Extreme warp and light lag

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

You might not enjoy even the Grimnoir books but I think they're his most likeable works.

There is a lot of fighting and I was tickled with the idea of John Browning being the main character's personal armorer but it could easily be too much gun fu for some people.

I kind of liked the Portuguese farmer adopting the Okie girl.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Ignoring the question of time delay for the moment, let's consider how accurately you can resolve something, in principle. A human being with 20/20 vision can discriminate details with an SM of -17 at a range of -3. That's a factor of 2000. So I would say that if you are looking at a star 2000 light years away, you can see its position with an accuracy of 1 light year. Your eye simply cannot resolve any better than that.

OP specified telescopic vision at a really hug level too if I recall.

[Lovewyrm]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

Resolving that makes the warper omniscient about every body in the sky and that can become problematic. How does a galactic civilisation protect itself from planet cracking, nova bombing terrorist frogs if the Universe permits exact location despite light lag?

It can't because planet cracking, nova bombing terrorist frogs (that can also warp) would not even attempt warping into space if they didn't have reliable means to do this.
Unless they're the equivalent of a ragtag crew on earth that has bad equipment or something and still is able to release planet annihiliation ordnance.

I'm still quite new to GURPS but I have come across that critique before where GURPS is considered problematic when it comes to 'player gains unrightful precognition regarding high speed projectiles fired at them'.

Aka the 'problem' of GURPS allowing you a defense roll upon potential hit.
Thus, one could stand in a rifle killing field, start channeling magic, and only stop channeling when the GM goes:" OK this bullet will hit you if you don't evade it."

But, I see this more as bad roleplaying. If you are vulnerable to bullets, and don't have some sort of suicidal trait that would rationalize you standing in a bullet hell killing field, knowing very well that you're being shot and you don't get the hell outta dodge, then ...THAT is the problem, not the fact that GURPS throws you a bone that you can do a defense roll on a ranged attack you are aware of.

You're simply metagaming or are just doing something out of character crazy at that moment and should probably get a suicidal disadvantage or something equally fitting.

Same with this star warping. Who'd do this if they aren't confident that they'll survive it?

But, that aside, here's a rationalization for warping to a star despite light lag.
"I warp to the origin of these photons of this star." (Or something worded better)
Then the magical warp ability glides across the photon stream until it stops.

THis is probably more sanity protecting to you, as well.
Do you really want to model the known observable universe in your head?
Space is also really vast, if you want light lag to come into play then just BS something on the spot, your players probably just want to play.

And also, consider the fantasy tracking problem.
What would be the point of arriving elsewhere (or not finding tracks)? What are the ramifications of it?

Does the player suffer instant plasma death? That would be pretty harsh.
Does the player suffer nothing? Then it's just a nuisance.
Does the player suffer confusion? Then that might also be just a nuisance if you don't have a 'quest' in mind.
Do you have flavorful side encounters in mind? Then roll on an encounter table 'on the way there'
Can the player overcome this with some sort of skill? Then that might just be a nuisance too.
Do you want the reallifeplayer to calculate actual astrophysics? Then that might be harsh to those who are not good at it.

Like, what's the fun campaign point of this, in relation to letting people pull of this feat in the first place?

I brought up survivability because it's the strongest indicator of potential nuisance.
"If I can survive near stars I want to warp to, then warping to nothingness, or a wrong star is no big deal"

Okay they might be crushed by a black hole or something, but is that fun?
"You zoom in onto the star and start warping. Oops, black hole appears, roll against gravity annihilation. The black hole dice bin is in the yard, just use the back hoe to roll it"


Oh yeah:
The cracking frogs. Maybe just abstract it into a battlemap and use things like projectile scatter and the like, multiplied by so and so lightyears off. Maybe?

Like, the entire target system fits on a 21x21 hexmap, or something, roll for scatter, and instead just going one hex or so, roll it against a difficulty number you think of on the spot with the capabilities of the frogs in mind (combined efforts of their scientists etc)

And the margin of failure is how far you go from the scatter point. Any success is just one hex.
You could even trace a projectile line to the spot you find with that method if you know where in space it's coming from and see if it hits some planet in the way.
Sure it's 2d but, you know. Hard enough as it is :P


P.S.:
Maybe just think of this 'light surfing' enhancement for warp.
With accessibility only for photons and other streamed energy sources that go beyond 'regular planetary physics' like wind or water.

Adds so or so many percent to the cost of warp.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by TGLS

OP specified telescopic vision at a really hug level too if I recall.

Are we trying for some kind of physical realism? Because if we are, there's a limit to how much angular resolution you can achieve. When your retinal neurons are closer together than half a wavelength of light, you're done. If you want more telescopic vision than that allows, you need to have a much bigger eyeball.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are we trying for some kind of physical realism?

When considering limits on a power that allows faster than light teleportation? I think this setting has already moved past that.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by malloyd

When considering limits on a power that allows faster than light teleportation? I think this setting has already moved past that.

Well, not necessarily, because we're discussing how speed of light limits affect the accuracy of teleportation. If physical realism weren't an issue, then we could just assume that it was possible to perceive a destination at an arbitrary distance.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Are we trying for some kind of physical realism? Because if we are, there's a limit to how much angular resolution you can achieve. When your retinal neurons are closer together than half a wavelength of light, you're done. If you want more telescopic vision than that allows, you need to have a much bigger eyeball.

Tagon's Toughs in Schlock Mercenary got around this with their Very Dangerous Array - they release (actually, teleport right out of their holding bay) a large number of antiship missiles, spread them out, and slave their targeting systems together to create a singular sensory system (the name is a play on the Very Large Array). They get excellent resolution - there's a memorable sequence where they teleport one VDA 9 light minutes from their destination, and another 136 light minutes from it. The first shows the aftermath of a space battle; the second allows them to actually watch said battle to see what happened (I should note here FTL comms are very much a thing in that setting).

I've also seen (or perhaps read) science fiction in which a small ocular system is able to get incredible resolution by projecting a field of manipulated gravity - basically a giant "gravity lens" that makes the eyeball functionally much larger. If we've got godlike entities who can teleport across the galaxy in an instant, something like that may be in play.

EDIT: I'll note here that the default for GURPS is "You get what you pay for." If you pay for the ability to Warp to a destination on the other side of the galaxy, you get the ability to Warp to said destination on the other side of the galaxy, light lag be damned. Similarly, if you have enough Telescopic Vision to resolve things from that far away, you can resolve things from that far away, even if you're SM-6. If Warp and Telescopic Vision work differently, that's most likely a Limitation... although as GM you are well within your rights to say "This is the way <Advantage> works in this campaign, but it's still full price." You just need to be certain to say that - it's bad form to essentially screw over your players by letting them buy traits they expect to work differently than how they actually will in your campaign. Not that I think that's what OP intends to do here, of course.

[WingedKagouti]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

I have things I want to reveal to the players about the nature of the Universe they inhabit and have them note and investigate the anomalies they find while warping about. My question in the OP is actually "Now what would be necessary to get around that lack of information about where a stellar body is now?"

Navigation (Space/Hyperspace) TL11+ and/or Physics(Astrophysics) TL8+ would be the skills to use to figure out where an interstellar body actually is located. For "realistic" settings you also need a bunch of information on both the place you're at and the place you want to go to to be able to do the calculations in the first place. And these skills obviously only work for this purpose if the knowledge of the society actually matches the physics in the setting.

I have answers for that baked into the setting but I am interested in examining the ways that can give exact locations in GURPS and then I will work on ways the rules can confound that or make setting specific rulings.

As a rule of thumb, FTL travel requires setting specific rules. In science fiction it only goes wrong if the failure is part of the plot, so the specifics are in turn handwaved away to allow for success at something that's basically just getting from one plot location to another.

Super Hero comic books handle it much the same way, if Superman needs to get to an alien planet there's usually just an establishing shot of him leaving Earth followed by one or two in-flight panels of him thinking about plot stuff and then an establishing panel of him arriving at his destination. And if a comic book character is powerful enough to teleport themselves or others from one planet to another, they almost never have to do math or any kind of observation beyond looking into the night sky and finding their destination, they just do it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Well, not necessarily, because we're discussing how speed of light limits affect the accuracy of teleportation.

Teleportation that doesn't obey speed of light limits is already a problem for physical realism.

On the OPs question, I would probably just assume that the ability that permits instantaneous teleportation also allows instantaneous sensing, but absent that predicting future position is mostly a data collection problem, most systems are going to be chaotic over a sufficiently long time scale, but unless you're trying to teleport near Sagittarius A* not really on a time scale of mere intragalaxy light travel time, and without that it's just number crunching.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Teleportation that doesn't obey speed of light limits is already a problem for physical realism.

Not to mention teleportation that does obey speed of light limits, whether for targeting or transit time until reappearance. There's still all the conservation of energy and momentum problems.