What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you use?

[CptPatriot]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Well, I only ran one sci-fi/supers game and I used Babylon 5 jump technology though one of the PCs had megascale teleportation defined as using wormholes. Then he tried to pull it off in hyperspace one game and I let him get away with it.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

The "Gravitic Tunneling Drive" - it uses a variety of high-efficiency reactors which produce enough energy to create a controlled gravity field, this gravity field essentially "shortens" space in front of the ship, creating a "shortcut" in space-time. Within this tunnel, the ship is moving at normal, sub-light speeds (driven by a combination of low-but-constant thrust Ion drives, and high-thrust pulsed plasma rockets.) However, the distance the ship must travel to cross interstellar space is decreased by upwards of 90 percent, making a journey that might normally take decades take mere months. Causality is maintained because it can't be broken; regardless of the length of the journey or the speeds / "compression" attained by more efficient drives and navigation... ships never arrive before they left, and no observable case of causality violation has occurred, though some time dilation is experienced on most interstellar trips (at the scale of about 1 extra day per month of travel.)

[Orion]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

In my campaign, most of the galaxy uses wormholes like in the Honor Harrington books. These ships can move slowly around a solar system, but anything more must go through the wormhole, and those are rare. All the aliens wants Earth because of the wormholes nearby, not because of any interest in us. A few of the more psionically advanced races use upsilon field generation from the Metapsychic series by Julian May. Basically, you enter a gray, featureless limbo where absolutely nothing happens for some time, then pop out the other side. A couple old races have true FTL capability, but most of the universe can't understand or manufacturer it, and none of them are interested in Earth yet, so it hasn't shown up.

 

As for the science explanations, I never bother. I describe how it is to be used, and the affects on the players, but in the long run, it just works.

[Old Man]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Yeah' date=' see, I could never buy into that. A week in hyperspace, no matter how far you went? That makes no sense.[/quote']

 

But jump drives make perfect sense.

[sinanju]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

But jump drives make perfect sense.

 

Well, sure. If you accept the basic premise in the first place. You push a button here, and are instantly there? Sure.

 

But--you push a button here, spend a week in hyperspace regardless of the distance traveled, and then find yourself there? No.

[Old Man]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Yeah' date=' the problem was: [u']I[/u] had fun with the physics, but my players sure didn't care. That's where the issue was.

 

Sounds to me like you need new players.

[Alcamtar]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

While ships seem to disappear instantly, it actually takes 3.5 days to fully enter hyperspace, followed by an instantaneous jump, then another 3.5 days to exit... at after which point the ship "appears". Maybe 3.5 days is the temporal quantum unit of hyperspace transition?

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

While ships seem to disappear instantly' date=' it actually takes 3.5 days to fully enter hyperspace, followed by an instantaneous jump, then another 3.5 days to exit... at after which point the ship "appears". Maybe 3.5 days is the temporal quantum unit of hyperspace transition?[/quote']

 

It took me a while to parse those two sentences. It makes a kind of sense that while crossing dimensional barriers, one or more of the dimensions we normally perceive might get a little stretched or bent.

[tkdguy]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Yeah' date=' the problem was: [u']I[/u] had fun with the physics, but my players sure didn't care. That's where the issue was.

 

I'd probably have that problem if I tried my hard sci-fi campaign with my current group.

[Christopher]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Sword of the Stars has a plentoria of drive systems (each race has their unique drive) and they are detailed best in their wiki:

http://sots.rorschach.net/FTL_Drive_Technology

We have "Natural Node Lines", warp Drive, Stutter Warp, STL w/ Instant transportation gates, Grav-Flock Drive and artificial Node Lines.

The FTL technology also determines what STL/tactical abilities the ships have, how easy they can escape a battle....

[Sabersonic]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Kinda late on my end, but I'll try to recall my own setting's FTL tech for the various extrasolar nations of humanity.

 

*ahem* "Though the separate Space-Time of what is more popularly known as hyperspace has been known in previous decades before the collapse and the resulting anarchy known as the Great Riot, humanity of the Golden Age was only able to send electromagnetic waves through the chaotic quagmire of energy and radiation which surrounds the trans-spacetime portal. That has been true until the middle of the Great Global War when the Earth Orbit Theater has become an active combat field fought between constellations of spacecraft designed purely for the elimination of the other rather than a simple shooting gallery of space planes and the Alliance of Nations invested in various super weapons to circumvent the anti-orbital defenses of the Coalition of Nations.

 

"One such weapon utilized the unstable nature of the Hyperspace Wormhole as an offensive weapon which could be projected upon the Earth's surface from orbit. On that fateful day upon a lunar proving ground, humanity's FTL engine was accidentally discovered when the Hyperspace Rift Projector suddenly teletransported itself from the lunar surface and into lunar orbit where the derelict satellite commissioned for the test was destroyed. Though the understanding of the basic physics of what is now known as the Hyperspace Warp Dive system would not be known without centuries of painful trial and error, that did not stop those desperate enough to escape the carnage of the then apocalyptic war to whatever star systems they could reach with the lagrangian points as locations of departure under the foolish paradigm that FTL requires an absence of strong gravitational fields for operation.

 

In truth, it was the stellar masses which allowed for economic transit between star systems with minimal time dilation, with the polar zenith of any given star the ideal Hyperspace Warp Dive-in points and the Equatorial plane of these stars the common Hyperspace Warp Dive-out points. Those early refugees who dived through the lagrangian points had to supplement this lack of gravitational force with high outputs from their onboard power cores which increased the time dilation exponentially. Though modern Hyperspace Dives would appear to be only mere seconds through what is best described as a 'roller coaster from the deepest pit of hell itself' for those upon the starcraft itself and measured in days for those outside the craft, the exodus fleets had traversed hyper space-time in the span of roughly an hour when it actually took a century or even more to the rest of the universe.

 

It may have taken the scattered settlements of humanity within and without the solar system centuries to fully understand the operation of the Hyperspace Warp Dive system, but once it was understood an interstellar economy and astro-political system arose and with it the rise of interstellar Nation-States. Though there were other extrasolar sapient species and cultures who have devised their own method of interstellar travel, and vastly slower compared to the interstellar empires of the enemy Entente, the Hyperpspace Warp Dive system is the fastest form of FTL. Still, woe be to those who take the Hyperspace Warp dive lightly."

 

Like I said, it was late on my end.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I should have mentioned that, for mine, the FTL only works if you get far outside the inner solar system, away from any natural gravity wells, as any gravitational influence could have an effect on the gravity field that creates your 'tunnel.' Usually this effect equates to you and your spacecraft and its cargo all being deposited along multiple, random points of space along your desired route. Well, bits of you, your spacecraft, and its cargo, at any rate.

 

So in-system travel is days or weeks, with several deep-space stations for refueling or for solely interstellar travel to pick up and drop off people and wares shuttled from or to in-system colonies or facilities. Then days or weeks or months in deep space, in your "tunnel" shortcut, accelerating half the way and decelerating the other half.

 

If anyone cares

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Yeah' date=' see, I could never buy into that. A week in hyperspace, no matter how far you went? That makes no sense. If it was a week per parsec, maybe, and a week [b']minimum[/b] (so that micro-jumps around a system aren't practical), okay. But a week, a whole week, and nothing but a week so help you god? No.

 

I agree 100%. The problem (and yes there is a problem here) is that the rules for Traveller's Jump Drive were transferred pretty much unmodified from one of GDW's old strategy table-top games. (I forget which one -- Imperium, I think.) I'm assuming that for a turn-based strategy table-top game, it worked alright; I admit I never played it. However, "borrowing" something like that for an RPG without modifying it at all was, IMHO, a lousy idea. With just a little tweaking, it would have (could have and should have!) made a lot more sense. But it was the late 70's, science fiction RPG design was in its infancy, and my "Traveller is over-rated" rant is almost as old as Traveller.

 

So I'll just stop right there.

 

Getting back on topic: I liked the FTL drive from 2300AD much better. It had a "hard" limit on its range, but speed depended on the size of the drive installed. For my campaign, I didn't want a lot of tinkering with ship design, and I never really liked the idea that the range could never be improved. So I based both speed and range of the Interstellar Overdrive on Tech Level.

 

The drive's range in light years equals its Tech Level. A drive built at TL9 has a range of 9 light years. Speed (in multiples of C) is the square of the tech level: the TL9 drive has an effective speed of 81C. Humanity's best drives are TL10: they can make 10 light-year "transits" at 100C. Some aliens have TL11 or even TL12 drives.

 

Traveller players and others will note that even the best drives above are relatively "slow" compared to FTL drives in most other settings. The slowest jump drive in Traveller, at 1 parsec/week, has an effective speed of 169.5C. I did this intentionally: the average transit between star systems takes about a month.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I should have mentioned that, for mine, the FTL only works if you get far outside the inner solar system, away from any natural gravity wells, as any gravitational influence could have an effect on the gravity field that creates your 'tunnel.' Usually this effect equates to you and your spacecraft and its cargo all being deposited along multiple, random points of space along your desired route. Well, bits of you, your spacecraft, and its cargo, at any rate.

 

So in-system travel is days or weeks, with several deep-space stations for refueling or for solely interstellar travel to pick up and drop off people and wares shuttled from or to in-system colonies or facilities. Then days or weeks or months in deep space, in your "tunnel" shortcut, accelerating half the way and decelerating the other half.

 

If anyone cares

 

This is very common limitation for FTL drives, for good reason: in the event of interstellar wars, it prevents a "first strike" consisting of one side sending its fleet through hyperspace (or its equivalent) directly into low orbit over the enemy's homeworld to take out its capital city. Woe to the SF game designer who forgets about this! (His campaign might be kinda short-lived.)

 

I introduced a slightly more complex variant on this: the smaller a spacecraft is, the smaller the limit on its hyperdrive. So using the color-coded zones from Star Hero, very roughly, light starships can jump into or out of a system's green zone, medium starships can reach the blue zone, and heavy starships are restricted to the black zone.

 

Also, in addition to gravity wells, hyperdrives are subject to interference from other hyperdrives. So sending a massive fleet of light attack craft to the enemy's homeworld is problematic. For that matter, sending a large fleet anywhere is difficult -- the ships have to be far enough apart not to interfere with each other's drives. (up to a light-second for capital ships) Carried squadrons are the order of the day. Defending a target in deep space is easy: just park a good-sized ship in orbit near it and power up the drive without jumping -- nothing will pop out of hyperspace within striking distance.

 

There are a lot of other tactical/strategic implications, but that'll do for starters.

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

[it's just above. G look if you have to!]

 

All very good. Someone rep this guy for me, huh?

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I also have limitations on how close to a gravity well that a hyper-drive can jump to. Standard practice is to jump just outside the system, then use sub-light (up to 99% of light speed) to travel in-system. This is because large bodies of gravity have an effect on hyper-space and have been known to prematurely pull ships out of hyper-space to their doom (into the planet, star, black-hole, Pulsar etc). In order to enter hyper-space, one must find a Jump Point, which is a weak-point in Space/Time which is detectable as a dip in the Gravitational Constant of the universe. It is at these points that Hyper-space can be entered and exited (safely).

[megaplayboy]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I think it breaks down into a few basic concepts:

1. Straight FTL travel--A->B, ship physically traverses the space between(by folding space, shunting gravity, channeling neutrinos/tachyons, whatever)

2. Hyperspace/wormhole travel--A-->B, ship enters a parallel dimension and travels for a time until arriving at destination and exiting

3. Hyperjump--A-->B, ship plots the "jump", and/or travels to a "safe jump point", and instantly arrives at the destination

4. Jump Gate/Wormhole/Stargate--A-->B, ship enters specific point in space, and either travels through a shortcut, or instantly emerges on the other side, at the destination

 

I have a few of these--The Origami drive is your basic space-warp drive, physically traversing the space between points; Some psi-gifted races use a "creative visualization jump drive", imagining their destination then willing the ship to arrive there; the Earth has 3 stable wormholes which have been converted into Stargates--taking ships extremely long distances and opening up incredibly lucrative trade routes; and a few "stealthy" races make use of hyperspace drives, which enable them to travel to the outskirts of star systems without being detected in transit.

[Cancer]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Probably at least as important is the breakdown for game purposes:

• Ships, stargates, or something else? Are fixed location sites needed for the FTL travel itself, or is the FTL travel device something that a person, ship, or fleet has to carry along?
  
• Is FTL travel instantaneous from the point of those doing the traveling? Or is it a process in which things can be done by (or happen) the traveler? This point, of course, asks whether combat in hyperspace is possible.
  
• What are the restrictions on FTL travel? Most people seem to be using "not too deep in a gravity well" with their ship-based FTL, but other choices are possible.
  
• Is there any meaningful correspondence between "distance" for FTL travel and distance in the physical universe? Most people say "yes" for convenience, but this isn't required either (but saying "no" makes FTL travel a lot like popping back and forth between dimensions).
  
• Does FTL have collateral effects on the traveler? E.g., are you unavoidably disoriented for minutes or longer after a jump? If so, this makes interdiction of interstellar travel possible, since an enemy at the destination can pick off incoming ships easily. Another possibility is that each FTL experience makes for a cumulative chance the traveler goes violently insane or gets taken over by Something Bad.
  
• Can the interstellar ships of different races interact while not in "normal space"? Or is each race's FTL method inaccessible to the other races?
  
• How expensive is FTL travel? At the low end is the starship three skilled guys can put together in their back yard; at the high end is the starship that's just a planet with a continent-size machine stuck at the pole. A special case is the stargate, where you can't make them but you may find one or two on any given planet.
  

 

There are other metaquestions that can be framed, too. The choices here strongly influence the flavor of the game you're running, obviously.

[Sabersonic]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

As a possible add-on for Cancer's questions on how FTL can affect one's campaign, here's a list of possible FTL types on Atomic Rockets.

[Kraven Kor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Ships, stargates, or something else? Are fixed location sites needed for the FTL travel itself, or is the FTL travel device something that a person, ship, or fleet has to carry along?

 

For the tunneling drive; larger ships only, and they just need to get outside the inner solar system and away from any gravity wells. The Gravitic Tunneling Drive is a large parabola dish (which usually folds into the ship when not in use) attached to a very hefty reactor; the smallest ships that have their own GT Drive are about size 17 in HERO terms. There are jump haulers that are nothing but a GT Drive and a harness for another ship.

 

Is FTL travel instantaneous from the point of those doing the traveling? Or is it a process in which things can be done by (or happen) the traveler? This point, of course, asks whether combat in hyperspace is possible.

 

No and maybe; the shortcut you create in space-time can be shared with other ships, and in theory one could enter the tunnel using their own GT Drive; but finding where a ship is in "real space" while it is in the tunnel is nearly impossible; ships in a GT Drive effect are essentially "moving sideways to everything else" but are not in "hyperspace" per se. If two ships are in the same tunnel, however, everything behaves as it normally would, and combat or other interaction between the two ships is indeed possible.

 

Is there any meaningful correspondence between "distance" for FTL travel and distance in the physical universe? Most people say "yes" for convenience, but this isn't required either (but saying "no" makes FTL travel a lot like popping back and forth between dimensions).

 

Yes and no for mine. The only direct correlation is that travelling X distance is going to take approximately Y time, with some fluctuation in travel times since the tunnel created by the GT Drive effect does not always follow the same route - space is curved by the massive gravity fields of planets and stars, and the gravitic tunnel kind of follows that natural curvature. And, certainly, when something goes wrong, the remnants of the ship are found in approximately the area of real space where their tunnel passed through.

 

Does FTL have collateral effects on the traveler? E.g., are you unavoidably disoriented for minutes or longer after a jump? If so, this makes interdiction of interstellar travel possible, since an enemy at the destination can pick off incoming ships easily. Another possibility is that each FTL experience makes for a cumulative chance the traveler goes violently insane or gets taken over by Something Bad.

 

Some people claim they can feel the shifts, but there is no scientific evidence this is possible. The 'bending' of space around the ship happens at a gradual rate. However, were a craft or object stuck along the edge of the GT Drive effect, the results would be disastrous - and the GT Drive has been used as a weapon of sorts on occasion (in fact, it was the only thing that saved a human exploration vessel when they first encountered one of the less-friendly species of the galaxy.)

 

Can the interstellar ships of different races interact while not in "normal space"? Or is each race's FTL method inaccessible to the other races?

 

Only one species has a truly different FTL drive; all the other species use some variation of the Gravitic drive and, in the right circumstances, could interact with each other.

 

How expensive is FTL travel? At the low end is the starship three skilled guys can put together in their back yard; at the high end is the starship that's just a planet with a continent-size machine stuck at the pole. A special case is the stargate, where you can't make them but you may find one or two on any given planet.

 

For humans, FTL travel is a huge investment up front (to build the drive and reactor), but fairly cheap so far as per-trip costs. Still expensive enough that the mega-corps control all access to FTL craft (beyond military craft.)

[bigbywolfe]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

Some day I want to use Futurama's Dark Matter Engine in a game, but not tell the players that is what it is. If they push for specifics on how the FTL works they will eventually discover that the ship stands still and moves the Universe around them...

[dmjalund]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

I thought that one could limit jump drive in inner systems by two ways.

 

1) (relatively) high gravity makes navgation difficult

 

and

 

2) you need to reach escape velocity of a body to leave it - i.e. if you want to jump to another star system, you have to be going faster than the escape velocity of the star you are currently near.

[Ravor]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

bigbywolfe what happens if two Dark Matter engines are used at the same time?

[SSgt Baloo]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

bigbywolfe what happens if two Dark Matter engines are used at the same time?

 

Simple. Both ships remain stationary while the universe moves around them. The nature of Dark Matter Drive (DMD) is such that even though each starship is actually stationary, each perceives itself and others as moving.

[sinanju]

Re: What FTL Drives do people use in their campaigns? And what techno bable do you us

 

SSgt Baloo has it pegged. RELATIVITY, my boy, RELATIVITY. The passengers of each ship see the whole rest of the universe--including other Dark Matter drive-equipped vessels--moving around them. And they're both right.