[Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Sometimes softened to technically you can get to a lot more destinations, but it's very unsafe to jump to a destination that you don't have extensive survey data for. Making it possible to bypass the expected bottleneck locations but only for the desperate or highly prepared.

EDIT: Though in both games and stories this generally has the flaw of being too all-or-nothing. If the main characters try it and it doesn't work it's a presumed TPK...

A way to have this without risking a single bad roll giving you a TPK is to instead have a failed attempt damage (but not destroy) the ship, requiring repairs before it can limp back to some semblance of civilization. The huge delay and the cost to actually get your ship back into full working order would be why most stick to the established routes. Of course, if you're trying to use it to attack another system, getting there in a half-crippled ship may well result in that TPK after all.

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

Yes, but once the rules are written, other people (the players, other GMs using your setting, et cetra) need to work within them, hence discussions like this.

Discussions like this can also help one determine what fiat rules they want - is a bottleneck desirable? If so, in which direction works best for the setting you want? And so forth.