A note on starship design: the engines point down.

[tkdguy]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

you could have just changed the direction of the windows

 

*headdesk*

 

Now you tell me!

 

[Vanguard]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

Awww' date=' c'mon! Where's the fun in that? It's cool to see the entire crew turned to jam when the inertial dampers fail while they're pulling 850 gees. (It's happened to a few warships in David Weber's Honor Harrington series, when battle damage destroyed the dampers. Characters in the series are aware of this possibility, but don't give it a lot of thought. If it happens there's nothing to be done about it. They'll be dead before they know it.)[/quote']

 

Because it takes forever to clean up said jam AND it completely clogs the air-filtration systems.

[tkdguy]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

Never really had an interest in playing hard sci fi games.

 

I can't really blame you. I worked hard on making my sci fi game as hard as possible, I saw how unglamorous it became. Spaceflight is long and arduous, and colonies are only marginally more comfortable. I even removed the naval designations from the warships (It's a "Class A Military Spacecraft," not a "battleship.") Maybe I went too far.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

I can't really blame you. I worked hard on making my sci fi game as hard as possible' date=' I saw how unglamorous it became. Spaceflight is long and arduous, and colonies are only marginally more comfortable. I even removed the naval designations from the warships (It's a "Class A Military Spacecraft," not a "battleship.") Maybe I went too far.[/quote']

 

Sometimes it's not easy to strike the right balance. For my "hard" SF campaign I made a lot of compromises to keep things interesting and entertaining, but specifically refused to compromise on others. It helps if you don't think of "hard" v. "soft" SF as separate entities, but as opposite ends of a continuous sliding scale. You can easily make a few compromises and still remain much closer to the "hard" end of the scale than most SF rpg's. (Especially those based on pop-culture SF.)

 

For the whole question of "Does my starship need artificial gravity?" this isn't even an issue in SF rpg's. The answer is just plain "No, it doesn't." For most visual SF (tv/movies) it's just as obviously "Yes, of course it does." because it's easier to film. The reason artificial gravity has become such a pervasive trope in popular SF is because nobody in Hollywood has a cheap way to do artificial weightlessness. So, they simulate artificial gravity using... real gravity! (Which kinda makes my head hurt when I think about it.) RPG's don't have this problem. GM: "Okay, you're in zero-G now." There, done. That was easy, no need to compromise.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

They did some pretty cheap artificial weightlessness in Barbarella. You couldn't really do that with a room full of people though...

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

They did some pretty cheap artificial weightlessness in Barbarella. You couldn't really do that with a room full of people though...

 

I've watched practically every cheesy (and not-so-cheesy) space-flick filmed before 1980, and I can tell you with authority that most sci-fi movies had one scene where a wrench or a crewmate floated up off the floor, then they (more often than not) put on their "magnetic boots", turned on the "artificial gravity" or just plain ignored weightlessness throughout the rest of the flick. Some of Apollo 13 was filmed aboard NASA's "Vomit Comet", but then with the rising cost of JP-4 (or whatever they're using now) I suspect we may never see its use again.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

"Cheap" was a really poor choice of words on my part; wires are cheap. What Hollywood lacks is a convenient and/or convincing way to do weightlessness.

[Vanguard]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

I can't really blame you. I worked hard on making my sci fi game as hard as possible' date=' I saw how unglamorous it became. Spaceflight is long and arduous, and colonies are only marginally more comfortable. I even removed the naval designations from the warships (It's a "Class A Military Spacecraft," not a "battleship.") Maybe I went too far.[/quote']

 

It might just be my impression of "hard" sci-fi but the way I've heard it referred to is "stuff that is only possible with current technology and/or reasonable advances in current tech."

 

To me, that's just way to limiting because you can't really do anything that you've seen in the movies or read about in books. And us gamer types like to emulate that.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

"Cheap" was a really poor choice of words on my part; wires are cheap. What Hollywood lacks is a convenient and/or convincing way to do weightlessness.

 

In the film 2010, they did some very convincing wire work and other zero-gee FX even before CG made "erasing" the wires possible. It can be done, but you don't often see that kind of craftsmanship in modern cinema.

[L. Marcus]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

"Cheap" was a really poor choice of words on my part; wires are cheap. What Hollywood lacks is a convenient and/or convincing way to do weightlessness.

The hotel hallway/elevator freefall scene from Inception blew my mind. I was half convinced they'd used a Vomit Comet, and apparently it was all wires.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

I've watched practically every cheesy (and not-so-cheesy) space-flick filmed before 1980' date=' and I can tell you with authority that most sci-fi movies had one scene where a wrench or a crewmate floated up off the floor, then they (more often than not) put on their "magnetic boots", turned on the "artificial gravity" or just plain ignored weightlessness throughout the rest of the flick. [/quote']

 

Heh...yeah. Barbarella's weightlessness lasted maybe 2-3 minutes, and then she hit the gravity and fell to a cushion/bed/sofa thing. I was impressed enough with the effect I had to look it up...you can tell it's not wires. But, yeah, I would think movie makers could use a combination of wires, CGI, other effects, and hell, even the Vomit Comet every now and then if they wanted to get serious about weightlessness. Most space movies are fiction, though, and are just as happy to hand-wave it away with all the other details they've already hand-waved to get a story in space.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: A note on starship design: the engines point down.

 

It might just be my impression of "hard" sci-fi but the way I've heard it referred to is "stuff that is only possible with current technology and/or reasonable advances in current tech."

 

To me, that's just way to limiting because you can't really do anything that you've seen in the movies or read about in books. And us gamer types like to emulate that.

 

I meant to reply to this yesterday but I was lying on the bathroom floor having a long philosophical conversation with the toilet bowl, and puking my guts out. I'm all better now.

 

This is one of the narrowest possible definitions of Hard SF, favored by self-styled genre police who enjoy passing judgement about what's "good enough" to be considered Hard SF, and what doesn't make the grade. I used to be one of those people, but I got better.

 

A far more incluive definition is: If a work of SF doesn't egregiously violate the laws of physics, it can be considered Hard SF.

 

If the author knowingly violates the laws of physics in a specific way, but deals with the consequences of that in a scientifically rigorous manner instead of just 'handwaving' it away, that could also be considered a "Hard SF" approach to the subject, even though it's considered "impossible" by our current understanding.

 

In some cases the author handwaves one idea for the sake of storytelling (FTL is a common choice) but takes a Hard SF approach to everything else. (Sometimes this is a good decision. The 2300 AD rpg had a scientific-sounding explanation for its FTL drive based on quantum tunneling which was proven impossible while the game was still in print.)

 

All of these are much less limiting for Hard SF author/rpg designers than the 'genre police' definition of Hard SF.

 

See the Sliding Scale of SF Hardness for more info.

 

Also see the Mundane Manifesto for a good list of creative works by authors who worked within the strictest definitions of Hard Sf and kicked @$$.

 

My advice to would-be Hard SF GM's: don't be afraid that Hard SF is "too limiting" by someone else's definition. And don't worry that someone else might consider your work to be "not hard enough." If you're making any effort at all to get the science right, you're already in the top 10% to begin with. You're in the top 1% by Hollywood standards.