DrTemp

Re: Alien Wars: Before hyperdrive, there was...

Frankly, IMO, what Alien Wars and Terran Empire needs is to take the Reactionless Drive from Terran Empire (p.158ff) and have them invented 5 centuries earlier. With a propellent-less drive in the mid 21st century, there's no need to worry about how a real-word STL works.

Another option might be giving Earth an actual Antimatter infrastructure and letting starships use antimatter photon drives. Those would have an exhaust speed of near c (light speed), and that'd significantly reduce the amount of propellant needed.

That kind of fuel would not be "easy to obtain", though.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

A horse can only be a horse because we have laws saying we can't try to make it anything else except in the strictest of conditions. Let's take a walk and say that the laws about animal testing' date=' cloning and gene splicing in general were far less strict. [/quote']

 

No. It is more a matter of physics- the energy density of anything a horse can digest is only so high, and thus the things it can do are limited. Now, a carnivorous horse could be reasonably stronger for its weight, but it still wouldn't be strong enough to, for example, fly (because it is too heavy).

 

You will never see a horse or an elephant moving at sustainable speeds of 100 km/h. And that is our equivalent of a chemical rocket working for 30 days continously- we could improve current chemical rockets to a certain point, but ultimately, we reach the limits of physics. That is why "rubber science" is needed in SF, after all.

 

[...]

As far as the possibility of continued strides in space travel we have possible true alternate energy sources today. Yeah today, I'm talking about zero point energies. With zero point energy I'm making reference to the theory that if a ship had a hull something akin to solar panels that gave it the ability to collect and convert the harmful energies of space it could use the continued barrage of harsh rays as a booster to another type of main drive.

[...]

 

That idea is not a chemical rocket.

 

BTW, you run into energy density problems there. The amount of energy required to produce thrust in space is enormous, the density of "free energy" of that kind is not.

 

We actually know quite a bit about the universe- any thechnology that provides things that we cannot do today at least theoretically requires assuming new, today unknown pieces, such as reactionless thrusters, for example.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

600 years ago, everyone thought they knew quite a bit about the universe too...and they also thought the world was flat.

But we still know a horse can only pull so much. That has not changed, and it won't change for chemical rockets either.

Re: Enterprise vs. Enterprise

Isn't there this fine fan project for a Star Trek Hero?

So why doesn't anyone take both ships' stats from there and simply plays it out using Hero System? I mean, if so many people are interested in the matter as it seems from this thread...

Re: Alien Wars: Before hyperdrive, there was...

Isn't it obvious? Before Hyperdrive there was really-really-really-fast drive.

There is, indeed, a tendency among some people to see it that way, but I personally find this... uhm, silly. I can have that kind of "I don't care how that works" attitude in any regular fantasy campaign. SF is, by definition, different. Especially military SF, which usually wants to be hard SF as well.

Re: Alien Wars: Before hyperdrive, there was...

Frankly, without a rubber-science STL, colonizing even handful of star systems is a 4-5 century project. *At* *best*.

Well, give them some kind of Russard ramjet, the'd have some 10% of lightspeed. Colonizing a new system would thus come down to a matter of decades.

So the question remains, what is Herogames' OFFICIAL explanation?

 

Mr. Long? Mr. Thomas? Are you listening?

I'd really love to read that, too. I know that Star Hero is currently not as profitable as it needs to be, but still, the settings are cool (minor difficulties aside) and I'd love to learn more about them.

Re: Average Seperation

So a new question... is there any basis (one way or the other) for having populated worlds be grouped together like this?

I believe there is.

First, the galactic habitable zone is an approximation that does not take into account the destructive effects of nearby supernovae, which can happen just anywhere in the galaxy. If a supernoa strikes, a few centuries later the surrounding life-bearing planets will have lost much of their higher life forms. Thus, it is quite probable that only in regions that haven't had supernovae for a long time there cann be an civilizations.

Second, of course, the average separation is just that, an average. It is quite possible that simply by chance, several intelligent species are closer to each other in the galaxy. There could still be those farther away- but nobody would know them.

Third, there is always the option of the "progenitor race", which sed life on a few clusters in the galxy. The progenitors were the first race (or a federation of races), and only on their planets did intelligent life evolve naturally. A variant of this might be an extinct genocidal race that was successful in some regions of space, but failed to exterminate intelligent life in others.

Re: Alien Wars: Before hyperdrive, there was...

IIRC' date=' the Colony Act was passed *before* FTL was readily available. Early colonization used long-term sleeper ships.[/quote']

 

Just looked it up- you are correct. The Colony Act pased the UE Senate in 2104, (no typo, the year is repeated in the text), "nearly a hundred years before the invention of Hyperdrive technology".

Re: Average Seperation

I was reading through Star Hero and came across the Drake Equation. An excellent tool I must say, but when running the numbers it says the number of technological civilazations have an "average seperation" of X light years. How is this average seperation determined? It doesn't really go into that...

That's because you, as the universe-builder, are to determine by sheer force of will what the "average separation" shall be. ;-)

Re: Alien Wars: Before hyperdrive, there was...

If I remember correctly, the class Alpha was the first mass-produced hyperdrive, but prototypes were certainly available much earlier. As much as you cannot buy an ion drive for your personal space probe today at "Old Neil's used spaceship parts", the early hyperdrives were purely gouvernmental experimening drives not available to the public in a way that a "class" of drives could be called existing.

I also vaguely remember reading about slower-than-light-hyperdrives as being the first uses of that technology. If they did some 0.5 c, they were still usefull for exploration.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

Actually, it's a LOT worse than this.

[...]

Correct.

With chemical rockets, UES spaceships would merely remain in orbit, jumping from one system to another orbit-to-orbit and not maneuvering much at all. Using, for example, fusion rockets, would allow at least for some "free-fall" deep space operations, with short bursts at the begin and end of a projected interplanetary course.

But design mistakes like this one are just examples for the necessity of a well-grounded design system for the SF environment and genre. I restate: A vehicle design system for the Hero universe, maybe much like GURPS Vehicles (even though a bit simpler, I suggest...) is required- at least for the higher-tech Hero Universe timeperiods like Solar Hero, Alien Wars, Terran Empire and Galactic Federation.

Re: Veteran of a 1000 Psychic Wars

What skills and powers would you give the psychic warriors?

Doesn't that depend on your campaign setting? Can you give a few clues about what is supposed to be possible?

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

The problem with these old Traveler games was the GM spend more time designing weapons, and ships than NPCs and plots.

Well, this is rather a problem of the GM involved, but I see what you mean- one can argue that the time consumption per usable campaign material output of such design systems is too high to be usefull.

This can easily be avoided by making a design system not too detailed. Skip things like the mass of the computer and sencsors system (being 50 or 100 kg) influencing the mass and performance of the 20 ton space superiority fighter- simply assume that all designed craft have a fair equipment aboard, all bought with the "2 to 3 tons for the cockpit". Modular design, so to speak. If designing a ship consists of only a few steps and takes no more than ten minutes, the output of usable campaign material increases rapidly...

But the value of such a design system is not only to give the GM a tool with which to provide background information for his or her campaign- it is also some kind of solitary play, which is simply fun for some people. (Many of those people also prefer rather rules-heavy game systems, such as you-know-which-one ). "Find out more about the setting by exploring its technological conditions". Providing such a systems deepens the fan's involvement with the game universe.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

Wabbida, you say? Exactly.

No.

Alien Wars, for example, wants to be rather hard SF on the sublight propulsion system question. The efficiency of a chemical or fusion rocket is not subject to arbitrary decision by the worldbuilder, but to known physics. If one wants to do Hard SF, one needs actual numbers. (There is only so much energy to be gained from converting Deuterium to Helium, so that is the maximum one can get out of a fusion rocket. It simply cannot be more, whatever the tech level is. For higher acceleration and burn endurance than the best imaginable (antimatter rockets) can provide, one needs rubber science.

{Warning. Numberchrunching example follows. If you are not interested in such things, move on to the next curly brackets}

For example, there is _no_ chemical rocket with an acceleration in the range of 0.1 g or above that can burn for a month. That is due to the exhaust velocities inolved, which are a function of the energy provided by fuel and oxidant. The best available chemical rockets use almost all of the energy provided, which allows for an exhaust velocity of perhaps 4500 meters/second.

To compute how much reaction mass we need for a given ship for a one-seconds-burn, we can use the simple formula:

shipsmass * velocitychangepersecond= reactionmassconsumptionpersecond * exhaustvelocity

For said Centauri class battleship, that is

100 000 tons * 5 m/s = reactionmassconsumptionpersecond * 4500 m/s

So

reactionmassconsumptionpersecond = 500 000/4500 tons

which is close to a hundred tons. For one second. A month has a _lot_ of seconds. (And one cannot simply multiply since the reaction mass for the last seconds has to be accelerated all the way until it is used, increasing the ship's initial mass and requiring a logarithmic equation for the actual computation.)

Even if one assumes that the exhaust velocity of Alien Wars rockets is much higher (which is actually not possible for a chemical rocket, simply because there is not more energy in that kind of propulsion system), there is no way a 100 000 tons ship can be in that range with its propulsion data if it uses chemical rockets.

{End of numberchrunching example}

In addition to physics being somewhat of genre relevance in SF, there is still the point that even with completely arbitrary rubber science systems, the numbers provide background information for the setting. If the best available FTL drive requires one ton of mass per ton moved with it, it is useless, since it can't even transport its own power source, and certainly not any payload. If interstellar empire A can build ships that carry one ton per kilogram of FTL drive and empire B only 500 kg, then empire A will dominate empire B (either economically or outright militarily).

In Alien Wars, the only real advantage the Xenovores seem to have, propulsion-wise, is that their dreadoughts are able to enter atmospheres- human ships are just as durable and just as agile as their Xenovore counterparts, even though the setting assumes that "the Xenovores are technologically superior", of which we'd see nothing in a space battle, given the stats of the available ships.

Don't misunderstand me- in the reality of play, these things are probably rather minor, and can be easily corrected if necessary. I really love the result of the author's work, it is a great SF setting. But it certainly lacks a design system.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

terran empires has a section on starship tech, tech levels, and the dates that specific bits and pieces become available as well as some charts.

But those charts are, again, only lists of Hero System powers and their associated point costs. No engineering involved.

Re: Something Star Hero needs, but hasn't.

I don't have Alien Wars or Terran Empire either. I wonder if the ship designs are consistent enough to reverse engineer a design system. This might be a good DH article if someone could do it.

Well, this is a funny thing about, for example, Alien Wars: While otherwise a remarkable work (and Terran Empire being even better), it turns out that if you reverse-engineer a Centauri-class battleship that way, you find out that using basic physics, it is simply impossible to build it- not because of the necessary rubber science involved, but because it has chemical rockets that can burn for a month and accelerate the ship at about 0.5 g... making that 100,000-tons-ship carrying about 250 *million* tons of reaction mass... a mistake that would have been easily avoided with a design system at hand.

I know that the Star Hero line does not sell too well, so it probably won't make sense for DoJ to add such a system to Star Hero, but I wonder if the lack of such a system is part of the reason for the relatively low sales.

Ever since Traveller, SF roleplayers like to do one thing: "Build Starships". (Of course, it's not only starships, but any kind of vehicle, but for ease of discussion, I'll simply call them all "ships").

Thing is, you cannot do that with Star Hero.

Oh, yes, you can write down the desired attributes of a ship you have in mind, and then assign a point cost according to the Hero system rules. But that is not what "building ships for your game" is about.

Especially in SF gaming, the engineering limitations of the technology available is a rather important aspect of the background. You want to know whether it is possible to build a Terran Empire dreadnought with 20 g of accelleration, ot what the maximum level is, engineering-wise. What are the limiting factors? Engine mass, pilot acc tolerance, available fuel? Some players take solitary fun in simply exploring what the "ultimate vessel" would be like- just what kind of ship is possible in the game universe?

Many SF games, from the old Traveller on, had "systems" to map these engineering limits: A given drive weighs X tons per ton of thrust, consumes Y tons of fuel per second for that and so on. Star Hero and its two settings, Alien Wars and Terran Empire have no such thing.

Why?

Re: Need Star Hero Reference

I don't have SH with me (at the office)' date=' and I need to know what the formula was for converting movement into kph. All I remember is its not exactly a straight SPD*MOVE*TIME sort of thing (there was a multiplier I'm missing).[/quote']

 

Well, from my stomach, in meters per seconds it's SPD*2*MOVE*5/60. MOVE is given in inches/hexes and thus two-meter-steps. Five turns per minute.

 

Convert it to kph the usual way, thus multiply the above by 3.6.

 

HTH

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice

This is just one more example of the kind of thing this tread is talking about. You can't deduce meaningful hard numbers from a work of Sci-Fi without letting personal judgements into the mix.

Well, if the "hard data" of the literature/movie source is arbitrary, then any conclusions from those are just as arbitrary. GIGO.

But there _are_ SF universes where this is not the case, as far as the technical data of ships is concerned. Of course, those are most common among RPG universes... but some TV shows qualify too. (We have hard technical data for the Star Trek Galaxy class, for example.)

Thing is- I've seen this kind of discussion on a local Battletech Mailing List, concerning several 'Mech types. From the same universe, with existing stats. But even under these circumstances, people preferred to do some blabla about why this or that was superior. They didn't even consider trying it out... Could have been so easy.

BTW can anybody tell which one is superior- a Xenovore Dreadnought from Alien Wars or a Tigress class dreadnought from Traveller?

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice

Unless you can find hard numbers in both sources stating their weapons power' date=' sheild resistances, and so on, there really cant be a valid comparison.[/quote']

 

Of course, there are usually much of these stats implicitly given in the available story material. For ships such as the ST Enterprise D, we even have some "hard" technical data. Also, even such general data as "uses Fusion power" gives raw ideas of how many power the ship can actually produce.

 

Of course, if no such thing is given either directly or implicitly, there is nothing to argue about. No data, so no conclusions.

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice

The problem is, how are you supposed to know whether or not a SW turbolaser has triple Armor Piercing only vs ST shields?

Now that is easy- you use Occam's Razor. If no author mentions anything in either source material that indicates this makes sense, there is no reason to assume that it did. You use the model of said vessel which requires the least assumptions for explaining every fact available.

Of course, in a written scenario, writers are free to introduce any such a thing for the sake fo the plot.

But the problem with the "writer's choice" answer is that it does simply not answer the question at hand. Nobody wants to know how the _writers_ would resolve the issue within a storyline because to _that_ the answer is just arbitrary. What people who ask for "X vs Y, who would win" really want to know is: "From all the available established source material, how do those units compare, combat-wise, all 'divine' interventions aside?"

Re: Who would win? Writer's choice

What I do not understand in all these X vs X threads is: WHY THE HELL DOES NO ONE USE THE HERO COMBAT SYSTEM TO SOLVE THE ISSUE?

*Aehem*

Really, one can argue several thousand times "X will, no Y will, because...". Or one can simply have one fight, using your facvorite RPG system, and the issue is closed. Why all the pointless blabla?

Step 1. Create the stats.

Step 2. Define the combat situation.

Step 3. Resolve the combat according to the rules.

And then you know. :-)

Re: Perry Rhodan Hero

That is very cool. At some stage I'll make some inquiries as to whether they hold the license for the English version as well.

Probably not.

However, I cannot agree that I find anything based in Midgard "cool". Midgard is something like the opposite of Hero System or GURPS: It's a bad D&D clone from the early 80's, and it shows.

Regardless, I'm sure there will still be a place in plenty (or some) of people's hearts for my version as well, since it's set in the first cycle of the series.

While I also believe there'd be interest in the game you have in mind, a want to nitpick that the Solar Imperium did not exist in the first cycle of the series...

Re: Enterprise NC1701A vs. Imperial Star Destroyer

Normally these dicsussions are pointless, but not here.

Hey, this is an RPG system forum. Why hasn't anyone just created the stats and used the combat system to find it out? Two of three, and you know which ship is better in a one-on-one.

Of course, this would still require some consensus on the actual capabilities of the two ships... but at least the whole discussion would be not as arbitrary as it normally needs to be.

Re: Perry Rhodan Hero

[...Random CharGen for the Perryverse...]

That would definately have a lot of merit, but completely random PC generation including power selection would just take a lot of building a character IMO. With Ivan's power it's simple to rule that PC's cannot have it since they don't have two heads. Humans are on the whole easy to do. Just restrict them to one major power and at most one minor power on top of that.

Uhm... if one does not want Pucky (I assume that's the Ilt Gucky's name in the english translations of the stories?) or a character of similar power level in the group.. well, what about giving fewer Character points to start with?

The first thing you'd need to do is throw point balance out the window. Look at the cost difference between a teleport and a telepath or a telekinet

Well, in a story, there is no such thing as "game balance", naturally. I would not conclude from that that in a different medium that has game balance this would not work in the Perryverse.

And what about hypnotic skill learning/power development? What a way to screw character generation if it's not regulated properly.

That should be easy. You need free CP for learning skills- just the amount of time required is reduced dramatically by hypnoteaching.