So in this setting is travel only through natural jump points (like in Pournelle’s CoDominium) as opposed to the less restricted jumps in Traveller? It sounds like that from the text but I wasn’t sure.
The jump point model has its advantages. Works great in wargames (Starfire being the big one) by creating definite chokepoints and defensible positions among the stars, something that's harder to establish in looser FTL models like Traveller, much less "go anywhere" settings like those seen in Star Trek/Star Wars.
Bit like the dichotomy between hard and soft magic systems that's come to dominate the conversation in fantasy literature when you think about it. FTL is one of the most commonly accepted bits of scifi "magic" but it's still magic, and your decisions about how (or if) you establish the rules it works by are critical.
Totally. In “Striker”, GDW even says that the anti-gravity and nuclear damping is magic, in practice. Not to mention psionics, some of the drugs, etc.
I have no problem with a jump point model, as it still supports communication speed being limited to travel. I found Starfire fascinating but never managed to play with others, just solo.
And for choke points, the CoDominium setting has a classic example located in the atmosphere of a red giant, later augmented with a naval blockade.
@Bonnacon I spent a good part of high school and several of my college years playing Starfire to death, usually in big multiplayer campaigns. That's probably where it shines most, as it obviously tends to be kind of lackluster in duels or small squadron games owing to lack of tactical options. Fun stuff at the time, but despite Starfire Design Studios' best efforts I rarely feel any itch to go back to it despite still being big into starship combat. Full Thrust has done a better job of managing to keep drawing me back in.
The CoDo Motie books raised a good point about natural jump points - they don't need to be stationary even on a human time scale, much less a stellar one. Stars move relative to one another, and presumably so do the wrinkles in hyperspace or cosmic stress lines or whatever causes ajump point to form. The Motie jump point wasn't always inside that red sun, and by the later books it was drifting nearer the surface IIRC so the blockade was getting harder and harder to maintain in the face of Motie hyper-accelerated tech progression.
Having an important jump point connection suddenly fail or change links (either "permanently" or for a short period) is also an interesting thing that can happen. Michael McCollum's old Antares trilogy revolved around that idea, with a big chunk of human interstellar civilization getting cut off from Sol (or the other way around) by a shift in connections that eventually undid itself, leading to getting caught up in a war that had started during the isolation period. You could also have newly-reopened jump points connecting to your classic "ancient alien empire fallen into ruin" for that tomb raider/dungeon crawler vibe.
Traveller's got a lot of casual magic, really. The maneuver drives are practically reactionless thrusters for all the mass they use to accelerate, and the antigrav tech is also related to the impossible inertial dampeners that allow speedy ships to pull 6G's without strain. And that's nothing compared to the hundreds of gees you see in the Honor Harrington novels - speaking of David Weber, who also wrote most of the Starfire novels. :)
I only read "A Mote in God's Eye". Are later Motie books worth reading?
I can imagine jump points moving, though stars don't move that fast on the scale of a human generation. But this is all pseudoscience anyway, so whatever is needed for the story the writer wants to tell works for me if they provide some reasonably plausible explanation.
Speaking of which, hard SF of the era preceding Traveller often had things that would make GDW blush. Just consider Niven, with General Product hulls, scrith, stasis fields, and the Outsider's inertialess drive that could make a near speed-of-light delta-V on the head of a pin.
"The maneuver drives are practically reactionless thrusters for all the mass they use to accelerate, and the antigrav tech is also related to the impossible inertial dampeners that allow speedy ships to pull 6G's without strain."
I hadn't really thought about the former before; I wonder how high the specific impulse could get if you allow for more energetic fusion sources (Bethe cycle or beyond). But the exhaust velocity would have to get pretty high to support a non-reactionless system. I haven't calculated whether the energy content of the fuel requirement Traveller assumes even supports the total delta-V the ships can attain. I doubt it does, but you would think that is something GDW might have calculated.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the second comment - as you state, anti-gravity and inertia dampening are really two sides of the same coin, so if you're willing to swallow one, isn't the other free?
So in this setting is travel only through natural jump points (like in Pournelle’s CoDominium) as opposed to the less restricted jumps in Traveller? It sounds like that from the text but I wasn’t sure.
ReplyDeleteThat's right. I discuss this in the rulebook sections about the setting, but I haven't excerpted that here.
DeleteThe jump point model has its advantages. Works great in wargames (Starfire being the big one) by creating definite chokepoints and defensible positions among the stars, something that's harder to establish in looser FTL models like Traveller, much less "go anywhere" settings like those seen in Star Trek/Star Wars.
DeleteBit like the dichotomy between hard and soft magic systems that's come to dominate the conversation in fantasy literature when you think about it. FTL is one of the most commonly accepted bits of scifi "magic" but it's still magic, and your decisions about how (or if) you establish the rules it works by are critical.
Absolutely. Mind you, I think most interstellar SF concepts are "magic" of one sort or another.
DeleteTotally. In “Striker”, GDW even says that the anti-gravity and nuclear damping is magic, in practice. Not to mention psionics, some of the drugs, etc.
DeleteI have no problem with a jump point model, as it still supports communication speed being limited to travel. I found Starfire fascinating but never managed to play with others, just solo.
And for choke points, the CoDominium setting has a classic example located in the atmosphere of a red giant, later augmented with a naval blockade.
@Bonnacon I spent a good part of high school and several of my college years playing Starfire to death, usually in big multiplayer campaigns. That's probably where it shines most, as it obviously tends to be kind of lackluster in duels or small squadron games owing to lack of tactical options. Fun stuff at the time, but despite Starfire Design Studios' best efforts I rarely feel any itch to go back to it despite still being big into starship combat. Full Thrust has done a better job of managing to keep drawing me back in.
DeleteThe CoDo Motie books raised a good point about natural jump points - they don't need to be stationary even on a human time scale, much less a stellar one. Stars move relative to one another, and presumably so do the wrinkles in hyperspace or cosmic stress lines or whatever causes ajump point to form. The Motie jump point wasn't always inside that red sun, and by the later books it was drifting nearer the surface IIRC so the blockade was getting harder and harder to maintain in the face of Motie hyper-accelerated tech progression.
Having an important jump point connection suddenly fail or change links (either "permanently" or for a short period) is also an interesting thing that can happen. Michael McCollum's old Antares trilogy revolved around that idea, with a big chunk of human interstellar civilization getting cut off from Sol (or the other way around) by a shift in connections that eventually undid itself, leading to getting caught up in a war that had started during the isolation period. You could also have newly-reopened jump points connecting to your classic "ancient alien empire fallen into ruin" for that tomb raider/dungeon crawler vibe.
Traveller's got a lot of casual magic, really. The maneuver drives are practically reactionless thrusters for all the mass they use to accelerate, and the antigrav tech is also related to the impossible inertial dampeners that allow speedy ships to pull 6G's without strain. And that's nothing compared to the hundreds of gees you see in the Honor Harrington novels - speaking of David Weber, who also wrote most of the Starfire novels. :)
@Dick McGee
DeleteI only read "A Mote in God's Eye". Are later Motie books worth reading?
I can imagine jump points moving, though stars don't move that fast on the scale of a human generation. But this is all pseudoscience anyway, so whatever is needed for the story the writer wants to tell works for me if they provide some reasonably plausible explanation.
Speaking of which, hard SF of the era preceding Traveller often had things that would make GDW blush. Just consider Niven, with General Product hulls, scrith, stasis fields, and the Outsider's inertialess drive that could make a near speed-of-light delta-V on the head of a pin.
"The maneuver drives are practically reactionless thrusters for all the mass they use to accelerate, and the antigrav tech is also related to the impossible inertial dampeners that allow speedy ships to pull 6G's without strain."
I hadn't really thought about the former before; I wonder how high the specific impulse could get if you allow for more energetic fusion sources (Bethe cycle or beyond). But the exhaust velocity would have to get pretty high to support a non-reactionless system. I haven't calculated whether the energy content of the fuel requirement Traveller assumes even supports the total delta-V the ships can attain. I doubt it does, but you would think that is something GDW might have calculated.
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with the second comment - as you state, anti-gravity and inertia dampening are really two sides of the same coin, so if you're willing to swallow one, isn't the other free?
Destructive “piracy” has its uses too. A supplier might want a decline in alternative sources that isn’t easily traced back to them.
ReplyDelete