Could use some thought feedback - CE setting

[Diveguy]

So, as a thought exercise (since I don't currently have a gaming group), I've been working out thoughts on a new campaign setting to play with.

General idea currently is to use Cepheus Engine/Hostile/Near Space as my rules sources, as I like the vibe it comes up with & the way it simplifies some stuff. Possibly some elements from Outer Veil as well... but also combined with some homebrew thoughts. General LBB 1-3 vibe, small ships, edges of explored space sort of thing.

Timeline/tech idea is late 2100 to mid 2300 range, near-Earth (so, while I like what has been done with Clement Sector, that's not the route I'm going). Still 50/50 on if I'm going to include other sophonts or not. Also, planning to use as much "real world" astronomy as possible without getting insane about it. Star travel isn't brand new, but only a few ships have Jump-2 capability. Because I still want comms to be at the speed of travel, and colony worlds are more than just a few days away from Earth.

Anyway - the spot I'm stuck on - Jump Travel/Hyperspace and the like...

I am a *big* fan of using the rule that starships require a gravity mass to enter and exit jump space. I like how this reinforces the importance of trade and communications routes, or can close of areas that are beyond the limits of Jump-1 ships etc... So - no "jump into empty hex with extra fuel, then jump again" in the campaign.

Options, as I see them currently (particularly since this would influence the very first jump out of Sol system to even get anywhere):

- Near Space postulates some conveniently located brown dwarf systems which at least build a few corridors of travel. Has anyone used this bit of handwavium, and any thoughts on it? My only concern is this populates Sol subsector with a large number of systems; which I would then have to extrapolate equally to others as I move out on the map.

- Or, do I use Hostile's "hyperspace" drives and put an upper limit on parsecs/week? Does this throw a wrench in the ship design process and game mechanics too much?

Anyone with any experience or suggestions?

Also - may do a short write-up on setting concept and politics, if any interest out there.

 

[kilemall]

IMTU is a similar near Earth first steps to stars milieu, but I'm the exact opposite on grav wells, precisely so I can have freedom to exploit the Oort Cloud as a vast lawless wasteland filled with the dangerous and weird.

However, if you postulate a low enough level of gravitic well that can serve as an anchor, perhaps the one critical ice rock out there can be the stepping stone out of the Earth system.

Doubly fun if it's so small it's dangerous to jump in there it requires highly skilled navigators.

 

[Enoki]

My take on jumping is that the ship creates a gravity well with the drive and "falls" (maybe is pulled?) in to emerge at the far end in a fixed period of time. The well is extra dimensional to "normal" space. The drive creates the well and the well collapses when you get to the "bottom" of it, regardless of whether there's a source of gravity nearby or not.

But, you have to have only microgravity (assumed to be a constant or nearly so) to jump with accuracy. If there's considerable gravity nearby, it will mess with the accuracy of the well and cause a mis-jump that results in you ending up where you didn't want to be.

To make things more interesting, if the ship is moving when it enters, it retains that vector on exit. The problem is with that that you are also creating a bigger navigational error by trying to open the well when moving. The "normal" / standard jump is done from a stationary point so you have the most precise aim when generating the well possible meaning you end up closer to where you intended to be than if moving.

This makes for lots of fun if you are being chased by pirates, the military, authorities, or whatever, as you have choose to either jump at speed, greatly increasing your potential error, or remove your vector of speed and stop to jump meaning those chasing you are going to close considerably and probably shoot you into little bits... :devil:

It also means you don't necessarily have to jump to the main world in another system. With a good navigator you can jump to outlying worlds or a gas giant and end up in the right place.

 

[willtron3030]

The "normal" / standard jump is done from a stationary point

Whoo boy, this caused my head to explode when I considered it once, as a way to enable hostile boarders. Boarding just doesn't work with any ship that chooses to resist and has means to. Even a "stationary" vessel can resist boarders. But blowing it to bits if it doesn't surrender? Yup, always an option.

What really gutted me was, "stationary relative to what?" If you're stationary relative to the system you're in, you're creating an exit point in or near a moving target. If you're stationary relative to your destination, well... someone demonstrated to me that most ships don't have enough delta-V - or patience - to meet that requirement for most transits.

I waved my hands a bit and ruled that the jump insertion and precipitation points are both stationary relative to the vessel (hence the 100D distance from everything else), and the astrogator is "leading the target", putting the precip point at the target's position a week from insertion and outside its 100D limit. I also decided jump-shadowing and jump-masking is irrelevant outside the departure and arrival systems since, as with you, the path between insertion and precipitation points are not in normal space and unaffected by physically intervening gravity wells.

 

[Timerover51]

I am working up a sector well to the Rimward of Earth set a bit later than yours, but based on a blend of Cepheus Engine and the 1977 edition of Classic Traveller. I am assuming that Hyperdrive initially took a month to cover a parsec, deriving that from some of H. Beam Piper's writings, as his hyperdrive speed varied widely. Once the idea is established that you need to get beyond a certain distance from a large gravity mass, such as a planet, Jump-1 and Jump-2 are developed. What I call Hyperdrive-2, covering a parsec a week, comes a bit later, after the Jump drives have established dominance based on faster speed of travel. The Piper Out Rim Sector uses a mix of Jump and Hyperdrive ships, with the Jump Drives supplying a higher speed of travel, while the Hyperdrive ships supply a longer range and do the initial exploration of a system.

It should be noted that a ship does not come to a complete stop prior to jumping, as it would retain both the planetary orbital speed and also the star system speed of movement as the Galaxy rotates. I do not spend a lot of time worrying about speed vectors prior to jumping. I do use a boost and cruise approach, so I do not necessarily have a high speed vector at either Jump or entrance to Hyperspace.

 

[Adam Dray]

It should be noted that a ship does not come to a complete stop prior to jumping, . . .

Also because "complete stop" in space is utterly meaningless, except measured relative to another object. There is no "0" speed.

All motion is relative. "Motion" doesn't even mean anything without a frame of reference.

 

[Adam Dray]

Diveguy,

This sounds cool!

MTU uses sungates (giant discs that are "implanted" in the surface of stars). Most of the travel time is from the planet to the main star at pretty normal rocket speeds.

Each sungate is paired with another at a quantum entanglement level, and it has to be moved into place (one on each star) the old-fashioned way (NAFAL). This limits how fast humanity can expand across the galaxy, but allows for very far "jumps" between stars.

Communication is still at the speed of travel, but an X-boat-style network can be much faster than in the OTU because there's no week in jump space. (If you want a week in jump space, just make the wormhole journey from one sungate to another take a week--or a few years per LY, if you prefer.)

Another consequence of sungates is that defense is a lot easier. There's a single access point to your system and you can surround it with mines or defense platforms or whatever.

I think this is still in line with you wanting a big gravity mass to enter jump space. Sungates can't exist without the giant magnetosphere of a star. It's not a big leap to say that the star's gravity well also plays a part in making a sungate work.

 

[Golan2072]

- Near Space postulates some conveniently located brown dwarf systems which at least build a few corridors of travel. Has anyone used this bit of handwavium, and any thoughts on it? My only concern is this populates Sol subsector with a large number of systems; which I would then have to extrapolate equally to others as I move out on the map.

As one of Near Space's authors - there were two reasons for us to speculate about the existence of a hypothetical (very small and dim) brown dwarf between Sol and the rest of the Solar Main.

The first was to allow Jump-1 drives to be relevant. Without that brown dwarf, you'll need Jump-2 to leave Sol, unless you use empty-hex jump, like Outer Veil (of which I am also a co-author, by the way) does. We wanted to keep Jump-1 ships relevant and useful, including for travel from Sol itself to other systems. Sure we could have had them built in Proxima, but then it will need Starport-A and a huge population, which might or might not be desired in a near-future setting.

The second was to avoid, given the above point, empty hex jumps. Outer Veil used them, but I now think that when empty-hex jumps are impossible, space has a "topography" and the map becomes more interesting.

So we speculated about a small, dim brown dwarf within one parsec of Sol to solve these issues.

Also - may do a short write-up on setting concept and politics, if any interest out there.

I would love to see them.

 

[whartung]

Starfire uses Warp Points, which are stationary in regards to the primary of the system.

The primary difference is that in Starfire a Warp Point connects two systems, rather than, in this case, simply being a place that you can initiate jump.

Both will provide a mechanism of a formal "border" by defining static entry and exit points for a system.

 

[Timerover51]

Starfire uses Warp Points, which are stationary in regards to the primary of the system.

The primary difference is that in Starfire a Warp Point connects two systems, rather than, in this case, simply being a place that you can initiate jump.

Both will provide a mechanism of a formal "border" by defining static entry and exit points for a system.

That sounds a lot like Niven's and Pournelle's Alderson Drive points. However, because the stars are moving in relation to each other, the Warp Point will gradually change position as well. It will not stay static.

 

[Diveguy]

IMTU is a similar near Earth first steps to stars milieu, but I'm the exact opposite on grav wells, precisely so I can have freedom to exploit the Oort Cloud as a vast lawless wasteland filled with the dangerous and weird.

However, if you postulate a low enough level of gravitic well that can serve as an anchor, perhaps the one critical ice rock out there can be the stepping stone out of the Earth system.

Doubly fun if it's so small it's dangerous to jump in there it requires highly skilled navigators.

Your TU use of the Oort Cloud is also intriguing - not the direction I'm going, but certainly can see lots of potential.

I like the concept of "Gravity well has to be a certain size to anchor in on, but the smaller it is the more room for error" - plus, I think that would help explain certain misjumps. "Sure - you didn't *mean* to end up here, but when the drive failed it locked in on that one comet that had *just* enough mass..." I may work some more on that in my head.

Thanks for the feedback.

 

[Diveguy]

My take on jumping is that the ship creates a gravity well with the drive and "falls" (maybe is pulled?) in to emerge at the far end in a fixed period of time. The well is extra dimensional to "normal" space. The drive creates the well and the well collapses when you get to the "bottom" of it, regardless of whether there's a source of gravity nearby or not.

But, you have to have only microgravity (assumed to be a constant or nearly so) to jump with accuracy. If there's considerable gravity nearby, it will mess with the accuracy of the well and cause a mis-jump that results in you ending up where you didn't want to be.

To make things more interesting, if the ship is moving when it enters, it retains that vector on exit. The problem is with that that you are also creating a bigger navigational error by trying to open the well when moving. The "normal" / standard jump is done from a stationary point so you have the most precise aim when generating the well possible meaning you end up closer to where you intended to be than if moving.

This makes for lots of fun if you are being chased by pirates, the military, authorities, or whatever, as you have choose to either jump at speed, greatly increasing your potential error, or remove your vector of speed and stop to jump meaning those chasing you are going to close considerably and probably shoot you into little bits... :devil:

It also means you don't necessarily have to jump to the main world in another system. With a good navigator you can jump to outlying worlds or a gas giant and end up in the right place.

Interesting write-up and way to work this - both yours and the follow-on concepts. Thanks.

One thing I'm keeping from some of the other sources is that there is no "one" jump-point in or out of a system - the jump point is dependant on the destination; which is part of why current navigation data is important as they tend to drift over time.

 

[Diveguy]

I am working up a sector well to the Rimward of Earth set a bit later than yours, but based on a blend of Cepheus Engine and the 1977 edition of Classic Traveller. I am assuming that Hyperdrive initially took a month to cover a parsec, deriving that from some of H. Beam Piper's writings, as his hyperdrive speed varied widely. Once the idea is established that you need to get beyond a certain distance from a large gravity mass, such as a planet, Jump-1 and Jump-2 are developed. What I call Hyperdrive-2, covering a parsec a week, comes a bit later, after the Jump drives have established dominance based on faster speed of travel. The Piper Out Rim Sector uses a mix of Jump and Hyperdrive ships, with the Jump Drives supplying a higher speed of travel, while the Hyperdrive ships supply a longer range and do the initial exploration of a system.

It should be noted that a ship does not come to a complete stop prior to jumping, as it would retain both the planetary orbital speed and also the star system speed of movement as the Galaxy rotates. I do not spend a lot of time worrying about speed vectors prior to jumping. I do use a boost and cruise approach, so I do not necessarily have a high speed vector at either Jump or entrance to Hyperspace.

I see where you went with this. Not at all discounting your efforts for your TU - but, I'm trying to stick with one "unified" FTL system as it were. Also, haven't decided yet how in the weeds I'll get on things such as vectors and velocities etc for Jump or other travel. My personal games we've always had more enjoyment out of simplifying much of that in the sake of the story - but, haven't ruled it out yet either.

 

[Diveguy]

Diveguy,

This sounds cool!

MTU uses sungates (giant discs that are "implanted" in the surface of stars). Most of the travel time is from the planet to the main star at pretty normal rocket speeds.

Each sungate is paired with another at a quantum entanglement level, and it has to be moved into place (one on each star) the old-fashioned way (NAFAL). This limits how fast humanity can expand across the galaxy, but allows for very far "jumps" between stars.

Communication is still at the speed of travel, but an X-boat-style network can be much faster than in the OTU because there's no week in jump space. (If you want a week in jump space, just make the wormhole journey from one sungate to another take a week--or a few years per LY, if you prefer.)

Another consequence of sungates is that defense is a lot easier. There's a single access point to your system and you can surround it with mines or defense platforms or whatever.

I think this is still in line with you wanting a big gravity mass to enter jump space. Sungates can't exist without the giant magnetosphere of a star. It's not a big leap to say that the star's gravity well also plays a part in making a sungate work.

Interesting approach sir. So, if I read this right - any *initial* journey to a new system, and placement of a "sungate" can only take place at sublight speeds, and thus expansion is slow but once in place, travel is fast? Original approach to it - don't think I've seen that before.

 

[Diveguy]

As one of Near Space's authors - there were two reasons for us to speculate about the existence of a hypothetical (very small and dim) brown dwarf between Sol and the rest of the Solar Main.

The first was to allow Jump-1 drives to be relevant. Without that brown dwarf, you'll need Jump-2 to leave Sol, unless you use empty-hex jump, like Outer Veil (of which I am also a co-author, by the way) does. We wanted to keep Jump-1 ships relevant and useful, including for travel from Sol itself to other systems. Sure we could have had them built in Proxima, but then it will need Starport-A and a huge population, which might or might not be desired in a near-future setting.

The second was to avoid, given the above point, empty hex jumps. Outer Veil used them, but I now think that when empty-hex jumps are impossible, space has a "topography" and the map becomes more interesting.

So we speculated about a small, dim brown dwarf within one parsec of Sol to solve these issues.


I would love to see them.

#1 - Shalom, thanks for taking the time to answer. LOVE Near Space and Outer Veil both, and please don't take my post as a criticism of either - rather, as taking elements I like and doing something somewhat "original" or at least different for a setting. So, thank you for the inspiration.

#2 - I think that's the whole part I like - Jump 1 being relevant. . . AND Jump 2 being special. Players/NPCs being able to get around the 'Verse in that Jump 1 ship and function fine. BUT, they have to plot their routes, and certain areas go the long way around. And, it explains why that Free Trader may be the only ship a colony off the main routes sees a few times a year - because it's not worth the 2-week diversion for a major company... Yet, there's also always the challenge of did that Jump 2 government or corporate ship get some news, or agents, or important tech someplace before anyone else could react? And so on.

I think you answered the inherent first element in that, you've obviously found it workable. SO - as an example (not my intent, but to give me a mental picture) - if you were expanding Sol subsector and the added "HSC-xxxx" brown dwarfs throughout a full sector such as Outer Veil, what kind of distribution would you give? Did/would you work off a random table, or build deliberate routes, or a mix of the two?

#3 - I'll clean up my draft "background" write up this week and post then - for fair use and feedback.

Thanks again sir.

 

[aramis]

That sounds a lot like Niven's and Pournelle's Alderson Drive points. However, because the stars are moving in relation to each other, the Warp Point will gradually change position as well. It will not stay static.

Similar, very similar, even, but not the same.

The biggest difference is that the Alderson Drive is just that - a drive, separate from the photonic drives used for N-space. You can wait on the point, ready to go instantly. Alderson points can be mathematically predicted in-setting.

In Starfire, the Ion Drive (More correctly, ion-trail sublight warp drive) is inherently able to trigger the warp point; the instant the field touches, the ship is ejected from the other end just clear of the field. The Warp Points cannot be predicted accurately; they have to be surveyed for. They generally don't show up inside the star's life zone.

 

[Golan2072]

#1 - Shalom, thanks for taking the time to answer. LOVE Near Space and Outer Veil both, and please don't take my post as a criticism of either - rather, as taking elements I like and doing something somewhat "original" or at least different for a setting. So, thank you for the inspiration.

You're welcome.

#2 - I think that's the whole part I like - Jump 1 being relevant. . . AND Jump 2 being special. Players/NPCs being able to get around the 'Verse in that Jump 1 ship and function fine. BUT, they have to plot their routes, and certain areas go the long way around. And, it explains why that Free Trader may be the only ship a colony off the main routes sees a few times a year - because it's not worth the 2-week diversion for a major company... Yet, there's also always the challenge of did that Jump 2 government or corporate ship get some news, or agents, or important tech someplace before anyone else could react? And so on.

I think you answered the inherent first element in that, you've obviously found it workable. SO - as an example (not my intent, but to give me a mental picture) - if you were expanding Sol subsector and the added "HSC-xxxx" brown dwarfs throughout a full sector such as Outer Veil, what kind of distribution would you give? Did/would you work off a random table, or build deliberate routes, or a mix of the two?

Here is a very old map I made a decade ago. upon which OV was based. It has both real and NSSC (HSC-xxxx-equivalent) stars on it.[/QUOTE]

Sol_Sector_WIP5 by golan2072, on Flickr

#3 - I'll clean up my draft "background" write up this week and post then - for fair use and feedback.

Wonderful!

 

[Orr]

Anyone with any experience or suggestions?

Using that mass requirement means brown dwarfs and similar objects are now very important, so important that there's going to be a lot of effort dedicated to detecting and charting them.

You'll have publicly known objects and privately known objects with governments, organizations, corporations, and individuals all busy looking for others and charting shortcuts. The setting's "scouts", government or private, will be in great demand.

Stealing coordinates and other such survey data will be part of the picture too. Before sea-going clocks made fixing longitude simple, navigators used "rutters". Stealing or copying those rutters was a constant occupation for governments, companies, and individuals. Updating "public" rutters was a constant occupation too.

Then there's trade wars angle (along with old fashioned wars too). Imagine a trading company which alone knows the location of the brown dwarf that cuts travel time between two systems by, 50%, 75%, or more. They'll keep the location secret, but their competitors will be able to deduce where to look and eventually located the object. When they try to use it, they discover the first company has warships stationed there.

It would be like the trade war adventure in TTA except around a brown dwarf and with Arekut attacking the interlopers. Portugal did just that for a few centuries while surveying and using the Cape of Good Hope route to India. They developed the rutters, they kept things as secret as possible, and they tried to kill any Europeans they found south of the Gulf of Guinea.

Also - may do a short write-up on setting concept and politics, if any interest out there.

Please do. I know I'm not the only one who would love to read it.

 

[mike wightman]

Have you thought about just redefining the range of jump for your setting?

Make jump 1 capable of 0-1.4pc (4.6ly), jump 2 0-2.4pc (7.8ly)

 

[Diveguy]

You're welcome.


Here is a very old map I made a decade ago. upon which OV was based. It has both real and NSSC (HSC-xxxx-equivalent) stars on it.

Sol_Sector_WIP5 by golan2072, on Flickr


Wonderful![/QUOTE]

Perfect. That gives me a good idea of where your thoughts were.

As of my thoughts today, and after looking at the Near Space map and topography, I'm really thinking of just doing the initial write-up for the one subsector only. Just as a "possibile interpretation" with your permission?