GURPS Space campaign setting

[combatmedic]

I like this very much. I think I will use it.:

David Johnston -
The "telegraph" equivalent could be created by having FTL radio, but one with limited effective range, maybe just a tenth of a lightyear. Therefore in order to actually create a communication link between systems you need 40 to 100 "repeater stations", each of them full of eminently destroyable (and perhaps plunderable) hardware. The expense, and need to defend the communications lines, means they only connect up the wealthier, more populous systems and less important inhabited systems that happen to be on the way between them.

This is also very cool, but I'll have to see how it meshes with the FTL drive I'm using:

Fred Brackin-
Rather than literal telegraph, FTL comunication is a sort of semaphore. A packet of enrgetic plasma is contianed in a warp field and aimed at a sun. Anything smaller is too small to be aimed at.

The packet of plasma drops out of warp at whatever distance limit there is and makes a visible flash. You use a simple interval code to encode info. You can't make it very dense though.

You also have limits on how many messages can be coming in from the same side of the galaxy. Too many flashes and they run together.

Messages will look like old-fashioned telegrams. Security is handled by use of codebooks. You send an identifier and the code group "glops". What "glops" means is then looked up in the reciever's codebook. Maybe it's "buy titanium at any price under 100 credits/lb" and maybe it's "Alien invasion" or whatever other meaning was prearranged.

Carrying new codebooks is an important job for secure couriers and stealing codebooks looks highly profitable. Forget about throwing teams of nerds with gigacomputers at the problem though. There shouldn't be enough for them to work with.