Brainstorming a “Kitchen Sink“ Sci-Fi campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

Operating from the idea seeds upthread about the gates being made in asteroids and also being part of a sentient mechanical race, tied with the Oan/Green Lantern type relationship, the KoO’s concealment issue becomes a bit easier.

1);The fact that they’re inside asteroids makes gate activity harder to spot. Most of the energy would be escaping from the ends, so if you’re looking at it a few degrees off center, it might be nearly undetectable from any real distance.

Visually, they going to blend in with their surroundings, as well.

2) Assuming the portals are sentient means they don’t need to be at fixed points in space in order to create and maintain connections. They keep in touch, updating their locations. That means a portal could be drifting along in an asteroid belt alongside hundreds of billions of similar pieces of rock.

3) If the sentient portals consider the KoO’s to be their agents*, they have a vested interest in keeping them safe. That means that the locations of those portals in KoO controlled space wouldn’t necessarily be revealed by the other portals.

Now, it wouldn’t take long for smart critters to figure out something hinky is going on when they try to follow KoO agents and wind up places where it’s patently clear the agents aren’t, but the portal technology predates the rise of pretty much every other sentient race. They won’t know all the secrets. They might figure it’s just a glitch. Or that the KoO have figured out some kind of way to manipulate the transport data.

Figuring out the portals are doing it themselves would be a shocking revelation. “They‘re sentient? They have free will? What if they stopped cooperating with us?”





* pets?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

@Umbran

In this thread, we’ve been discussing a setting in which large starships are capable of “short range” hyperspace jumps, but truly “long range” jumps require the use of portals.

What would you think would be good definitions for “short” vs “long” range?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

@Umbran

In this thread, we’ve been discussing a setting in which large starships are capable of “short range” hyperspace jumps, but truly “long range” jumps require the use of portals.

What would you think would be good definitions for “short” vs “long” range?

I'm not Umbran, but how about 10 parsecs? There are 414 stars within 10 parsecs of Sol.

 

[Umbran]

@Umbran

In this thread, we’ve been discussing a setting in which large starships are capable of “short range” hyperspace jumps, but truly “long range” jumps require the use of portals.

What would you think would be good definitions for “short” vs “long” range?

What you ask is... really complicated.

Take, for example, that 10 parsec suggestion. It sounds reasonable. There are a few hundred stars within 10 parsecs of Earth. But, if one engine can make one jump, and reach any of 400+ worlds, how many are within two jumps, or three, or thirty? Within 30 jumps (about 900 light years) there should be millions of stars.

If a jump takes a day, you can reach any one of millions of stars in a month. If the jump takes a week, you can reach any of millions of destinations in a year.

This is the problem with space. Locally, it is empty. Globally, there's too much. If every star in the 10 parsecs around Earth is a game location, you already have over 400 of them - you're done.

Here's the secret - when you are dealing with space opera RPGs... the distances are arbitrary. Because you aren't going to have them hex-crawl through the galaxy. For one thing, it is a 3d volume, not a flat map. For another, the number of sites they can reach goes up too fast.

You're going to end up with a node map of interesting places. What matters is not distance, but how quickly you can travel the node map. Scale the node map to whatever distance scale you like.

What you need to know more is not distance scales but the politics and socioeconomics of travel through the node map. How much effort, money, and time does it take a PC, a normal person, cargo, and war machines of note to travel the node map?

I think I have it: the blue supergiants Alnitak, Alnilam and the blue giant Mintaka are the stars system comprising Orion’s Belt. I think Knights of Orion has a cool ring to it. Their emblem will be a trio of blue stars in a line.

Remember, they only look like that from Earth.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What you ask is... really complicated.

Take, for example, that 10 parsec suggestion. It sounds reasonable. There are a few hundred stars within 10 parsecs of Earth. But, if one engine can make one jump, and reach any of 400+ worlds, how many are within two jumps, or three, or thirty? Within 30 jumps (about 900 light years) there should be millions of stars.

If a jump takes a day, you can reach any one of millions of stars in a month. If the jump takes a week, you can reach any of millions of destinations in a year.

While not mentioned, the stringing jumps together issue was on my mind. It was part of why I asked for your help!

My thought was that a jump capable ship could do 2-4 jumps within a day, but the fuel costs, mechanical stress, and stress on biological minds would combine for there being a hard cap on the number of jumps a ship could make in a week. And after that cap was hit, biological crew needs R&R (or risk psychosis), the ship would need fuel...and possibly maintenance work. That would allow for mercantile and military jumps, but would prevent simply skipping across the galaxy, bypassing the portals.

Portal travel takes the same amount of subjective time, but is much less stressful on everything transmitted. This is probably because the other races are using knockoffs of the original portal tech, and haven’t cracked all the physics the portal makers did. The original portals are just better.

Here's the secret - when you are dealing with space opera RPGs... the distances are arbitrary. Because you aren't going to have them hex-crawl through the galaxy. For one thing, it is a 3d volume, not a flat map. For another, the number of sites they can reach goes up too fast.

You're going to end up with a node map of interesting places. What matters is not distance, but how quickly you can travel the node map. Scale the node map to whatever distance scale you like.

As I recall, SPI’s Universe RPG had a flat map, but there was a 3rd axis implied by giving stars a coordinate above or below its plane.

But your point stands: no way a TTRPG can contain that much info on a galactic scale map. So... handwavium applied to ship-level hyperspace generators?

What you need to know more is not distance scales but the politics and socioeconomics of travel through the node map. How much effort, money, and time does it take a PC, a normal person, cargo, and war machines of note to travel the node map?

Yes. Excellent insight.

Remember, they only look like that from Earth.

Oh, I know that. But every Sci-Fi IP I can think of that mentions constellations defaults to the human ones.

 

[Zardnaar]

Danny about ftl travel.

Have it but it's not super fast. Slower than say Star Trek.

Something later or 4-5 light years speed in a year and only on ships that are big enough to house a jump drive and generator.

So a year to get to say Alpha Centauri from earth but more like 20000 years to cross the galaxy.

If the current races can build the gates they send out a construction vessel to nearby stars and it takes a few years to get there.

Older gates and wormholes might be able to get to parts far away.

 

[MarkB]

Fuel as a limiter to FTL travel can work well. Make it something that can only be manufactured by a high-tech civilisation (antimatter, or preferably something similarly exotic but less unstable) and that is bulky enough to be a significant limitation to maximum number of jumps.

Combine this with the Gates network, and most civilisations within the galaxy will be gradually-expanding bubbles centred around each gate location. Sure, you can travel further with local-scale FTL, but you run out of fuel if you stray too far from anywhere advanced enough to manufacture more of it.

 

[Umbran]

Fuel as a limiter to FTL travel can work well.

I expect most arbitrarily set limitations on consumables will generally be found to be questionable given sufficient economic incentive. Making it a fuel issue really shifts the problem to money - and you have interstellar governments who should have access to arbitrarily large amounts of funds, it ceases to be a limitation.

 

[Umbran]

My thought was that a jump capable ship could do 2-4 jumps within a day, but the fuel costs, mechanical stress, and stress on biological minds would combine for there being a hard cap on the number of jumps a ship could make in a week. And after that cap was hit, biological crew needs R&R (or risk psychosis), the ship would need fuel...and possibly maintenance work. That would allow for mercantile and military jumps, but would prevent simply skipping across the galaxy, bypassing the portals.

So, I am going to come around to a point backwards.

What do you want to be the basic economic limiters on the cultures in this setting. Because those, combined with your ftl technology, will tell you what war will be like. Because, to be brutally honest, war is a problem.

Anyone who can manage casually moving around in a solar system, and make jumps between stars in independent ships, can destroy society on a planet, almost trivially. Slap engines on a ship-sized nickel-iron asteroid. Jump it to the outskirts of your target solar system. Drive full throttle at your target - engines and the gravity assist of falling towards the system's sun make your rock into a dinosaur killer. This is cheap and unmanned. You make 'em by the truckload. Eventually one gets through.

So, you need a reason why wars don't happen. The gate system may be your answer.

 

[Nobby-W]

So, I am going to come around to a point backwards.

What do you want to be the basic economic limiters on the cultures in this setting. Because those, combined with your ftl technology, will tell you what war will be like. Because, to be brutally honest, war is a problem.

Anyone who can manage casually moving around in a solar system, and make jumps between stars in independent ships, can destroy society on a planet, almost trivially. Slap engines on a ship-sized nickel-iron asteroid. Jump it to the outskirts of your target solar system. Drive full throttle at your target - engines and the gravity assist of falling towards the system's sun make your rock into a dinosaur killer. This is cheap and unmanned. You make 'em by the truckload. Eventually one gets through.

So, you need a reason why wars don't happen. The gate system may be your answer.

I know this - reaction drives and guidance. It's pretty obvious when you're doing this, as an asteroid big enough to be a dinosaur killer needs a large drive and a naughty word-load of reaction mass to move it in any reasonable length of time. Unless you can accelerate it to velocities in the 1,000's of km/sec it will still take months or years to get to an inner planet from the outer system.

If you've ever done an orbital rendezvous in Kerbal Space Program, hitting the sphere of influence of a planet, let alone the planet itself is not a trivial undertaking from (say) Jool to Kerbin. The asteroid will still need terminal guidance or a very precise initial shove indeed to hit the target. Caught far enough out, it doesn't need a big push to make it miss - a difference of a few metres per second will do it from far enough out. You have to defend the asteroids or the target will pick up on it and nudge it away.

You need a lot more delta-V to orchestrate the attacks then you need to defend against them. Unless the target has no spacegoing capability or lacks the technology to do the intercept then it's easier to defend this than attack with it.