Gemini Ascendant Campaign

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

With 10" every 6 Hours.. A day's travel (4 Jumps) can launch a ship 40 Lightyears.

 

Even if a skilled pilot (Navigation 12-) only jumps 1 LY at a time, a day is 4 Light Years of travel - four times faster than a Void Drive. I got the impression you wanted them to travel slower?

 

Dropping the MegaScale down one level gives that same pilot .4 Light Years per Day instead. A highly skilled pilot (13-, or a skilled pilot pushing his luck) cab go .8 LY per day. (2" Teleport, 4 times).

 

A Psychotic Pilot kicking a full jump (-10) get can 4 Light Years out of a day.

 

To Match Void Drives, given 4 Jumps per day, a Pilot would want to Jump 3" (must come up with cool game-techno babble for this) twice and 2" twice - or just 3" all four times - to get 1-1.2 LY per Day. Only very skilled pilots could do this.

 

That's assuming that the Jump went off each time - though 4 Jumps is: Free, 15-, 14-, 13- Activation. Not an unreasonable assumption.

 

Hmm.. Let's assume they only jump 3 Times per day, and a ships engineering crew works the fourth ship to recalibrate the engine. Skilled Pilot (12-).

At 1" = 1LY, taking a -1 to the roll (skilled, but still cautious) can still get 3 LY in a day. 3 Times faster than Void Drives.

At 1" = 1 Trillion KM (one step down) that same Pilot only gets .3 Light Years. 1/3 As Fast as Void Drives. And the third jump has about a 91% chance of success. A fourth jump for ships pushing it has only an 84% chance of success.

 

Just a from reading your blog and other comments, I think you want to drop the Megascale on the Jump Drive down to the 3 1/4 Level. Unless the only possible way to reset the Activation Chance is in port? In which case the drives are much faster, but no captain would ever go 6 Jumps, 7 Jumps is 10- (50%) Chance of making it.

 

Even then, finding enough pilots who are good enough (13- or more) to keep enough channels open (take a -2 for an 11- Navigation) making 6 Jumps at 1"=1LY is a 12 Light Year range. that's a good chunk of Frontier Space isn't it? Doesn't seem to me that you'd have to go more than 3 jumps at that speed to find a port to refit the engines. Still seems like it's too fast and wouldn't splinter the Frontier.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Good points. Here is what I wanted. It takes time for the reactors to store enough energy for the fold drive to even work. I'm imagining that the fold drives take up an enormous amount of hull space because they are basically huge capacitors that store energy over the space of hours. When the actual Fold occurs, all of that stored energy is released rather explosively through the Fold Drive systems. This causes the wear on the drive components.

 

Now between jumps it is possible to maintain the drive components ahead of time. With the proper parts, you could hypothetically keep the drive running for a good long while. The problem is that the parts involved take up valuable cargo/storage space. This makes smaller craft less likely to maintain long-term jump capability without overhaul. Larger craft, with more cargo space, can probably maintain six months to a year in the field before needing a complete overhaul.

 

Hypothetically, with the right support ships, parts, skilled crew, and time, the ship can be overhauled in the field.

 

All in all, the Fold Drive would never have been introduced had the Void not been disrupted. While hypothetically slower, the Void drives were paragons of reliability. A Void capable ship could last for years (some even lasted decades) before needing major repairs.

 

All that said, let me clarify some points;

 

1. The Extra-Time: 6 hours is simply for the engines to recharge.
   
2. If maintenance is performed, the engines have to discharge, the repairs completed and then another 6 hour charge time begins. (Edit: Maintenance takes a base 6 hours/ divided by the margin by which the Engineer makes his PS: Engineering roll.)
   
3. Some really large ships (super freighters and large military ships) maintain two distinct Fold drives for redundancy sake. Many of the ones that run single drive configurations have the parts to completely replace the drive. They are not going to get stuck in the middle of a non-charted system if they can at all help it.
   
4. Smaller vessels (like ones that the crew would most likely be using) have a life expectancy of 10 jumps before it gets so bad that an overhaul is required.
   
5. Overhauls will be expensive. Right now the crew has access to many resources so that will be somewhat transparent. Not sure if I want to bog the campaign down in logistics, but there should rightly be an awareness of the limitations they have to face.
   
6. There is a meta-plot reason for all of this; let the crew explore, but keep them grounded to the campaign setting. This "rules set" sort of forces the crew to occasionally have cause to make a port of call which allows me to come up with different scenarios.
   
7. And who says the Void is completely lost as a transit medium. Ponder that for a while.
   

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

I think you may be right about the megascale thing. One aspect I dropped was the need to be a certain distance from planets, stars and other gravity wells. That would have added sub-light travel time to and away from planets from the jump points. For dramatic reasons, I figured I would just drop that. So reducing the distance jumped might be better.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Thinking about that - and how Piracy can really fit into the setting...

 

What if a ship had to be 1 full Light Year away from a gravity source (star, black hole, etc) before a Jump Drive could engage. Thinking about what charges the Jump Drives - it'd have to be massive engines.

 

Call 'em Ion Engines (because we haven't used it yet, and it sounds cool).

 

The Ion Engines are also used for Sub-Light Travel to get the ships to Jump Distance.

 

1ly = ~10 Trillion KM (10^13) (assuming my math is even remotely correct)

If you want to take about 10 days to get a safe distance for a good drive (it's an easy number) you need to travel 1 trillion KM per day.

About 41,666,666,666.6...KM per Hour

 

Ion Drive Flight 4", MegaScale (1" = 10 billion km; +2 3/4), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+1/4) (32 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3)

 

About 40 Billion KM/Hr there, the Extra Time takes the Speed of the Ship out of the equation, that makes it handy. You can just house rule a prorated (travel for 15 minutes puts you 10 Billion KM down the line).

 

That's 10 days, puts you 1LY away from a source.

Moving the Jump Drive to 1"=1LY, given a good eigineering crew can fix an engine in 3 hours say, plus 6 hours to charge; 9 Hours/Jump. A good Pilot can get 2 LY out of the Jump reliably/safely. At about 2 Jumps per day that's 4 LY a day. Then another 10 Days to get In System (where you're vulnerable to pirates!) that's a 21 Day Journey to travel a whole 6 Light Years.

 

I think if you put the travel time Out/In System back in, you can keep the Jump Drives at 1LY MegaScale - which gives them range - but you have to account for 20 days travel time in and out of systems. That might isolate systems too much though.

 

Halve the time (double the Flight Inches) and it might be more reasonable. Thoughts?

I like that piracy occurs at sublight, outside but within reach of a star system.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Sounds somewhat reasonable. I was thinking less in terms of LY as opposed to AU, but you seem to have done all that math. I is dumb with math, so I am going to defer to your idea. Of course, now I am going to have to draw up the whole pirate attack scenario at some point.

 

Here is the problem near as I can tell. If it takes 10 days to travel 1 light year, then getting stuck in the far reaches of space is not that frightening a concept. After all, you just thrust towards the nearest star and the worse you have to worry about is say a half a year of thrusting. I don't think any point on the map is further away than that.

 

What if we slowed the speed somewhat and went backwards in concept to the Star Frontiers source and have to get to near relativistic speeds before the ship could jump? The time frames might be similar but the distance traveled in sub-light less so. The danger of being lost in space becomes very real.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Or add a Fuel Source.

 

No one can carry enough Fuel to thrust for six months. And doesn't make the fuel depot that was the a major point of the last arc a null item. In fact it could make it a precious resource.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Or add a Fuel Source.

 

No one can carry enough Fuel to thrust for six months. And doesn't make the fuel depot that was the a major point of the last arc a null item. In fact it could make it a precious resource.

Point. Let's go with your plan. I like the banditos betwixt the stars concept too.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Two options on fuel limitations:

 

Space or Cash.

 

Space comes with the complication that'd you would literally need to have it take so much refueling depots would need hundreds of billions of gallons (space stations that are nothing but giant gas tanks) or if solid cubic meters.

 

Or - some mineral that is rare enough to be 1) regulated and 2) Expensive.

 

This forces the crew to either keep returning to base - and the more often they return the higher chance of getting caught - or become "legit" enough to trade their own fuel source out for cashflow to refuel anywhere. (that option removes us a step away from "accounting hero" which is boring as F without handwaving the PCs into always having money to refuel.)

 

I'll do more math and come up with something reasonable that can then be turned into background info without stuttering the campaign.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Looking forward to that.

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

There is a website... if I can find the URL, that has a calculator that computes escape velocities, and the distance you must travel away from a planet to be free of its gravitational influence. It shows the varying distances based on the planets size and mass. It also has calculators that show how long it would tke to reach that distance based on a given amount of G acceleration. Realistically it assumes accelerating half the distance and then decelerating the second half of the distance. I'll see if I can find it again if you want that level of granularity... Just let me know.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Planetary Escape Velocity is nice... but we need Solar System Escape Velocity.

 

Actually, it's more like Solar System Gravitational Influence Distance. And since we're making up science, it's not actually relevant as it's more plot defined how far "outside" a stars gravitational influence one needs to be. 1LY is probably plenty far.

 

That and the build has Ion Drives traveling at 40 Billion Kilometers Per Hour. That's well past escape velocity. For reference - once you start an Ion Drive it takes about two hours to clear the Earths Solar System.

 

So - keep that in mind. No blasting off and hitting Jump. Gotta go way way way out. Days out. Chase Scenes at ~42,000,000,000KPH

 

Here's my idea: Fuel Rods.

 

Just to make it simple, 1 Fuel Rod provides 1 Days worth of Ion Travel or 1 LY Jump.

 

Given a standard engine is 10 days out and in, that's 20 Rods. Plus another 10 for Jumps, which is a 10 Light Year range. A ship could carry a standard compliment of 30 Fuel Rods.

 

Fuel Rods are divided like tootsie rolls (I'm hoping everyone has seen them - the longer ones have a sort of dent that divides them into smaller portions). Say, six portions - each portion is 4 hours of burst in an Ion Drive, it takes a full rod to charge up the capacitors for a Jump, you can't jump on a partial rod.

 

Unless the GM wants to let a ship try, I'll let the GM come up with sufficient penalties to using partial rods to charge a Jump Drive.

 

Back to 1/6 of a Rod - 4 Hours in an Ion Drive is a distance of 160 Billion KM. Not too shabby.

 

Pirates would go after the fuel rods as a priority - they are expensive, and likely regulated by local authorities. Each rod could have to come with a Factory Stamp (batch serial, date, company, etc).

 

Pricing, not that it's horribly important, but fun to establish for setting purposes. At 1000 Credits per rod that's 30k, at 500 Credits that's 15k.

 

Now, a short run, you need the 20 Rods to burn out and in, say the shortest distance between systems is 4 Light Years. That's 24 Rods bare minimum (better hope they all burn clean, there's no accidents, and you don't misjump). I'll let Nolgroth play with pricing.

 

Now, faster and slower Engines. I built Ion Drives at 4"/40 Billion KPH.

Up it to 6" and it burns more fuel to get more speed. 1 Rod no longer provides a day's worth of travel. 50% in crease in speed, and to make up a number, causes rods to burn 25% faster. Which means a 60Billion KPH Ion Drive needs 1.2 Rods (er, I'm pretty sure at least it needs a sixth more rods worth of fuel) to burn for a day. You also make it out to Jump Distance in 6 Days 16 Hours.

 

A Fast Ion Drive needs ~8 Rods to get out to Jump Distance. So, if you can pony up the cash and space (and your ship can fit) a Fast Ion Drive, you burn less fuel overall.

 

I'll leave Ion Drive Size/Fitting/Availability up to Nolgroth. I can do more math for him if he'd like. One could assume that the Military uses Fast Ion Drives. Or something even Faster. . . . But I figured most of my math off of 4".

 

Thoughts?

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Jump Drive: Multipower, 95-point reserve

1u) Ion Engine: Flight 4", MegaScale (1" = 10.5 billion km; +2 3/4), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+1/4) (32 Active Points); Extra Time (1 Hour, -3)

 

2u) Fold Engine: Teleportation 10", MegaScale (1" = 1 lightyear; +3 1/2), Can Be Scaled Down 1" = 1km (+1/4) (95 Active Points); Extra Time (6 Hours, -3 1/2), Side Effects, Side Effect occurs automatically whenever Power is used (Degrading Activation Roll (first use is automatic, 15- for the second, -1 Per use after, Must be repaired; -1)

 

Total Cost: 98 Points

 

Vehicle Requires Fuel Rods: Physical Limitation; All The Time, Greatly Impairing (20 Points)

 

As a Mechanical Build.

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

My only problem with 1 ly for a jump distance is that to reach a jump point in less than a YEAR we would have to be traveling FTL... did you perhaps me one light day? Just for a point of reference... Earth is about 8 light minutes or 480 light seconds from Sol, and we are about 1/3 of the distance from SOl to the Systems out edge, so accounting for orbital eccentricities, 1 light hour should clear the system. How far past that we would need to travel would just be game mechanics... I vote for 10 Light hours. That way we are extremely clear of the systems gravity well, and ship can still make it to the jump points in 10 hours at light speed or somewhat longer if traveling slower.

 

On another note this would give rise to a couple of things. Carriers would be prominant on space navies. Once a system had developed its industry sufficiently they would certainly build system defense ships, fully space and combat capable but not Jump/void capable. They would be cheaper to build and could have a greater speed/weapon to mass ratio as they would not need the superlight engines or fuel, giving extra space for better sublights engines and ordinance or shielding/armor. A couple of ships design I would push for if running such a star spanning society would be Jump tugs/Barges, basically a large cargo type ship with docking clamps instead of cargo bays so that I could clamp onto non-jump ships and transport them through jump space. Another would be a special type of system defense boat, instead of main weapon she would mount a gravity field generator, and really fast sublight engines. Her job would be to project a gravity field thus disrupting an escaping ships jump capability, while her escort companion ship dealt with the offender using more conventional weapons....

 

Have you considered the idea of Jump points? Fixed or variable points in space where the fabric of space is more susceptable to manipulation, and thus a ship mounting a jump drive can engage their drive and Whammo.... there they go... With this type of thing you can put the Jump point anyplace the story dictates, as GM regardless of gravity and such. So if you wanted to place the jump point in one system a light year out so be it, and in another system the jump point might be inside and asteroid field, and it could be a rare system indeed that had more the one jump point (unless jump points where specific corridors that only took you to one place and back again).

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Oh yeah... I really like the fuel rod idea.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Ion Drives are actually traveling at FTL - a LY is about 10^13 km; which at 42 Billion KPH you reach that distance in about 10 Days.

 

It's question if a docked ship can enter a Jump with the Jump Capable Ship - I'll leave that up Nol. Or if a large enough gravity field could even be generated, that would take an enormous amount of energy I think.

 

And Earth is 1AU away from the sun - which is nowhere near the 1/3 of the way to the edge of the system (Neptune is 30AU out). For comparison - I'm talking about getting out around the Oort Cloud, or just a little further.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

I looked up the speed of light in KPH - which is about 1 Billion KPH. Ion Drives kick about 42x that speed. Not very sublight. If at any point I ever said Sublight Speed, I take it back, I was talking crazy.

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

OK.. crazy like a fox sometimes I think

 

You are right... Earth is 1 AU... and you are right the earth is nowhere near 1/3 out... I had this image in my head from some old school books and planetarium thing that for some reason made me think it was that far out.

 

As for the jump tugs... if the clamps were physically strong enough to stand the strain of the jump, that should be the only consideration. And if we can create hulls with antenna, dish arrays, and gun mounts that aren't torn free, then strong enough clamps should be no problem. The limit on how many ships/tonnage a jump tug could move would be more a limit of the Jump/lift capability of the engines minus the tonnage of the tug itself. I actually iamgine some type of elongated frame with a brodge at one end and engines at the far end, with a the fram like a long spine with huge claw like clamps that could encircle smaller ships with a band like claw. once closed the smaller ships crews would actually stay inside their own ship during the jump. The tug crew would be very small in comparison to the ships length. Small bridge/crew module with maybe a two man capacity. and a larger engine section with several engineers, mechanic/tug hands. The bridge module, and the engineering module would have seperate crew quarters, small but cramped.

 

As for the gravity inderdiction thing... I think whether it would be effective woul depend on how much gravity it takes to cause a disruption. If you have to be a whole light year away from a star to jump, then a smaller vessel in much closer proximity would only need to generate a small gravity well (bigger than a ship but much less than a star), to disrupt the drive.

 

One more thought. If the Ion drive is already FTL, and you can reach a 1 ly jump horizion in 1 day, and you have 30 fuel rods (each good for one day of travel), that gives even a non-jump ship a 30 ly range. Alpha Centauri is only 5 LY from earth... Why would I want to jump with a range like that.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

You can reach the Jump Horizon in 10 Days, not 1.

 

Also, I was looking up Roche Sphere's, even the sun's Roche Sphere is well past 1 LY, so that's not getting too far outside the sun's full gravitational influence. Really, I just picked a random distance that has nothing to do with "real science" in any way - so I wouldn't think to hard about it.

 

The only question needing to be answered by Nol: Can a ship generate a large enough gravity field on it's own to prevent a jump? Or is that technology outside the grasp of Frontier Science?

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Ah OK... I had to go back and re-read what originally posted. I must be getting old timers disease, as I thought you had said 1 day to reach a 1 ly jump horizon. 10 days works great... and now I see the reason for needing/wanting to jump... in an emergency, I could see doing a speed run up to half your fuel then coast (you don't lose velocity in zero gravity) for days/weeks/months if needed (so long as LS - Air/food lasts), then decelerate back to normal planetary speed burning the other half of your fuel rods... This would take musch longer than jump, but would be doable in a pinch. heh it even reminds me of the Book "Voyage of the Starwolf" (and yes I had the handle long before the book came out). In it the crew loses its FTL drive and has to take months to limp home.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

I wasn't going to go Hard Science and deal with Accel/Deaccelleration in space.

 

Just "you keep the Ion Drives running to keep the ship at speed to the Jump Horizon"

 

Because to be absolutely dead honest - I don't like that much real physics in my space opera and flat out ignore it. I am not a Hard Science fan.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Been reading and thinking. Wolf's right. A thirty light year range would put many stars within reach without the jump. It would take longer to be sure. For example, a ship carrying a payload of 30 fuel rods going at the speed of the Ion drive could make it from Morrigan's Star to Tassak. It would take nearly a year to get there, but there is little fear of actually getting stranded anywhere. The question then becomes; should that be a concern at all within the game setting? I have many ideas both for and against the idea of restricting travel to one form of FTL, but I would like to hear your takes.

 

The fuel rod idea has merit. In fact I like it a lot. Rather than have to deal with pounds of fuel or gallons of fuel, the fuel rod concept works well as an abstraction. Plus it sounds all science fictiony.

 

The light year distance, assuming we stick with the super fast drive, might be about right. Would the type of star have any effect at all? I mean a Blue Giant has much more gravity than a Yellow Dwarf. Would it then have a larger area of non-jumpiness.

 

A ship's artificial gravity is too narrow of scope for the most part. There may be giant moon sized ships out there that might cause distortion, but for the most part ships would not be able to affect other ships. Now for the moment there are no "gravity mines" to prevent jumps, but that might be a development of the near future.

 

Urg. Can't think of anything else at the moment. Remind me if I missed a topic.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Range: Removing the idea of being stranded - as long as you have Fuel - isn't too bad an issue IMO. In fact, it could be a selling point in the setting, taking six months for a slow tramp freighter, over a year to get long distances. . .

 

that's just the Ship though. there's still food, do ships carry several months worth of food for what's supposed to be a two week journey?

 

Even going 6LY on Ion Drives takes two months, using Jump Drives that's less than a week normally. I could see extra provisions for a few extra days if repairs need to be affected, but not over a months extra food.

 

Also - you could implement deep space stations along known trade routes, so even if you break down in the middle, you might be able to affect repairs en route. Leave the trade routes and you're SOL.

 

I like the type of Star having an effect. You could easily work up a chart for the Jump Horizon of any given star. I'll see what I can come up with - something "sciency" without getting all over board on it.

 

And also, remember artificial gravity in a ship was just recently introduced to the Frontier via Terran Empire Invasion. It's possible that we're just now getting to the point where it's common in most vessels, and possibly only a few companies even produce the tech needed for it. How many vessels still operate like Gemini II did as spinners/central column types? Possibly a lot. And big ships might use magnetic plating, or cheap space stations that don't spin.

 

The tech to even create a hugely massive gravity generator may be years off out here.

[Nolgroth]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

I'm actually starting to see a setting where the Fold drives are actually used only by the very wealthy or in extreme duress. The chance of drive failure or misjump is high enough that even the relatively slow plodding of the Ion drives would still be preferable to having to spend time mucking around the engine compartment. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Kind of lends a "sail the seven seas" feel to the game setting.

 

I think 1 ly should be the baseline for a Sol-type star. Work downwards for lesser stars (Orange, Red, and Brown) and upwards for Blue and Blue-White stars. Black holes would have the largest I would think. Some things to consider. There are blue stars relatively close to other stars in the top right of the map. This might well create a huge area that must be "tramped" through.

 

The trade stations along the routes is brilliant and lends to the whole not so faster than light feel.

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

Ok good points all...

 

Artificial gravity is to new to allow for Jump interdiction ships...

 

I too like the idea of different type of stars (don;t forget black holes) having different jump horizons.

 

As for journey length and food, I actually think it would be air and water that present the most challenging problems, but even here in the 21st century we are beginning to work on those. The ISS recently installed a device to reclaim purified drinking water from human waste... Still you can only store so mush water. Food can be grown and you can store a suprising amount of emergency rations in a very small space. I have a years supply of food for 5 adults that fits in 20 5 gallon buckets (each bucket holds 200 adult meals and has a 20 shelf life). Granted you would get very tired of soups and oatmeal, but the meals are balanced mixtures of protien, carbs, and fats, and they are vitamin fortified. I know air can be scrubbed to remove C02, and hydroponics could produce both food and air, but unless the ship is very large I don;t think hydroponics are a viable option. I think a 6 month supply of air even assuming scrubbers is probably about max. I am not sure how subs or the ISS produce their air but the ISS has been in orbit for years now, and a standard sub tour, submerged, is 6 months. Though subs might scavenge their air from sea water?

[Starwolf]

Re: Gemini Ascendant Campaign

 

I think these discussions are, for me almost as enjoyable as playing.