[Space] Technobabble for my new campaign.

[cvannrederode]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

You may want to consider things other than radii for space flatness. A simplistic thing would be the locally-felt real gravity.

Also, do consider the troubles of lifting off with a mere 0.1g drive. Works with winged launch, but not with wingless. And you can't meaningfully use wings for planets with a trace atmosphere, and your runway requirements will be huge with low thrust/low air density in general.

The actual requirement is "gravitational flux" or how much gravity changes over distance. Between myself (Comp Sci/Software Engineer) and my one player(PhD Astrophysicist and collage physics prof) we'll probably work up a little app that gives you the proper distance. Most in game work will be handwaved, however. True grav flux is a mutli-body problem.

As far as take offs, that's already been thought of at length. Campaign is starting on an Arcology farm on a Ceres analog, with 0.03g at the surface. They'll have winged shuttles for most large inhabited planets, when they get there. They don't actually have their own ship yet. Yet.