New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

IQ 15 characters are professionals in virtually every single mental skill with no training working off defaults alone. No real world human is like that.
But that's only IQ! 15.
Willpower and Perception 15 is near Terminator determination and Sherlock Homes acuity.
All together makes for a superhuman.

GURPS IQ is unitary, real intelligence isn't. If you actually knew me, you'd see that I am highly intelligent, but, like every other human, I have areas of stupidity. GURPS simplifies intelligence, just like almost all RPGs. This makes it a game, not unrealistic.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would actually place Terminator like determination at Will 20 (as it had to succeed on a bunch of Will rolls at -10 to continue) and Sherlock like perception at Per 20 (as he had to succeed on a bunch of Per rolls at -10 to succeed in his cases). Of course, I tend to be rather generous with penalties, and -20 is not uncommon in my campaigns (attempting to pick locks, by touch, with improvised tools, upside down, hanging on a rope with your legs, during a hurricane).

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

GURPS IQ is unitary, real intelligence isn't. If you actually knew me, you'd see that I am highly intelligent, but, like every other human, I have areas of stupidity. GURPS simplifies intelligence, just like almost all RPGs. This makes it a game, not unrealistic.

If it didn't simplify intelligence, we'd have a half-dozen or more stats that are currently covered by 'IQ.' On the bright side, it does fairly well at simulating some forms of fictional intelligence.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

If it didn't simplify intelligence, we'd have a half-dozen or more stats that are currently covered by 'IQ.' On the bright side, it does fairly well at simulating some forms of fictional intelligence.

But simulating fictions is the fun we're all after. So it's good!

[Astromancer]

Try this idea...


Basically, a loophole in gravity is found. The young lady, Dr. Wanda Jackson, wins the Nobel at twenty-eight. She spends her time there after nailing down the ramifications of her discoveries and theories. Antigravity engines, reactionless drives, and FTL drives too, were the technological results most people understood. Certain esoteric sidelights of Doctor Jackson's insights allowed cheap efficient fusors. Which powered the second half of the Twenty-First century.

Basically, this is a TL8^ Space Opera, except for the ships and the fusors, all the tech is straight down the middle TL8. Advanced TL8, but TL8. The politics are our world's politics.

The Jackson Drive is a skip warp. At normal cruising speed, 90 light years can be covered in eighteen months. Higher speeds can't be sustained for long. After a certain period of voyaging serious maintenance is needed. If you stay on cruise or lower, the limit is about three years. Higher speeds radically limit how long you can go without serious maintenance.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

But simulating fictions is the fun we're all after. So it's good!

Well, the fun most of us are after, anyway. I'm sure there's at least a few people out there who would want to play a game that had about six or so intelligence stats (designed by psychologists, for psychology students?), but I'm generally not one of them.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Try this idea...


Basically, a loophole in gravity is found. The young lady, Dr. Wanda Jackson, wins the Nobel at twenty-eight. She spends her time there after nailing down the ramifications of her discoveries and theories. Antigravity engines, reactionless drives, and FTL drives too, were the technological results most people understood. Certain esoteric sidelights of Doctor Jackson's insights allowed cheap efficient fusors. Which powered the second half of the Twenty-First century.

Basically, this is a TL8^ Space Opera, except for the ships and the fusors, all the tech is straight down the middle TL8. Advanced TL8, but TL8. The politics are our world's politics.

The Jackson Drive is a skip warp. At normal cruising speed, 90 light years can be covered in eighteen months. Higher speeds can't be sustained for long. After a certain period of voyaging serious maintenance is needed. If you stay on cruise or lower, the limit is about three years. Higher speeds radically limit how long you can go without serious maintenance.

You end up with a terrorist (economic, political, religious, it does not matter) stealing a 100 metric ton shuttle, filling it with 50 metric tons of ball bearings, going 1200 AU out, and accelerating to 0.1c before dumping the ball bearings out the cargo hold halfway to their target. The terrorist is capable of going somewhere else after releasing their cargo while the ball bearings invisibly follow the laws of inertia to their destination (which is a target nation).

If we assume that the terrorist releases the ball bearings at 300,000 light seconds (around 600 AU), random dispersion will probably spread the ball bearings across 1,000 kilometers radius during their six week journey. If we assume that each ball bearing is 100 grams, they will each possess the equivalent explosive power of 22 kilotons of TNT. With 500,000 ball bearings, that ends up hitting the Earth with a total explosive force of 11 gigatons of TNT. If it hits eastern North America, it wipes out every major city in the US and Canada west of the Rockies.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

You end up with a terrorist (economic, political, religious, it does not matter) stealing a 100 metric ton shuttle, filling it with 50 metric tons of ball bearings, going 1200 AU out, and accelerating to 0.1c before dumping the ball bearings out the cargo hold halfway to their target. .

I'm pretty sure the enterprising terrorist would kill their self while in the process of accelerating like that. The super-science doesn't include deflector shields after all. Nor would it be all that hard to track and intercept the stolen shuttle on the way out.

[tanksoldier]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Nor would it be all that hard to track and intercept the stolen shuttle on the way out.

Somebody will eventually succeed... and the shuttle full of ball bearings isn't required, the shuttle itself will do.

...plenty of orbital habitats in this scenario. 9/11.... IN SPAAAACCCEEE!

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by tanksoldier

Somebody will eventually succeed... and the shuttle full of ball bearings isn't required, the shuttle itself will do.

...plenty of orbital habitats in this scenario. 9/11.... IN SPAAAACCCEEE!

If you can get stolen shuttles in space, you can station real interceptors there, too.

Anything that fast will set off all sorts of klaxons, and somebody will send a fast-mover to make a kinetic inquiry.