More interstellar drive options...

[BobGreenwade]

One of the things I'm hoping to see in Galactic Champions (and, by implication, The Galactic Federation) is an expansion of the ATRI scale.

 

One way I'd like to see it expanded is the addition of other categories, as imports from Se'ecra, Perseid, and Mon'dabi versions of technology classification. But let's discuss that in another thread, another time.

 

What I'm interested in right now (as you've probably guessed from the topic header) is a few more slots below the "Malvan" level of ATRI 14 -- basically, increasing the number for this sort of "ultimate" tech, and add more possibilities. Since one of the benchmark areas used by Humans is transportation, maybe some new technologies for interstellar drives are in order.

 

I can come up with two right off the top of my head.

 

First, "slipstream" movement. This is a form featured in Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, though there was some mention on Star Trek: Voyager. Basically this involves finding a "space tunnel" between where you are and where you want to be, and riding it. The nature of the tunnel is the subatomic "threading" among all the particles of the universe; the trick is to find the one taking you where you want to go. This, I'd model with Teleportation, MegaScale (enough to go between any two points in the galaxy), Extra Time (1 Day), Requires A PS: Slipstream Navigation Roll, Side Effects (ends up someplace else), and maybe a few other Limitations. More advanced versions would reduce the time and maybe make the Skill roll easier.

 

My second idea is wormhole generation. This can take a ship anywhere, instantly. I figure it would be a very complex process, so the early versions would need a month of recovery before creating a new wormhold. As above, I'd start this with Teleportation, MegaScale (enough to go between any two points in the galaxy), and then go on to 1 Continuing Charge for 5 Minutes which Recovers per Month, and all the necessary Modifiers to create a Gate. More advanced versions would reduce the recovery time, and extend the MegaScale to eventually (probably late in the {i]Galactic Champions[/i] period -- say, around 2200) reach other galaxies and even galactic clusters.

 

Any thoughts, and/or other suggestions?

[Dr. Anomaly]

I knew someone once who named the capital ships of his galactic empire for various Rush albums. The Long-Awaited Friend, for example, was a MASH ship, Moving Pictures was a propaganda ship that could project holographic images on a planet's atmosphere that could be seen from anywhere in that hemisphere, and so on.

 

One of the ships was a ship that opened "warp gates" between systems that other ships could use to get instantly to the destination, without all the time it took for a hyperspace transit. The name of the ship? Power Windows, of course!

 

In any case, what about a "drive" like that...a MegaArea, MegaRange Teleport Gateway. Perhaps one or two of the big ships in a fleet could have this equipment, and the other ships in the flotilla don't even need stardives, just realspace engines.

[Snarf]

I don't know anything about Galactic Champions and I have no idea if this is useful to you, but I did make a new type of stardrive for one of my futury type games. It was kind of like an instant jump drive, but instead of jumping on it's own it enhances a characters teleportation powers so their inches turn to light years. I designed it as a megascaling naked modifier with bulky focus and drawing from the power source of the vehicle it's installed in.

 

If threads for the slipstream riding are stable and well known, you could make navigators or navigation computers do an area knowledge roll to recall where the useful threads are in that region.

[keithcurtis]

I had a drive that relied on something called thread pulling. The idea was that every particle in the universe had a natural connection with every other particle. This was a thread of "negative energy", one of the requirements for the mathematics of warping space. It cannot be detected by normal instruments and has no direct effect on the observable universe. However, if enough particles are compacted into one space, the threads become something that can be manipulated. Basically, only a star had enough threads concentrated into one space. From the point of view of the thread-pulling starship, the universe was a bundle of threads that connect all the stars. The more massive the star, the more threads you could pull and the faster you could travel. There was a limit, though. You had to pull the thread end a physical distance in order to "open" the "end" and create the warp bubble. Small stars required more sophistacation than current tech allowed and large stars were often so large that the thread end was still inside the star and thus unusable. You were thus limited to a couple of classes around the G-class star.

There was a lot more than that, but that's the gist. I never bothered to write it up in Hero terms, since it was more of a plot device, belonging to a unique prototype ship. If I were to take a stab at it in Hero terms, it would probably be a form of Megascale Teleportation, extra time, linked to extradimensional movement (A ship in transit has almost no interaction with the physical universe)

 

Keith "Silly rabbit, points are for players" Curtis

[Drakkenkin]

I have to head to class right now, but I have two possible Ideas fro you. one comes from the book " A Wrinkle In Time" and the other from DUNE.

 

The first is called TESERAC, I think... I'm positive the spelling is off but I know there are people here that know the book and can correct me. I read the book any moons ago but as I remember it, with this ability you could fold space and time making travel to a new position instantaneous. In the book I don't think they needed ship to do this, but you could create a ship that has the same effect. Anyone here that can correct / expand on this?

 

Second is the whole needing a living navigator to get form point a to point b. Kind of like what Snaf had in mind, I would think.

 

Anyway, goto to go.

 

Drakkenkin

[keithcurtis]

The word was "tesseract", and she adapted heavily from an existing mathematical construct. A real tesseract is a four dimensional cube. Much like a square folded into the third dimension becomes a cube, a cube folded into the fourth (spatial and imperceivable) direction becomes a hypercube, or tesseract.

 

She also used it as a verb.

 

Keith "Tesser, sir! Now" Curtis

[Drakkenkin]

Thank you Keithcurtis, I knew there would be someone that had more info... and correct info.

 

Drakkenkin

[Aroooo]

There was a book (or two?) I read years and years ago where they did not have FTL travel, but they had tachyon transmission. So what you did was stepped into a 'teleporter' of sorts and a copy of you was created at the destination within seconds. So now there were two of you. If you had to go somewhere else, then there would be 3, etc... (The story revolved around a 'troubleshooter' type character, so there wound up being a lot of copies of himself.) If anyone remembers the name of the book(s) let me know, I'd like to read them again.

 

Aroooo

[Dr. Anomaly]

Are you talking about Farthest Star and Wall Around a Star by Fred Pohl and Jack Williamson? There was such a troubleshooter character named Ben Pertin, and each time he was copied the copy gave himself a different middle name to distinguish himself from the others.

[Aroooo]

Yeah, I think that was it! You made my day - thanks!

 

Aroooo

[Dr. Anomaly]

No problem. They happen to be books that I liked as well.

[BobGreenwade]

Most of these look like really great ideas, though generally similar in many ways to something either already in use in the Hero Universe future, or one of the two options I mention above. For instance, Dr. Anomaly's "warp gates" read a lot like the wormhole generation idea, and Keith's "thread pulling" looks to me like a prototype version of the slipstream method.

 

Drakkenkin's tesseract suggests an interesting extension of the TE warp drive. The existing drives work by compressing space; a tesseract drive could extend that by compressing time as well. Whether this would be a precursor or an extension of time travel would have to be ironed out, but I think it definitely should be a level beyond the wormhole/warp gates.

 

So I guess what we have so far is ATRI 14 = slipstream, ATRI 15 = wormhole generation, ATRI 16 = tesseract, ATRI 17 = probability drive.

 

I'm not sure what to make of Snarf's "extended personal teleportation" idea. It would definitely be something for Galactic Champions (as opposed to The Galactic Federation, taking place as it does before the return of superpowers).

[Kristopher]

Originally posted by keithcurtis

I had a drive that relied on something called thread pulling. The idea was that every particle in the universe had a natural connection with every other particle. This was a thread of "negative energy", one of the requirements for the mathematics of warping space. It cannot be detected by normal instruments and has no direct effect on the observable universe. However, if enough particles are compacted into one space, the threads become something that can be manipulated. Basically, only a star had enough threads concentrated into one space. From the point of view of the thread-pulling starship, the universe was a bundle of threads that connect all the stars. The more massive the star, the more threads you could pull and the faster you could travel. There was a limit, though. You had to pull the thread end a physical distance in order to "open" the "end" and create the warp bubble. Small stars required more sophistacation than current tech allowed and large stars were often so large that the thread end was still inside the star and thus unusable. You were thus limited to a couple of classes around the G-class star.

There was a lot more than that, but that's the gist. I never bothered to write it up in Hero terms, since it was more of a plot device, belonging to a unique prototype ship. If I were to take a stab at it in Hero terms, it would probably be a form of Megascale Teleportation, extra time, linked to extradimensional movement (A ship in transit has almost no interaction with the physical universe)

 

Keith "Silly rabbit, points are for players" Curtis

 

Sounds like the intersteller travel method in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Hmmm...just remembered another one, though it could conceivably be covered already by a previously-mentioned drive. (What brought it to mind was the using of machinery to vastly amplify a personal teleport ability.)

 

I read a short story once (can't remember name of story or of author, dang it!) about ships that ran on "philosopher" power. A philosopher basically "disbelieved" various laws of physics into not applying to the ship, allowing for interstellar travel in a short period of time. The tension in the story comes from the actions of one of the passengers on the ship, who doesn't believe the philosopher is actually responsible for the ship's FTL capability, so he debates the philosopher and "proves" to the philosopher that the philosopher's belief can't be responsible for what happens. Result? A ship stranded a loooooong way from anywhere, because the philosopher doubts his own ability.

[Snarf]

Geez, what a butthead. I bet that guy was thrown out the airlock as soon as the others figured out what happened.

 

If we're talking about literary examples, the Infinite Improbability Drive in The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy is one of my favorites. Operating the thing correctly causes a random coincidence that teleports you where you want to go, but the fun part is the screw ups, which would be Side Effects in the Hero System. If you run it wrong, other improbable thing happen, like whales appearing out of thin air and people getting teleported to the other side of the galaxy.

[BobGreenwade]

I'm pretty sure (by supposition, mostly) that the Probability Drive at (the current) ATRI 14 covers the above two suggestions.

[tomd1969]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

I read a short story once (can't remember name of story or of author, dang it!) about ships that ran on "philosopher" power. A philosopher basically "disbelieved" various laws of physics into not applying to the ship, allowing for interstellar travel in a short period of time. The tension in the story comes from the actions of one of the passengers on the ship, who doesn't believe the philosopher is actually responsible for the ship's FTL capability, so he debates the philosopher and "proves" to the philosopher that the philosopher's belief can't be responsible for what happens. Result? A ship stranded a loooooong way from anywhere, because the philosopher doubts his own ability.

 

This sounds like a Barry Longyear story (who also wrote "Enemy Mine" FYI...). I think it started with an entry to Encyclopedia Galactica IIRC.

[keithcurtis]

Originally posted by Kristopher

Sounds like the intersteller travel method in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye.

 

Similar in some ways, in that it relied on the nature of space around you and you jumped from point to point in real space. In specifics, it resembles it very little. The drive in mote was instantaneous IIRC, whereas mine had a specific (yet variable) duration. Niven and Pournelle's version was far more thought out and needed differential equations to solve (Larry wrote a great essay on it).

Theirs relied upon anomalies in space time, while mine posited the existence of a heretofor unknown, theoretical and undetectable "negative energy."

They did have jump point that was inside a red giant. This sort of thing was possible in my drive, but a sufficiently powerful/sophisticated ship could have pulled the thread end out far enough to "catch the end".

 

Keith "Mr. nit-picky" Curtis

 

PS. I read MiGE twice, oddly enough. The second time I read it, I had toally forgotten that I had already read it. Each page I turned, I had a strange feeling of deja vu. I gradually came to the realization that I had read it before but for the life of me couldn't remember what was going to happen. Every chapter, I would say, "Oh yeah! I've read this!", and then figure I must have stopped at that point, because I had no other memories of it. That continued until the very last sentence of the book. Weird! I've never had that experience ever before or since.

[Chris Goodwin]

Originally posted by Dr. Anomaly

I read a short story once (can't remember name of story or of author, dang it!) about ships that ran on "philosopher" power. A philosopher basically "disbelieved" various laws of physics into not applying to the ship, allowing for interstellar travel in a short period of time. The tension in the story comes from the actions of one of the passengers on the ship, who doesn't believe the philosopher is actually responsible for the ship's FTL capability, so he debates the philosopher and "proves" to the philosopher that the philosopher's belief can't be responsible for what happens. Result? A ship stranded a loooooong way from anywhere, because the philosopher doubts his own ability.

 

In L. Neil Smith's Tom Paine Maru, a group of alien naval cadets on their equivalent to a midshipman cruise decided to play a practical joke on, well, themselves. Their star drive was based on Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and so as their prank half of them calculated the ship's exact location and the other half calculated its exact velocity, rendering them immobile in space. There they stayed until a friendly Earth vessel happened along, to tow them to a carefully randomized location, there to cut them loose on a random vector and velocity.

[Drakkenkin]

Here's another possibility for space travel. They game mechanics may work the same but physics wouldn't be, and I'm sorry if it makes no sense, but I hope it dose because in my sleepy state it sounds real cool.

 

One of my physics professors was talking about black holes, their effect on the surrounding space, and what theoretical information we know about them. During his lecture the question was proposed what would happen if the black hole became so dense that it was able to pull in it's own gravitons.

 

Now he qualified the answer as rubber science more or less, but that because that area would no longer interact with space as we know it. It would become a true singularity, and a hole in the space time continuum as we know it. Much like the beginning of the universe if you follow the theory of the Big Bang.

 

Now, if some race was able to create a device to detect these points of 'nothingness' (these holes) who knows what they could do with them! A device of war (upset their balance and they explode into a "Big Bang".) or transportation they may be a hole into another dimension that would require special ships to pass into (as the hole would be VERY small), or maybe, because the points are out side time and space as we know it they them selves are their own kind of dimension and are all linked together and can be traveled through. Better yet they could just be a hole and all the holes in existence are the same hole.

 

It would be like having a doorway that, if you knew how to direct it, you could exit at any other doorway. Stick your hand through and your body would be at home while your hand could be anywhere else. Directing where the exit would end up could be a feat of mind over matter... maybe amplified by some sort of bio-mechanical engineering.

 

The holes could be literally anywhere. They would be so small, they would have no generally noticeable effect on their environment, and yet have effectively infinite mass.

 

Just a thought. I hope some one finds it useful if not at least understand what I'm trying to write.

 

Drakkenkin

[BobGreenwade]

A fascinating thought, Drakkenkin. This is certainly something new.... I'd have to mull over how to create it mechanically, but I think it definitely should go on our list at ATRI 17, bumping probability drives to ATRI 18.

 

Essentially I'd consider this MegaScaled Teleportation, with a Limitation that it only works to go from one (for lack of a better term) "Zero Hole" to another. It has some quite interesting story potential for a place like the Galactic Federation.

[Drakkenkin]

I'm glad you like it, and I think the name 'Zero Hole' seems to be quiet fitting.

 

Drakkenkin

[Snarf]

Originally posted by BobGreenwade

I'm pretty sure (by supposition, mostly) that the Probability Drive at (the current) ATRI 14 covers the above two suggestions.

No way! This one is an Improbability Drive. Totally different. Yup.

 

Theirs relied upon anomalies in space time, while mine posited the existence of a heretofor unknown, theoretical and undetectable "negative energy."

I remember reading something in N-Space about that. It used a fifth currently undiscovered force called the Alderson force that had certain properties. It was interesting to me how they treated it scientifically and worked around present day physics rather than violating it.

[Drakkenkin]

Ah, yet another loose theory. In some groups of scientist they believe the galaxy is still expanding, and they wounder why that is. So they came up with the theory of anti gravity masses. Basically, with out writing up and article on it it is a strange thing that has anti-gravitons and it pushes masses away from it, much like gravitons pull masses together.

 

A race that is good with gravity may be able to use these forces very efficiently and create a form of transportation that allows for the ship to be pushed by the Anit-gravitons (that would tend to be in emptyy' space) while being puled by normal gravitons when they are there in efficient quantities. Somewhat like a sail.

 

Drakkenkin