In SF games that involve FTL, what kind of FTL do you prefer?
The classic jump drive, a'la traveller, works to get the players from system A to system B, but doesn't work in gravity so it allows for 'space battles" around planets and such, and it had been made to work fairly consistenly over the decades in which traveller has been around.
Warp drive lets players communicate and interact with the universe while in ftl, but has a lot of issues with it, like how do weapons hit a ship thru the 'warp bubble' around it and so on.
Hyperdrive is just jump drive with fancier effects.
The honor harrington books have a new form of ftl that's heavily explained and could be used in most games, plus is can defend a ship in battle along it's sides.
So, what FTL drive do you like? Does it have to be heavily detailed technically and consistent? I prefer that kind as it keeps things on a solid, consistent foundation. Or do you go for the less complex "It's like in star wars/star trek" kind of drive?
Anything that allows for "handwavium overloads" whenever my physics savvy player tells me that by doing x,y and z he can evade the imperium dogfighters/not use any fuel to get from a to b/blow up a planet.
In StarCluster I used a true Jump Drive, which is instantaneous to the occupants of the ship, though it may take up to almost a year of outside time to transit. Transits go from a known Jump Point to a known Entrance Point in each system.The ship is never technically travelling anywhere. It disappears one place and re-appears another.
In Cold Space, I used a "Go Faster" drive which compressed space ahead of it in an inverse proportion to the gravity present. This makes travel within a system faster, and travel between systems much, much faster.
Obviously, I like both of these... :D
-clash
Traveller jump drive seems adequate for most gaming purposes.
I have a soft spot for Battletech´s Kearny-Fuchida Drives. They are more Traveller than Traveller!
Stuttwerwarp also rocks.
Quote from: SettembriniI have a soft spot for Battletech´s Kearny-Fuchida Drives. They are more Traveller than Traveller!
Stuttwerwarp also rocks.
Ah, stutterwarp, that was a cool drive. Wasn't it also called the flicker drive and first used in traveller 2300?
Quote from: Dominus NoxAh, stutterwarp, that was a cool drive. Wasn't it also called the flicker drive and first used in traveller 2300?
From what I can remember, Stutterwarp was first used in 2300. It is a very cool concept of making a large number of very small jumps.
I have slight problems with FTL drives because of the time travel which they inherently allow. Relativity is quite well-established, and it means that if you can get a ship up to relativistic speeds with an FTL drive (including a standard teleport one), you can travel through time.
Not a big deal in a space opera game -- but it's given me a twinge or two before in games which try to have science in them.
This is avoided if you have a preferred frame of reference -- which you can do by tying the FTL drives to stars, or the galaxy or something. So I like ship-sized wormholes or system-based "stargates", but also any FTL drive which locks the ship to a frame of reference.
Wormholes.
Eistein-Rosen bridges, despite the inherent challenges, seem the most plausible to me.
I like the Hyperspace of the B5 universe.
If I just want to focus on planetary stuff, then any system that breaks down to "plot a course and roll some dice" works. I'd prefer as few stabs at actual physics as possible, because it's rare that the game designer understands physics better than all the players of the game, and it only takes one guy spouting off on a BBS somewhere to break a system wide open and require cascading house rules to patch it.
Quote from: Dominus NoxThe honor harrington books have a new form of ftl that's heavily explained and could be used in most games, plus is can defend a ship in battle along it's sides.
Quote from: Caesar SlaadWormholes.
The best thing about David Weber's "Honor Harrington" setting (the "Honorverse") is that it uses a very detailed FTL drive as well as wormholes. Actually, it uses two FTL drives - a more "conventional" one (in scifi terms) and the Warshawski sails, which allows ships to use gravity waves that were extremely dangerous to FTL travel before their invention. Toss in wormholes which become objects of strategic interest, and it's a very rich part of the setting.
So that'd be my pick - the "Honorverse" system of FTL travel.
Quote from: James McMurrayI like the Hyperspace of the B5 universe.
If I just want to focus on planetary stuff, then any system that breaks down to "plot a course and roll some dice" works. I'd prefer as few stabs at actual physics as possible, because it's rare that the game designer understands physics better than all the players of the game, and it only takes one guy spouting off on a BBS somewhere to break a system wide open and require cascading house rules to patch it.
Albert Bailey, who designed the drive for Cold Space and designed the drives for StarCluster with me is a plasma physicist working for Northrop Grumman. He's an actual bonafide rocket scientist.
-clash
Then the game probably has waaaay more information about how the FTL technology (and other stuff) works for my tastes. Bully for him though, that takes a hell of a lot more work than I want to do. :)
Although technically I'm a rocket scientist too, it's just that the parts of the rockets I work on are code. Make of that what you will, but I'm sure some folks reading it will stop using "rocket scientist" as an honorarium for people they think are excesively intelligent. :)
Quote from: James McMurrayThen the game probably has waaaay more information about how the FTL technology (and other stuff) works for my tastes. Bully for him though, that takes a hell of a lot more work than I want to do. :)
Although technically I'm a rocket scientist too, it's just that the parts of the rockets I work on are code. Make of that what you will, but I'm sure some folks reading it will stop using "rocket scientist" as an honorarium for people they think are excesively intelligent. :)
Well, that's actually not true. We abstracted all of that info out - only using it to develop it. We are both gamers, and hate taking time out of play for fiddly stuff. StarCluster is dead simple - a single die roll for how long it takes - though Cold Space is somewhat more complex, requiring some elementary level math. A four function calculator does the job. Just want to set the record straight.
-clash
Ah, cool. Thanks for the intel.
Let's just say that I don't at all mind toying with flamboyant but somewhat, eh, implausible notions of space travel, like the breaker gates from A Miracle of Science (which can convert entire fleets into time and transport them across vast distances in an instant), or the Icarus Drive from Rein-Hagen's never-released Exile (which allows a ship to plunge through the gravity well at the heart of a star into "nullspace" and out again from the core of another star)...
As much as I love the new BSG I generally think that it's jump drive would be a bitch for gaming purposes for several reasons.
1. A ship in trouble can just 'jump' away, making it possible to fight till you start getting damaged, then jump to safety, making ship kills, especially capital ship kills, hard as hell if the drive is used consistently.
2. You can literally jump from interstellar space to within a planet's atmosphere if your drive is good enough, and jump from practically a planet's surface to deep space. Boy, would that allow the players to avoid any fight they didn't want to get in way too easily.
3. A ship can, apparently, jump within a minute of so of making it's last jump, no recharge time or anything like that needed, as seen when the galactica jumped into new caprica's atmosphere, then jumped into orbital space less than 2 minutes later.
All in all a jump drive like that would make space war impossible, basically. Hell, if I want to trash your homeworld I can jump nukes right above your cities from a good distance, or jump into near orbit, fire a volley and jump home before you can get a lock on me. Or I could jump in, fire self guided missiles at your ships then jump away.
BTW, I don't consider FTL drive to be impossible or even unrealistic as no one has yet to explain why the speed of light is 186,222 miles per second in vacuum, so if they can't even explain the speed of light it's a little presumptious to say it can't be exceedd. Likewise many FTL drives don't actually exceed so much as circumvent the speed of light.
Traveller works as long as people don't start arguing over jump masking/shadowing/fuel/differences between editions/brown stars/jump-torpedos. :pundit: The crystals are a bit too Trek for me but easily ignored. Speculation on just what J-space is and what (or who) is in it is fun in or out of game.
2300's Stutterwarp works as a nice mix between science and playability.
I like how FTL is done in Cordwainer Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith)'s Instrumentality of Mankind stories. Early on it requires either severing almost all senses so the pilot doesn't eventually go insane and destroy the ship ala Scanners Live in Vain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain) or later a linked psychic and cat team to guide the ship to the destination as in The Game of Rat and Dragon. The later can be used like a less doom-ridden version of the later WH40K psychic guided FTL. (note: Baen has some sample stories (http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520953/1416520953.htm?blurb) for a recent collection of some of the stories but there's also a good two volume collection by NESFA Press)
Quote from: Casey777Traveller works as long as people don't start arguing over jump masking/shadowing/fuel/differences between editions/brown stars/jump-torpedos. :pundit: The crystals are a bit too Trek for me but easily ignored. Speculation on just what J-space is and what (or who) is in it is fun in or out of game.
2300's Stutterwarp works as a nice mix between science and playability.
I like how FTL is done in Cordwainer Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordwainer_Smith)'s Instrumentality of Mankind stories. Early on it requires either severing almost all senses so the pilot doesn't eventually go insane and destroy the ship ala Scanners Live in Vain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanners_Live_in_Vain) or later a linked psychic and cat team to guide the ship to the destination as in The Game of Rat and Dragon. The later can be used like a less doom-ridden version of the later WH40K psychic guided FTL. (note: Baen has some sample stories (http://www.webscription.net/chapters/1416520953/1416520953.htm?blurb) for a recent collection of some of the stories but there's also a good two volume collection by NESFA Press)
I had no problem with the "Zuchai crystals" in traveller as they really were nothing but a highly efficient capacitor material that allowed for jump drives to be somehwat more reliable, smaller and more effecient than one built with a regular capacitor battery to power the jump. The crystals simply stored and released energy faster, more reliably and efficiently than a normal capacitor, they produced no energy. As such they were an OK item, nice to have but not necessary, plus they made for great trade/commerce items.
Universe had a jump-drive that involved getting out to beyond the system's gravity well and then making a jump to another system that had to be assisted by a psion.
It also had no artificial gravity, and high acceleration was only possible if you were fitted with a 'net' (basically reinforcements throughout your body). Some neat ideas from that old dinosaur.
Quote from: Dominus NoxI had no problem with the "Zuchai crystals" in traveller as they really were nothing but a highly efficient capacitor material that allowed for jump drives to be somehwat more reliable, smaller and more effecient than one built with a regular capacitor battery to power the jump. The crystals simply stored and released energy faster, more reliably and efficiently than a normal capacitor, they produced no energy. As such they were an OK item, nice to have but not necessary, plus they made for great trade/commerce items.
Zuchai crystals (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal) are Traveller's Dilithium crystals (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dilithium), serving a similar purpose, focusing power and risk becoming a handwavium gottahaveit magic crystal. I don't see anything in available OTU sources nor design systems about them being more optimal than some regular jump capacitor. Instead they're portrayed as being vital in Library Data fluff (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal).
DGP and to some extent MT and GT sometimes go into too much detail and high geewhiz tech for my tastes. DGP/MT also could get too clean in look, similar to Star Trek's aesthetics.
Quote from: Casey777Zuchai crystals (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal) are Traveller's Dilithium crystals (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dilithium), serving a similar purpose, focusing power and risk becoming a handwavium gottahaveit magic crystal. I don't see anything in available OTU sources nor design systems about them being more optimal than some regular jump capacitor. Instead they're portrayed as being vital in Library Data fluff (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal).
DGP and to some extent MT and GT sometimes go into too much detail and high geewhiz tech for my tastes. DGP/MT also could get too clean in look, similar to Star Trek's aesthetics.
"We've switched the ship's dilithium crystals with new Folger's crystals. Let's see if Scotty notices..."
-clash
FTL is impossible and wrong, so I don't mind whatever handwavium is used so long as it lets me do fun space opera stuff without too much fuss. Ideally, I know what kind of jargon / metaphor to use.
Quote from: flyingmice"We've switched the ship's dilithium crystals with new Folger's crystals. Let's see if Scotty notices..."
:) While we're waving our hands about he'll be dancing on our graves singing Hallelujah (http://www.phespirit.info/montypython/four_yorkshiremen.htm). Too much hokum and I switch from Traveller to another game. Just another component, fine, magic red go fasta crystals, pass. As always YMMV.
Quote from: Casey777Zuchai crystals (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal) are Traveller's Dilithium crystals (http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Dilithium), serving a similar purpose, focusing power and risk becoming a handwavium gottahaveit magic crystal. I don't see anything in available OTU sources nor design systems about them being more optimal than some regular jump capacitor. Instead they're portrayed as being vital in Library Data fluff (http://traveller.wikia.com/wiki/Zuchai_Crystal).
DGP and to some extent MT and GT sometimes go into too much detail and high geewhiz tech for my tastes. DGP/MT also could get too clean in look, similar to Star Trek's aesthetics.
I think that Loren Wiseman once said they were nothing but a better capacitor material than normal, but admitted they were mostly a "mcguffin" item.
I don't think they ever existed in gurps traveller...
QuoteWhich FTL drive do you prefer?
Time Distort (http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/SevenCyc/7Disp.cgi?l=T&m=19&e=TIME_Distort), of course. Preferably with a
Photonic Drive (http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/SevenCyc/7Disp.cgi?l=P&m=19&e=PHOTONIC).
:respect:
i've always preferred the traveller version over trek. would like to try something with "gates" or wormholes, or the like. the setting would be based around the strategic importance of such things, since they're an immovable resource (if wormholes, that is).
i try to stay away from any handwavium stuff in my sf games, but with ftl it's basically unavoidable in one way or another.