Nerfing Stutterwarp

[rgrove0172]

Ive always thought that stutterwarp technology, as it exists in the 2300AD universe, was over powered and tainted what is otherwise a beautiful sci-fi setting by nullifying the effectiveness of so many typical science fiction elements. The supervelocity combats, rediculously long ranged weapons and seeming impervious nature of stutterwarp vessels to conventional weaponry destablizes the entire setting and removes so many interesting possibilities.

My answer is to make a few minor changes in how stutterwarp functions and plugging in a few limitations. I welcome any feedback.

1. Spacecraft may not manuever while in warp. Stutterwarp "runs" are preprogrammed and proceed with only one alteration possible, dropping out early. It is used to move from one place to another, period.
2. Sensors, communications and the weapons tracking equipment cannot function while in warp. Teleporting several thousand times a minute doesnt allow any connection with the universe around a spacecraft. The milliseconds between each jump arent enough time for any interaction. Once has to drop out of stutterwarp to perform any of these operations, or indeed interact with reality.
3. Stutterwarp navigation requires time, hours typically, to plot. Stutterdrives require time, minutes at least, to "warm up" if you will and a like period to "cool down" after disengaging. A spacecraft cannot simply push a button and jet off.
4. Stutterwarp drives suffer increasing difficulty within the .0001G threshold and fail completely within the .1G wall. Conventional thrusters are therefore common place on all vessels.

Weapons Note - space based weapons that fire 600,000 kilometers dont exist. The scale of all weapons is more or less that of vehicle weaponry, increased for the lack of atmophere perhaps. Lasers, rail guns, nuclear detonation lasers and such are all still useful but on a more conventional scale while missiles and other typical weapons systems are now equally useful against spacecraft which must now operate by newtonian physics and thrusters when engaged.

As I dont utilizes any of the Kafer military history, Im not concerned how this would affect any of that but otherwise, do you see this move seriously harming the 2300 setting?

 

[robject]

In my less-informed opinion, no.

I believe the primary goal of stutterwarp *as used in combat* is to simplify space combat to a degree. For example, to avoid having to track vectors. Thus, it seems to me that limiting its use in combat does not change the setting.

 

[McPerth]

Ive always thought that stutterwarp technology, as it exists in the 2300AD universe, was over powered and tainted what is otherwise a beautiful sci-fi setting by nullifying the effectiveness of so many typical science fiction elements. The supervelocity combats, rediculously long ranged weapons and seeming impervious nature of stutterwarp vessels to conventional weaponry destablizes the entire setting and removes so many interesting possibilities.

My answer is to make a few minor changes in how stutterwarp functions and plugging in a few limitations. I welcome any feedback.

Any such changes will surely affect the setting, that would probably have to be adapted to them. While some of the setting standards and assumptions may be too powerful, changing them can give you more trubles than it resolves, as in such a setting based game setting and rules use to be supporting each other.

1. Spacecraft may not manuever while in warp. Stutterwarp "runs" are preprogrammed and proceed with only one alteration possible, dropping out early. It is used to move from one place to another, period.

See that in 2300 ships cannot maneuver while in stutterwarp, they have to use the moments in real space to change the ship direction to maneuver, as the tunneling is always perpendicular to the drive, and its direction cannot be turned without turnin the whole ship.

2. Sensors, communications and the weapons tracking equipment cannot function while in warp. Teleporting several thousand times a minute doesnt allow any connection with the universe around a spacecraft. The milliseconds between each jump arent enough time for any interaction. Once has to drop out of stutterwarp to perform any of these operations, or indeed interact with reality.

This change, coupled with the limitations given in 1 (mostly the preplaned travel) make all naval doctrine notes given in The Lone Wolf and Three Blind MIce (and I guess also in Star Cruiser, but I have no access to it) void, as most of them are based in the possibilitiy to detect and shadow enemy ships and to alter your course while in stutterwarp travel.

This may well offset the whole setting, mostly the military operations on it, and make some designs thought just for those missions in 2300 really useless (the Killiecrankie from TBM being a paramount example).

3. Stutterwarp navigation requires time, hours typically, to plot. Stutterdrives require time, minutes at least, to "warm up" if you will and a like period to "cool down" after disengaging. A spacecraft cannot simply push a button and jet off.

This change, again coupled with those in 1, makes the stutterwarp to close to the jump in Traveller for my liking (a personal opinion). Precisely the basis of any warp drive is that FTL and STL drives are the same (at least in interplanetary trips, not always for landing/taking off from planets, as is 2300 case), and are more like engaging your car engine to move, instead of requiring such large planning.

4. Stutterwarp drives suffer increasing difficulty within the .0001G threshold and fail completely within the .1G wall. Conventional thrusters are therefore common place on all vessels.

Once again that makes many designs in 2300 useless or nearly so, as all designs without conventional thrusters will need tug support just to discharge the drives. Also, the increasing difficulty for using stutterwarp inside the 0.0001G threshold will offset most intra-system commerce, making common deep space stations just outside this threshold as cargo terminals, and needing conventional thrusters ships to move the cargoes (and passengers) from there to their intended destination.

See that this will increase the cost of moving goods and people, something already seen as too high to be profitable in 2300 rules as written. Now the main cost will not be to raise/download cargoes to/from orbit, but from the 0.0001G threeshold to orbit. Even the beanstalk lose part of their meaning, when they don't offset the main cost for cargoes.

Weapons Note - space based weapons that fire 600,000 kilometers dont exist. The scale of all weapons is more or less that of vehicle weaponry, increased for the lack of atmophere perhaps. Lasers, rail guns, nuclear detonation lasers and such are all still useful but on a more conventional scale while missiles and other typical weapons systems are now equally useful against spacecraft which must now operate by newtonian physics and thrusters when engaged.

It should be tested, but my take in those changes would be that they will make the space combat a wild melee at short distances:

1. the unsuitability of the stutterwarp inside the 0.0001G threeshold will force the ships to run in convetional thrusters for combat (I still believe outside 0.0001G the FTL speeds will make combat impossible)
2. Same about being sensor/radio blind wile using stutterwarp
3. Missiles have to be conventional thruster driven, as they depend on they (limited) sensor capabilities for accuracy, so being easily avoidable by stutterwarping ships, easily targeteable with lasers and quite less expensive, but needing to be larger
4. Ships will have to devote a considerable part of its volume to thruster fuel if they are to maneuver in combat for any length of time
5. Comerce raiding becomes imposible when the raider must use conventional thrusters (or be blind) while the prey may use stutterwarp, so being able to outrun them quite easily. See that the main mission of military navies are either to make sure your freighters reach destination or to avoid enemy's ones to do so, so its main mision will become just to blockade and blockade lifting, as blockade will be the only way to achieve this.

Once again, probably the whole fleets must be redone, as most ships are nearly to useless (when not outright so).

As I dont utilizes any of the Kafer military history, Im not concerned how this would affect any of that but otherwise, do you see this move seriously harming the 2300 setting?

I'm afraid the 2300 setting will be quite offset with all those changes. as all naval doctrine, ship's designs and commerce principles must be changed. It will result into a whole different setting (that may be equally interesting, just different).

 

[aramis]

It's worth noting that stutterwarp ships at C+ pseudovelocities can not see behind them, since all sensor data (except possibly gravitation) propagates at or below C.

Which means you can be followed, but can't detect pursuit except by a loop maneuver. Likewise, a faster ship can always run up on the slower in deep space. As long as you run right up the rear. But in deep space, you can't reliably force combat, as lasers won't work - you'll outrun your beams and be hit by them. Or you fire a blind pattern to where you think they will be as you cross their bow.

It's also worth noting that stutterwarp can not disable forward passive sensors - you're just running into light sooner than you otherwise would, and skipping small chunks of interim.

 

[corumeach]

1. Spacecraft may not manuever while in warp. Stutterwarp "runs" are preprogrammed and proceed with only one alteration possible, dropping out early. It is used to move from one place to another, period.
2. Sensors, communications and the weapons tracking equipment cannot function while in warp. Teleporting several thousand times a minute doesnt allow any connection with the universe around a spacecraft. The milliseconds between each jump arent enough time for any interaction. Once has to drop out of stutterwarp to perform any of these operations, or indeed interact with reality.
3. Stutterwarp navigation requires time, hours typically, to plot. Stutterdrives require time, minutes at least, to "warm up" if you will and a like period to "cool down" after disengaging. A spacecraft cannot simply push a button and jet off.
4. Stutterwarp drives suffer increasing difficulty within the .0001G threshold and fail completely within the .1G wall. Conventional thrusters are therefore common place on all vessels.

Although rgrove0172 might no longer read this, I agree with him. For my camoaign (it's actually not 2300 but a wild mix of elements from all over the place) I'm going to use stutterwarp pretty much as described here.

Although weapons should be able to have effect over greater distances than on a planet's surface, otherwise no space combat could occur at all. But they are not able to fire over several hundred thousand miles or fire faster then speed of light. Stutterwarp missiles/torpedos are only possible in theory in my campaign, they would be too expensive/valuable and only applicable in very limited scenarios.

The whole hiding/detecting thing during stutterwarp is skipped. No ninja style fighting while travelling at multiple SOL.

Stutterwarp travel is the key to reach the stars, nothing else, for me it's not the next battlefield, if combat must occur, it will happen at the destination, in the orbit of a planet. Actually deep space combat is ridiculous. Space ships are way too tiny and too far from each other for this. Energy is required to keep the crew alive while in space, you won't waste it on firing lasers at tiny targets. This means, in my campaign military vessels are rare and are mainly stationed in planetary orbit for defence. They don't strife deep space, carrying weapons and ammo through the galaxy. I use my own ship designs, that are more like the ISS, the Venture Star from Avatar or ships presented in Jovian Chronicles. They don't resemble seagoing vessels anymore, as typical scifi ship designs do. There is no room or fuel to be wasted for carrying armor on spaceships, for example.

Less imperial feudal warfare, more explorer and science style.

 

[McPerth]

Stutterwarp travel is the key to reach the stars, nothing else, for me it's not the next battlefield, if combat must occur, it will happen at the destination, in the orbit of a planet. Actually deep space combat is ridiculous. Space ships are way too tiny and too far from each other for this. Energy is required to keep the crew alive while in space, you won't waste it on firing lasers at tiny targets. This means, in my campaign military vessels are rare and are mainly stationed in planetary orbit for defence. They don't strife deep space, carrying weapons and ammo through the galaxy. I use my own ship designs, that are more like the ISS, the Venture Star from Avatar or ships presented in Jovian Chronicles. They don't resemble seagoing vessels anymore, as typical scifi ship designs do. There is no room or fuel to be wasted for carrying armor on spaceships, for example.

I guess fleets will try to develop a way to fight farther than the target planets anyway (while maybe they don't find it, it will be a research priority), as fighting close to the planet you try to defense is risking damage to it.

If all combat must be near the planets, that means planets must be strongly fortified (defense orbital stations, etc), and that avoiding a hit and run raid will be nearly imposible, as the main way to avoid it would be to intercept the ships planetbound before they are at firing range.

If ships need so much power as to make lasers not a viable options, then missiles and railguns (and even machineguns, as those ships are, as you say, unarmored) might be used to intercept them, and small crafts (either stutterwarp or conventional drives poweres) with MGs and small guns (akin WWII fighters) would try to intercept inbound ships, in hope of avoiding them coming so close to the planet as to damage the installations there.

Also, if stutterwarp is so difficult to maneouver, lasers from ODIs (orbital defense installations) will begin to fire at them at longer distances (at least 1 LS, as it's where it would take less than 1 second to hit them and a reliable lock may be achieved). As lasers don't disperse too much in space and those ODIs could have quite large ammounts of power, I guess this will be posible, putting the incoming fleet at large disadvantage.

 

[aramis]

Although rgrove0172 might no longer read this, I agree with him. For my camoaign (it's actually not 2300 but a wild mix of elements from all over the place) I'm going to use stutterwarp pretty much as described here.

Although weapons should be able to have effect over greater distances than on a planet's surface, otherwise no space combat could occur at all. But they are not able to fire over several hundred thousand miles or fire faster then speed of light. Stutterwarp missiles/torpedos are only possible in theory in my campaign, they would be too expensive/valuable and only applicable in very limited scenarios.

The whole hiding/detecting thing during stutterwarp is skipped. No ninja style fighting while travelling at multiple SOL.

Stutterwarp travel is the key to reach the stars, nothing else, for me it's not the next battlefield, if combat must occur, it will happen at the destination, in the orbit of a planet. Actually deep space combat is ridiculous. Space ships are way too tiny and too far from each other for this. Energy is required to keep the crew alive while in space, you won't waste it on firing lasers at tiny targets. This means, in my campaign military vessels are rare and are mainly stationed in planetary orbit for defence. They don't strife deep space, carrying weapons and ammo through the galaxy. I use my own ship designs, that are more like the ISS, the Venture Star from Avatar or ships presented in Jovian Chronicles. They don't resemble seagoing vessels anymore, as typical scifi ship designs do. There is no room or fuel to be wasted for carrying armor on spaceships, for example.

Less imperial feudal warfare, more explorer and science style.

Try "More idealistic than realistic" - The first practical thing every new motive technology gets used for is looking for new ways to gather intelligence. The second is for counter-intelligence via combat.

The moon shots and deep ocean dives were about the only unarmed explorations we've seen. Even the Beagle was armed (small arms used for hunting and defense). Col Vaughn was armed when he crossed the poles.

And the moon shot was a technology originally developed to kill people.

Combat ranges of a lightsecond or less are reasonable doable, and with the fusion power plants, there is plenty of power.

Play it however, but realize: wherever people have gone, military action has followed. Oh, and stutterwarp torps? They're only good in stern chases at FTL... and the rabbit doesn't realize there's a wolf until the first torp hits.

 

[corumeach]

good points

it's actually what I am aiming at. in my campaign colonies are members of a large confederation, but this means almost nothing in daily business. like the European nation, every nation still is running 99% like before, although a few metamatters are discussed on confederation level, it rarely makes any difference to system x.

On military matters I want colonies to be self-defensive. Yes, they use orbital defense installations alot. They are easier to install and maintain as mobile fleets and they do the job. No one cares about the rock balls in a system, the one orbital colony or surface colony is what matters.

there are no pirate colonies (pirates could never afford this) in my campaign, and no military fleets of hundreds of huge ships patroling space. this is too much anime for me. although i like macross and stuff a lot

yes, where man goes, he brings war(weapons). but only in a practical amount. they didnt take grenade launchers or gatlings to the northpole, they had a few rifles, mainly against ice bears and yetis

Hm, I doubt that ships can really damage a planet in 2300 setting. they can do some damage to installations or cities (although orbital bombardment has its limits, lasers in atmosphere, ammo limits...), but they will not be able to destroy it. as I said, who would afford carrying thousands of tons of explosives through space to drop it on a resisting colony? not many. and I am pretty sure that in the future more subtle methods will be enforced (espionage, hacking, alls sorts of electronic and political warfare, assassinations...). It's much cheaper and much less hassle than maintaining an expensive fleet and actually risking it in full scale shootouts.

and the colony itself is pretty much what you want to have, you would not risk to damage it. its not like Earth, where people simply burn a country during invasion, because they now, everything will regrow. In space a tiny 200-person colony container is more precious than thousands of squaremiles of land on Earth. you don't blow them out of the sky.

I believe transporting historical concepts from the wild west into space is not what is likely going to happen. the attitude yes, but not the methods.

I am not talking about a peaceful society of explorer scientists here, governments, agencies, companies and other factions are even more sinister than today, but they dont send in the marines all the time. they send a single black ops specialist, using advanced disguise technology, players will have lots of fun dealing with that guy aboard. you should know, that in my campaign mankind was "given" advanced technology by an entity from outside. They still dont know what it is or what its motives are, but they learned stutterwarp and other wonders from it. so, this can hardly be compared to 2300. but the techlevel available is pretty much that of Jovian Chronicles minus humanoid giant robots.

 

[McPerth]

Hm, I doubt that ships can really damage a planet in 2300 setting. they can do some damage to installations or cities (although orbital bombardment has its limits, lasers in atmosphere, ammo limits...), but they will not be able to destroy it. as I said, who would afford carrying thousands of tons of explosives through space to drop it on a resisting colony?

Not needed. If all you want to do is to damage te planetboud facilities and freighten the population, just some large rocks (no need for them to be in the thousand tons range, though) may do quite a good job, and they are plentiful and cheap...

not many. and I am pretty sure that in the future more subtle methods will be enforced (espionage, hacking, alls sorts of electronic and political warfare, assassinations...). It's much cheaper and much less hassle than maintaining an expensive fleet and actually risking it in full scale shootouts.

and the colony itself is pretty much what you want to have, you would not risk to damage it. its not like Earth, where people simply burn a country during invasion, because they now, everything will regrow. In space a tiny 200-person colony container is more precious than thousands of squaremiles of land on Earth. you don't blow them out of the sky.

Of course that's what you'll do if you want to capture the colony, not to destroy it, but I was talking about hit and run raids, and their pourpose don't use to be taking and holding territory, but more akin destroying facilities or terror bombing.

Of course, international treaties (akin ok Geneva Convention) may preclude that kind of raids, but in a war like Kafer war in O2300TU or any similar one, things may change...

I believe transporting historical concepts from the wild west into space is not what is likely going to happen. the attitude yes, but not the methods.

And the paranoia about anything that approaches will also be probably transported wherever man goes, so I guess contingency plans for such attack as I describe above will be done (just in case there are hostile aliens out there...), even if Kafer are not part of Y2300TU.

 

[aramis]

One of the "unintended consequences" of the fluff about how the stutterwarp works is that the ship continues to accelerate towards the planet and star, because the drive has no effect on actual velocity...

So... grab a few 20-ton rocks. Securely fasten them with explosive bolts to the outside of the ship but well inside the effect of the stutterwarp.

Go hover somewhere until your vector is almost enough to exceed your stutter's displacement - then leaveby going sideways of that body.

Aim for the world in question under maximum stutter with those rocks.

Let them go from a "not going to intercept effectively" range, giving yourself just enough clearance time to both get them outside your drive's primary effect and to not have you impact with. (If you've got orbital thrusters of 0.1G, you should be clear in under a couple minutes.) Make certain that your approach will result in a "dead-fall" course to impact, so that if they shoot you down, you still impact the planet with 50km/s+ chunks of rock. If they manage to shatter the rocks... you've just created a cluster of Meteor Crater class impacts scattered acros the facing side. If not, you've just created a trio of ≥ Chixalub class ones. Remember - Chixalub is the Yucatan impact that was suspiciously matching the Kt boundary in age... A trio of Dino-killer events in a single day... you'll resurface large portions of the face due to ashfall, and the debris will hit orbital levels.

Every single stutterwarp ship is capable of being a 200T or larger impactor as well... simply by having a suicidal bridge crew and a couple guys to keep engineering from overriding the bridge.

 

[corumeach]

a ship only accelerates, when it already had a velocity when it started to stutterwarp, right. what if stutterwarp only works correctly or safely, when the ship has no velocity at all? for whatever reasons? I dislike the whole "stutterwarp engine has to be set oncourse" idea. We are talking tunneling effect here, but not using a CERN-like tunnel on the ship. if the drive is fixed on the ship and the ship has to be rotated to make direction changes, this surely feels a bit like putting steampunk into it, imho. in my players game the stutterwarp engine/field can "jump/teleport" the ship to any point within teh 100m distance. because the jumps take place so rapidly, no crew can steer the ship manually. It has to e precalculatet. You can't make corrections (at which femtosecond do you wish to change your course by a billionth degree?). It's program, start, wait, arrive.

What I haven't decided now is the chance of collisions. Doing billions of microjumps, even through almost empty space, does include a certain risk of jumping into something. Even more so, when all ships will use the main (=shortest) routes. Computers than precalculate the jump route MUST cause collisons with other ships, unless there is some sort of flight control or detection (but being faster than light, there can't be any detection).

The best defense would be the deadzone itself. build colonies deep inside of a system's deadzone and only chemical thrusters can be used to accelerate rocks as projectiles (which still is bad news at a few Gs, but the fuel consumption will set a limit here.). yes, you could calculate trajectories, even use the gravitational pull of other planets, to "fling" a rock from outside the Threshold into the deadzone, but this takes very long and most likely is not possible for almost any normal ship crew.

 

[McPerth]

a ship only accelerates, when it already had a velocity when it started to stutterwarp, right. what if stutterwarp only works correctly or safely, when the ship has no velocity at all? for whatever reasons? I dislike the whole "stutterwarp engine has to be set oncourse" idea. We are talking tunneling effect here, but not using a CERN-like tunnel on the ship. if the drive is fixed on the ship and the ship has to be rotated to make direction changes, this surely feels a bit like putting steampunk into it, imho. in my players game the stutterwarp engine/field can "jump/teleport" the ship to any point within teh 100m distance. because the jumps take place so rapidly, no crew can steer the ship manually. It has to e precalculatet. You can't make corrections (at which femtosecond do you wish to change your course by a billionth degree?). It's program, start, wait, arrive.

2300AD canon specifies that the microjums are perpendicular to the engine, so your possibility to jump at any point within the 100m distance, while can be interesting, is out of canon (what does not mean a dime in Y2300TU, off course).

In any case, nothig is said about making the drive itself able to rotate inside the ship (though no design uses this option, AFAIK). Of course this will require more volume for the drive, as it must be able to so rotate, but could ease direction changes while stutterwarping.

It's also in canon that momentum is not affected by warping, and that the same momentum it had when started is maintained when stoped. The accelerating way Aramis talks about, is well posible in canon, letting a stellar body accelerate you towards itself and retreating by warping just before reaching the 0.1G treshold and again, untio you have momentum enough for the speed you want.

Off course, again, Y2300TU does not need to agree with this, but if stutterwarp can only be engaged by a stationary ship, then other problems appear as stationary respect to what? An orbiting ship could not start its stutterwarp?, etc..

What I haven't decided now is the chance of collisions. Doing billions of microjumps, even through almost empty space, does include a certain risk of jumping into something. Even more so, when all ships will use the main (=shortest) routes. Computers than precalculate the jump route MUST cause collisons with other ships, unless there is some sort of flight control or detection (but being faster than light, there can't be any detection).

This has been discussed before, and my guess (not canon this time, as canon does not resolve it AFAIK) is that the same physics that allow stutterwarp do not allow it to materialize where other bodies are (at least big enough to be of consequence). Of course, when you fire a machinegun agains a ship warping towards you, filling the space withe bullets, this may pose some problems...

The best defense would be the deadzone itself. build colonies deep inside of a system's deadzone and only chemical thrusters can be used to accelerate rocks as projectiles (which still is bad news at a few Gs, but the fuel consumption will set a limit here.). yes, you could calculate trajectories, even use the gravitational pull of other planets, to "fling" a rock from outside the Threshold into the deadzone, but this takes very long and most likely is not possible for almost any normal ship crew.

Being such infiltration/comando style hit and run raids and expecting those horrendus results (far beyond any RL MDW), I guess ships for those missions would not be crewed by normal ship crews...

 

[corumeach]

Ok. So ships may jump a few hundred thousand times in a straight line, disengage the stutterwarp drive, make a tiny course correction (with thrusters) and re-engage the stutterwarp drive again? I assumed that a stutterwarp jump sequence normally would not be interrupted.

And I still don't see how normal computers can control and monitor such manouvres. Still no clue how to handle that, besides imposing quantum processors. You can't count jumps mechanically, and you can't count them digital with computers working "only" at lightspeed. Having computers at hand that are able to process data at a multitude of SOL very likely has further consequences for the rest of the game universe (genius AIs)... any ideas on that?

It seems near-teleportation is the only viable key to the stars, but it will not make way for a classical star empire as most people thought would come about. A certain breakthrough in technology might change mankind's future in ways we never imagined/wished it would.

Maybe I should sit back and let it settle for a while Constructing a reasonable stutterwarp technology for a game is probably too ambitious (for me). I can't fix all the holes, maybe it's better to patch them on the fly with some wavehanding and play That's the downside of scifi - you want to know how it works (at least roughly), being awed by something mystical is fantasy, at least to me.

 

[SpaceBadger]

a ship only accelerates, when it already had a velocity when it started to stutterwarp, right. what if stutterwarp only works correctly or safely, when the ship has no velocity at all?

"No velocity at all" with respect to what?

Any system, any cluster, any galaxy are full of objects moving in different directions and at different velocities relative to each other. It is impossible to have "no velocity at all" with respect to all of them.

Maybe at zero velocity with respect to the nearest mass that is large enough to exert a certain amount of gravitational force on the ship? Or at zero velocity with respect to the largest mass within a certain range?

 

[aramis]

Ok. So ships may jump a few hundred thousand times in a straight line, disengage the stutterwarp drive, make a tiny course correction (with thrusters) and re-engage the stutterwarp drive again? I assumed that a stutterwarp jump sequence normally would not be interrupted.

They don't even need to turn it off - It's not "on" 100% anyway.

The drive operates on a cycle of hundreds to thousands of events per second. In between those, it's coasting in N-space, and so if it wants to turn, it fires up the OMS thrusters, and turns the ship with those while under warp. THe drive being "on" is a tiny fraction of the cycle.

 

[sayatmenace]

I agree with the OP; stutterwarp never really appealed to me. I did like the presence of faster and slower drives/ships (as opposed to simply longer/shorter-ranged as in Traveller), but what it meant for zipping around within a solar system was kind of the opposite of what I enjoyed.

In the very noncanonical 2300AD setting (or perhaps better "2300AD-derived setting") I've drifted into, I have, basically, reverted to Travelleresque jump drives. The only differences being that a) interstellar travel time does vary depending on vessel mass/input energy/etc, and is considerably slower than 2300AD stutterwarp, and b) it's much more sensitive to local gravity, and you need to get much farther away from stellar/planetary bodies to even consider turning it on.

Having to rely on primitive reaction drives and patience to get around is a feature to me, and the boringness and uncoolness of space combat is no bug. Come on, seriously, taking two or three months to get to the nearest star isn't fantastic enough??

 

[Peter Schutze]

>You can't count jumps mechanically, and you can't count them digital with computers working "only" at lightspeed

if you can cycle the power X thousand times a second throughout the drive which involves at least a few centimetres of material then logically the on/off can be recorded within that power circuit on something requiring only a tiny fraction of a millimetre (a pathway on a computer chip)

 

[corumeach]

>You can't count jumps mechanically, and you can't count them digital with computers working "only" at lightspeed

if you can cycle the power X thousand times a second throughout the drive which involves at least a few centimetres of material then logically the on/off can be recorded within that power circuit on something requiring only a tiny fraction of a millimetre (a pathway on a computer chip)

that is the question. the stutterwarp makes use of the quantum tunneling effect, but no other use of this effects is known or mentioned. as computers in 2300 are described as early 90s state at best, there is room for doubt that any other utilization of the quantum tunnel effect takes place beside interstellar travel. which is odd and won't work at all, as computers working at the speed of light can never catch up with the speed of events occuring while stutterwarping. so I have to decide now if only stardrives use quantum tunneling effects or computers do, too. they might not work on planets or large objects due to the gravity but navigational ship computers should keep up the pace of events, otherwise interstellar travel will not be possible in a controlled way.

 

[McPerth]

In MgT 2300AD, while general TL is set at 12 as higher in humanity, computers are TL 14, so telling us computer technology is higher than in other fields.

 

[aramis]

that is the question. the stutterwarp makes use of the quantum tunneling effect, but no other use of this effects is known or mentioned. as computers in 2300 are described as early 90s state at best, there is room for doubt that any other utilization of the quantum tunnel effect takes place beside interstellar travel. which is odd and won't work at all, as computers working at the speed of light can never catch up with the speed of events occuring while stutterwarping. so I have to decide now if only stardrives use quantum tunneling effects or computers do, too. they might not work on planets or large objects due to the gravity but navigational ship computers should keep up the pace of events, otherwise interstellar travel will not be possible in a controlled way.

The stutter is near-instant, and the electrons in the computer tunnel with the rest of the ship. There is no disruption; the only difference between before and after the QT event is position, not state, excepting the energy state of the stutterwarp drive and the changes to the tantalum in the drive.