Sorry, I didn't post any digests this weekend. Here are the posts I received... ---- Return-Path: Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 15:04:57 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960223-1] >To Alan: > >Okay, I am sending you the Planet Generation system I mentioned to you. The >system is not too simple (or unrealistic), but also it is not too complex >(or realistic). The author of the system, Ross Smith, found a middle ground >with the system. It's a great system, but I'm not sure how good it will be >to use for our purposes. Perhaps we should take from both systems. Speaking >of GURPS, I'm going to try to get my hands on a copy of GURPS space so that >I can follow along what you're doing better. First off, don't feel compelled to get Gurps space. I choose it for this purpose because it has a method of determining the population growth of a planet based on environemnt and time, vice just a straight random roll (like traveller had, which often led to unrealistic results). The rest of the stuff is sort of a quick & dirty take off on Traveller/Megatraveller. (But the planet map & description sheets are pretty neat). Second is in response to: "The system is not too simple (or unrealistic), but also it is not too complex (or realistic). The author of the system, Ross Smith, found a middle ground with the system. It's a great system, but I'm not sure how good it will be to use for our purposes." Not a problem. I'm an old hat at some of these planet generation systems. I used to crucnch out planets and star systems using the original traveller system's "Basic book/Scouts/Grand Census/Grand survey" combination, before they simplified the formulas for inclusion in MegaTraveller! I've also used GURPS space and Space Master's system. So I'll just try to take the best of those and the system you sent and modify it too what we need, and trash the rest. BTW, what happened to the other contributers - haven't heard a peep from them? Anyway, gotta go, I'll read over the system and work on this some more when I get a chance. Later Alan D Kohler ---- Return-Path: To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: Samuel Penn Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960222-3] Reply-To: sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk References: <9602230442.AA15916@mhv.net> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 19:08:10 GMT Organization: Somewhere in Aldershot Re: Time scales > >is that 2700-3000 "AD" or "years in the future"? If the former, I'm going > >to have a hard time justifying thickly populated worlds. Consider a starting population of 1,000,000. A few quick calculations given certain growth rates, give the following populations: Growth Population Population rate after 500 yrs after 1000 years 0.1% 1.6 million 2.7 million 0.8% 53 million 3 billion 2.0% 20 billion! 400 trillion!!! 0.1% is the UK, 0.8% the US, and 2.0% a low growth third world country. I see no reason why population growth can't be high, given good medical care, a booming economy, and plentiful available land. > I meant AD, but that is so unrealistic. The least it could be is 1500 years > into the future. If not 2000 years. Start at 1500 and work up. 2700-3000 AD is plenty enough time as far as population growth goes. That's as long as from the middle ages to the present. The restricitng factor though is when we begin interstellar travel. > >I promise I'll pull out my GURPS Space tonight and start working up a > >population model. > > Also, look into Ross Smith's planet generation system. If you would like a > copy sent to you, just ask. I wouldn't mind a copy, depending on architecture required. If it's C source even better. If it's an executable, what does it need to run? -- Be seeing you, Sam. ---- Return-Path: To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: Samuel Penn Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960222-3] Reply-To: sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk References: <9602230442.AA15916@mhv.net> Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 19:04:18 GMT Organization: Somewhere in Aldershot Re: Hyperdrives / Quantum Drives A few variations and suggestions on the theme of the Quantum Drive. First, a limiting factor could be that where a jump takes you is set according to where you are - similar to the jump points in Niven and Pournelle's "The Mote in Gods Eye". You want to be able to have a situation where player's have difficulty getting back? How about one way Jump Points, or where the only way out leads you into the middle of a red giant? When the drive is activated, the ship moves to a higher energy state, which is 'above' 3D space. If this Jump occurs where two points of space meet, then when the ship drops back, there is an equal chance of the ship dropping into one of the two regions. Actually, if we're using quantum physics principles, how about this: The drives can be used at any point in space, and where the drive takes you to is governed by a probability function. For most places, that function gives an almost guaranteed chance of placing you back where you started. A few places (the Jump Points) have a much higher probability of taking you to some distant point. There is always a a chance though that you might end up _anywhere_. (of course, such a drive would need a nice hot cup of tea to work :) ) Some points may require more powerful drives then other points. And maybe it is possible to manipulate these points with very advanced technology. Another thought about this idea: There could be 'roadways' of these Jump points, spanning across the galaxy. Since travel between regions connected by these areas is relatively easy, and races bordering on them will quickly meet, even though their homeworlds are tens of thousands of lightyears apart. This increases the probability of meeting several alien civilisations. Regarding the hypersling: One of my old SF games used the concept of a hyperdrive being a two-stage device. It consisted of a 'Twister' and a 'Mover'. The fomer was needed to shift a ship into hyperspace, and was generally massive and expensive. The 'Mover' allowed movement through hyperspace. There existed 'Shunt Transports' - basically big carriers consisting of little more than a big Twister, and lots of cargo room to carry smaller ships. These smaller ships were only equipped with 'Movers'. This allows small, less massive ships to mve through hyperspace, but as long as there is a shunt transport at both ends of the journey. Another thought for the hypersling (quantum sling?) is that it could be the 'only' way to jump. It flings you into hyperspace, and you (hopefully) come out at a predetermined point. To get back, there either needs to be another hypersling at the destination, or you have to build one. Exploration vessels would be something like the Cortez from Babylon 5 - basically a big factory in space. -- Be seeing you, Sam. ---- Return-Path: Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 10:39:21 -0600 (CST) From: Thorne Aaron W Subject: NET SF: Jumping in To: maelstrom@csnet.net Well, it's about time I threw my .02 in, so here we go. Starting with introductions: I'm Aaron Thorne. I am a senior accounting major at Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. Next fall I will be attending grad school working toward my MBA. I'm 21 and have been adventure gaming for over 10 years. I'm also a born-again Christian, so let's keep it clean ;). On to the important stuff: People are currently discussing the Q-drive idea. I personally like the way that works. It is like one of my two favorite interstellar travel theories. The first is the K-F drive used in the Battletech game. It works somewhat like the Q-drive does. You activate the engine, and almost instantaneously arrive at your destination. Of course, different drives have limited ranges, so expansion is also limited. My second favorite theory is the Fold theory. Assuming that space is a fabric, and that the origin point and destination point lie on the same fabric, you just find a way to fold up the intervening space so that the two points end up lying very close to each other. I think I saw an Anime film or something along that line that used a system like this. I also like the hypersling idea. That would make a workable FTL system, and could also lead to some great adventures. In the realm of Aliens, the fewer the better in my idea. Most games just toss a bunch of half-baked humanoids at the players, and they just aren't thought out well enough to be believable. Probably something along the lines of 2 races that have fairly common interactions with humans, and 1 or possibly 2 that are out there, showing up at opportune (and inopportune) times. These latter races would probably be non-oxygen breathing, and have an extremely odd (by human standards) logic process. For example, they spend 20 years building a spaceship, travel 6 months to a planet, toss a 1 ton chunk of ice onto it to watch it melt, and then leave completely satisfied that their time was well spent. And no, I didn't come up with that on my own, I read it somewhere. For the amount of time in the future we are looking at, do we really need other planets with large populations? On this note, we should probably determine what kind of terraforming technology will be available, as this would also determine the number of planets that could be made habitable to humans. Back to the original thought, definitely no soner than AD 2500, but I'd rather not go like AD 3500; that would be just too far away. I'm not even going to touch the Dark Matter idea, with my wonderfully deep knowledge of science. As a last thought, I know Alan Kohler has a physics background. If you need backup on something, I have a brother who got a degree in space physics & astronomy. Because he doesn't get much of a chance to use his knowledge in his current job, he would probably be happy to help us with any physics problems we have; just be ready for lots of formulas and such. Okay, here's my real last thought. I have a "generic" sci-fi rpg called Journeyman. It's great, just doesn't have a universe for it. So whatever we come up with I'm going to adapt it to Journeyman. Enough for now, - Aaron Thorne ---- -- maelstrom@csnet.net Return-Path: Date: Sat, 24 Feb 1996 18:29:32 -0600 (CST) From: Richard Hopkins To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: Re: NET SF: List [960223] On Sat, 24 Feb 1996 maelstrom@csnet.net wrote: > ---- > > NET SF: Design Team List > ---- > > Name Email > ---- > > James Arendt maelstrom@csnet.net > Alan Kohler hwkwnd@poky.srv.net > Richard Hopkins rshopkns@cedar.netten.net **************************************************************************** ***** Richard S. Hopkins THE REALMASTER * rshopkns@cedar.netten.net Home of the REALMS role-playing system * "Actual brain cells were wasted in the creation of this document." ***************************************************************************** Yes its me. Oh my name in lights! :) Allow me to introduce myself. I am a dabbler, hoping to ascend to visionary. I have studied electrical engineering and computer science, so I not an expert on physics. I do like to try to apply tidbits i pick up here and there. Like i did see a report on designing a particle beam weapon. Basically they woulfd take a stream of neutrons and wrap it with a stream of electrons. This way they could aim the beam. I haven't read much in the way of science fiction lately. I do have THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO CREATING A SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSE. I have played just about every rpg out there (except for 2300 AD). I do want to do something unique. The idea of the quantun drive sounds good to me. I am going to try to find some books on multi-dimensions. The idea of going to higher dimension to travel in space intrigues me. I also have a pet theory that as you get very very close to the speed of light, undiscovered rules may apply. I throw this out to help us explain some new concept. ---- Return-Path: Date: Sun, 25 Feb 1996 16:55:18 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: List [960223] >NET SF: Design Team List >---- > >Name Email >---- > >James Arendt maelstrom@csnet.net >Alan Kohler hwkwnd@poky.srv.net >Richard Hopkins rshopkns@cedar.netten.net >Neal Bohl nhauke@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu >Phil Scadden P.Scadden@gns.cri.nz >Sam Penn sam@bifrost.demon.co.uk >Aaron Thorne awt851s@nic.smsu.edu > That many - really? I hardly heard a peep from but a few of those about a week ago. Well, maybe, since we have a few of the essentials of FTL technology worked out, and an idea of what kind of time and distance scale we are at, mayhaps it's time to address a few matters of more universal interest, mainly politics and history. I'll try to get the ball rollig here. First off, it seems most of us would prefer to espouse an "Alien light" universe, perhaps with a few advanced alien races, instead of every bar in every starport looking like the cantina in "Star Wars". I was not the first to suggest this, but there are a couple good campaign driven reasons to only have a few races. The first is flavor and detail. If there are only a few aliens, then any encounter with them is sort of fantastic, vice everyday. More time can be spent making each alien race distinct and different. Take a look at CJ Cherryh's "Chanur" books. Theese have exremely detailed alien races, but only a couple. I would like that kind of feel in a campaign. The second is "new contact". If the players frontiersmen, a good possibility is they may be the ones to have first contact with a new race. Isolated and alone, they have to make all decisions themselves concerning how to deal with this new race. It's quite possible that PCs may determine the fate of relations between humanity and the new race. Another question: Alien PCs? I used to have a homebrewed game with a list of PC alien races - about 20 different ones. That was part of it's charm. But that would be counter to our established direction of making aliens a rarity. There is good SF on both sides of this - Some with aliens very, um, ALIEN and enigmatic, others with aliens as an interesting protagonist (would translate into "PC" in gamer terms) and a vehicle for exploring alien psychology (like the puppeteers and kzinti in Larry Niven's Ringworld books). (Oooh - that makes me think - I want a race sort of like the kzintis - I'l have too think on that one a bit - how to get the feel I want out of niven's Kzinti without cloning niven's Kzinti...) I recommend 2-3 alien race usable as PCs (sort of like the old TSR attempt at an SF game, Star Frontiers), maybe just one (Like the Humanx books) Enough about aliens for a bit (well, very little bit, because I'm about to talk about them in a little bit ...) Let's start tossing the ball around about history and politics. I proposed a figure of 2500 for the first discovery and use of the Q-drive. There's a few reasons I set this about far in the future. I figure that if we extrapolate from today, we may have some trouble getting into space at any kind of breakneck speed. Putting people into space isn't cheap, and putting industries in space would be more expesive yet, and no one is going to do it without GOOD incentive, being relatively convinced that this is one of the best ways to make a profit - or other suitably good reason. Perhaps some minor segments of industry will get into space before 2300 or so, but no major interplanetaty resource shipping is likely to occur before 2200 or so. But a lot of economists figure have us running out of various non-renewable resources starting about about 2300 and continuing in different categories through about 3100 - so resources start becoming a major concern. I figure by 2300 also, population pressure is going to be a MAJOR problem. Cities will have sprung up where rural communities now stand, and farmlands (hydroponics domes?) will have sprung up everywhere to feed the masses. Legislation limiting population growth will have become widespread. And most likely, we will have begun using sea-borne farming techniques (I base these allegations on no specific works, but discussions that have come up in classes, read in magazines, etc.). It is that point that humanity would feel massive pressure to expand outward into space and get resources there. So, how does mankind get the Q-drive? Well, here's one aproach - yes I'd said I'd talk about aliens again. Two ways involving aliens come to mind. First, we had said that aliens in the universe would logically have radically varying levels of technology. And, while I based the Q-drive on a few concepts in quantum mechanics, there's really not much to justify it in any technology we have today beyond the so-called "tunnel effect". So maybe it's REALLY advanced. Perhaps there's an alien coalition that has observed earth from time to time and knows that they NEED the technology. So they give it too us because (pick one) 1) They feel our "coming of age" as a race has come (had to choke that one out - sort of gives me hankerings of "Childhoods end", which I have NO desire to base any SF universe on, and a little of the uplift wars, which is good, but again, I do not want to use as inspirational material). 2) They are merchants by nature, or otherwise give it too us in exchange for something we have (There's been a lot of good SF on this line, the one that springs to mind was the background for an AD&D based SF game a friend of mine ran where the "more advanced" race wanted seemingly simple items in return for advanced technology, things like seeds to various crops, plant and animal specimens, art, literature, etc., but left it sort of mysterious WHY they wanted any of these things.) 3) An alien derelict, a remnant of some feirce battle between 2 alien races, is found (perhaps around another star that we may have send STL scouts to - Alpha centauri or barndads star may have been an alien outpost of some sort.) Both 2 and 3 have strong possibilities in my eyes. In the case of #2, perhaps we no longer have contact with that race. Perhaps other alien races have heard of or seen them at sometime in the place, but they have left for "other parts" of the galaxy. In the case of #3, there are also numerous possibilities. Perhaps one or both races are extinct now, other alien races have also borrowed their technology. Perhaps just one is extinct, but they are very warlike and pose a threat to us - for the time being, they haven't noticed humanitiy, but they are a constant threat, as we have learned about them and suspect that they have a much more established interstellar community than us, thus we know they can kick our butts. Or perhaps they both still exist, and try to drag us into their neverending interstellar conflict. Lastly, I won't talk about it much, but want to propose a model for an interstellar goventment. Empires? Been done - too much Federations - less than empires, but ditto. That left me at a loss, because those are 2 extremes my mind tends to dwell on, and I was groping for something ELSE. One of the contributors recommended colonies. Well, why would anyone colonise a place just for it to be there in the first place? I pondered on his a little, and a friend I talked to about this project recommended something that would fit both of those schemata. He called it "Guild space" This isn't his idea as he explained it to me, but rather how I thought it would A) logically have evolved and B) satisfy the 2 criteria above. Keep in mind this is an idea in infant form, so there's a lot of room for development. Imagine the scenario most cyberpunk games have set forth. Governments become weaker. Corportations become stronger. Now extrapolate this to an interstellar setting. Perhaps the role of corporation and government are blurred (like in robocop, where a corporation owns the police force). The corps expand into space, perhaps a few of the corps aranged colonization not only because they could exploit the resources on those planets, but because they can exploit the people that will be on that planet (making their own customers, or serfs, whatever). With governemnt so weak, some corporations go dirty. They treat employees and colonist like slaves, nuke competitors, etc. This goes a little too far, people ("citizens/employees") get fed up and assume control of the corps (either by coup - a theif who is stolen from can't go to the cops - especially when they are the cops!; or by citing some ancient "employee shareholding" clause). This idea spreads. The guilds begin, basically populist versions of the corps that they were born from. Each guild establishes a major area of control in sort of a "horizontal monopoly" on some service: ship construction, law enforcement, etc. Planetary governments still exist, but in space, the guilds are the closest thing to an interstellar government. What do y'all think? Has anyone (RPG or SF writers) ever done this before? Sorry, I obviously have too much time on my hands, but once I'm on a roll, I just keep rolling. ;). Alan D Kohler ---- Okay, I don't have much time to write, but I'll try to get some things down. I did have a chance to read all the posts, but I'll discuss what is still fresh in my mind. It had to do with governments and corporations... Alan brought it up, right? I think what's going to happen (similar to what he wrote) is that as time goes on, corporations (especially, large international mega-corps) will be the basis of life on earth. governments will take a back seat to the corps, if not, they may just be abolished completely - unless a single, large government comes into power. The corps will be the ones behind the drive to explore space. Mostly for resources, but also for factories, headquarters, and so on. People will settle in areas where corps have set foot-holds in since that's where the jobs will be (much like how in the Industrial revolution farmers went to the cities to become factory workers). Corps will have strong control over what goes on in those settlements (including governmental) since governments are slow to adapt to changes. This will eat at and possibly destroy governments. Corporations will take on those added responsibilities favorably/unfavorably. I'm running out of time so I will end there with the corporations. I just have one question - Are we going to go with a more non-fictional or fictional universe? What I mean is the following... Are we going to have Earth and the known astronomical star systems, etc or are we going to have a totally fictitious universe which we have created - a galaxy far, far away. Now, if we do the first, a lot of straints are put on us with where stars are, etc. If its the latter, we have more freedom. My only question is this - why humans then? Unless of course, they were brought there by some ancient race that has either died off or go onto some further existance. Well, that's all for now... -- maelstrom@csnet.net Return-Path: Date: Tue, 27 Feb 1996 08:53:43 NZST From: "Phil Scadden, Scadden Research" To: maelstrom@csnet.net Subject: RE: NET SF: Ground work [960226-2] >That many - really? > >I hardly heard a peep from but a few of those about a week ago. Well as base lurker, I had better introduce myself. I'm an independent programmer/consultant with degrees in Geology and Maths, long interest in cosmology and physics, who fell into programming. Absolutely addicted to maps, and author of Windows freeware mapping program which I hope will be of use to project. I'll try to find time to do demo of mapping space with links to system maps and world maps. I dont have strong opinions on FTL. I rather like the idea of folding space and needing presense of large masses to help. Ie. to really easily move from one star to another, you need to jump from centre of start to centre of star :-). In practise you jump from point as close to star as your tech will stand, with increased distance increasing danger and likelihood of a wrong destination. With in a system, can use same tech to jump from star/planet to planet but the proxity of several planets makes precision difficult Besides creating roadways between stars, this system has game advantage of forcing some non-ftl travel on systems to move to real destination. This is good from point of view of any space battles/piracy/encounters. >First off, it seems most of us would prefer to espouse an "Alien light" >universe, perhaps with a few advanced alien races, instead of every bar in >every starport looking like the cantina in "Star Wars". Yes, agreed. >spent making each alien race distinct and different. Take a look at CJ >Cherryh's "Chanur" books. Theese have exremely detailed alien races, but >only a couple. I would like that kind of feel in a campaign. Yes, I like her universe as a gaming setting. >Another question: Alien PCs? I used to have a homebrewed game with a list Hmm. Since I thought idea was game setting not a game, I would leave questions like this to GM to settle. I wouldnt want to limit too much what a GM might like to do. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Scadden, Scadden Research 55 Buick St, Petone, Lower Hutt New Zealand ph (04) 568-7190, fax (04) 569 5016 ---- Return-Path: Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 18:43:42 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net X-UIDL: 825428404.000 From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960226-1] >Re: Time scales > >> >is that 2700-3000 "AD" or "years in the future"? If the former, I'm going >> >to have a hard time justifying thickly populated worlds. > >Consider a starting population of 1,000,000. A few quick calculations >given certain growth rates, give the following populations: 1000000 is a little large for a start-up colony, IMHO. My model works with a 5 colony ships ariving at the world , once per decade. After 600 years, neglecting population pressure and assuming world environments are ideal, and modern medical technology, the population would be around 33 billion > Growth Population Population > rate after 500 yrs after 1000 years > > 0.1% 1.6 million 2.7 million > 0.8% 53 million 3 billion > 2.0% 20 billion! 400 trillion!!! > >0.1% is the UK, 0.8% the US, and 2.0% a low growth third world country. >I see no reason why population growth can't be high, given good medical >care, a booming economy, and plentiful available land. I emulated GURPS Space, which assumes 10x population in 100 tears, minus any modifiers for harsh environment. Starting at 1,000,000 and going for 500 years by those figures yeild: 1x10^11 (100 billion!) in that amount of time (500 year). Further, I assume (but have not factored into those calculations) that population pressure would also be another factor. If your figures are correct, population pressure would factor into the calculation much sooner than I anticipated. >Re: Hyperdrives / Quantum Drives > >A few variations and suggestions on the theme of the Quantum Drive. > >First, a limiting factor could be that where a jump takes you is set >according to where you are - similar to the jump points in Niven and >Pournelle's "The Mote in Gods Eye". You want to be able to have a >situation where player's have difficulty getting back? How about one >way Jump Points, or where the only way out leads you into the middle >of a red giant? Thinking sort of along parallel paths- but not exactly. I was thinking that the jump would occur from a given mass/distance ratio to star a to the same mass/distance ratio around star b - thus if you jump from 10 solar radii(as in "our sun's radius") from the center of star A, if star B has the same mass, you'll end up 10 solar radii from star B. If star B is much less dense (like red supergiants) and your astrogator is very dense, you could end up inside star B! (Of course Niven&Pournelles ships could survive this...) One coralarry of this method is that you can jump to the same star, provided you are the same distance from the star. I think this stunt, while it could be useful, would have a very high chance of being random. >The drives can be used at any point in space, and where the drive >takes you to is governed by a probability function. For most places, >that function gives an almost guaranteed chance of placing you back >where you started. A few places (the Jump Points) have a much higher >probability of taking you to some distant point. There is always a >a chance though that you might end up _anywhere_. I like that! Thats the kind of thinking good psuedo-science comes from! Taking scientific principles, relating it to something else to make a possible sounding fictional science! >(of course, such a drive would need a nice hot cup of tea to work :) ) That's not good SF, but good humor :). >Some points may require more powerful drives then other points. And >maybe it is possible to manipulate these points with very advanced >technology. As I suggested, jumps are easiest and quickest betwwen 2 large stars. I sort of contemplated a formula for this, let call this little number "Quantum permitivity", it describes how easy it is to jump between 2 stars with masses "M(A)" and "M(B)" - QP = M(A) * M(B) - [M(A)-M(B)]^2 Thus massive pairs of stars are gateways between widely separated clusters of stars, the ships then disseminate from the big star to surrounding smaller stars. The second term makes it more difficult to Q-jump to a star that has a mass much different that the one you are around. This effect could be made more or less important by tossing a constant in front of it - like .5, but exaclty how big it would be would be would be determined after I acually know how these numbers would relate to "game terms" >Another thought about this idea: There could be 'roadways' of these >Jump points, spanning across the galaxy. Since travel between regions >connected by these areas is relatively easy, and races bordering on >them will quickly meet, even though their homeworlds are tens of >thousands of lightyears apart. This increases the probability of >meeting several alien civilisations. Pairs of large stars- instant roadways. >Regarding the hypersling: One of my old SF games used the concept of >a hyperdrive being a two-stage device. It consisted of a 'Twister' >and a 'Mover'. The fomer was needed to shift a ship into hyperspace, >and was generally massive and expensive. The 'Mover' allowed movement >through hyperspace. There existed 'Shunt Transports' - basically >big carriers consisting of little more than a big Twister, and lots >of cargo room to carry smaller ships. These smaller ships were only >equipped with 'Movers'. > >This allows small, less massive ships to mve through hyperspace, but >as long as there is a shunt transport at both ends of the journey. The q-sling, as I have envisioned it, would only be needed to help raise a ship to the quantum level - and then, only if the ship's own "Twister" (using your terminology) isn't up to the desired trip. Of course, the ships mover has to be able to pay the price to stay at the quantum level that the q-sling put it into. >Another thought for the hypersling (quantum sling?) is that it could >be the 'only' way to jump. It flings you into hyperspace, and you >(hopefully) come out at a predetermined point. To get back, there >either needs to be another hypersling at the destination, or you have >to build one. Exploration vessels would be something like the Cortez >from Babylon 5 - basically a big factory in space. I'm not in favor of that for 2 reasons: 1 - its been done - or 2 - it sounds a lot better to have more portable drives for "in game mobility" purposes. >over 10 years. I'm also a born-again Christian, so let's keep it clean >;). Not a problem - I think we can save the disscusion about holo-brothels, et al., until later ;). >On to the important stuff: >People are currently discussing the Q-drive idea. I personally like the >way that works. It is like one of my two favorite interstellar travel >theories. The first is the K-F drive used in the Battletech game. It >works somewhat like the Q-drive does. You activate the engine, and >almost instantaneously arrive at your destination. I've assumed the Q-drive keeps you in Q space for a while - but the "ease" of the journey can affect how long it takes. > Of course, different >drives have limited ranges, so expansion is also limited. My second >favorite theory is the Fold theory. Actually, Q-drive isn't to far of that - it finds a "shortcut" through the "other dimensions" that didn't unfold when the big bang occured. (This is actual astrophysicist babble here...) >I also like the hypersling idea. That would make a workable FTL system, >and could also lead to some great adventures. >In the realm of Aliens, the fewer the better in my idea. Most games just >toss a bunch of half-baked humanoids at the players, and they just aren't >thought out well enough to be believable. Probably something along the >lines of 2 races that have fairly common interactions with humans, and 1 >or possibly 2 that are out there, showing up at opportune (and >inopportune) times. These latter races would probably be non-oxygen >breathing, and have an extremely odd (by human standards) logic process. I like maelstroms' idea - the chlorine breaters are our freinds, the other oxygen breathers are competing for the same worlds - and thus foes. >I'm not even going to touch the Dark Matter idea, with my wonderfully >deep knowledge of science. WARNING: Just so my psuedo-scientific babble doesn't make me a laughing stock: The idea that dark matter is some form of matter that does not interact with "normal" matter in any way save gravity waves is a theory shared by actual astrophysicists. That dark matter is some pocket universe which can affect the course of a Q-drive is totally made up psuedo science stuff. 'Nuff said. More to follow... (replying/commenting one part at a time) ---- Return-Path: Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 19:12:16 -0700 X-Sender: hwkwnd@johnny.poky.srv.net To: maelstrom@csnet.net X-UIDL: 825428404.001 From: hwkwnd@poky.srv.net (Alan D Kohler) Subject: Re: NET SF: Ground work [960226-2] >I haven't read much in the way of science fiction lately. I do have >THE WRITER'S GUIDE TO CREATING A SCIENCE FICTION UNIVERSE. >I have played just about every rpg out there (except for 2300 AD). I >do want to do something unique. The idea of the quantun drive sounds >good to me. Thanks :) >I am going to try to find some books on multi-dimensions. The idea of >going to higher dimension to travel in space intrigues me. Keep me posted! (maelstroms comments on corps snipped...) Does that mean you don't like the "magacorps evolve into guilds" thing? I think the guild thing is pretty plausible as an interstellar psuedo-governemnt. One hand has to was the other. Sure, some guild would be powerful (for example, shipbuilders), but would have to keep other guilds they rely on happy (like maybe an astrogators guild or somesuch). The guilds don't fiddle too much with planetary governments, but if one gets out of line, they can impose hideous sanctions. And smaller, planet based corporations could still exist - possibly as "vassal corporations" to the guilds. In the fronteirs, perhaps guilds are weaker - and the few remaining true corporations run rampant. Perhaps there is a splinter human state that is still run by corporations per se. >I'm running out of time so I will end there with the corporations. I just >have one question - Are we going to go with a more non-fictional or >fictional universe? What I mean is the following... Are we going to have >Earth and the known astronomical star systems, etc or are we going to have a >totally fictitious universe which we have created - a galaxy far, far away. >Now, if we do the first, a lot of straints are put on us with where stars >are, etc. If its the latter, we have more freedom. My only question is this >- why humans then? Unless of course, they were brought there by some ancient >race that has either died off or go onto some further existance. I prefer non-fictional, esp. since we are going hard SF, but games based on "an empire that once was" have a lot of charm, but too many examples of such types of games and SF authors are too fresh in my mind, so I'd rather stick with the realisitic. As far as contraints on what we can do goes - remember that we discussed a expanion radius of 400-600 ly from earth. There's pretty good data on stars near to earth, but the data thins out on the smaller stars as you go outwards. Sure, you may not be able to plop a type O supergiant in that radius realisticly (there AREN'T ANY within 600 ly), but as far as the Sol-sized stars - and a little bit larger - there's a wide degree of lattitude outside about 50 years ago. We can assume a starmap of "what we know" for the nearby stars, and use the brighter stars as reference points farther out, and "fill in the blanks" with random rolls or GMs fiat as far as smaller stars go. This last idea sits well with the concept of the Q-drive jumping to more massive (brighter, well known in even meager star catalouges) stars more easily, thus these stars become important, well known way stations. That's all for now - waiting to see if anyone likes the guild-space idea. Oh, BTW, Since my post on digest one for today, I've refreshed my memory on how massive stars tend to be, and we might want to modify my formula to make the extremes less extreme - say take the square root of the formula - before we apply anything meaningful to the number. Stars vary for .0028 to 60 solar masses or so, not counting type O stars. As an example, if a ship jumping between 2 stars about the size of Sol (say here and alpha centauri), could bridge a gap of 5 ly with a given drive, and the distance that a drive can jump is proportional to the figure "quantum permitivity" that I gave, the same ship could jump between 2 type B supergiants 18,000 light years apart!!! (If we use square root, it would be 300 light years - much more reasonable) That is, unless you forego the idea of a single pocket of space inhabited and go to multiple pockets that spring up around supergiants all across the galaxy - but that type of campaign sound a little to big & sprawled for me. Well gotta run - till next time!! ---- -- maelstrom@csnet.net