Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

[Yansuf]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Let me put things another way when it comes to the issue of the "sublight drives": I don't think that my probable players would be interested in a setting that involved detailed calculations of delta v, fuel remaining, burn times, etc, or in taking days to travel between planets in the same system, or in waiting a week to get to "safe FTL distance".

 

So what I want is something that has a "real" feel, but doesn't disinterest those players. I hope that makes more sense and clarifies what I'm going for.

 

Then I suggest that you use some form of "micro-jump" drive.

See post 99 above for the basis. I don't know if it was Larry Niven or Poul Anderson who first showed such a thing, but the idea goes back 50 years or so.

Star Cruiser and 2300AD used a variant of this.

And until you let it go FTL, it does not violate any known physical laws!

[Kristopher]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Then I suggest that you use some form of "micro-jump" drive.

See post 99 above for the basis. I don't know if it was Larry Niven or Poul Anderson who first showed such a thing, but the idea goes back 50 years or so.

Star Cruiser and 2300AD used a variant of this.

And until you let it go FTL, it does not violate any known physical laws!

 

Teleportation that doesn't violate physical laws?

 

A "microjump drive" isn't really the feel I'm looking for.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

If you have teleportation, you can rig a ship that teleports to its own front end. Your speed is limited by the speed of the teleportation process. However, there's no actual motion - when the drive is turned off, you simply stop.

 

(I don't know who thought of the concept originally, but Larry Niven explored it in, "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation".)

Yes, that would have the advantage that the ship is no longer a weapon of mass destruction. Good call.

 

You see, the devastation we have been talking about is caused by momentum. If you remember Newton's laws, F = MA or momentum equals mass times acceleration.

 

But with this drive, the ship's acceleration is zero. The act of teleporting the ship changes its position, but it does not accelerate it.

 

So you can zip through the solar system really fast, but you cannot destroy planets by ramming them.

[Yansuf]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Yes, that would have the advantage that the ship is no longer a weapon of mass destruction. Good call.

 

You see, the devastation we have been talking about is caused by momentum. If you remember Newton's laws, F = MA or momentum equals mass times acceleration.

 

But with this drive, the ship's acceleration is zero. The act of teleporting the ship changes its position, but it does not accelerate it.

 

So you can zip through the solar system really fast, but you cannot destroy planets by ramming them.

 

Force=Mass x Acceleration

Momentum=Mass x Velocity

[Nyrath]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Force=Mass x Acceleration

Momentum=Mass x Velocity

They are related:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Linear_momentum_of_a_particle

But it does not change the fact that a teleport drive would not create a kinetic energy weapon

[Tom Carman]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Since you're talking about using handwavium technology anyway, I think it's easy enough to make a reactionless drive that can't be a planet buster.

 

1. The drive requires a powerplant to move
   
2. Top speed is based on the amount of energy supplied to the powerplant
   
3. If you cut power to the drive the ship comes to a stop - you can have it coast if you want since that's cooler
   
4. The drag on the drive is inversely proportional to the gravity well the drive is in. That is, the drive doesn't really work in a gravity well, or works very inefficiently. The deeper into the gravity well you get, the slower the drive goes, regardless of the amount of energy supplied.
   
5. You can still use this to power missiles and the like, but they only really work well in deep space.
   

You just have to add some more handwavium (yes, I know, it's a slippery slope). Just my 2 credits.

 

This isn't too far from the aether propellers of the Space 1889 game. It didn't even discuss issues like acceleration or what happens if the drive is turned off (or gravity aboard ship). You just determined your drive, its power requirements, and the mass of your ship; then you derived the speed in millions of miles per day, and finally rolled on navigation skills to see how efficient a course you could plot. Aether propellers didn't function in atmosphere denser than about 25000 ft altitudes, and the solar boiler power plants could reach into the asteroid belt but not beyond it.

[Tom Carman]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Then I suggest that you use some form of "micro-jump" drive.

See post 99 above for the basis. I don't know if it was Larry Niven or Poul Anderson who first showed such a thing, but the idea goes back 50 years or so.

Star Cruiser and 2300AD used a variant of this.

And until you let it go FTL, it does not violate any known physical laws!

 

I'm pulling a blank on the author and book title, but a somewhat similar notion is the "skip drive". It depends on "quantum space": instead passing through each and every point of space, you could skip along touching every 10th spacial quanta, covering 10 times the distance with no increase in true velocity. The kicker in the novel was that you needed really high skip factors for practical interstellar travel, and then you started to "jump the track" (because you were not touching down in your reality often enough) and drift into parallel universes.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

I'm pulling a blank on the author and book title' date=' but a somewhat similar notion is the "skip drive". It depends on "quantum space": instead passing through each and every point of space, you could skip along touching every 10th spacial quanta, covering 10 times the distance with no increase in true velocity. The kicker in the novel was that you needed really high skip factors for practical interstellar travel, and then you started to "jump the track" (because you were not touching down in your reality often enough) and drift into parallel universes.[/quote']

 

'All These Earths' by F M Busby, briefly mentioned earlier.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Then I suggest that you use some form of "micro-jump" drive.

See post 99 above for the basis. I don't know if it was Larry Niven or Poul Anderson who first showed such a thing, but the idea goes back 50 years or so.

I dunno if Poul was the first, but I did read about such a drive in his short story "Margin of Profit " which was published in 1956.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Teleportation that doesn't violate physical laws?

 

A "microjump drive" isn't really the feel I'm looking for.

 

I know what you're say, Kris. It doesn't sit right to me, and raises questions about how teleportation might be used otherwise.

 

So let me argue my corner, present you with an option you might like. This is just a fanwank of C. J. Cherryh, btw. (Point vii is where I get to game-specific consequences of all the wanking.)

i) Hyperspace jumps conserve energy. The more (power plant) energy you pump into hyperspace, the more (kinetic+potential) energy you have when you come out of hyperspace.

(ii) Jumping just puts you in hyperspace. The only way to get out is for a gravity well to pull you out.

 

(iii) A good analogy here is that You go into hyperspace and "coast downhill." If you need to go a long way in hyperspace, you're going to end up going very fast indeed when you come out. (Like relativistic velocities.) You need a way to slow down. and the sign of velocity change is defined by the grav well. You automatically come out pointing at the well, and the only delta vee allowed is negative.

 

(iv) Conversely, if you jump inside a gravity well, (the value of gravitational potential energy for your point in space is sufficiently high) you will get pulled out instantly, and all of your engine power will be converted into kinetic energy, and by definition it will be outwards with respect to the gravity well. Strictly this is a reactionless drive, although if you want your players to feel grav pulls, it might be worked in somehow. Maybe it is just the ship's sails ("vanes") that actually transition through hyperspace, and they haul the rest of the ship around? Moreover, the sign of the velocity determines where you can go, and how much delta vee.

(vi) Conservation of energy dictates that you come out of hyperspace with exactly as much kinetic energy as you put through your engine. The absolute magnitude of your change in potential energy may be small, but it is hard to deal with, and maybe there are some inefficiencies, because it looks like it is easy to jump to brown giants close at hand, and increasingly difficult to jump straight through to other star systems. There's also some uncertainties here. That's key to preventing the planet buster problem.

 

vii) So, you start out on a planet. You cycle your vanes. You're going faster. But your vector is out from the gravity well, albeit not necessarily precisely orthogonal to the field, and how much delta vee cycling can give you depends on how far you are from the system's centre of mass. Kinetic energy kill vehicles are impossible because the system doesn't let you get up to that kind of speed on a planetary intercept course. From Earth you might be able to bomb Mars at multiples of solar escape velocity, perhaps, say, 100km/sec at conjunction, but that's not out of range for conventional weapons of mass destruction, so who cares?

 

Conversely, you come into system very fast. But the further (faster) away you come from, the more random your trajectory is. And the only way you can change your trajectory is by cycling your vanes, and the only velocity change vector is downwards. And the further in you go, the smaller the delta vee that cycling gives you. So you have to dump speed fast.

So, yes, you can have a kinetic kill energy weapon, but the ship is popping into space 50 AUs out with a random trajectory. (Not completely random, to be sure, but even a small cone of uncertainty in actual time elapsed in transit will make the intercept for a planet an astronomically small range of the total possible courses.) If you need a crew to make a ship go, they have to appreciate that their chances of kamikazing Jupiter are vastly greater than of hitting Earth. Demoralising, that. And, in fact, the vast majority of would-be kamikazes will just bomb through the system, and run into the sun, if not space junk on the way.

[Cancer]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

A complication on that theme can come if you recognize that different stars have different space velocity vectors, and to get from System A to System B successfully means you need to match both position and velocity vectors. The velocity vectors of stars do not change on a human-noticeable timescale (until you are Much Too Close to the black hole at the galactic center), so that's simply a look-up table of fudge numbers for one star to the next.

 

If your drive is limited in its velocity alteration capacity, it provides a rationale why, for example, two stars with a small distance between them cannot be reached from each other in one jump. The delta V is too great for a single jump with existing tech; you have to go "the long way around" through one or more other steps of intermediate velocity.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Of course, Larry Niven in his THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TELEPORTATION did include a clever way of turning a teleport drive into a weapon of mass destruction.

 

Ordinarily, when you turn off the teleport drive, your ship becomes quote "stationary" unquote (actually, it reverts to the same relative velocity it had before it turned on the teleporter, which can be difficult to explain to non-technical people).

 

So Niven said do the following:

[a] move your ship near a planet with high gravity (e.g., Jupiter, but any planet will do)

Aim the nose of the ship at the planet

[c] Let the ship fall to the planet a distance equal to one ship length

[d] teleport the ship backward one ship length

[e] go to step [c]

 

The ship is constantly accelerating towards the planet, but it never reaches it. By keeping this up for a month or so, your ship will acquire quite a huge velocity. The larger the planet's gravity, the faster the ship will accelerate.

 

Now you can use the teleport drive to move the ship over to the target planet, turn off the teleport drive, and the ship promptly crashes into the planet with civilization destroying force.

 

Of course, according to the law of conservation of mass-energy, you'd expect that the energy required to run the teleporter drive would be a larger than the energy of velocity that the ship has acquired.

[Yansuf]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

They are related:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momentum#Linear_momentum_of_a_particle

But it does not change the fact that a teleport drive would not create a kinetic energy weapon

 

Of course they are related. But they are not the same thing.

 

Naturally I agree about your last point.

[Nyrath]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Of course they are related. But they are not the same thing.

Yes, I stand corrected on that.

[Kristopher]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Has anyone done any work on a somewhat simplified presentation for spacecraft and vehicle combat?

[Kristopher]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Here's a rough draft of the material for my players regarding otherspace. Let me know what you think.

 

 

 

Otherspace

 

Most simply refer to it as “otherspace”, even though the formal scientific name of amongst human cultures is “Waldhausen – Kurakimichi space” in honor of the scientists who first described the strange dimension.

 

Depending on whom you ask, otherspace exists alongside, behind, above, or below “normal space”. None of these explanations are truly accurate. Conventional descriptions fail; accurate understanding requires complex abstract mathematics, and/or a certain… gift.

 

Otherspace is non-Euclidian and non-Einsteinian, and some would even say non-objective. While the perceptible universe of human experience is commonly understood to consist of four dimensions – width, height, depth, and time – otherspace is five dimensional. That fifth dimension can most easily be understood as “distance” or “separation”; the farther along that “v axis” one goes, the closer points are together.

 

While this is interesting on a theoretical level, it wouldn’t have been world changing without one last fact: every point in normal space coincides with a point in otherspace, and the “mapping” of those points is roughly the same. Because those points can be closer together in otherspace than they are in normal space, two points that are separated by vast distances in normal space can effectively be right next to each other in otherspace.

 

The Waldhausen – Kurakimichi Drive (WK Drive, dim drive, otherspace drive, “shortcut drive”) generates a transition field that allows a ship to enter and exist in otherspace. By accessing otherspace at a certain “depth” on the v axis, the ship crosses between points faster than the speed of light would allow. According to theory, a ship could, by accessing otherspace “all the way down”, travel instantly to anywhere in the universe. There are two problems with attempting this, however.

 

First, masses in normal space cast “shadows” in otherspace. The more massive an object is, the more tangible its shadow is. Planets and stars have very tangible shadows, and if a vessel is too “deep” upon transitioning, the mass shadow will overlap its current position, with potentially disastrous results.

 

Second, as noted, otherspace can be described as “non-objective”. The “deeper” one is in otherspace, the more pronounced this becomes. The strange phenomena that are occasionally reported at the commonly used depths become intense and constant.

 

Otherspace can be creepy, ships sometimes disappear, people sometimes go crazy. The stories are always told in the style of “something that happened to a friend of a friend” or “what an old spacer buddy of my dad told me”. Voices, apparitions, nightmares, even... something moving at the edge of sight, out there beyond the windows, if you're one of those who can stand to look out into otherspace at all. Most spacers try to dismiss the weirder tales as hyperbole and paranoia and hallucinations, but they also carry their lucky objects, knock on the bulkhead three times, and so on... just in case...

 

Navigating in otherspace takes a certain knack or talent… a Gift. For some, it expresses itself as an intense mathematical talent for mental calculation and interpreting numbers on the fly. In others, it manifests are a sort of limited precognition while in otherspace. While not a rare enough ability to stifle interstellar travel, possessing it does guarantee one a well-paying job for life, and both governments and corporations will provide a free education to anyone with the ability to navigate in otherspace.

 

Most people are at least unnerved by the nature of otherspace, and for this reason, ships typically “button up” during otherspace transits. Viewports and windows are closed, and some passengers even retreat to the comfort of sleep-inducers for the duration of the transit. Militaries and shipping companies are always looking to recruit those who are able to endure or ignore the sight of naked otherspace outside the ship… beyond the WK drive field.

 

Travel times in otherspace vary, depending on the strength of the drive and the skill of the navigator. Typical transits run at 1 to 2 light years per day, and this is the speed of most large cargo and passenger vessels. Combat vessels are somewhat faster. Couriers, elite military intel/scout vessels, and research ships will top out at about 1 LY per hour, with their relatively massive dim drives and crews made up entirely of highly-trained Gifted.

 

 

[phookz]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Sounds interesting. I'm curious what the potentially disastrous results are - its a little vague on that. What might go well with this would be a crib sheet of otherspace rumors - examples of things that have happened to people in otherspace (true or not), to prime the imagination. That would be a great handout for players to help set the expectation for what their characters have heard about otherspace.

[Cancer]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Sounds like a powerfully effective sabotage technique is to slip a navigator something hallucinogenic or psychotropic in some less obvious way. The adjective "spacey" seems likely to take on entirely new connotations.

[Ian Mackinder]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Here's a rough draft of the material for my players regarding otherspace. Let me know what you think.

 

 

 

Otherspace

 

Most simply refer to it as “otherspace”, even though the formal scientific name of amongst human cultures is “Waldhausen – Kurakimichi space” in honor of the scientists who first described the strange dimension.

 

Depending on whom you ask, otherspace exists alongside, behind, above, or below “normal space”. None of these explanations are truly accurate. Conventional descriptions fail; accurate understanding requires complex abstract mathematics, and/or a certain… gift.

 

Otherspace is non-Euclidian and non-Einsteinian, and some would even say non-objective. While the perceptible universe of human experience is commonly understood to consist of four dimensions – width, height, depth, and time – otherspace is five dimensional. That fifth dimension can most easily be understood as “distance” or “separation”; the farther along that “v axis” one goes, the closer points are together.

 

While this is interesting on a theoretical level, it wouldn’t have been world changing without one last fact: every point in normal space coincides with a point in otherspace, and the “mapping” of those points is roughly the same. Because those points can be closer together in otherspace than they are in normal space, two points that are separated by vast distances in normal space can effectively be right next to each other in otherspace.

 

The Waldhausen – Kurakimichi Drive (WK Drive, dim drive, otherspace drive, “shortcut drive”) generates a transition field that allows a ship to enter and exist in otherspace. By accessing otherspace at a certain “depth” on the v axis, the ship crosses between points faster than the speed of light would allow. According to theory, a ship could, by accessing otherspace “all the way down”, travel instantly to anywhere in the universe. There are two problems with attempting this, however.

 

First, masses in normal space cast “shadows” in otherspace. The more massive an object is, the more tangible its shadow is. Planets and stars have very tangible shadows, and if a vessel is too “deep” upon transitioning, the mass shadow will overlap its current position, with potentially disastrous results.

 

Second, as noted, otherspace can be described as “non-objective”. The “deeper” one is in otherspace, the more pronounced this becomes. The strange phenomena that are occasionally reported at the commonly used depths become intense and constant.

 

Otherspace can be creepy, ships sometimes disappear, people sometimes go crazy. The stories are always told in the style of “something that happened to a friend of a friend” or “what an old spacer buddy of my dad told me”. Voices, apparitions, nightmares, even... something moving at the edge of sight, out there beyond the windows, if you're one of those who can stand to look out into otherspace at all. Most spacers try to dismiss the weirder tales as hyperbole and paranoia and hallucinations, but they also carry their lucky objects, knock on the bulkhead three times, and so on... just in case...

 

Navigating in otherspace takes a certain knack or talent… a Gift. For some, it expresses itself as an intense mathematical talent for mental calculation and interpreting numbers on the fly. In others, it manifests are a sort of limited precognition while in otherspace. While not a rare enough ability to stifle interstellar travel, possessing it does guarantee one a well-paying job for life, and both governments and corporations will provide a free education to anyone with the ability to navigate in otherspace.

 

Most people are at least unnerved by the nature of otherspace, and for this reason, ships typically “button up” during otherspace transits. Viewports and windows are closed, and some passengers even retreat to the comfort of sleep-inducers for the duration of the transit. Militaries and shipping companies are always looking to recruit those who are able to endure or ignore the sight of naked otherspace outside the ship… beyond the WK drive field.

 

Travel times in otherspace vary, depending on the strength of the drive and the skill of the navigator. Typical transits run at 1 to 2 light years per day, and this is the speed of most large cargo and passenger vessels. Combat vessels are somewhat faster. Couriers, elite military intel/scout vessels, and research ships will top out at about 1 LY per hour, with their relatively massive dim drives and crews made up entirely of highly-trained Gifted.

 

 

Very interesting. Reminescent of the FTL used in a book I should have recommended earlier - 'Starliner' by (I think) David Drake.

[phookz]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

An interesting take on the Gift for navigators would be to do some type of autistic-savant thing. Maybe the Gift only (or usually) manifests in people with Autism or Asperger's syndrome. This would make interpersonal dealings with them more difficult, and would also mean training them would be more difficult. I'm reminded of the Hybrids on the Cylon ships in Battlestar Galactica.

 

This was something I started thinking about recently when I read an article how a gentleman has created a business where he's hiring autistic people because they are very good at certain jobs (especially math and engineering work). I can't find the link now, unfortunately, but it was pretty interesting stuff.

[BlackSword]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Has anyone done any work on a somewhat simplified presentation for spacecraft and vehicle combat?

Since I have not had much time to game recently, I haven't had time to crunch the numbers or see how it fits in with Hero. That said, you might take a look at Starmada. Its a generic system for ship building and combat. I believe SCUBA Hero played it some at a local con and may have some comments about the system.

[Kristopher]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

An interesting take on the Gift for navigators would be to do some type of autistic-savant thing. Maybe the Gift only (or usually) manifests in people with Autism or Asperger's syndrome. This would make interpersonal dealings with them more difficult, and would also mean training them would be more difficult. I'm reminded of the Hybrids on the Cylon ships in Battlestar Galactica.

 

This was something I started thinking about recently when I read an article how a gentleman has created a business where he's hiring autistic people because they are very good at certain jobs (especially math and engineering work). I can't find the link now, unfortunately, but it was pretty interesting stuff.

 

I probably won't make this true of all with the Navigating Gift, but I like the idea of the rate being higher, and it would make for an interesting NPC.

[Kristopher]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

Speaking of Gifts and the Gifted, (working name, will take suggestions), that's what I'm writing up next.

[Cancer]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

You might consider "the Ability" and "the Able" in place of Gift/Gifted. Mild difference in implied society importance and power.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

 

"Touched" also works, especially if there are personality quirks associated with it. There could also be different permutations ("space-touched", "void-touched", etc).