GURPS Space: Stardrives

[Diomedes]

One of the things that's fallen out of the discussion of SF space settings is the importance of how you get around. Apart from dictating the movement of the players, it dictates the setup of the universe.

So I thought this might be a good time to brainstorm fictional stardrives and figure out what's "gamable."

Here's my first idea:

Hyperspace/Catapult Drive

The hyperdrive portion of this is fairly standard; you have to get far enough away from large gravitational bodies like planets and stars, calibrate your drive for your destination, and press enter. It's fairly slow; 200c will take you about a week to get to Alpha Centauri, plus the time you spend getting out of the inner system, and getting into the inner system of your destination.

So it was with great joy that people discovered "hyper nodes" in several nearby systems. Hyper nodes are features of space-time that, when properly stimulated (i.e., with the careful application of energy), will fling a starship on its way, at a much greater speed (~3500c). The distance is variable up to a maximum for each node, as is the direction, so careful calculation is required beforehand.

One limitation of the nodes is that travel is mostly one-way. You can only get back if your destination happens to have a node of its own, of sufficient range to reach the original. If not, you have to use hyperdrive to get home. Of course, if the system has a node of insufficient range, you can still use it to take a shortcut and reduce your travel time.

Most trips consist of using hyperdrive to reach a suitable node, and often navigating to several nodes on a long voyage. If you're lucky, each node is within range of the last one; more often, you go as far as you can and cover the difference on hyperdrive.

The advantage of this system is that it allows choke points, which are useful to empire builders and pirates. But it also allows people to take the slow-but-direct route, or go off the beaten path for exploring, smuggling, hiding, and other things PC's may want to do.

The disadvantage is that keeping track of the nodes and their ranges would be a pain (probably requiring a computer program or applet), though not as much of a pain as placing the nodes in the first place!

Questions? Comments? Ideas that would make it more or less of a pain?