Brainstorming a “Kitchen Sink“ Sci-Fi campaign

[Dannyalcatraz]

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.

Those kinds of considerations were on my mind when I started thinking about the portals & ship jump drive issue, and why I used the Umbransignal.

Drawing from RW history, one of the reasons for the lack of wars on American soil is those two big oceans. So I wanted something analogous in the setting that makes wars rare as well. This meant it would have to be VERY difficult to launch a war fleet of any real into space controlled by another civilization.

Step 1: ship drives have limited range. They have enough range that each civilization can span several or- in some regions- hundreds of stars- but each civilization’s boundaries are defined by interstellar gaps too large to cross as a practical matter.

Step 2: the big portals are nestled inside of big asteroids. While their range is much greater than a ship’s jump drive, they still have limitations on how much they can pass quickly. This also makes it difficult to transport a hostile force into someone else’s territory. Combined, that makes the portals into a more defensible choke point.

Step 3: Jump drives aren’t merely very expensive to build. They (and portals) also require expensive Unobtanium to function. Each ship drive is inherently precious, borderline irreplaceable. Even the ones used for commerce- if any such exist- might still be in part under government control. So it would be a rare tactic to sacrifice a jump drive in order to make an interstellar kamikaze strike. Rare, but not inconceivable. Possibly even tried by rogue imperialists, terrorists or xenophobes who manage to steal a drive. It may have even been done successfully a couple of times, resulting in higher security- possibly including unified efforts- to prevent history repeating.

There’s also something in my mind from The Retrieval Artist novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: there’s a very sophisticated court system that handles most conflicts between members of different civilizations, including major ones. As in, incidents that could touch off genocidal wars. While it’s never stated as such, you get the feeling that the civilizations that use the system are DEEPLY invested in making it work, to the point that they would take extreme measures to make sure the verdicts are obeyed.

That made me think of the 1964 film, Failsafe. In it, the President of the USA orders an American bomber to nuke NYC in order to stave off war with the USSR after a mistakenly deployed US bomber nukes Moscow.

Fail Safe (1964 film) - Wikipedia

None of this makes war impossible. Just improbable. Economic siege warfare would be more likely than actual military strikes.

 

[Zardnaar]

I think that's the point. You're designing setting conceits. If you want to answer "Why don't folks use dinosaur killers on a regular basis?" then you just tweak the capabilities of the societies so they can't. I just used some basic physics to show a few lines of argument that could be used - 'too big', 'too noisy to hide', 'too easy to defend against', and 'cheaper to do it some other way.'

My assumption is any setting with sufficient ly large enough ships that can win space superiority can basically wreck a planet from space.

Even a few real world missile cruisers in space could orbital bombard with nukes. If they have anything better than nukes well yeah.

Assuming said planet doesn't have planetary shields or some sort of surface to orbital weapon.

 

[Zardnaar]

Those kinds of considerations were on my mind when I started thinking about the portals & ship jump drive issue, and why I used the Umbransignal.

Drawing from RW history, one of the reasons for the lack of wars on American soil is those two big oceans. So I wanted something analogous in the setting that makes wars rare as well. This meant it would have to be VERY difficult to launch a war fleet of any real into space controlled by another civilization.

Step 1: ship drives have limited range. They have enough range that each civilization can span several or- in some regions- hundreds of stars- but each civilization’s boundaries are defined by interstellar gaps too large to cross as a practical matter.

Step 2: the big portals are nestled inside of big asteroids. While their range is much greater than a ship’s jump drive, they still have limitations on how much they can pass quickly. This also makes it difficult to transport a hostile force into someone else’s territory. Combined, that makes the portals into a more defensible choke point.

Step 3: Jump drives aren’t merely very expensive to build. They (and portals) also require expensive Unobtanium to function. Each ship drive is inherently precious, borderline irreplaceable. Even the ones used for commerce- if any such exist- might still be in part under government control. So it would be a rare tactic to sacrifice a jump drive in order to make an interstellar kamikaze strike. Rare, but not inconceivable. Possibly even tried by rogue imperialists, terrorists or xenophobes who manage to steal a drive. It may have even been done successfully a couple of times, resulting in higher security- possibly including unified efforts- to prevent history repeating.

There’s also something in my mind from The Retrieval Artist novels by Kristine Kathryn Rusch: there’s a very sophisticated court system that handles most conflicts between members of different civilizations, including major ones. As in, incidents that could touch off genocidal wars. While it’s never stated as such, you get the feeling that the civilizations that use the system are DEEPLY invested in making it work, to the point that they would take extreme measures to make sure the verdicts are obeyed.

That made me think of the 1964 film, Failsafe. In it, the President of the USA orders an American bomber to nuke NYC in order to stave off war with the USSR after a mistakenly deployed US bomber nukes Moscow.

Fail Safe (1964 film) - Wikipedia

None of this makes war impossible. Just improbable. Economic siege warfare would be more likely than actual military strikes.

Unless you have moon sized ships planetary defenses could just exceed the ability to attack. Fusion reactors or geothermal powered shields.

Or just lots and lots of something like Stargate Atlantis defense towers.

You could fit a huge amount of Patriot equivalents on very little space.

 

[Nobby-W]

My assumption is any setting with sufficient ly large enough ships that can win space superiority can basically wreck a planet from space.

Even a few real world missile cruisers in space could orbital bombard with nukes. If they have anything better than nukes well yeah.

Assuming said planet doesn't have planetary shields or some sort of surface to orbital weapon.

That's reasonable and passes a basic smell test. In the Star Trek canon (TOS at least), a Constitution class cruiser like the Enterprise has enough firepower to trash everything on the surface of a planet. If you assume that you can make a battlefleet capable of attacking a planet, then all you need to say about other things like dinosaur killers is that it's just easier and cheaper to deploy a battle fleet. Ergo, small terrorist cells who can't afford a battle fleet also can't afford the hardware to make a dinosaur killer.

 

[Zardnaar]

That's reasonable and passes a basic smell test. In the Star Trek canon (TOS at least), a Constitution class cruiser like the Enterprise has enough firepower to trash everything on the surface of a planet. If you assume that you can make a battlefleet capable of attacking a planet, then all you need to say about other things like dinosaur killers is that it's just easier and cheaper to deploy a battle fleet. Ergo, small terrorist cells who can't afford a battle fleet also can't afford the hardware to make a dinosaur killer.

Depends what type of other things you have in universe.

If you have something like a space battleship or dreadnought with a tractor beam that can nudge a dinosaur killer that's one thing.

If you've got super weapons that can fire a dinosaur killer or drag one through hyperspace or equivalent and fire it across the galaxy that's even more up there.

Stuff like that tends to be precursor tech though. Terrorists might be able to find something like that but couldn't build it.

It's Danny's idea if they don't have reliable ftl that's more towards Battlestar, early trek or Mass Effect technology vs Star Wars let alone ringworlds and dyson spheres.

 

[Nobby-W]

If you have something like a space battleship or dreadnought with a tractor beam that can nudge a dinosaur killer that's one thing.

All it needs is a tug that can impart a few m/sec of delta-v to it early enough and it will miss its target. If the tech exists to accelerate it by multiple km/sec or more then the tech exists to nudge it by less than 1/1000 of the delta-V you needed in the first place.

If you've got super weapons that can fire a dinosaur killer or drag one through hyperspace or equivalent and fire it across the galaxy that's even more up there.

Although that's back to the question of "Is this really the best way to do it. Just because you can doesn't mean that it's the best way."

Stuff like that tends to be precursor tech though. Terrorists might be able to find something like that but couldn't build it.

That gives you an interesting one-off scenario about a bunch of fanatics that get hold of some old precursor tech. In that state it's a one-off, rather than an existential threat to society.

What are your conceits - In a lot of ways it might be better to start with a list of capabilities that do/do not exist in your 'verse and work backwards from there. I've done that quite a lot with my settings.

 

[Zardnaar]

All it needs is a tug that can impart a few m/sec of delta-v to it early enough and it will miss its target. If the tech exists to accelerate it by multiple km/sec or more then the tech exists to nudge it by less than 1/1000 of the delta-V you needed in the first place.

Although that's back to the question of "Is this really the best way to do it. Just because you can doesn't mean that it's the best way."

That gives you an interesting one-off scenario about a bunch of fanatics that get hold of some old precursor tech. In that state it's a one-off, rather than an existential threat to society.

What are your conceits - In a lot of ways it might be better to start with a list of capabilities that do/do not exist in your 'verse and work backwards from there. I've done that quite a lot with my settings.

Depends what the precursors tech does.

In the upper scale I look at megaengineering (dyson spheres, ringworlds) and giga engineering (building star, solar systems, black holes etc).

If terrorists get hold of some facility like that and they can reuse it.

 

[MarkB]

That's reasonable and passes a basic smell test. In the Star Trek canon (TOS at least), a Constitution class cruiser like the Enterprise has enough firepower to trash everything on the surface of a planet. If you assume that you can make a battlefleet capable of attacking a planet, then all you need to say about other things like dinosaur killers is that it's just easier and cheaper to deploy a battle fleet. Ergo, small terrorist cells who can't afford a battle fleet also can't afford the hardware to make a dinosaur killer.

When it happens in The Expanse, any initial signs of it go unnoticed because there's literally an entire massive industry in the solar system of mining and moving asteroids. There's just too much going on in the system for any one set of drive plumes to really stand out, especially if they're way out in the asteroid belt. And once the rocks have been placed on course, they proceed under zero thrust and with their surface coated in stolen state-of-the-art stealth materials to give them almost no radar signature.

And the terrorist group that does it is part of the Belter culture, who have grown up as a workforce under the heel of both Earth and Mars. They have no space navy of their own, and little way to acquire one. What they do have is huge quantities of dedicated industrial vessels specialised in hauling, mining and prospecting.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When it happens in The Expanse, any initial signs of it go unnoticed because there's literally an entire massive industry in the solar system of mining and moving asteroids. There's just too much going on in the system for any one set of drive plumes to really stand out, especially if they're way out in the asteroid belt. And once the rocks have been placed on course, they proceed under zero thrust and with their surface coated in stolen state-of-the-art stealth materials to give them almost no radar signature.

And the terrorist group that does it is part of the Belter culture, who have grown up as a workforce under the heel of both Earth and Mars. They have no space navy of their own, and little way to acquire one. What they do have is huge quantities of dedicated industrial vessels specialised in hauling, mining and prospecting.

You don’t need a 50 cal (dino killer) if you have a shotgun (lots of smaller asteroids). A concentrated, unified effort by aggrieved Belters could ruin a planet.

Of course, if they’re not entirely self-sufficient, that could be a pyrrhic victory...

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Many RPGs ignore the 3D. Probably the best known of these is Traveller.

For combat, many more ignore local 3D, even while doing 3D for interstellar.

If you go with big enough hexes, you can treat it as a single hex thick. The thickness is about 1 kPc; the Shapley center is 2 kPc across (and tall). It's 120 kPc across the disk.
the LMC is ~50 kpc away, 14 kPc diameter across the disk, probably under half a kpc thick, distorted barred spiral
the SMC is ~ 62 kpc away, between 7 and 12 kpc across, barred spiral
Sag dSph is roughly 50 kpc away from the galactic center, in a polar orbit... and what little I can glean, is a 7x14 stretched sphere.

Note at a scale of 1 kpc per hex, only the center hex of the Milky Way is 2 hexes thick.
The LMC is a 14 hex disk only 50 kpc from earth...
The SMC is a 7x14 oval.

All very mappable.

But at that scale, 1 week per hex means hitting the LMC in under a year, and crossing the MW is 2 years and 2 months, plus another two weeks to avoid the Shapley Center and the Sag A* within.

I remember thinking about a way to make Traveller sectors 3-d. Hexes are ok for lateral movement. But as you think about taking the 8x10 grid of the Traveller sub-Sector, and then adding another 8 or 10 (or for fun, 9) layers on top of it, then wow.

Looking at Solomani Rim Sector book I have (Supplement 10 Little Black Book), on average in that sector, looks like 20-30 worlds per subsector. Let's go with 25 on average.

And a sector is 16 sub sectors, or 4x4 sub-sectors. So we are looking at a rectangular prism (cuboid? parallelipiped?) that is 32x40x36 hexes large. And 25 worlds per 80 hexes. So: 32x40x36/80x25=14,400 worlds. In one single 3d sector. And from one corner to the other would be hmmm, maybe 94 jumps? Anyway, 3d space is large.

(as an aside, if I was a coder, I'd love to have a web page where you start at a point in space, and then you define how dense the space is in that neighborhood, and as you travel with your mouse or keyboard keys (L, R, U, D, Back, Forward) the app build worlds for you, (or not) based on the Classic Traveller algorithm. And you could, if you wanted to, travel in any direction infinitely. And as you travel, the density of the space randomly changes, so you get rifts and clusters and mains.)