Space Campaign, revisited

[combatmedic]

To answer Shrale's question: I suppose there will be drones and bots, but I don't want to negate the role of human crews. Will have to think about this one.


Here's what I'm going for with FTL:
Starships fly between planets, but there are no reactionless drives and no relativistic potential planet busters.
Limited or no FTL commo, other than courier ships.
Trade routes exist.
Possibility of smuggling and piracy.
Living sentient pilots and crews are not obselete.
Limited superscience- mostly just the FTL drive.
No contragrav
No psionics


I'll check out the stutter warp. Thanks, Pomphis.

This is exactly what I was hoping for; lots of feedback on FTL and its effects on travel,trade,communication,etc.

[StevenH]

If you want to go so far as to make living, sentient pilots necessary (as in, no robot FTL pilots at all), you might want to read Modesitt's "Gravity Dreams" novel. The FTL was similar to jump lines, but had very abstracted, almost metaphysical imagery that the pilot had to interpret in order to navigate past hazards. While much of the ship was automated, the piloting itself seemed to require someone who could figure out that the "pulsating red spiky swirly thing on top of what seems to be a hill" was a supernova remnant that would be better off not being collided with.

I also must echo the Vorkosigan comment; lots of jump point tactics, and darn good reads regardless. :-)

Your universe sounds like it will be very interesting!

[combatmedic]

Thanks for the tip.
I'm unsure exactly how I want to do it, but I know what I'm going for.
I like Traveller's Age of Sail feeling. I want something a bit like that. Space voyages takes weeks, months, maybe even years for really long trips.


Once I get the FTL figured out, I'll move on to defining the rest of the universe in greater detail. There will be aliens. No humans in rubber suits [although some of the more common alien species will need to be close enough in thinking to humanity that commerce is possible].

[Apache]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Thanks for the tip.
I'm unsure exactly how I want to do it, but I know what I'm going for.
I like Traveller's Age of Sail feeling. I want something a bit like that. Space voyages takes weeks, months, maybe even years for really long trips.

Check out Voidstrikers' FTL system.

Pretty neat.

Base speed is 1 light-year a month, but massive stars give you a 'boost'. So a ship leaving Antares is going to be going much faster than a ship leaving Earth or Alpha C.

[Sanity]

Google returns hardly anything for Voidstriker - care to provide some more references?

[Ashavan]

CM,

I've been thinking up a similar setting (and am right down the street from you, apparently). The way I'm planning to do it is have jump be instantaneous: when you arrive at the jump point, you activate your jump drive, and you instantaneously emerge at the corresponding jump point in the system on the other end of the jump line. If a system has multiple jump lines coming out of it, it also will have multiple jump points. These are not generally situated near each other, so if your trip involves multiple jumps, you will have to spend a lot of time using old-fashioned maneuver drives to go from one part of the system to another, and space travel will still be pretty slow, even though jump itself is instantaneous. How slow depends on how fast the maneuver drives are, how far apart the jump points are in a given system, and how many systems you need to travel through in a typical voyage.

The approach I'm looking at is one where typical military starships are capable of putting about 1 G of thrust on average over the course of a trip. (They can go up to 2 G for short periods of time in combat but can't sustain it, and fighters can go much faster--5 Gs or so--because they're all engine and weaponry, but they're strictly short-range and don't have FTL capability. I realize that this is an unreasonable amount of thrust for a fusion torch drive that's not reactionless, but whatever, I'm waving the hand.) In a typical system, the jump points are spaced more or less evenly around an orbit out where the gas giants are (just past Saturn's orbit in the case of Sol), so if I have the math right, in-system travel from one jump point to another will usually take a week or two.

If you don't want contragravity or artificial gravity, one thing you may want to think about is how gravity is going to work on the ship. If the ship is capable of putting out 1 G of thrust, then this isn't a problem as long as the ship is accelerating, because in that case the ship will have regular Earthlike gravity and "down" will be in the direction of the ship's engines. If the ship stops accelerating, there's no gravity, however. This has implications for how the ship is laid out, because it means long ships are going to have to be built like skyscrapers, with relatively small decks stacked on top of each other. This is different from most sci fi deck plans, which have layouts similar to modern naval vessels. Jovian Chronicles is the only game I can think of that consciously designs its ships the other way.

[tshiggins]

We had a discussion, not that long ago, about this very topic. That thread has a good description of a lot of different stardrives, as well as their implications and limitations for a campaign. I like the 2300 AD stutterwarp drive, a lot, myself. A description of that drive appears in post 47 of the thread:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...highlight=2300

You are correct, in that you have to resolve the travel question, before you do anything else, in an interstellar science fiction setting. :)

[thtraveller]

Originally Posted by Ashavan

The way I'm planning to do it is have jump be instantaneous: when you arrive at the jump point, you activate your jump drive, and you instantaneously emerge at the corresponding jump point in the system on the other end of the jump line.

Playtest comment: you may need to explain why in settled systems you don't have smaller and cheaper dedicated jump ships (standing room only) that toggle to and fro between two adjacent systems with a fleet of smaller and cheaper in-system shuttles that take you between the jump points and planets.

This also allows FTL comms with toggling jump ships acting as relay stations. You could send an urgent message to the next system and get a reply in around 6 hours.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Once I get the FTL figured out, I'll move on to defining the rest of the universe in greater detail.

An FTL system I used in a couple of campaigns had jumplines but avoided a number of problem areas some people have mentioned.

First, the jumpline was a _line_ and not a point. You could enter or exit anywhere from 1/10 of an AU out from a Sol-size star to probably over 2 AU. Too big an area to squat on top of. You could have an interception fleet with decent distance of anyone coming out but you do need interception capability. If you just sit somewhere (except the target planet's near orbits) bad guys will just avoid you.

Second, jumpline travel was instantaneous but except as a very great rarity you had to make 3-5 jumps to go from one inhabited world to another.

All of the systems between 2 major worlds might be occupied with asteroid miners but usually there will be substantial amounts of wilderness space that no one guards. That's where your pirates hang out.

Also, there was a need to make substantial normal space trips between different jumplines. No real "toggling" messenger drones. For a 5 jump route you'd need 5 drones (and not that smaller or cheaper than a manned ship) and 10-15 relay stations (sometimes the system's sun will be between 2 jumplines and you need an extra relay). You might have such a pony express between 2 major worlds but certainly not everywhere.

These are the two major points to bear in mind to avoid some of the mentioned problems. No single jump "point" and multiple jumps required.

[combatmedic]

Thanks for the advice, guys. I've been reading and re-reading articles on Atomic Rockets, sections of GURPSSpace, and various web pages- trying to settle on what works best.



Different civilizations will build different sorts of starships, naturally. I do want there to be some 'technical box' style flying skyscrapers with big-damn fusion rockets stucking out the rear end.

Don't care if there are manned space fighters or not.

Now I must go to sleep. Study all day tomorrow.