• Welcome to the new COTI server. We've moved the Citizens to a new server. Please let us know in the COTI Website issue forum if you find any problems.
  • We, the systems administration staff, apologize for this unexpected outage of the boards. We have resolved the root cause of the problem and there should be no further disruptions.

cosmic phenomonomonomonon's..and you

N

Nurd_boy

SOC-13
After watching a ton of History channel's programs dealing with the cosmos. I got to thinking how I could translate some of the more crunchy bits to my oun twisted TU...
lets take this for one:
GAMMA RAY BURSTS, capable of incinerating a whole system (or so the people with big brains that think about this stuff say...) I say: nasty, nasty, bad cosmos...yet strangely fascinating, would it be better just to jump in and see the aftermath and NOT experience one inperson?....
or jump in and see...
TWIN NEUTRON STARS? gravity locked spiralling around each other in an ever tightening dance of doom?
what about...
stellar collisions?, QUASAR, BLACKHOLE/whitehole, NOVA, SUPERNOVA, PULSARS, nebulea

so lets here it folks, how would these things be viewed/effect by/the intrepid crew in simple game terms(like event horizons), being I'm not an astro-Physicist.
 
Even cooler then that.

Since you have FTL you can experience a volumetric extermination event multiple times. You could have carnival ships staying with the moving events, surfing them for the entertainment of its guests. Watching the same event (say a stellar collision and resultant gamma ray burst) again and again and again.

I'd say crews would view them like people view tornados. Fun to see on a news cast - not so fun when it has just stolen your trailer. The safety measures for some of these (a big enough gamma pulse would not be survivable in traveller, even with a black or white globe generator) would make any momentary wonder at how "pretty" the effect is a secondary consideration.

That's for the crew of course. Extreme sports/science people may see it as a challenge (much like modern vulcanologists watching actively exploding volcanoes) and tourists may get some entertainment.
 
ok, on a more mundane 'cosmic' item...take a nebulea. In game terms jumping in/near one would what, interfere with sensors from radiation to a degree? the mod being in relation to the distance? and visual would be bad, com interference?
or the radiation stream from a pulsar? I can see being able to get close as long as the..call it the 'pulse zone' is avoided, otherwise what? lethal doses? or fried electronics?
And when stellar mapping, a variable star or two could make live interesting for a ship crew i think, especially if the star is entering an active phase...bursts of radiation, low end levels, maybe some radio static, higher end leathal? streamed or omnidirectional from the star? speed wouldbe near light? so a crew would have, mabe minutes to button up or get cooked? hmmm...
 
Nurd_boy said:
a variable star or two could make live interesting for a ship crew i think, especially if the star is entering an active phase...
Click to expand...

There's an old Keith Brothers Traveller scenario called "Flare Star" in Space Gamer issue 46.

SJG has a free GT version on their e23 website. Might be useful.
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-1150

I can't recall right off the bat if it went into detail about solar flares from unstable red dwarf stars, but might be worth checking out just in case.

Best,
Will
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top