuel your ship often. Which is a major bummer. Unless, like
Traveller, you introduce an entirely arbitrary fuel need to fuel the warp drive.
And finally, the one that really does annoy me. I would prefer to have the full range of starship ordnance available, but it turns out to be very difficult to have various ballistic attacks connect with a warping ship, so you are left with only one: warp torpedoes. This is also what
2300AD does- and in fact all of them are detonation lasers, too. This is particularly apropos if you use an Alcubierre drive as your technobabble, since the warp field tends to destroy any matter that crosses it, converting it into a shower of radiation. Beam weapons might work, too, at least canonically by the combat rules in Spaceships, but when you're talking about ships maneuvering at 1000Gs it gets hard to believe that combat closes to distances where they might be useful.
Finally, I personally would like one aspect of interstellar travel which, again, IMHO
2300AD got right. I don't want to just be able to warp from any system to any other system directly. When you can do that all warfare degenerates into massive Mahanian battles, which I find uninteresting. I want there to be strategic "space lanes" and allowance for maneuver. Putting a limit on how far an interstellar drive can go in one jump does this naturally. There will be strategic systems that one needs to transit to get to others, etc. In
2300AD a warp drive developed a "charge" as it was used that would lead to destruction of the ship if it traveled more than 7.7 light years. (And after playing around with Astrosynthesis I have decided that 8-10 light years works well on a real near-star map, depending upon just how complex you want your options to be, without orphaning any of the more interesting systems.) After that, the ship HAD to drop down into a gravity well to the point that the drive didn't work in order to "discharge" it's drives. This meant that transiting a system also involved finding a planet at which to discharge your drives, so for instance military bases might be made at convenient planets.
This need to discharge a drive after a certain distance can be used with any drive, not just the warp drive, of course. And it
so perfectly forces more interesting interstellar travel (space lanes, a reason to drop closer to planets when transiting a system, etc.) that I highly recommend it. It also has interesting tactical features, too. For instance, if you try to attack another system that is more than half the total distance possible
you can't retreat back to your system of origin without finding a planet at which to discharge drives (which will probably be defended).
Just my $0.02.
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If I could come up with a space travel system (realspace and stardrive combination) that covered everything I wanted I'd change in a heartbeat, but this is the closest I can come. FWIW what I want is:
1. Cheap and fast space travel, both realspace and interstellar
1a. Interstellar Trade
1b. Tramp freighters
1c. Space piracy
1d. Non-geriatric travel times (no more than a few months between systems)
2. No world-destroying power in the hands of every ship skipper
2a. Ridiculous velocities are tolerable, so long as there are limits and countermeasures
2ai. If it takes a reasonable time to accelerate and drives are highly visible, it's ok.
2aii. Nothing undefendable, e.g. 1000s of Gs real acceleration without an easily detectable signature.
3. No heartrending technology
3a. No reactionless drives
3b. No antigravity
3c. No time travel
3d. "Limited-superscience" is acceptable, but I'd like to avoid overt superscience.
4. No spewing radioactive death from drives, because...
4a. Starships (at least some) can land on planets
5. Need for significant fuel or reaction mass replenishment
5a. Very powerful reaction drives are ok, so long as not WMD
5b. But most reaction drives are actually very poorly collimated, and thus acceptable.
6. Interesting space warfare, both strategically and tactically
6a. Defined "space lanes"
6b. Strategic systems and choke points in the space lanes
6c. Full range of space weapons viable (ballistic, energy, missile)
6d. No MAD in all space combat, which probably requires armor
7. A reason for ships to travel
through a system, not just jump straight to a destination world.
Obviously, this system does not exist.
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