realism

[robject]

In the games I've played, I have only seen complaints about:

1. Using six-sided dice.
2. T5.00 (original RAW) armor damage in personal combat.

I understand both: some people are percentilers. T5 has bugs that are being worked out, and personal combat is the most important subset of Traveller rules (because that's an obvious way for your character to die in a game).

But here's some of the things I've not seen people in games complain about:

1. Character generation and the UPP.
2. Guns and armor.
3. Modified T5 personal combat, CT personal combat, and modified T4 personal combat.
4. Multiple six-sided dice.
5. Ridiculous UWPs in sector listings.
6. Anything about starship designs.
7. Astronomy, despite us knowing the difference between Traveller and Real Life.
8. "Aliens" in any mode: nonexistent, occasional, or ubiquitous.
9. Animal encounters.
10. Patron encounters.
11. Psionics.
12. The OTU, including the Imperium, the Consulate, and so on.

And here are some things we never dealt with, so I don't know how bothered they'd be:

1. Space trading by any book other than Book 3
2. Ship-to-ship combat by any rules system

 

[whartung]

All of the 'gnats' are true, and very good arguments for 'realism' ... but we have already swallowed the camels. True 'realism' doesn't allow for FTL, or near infinite Delta-V. The application of realism is already a selective process.

But we've accepted the existence of the J and M Drive since day one as the two most fundamental hand wavium moments, but, as a rule system, general accepted Newtons others conclusions. Psionics are handwavium as well.

The closest thing we have to Stealth is the Black Globe. If you want a "stealth ship" then make one. Even better, come up with some random "science" to justify how your stealth works.

Like I said earlier, document the system, then create mechanics that support it.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Like traveling Faster than light?

Maybe it is not "realistic" but to me it is not so unrealistic as to be impossible. I'm not too smart so while I know that we don't have FTL now I can believe that it is a possibility at some point in the far future. Again, not too smart but I know that there are "black holes" and theories on them change as we learn more and one persons ideas may not be the same as anothers - perhaps it is possible the immense gravitation of a black hole is pulling and accelerating particles and electromagnetic radiation including light toward it and thus we can't sense "see" light or anything else? What do you call light that is being pulled and accelerated? If you must attempt to enlighten me please start a new thread so that it can be discussed in detail (and I can ignore it and keep the mystery of FTL alive!!

Anyways, it's one thing to swallow gnats because you don't have much choice - stranded on a deserted isle and nothing else to eat - interplanetary space setting without FTL
vs
eating a gnat when there is something more palatable available. Sorry, not sure where this discussion came from to know what the root issues were.

The concept of eating gnats after leaving the deserted isle is unpalatable to some. End up on another deserted isle? Go ahead and eat the gnats, but don't fault someone else for wanting to search the island and see if there are beetles, worms, or maybe even a banana tree and turtle eggs - oh, wait, it wasn't even a deserted isle! If you had taken the time to explore you would have found a small fishing village.

Ok, anyone have a clue what I'm talking about any more? I think I'm losing myself o:

 

[CosmicGamer]

Just some more crazy blathering. Move along.

Ok, if your still reading you asked for it!

You can see right through a quickly moving fan and you don't see the spokes of a bicycle when it is moving - there are limits to what our eyes and brain are capable of "seeing". In the past people have thought radio waves and all sorts of "invisible" phenomena was a bunch of hooha. If you can't see it... For some, it is possible that things are moving FTL every day it's just that we can not see or sense something moving that fast with current technology.

I'm not sure what all versions of Traveller have to say about jump drives but in the versions I am most familiar with the ship goes from point A to point B in approximately one week but it never travels faster than light.

No FLT gnats eaten, er, wait, I think that is FTL camels?

 

[salochin999]

My preference is that sci fi defaults to everyday realism except where a specific technology explains the difference.

So in "Outland" although the sheriff is in a futuristic space station he has a standard shotgun so in the shootout it still obeys the rules of standard shotguns. If it had been shown earlier that he had a pistol firing heat seeking missile bullets then it could have been different.

So,

default to realism *except* where the setting's future technology explicitly negates it.

This is the context of the pirates argument imo. For me realism can be negated explicitly on a case by case basis by specific technology but otherwise default realism applies.

Hence for me instead of "if you swallow an elephant sized premise (e.g. jump) why not just swallow it all?" I prefer to treat each gnat and each elephant individually.

#

Another aspect of the gnat vs elephant thing is individual knowledge might make one thing look like an elephant to one person which is only a gnat to someone else.

For example someone who knows a lot about weapons might have an elephant sized problem with something that is a gnat to most or someone who knows a lot about navies or someone who knows a lot about physics might find the FTL / jump thing an elephant but others not.

#

Personally I like "realism" convos as even though it's just a game I like my handwavium to turn as many elephants into gnats as possible - dunno why but I like it.

For example since watching Interstellar my jump handwavium has become dimensional - the ship slips into the 5th or whichever dimension and in that dimension you can align the line between the point you're at and the destination point in 4D space until they are in the same spot in 5D space and then you simply exit 5D space at the destination - so you barely move at all let alone FTL, you just slip into 5D space, rearrange the geometry and then slip out again.

Now I'm not saying that is any more plausible than the earlier handwavium but as far as I'm aware no one has yet *proven* that the laws of physics which apply in 4D space apply exactly the same way in 5D or 6D or 10D space.

So for me that shrunk that particular elephant a bit.

 

[kilemall]

The closest thing we have to Stealth is the Black Globe. If you want a "stealth ship" then make one. Even better, come up with some random "science" to justify how your stealth works.

Like I said earlier, document the system, then create mechanics that support it.

One of the big ones I worked out recently is that the fuel tanks themselves are filled with superchilled L-Hyd, and so when full are blocking a lot of IR and likely EM.

IMTU the hard landers (those without grav as a component of M drive) already have spigots to release fuel to flow over the hull to cool it during reentry.

The same system can be used to pump fuel over the hull to lower observable temperature, at a cost of the fuel itself and a certain amount of power.

 

[aramis]

One of the big ones I worked out recently is that the fuel tanks themselves are filled with superchilled L-Hyd, and so when full are blocking a lot of IR and likely EM.

IMTU the hard landers (those without grav as a component of M drive) already have spigots to release fuel to flow over the hull to cool it during reentry.

The same system can be used to pump fuel over the hull to lower observable temperature, at a cost of the fuel itself and a certain amount of power.

All that's going to do in vacuum is make you a BIGGER target. IR signature is pretty much "Anything above 3° on Kelvin's scale is visible, unless directly in line with something else of similar temp." Hydrogen is solid below 13.9° or so. (and it's a gas about 33°.) Hydrogen is a crappy coolant, and has some interesting thermal issues when the gas expands.

If your Lhyd in the tanks is used as a heat sink, you now have pressurized hydrogen gas... and it tends to escape in interesting ways. Ways which, IIRC, result in making metals brittle, and it can escape THROUGH steel. And copper.

TiNSIS. (There is no stealth in space.)

There is "too far away to resolve against background noise." But that measures in Light-weeks or longer. (They could, if they wanted, verify pioneer X's location with the COBE scope, looking for its thermopile...)

 

[epicenter00]

IMTU the hard landers (those without grav as a component of M drive) already have spigots to release fuel to flow over the hull to cool it during reentry.

Just a quick observation on this with my (admittedly) rudimentary knowledge of science. Much (if not most) of the planetary re-entry scenarios with landers would be be done on worlds with oxygen in their atmosphere, I should think.

Mixing a constant stream of hydrogen and oxygen near the hull of a ship seems ... unwise. Mixing hydrogen and oxygen like that is one of the more common forms of liquid rocket fuel used - it's pretty energetic when they combine (while they might not burst into flame instantly upon the two elements coming in contact, I think the heat of re-entry would be more than enough to start the ball rolling...?). Even if it doesn't explode, the oxygen and hydrogen constantly combining all the way down would generate quite a bit of heat, so I'd think it'd actually make your lander hotter, not cooler. The atmosphere up in that region is very thin, but I think it'd still have enough oxygen to do something interesting.

 

[warwizard]

I like my game playing to be fun but my ship designing to be as crunchy as I can make it, IMTU I tend not to allow any form of reactionless drives.
My favorite handwavium is: I describe the effect of an anti-gravity drive passing over a field a few hundred meters up to be one of flattening all the smaller/weak plants, and as it goes higher the effect is spread out to larger areas till at a couple of KM it would not be noticed, but there IS a reaction, just not a visible rocket exhaust, (It's a graviton rocket depositing momentum on nearby matter.)

On the subject of stealth in space, the signals may be detected, but unless you are truly in interstellar space (oot cloud perhaps) the local star will be heating all surfaces exposed to the light, so the detection task becomes one of sifting through a plethora of signals to find the one that is different from the rest. At a given distance from the primary you will have temperatures of materials varying by their albedo, and how long they have been in the light as their body rotates and their thermal inertia. So the natural background will be a range of temperatures and if the PC's can cool their ship to be within this range then they have indeed achieved a semblance of stealth. But yeah that 273 degree kelvin environment is going to be hard to hide unless you are in the inner system where such temperatures are common.

 

[rich4421972]

All that's going to do in vacuum is make you a BIGGER target. IR signature is pretty much "Anything above 3° on Kelvin's scale is visible, unless directly in line with something else of similar temp." Hydrogen is solid below 13.9° or so. (and it's a gas about 33°.) Hydrogen is a crappy coolant, and has some interesting thermal issues when the gas expands.

If your Lhyd in the tanks is used as a heat sink, you now have pressurized hydrogen gas... and it tends to escape in interesting ways. Ways which, IIRC, result in making metals brittle, and it can escape THROUGH steel. And copper.

TiNSIS. (There is no stealth in space.)

There is "too far away to resolve against background noise." But that measures in Light-weeks or longer. (They could, if they wanted, verify pioneer X's location with the COBE scope, looking for its thermopile...)

Would a solar sail be better (less detectable) for short (system) distances?

Would cooling systems be more effective (smaller and less costly) with a ship's built at a higher tech level? How would this change the required skills of engineering/mechanical crew members?

 

[aramis]

Would a solar sail be better (less detectable) for short (system) distances?

Would cooling systems be more effective (smaller and less costly) with a ship's built at a higher tech level? How would this change the required skills of engineering/mechanical crew members?

Cooling systems don't change your energy output - they have to have somewhere to dump the heat. (You cannot destroy heat. You can move it, you can dump it out directionally, but you cannot destroy it.)

A solar sail is, by nature, reflective. It's a big mirror.

 

[rich4421972]

Thanks. That makes sense.