Spaceship Tech in your Setting

khorboth · 08-05-2021, 08:31 AM

I feel like this question is backwards.

Start with the feeling and themes of the setting and then decide what kinds of spaceships exist there.

In my supersoldiers game, I wanted both good FTL travel and a good reason for people to go into stasis during it. So, I created an FTL drive where objective (outside the ship) travel speed was measured in hundreds of times the speed of light. Then, I had subjective (inside the ship) travel speed stuck at speed-of-light. So, a 10-light-year trip might take hours of objective time, but would be four years of subjective time. I then just refused to explain how the physics worked. Nobody fully understood the physics in-universe. It wasn't important to the game. I also wanted a reason to have some in-system travel time, so ships had to jump in substantially far from stars due to radiation levels interfering with the drive. In-system, I made excessively efficient drives which used mass scooped from gas giants. The PCs had a very nice ship which could accelerate at 2g for as long as they needed to. I gave them travel times based on their characters' calculations. Again, further explanation was unnecessary. It wasn't the game's focus. I described the game as hard-science compatible. It mostly made sense, but wasn't excessively detailed.

Conversely, when we ran Star Wars, the ships had top-speed. They had a certain range before refueling. When they went close to other ships, they went "woosh" explosions in space go "boom!" And we translated entries from Wookiepedia as best we could. Sense and physics be damned. Because it wasn't that kind of game.

Edit:
My math is wrong/inconsistent. And as I remember more, I think I had days between systems rather than hours. Drives were between 500C and 3,000C

08-05-2021, 08:31 AM	#3
khorboth Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Denver, CO	Re: Spaceship Tech in your Setting I feel like this question is backwards. Start with the feeling and themes of the setting and then decide what kinds of spaceships exist there. In my supersoldiers game, I wanted both good FTL travel and a good reason for people to go into stasis during it. So, I created an FTL drive where objective (outside the ship) travel speed was measured in hundreds of times the speed of light. Then, I had subjective (inside the ship) travel speed stuck at speed-of-light. So, a 10-light-year trip might take hours of objective time, but would be four years of subjective time. I then just refused to explain how the physics worked. Nobody fully understood the physics in-universe. It wasn't important to the game. I also wanted a reason to have some in-system travel time, so ships had to jump in substantially far from stars due to radiation levels interfering with the drive. In-system, I made excessively efficient drives which used mass scooped from gas giants. The PCs had a very nice ship which could accelerate at 2g for as long as they needed to. I gave them travel times based on their characters' calculations. Again, further explanation was unnecessary. It wasn't the game's focus. I described the game as hard-science compatible. It mostly made sense, but wasn't excessively detailed. Conversely, when we ran Star Wars, the ships had top-speed. They had a certain range before refueling. When they went close to other ships, they went "woosh" explosions in space go "boom!" And we translated entries from Wookiepedia as best we could. Sense and physics be damned. Because it wasn't that kind of game. Edit: My math is wrong/inconsistent. And as I remember more, I think I had days between systems rather than hours. Drives were between 500C and 3,000C Last edited by khorboth; 08-05-2021 at 01:03 PM.