CT Only: Hard Space

[Golan2072]

While I dedicate most of my game-design time to my Visions of Empire setting, which has commercial implications, as well as shorter Stellagama Games products, I thought that it might be fun to write up a Traveller setting inspired by my conclusions regarding Classic Traveller lethality. This, of course, is for Classic Traveller - mainly Books 1-3, with some added material from Book 4 and Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, as well as hand-picked materials from JTAS. However, the spirit of the setting is that of the three little books - a dangerous, mostly-frontier, small-ship universe. This is not a grand space opera setting such as Visions of Empire or the Official Traveller Universe, but rather a much grittier, harsher and less colourful. Think of it, maybe, as a reflection of mine on my old Outer Veil setting (published four and a half years ago by Spica Publishing) with the "grit" and "harshness" dials turned up to 11.

I have made a rule for myself, however, in order to prevent having Hard Space take over the time devoted to Visions of Empire: I have made a rule for myself, however, in order to prevent having Hard Space take over the time devoted to Visions of Empire: I will write ONE paragraph for Hard Space for every FIVE paragraphs I write for the Visions of Empire.

Anyhow, the premise of Hard Space is this - the year is 2130 AD. Humanity has only recently reached out to the nearby stars, but limited technology does not allow for rapid interstellar expansion. Space is dangerous, ships are small, and even sixty-three years of faster-than-light exploration and settlement have only carved out a small, sparsely populated colonial region around Sol. As the old national governments on Earth have been bled dry financially and politically by the events of the mid-21st century, space is the domain of the private sector - of the larger corporations; once you leave Luna's orbit, Earth governments are little more than flags-of-convenience to private-sector investments and facilities. Competition among the "Big Four" interstellar corporations, and to a lesser degree between their rivals, is tense and quite cutthroat, leading to a great degree of underhanded actions and industrial espionage.

Most of humanity still lives on Earth, followed by Luna and Mars. As Earth is highly polluted, extremely crowded, and suffering from an unstable climate, many people - especially from the lower classes - are willing to take major risks to move to the colonies, where living conditions are often somewhat better, and where corporate jobs abound, even if they are mostly low-level jobs. To get away from the sprawling slums of Earth, many would even accept the risk of travel by Low Berth. Moving to Luna or Mars is easier, but the jobs on the extrasolar colonies pay better, and some of them have actual open-air environments.

Humanity has colonized 35 primary extra-solar worlds, of them 24 in the last fourteen years. The common way to refer to the stages of interstellar colonization is by "generations" or "waves" of colonization related to the development of jump technology combined with the slower creep of regular world-to-world expansion. The 1st generations colonies were founded between 2067 - when the corporations developed the first Jump Drives - and approximately 2090. The 2nd generation started with the colonial push of Zhang-Markov Industries and Iron Star Enterprises to the Coreward and Rimward, respectively, in the early 2090's, and lasted until the development of next-generation starship drives in 2116. The 3rd generation began in 2216 and is still going strong, with Zhang-Markov and Iron Star expanding further along their "arms" and attracting lesser colonial partners; the Royal British Interstellar Company (RBIC) colonizing the Procyon Cluster, and United European Minerals (UEM) colonizing the Ceti Cluster.

Humanity has encountered alien life on many worlds, but no (living) sentient life. There are, however, the Visitors. These alien beings have presumably "Visited" Mars - as well as several extrasolar worlds - leaving behind anomalous "Visitation Zones" filled with anomalies and artifacts, with little hint of their creators or their purpose. Most anomalies are highly dangerous - typically lethal to the unsuspecting explorer - and almost all artifacts have no immediate use. However, gradual research of Visitor artifacts does yield some insights into exotic physics and even weirder molecular biology, and thus any artifact has a meaty price tag when sold to researchers or to scientifically-minded corporations. Exploring a Visitation Zone is a profitable, though highly risky, enterprise. In many cases, when explorers find a Visitation Zone on a remote world, this generates a violent "gold rush" where rival gangs of Stalkers - as those artifact-hunters are often called - stop at nothing when trying to amass artifacts for sale to corporations and research institutes.

This is a very "early" near-future near-Earth setting. Even more than Outer Veil. The maximum Tech Level is 10, though unreliable prototype technology can reach TL13 in some cases, and in the case of electronics and software might even reach TL16 in very unreliable cases. The only Starport-A around is that of the Sol system - the collective shipyards of Earth, Luna and the Belt - and the only Industrial World in the setting is Earth itself. The largest starships are 1,000 tons in displacement - as this setting uses the Classic Traveller Books 2-3 drive tables and drive TLs; small ships are usually faster, and a colonial transport or heavy freighter of 1,000 tons will typically take long weeks to reach most destinations. Colonies are very small and very remote in comparison to anything in the Sol system.

This is a time of outward expansion and adventure among the stars - and also of great, mortal danger. Going into the Unknown is a particularly risky endeavour, as the Unknown as teeth, and Claws, and tentacles, and even the slightest malfunction in a ship's drives or in a spacer's vacc suit could spell disaster to the hapless explorer. Corporate and government marines battle vicious pirates, desperate rebels, and nasty xenomorphs on many worlds, facing a bloody attrition rate; explorers and couriers on the frontier and beyond - colloquially called "scouts" - go among unexplored stars, and in many cases do not return from their missions. The rewards of interstellar exploration are staggering, but so are the risks...

Sources of inspiration - literature:
Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson
Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Sources of inspiration - film and television:
Alien and Aliens
Apollo 18
Event Horizon
Firefly/Serenity
Outland
Pandorum
Stalker
Star Hunter
The Expanse

Sources of inspiration - video games:
Alien Legacy
Dead Space
Descent
Metro: 2033 and Metro: Last Light
Red Faction and Red Faction: Guerrilla
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
S.T.A.L.K.E.R - Shadows of Chernobyl
System Shock 1 and 2

 

[kilemall]

Bit different then mine, but welcome to the near future neighborhood.

The setting sounds similar to that FTL game by Tritac, minus the looming empire.

http://www.tritacgames.com/FTL.htm

One of my Big Themes is that the old governmental systems and social tools is going to have to go by the wayside. Mine is nations and the creakiness of trying to extend the UN Space Treaty waaaay past it's expiration date, along with the eternal viral colony of Chaos the Oort clouds foster.

Yours could be the colonialists rising up against the corporation ala Battlefleet Mars, with a hearts and minds contest in addition to the shooting.

Oh, and my operative phrase for most everything- Space Hurts.

 

[Golan2072]

Bit different then mine, but welcome to the near future neighborhood.

Thanks! Though let's just say the Near Future is VERY familiar to me in Traveller (look for Outer Veil in DTRPG if you don't know it, I am its primary author).

The setting sounds similar to that FTL game by Tritac, minus the looming empire.

http://www.tritacgames.com/FTL.htm

This one I do not know well, I'll get the books eventually for research purposes.

One of my Big Themes is that the ol... everything- Space Hurts.[/QUOTE] Absolutely.

 

[Golan2072]

History

World War III came about in the early 2040's, but luckily enough it did not materialize into the all-out nuclear armageddon feared by many. Instead, the war dragged on for over a decade, until all belligerents were bled dry and exhausted from the long war years. In 2053, the war was finally over, and the world was in ruins from prolonged conventional warfare and the few nuclear, chemical and biological weapons that did see use in the war.

All sides claimed victory but in reality, there were no victors - just bankrupt and impoverished nations incapable of conducting any further large-scale military operations. Politically, most governments emerged from the war in a very weakened state and had very little support from the war-weary population. The governments were mostly powerless to do anything meaningful to reconstruct the ruins of their nations; into this vacuum stepped the private sector, thrilled with the possibility of profit from reconstruction. Earth's collapsing nation-states no longer had the political power necessary to force taxes or regulations on the larger corporations, and these companies grew rapidly in size and power.

Bit by bit, the corporations rebuilt parts of Earth. Not all of it; not even most of it. But the corporate arcologies and gated cities provided their residents with the amenities of modern life, unlike the almost universal poverty of the urban blight surrounding them. Rising in profits, the private sector turned its eye to research and development, as well as the industrialization of the solar system. In the early 2060's, these efforts bore fruit and resulted in a rapid succession of innovations, from suspended animation to gravitic control, as well as improvements to the fusion power technology existing from before the war. In 2067, gravitic technology led to the greatest invention of all times - the faster-than-light Jump Drive, demonstrated by a historic month-long round-trip to Alpha Centauri by Zhang-Markov Industries's starship Zhen He. Very rapidly - some would say too rapidly - Iron Star Enterprises followed suit and launches their own exploratory starship, John Glenn, on an expedition to Barnard's Star. Thus began the first generation of space colonization.

Space is dangerous, and interstellar space more so. The first interstellar travellers found this the hard way, with high mortality rates among the early explorers who ran into deadly jump drive malfunctions, vicious alien wildlife - and soon enough, inter-corporate rivalry resulting in bloodshed. But mankind continued its march to the stars, despite the small size of interstellar ships allowed by the early jump drives. Colonies soon sprang out on planets orbiting Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, and Ross 154, as well as a small research outpost on a rockball in orbit around Luhman 16. With the development of more robust starship shipyards and thus a larger number of starships, the second wave of interstellar colonization in the early 2090's, colonizing seven new worlds, of them only one, orbiting Wolf 424, turned out to be a highly promising garden world, with the rest being more amenable to rare and exotic element mining.

The greatest discovery in the history of space flight came in 2099 when a detailed dig o the Cydonia region of Mars yielded weird alien artifacts after long years of rumors and strange accidents caused to spacecraft and ground vehicles in the vicinity of this region. While the Face of Mars turned out to be nothing but an oddly-shaped hill, the region itself appeared to be visited by extraterrestrial travellers - dubbed the "Visitors". They left behind unexplainable and deadly anomalies warping time and space, as well as a plethora of artifacts, the function of which was never fully discerned so far. Rumors of similar "Visitation Zones" on GL674 IVa and Ross 128 II were strongly denied by Iron Star and Zhang-Markov, respectively. In 2116, research into the alien artifacts and anomalies - while yet far from bringing about an understanding of the Visitors themselves, their purpose, or their civilization, gave scientists valuable insights into meta-dimensional physics and exotic matter, bringing about a new generation of magneto-gravitic and jump engines. These new engines, allowing both larger starships and longer travel ranges, opened up new frontiers to Humanity.

Today, in 2130, human space boasts 35 primary interstellar colonies. Most are very small in size, especially the remote ones, though Proxima Centauri III does serve as a home to almost a hundred thousand people. The frontier is wide open, and starships are "cheap" enough for smaller corporations and all sorts of social and religious movements to afford. Criminals, of course, can afford them as well, and piracy is a blight on the high frontier... This is a time for daring people to go out of the Sol system and seek their fortune among the stars, though many will find there not their fortune - but their untimely death.

 

[kilemall]

The SPI game Battlefleet Mars backstory is worth investigating too, that is where the Ares Corporation 'owns' space but is heavy handed with the colonists, who eventually revolt.

Earth in that context is initially disinterested in either backing the company or the colonists, but will get involved the more the critical raw material flow stops coming and industries start collapsing. That may go to supporting either side, whichever will keep the goods coming.

Your competing corporations may be smarter then the Ares monopoly, but they can still think they have a lid on unrest and screw up.

 

[RandyB]

There's also the old Terradyne setting book for GURPS. A descendant of the aerospace industry (as I recall) took over space exploration and exploitation and wound up controlling most or all of the system except for the Earth itself.

 

[mike wightman]

I'm interested in a near future setting where the gravitics and fusion power plant breakthroughs allow for most of the heavy polluting industries to be moved off word.

Assuming the technological breakthroughs occur around 2100 and then have 50 years of developing off world industries, space habitats, moon bases, settlements on moons and other planets. Meanwhile the Earth could be cleaned up.

 

[kilemall]

Well that's what I've got, Earth is now more an Amber Zone/quarantine/International Park/genetic repository.

Only TL3 'natives' are allowed to live there.

The big disruption wasn't WWIII but the Great Plague, which stimulated both a huge increase in biotech for defeating the plague, and getting offplanet before the cure was settled.

In the meantime the economic collapse came from both massive disruption and isolationism and people willing to pay any price for drugs and treatment to help.

There was such a huge shift of capital to drug companies that they became the defacto financial empires.

Under threat of dissolution and opportunity to make good on their windfall, the pharmabanks were forced by the nations who after all had guns, allegiance and were rather desperate, into financing the technology and building of habitats for the surviving world population.

In exchange Earth would become a safe zone for retention of species micororganism plant and animal, and therefore a massive template for a huge windfall of genetic industrial applications.

The TC Scout service are effectively Park Rangers and Amber Zone enforcers, running a delicate game between the pharmabanks, TC interests, and what is best for the planet while striving not to be corrupted in the process.

Sorry to get into all this, but I thought you might find the 'Earth as natural genetic engineering resource' angle to be very useful for your corp-centric take.

 

[Golan2072]

Well that's what I've got, Earth is now more an Amber Zone/quarantine/International Park/genetic repository.

Only TL3 'natives' are allowed to live there.

The big disruption wasn't WWIII but the Great Plague, which stimulated both a huge increase in biotech for defeating the plague, and getting offplanet before the cure was settled.

In the meantime the economic collapse came from both massive disruption and isolationism and people willing to pay any price for drugs and treatment to help.

There was such a huge shift of capital to drug companies that they became the defacto financial empires.

Under threat of dissolution and opportunity to make good on their windfall, the pharmabanks were forced by the nations who after all had guns, allegiance and were rather desperate, into financing the technology and building of habitats for the surviving world population.

In exchange Earth would become a safe zone for retention of species micororganism plant and animal, and therefore a massive template for a huge windfall of genetic industrial applications.

The TC Scout service are effectively Park Rangers and Amber Zone enforcers, running a delicate game between the pharmabanks, TC interests, and what is best for the planet while striving not to be corrupted in the process.

Sorry to get into all this, but I thought you might find the 'Earth as natural genetic engineering resource' angle to be very useful for your corp-centric take.

I really like this!

 

[Golan2072]

Very tentative map - similar to Visions of Empire and my old OV data (with modern additions) - but with less red dwarfs between Sol and Epsilon Eridani and Sirius for more nuanced interstellar expansion.

The blue border is the extent of first-generation colonization; the yellow of the second generation, and the red is the current (third) generation.


Hard Space by golan2072, on Flickr

 

[Golan2072]

Though I'm tempted to add a brown dwarf between Sol and Alpha Centauri/Barnard's Star to create a Jump-1 Main so that Jump-1 ships will be relevant on the interstellar level as well (no empty-hex jumping in this setting in order to have a "topography" and "arms" of expansion).

 

[Golan2072]

Updated map.

Sheol is a moon of superjovian rogue planet, which does give some radiation and heat by itself, but only very little. The place is VERY cold and VERY dark but is an essential waypoint from Sol to the Solar Main.

This way we have a very long J-1 main accessible from Sol.


Hard Space-13-APR-16 by golan2072, on Flickr

 

[Golan2072]

An excellent comment on this subject I have received on another forum:

Actually, if you go back and read LBB 1-3, it never quite says that the M-Drive is a gravitic drive. It doesn't have fuel or anything, but it doesn't specifically state Gravitic either...
That might also make sense for why the thrusts are so low. 1G or 2G is as high as you are going to go without special equipment. Acceleration Couches will let you get a couple more G's sustained. 6G sustained probably requires very expensive support equipment and isn't done except in combat.

Similar to the Warp Drive on Star Trek, the ship can go to Warp 10, but often just travels at Warp 1 or Warp 2 (see the end of every episode).

I suggest that most ships don't have artificial gravity, but they have constant gravity. Fusion drives don't use any fuel, it is absorbed within the PP fuel (most of which is needed to power the M-Drive). Constant Thrust means "towers" for ships, not airplanes, so almost none of the deckplans will work - but LBB 1-3 don't have deckplans anyway...

I seem to remember something from the 1st Edition that the M-Drive produced a weapon equivalent to a Beam Laser or something ...

 

[aramis]

The only reference to engines as a fusion drive I'm aware of is in Bk 5-1979 (HG 1E)... page 40. Using it as such automatically moves one to long range...

Beltstrike mentions maneuver fuel and Power Fuel... but, like Bk2, presumes the same power and maneuver fuel without regard to tonnage. It does NOT mention fusion thrusters.

...the inhabited section of Alpha is on the opposite side from the primary. This gives extensive natural shielding against the dangerous radiation which is found this close to Bowman Prime. (Ships under power are not affected-part of the M-drive generates a low-power screen against radiation and meteorite impact- but a power failure during approach within about a million kilometers of the gas giant would be fatal.)
(Beltstrike, Folder 1, page 2)​

Note that Bk 5-79 and 5-80 defines gravitics thusly:
"Gravitic items are those devices which utilize the principles of anti-gravity, including air/raft lift modules, grav belts, grav sleds, and grav tanks."


It's not until MT comes out that it's absolutely clear the OTU's drives are gravitic.

AM 4 Zhodani notes that gravitic lift works against the artificial gravity aboard ships. (p. 19)

Searching for the terms on the CD is informative, but not always 100% (especially since the error rate is typically about 3% on the OCR... one in 33 words - some documents are 5% - one in 20.)

 

[Golan2072]

Thanks for the detailed information!

Anyhow, decisions regarding spacecraft and starflight in this setting:

1) In this setting, there are no empty-hex jumps. You need a gravity well to jump from or jump to, though being too deep in a gravity well is risky as usual. This gives space a "topography".

2) M-Drives are not reactionless Magneto-Gravitic drives but fusion engines. The "power plant fuel" is actually M-Drive fuel/propellant. The power plant actually has a reserve of hydrogen (or even He3) enough for decades. What you need LHyd for is the M-Drive. This produces constant thrust, giving the ship constant gravity - it is built as a "tower" with the engines on its "bottom" - though without inertial damping this means that you usually don't go over 1G unless in emergencies and combat, and then you need to be strapped into an acceleration couch. I know very well that the fuel consumption and thrust here are a handwave - in reality you will need MUCH more propellant and you'd usually avoid constant acceleration due to limited propellant - but its still a much smaller handwave than that required for gravitics...

3) As a result of the lack of gravitic technology, most starships don't land on planets. Instead, they use interface craft. Most ships thus carry small craft for landing purposes. Heavy freighters usually travel from high port to high port - as loading an unloading with shuttles could be unwieldy - and thus rarely appear on the frontier. The exceptions are Scout/Couriers and Free/Far Traders, which are "flying saucers" with their engines on their "bottom". When they enter an atmosphere and gravity well, they turn off their fusion drive and use interface drives to fly like aircraft, but the floor remains in the same direction, only now using local gravity instead of acceleration-based "gravity".

4) I am using Book 2/Book 3 drives and drive TLs: heavier ships are slower and ships are usually small.

5) As interface craft would now take some serious tonnage on most starships, I am increasing the TL from TL10 to TL11 in order to accommodate larger ships - up to 2,000 tons on a Solar Main only ship.

 

[mike wightman]

LBB2 77 edition has this to say:

A fully fuelled power plant will enable a starship an effectively unlimited number of accelerations (at least 288).

Fuel is also used by the maneuver drives of non-starships. When used by such vessels displacing under 100 tons (ship's boats shuttles, pinnaces etc.) 10 kilograms of fuel (1/100th of a ton) is sufficient for 1G of acceleration for 10 minutes.

HG 1e says this:

Fusion Drives As Weapons: Any ship may use its maneuver drive as a weapon when at short range, providing the drive is operational and fuel is available. When used, the ship attacks as with energy weapon. Automatically, the ship (all ships in the side) move to long range, regardless of initiative.

Any ship may use its fusion maneuver drive as a weapon with a factor equal to its G rating.

In an interview Frank Chadwick or Dave Nilsen, I forget who exactly, stated that TNE uses HEPlaR so as to return to the CT paradigm of maneuver drives being reaction drives.

 

[kilemall]

An excellent comment on this subject I have received on another forum:

That's part of my Space Hurts ethos.

Constant 1-G accel for the TL 8 stuff to make gravity, gravitic compensators start up at TL 9 but only for 1-G, TL10 does 2-G.

That means I can have comfortable 2-G at TL9 and comfortable 3-G at TL10, but in all cases those ships will be vertical rather then the typical Traveller horizontal decks.

So ironically a lot of the high speed luxury liners are tailfin streamlined like Ley designed ships.

You go to 4-G and above, they are hard burns and hurt, eventually do damage.

However, I also allow for the gravitic thing, has the 1000D limit, and mixed, you just spec how much is grav and how much is reaction.

Grav is highly desirable for planetside landings especially on worlds that have limits on reactive drive pollutants, but I have a LOT of rough space out there beyond 1000D that needs reaction drives, most notably the Oort Clouds.

 

[san*klass]

That's part of my Space Hurts ethos.

Constant 1-G accel for the TL 8 stuff to make gravity, gravitic compensators start up at TL 9 but only for 1-G, TL10 does 2-G.

That means I can have comfortable 2-G at TL9 and comfortable 3-G at TL10, but in all cases those ships will be vertical rather then the typical Traveller horizontal decks.

So ironically a lot of the high speed luxury liners are tailfin streamlined like Ley designed ships.

You go to 4-G and above, they are hard burns and hurt, eventually do damage.

However, I also allow for the gravitic thing, has the 1000D limit, and mixed, you just spec how much is grav and how much is reaction.

Grav is highly desirable for planetside landings especially on worlds that have limits on reactive drive pollutants, but I have a LOT of rough space out there beyond 1000D that needs reaction drives, most notably the Oort Clouds.

I have had a quick read through your setting (and maps) and they are extremely inspiring.

As regards your comments around spaceships, the concept of “thrust as gravity” is one that I too have been using.

I have had a few thoughts around a homebrew “Ceres Asteroid Mining Authority Patrol” campaign, set in Sol’s asteroid belt in the early 22nd century. Unlike you, I didn’t need to worry about atmosphere and gravity and so could get away with a “moored to the asteroid” approach, so reducing the need for launches etc. RCS/Jet pack incorporated Vacc suits will do the rest.

I put all my drives (merged PP & JD sizes together to make one drive of that G) into one rearward section, with a long open framework spine surrounding the fuel tanks (again merged PP Fuel and Jump Fuel), then a Command/Living module for the crew. I merged PP & JD to make (what seemed to me to be) the right size of drives and fuel for such simple ships. The C/L module was divided into L1 – Services (Storage/Cargo, Computer, Life Support, Ships Locker, Hardpoint/Gunners station, Airlock). L2 – Quarters (beds, toilet, kitchen, lounge/diner) And L3 – Command (“upward” facing Bridge and Avionics, sensor dish on the “top” etc).

I discovered that (with a little customising) I could use the same structure for Scout(Patrol Ship) and Free Trader, if I used Modules clipped to the outside of the open framework spine for cargo (30dt) and Passenger Quarters (28dt). I was imagining that Modular Cutters would be available to take these down to the Starport surface to unload. I haven’t yet got around to converting larger vessels, although I don’t imagine there will be too any problems. Some (Patrol Cruiser, Merc Cruiser) will need to be changed to slower drives since (using TTB) at TL9 only Drives A-D are available. But I don’t see anything presenting a major issue.

 

[kilemall]

Not to get too far into our issues rather then Golan's settings, but keep in mind that modular design ethos is just great for space only ships, however I have a hard time seeing how classically streamlined ACS like the Type S and Type A are amenable to modular design.

And you don't want to force small craft transit on these platforms, they are specifically designed for a wide range of adventuring.

 

[Golan2072]

I have had a quick read through your setting (and maps) and they are extremely inspiring.

Thanks!

And I do like your ideas regarding the belting aspects and engine design, though I'll stock to ordinary CT Books 2.3 designs right now.