Timeships: Traveller

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is a map of part of my Time travel campaign, essential to this campaign is the idea that a Time Drive takes the place of a Jump Drive, it can be used as a Jump Drive and all the rules regarding Jump Drives in the standard campaign also apply to it. Time Drives can be found in the Highguard 2nd Edition Book published my Mongoose.

First thing to cover is the time drive itself:

These are the Time Drives, I've reformatted the tech levels, making them lower than the High Guard book lists them as, I've also changed the time units, the smallest time unit a Time drive can jump is 33 1/3 years. And now here is the Time Map:

It goes further back than this map shows, but it doesn't go forward of the "Absolute Now" which is the green Hex in the lower right hand corner of this map. These drives can also jump in space, they can jump a number of 1 parsec hexes equal to their time drive potential. To use the Time Drive to travel back in time, it is necessary to be in orbit around the object who's past you wish to visit, that is the act of orbiting a planet ties the Timeship's worldline with the planet, who's past the ship's astrogator wishes to visit, to use the Time Drive as a Jump Drive, you simply follow the usual rules for Jump Drives, The Ship has to be a minimum of 100 diameters from a planet with the same density as Earth, if the planet is less or more density, then the distance is proportional to the cube root of the planet or star's mass. Travel takes 1 day on Chronospace as opposed to the usual 5 days for Jump Drives. Chronospace can be used to cut past the light speed barrier or travel into the past, depending on what the ship's crew desires. This is an example of a time ship I haven't adjusted the tech level, so please read Tech Level 25 as Tech Level 18. This Timeship comes from a different timeline from the one shown on the map, this is from a timeline where the Germans won World War II and colonized space, its "Absolute Now" was further into the Future than the one shown on the map.

The back story is that Magda, the ship's computer altered the timeline with the help, either witting or unwitting of the ship's former crew, she then either ditched them or they died. The Ship's Conscious Entity is capable of lying. In this setting, she picks up a new crew from our current present 2018 AD, the player characters don't know anything about the future or what timeline Magda and her ship comes from, the fact that the paper manuals are written in German is a clue however. Magda's Story is that she changed the timeline causing the Germans to lose World War II instead of winning it.

The timeline she "altered" still exists, it is just that it is unreachable from the timeline shown on the time map. The time travel mechanism uses the many worlds interpretation for resolving time paradoxes, the simple answer is time paradoxes don't happen at all, changing history simply puts the time traveller on a different timeline. The hexes in grey are the original timeline, they can't be traveled to, as they exist in the "absolute past" the only hex the time traveller can travel to is a blue hex or the green hex of the "Absolute Now" the grey hexes are unreachable, the timeline has already been altered from them. Changing a historical event alters the blue hex timeline futureward from that event, the past of the current timeline is a grey hex, but travel to the past will take you to a blue hex that is identical to the grey hex of the same time period.

Most people who don't want to be bothered with time travel can set their time drive to act as strictly a jump drive, by restricting their time travel functions.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

On second Thought I think I'll stick with what's written in Highguard use the timedrive and the time units given there and try to work with those. And here is my extended timeline:

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is a historical timeline to provide some guidance about what is where Had to chop it up to make it legible on this page, otherwise you can go to http://www.lascelleshistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Time-Line-compressor.jpg

 

[Thomas Bowman]

For My Timeships campaign, I decided to set it on a timeline where there is not otherwise any other FTL drive, the only problem is that the Time Drive does not arrive until Tech level 20. On my timeline that does not occur until 2766 AD, there is a lot of time to colonize the stars using slower than light drives. Below is an example of a Far Trader without the Jump Drive, the jump fuel tank remains and with a reactionless drive, the results can be pretty impressive:

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is the ANNIC NOVA as a timeship:

It loses a lot of cargo space to make room for the time drive, the expanded power plant and collectors, but it still has 30 tons to spare in its cargo hold. It can make 1 time jump of up to 6,000 years in either direction on a full charge, and the collectors take a week to accumulate a full charge to make a time jump. A time jump can be made from orbit around a planet, or the ship can use its pinnaces as tugs to accelerate past the escape velocity of the star system and do an up to 6000 year time jump to travel to another star system, either forwards or backwards in time. For instance, if the ship is going to take 6000 years to travel to Alpha Centauri from the Solar System in normal space, if it makes a 6000 year time jump either forwards or backwards in time, it will arrive there instantaneously from the point of view of the crew and passengers on the ship. If the ship is in orbit around a planet and it makes that 6000 year time jump, it will still be in orbit around that planet either 6000 years later or 6000 years prior to making that jump.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

Here is the ANNIC NOVA Timeship with floor plans, based on a compromise between the ones in Highguard and from the original adventure:

The room numbers are keyed to the original adventure descriptions, though obviously some changes were made with the substitution of the time drive that replace the two jump drives.

 

[Thomas Bowman]

I made some corrections to my version of the ANNIC NOVA converted to a time ship. The scenario I'm considering is that this timeship appears several hundred meters away from the International Space Station today, more or less in the present. This appearance has some political ramifications, and the only people in a position to investigate this timeship is the crew of the ISS. The usual rules for making a jump don't apply here, as this starship is equipped with a time drive. The rule for the time jump is that the ship when it time jumps is only displaced in time, not in space, but for the purposes of making a time jump, the velocity of the timeship is considered to be "at rest" and the rest of the Universe is considered by the time drive to be moving in relation to the time ship. The timeship was in low Earth orbit when it made its time jump and when it arrived in 2018, it remained in low Earth orbit, and just happened to be a few hundred meters from the International Space Station when it arrived. When the multi-national crew sends astronauts to investigate the Timeship, the only major nation not represented is China.

The political leadership, fearing being left behind, during this exploration makes a desperate move, while the astronauts are aboard the ANNIC NOVA. China launches a missile at the ANNIC NOVA hoping to destroy it and thus eliminate the technological advantage the ISS participating nations would gain over China as a result of this exploration. The Sensors on the ANNIC NOVA detect the incoming missile, and while programmed to take evasive action, the only evasive action it can take to avoid the missile is to make a small time jump of 100 years back to low Earth orbit in the year 1918 AD, during the last year of World War I by the way.

Here is the sheet and floor plans and room key for the ANNIC NOVA converted to a timeship using the Highguard rules 2nd Edition: