What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you use?

[Ravor]

I think the title says it all, I'll post mine later on tonight or maybe this weekend.

[Zeropoint]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I will use the Bachman-Turner "Overdrive".

[Folded]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

My babble goes like this:

 

"Many years ago, a particularly extreme genius developed a way of traveling faster than the speed of light. The military was, naturally, interested in this technology. At the time, only six other people in the solar system even claimed to understand the theory.

 

An admiral was sent to interview the genius and see a demonstration. He spent four days getting many simplified explanations, analogies and attempts to explain the math. When he returned, the admiral was asked by his superiors to a)make a judgment on whether the drive system should be developed, and how did it work. His response was as follows:

 

"Yes", and "It Just Does" Hence, the Interstitial Jump Drive, or IJD.

[Escafarc]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The Quantum Caterpillar Drive for both N-Space and Hyperspace(EDM linked to Megascale Flight with the Optional "Realistic" Space Acceleration Rules) travel.

[Sundog]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I use the Active Wormhole Drive. Under certain conditions, a wormhole can be formed between two points provided the points hve roughly equal gravitational potential energy of not greater than a certain point, and not less than a certain point. Thus, ships can only travel between stars, and only at a certain distance from both the primary and the nearest planets.

 

This prevents "sneak attacks", but also means space conflicts don't come down to massive attrition battales at stargates. It also eliminates the problem of relativistic weapons (which would be difficult anyway, since I use basic nuclear reaction rockets for normal space flight).

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

It's called the Interstellar Overdrive. (Hat tip to Pink Floyd.) It was purchased from aliens, who informed humanity they'd been wasting their time with string theory for over a century, and why didn't they pay more attention to the theories of that Burkhart Heim fellow?

 

Humanity: "Because he was a crack-pot?"

 

Aliens: "Well no, not really... how amusing. Anyway, here's your hyperdrive. We accept installment payments in monopoles, wormholes, strangelets, or quantum entangled pairs of anything. Try not to fall behind on payments or it'll wreck your entire species' credit rating."

 

Humanity: "Okay... how did you know about Heim, anyway?"

 

Aliens: "It's a secret, but we can sell you that information for the low, low price of..."

 

Humanity: "Oh never mind!"

[Manic Typist]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I like that, Xavier.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

It's called the Interstellar Overdrive. (Hat tip to Pink Floyd.) It was purchased from aliens, who informed humanity they'd been wasting their time with string theory for over a century, and why didn't they pay more attention to the theories of that Burkhart Heim fellow?

 

Humanity: "Because he was a crack-pot?"

 

Aliens: "Well no, not really... how amusing. Anyway, here's your hyperdrive. We accept installment payments in monopoles, wormholes, strangelets, or quantum entangled pairs of anything. Try not to fall behind on payments or it'll wreck your entire species' credit rating."

 

Humanity: "Okay... how did you know about Heim, anyway?"

 

Aliens: "It's a secret, but we can sell you that information for the low, low price of..."

 

Humanity: "Oh never mind!"

 

Very nice.

"Must spread" yadda yadda

 

For my new setting I'm going with Scalar Wave Theory.

It's worth reading up on. The Scalar Wars site is almost dangerously crazy but it has a LOT of great campaign potential.

Note: That site did trigger my popup blocker. proceed with caution.

[Ravor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

( 1 ) Phasic Impulse Drive

 

In the darkest days of the Wars of Unity when the Confederacy hoard had sorely pressed our fleets into defensive positions around Terra itself an Atlantian genius finally made the breakthrough he had been grasping for his entire life, an exotic metal alloy he dubbed orichalcum. He demonstrated to an assembly of Lord Protectors how an engine using nestled rings of orichalcum spinning at the speed of light could produce thrust on par with the best drives of the day without venting dangerous plasma or subjecting the pilot to hazardous G Forces. Even so the assembled Lord Protectors were far more interested in the phase shifting properties of orichalcum which allowed the fairly delicate metal rings to spin at such incredible speeds and dreamed of indestructible warships raining death upon their enemies. Instead they had to “merely” be satisfied with a fleet of ships that are untouchable to the rest of the universe while traveling at FTL speeds. One interesting fact is that the thrust produced by the drive is truly virtual so if the drive fails the ship is unable to “coast” so for this reason every Alliance ship is fitted with a small secondary reaction drive. Note that even at FTL speeds, the phase shift does not allow the craft to pass through normal matter and the drive is currently only capable of relatively slow FTL travel, making it of very limited use in interstellar voyages but extremely useful for in-system travel.

 

The Atlantian Alliance have had difficulties in scaling the technology in larger craft, so thus far the largest ship capable of using a Phasic Impulse Drive is a heavy cruiser, but this limitation is acknowledged as merely an engineering problem.

 

As to date, all attempts of creating a Phasic Shield capable of rendering ships indestructible at STL speeds have failed and Alliance scientists have wrongly concluded that such a feat is impossible but research into various forms of damping fields to prevent the drive from reaching FTL speeds have born promising first results.

[sinanju]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

It's called the Interstellar Overdrive. (Hat tip to Pink Floyd.) It was purchased from aliens, who informed humanity they'd been wasting their time with string theory for over a century, and why didn't they pay more attention to the theories of that Burkhart Heim fellow?

 

Humanity: "Because he was a crack-pot?"

 

Aliens: "Well no, not really... how amusing. Anyway, here's your hyperdrive. We accept installment payments in monopoles, wormholes, strangelets, or quantum entangled pairs of anything. Try not to fall behind on payments or it'll wreck your entire species' credit rating."

 

Humanity: "Okay... how did you know about Heim, anyway?"

 

Aliens: "It's a secret, but we can sell you that information for the low, low price of..."

 

Humanity: "Oh never mind!"

 

These guys sound suspiciously like Larry Niven's Outsiders.*

 

*Aliens who evolved in the dim, cold recesses of space like the moons of Neptune or Pluto. They sold the secret of hyperdrive to all the species of Known Space, for unimaginable sums of money. They also sold the secret of the reactionless planetary drive (for moving whole planets) to the Puppeteers when they decided to flee the galaxy--and take their homeworld with them. They will answer personal questions...for a trillion stars (credits/dollars) per question.

[sinanju]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I'm partial to the Alderson Drive (named for Dan Alderson, a Cal Tech physicist) from Jerry Pournelle's SF (and his collaborative work with Larry Niven). It's kinda like the Traveller jump drive, except it takes you there instantaneously--and only along specific "tramlines" that exist between solar systems. Not all systems have such links, and some have more than one.

 

One advantage to this system is that it means the PCs can't go anywhere you don't want them to go. You don't have to map every possible destination in your campaign.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

These guys sound suspiciously like Larry Niven's Outsiders.*

 

*Aliens who evolved in the dim, cold recesses of space like the moons of Neptune or Pluto. They sold the secret of hyperdrive to all the species of Known Space, for unimaginable sums of money. They also sold the secret of the reactionless planetary drive (for moving whole planets) to the Puppeteers when they decided to flee the galaxy--and take their homeworld with them. They will answer personal questions...for a trillion stars (credits/dollars) per question.

 

They have a lot in common with the Outsiders, and quite a few differences. And you're absolutely right, I'm a huge fan of Niven's (early) work.

 

The "Keepers" as these aliens call themselves, didn't evolve naturally. They're a post-biological species who inhabit the dark side of tide-locked worlds orbiting red dwarf stars: in other words, the most long-term stable environments in the galaxy. They're everywhere, and they're all quantum-entangled with each other -- if one Keeper knows something, they all know it, which is why they're such good information-brokers. They don't travel much, for obvious reasons. They're described in more detail in Terracide.

[tkdguy]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I thought of using the Alcubierre Drive before I limited the scope of my campaign to the solar system. I may still use it, though.

[Gnaskar]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The Shepherd Effect Drive was invented in 2523 by The Shepherd. The first successful faster than light flight was made only two years later, and the first intersystem jump was made three years after that. Most history books refer to what followed as the Golden Age of Humanity.

 

But what history books don’t record is what happened half a century later. In 2579, a private freighter ship disappeared on its way to Sirius, and was assumed to have had suffered a fatal malfunction. It reappeared in the Sol system three weeks later and docked with an orbital habitat. Official records claim what happened next was the result of a containment failure in the habitat’s anti-matter reactor, and dismisses the contents of the broadcasts made prior to the explosion as hallucinations brought on by the poisonous fumes of the failing containment system.

 

It was around that time that The Shepherd discovered that hyperspace wasn’t the empty featureless plain he had thought. Hyperspace, it turned out, was as close as one could get to the traditional depictions of hell, and the “demonic” entities that resided there were all too happy to be given a way out. The Shepherd shut down all other processes and devoted its full attention to this new discovery for a whole week . It concluded that going public with this information would completely ruin the human race, which had already grown dependent on intersystem trade. Instead, it funded a clandestine organization dedicated to keeping the forces of the void at bay.

 

The Shepherd’s Inquisition, as the organization became known, exists to this day, though in a slightly modified form. While they were originally focused purely on hunting void entities and preventing void intrusions, contacts tended to call on Inquisitors whenever anything strange happened. Veteran Inquisitors were thus, through simple experience, generally the best men for the job whenever something odd occurred, leading them to being called to handle it more often. Bowing to the inevitable, The Shepherd expanded the organization’s brief to cover other unusual occurrences.

 

Shepherd Effect Drive

 

The Shepherd Effect Drive consists of a Faraday cage surrounding the vessel and the Drive itself. The Drive sends a pulse of magnetic energy through the Faraday cage in a pattern carefully designed to generate a magneto-gravitonic field. This creates a singularity, a hole in the local space-time, which sucks the ship in. Once in the Void, the Shepherd Effect continues sending low frequency pulses through the Faraday cage. This has the double side-effect of creating the distinctive black emptiness associated with the Void and protecting the ship from the Entities that dwell in it by creating a near impenetrable barrier. It’s also how the ship can move in the Void, using the magneto-gravitonic (aka Shepherd Effect) field to push the ship along at insane speeds.

 

The Shepherd Effect Drive emits a low frequency hum best described as a thump when in use. In ships that don’t dim the lights while in the Void (a common tradition), it also causes the lights to pulsate in time with the thumps. Most experienced spacers are as used to this sound as they are the life-support sounds, and thus tend to ignore it (until it isn’t there).

 

Some people experience nausea while in the Void, which modern science attributes to reactions to the EM radiation. Even so, The Shepherd is known to keep a close eye on these kinds of people wherever they’re discovered. Nausea during the transition is more common, and is probably because of the rapidly shifting gravitational fields involved and other side-effects of entering a singularity.

 

The Drive In Game Terms

 

Shepherd Effect Drive: Faster-Than-Light Travel (1 Light Years/day),

Instant Lightspeed (38 Active Points); Increased Endurance Cost (x5

END; -2), OAF Bulky (Faraday Cage; -1 1/2), Side Effects (Void

Phenomenon; -1), Costs Endurance (-1/2), Requires A Roll (17- roll;

-1/4). 6 Points.

 

The Required Roll can vary depending on how well maintained the Drive is, damage to the Faraday cage, environmental factors, etc. An ill-maintained, damaged pirate ship might be as low as a 12- in some cases. Failing the roll by one or two leads to relatively tame Phenomenon occurring; more strange than actually dangerous. Lights flickering on and off, power surges, sudden winds in places there shouldn't be, food rotting away over night, etc. Failing by three or more, on the other hand, can lead to anything from a demon manifesting on the bridge to the ship (and everyone on board) being torn inside out. If you're “lucky” you get a sneaky, malicious demon intent on drawing things out by killing of the crew one by one in ever stranger accidents rather than an unstoppable combat monster intent on wholesale slaughter.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

It depends on the campaign. My Star Wars Universe settings used a hyperspace drive that worked (in game terms) like the ones in the movies. It covered light-year distances in hours of travel time. I borrowed from Traveller the idea that some preparation time involving the Nav computer and Hyperspace Navigation skill were required, and had some bearing on the actual speed of the FTL leg of the trip but also accuracy (how close to the target location you emerged from hyperspace). Other settings borrowed heavily from Traveller or Star Trek, depending on what sort of space drive the setting called for.

 

One of my favoritedrives was the "Differential Gravitic Slope Drive". This was installed in a ship that looked like two equal-sized, intersecting spheres. A "Gravitic Slope Generator was installed in each sphere. The fields were tuned so the difference in perceived gravity between the two spheres would be one gee. In either sphere, "down" was towards the other sphere. Both drives together might exert 10 gees in the desired direction of travel, but the tidal forces between the two sections of the vessel provided a steady one-gee "gravity" (one section would exert ~11 gees while the other exerted just 10, making the difference one gee. Usually the two drive sections would thrust along the same axis, but turning the vessel could be accomplished by skewing the axis of one or the other section's drive to apply a turning force to the whole ship, providing pitch and yaw control (roll was by smaller "gravitic thrusters" or reaction jets). At very high sublight speeds, this drive began interacting with the extra dimensions of normal space to the point that the vessel would "disappear" from normal space, then "reappear" at a much distant point. At first this was assumed to be a random process (initially it was thought that this destroyed the ship), but eventually a brilliant mathematician worked out what was going on, providing the basis for using the DGSD as a FTL propulsion system.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

My campaign setting uses three.

 

The first is a typical Hyperspace Drive. The ship travels to a Hyperspace jump point, transitions to hyperspace via a Hyper Dimensional Flux drive, then travels the hyperspace lanes to the next jump point, transitions to Normal Space, then navigates to the next Jump Point. This is the typical FTL drive used to society at large and it can attain speeds of up to 100 times that of light speed (thus if it takes 100 years to get somewhere at c then it takes 1 year to get there via a hyperspace lane)

 

The next type of drive is that of a Worm-Hole generator. Certain space stations have Stargates that generate a Worm-hole that bores directly through Space-Time that spans great distances, like hundreds to thousands of light years. The government of my campaign setting is working on getting ships out to distant areas of the galaxy in order to build Stargates to allow mass colonization of those areas of space. Some military and coporate vessels can actually create their own temporary worm-hole without the necessity of a Stargate. These are very expensive and power-hungry requiring Neutronium (yes material from a Neutron Star) to function. The drive is called a Singularity Drive because it functions similarly (but not exactly the same) as a singularity. The Singularity drive concentrates massive amounts of gravitational energy at a single point in space until Space Time folds in upon itself at that location. The ships computer calculates the distortions effect on Space-Time and activates a Quantum Stabilization Field at the right moment to create a (momentarily) stable worm hole for the ship to pass through to the desired location. This is Megascale teleportation bought at interstellar distances. Current limitations on the Singularity Drive are 50 light years in a single jump and the most advanced drives can make a Jump every 12 hours or so. (keep in mind that it takes typical Hyperspace enabled ships nearly 6 months to travel 50 light years. The fastest ships take about 90 days (very expensive drive. not many of those to go around). Most of the expensive military ships that have a Singularity Drive also have a pretty robust Hyper-drive as well.

 

What the government doesn't know (or most of them don't. Some suspect) is that Worm-hole technology is causing Space-Time to destabilize. Even the Hyper-drive technology has an effect on this, though a much smaller one than a Singularity Drive. This is causing the Hyperspace field to become unstable and allowing dimensions to bleed in to one another. In some places near Stargates, time is not linear and it is possible when passing through a worm-hole to get transported into a nearby alternate universe.

 

Note that the "Hypespace Dimension" actually isn't it's own dimension or universe per se, it is the buffer between universes that keeps them from merging. Hyperspace drives from our universe are keyed to the gravitational constant of our universe (each Universe having its own unique Gravitational Constant) so that when they jump back to our Universe from hyperspace, they are always supposed to end up back in the proper 'verse. However occasionally (.0023%) a Hyper Drive may malfunction slightly and cause the ship to Jump into the wrong universe. Have fun finding your way back!

 

The Enemy in my campaign setting are from an Alternate Universe and are going from Universe to Universe conquering and devouring resources. Their ultimate goal is to bring all of the universes together to become The True Universe. They believe the multi-verse to be a Space-Time anomaly that must be fixed for everything to be made right again.

[Cancer]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The one sci-fi campaign I've run used a discontinuous jump drive, so that you never actually experienced FTL. I have some technobabble about how it works. OTOH, I know too much physics and was more interested in making a consistent universe than I was making a playable game. I have referred to it obliquely in threads over in the General Roleplaying forum.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The one sci-fi campaign I've run used a discontinuous jump drive' date=' so that you never actually experienced FTL. I have some technobabble about how it works. OTOH, I know too much physics and was more interested in making a consistent universe than I was making a playable game. I have referred to it obliquely in threads over in the General Roleplaying forum.[/quote']

 

I go with the tried-and-true Hollywood method: Never let physics get in the way of a fun time!

[Tasha]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Most of the SciFi games I have run used the plain old Classic Traveller Jump drive. It takes one week to travel in Jump space from fractional Parsecs all the way to the maximum of the Jump drive installed (6 Parsecs being the best Jump Drive you can get). Jump drive works by opening a hole and entering "Jump Space" spending a week there traveling, then reemerging into normal space around 7 days later give or take half a day depending on Navigator expertise and engine upkeep. I was thinking about modifying the way that Jump drive works so that someone can choose to burn more fuel to emerge from Jump space faster. In otherwords trading in distance travelled for less time in Jump Space. ie a ship with Jump 2 could burn all of it's jump fuel just like they were going to travel 2 parsecs, only instead of moving 2 parsecs they move 1 parsec and only have to spend 3.5 days in Jump space.

 

When I finally decide to run/write up the Sci Fi campaign that's in my head. I think that I will use Hyperspace drives ala Babylon 5. I like the idea of Hyperspace being somewhere you actively navigated. That there are sometimes disturbances and storms. I guess I like the FTL space is kind of like travelling by ocean concept.

 

I have thought of using something similar to Andromeda's Slipstream drive. I kind of like the Slipstream pilot being semi prescient and autopilot being nearly impossible. For my purposes Slipstream is a concept that gives the campaign a FTL drive that is too fast. It's setup nicely for one pilot/navigator being used for one trip. It doesn't work well for long voyages with shifts. That's why I don't really like the StarWars Hyperdrives. They are too fast. No time to do stuff while in flight.

[John T]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The Shepherd Effect Drive...

Reminds me a lot of the movie Event Horizon, though I imagine the idea wasn't new to that film. One of the films I bring up in reference to the idea of "Lovecraftian Sc-Fi".

 

Which reminds me:

 

That's why I don't really like the StarWars Hyperdrives. They are too fast. No time to do stuff while in flight.

Interstellar travel in the Star Wars films happens at "plot drive" speeds. Nothing much beyond Jedi training and sensing great disturbances happens there because it wasn't written that way. In my own SW game, one of my smuggler captain PCs was napping on the bridge during a hyperspace jump. As he drifted into "half-awake", he saw... something... outside. Naturally, when he started fully awake, nothing but the blur of hyperspace was there...

[dmjalund]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

That's why I don't really like the StarWars Hyperdrives. They are too fast. No time to do stuff while in flight.

You could arrange it so that times taken to travel to and from jump points can take long enough.

[Cancer]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I go with the tried-and-true Hollywood method: Never let physics get in the way of a fun time!

 

Yeah, the problem was: I had fun with the physics, but my players sure didn't care. That's where the issue was.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Yeah' date=' the problem was: [u']I[/u] had fun with the physics, but my players sure didn't care. That's where the issue was.

 

I've often had the same experience, not only with the physics (or astronomy), but with game design as well. At the end of the day, I just try to make sure the results are entertaining. If they're anywhere near scientifically "correct" and the game design is good, that's a bonus for me.

[sinanju]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Most of the SciFi games I have run used the plain old Classic Traveller Jump drive. It takes one week to travel in Jump space from fractional Parsecs all the way to the maximum of the Jump drive installed (6 Parsecs being the best Jump Drive you can get). Jump drive works by opening a hole and entering "Jump Space" spending a week there traveling' date=' then reemerging into normal space around 7 days later give or take half a day depending on Navigator expertise and engine upkeep. [/quote']

 

Yeah, see, I could never buy into that. A week in hyperspace, no matter how far you went? That makes no sense. If it was a week per parsec, maybe, and a week minimum (so that micro-jumps around a system aren't practical), okay. But a week, a whole week, and nothing but a week so help you god? No.

[Ravor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I don't know, I think I'd explain it as the actual travel taking place in a blink of an eye, with the rest of the time being necessary to allow the "hyperspacy viberations" that crossing into hyperspace inflicts on normal matter to subside enough to allow the ship to cross by into normal time/space. Said "hyperspaciness" bleeds away in the normal universe in an instant hyperspace flash.

 

Of course, anyone that is able to figure out an artifical way to bleed the viberations away quicker will be one of the richest men in the galaxy.