Space Exploration Worldbuilding

[Tiger]

This is my first post here, sorry it's so long but I don't usually have internet access so I wanted to front load it. If any of the below seems interesting, gives you ideas or is related to another post let me know! If there's any gibberish, I apologize because I'm on my girlfriends phone typing it.

I'm currently hammering out some ideas I've had for a roleplaying setting. It's designed for GURPS and I have all the relevant books and Pyramid issues. Before I start digging through statistics, though, I need to figure out some details.

I already know the general theme of what I want to run as a game - a space navy style military is exploring new star systems. Exploration in space and of planetary surfaces is the main activity. There still be some combat (personal and shipboard) as well as survival situations. Scientific study is also involved.

The setting tech level is about 10 in GURPS, they have relatively efficient spacecraft, but not torch drives - they have a lot of dV compared to SpaceX but not enough to fly around Willy nilly and ignore gravity wells.

Weapons are mostly regular firearms and some lasers. Spacecraft use the same, as well as particle beam cannons. I'm tilting strongly towards believable/conservative technology, though with some cinematic rule tweaks to help the players out so they're not just made obsolete by technology. There is no artificial gravity or teleportation. Faster than light will probably be wormholes, which are natural or at least far outside the capability of humans to recreate.

Characters should be with the crew/ship sometimes but also have an opportunity for independent decision making and some trade.

Regarding combat, but I have to be very careful because GURPS is already somewhat dangerous and people use coilguns on each other. Whatever the 'threat' is it has to be potentially survivable and allow players to use their talents or call in help so that it's a fight and not just a test of who can hit first and annihilate their target.

Add mentioned above, there is some military threat - I'm still not sure if it's other humans (prewormhole slow boat colonists who've generically engineered themselves), am intelligent alien or some non intelligent threat which is still space capable (as in Blindsight by Watts, mindless starfish aliens building superorganisms that eat radiation in space). Possibly some combination, such as slowboat colonists who've domesticated dangerous space monsters.

I'm also considering putting in mild psionics.

I'd be interested in hearing ideas and analysis for the setting. I still am not sure how to structure the mission and military to give them opportunity to go off by themselves sometimes. I'm unsure of what the Threat should be. Im also interested in alternatives to wormholes. Jump gates are interesting but can make it too easy to bring infrastructure and supplies, and I want the isolated, slow aspect of space travel to be key.

Warp and jump drives are out, unless there was a serious fuel limitation (and difficulty in getting the fuel), so that someone jumping will have to be committed to his destination as it's not possible to jump at will. Something like a limited jump drive with steep navigation requirements appeals to me as a alternative to wormholes.

One reason I thought wormholes initially is because they're not contiguous - a wormhole might lead to another galaxy a million years in the past, while across the system is one that leads to Mars orbit two days from now.

The disconnected time/long wait aspect really interests me - if I can make it work I'd like to include elements of "The Forever War" by Haldeman(sp?) and the Alastair Reynolds space operas with time diallated characters who are functionally immortal. A society actually adapted to work that way would be very interesting to portray. I want to portray the vastness of space, time and huge alien arcologies (ie "Rendezvous with Rama" , the decaying Dyson Swarm in Reynolds' "Revenger", Niven's Ringworld, etc.)

Most sci fi totally ignores these things(basically WW1/WW2 in space and aliens are everywhere butt somehow we never see them). The scientific and exploratory are the focus here, not 'human interest stories'. Plot takes a firm back seat to astrophysics.

One reason I'm interested in the wormhole our discontinuous jump type of scenario is that it allows aliens and space infrastructure to exist, whereas in our galaxy it seems they probably don't (if you light up a fusion torch drive or use radio it would be fairly obvious to anyone within several hundred light years). Wormholes allows me to avoid issues with Relativity and implausibly invisible alien civilizations as they can be on the other side of the galactic cluster instead of around the corner as required I a warp drive scenario.

Finally, I don't want to do forehead/hat aliens. While they might have some things in common with us (manipulators, math, requiring foods) I endevour to make at least some of aliens further from human beings than any organism that had ever lived on Earth - which are all cousins of ours.