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Old 05-27-2022, 11:29 AM   #51
Joseph Paul
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Originally Posted by Lovewyrm View Post
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.
Re GURPS defense assumptions:

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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
Let's ask the men at Antietam, or the high water mark at Gettysburg, or every bomber crew that crossed the Channel to face flack while they stayed in formation to plaster the evil beyond the Rhine. It is not a character flaw to be brave in the face of sure danger. They weren't suicidal, they had a Higher Purpose.

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Same with this star warping. Who'd do this if they aren't confident that they'll survive it?
Every master of a ship that sailed uncharted waters in search of treasure, conquest, and renown. Every test pilot ever, the guy that said "Let's light this candle!", Grissom, White, and Chaffee. The first person that ever tried to ride a horse. All the people that moved to new lands when bad things happened in their old hunting grounds. That meant meeting new peoples, new animals, new weather, new diseases. All of which will try to kill you.

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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 sounds much more like wish fulfillment than an exercise of will so who is granting that wish?


[quote]This is probably more sanity protecting to you, as well.
{snip - sanity, ramifications, and concerns for playability and fun}

Thank you for your comments on these topics. I have these all well in hand. Would you have anything concrete to share on modeling in GURPS that light surfing capability that will pierce the light lag problem?

Quote:
Oh yeah:
The cracking frogs.
You have missed the point of delivering munitions instantaneously and at any arbitrary distance from the target in a system where the arrival of the aggressor will be masked due to light lag. I asked how that was supposed to be defended against. If you have to intercept the munition you have already lost.
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Old 05-27-2022, 11:46 AM   #52
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Originally Posted by Joseph Paul View Post
Let's ask the men at Antietam, or the high water mark at Gettysburg, or every bomber crew that crossed the Channel to face flack while they stayed in formation to plaster the evil beyond the Rhine. It is not a character flaw to be brave in the face of sure danger. They weren't suicidal, they had a Higher Purpose.
Would they have crossed the flak lines with hot air balloons, too?
If not, why not?

That's what I'm getting at.

Who'd set sail to uncharted waters without the notion that they can survive it?
Would they have sailed to uncharted waters in a makeshift raft and a single loaf of bread?
If not, why not?

>sounds like wish fulfillment
Well if I am reading the rules for Warp correctly there's merely a penalty for indirect viewing too.
Like seeing a place through a TV screen.

If the player visualizes the destination then they arrive there if they make the roll.

>Do you have something that pierces light lag problems
Yeah, the stuff you snipped out because you have it in hand.
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Old 05-27-2022, 12:14 PM   #53
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Who'd set sail to uncharted waters without the notion that they can survive it?
Few people would do something they felt they had no chance of surviving; those who would are either gripped by some form of insanity or - perhaps more likely - expect to accomplish something they value above their lives. But I see no indication that the suggested change to Warp means "If you use this, you die." Better to assume the characters have some means of surviving using this modified Warp than otherwise.

I mean, I'd be disinclined to handle Warp this way, but I could see it having some potentially interesting effects. Unless there's some way to detect distant Warps at FTL speeds, however, it seems like the planet-cracking frogs would still be an issue, they just need more jumps to reach their destination.
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Old 05-27-2022, 12:43 PM   #54
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post

If no one tells you you've jumped back 30,000 years in the process of warping, how would you know?
I suspect that my starting point is not in the right place when I check it.
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Old 05-27-2022, 01:25 PM   #55
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I suspect that my starting point is not in the right place when I check it.
And how do you check it to discover it's not in the right place?

You're 30,000 light-years from home. The night sky is going to be that of the planet you're on, that you probably haven't been to before. The stars that make up the constellations you're familiar with will still be there and may even be visible to you, but the constellations won't be because the relative positions of the stars have changed. If you're on a planetary surface you don't even know which galactic direction you're looking in, barring maybe being able to use Andromeda, the Magellanic Clouds and possibly one or two more galaxies to establish general galactic direction, if they're even visible. You don't even necessarily have a guarantee that you're in the same N/S hemisphere relative to the destination planet that you were in on the originating planet. The night sky may be the one that should have the Southern Cross rather than the Big Dipper in it. I think you'd have your dirty muckle to even locate where Sol is (30,000 years ago), much less determine that it should be somewhere else.
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Old 05-27-2022, 01:45 PM   #56
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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And how do you check it to discover it's not in the right place?
If you have the ability and/or have taken the time to determine this destination is a worthwhile location to travel to, it's possible - probable, even, if your Warp is such that you can't just say "Bring me here" and end up going there - that you've already worked out some star charts for the destination. Obviously, some of that's going to be wrong, but when you consistently find that everything is off by about 30,000 years, you're probably going to get a bit suspicious. And things get even worse if you do manage to identify your origin, because if you then decide to Warp there... you're going to notice pretty quickly that you're in a completely different time period than when you started.

Also, you're going to have noticed this aspect of your Warp ability quite some time ago. Do you suppose this 60,000 light year Warp is the first Warp the character has ever done? Warp to Mars, stay there for a bit, then Warp back... and find your watch is about half an hour fast. Well, that's odd, let's see what happens if you just Warp to Mars, then come back immediately... at which point you meet yourself from half an hour ago, and now we're dealing with a time travel campaign.
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Old 05-27-2022, 03:21 PM   #57
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Originally Posted by Lovewyrm View Post
Would they have crossed the flak lines with hot air balloons, too?
If not, why not?

That's what I'm getting at.
What I am getting at is that you have taken it upon yourself to declare the level of danger involved based on nothing I have presented and after I have already explicitly stated that I am not concerned with pursuing that at this time.


>sounds like wish fulfillment
Well if I am reading the rules for Warp correctly there's merely a penalty for indirect viewing too.
Like seeing a place through a TV screen.

If the player visualizes the destination then they arrive there if they make the roll.[/quote]

Does it need to be a live feed or will a static stock shot do? How about a post card? I find the indirect viewing to be problematic as well and included for replicating settings where the original author of a literary work used it. I am not inclined to do so.

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>Do you have something that pierces light lag problems
Yeah, the stuff you snipped out because you have it in hand.
I am so sorry that what you consider an acceptable solution won't work for me or my players. Perhaps you should peruse more of the threads that are explicitly about building powers to get the hang of what is expected in such endeavors.
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Old 05-27-2022, 03:27 PM   #58
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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Originally Posted by Curmudgeon View Post
And how do you check it to discover it's not in the right place?

You're 30,000 light-years from home. The night sky is going to be that of the planet you're on, that you probably haven't been to before. The stars that make up the constellations you're familiar with will still be there and may even be visible to you, but the constellations won't be because the relative positions of the stars have changed. If you're on a planetary surface you don't even know which galactic direction you're looking in, barring maybe being able to use Andromeda, the Magellanic Clouds and possibly one or two more galaxies to establish general galactic direction, if they're even visible. You don't even necessarily have a guarantee that you're in the same N/S hemisphere relative to the destination planet that you were in on the originating planet. The night sky may be the one that should have the Southern Cross rather than the Big Dipper in it. I think you'd have your dirty muckle to even locate where Sol is (30,000 years ago), much less determine that it should be somewhere else.
We won't be navigating the galaxy by constellations. We set Sag A* as the center and work out Galactic Coordinate systems and peg loud quasars as beacons to be checked against. See the Project Rho Star Mapshttp://www.projectrho.com/public_html/starmaps/
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Old 05-27-2022, 04:27 PM   #59
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

The key difference is in how you define your target.

If you define your targets by "place", then teleport works pretty much like it does in most stories, when it works it takes you to that place in some narrative sense in survivable way. This is the power you are *paying for* with Warp, or the Teleport spell. If it doesn't do this, that's fine, but it needs to come with a limitation.

If you define it by direction and distance, then it can't fail to bring you to the correct star because you can't aim at stars (or any other particular "place") anyway. Only at a direction and distance. This version doesn't do stuff like match ground levels, or local velocities or anything else and is likely to kill you accidentally if you are a little bit out. It may very well kill you if you use it to teleport into an atmosphere, since lacking any way of determining what is at the other end it can't very well lock on what's there to swap it with you, so if there's any significant amount of matter there, you presumably interpenetrate with it and explode. You are also going to need to take into account all kinds of other stuff other than the proper motion of the target - momentum conservation, materializing inside occupied space, relativistic effects (what happens when you teleport somewhere in different gravity where *sizes* are not the same) all that other stuff that basically makes teleporting an exercise in physics you will probably never be able to capture all the possible consequences of. It's a lot of work to make the power into something nobody will use as anything other than a plot device.

And if you are going to have reliable workarounds that make the power useful, then in the end it just converts it back to the first useful form when those workarounds function. I'd think about just adding "Requires skill roll" and a rule that failure is one of the many possible lethal off target accidents and just skip the lot of work.
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Old 05-27-2022, 07:21 PM   #60
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Default Re: Extreme warp and light lag

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If no one tells you you've jumped back 30,000 years in the process of warping, how would you know?
You find out when you return. You're 30,000 years in the past. Light reaching your new planet from Earth is 30,000 years old -- so, 60K years before your departure from Earth. When you jump back, you jump to an Earth 30,000 years before you leave the new planet, so you're 60,000 years before you left. The situation is symmetrical. If Warp means travelling back in time, then long-distance Warpers get permanently lost -- and the organization sending them out, if any, will certainly notice.

You'll also see the same effect, but on a much shorter timescale, with shorter jumps. The first test Warp to Alpha Centuri returns 8 years before it leaves. That's not so long that there's no civilization, and not so long that you can't just leave a note for yourself (or your bosses) to introduce all the usual time-travel paradoxes.

At some point, there was probably some researcher trying to measure Warp time to see if it was instantaneous, light speed, or some slower rate, so they did a test with an atomic clock, laser interferometry, or other tech tricks, able to measure a loss of time even with short jumps remaining on Earth.

Seems like a cure worse than the disease.
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