05-07-2021, 05:58 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Mar 2005
Location: The deep dark haunted woods
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
It all depends on the fiat rules you give your FTL.
And that's the point - they're fiat. What the guy says. You don't have to worry about conforming to rules until the rules are written. You figure out the rules you want your space battles to follow. Then you design a drive to follow the rules you want. Period.
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05-07-2021, 06:22 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Quote:
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
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05-07-2021, 06:50 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Quote:
Discussions like this can also help one determine what fiat rules they want - is a bottleneck desirable? If so, in which direction works best for the setting you want? And so forth.
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05-07-2021, 07:06 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Quote:
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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05-07-2021, 07:13 PM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Quote:
Also, if there are wormholes/jumpoints, how far are they from any points of interest within the star system? Remote jump points mean any invaders, smugglers, etc. are probably seen a long way from where they are going, and that makes tactical surprise and gun-running very hard. If they are close to a world (or whatever) gun-running and other smuggling by being sneaky and fast works (like in Star Wars) and, unless the jump point is easy to interdict (which also does for the gun-runners), so do surprise attacks.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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05-08-2021, 01:08 AM | #16 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Quote:
Also, really, there's no meaningful option to retreat regardless while fighting the forts, because beam engagements are far too fast, and no real obstacle to retreat once you've broken them. If you've destabilized the wormhole you can't retreat through it, but you can simply retreat into hyperspace.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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05-08-2021, 07:45 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
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His throat dimensions could be fairly restricted, which would lead to "Panamax" freighters optimized for the opening. |
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05-08-2021, 08:57 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Dec 2020
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
Another options for wormholes is to say that in a given time a max volume / mass can pass it. So after a big ship there would be a cooldown time making big fleets jumping simultan nearly impossible.
Some other method often used in computer games is that you have wormholes that have different passage times, like a green wormhole allows a ship to cross the distance in zero time, a yellow one needs 1 hour passage time and a black one will reach the target destination sometime in the next millenia. If you use this you can always add in that the distance between the jump points has to be counted in. That makes wormholes effectiely space roads, from forbidden lanes or one way up to the autobahn. Any world should had have access to the web of wormhole lanes, but some of it are one ways or blind end, making worlds with multiple wormholes sought after places. In the Honorverse manticore got a big part of their money not from own industry / labour but from the wonderfully connection to several wormhole lanes. |
05-09-2021, 06:36 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
A bit about the wormholes in the Irar setting mentioned in the OP, from a post I'm working on for that thread:
Wormholes in this setting are very difficult to detect at range, if no-one has placed a beacon or guard-station nearby. Scanning for them optically or otherwise using electromagnetic radiation, you're only going to find one if you're very close (Long-Distance Modifiers, pB241) and know to look for a visual distortion in the background objects (Astronomy-3 on top of the Long-Distance modifier), or if you happen to see something enter or leave, that doesn't have a cloaking device. Psychotronic detection systems do much better, having penalties based on light-second ranges (Size and Speed-Range table, pB550; treat 'yards' as light-seconds, and Speed/Range as the penalty; an Astronomical Unit is just under 500 light-seconds). You still need to be looking in the right place, though. Once you know where it is, following its orbital path becomes far less difficult, though you can still lose it of you aren't careful. A wormhole's mean radius of orbit mostly varies roughly between 3 AU and 13 AU (2d+1 AU, in other words). The physical nature of a wormhole as currently understood is a spherical spacial and gravitic anomaly which reads to psychic detection somewhat like a continuous teleportation. The amount of gravity it produces is quite small, far out of proportion with the difficulty of altering its orbit (which so far no-one has managed). It is possible to pass through in both directions (manoeuver toward the centre of the wormhole, and you will come out the other side); oddly, vessels cannot collide in the 'tunnel' - they simply move around each other. Psychic or psychotronic communication is possible though the wormhole, though radio or laser communication seems not to be. Likewise, it is possible to scan though the wormhole using psychic senses and psychotronic sensors, though at best you're only likely to 'see' a few light-seconds around the wormhole on the other side. Thoughts?
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Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted. |
05-10-2021, 07:59 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
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Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks
The "Starfire" novels by David Weber and Steve White, based on the game of the same name use jump points. There's a lot of discussion about jump point strategy from a defensive and an offensive standpoint.
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