12-27-2020, 04:00 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
You could just as easily have fuel/coolant requirements for inertialless boost drives and get the same sense of drama while avoiding civilization killing reaction or reactionless rockets. For example, you could rule that inertialless boost drives require 1 fuel tank worth of coolant per engine component for every week of operations, meaning that anyone who skips refueling is going to have a really bad time of it.
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12-27-2020, 04:09 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
Sure, but the point is that there's a wide variety of cinematic rockets (so you need to decide what you're emulating), and they were not generally designed with any particular concern about what is realistic, or even makes sense. For example, anime jump jets don't normally run out of fuel but only allow leaps rather than sustained flight, generally with no explanation as to why they work this way.
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12-27-2020, 04:11 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
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GURPS Overhaul |
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12-27-2020, 04:34 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
If players get to bend reality in the name of cinematics, so do GMs. A vehicle breaking down at exactly the worst moment is very cinematic, and so should be part of the GM's toolkit.
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12-27-2020, 05:10 PM | #15 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
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12-27-2020, 05:41 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
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12-27-2020, 10:18 PM | #17 | ||
Join Date: Jun 2020
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
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One of the core things of the setting that it is a 'future-history' setting, where things progress, however slowly. Originally, the various factions of humanity used NTRs and nuclear lightbulbs to travel between planets, but due to the fact that peace is no longer a thing in the setting, it was found that the rockets aren't good enough in the D-V department to head to somewhere, fight, and then head out to somewhere else. So the various factions invested in researching ways to improve the delta-v to maximize effectiveness. This led to a high-efficiency fusion drive similar to Transhuman Space's High-Efficiency Plasma Recombustion Fusion Rocket (HePlaR). They're not Battletech efficient (~40 days at 1G for only 1.6kTons of hydrogen!?!) but they're enough to turn a trip that would take years (Earth to Jupiter) and reduce that to a handful of months... and that is before the invention of the 'Interplanetary Drive' (making a trip that would have taken years to a literal handful of months). 'Unrealistic' is usually termed 'cinematic' from what I've heard... |
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12-28-2020, 03:54 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
Cinematic is also unrealistic, but unrealistic is broader than that. Cinematic is 'things happen because dramatically appropriate'.
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12-28-2020, 07:01 AM | #19 |
Join Date: Jun 2020
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
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12-28-2020, 07:06 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: Cinematic Rocket Delta-V Rules
Superscience and magic are unrealistic, but they are not necessarily cinematic (you can have FTL or spell casting in a noncinematic setting). The primary issue with even limited superscience drives in such a setting is that inertia becomes the ultimate weapon. Even at 35 mps per fuel tank, a spacecraft with 10 fuel tanks can reach 490 mps easily, meaning that every ton of remaining mass is equivalent to 68.5 kilotons of TNT, meaning that civilian terrorists can turn a SM+9 merchant ship in a full scaled Tsar Bomba. Even a SM+4 AKV becomes much more valuable as a WMD than as a combatant, as it would be the equivalent of over 340 kilotons of TNT at full speed.
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Tags |
cinematic, delta-v, spaceships |
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