rgrove0172
SOC-12
Ive actually considered this too and frankly, just chose to ignore it. It seems so obvious that there has to be a provision for it. The whole setting sort of depends on that 7.7LY max.
Fleet sizes
- Thread starter McPerth
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Ive actually considered this too and frankly, just chose to ignore it. It seems so obvious that there has to be a provision for it. The whole setting sort of depends on that 7.7LY max.
Parts are a different animal. A disassembled drive accumulates no charge.
It's just the accumulation of ideas that missile engines need to be transported dismantled, then carry an absolutely high cost and complexity to assemble them, or—in the alternate—it is an absolute time consuming horror to discharge them routinely trucking around known space that I object to. There's no point to the latter from the standpoint of game balance. I can't even see it lending itself to any particular game drama, and it makes military ships like the Kennedy kind of stupid. Wouldn't the Kennedy be a better, more efficient ship with half its missiles if each missile requires its own crack assembly/discharge crew?
It just complicates things without adding much, IMO.
Brown Dwarf density is lower than stellar density... they don't even double the number of "systems" in the local region.
Smaller bodies, however, should been in the oort and kuiper belts of most systems... (and Oort and Kuiper belts have been imaged around another star, and confirmation is waiting on a third.) Which means, if you're not in a rush, that 7.7LY distance is Oort-to-oort, for about an 8.5-9LY star to star, with a roughly 1/10 chance of a brown dwarf extending that further... and probably another 1/10 chance of a planemo extending it as well.
rgrove0172
SOC-12
I house rules almost immediately that the hazardous checks need to be made hourly at an accumlating negative modifier.
As far as unmapped Brown Dwarfs or rogue planetoids out there, I imagine just keeping them as cool plot elements to draw into the game as needed.
Rough guess, given rocky-ish density, about 1/10th the size of Earth. Kuiper belt objects are too small, but something on the order of Titan would work.
And you're right, all these BDs they're finding littered around space play havoc with 2300's basic assumptions, just as they do in Traveller. These games have to limp out of the 1970s on walkers
That's better than I had somehow gathered. But it still upsets the 2300AD universe.
Hans
shaunhilburn
SOC-12
A terrestrial, silicate/nickle-iron planet like earth with a comparable core mass fraction: 0.0031 earth masses; 2,260 km in diameter. A rock/ice body would be 30% - 40% larger.
No.
Thing is, they're getting ALL the news. There are a few estimates that they might total the same. The most "enthusiastic estimates" I've seen are 1 superjovian or larger object per cubic light year... and THAT would chuck the arms right out...
But the number actually discovered isn't really all that high, especially since most of them are binary companions to visible stars. At least, based upon what's in the readily accessible public papers.
That's how I interpreted it too, until I saw this would shatter 2300 setting (e.g., Voghelheim and Eta Bootis are 9.035 LY apart, whouldn't have been easier to send reinforcements to Borodin by such drive tampering than confronting the Kafers at Hochbaden?)
But now there's another thing just comin to my mind. Let's imagine a Kenedy tampers with the drives so that it can travel 12 LY with this 24 hour extension (7.7 + 4.8). Unless he tampers likewise all its missiles drives or have them disassembled, it will have a nasty problem when the 7.7 threshold is reached and the missiles coils begin to explode...
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rgrove0172
SOC-12
After some thought (while pounding on the treadmill this afternoon) I think Im going to dump the "delayed discharge boost" concept entirely. Its just too problematic and too easy to ignore.
As a compromise I suppose you could allow the bonus travel at the Sublight speeds only (inside the threshold) to allow critically charged ships to reach a gravity well but at the risks we associated earlier. The 7.7 limit wouldnt be threatened this way and you still get the drama.
And as far as Brown Dwarfs go, recent astronomy has shot the setting all to hell already, no real reason to even consider "real space" anymore. If you wanted to conjure up some sort of scientific reason the brown dwarfs wont work for discharge, that might be ok too but the simplest solution is to just leave it alone unless you need one for a story line.
As a compromise I suppose you could allow the bonus travel at the Sublight speeds only (inside the threshold) to allow critically charged ships to reach a gravity well but at the risks we associated earlier. The 7.7 limit wouldnt be threatened this way and you still get the drama.
And as far as Brown Dwarfs go, recent astronomy has shot the setting all to hell already, no real reason to even consider "real space" anymore. If you wanted to conjure up some sort of scientific reason the brown dwarfs wont work for discharge, that might be ok too but the simplest solution is to just leave it alone unless you need one for a story line.
Perhaps more than in Traveller. 2300 really set about to establish itself in the catalogue of known stars. I can imagine that, for the designers, the idea of Arms, and the geopolitics of Arms, came only later, after they'd sketched the routes of known space. A map emerged, then the thinking about that map.
I imagine (could be wrong here) the designers bumped into the 7.7 equation in some '70s textbook as the average density of stars in the local cluster, and using that began plotting from there, using stellar data that—by 2013—is a bit naive and inaccurate. So a BD here and there really kayo's the setting in profound ways. Traveller, which never gave much truck to definitively mapping the setting 1:1 to reality, much less so. My 2¢.
rgrove0172
SOC-12
As to mucking with the setting, my game assumes the Kafer threat hasnt developed yet, only a couple brief, mysterious and scary encounters - no interstellar war. So all the military history that would be rendered null by the inception of new start isnt a concern for me. What does concern me though is the rapid expansion of the human race if all those little BDs are there. In a couple hundred years of unlimited growth you might well have an Imperium-like setting out there and that would essentially ruin 2300.
Check this out:
http://evildrganymede.net/2012/02/13/stellar-mapping-2300ad-near-star-map/
So: Using modern stellar data, the known space map is already broken. If you ease the stutterwarp limit up to 8 ly, a lot of the problems Dr. Ganymede lists tend to go away ...but still.
If you read Colin's musings on the 2300 update, he was tempted to use modern stellar data. But it broke the Arms and the setting. So, back to elder data. The BDs only put more water through what was already a badly leaking dike, and no amount of fingers can plug those holes. You're pretty much invested in a fictional star map.
As the saying goes, "SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543"
Wouldn't the cost of starship drives still be the same bottleneck that it is in canonical 2300AD?
Hans
rgrove0172
SOC-12
I dont have a big problem with that. We were playing Twilight:2000 in 2004 with the original background!
I've been searching my old work to find this bit below:
When I first started to play 2300AD (Somewhere in the early noughties) I wondered and thought about this for a long time. Why does the drive build up such a charge?
It took me quite a while to get the sourcebooks together, but what I came up with was this: The drive has a coil; this coil is not physically attached to the rest of the drive but is magnetically suspended in it.
This suspension, when moving under warp in (near) zero G causes the charge to build up in the coil. This is why the drive has to be disassembled, ie: the coil removed from the suspension field in order for it not to build up the charge.
Well, we may not know how stutterwarp energy works, but we know all about magnetism and electricity. So it should be possible to design the magnetic suspension chamber to be in a detachable section by itself. Design this section to have its own electrical supply and it should be a simple matter to switch the suspension chamber from being maintained by the drive to being maintained by its battery. You can then eject the suspension chamber and grab a spare suspension chamber with a spare drive coil and install that with the same ease that any modular component can be swapped.
No doubt that's going to be expensive in itself, the material for drive coils being so rare, but at least you won't have to destroy the entire drive.
(I realize, of course, that there must be some reason why this won't work, but I can't spot it. :devil
.Hans
I tell you I hate the shuttle-warp drives system of 2300 myself, I instead have started using a Fold Drive system. Basically a energy bubble is generated surrounding the vessel, and then using a plotting of locations, the ship slips into Hyper Space and from one point where it starts and out the other side where it will finish it's flight. For sense of play, I have stated it will take One Hour per parsect travelled and it all relates to the amount of energy units the ships power supply generater has to how far a given ship can move. Thus depending on the Power Supply it generates a given number of power units, and then depending on the size of the ship it takes a certain number of power units to travel each parsect. Also the cost in power units is a bell curve that increases each additional parsect travelled added to the cost.
I use alot of different systems that are not standard anything Traveller, but it make plotting and planning a Fold fun for the players to do. They also have to take into account power units for other ships systems as well too. It comes down to a balancing act, with certain systems and how far one can Fold/travel in any given "Jump"! Also my Traveller ships no longer use the same fuel systems either, there are a number of other fuel systems in use. As with all things, there are Pros and Cons baked in for added possible roleplay within any given situation.
I use alot of different systems that are not standard anything Traveller, but it make plotting and planning a Fold fun for the players to do. They also have to take into account power units for other ships systems as well too. It comes down to a balancing act, with certain systems and how far one can Fold/travel in any given "Jump"! Also my Traveller ships no longer use the same fuel systems either, there are a number of other fuel systems in use. As with all things, there are Pros and Cons baked in for added possible roleplay within any given situation.
rgrove0172
SOC-12
Im not sure the setting could handle such a radical change in technology, but hey.. to each his own. If it works for you, go for it!
