From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: SF-RPG To: nv91-asa@nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 13:05:03 -0700 (PDT) > > What are you supposed to do? Employ antimatter? > > No, antimatter has positive energy too. Negative energy is extremely > esoteric, and could perhaps be likened to an area where there is a strain > on spacetime. It is not known if it can exist or not yet. In the paper, he mentions something about esoteric matter being employed. Now forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what the heck is esoteric matter? :-) > More advanced races have more energy to spare, so their ships will move > faster. A rather young or poor race (like the humans) would move more slowly. Good idea. Part of the game can be aquiring alien technology to build a better starship. > Here are some further ideas: the fields around the ship are not stable > unless the systems of the ship keep them stable. If the stabilizer > systems are turned off, the fields will become depolarized and the ship > will stop - in the best case. If the fields become too inhomogenus they > will collapse into each other, ripping the ship apart with tidal forces > and gravity waves. Yeah, this fits perfectly with that paper he wrote. > The stabilizer systems are essentially big computers > which constantly manipulate the fields towards a symmetrical shape; their > work will become harder and harder near a gravity well. Advanced > civilizations have powerful computers and are able to go closer, but it is > very impractical for most purposes. Actually, how close you can get to a gravity field would be a very practical area to devote resources. That, right there, is your response time to threats. This alone could precipitate an arms race of who has the fastest computers. > > >Hmm, meteors accellerated to 0.9 c might be stopped quite easily if they > > >are shot a long distance; If I fire it at you a light-hour away, you will > > >still have around 6 minutes to stop it. > > > > Unless they have a form of sensor which keys on a faster-than-light > > particle. That could also speed-up communications, by the way. > > Yes. Do we want FTL-radio in this scenario? I'm not sure. On the one hand, I like the idea of courier ships carrying messages. It means they can be intercepted. And that alone has all sorts of neat consequences. Players intercepting such intelligence can have a huge impact on interstellar events. Makes for good plots. On the other hand, if you limit comm to the speed of light, then planets are gonna have a harder time defending themselves. All the contingencies have to be considered. How will they respond to every conceiable threat? Of course, gravity is one obvious defense, but what about having a defense for those deep space stations? Any joe schmoe could just speed up to FTL and slam them. A remote-controlled craft could do it, even. How do we stop the kamikazi scenario of terrorism... or should we? When you think about it rationally, it is quite a wonder than New York is still standing, considering just how many of these terrorist states we've managed to piss off. If I was looking at modern Earth as a potential campaign setting, I'd probably have to call bullshit right there. On the topic of the stardrive we're discussion and the limitations... > Doesn't work near gravity wells. This one's fairly standard and works as a nice planet-protector. > Requires much energy to start, and dissipates most of it when it stops. This one is fairly serious. How did anybody ever do any exploring if you can only go one way? Or maybe the first exploration ships had to be really mammoth so they could hold their own fuel and/or power plant. That means you have a choice. A cheap one-way starship where you constantly have to beg for energy, or a really huge and expensive ship where you can carry gas around with you or skim gas giants for it, but most of all, convert it into the energy you need without the help of a starport. hey... I kinda like it. At the very least, this will keep the players humble. They absolutely must go to the starport or they're stuck in-system. Unless, of course, they manage to acquire a two-way starship. I like it... it makes a nice clean cut between types of starships. They definitely won't take star-travel for granted, especially if they're disliked/feared by half the aliens they need to acquire power from. > Speed depends on the amount of energy used. Yeah... absolutely. So the whole thing will boil down to how much gas they can get and how quickly the local power plant can convert it into energy so they can jump. Just handwave some time-limit where the field starts to get instable. Otherwise they'll just pump more and more energy in to get whatever speed they want. Unless there's some sort of asymptotic relationship going here. From reading the paper, do you get the sense that this might be tthe case? > Can collapse catastrophically if damaged or stabilizers fail. Yep. What sort of debris do you envision. Just a bunch of stray atoms? > The fields are weakened by interstellar dust and gas (nebulas may be a > hindrance) Probably would be. They might have to spend lots of time mapping intersteller space looking for dust clouds and so forth. There might be hazard zones all over the place. > You cannot change destination once the ship is on its way (slight > adjustments are possible, but no turning). The question is, how slight are the adjustments? > (Many of these limitations might be good for the game) Agreed. > > Catapults are fine for cargo that is totally non-fragile... not such a > > good thing for anything that can't stand one heck of a lot of Gs. > > Some races might survive them. They'd have to awfully hardy. > > The > > beanstalk idea is neat, and I've used it before in some fiction I've > > written, but I'm not sure how realistic it is. I think building such > > a thing would be really really really really hard. And then, you have > > to ask yourself, how much energy is it really saving? And if energy > > is cheap due to whatever revolutionary reactor is powering the FTL > > drive, then why even have a beanstalk? It's just a big target for > > terrorists. > > It is a very cheap way of getting into orbit, it saves the environment > from a lot of launches and could double as a large farm of solar > collectors. Building it isn't that hard if you can produce large > quantities of extremely strong cable in space (probably using simple > nanotech/ advanced biotechnology). All you need is to place the factory in > synchronous orbit and slowly unreel the stalk until it touches the ground. Not exactly. From what I understand, for every gram/meter you build down, you have to build the same amount upward to keep in balanced. If it gets off balance of caught in a hurricane or something, you've got big problems. Potentially really big problems, as it could end up crashing somewhere. On a highly developed planet, this could be somewhat tragic. > > One method I like a lot for surface to orbit is gravitic technology. > > Suppose you could harness a planet's gravitational field and use it > > to maneuver. Then you could have two drives, the FTL for > > gravitationless (or smooth) space and gravitic for gravitional > > (or stretched) space. No need for reaction mass in either case. > > And the gravitic drive for atmospheric maneuvers could be totally > > silent. You'd want to keep aerodynamic designs just for better > > control and maneuverability, but even they wouldn't be necessary. > > Maybe you could use polarization of space a la Alcubierre if you did it > carefully and in a purely radial way; if the cargo lost alignment it > would be ripped apart. I was actually thinking more in terms of harnessing the infamous Higgs boson... of which I know next to nothing except that some phycists think it might be a route to understanding and perhaps one day harnessing gravity. You probably know a *lot* more about this than I do. Any sites you know of which discuss this sort of stuff? > > >Hmm, we are living just 8 parsec from the galactic plane, and the disc is > > >around 100 pc thick here. > > > > Hmm... this is news to me. I was guestimating about 400 parsecs on the > > width. > > Hmm, you might be right. I'll have to look it up. Please, if it's not too much trouble. I have to admit, this is an area where I'm very weak. Any help would be appreciated. > > But that's easily fixable. The thing that isn't easily fixable > > at this point is the galactic plane itself. I simply supposed that the > > X-Y plane on the 2300 near star map was parallel to the galactic plane. > > I bet this was a bad assumption. That X-Y plane is probably our solar > > plane which is no doubt the same as the equatorial plane at equinox > > and has nothing whatsoever to do with the galactic plane. Let me know > > either way, if you have an answer to this. > > The coordinates on the map are based on declination and rectascension > (sp?). The x-y plane would correspond to the celestial equator. That's what I was afraid of. No starmap made my aliens would use earth's celestial equator as their X-Y plane. I am right in assuming one planet's celestial equator is different from any others, right? My astronomy really sucks, if it doesn't show. > > Also, based on the 2300 > > near star map, in which direction is the galactic core? I basically need > > to come up with where this map is in relation to the rest of the galaxy > > and where the galactic plane crosses through it. Probably not easy > > data to find, but please let me know if you happen to have the answers > > to all this. > > The z axis points at the celestial pole, so I would expect that the map is > inclined from the plane of the galaxy. But frankly, I don't think it > matters very much. The center of the galaxy is in the direction of > sagitaurius, but it is so far away that it doesn't matter here. The celestial pole would likewise be different from one world to the next, right? And the poles for the galaxy as a whole would be different still. Let me know if I'm screwing up, here. > I think 2300 knows what it is doing (GURPS have never struck me as very > scientific). Take a look at the texts about planetary formation at the > World Wrights Web, they discuss this quite well, and also details about > atmospheric chemistry (it is a terrific site) > > http://www.cs.tu-bs.de/~rhiemeir/ Thanks. I'll take a look at it. I'm really glad these resources are available. > Yes, nitric oxide would form nitric acid together with water. Quite > poisonous and corrosive (but might form the basis for some interesting > life). Carbon monoxide is not stable together with oxygen, a planet with > that in the atmosphere have to have unusually much carbon on the surface. So you're saying that carbon monoxide probably wouldn't exist beside nitric oxide in large quantities? The CO would break down to CO2 or something? These are the sorts of things I could use some guidelines on. Of course, I don't think I'm gonna write software to go down to this level. It would be nice, but maybe this is something that is better left to the individual GM. Right now, the program basically shows whatever starsystem the user wants to see and provides each planet with a classification: gas giant, rockball, garden world... but that's about it. The user can type up and save some text about the starsystem which can be accessed within the program, but the program doesn't give all sorts of data off the bat. One thing about 3d space is that you end up with *lots* of starsystems very quickly. It would take lots of harddrive space to keep expanded data on every single planet. I'm not saying its impossible. Just slightly infeasible. Then again, maybe people would want expanded data to be automatically generated and stored in some "extras" location which they could dump to tape or whatever when they're not using, or which they could turn off or on depending on their harddrive capacity. Something to think about, I guess. > I think the proportions of elements in space are not that different from > here at earth; it would be unlikely for a planet to have as much chlorine > as oxygen, for example. I'll see if I can find some guidelines on this at the www page you suggested I check out. Thanks again... Date: Mon, 12 Jun 1995 17:14:57 +0200 (MET DST) From: Anders Sandberg To: james vassilakos Subject: Re: SF-RPG On Sat, 10 Jun 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > In the paper, he mentions something about esoteric matter being > employed. Now forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what the > heck is esoteric matter? :-) Matter with weird properties. It could be the opposite of matter, some kind of matter which disappears without any energy production when mixed with matter, or it could be a material under so intense stresses that the forces inside the material overshadow its own energy. In any case, it would be very exotic and quite noticeable. > > The stabilizer systems are essentially big computers > > which constantly manipulate the fields towards a symmetrical shape; their > > work will become harder and harder near a gravity well. Advanced > > civilizations have powerful computers and are able to go closer, but it is > > very impractical for most purposes. > > Actually, how close you can get to a gravity field would be a very > practical area to devote resources. That, right there, is your > response time to threats. This alone could precipitate an arms > race of who has the fastest computers. Maybe many races don't try to build more intelligent computers, just faster and more powerful computers. > > Yes. Do we want FTL-radio in this scenario? > > I'm not sure. On the one hand, I like the idea of courier ships carrying > messages. It means they can be intercepted. And that alone has all sorts > of neat consequences. Players intercepting such intelligence can have > a huge impact on interstellar events. Makes for good plots. These couriers could range from crewed ships to tiny message missiles. > On the other hand, if you limit comm to the speed of light, then planets > are gonna have a harder time defending themselves. All the contingencies > have to be considered. How will they respond to every conceiable threat? I take it that you don't want it to be too easy to blow up planets? FTL weapons might not be able to penetrate the gravitational field very well, but they could appear almost out of nowhere and release nasty conventional weapons such as nuclear warheads or packets of antimatter pellets. One defense could be to have disruptive gravity-wave generators placed around a planet; they send out waves which resonate with the polarization fields and disrupt them. This would of course mean that planets with plenty of energy and technology are safer than planets without. > Of course, gravity is one obvious defense, but what about having a > defense for those deep space stations? Any joe schmoe could just speed > up to FTL and slam them. A remote-controlled craft could do it, even. > How do we stop the kamikazi scenario of terrorism... or should we? Hmm, maybe FTL terrorism is a danger. So most civilizations keep a *very* careful check on who has a FTL drive. FTL weapons are probably not unknown, but are so expensive that they are seldom used. > When you think about it rationally, it is quite a wonder than New York > is still standing, considering just how many of these terrorist states > we've managed to piss off. If I was looking at modern Earth as a potential > campaign setting, I'd probably have to call bullshit right there. Well, reality is usually stranger than fiction. And in your scenario, maybe most races are rather peaceful (or at least not openly violent) just because violent races won't get any help to reach the stars and often destroy themselves. > > Requires much energy to start, and dissipates most of it when it stops. > > This one is fairly serious. How did anybody ever do any exploring if > you can only go one way? Or maybe the first exploration ships had to > be really mammoth so they could hold their own fuel and/or power plant. Yes, that sounds reasonable. Or maybe they could deploy huge solar panels and gather energy for the next FTL-scramble. > That means you have a choice. A cheap one-way starship where you > constantly have to beg for energy, or a really huge and expensive > ship where you can carry gas around with you or skim gas giants for > it, but most of all, convert it into the energy you need without the > help of a starport. hey... I kinda like it. Its elegant. Along many trading routes, you can use one-way ships who buy energy from the starports. But to go into the great unknown, you need a ship with solar cells, a huge reactor or to skim gas giants. > At the very least, this > will keep the players humble. They absolutely must go to the starport > or they're stuck in-system. Unless, of course, they manage to acquire > a two-way starship. I like it... it makes a nice clean cut between > types of starships. They definitely won't take star-travel for > granted, especially if they're disliked/feared by half the aliens > they need to acquire power from. Yes. You see what I meant with the FTL drive affecting the story? Another thing is that this system naturally leads to "arms" like in 2300AD, without having to use that games arbitrary 7.7 light-year limitation. For example, the cluster of G-stars around Beta Canum would be connected by a long trading route, where there were starports supplying traders and transports with energy, so they can use the simpler and cheaper one-way ships. But just beside it there are systems with almost no civilization whatsoever, where you have to have 2-way ships to get around. As trade and economy shifts, the possible routes change (this is another reason so much happens in the energy-rich spiral arms). A planet with lots of energy can easily become a trading hub, but will also have to handle the problems with much traffic (including the risk of attacks or accidents). > > Speed depends on the amount of energy used. > > Yeah... absolutely. So the whole thing will boil down to how much > gas they can get and how quickly the local power plant can convert > it into energy so they can jump. Just handwave some time-limit > where the field starts to get instable. Otherwise they'll just > pump more and more energy in to get whatever speed they want. As I see it, its quite hard to charge up the fields during flight. It could be done, but you have to be careful not to cause an instability. If something goes wrong either you are ripped apart, or you manage to dissipate away the fields and now are stranded in deep space. > Unless there's some sort of asymptotic relationship going here. > >From reading the paper, do you get the sense that this might > be tthe case? I have to look at it. One could say that speed behaves like the logarithm of the energy; each doubling of energy might give one lightspeed, or something like that. > > Can collapse catastrophically if damaged or stabilizers fail. > > Yep. What sort of debris do you envision. Just a bunch of > stray atoms? I think they can handle small things, but asteroids or heavy junk might be dangerous. I would imagine that the stabilizers compensate for it, but it might cause a worrying "flicker" in the fields. Interesting... I think this drive would work as a kind of ramjet: since the ship is moving FTL, matter has no chance to get away from it and enters the frontal fields. It is ripped apart by tidal forces into very thin plasma and enters the "bubble" around the ship, with almost the same momentum relative to the ship as it had relative to empty space. It will then diffuse away again from the ship. The result is that a ship will leave a homogenized trail of plasma, and maybe this could even be used for some purposes. It would also mean that you could detect where a ship has been by analyzing its trail. If a ship moves towards a sun, it will accumulate large amounts of solar wind and light, which could be an energy source (hardly enough to start and stop the ship, but probably significant nevertheless). If you travel a lightyear straight towards the sun, you will scoop up all the sunlight along your path in a rather short time as seen from the ship. It might even be a problem in some systems; your ship could overheat if it moves too close to the sun at FTL speed. It might be a good idea to place heat shields or solar panels in front of the ship. > > The fields are weakened by interstellar dust and gas (nebulas may be a > > hindrance) > > Probably would be. They might have to spend lots of time mapping > intersteller space looking for dust clouds and so forth. There > might be hazard zones all over the place. Just think of the Oort clouds around many systems! I think prudent crews will leave the systems orthogonally from the ecliptic, to avoid the risk of running into anything large. And there might be zones everybody knows are dangerous in deep space too, like a cloud of drifting asteroids or brown giants. > > You cannot change destination once the ship is on its way (slight > > adjustments are possible, but no turning). > > The question is, how slight are the adjustments? That would depend on your computing power and how good stabilizers you have. A race with poor stabilizers can't turn very well, since it might cause an instability. An advanced race might be able to do some quite dramatic turns, maybe even use the instabilities to their profit. I think one could imagine this drive as a "surf-drive", the ships surf on a gravity wave. The stronger wave, the more speed and power, but a greater risk to fall off. Sharper turns are also harder to do. I have been thinking about how things would look from the ship when its moving FTL. Essentially you will get an intense aberration (this is the same phenomenon you see when you cycle or run in rain; as you move forward the droplets strike your face, not the top of your head). All light from the universe around the ship seems to come from a single, brilliant pinpoint in front of it. The rest of the sky is completely black. When the ship is launched into FTL, the transition is almost instantaneous. When it discharges the fields, the sky will explode out from the pinpoint, briefly focus behind the ship and then stabilize itself. > > > Catapults are fine for cargo that is totally non-fragile... not such a > > > good thing for anything that can't stand one heck of a lot of Gs. > > > > Some races might survive them. > > They'd have to awfully hardy. Yes. I got the thought from a race in the "The Universe According to You"-project. It is a quite interesting place, see http://www4.ncsu.edu/eos/users/c/cpcline/www/universe/World.html > > It is a very cheap way of getting into orbit, it saves the environment > > from a lot of launches and could double as a large farm of solar > > collectors. Building it isn't that hard if you can produce large > > quantities of extremely strong cable in space (probably using simple > > nanotech/ advanced biotechnology). All you need is to place the factory in > > synchronous orbit and slowly unreel the stalk until it touches the ground. > > Not exactly. From what I understand, for every gram/meter you build down, > you have to build the same amount upward to keep in balanced. If it gets > off balance of caught in a hurricane or something, you've got big problems. > Potentially really big problems, as it could end up crashing somewhere. > On a highly developed planet, this could be somewhat tragic. Well, I certainly don't want to get 40,000 kilometers of cable on my head. Fortunately, if the cable broke one half would fly off into space and the other crash in a straight line to the west. And as far as I understand it, you can always have some active control on the cable while it is built (afterwards too). Maybe sky-hooks are safer, but a static beanstalk is very tempting to build when you can build them. > > Maybe you could use polarization of space a la Alcubierre if you did it > > carefully and in a purely radial way; if the cargo lost alignment it > > would be ripped apart. > > I was actually thinking more in terms of harnessing the infamous > Higgs boson... of which I know next to nothing except that some > phycists think it might be a route to understanding and perhaps > one day harnessing gravity. Hmm, nice idea. This could also explain the polarization effect. Essentially all the energy fed into the polarizers are used to cause some (handwave)(handwave)local symmetry-breaking of the Higgs field. This allows the creation of the huge distortions used for the drive. But the technology could be used in other ways too. Gravitic technology is one of the most important technologies for an advanced civilization, but also one they really want to control. Maybe it is even the step above most civilizations, who just use the devices without understanding the exact details. Of course, that would be something most would never tell the puny humans. > You probably know a *lot* more about this than I do. Any sites you > know of which discuss this sort of stuff? I'll look for them, but I don't think there are that many good introductions to the area on the net. > > > >Hmm, we are living just 8 parsec from the galactic plane, and the disc > > > >is around 100 pc thick here. > > > > > > Hmm... this is news to me. I was guestimating about 400 parsecs on the > > > width. According to what I have found in my astronomical books, it is 300 parsecs thick around here. The central bulge is 1000 parsecs thick. > Please, if it's not too much trouble. I have to admit, this is an area > where I'm very weak. Any help would be appreciated. I also found that we are living in a slightly unusual corner, "Gould's Plane" or the "Local System". The stars in our vicinity are not completely aligned with the rest of the galaxy, something *big* happened here around 67 million years ago which changed the dynamics. We are living around 1000 parsec from the Carina-Saggitaurius arm and 3000 parsec from the Perseus arm. > That's what I was afraid of. No starmap made my aliens would use > earth's celestial equator as their X-Y plane. I am right in assuming > one planet's celestial equator is different from any others, right? Yes, that is probable. I would guess most tend to be aligned somewhat with the galactic equator due to the angular momentum of the galaxy, but this is just statistically speaking. My suggestion is that you tilt or mirror the starmap. > My astronomy really sucks, if it doesn't show. Don't worry, the most important thing is making the game work, not worry about minor details. > The celestial pole would likewise be different from one world to the > next, right? And the poles for the galaxy as a whole would be different > still. Let me know if I'm screwing up, here. Yes, every pole is different. Makes it quite complicated. > So you're saying that carbon monoxide probably wouldn't exist beside > nitric oxide in large quantities? The CO would break down to CO2 or > something? These are the sorts of things I could use some guidelines > on. I'm not completely sure about the dynamics of a CO/NO atmosphere, but it would probably be unstable. But I'm not a chemist... I really liked the text about planets in the World Wrights Web, it had some good ideas. I think the Mothers will come from a quite earthlike planet, while the arboreal climbers would come from a planet with a biochemistry based on nitric oxides and acids. > Right now, the program basically > shows whatever starsystem the user wants to see and provides each > planet with a classification: gas giant, rockball, garden world... > but that's about it. The user can type up and save some text about > the starsystem which can be accessed within the program, but the > program doesn't give all sorts of data off the bat. One thing about > 3d space is that you end up with *lots* of starsystems very quickly. > It would take lots of harddrive space to keep expanded data on > every single planet. What about regenerating it from a random seed based on the system location? The user data would have to be stored, but the rest could be recalculated if needed (I think this is how Elite does it). I'm working on the Mothers right now. They seem to have great potential, and humans would probably be very mystified by them. While they might be able to interact with humans quite directly (at least a family specialized in such communications), they have very alien traits (for example, the males are not intelligent, and look like small rays. When they mate they grow into the mother, and eventually become part of the neural interface between mother and daughter). From: james vassilakos Subject: Re: SF-RPG To: nv91-asa@nada.kth.se (Anders Sandberg) Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 00:37:07 -0700 (PDT) > > In the paper, he mentions something about esoteric matter being > > employed. Now forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what the > > heck is esoteric matter? :-) > > Matter with weird properties. It could be the opposite of matter, some > kind of matter which disappears without any energy production when mixed > with matter, or it could be a material under so intense stresses that the > forces inside the material overshadow its own energy. In any case, it > would be very exotic and quite noticeable. Odd. Very odd. And you know how I hate very odd, don't you. *Sigh* Okay, let's think here. You know the technology level we're talking about. How are these bozos gonna get this "exotic" matter. I mean, let's say they're little fief in confined to some, oh... I dunno... maybe 300-500 lightyears cubed in the general vicinity of Sol. Do they have the resources, both technological and material, to acquire and extract and transport and process this esoteric matter? > > Actually, how close you can get to a gravity field would be a very > > practical area to devote resources. That, right there, is your > > response time to threats. This alone could precipitate an arms > > race of who has the fastest computers. > > Maybe many races don't try to build more intelligent computers, just faster > and more powerful computers. Could be. Maybe they've given up on artificial sentience. Or maybe that's one of the no-no areas the "Galactics" (you know, we may want to steer clear of that name... sounds too much like Schmitz's "Old Galactics" in _Legacy_) don't want "minor" races delving into (right up there with making stars go nova and other neat tricks of science). > These couriers could range from crewed ships to tiny message missiles. Unless the surf-drive needs to be a certain (somewhat large) size. I kind of like imposing limitations on this stuff. The harder FTL is, the less likely it can be used for mass-destruction. > I take it that you don't want it to be too easy to blow up planets? FTL > weapons might not be able to penetrate the gravitational field very well, > but they could appear almost out of nowhere and release nasty conventional > weapons such as nuclear warheads or packets of antimatter pellets. One > defense could be to have disruptive gravity-wave generators placed around > a planet; they send out waves which resonate with the polarization fields > and disrupt them. This would of course mean that planets with plenty of > energy and technology are safer than planets without. Another alternative is to say that you have to be pretty far out from any gravitational areas (such as the inner system). Or make a 1000 diameter limit, or something else pretty heinous. I'll try to get some of this drawn into a tentative system. > Hmm, maybe FTL terrorism is a danger. So most civilizations keep a *very* > careful check on who has a FTL drive. FTL weapons are probably not > unknown, but are so expensive that they are seldom used. Well, when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, delivery is everything. Either it gets there to do the job or it doesn't. That is to say, either you have an effective weapon, or you don't. No government is going to let itself be defenseless, so you can be sure they will invest whatever it takes to turn FTL into a weapon if it is at all feasible. Cost isn't going to be an issue. They'll build it regardless of cost. Even if it bankrupts their society. Of course, this is assuming they think the same way we do, which, for their sake, I hope isn't going to be the case. > > When you think about it rationally, it is quite a wonder than New York > > is still standing, considering just how many of these terrorist states > > we've managed to piss off. If I was looking at modern Earth as a potential > > campaign setting, I'd probably have to call bullshit right there. > > Well, reality is usually stranger than fiction. And in your scenario, > maybe most races are rather peaceful (or at least not openly violent) > just because violent races won't get any help to reach the stars and > often destroy themselves. Yeah. Terrorism, while not entirely unknown, may be so persistently persecuted by all member worlds that it may be set further in the background than we might otherwise expect. > Another thing is that this system naturally leads to "arms" like in > 2300AD, without having to use that games arbitrary 7.7 light-year > limitation. For example, the cluster of G-stars around Beta Canum would be > connected by a long trading route, where there were starports supplying > traders and transports with energy, so they can use the simpler and > cheaper one-way ships. But just beside it there are systems with almost no > civilization whatsoever, where you have to have 2-way ships to get around. Yeah. This makes trade-routes much more powerful entities than they are in classic Traveller. I mean, players have to litterally stick to the route unless they can get passage aboard a 2-way ship, and those aren't seen very often. > I have to look at it. One could say that speed behaves like the logarithm > of the energy; each doubling of energy might give one lightspeed, or > something like that. Please do. I took a brief look at the formulas in that paper, then closed my eyes to keep them from wobbling out of focus. Math does that to me sometimes :-) > > Yep. What sort of debris do you envision. Just a bunch of > > stray atoms? > > I think they can handle small things, but asteroids or heavy junk might > be dangerous. I would imagine that the stabilizers compensate for it, but > it might cause a worrying "flicker" in the fields. No, I mean, if the field fails before they manage to depower. For example, the drive hiccups in mid-ftl. Do you think they'd just be so much space dust? No flight recorder? Nothing? > Interesting... I think this drive would work as a kind of ramjet: since > the ship is moving FTL, matter has no chance to get away from it and > enters the frontal fields. It is ripped apart by tidal forces into very > thin plasma and enters the "bubble" around the ship, with almost the same > momentum relative to the ship as it had relative to empty space. It will > then diffuse away again from the ship. The result is that a ship will > leave a homogenized trail of plasma, and maybe this could even be used for > some purposes. It would also mean that you could detect where a ship has > been by analyzing its trail. Yeah, that makes some sense. The thing is that you'd be running into interstellar hydrogen. Even if you turn this into a plasma, I'm not sure it's be concentrated enough to even detect. > If a ship moves towards a sun, it will accumulate large amounts of solar > wind and light, which could be an energy source (hardly enough to start > and stop the ship, but probably significant nevertheless). If you travel a > lightyear straight towards the sun, you will scoop up all the sunlight > along your path in a rather short time as seen from the ship. It might > even be a problem in some systems; your ship could overheat if it moves > too close to the sun at FTL speed. It might be a good idea to place heat > shields or solar panels in front of the ship. Hmm... this might be another way to limit the drives and protect planets of the inner system. > Just think of the Oort clouds around many systems! I think prudent crews > will leave the systems orthogonally from the ecliptic, to avoid the risk > of running into anything large. And there might be zones everybody knows > are dangerous in deep space too, like a cloud of drifting asteroids or > brown giants. Yeah, makes sense. > I also found that we are living in a slightly unusual corner, "Gould's > Plane" or the "Local System". The stars in our vicinity are not completely > aligned with the rest of the galaxy, something *big* happened here around > 67 million years ago which changed the dynamics. Okay, I had a vague feeling something like this might be the case. I don't know why there isn't more information about it. Did whatever happened leave a any sort of larger than expected gap between the Carina-Saggitaurius and Perseus arms? From what you write, the gap is around 4000 parsecs. Is that larger than what you'd expect if this "event" did not happen? Also, is there any mention of what this even might have been? 67 million years is not really all that much time. I'm not saying that its "yesterday", but in terms of the galaxy's total age, it's a small fraction, and hence qualifies as fairly recent. > this is just statistically speaking. My suggestion is that you tilt or > mirror the starmap. > Don't worry, the most important thing is making the game work, not worry > about minor details. Yeah, I know. I'm way too detail-oriented. I am considering going back to the Sol is Origin type map which is basically a copycat of the 2300 map. My original plan was to make the galactic core is origin, and our coordinates were something obcene like -15200,15800,600 or something along those lines (of course, this was using units of 1.34 light years or something like that). The end result was that Sol was about 30k light years out from the origin. A third option is to tilt the map slightly and let the origin be some local area of commerce, some system anywhere from 50-100 light years from Sol. Right now I'm leaning slightly toward option #1, sol as the origin. It's easy to do (since the data is already set up that way) and it also provides players with a nice frame of refernce. Of course, I don't want to look too much like a 2300 copycat either, and I could easily envision GDW squaking, "Hey, you stole our data." Nevermind that its public domain. Any comments? > What about regenerating it from a random seed based on the system > location? The user data would have to be stored, but the rest could be > recalculated if needed (I think this is how Elite does it). I'll look into this possibility. It is a nice idea. One of the Traveller starmapping programs works this way. I forget the author just now, but the program seems to use this method not only to keep worldbuilder data on every planet of every star, but it also uses this method to store fractal maps... again for every planet of every system. Somewhat ingenious. The maps are definitely beyond my abilities as a programmer. In any case, it will require some major modifications to make use of this idea, but it may be worthwhile considering how much harddrive space it could end up saving. Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 01:01:06 +0200 (MET DST) From: Anders Sandberg To: james vassilakos Subject: Re: SF-RPG On Wed, 14 Jun 1995, james vassilakos wrote: > > Matter with weird properties. It could be the opposite of matter, some > > kind of matter which disappears without any energy production when mixed > > with matter, or it could be a material under so intense stresses that the > > forces inside the material overshadow its own energy. In any case, it > > would be very exotic and quite noticeable. > > Odd. Very odd. And you know how I hate very odd, don't you. *Sigh* But the surf-drive would avoid this kind of weirdness by sweeping it under the quantum rug. While the ships would move forward surrounded by warped spacetime, the true weirdness just takes place on the particle level where we can ignore it (or rather, on the quantum scale this kind of weirdness is completely normal). > Okay, let's think here. You know the technology level we're talking > about. How are these bozos gonna get this "exotic" matter. I mean, > let's say they're little fief in confined to some, oh... I dunno... > maybe 300-500 lightyears cubed in the general vicinity of Sol. Do > they have the resources, both technological and material, to > acquire and extract and transport and process this esoteric matter? Here is an idea: esoteric matter may exist, but is on the "no-no" list of the Galactics. Actually, the inner workings of vacuum polarization might be so advanced, that it cannot be extended by most civilizations. I got this idea while reading about quantum gravity: the best theory could be so utterly complex or alien that no human could ever imagine it. Maybe most races are able to use a few "safe" results or recipes which has trickled down from the Galactics or are easy to discover, but cannot use the full theory. The drive units most civilizations use are fairly standardized. The main differences is how they look and how energy is applied (some civilizations store it inside the unit in some form and then activate it, others store energy on the ship and then suddenly pour it into the drive). Building one requires some rather unusual material to create the finely tuned internal fields (maybe superconducting coils which are short circuited into a *huge* magnetic field in a very special way). > > Maybe many races don't try to build more intelligent computers, just faster > > and more powerful computers. > > Could be. Maybe they've given up on artificial sentience. Or maybe that's > one of the no-no areas the "Galactics" (you know, we may want to steer > clear of that name... sounds too much like Schmitz's "Old Galactics" in > _Legacy_) don't want "minor" races delving into (right up there with > making stars go nova and other neat tricks of science). Hmm, what could we call them? The Powers? (a bit too much like Vinge, I think) Them? (Makes them more mysterious). The Great Ones? The Eight Races? I don't think AI would be on the no-no list of the Galactics; as I see it, the Galactics don't want lesser races to mess up the galaxy too much, but if they do something with their own culture they are on their own. Maybe they doesn't accept the construction of von Neumann probes or similar things that could get out of hand. Or perhaps they don't want civilizations to transcend? > > These couriers could range from crewed ships to tiny message missiles. > > Unless the surf-drive needs to be a certain (somewhat large) size. > I kind of like imposing limitations on this stuff. The harder FTL is, > the less likely it can be used for mass-destruction. Yes. We really should decide on how much energy is needed to power the drive, both at launch and during flight. If the ships need a fairly large reactor even in-flight, there is no point in small missiles etc. On the other hand, ships can't be too large, or their gravity would begin to interfere with the drive (this prevents moving planets around). Of course, if you increase the power of the drive, you could make a larger field and move bigger objects, but eventually you reach a point of dimishing returns. The Gool asteroid-ships might be among the largest spacecrafts around, and most ships are much smaller. What energy sources do we want for ships? Some ideas: * Solar power (might work especially well inside a solar system when driving FTL) * Microwave antennas (space stations or planets beam a microwave beam at the antenna, powering the ship. This could perhaps be scaled up into the visible light or even UV range). * Fission * Fusion (bulky, but provides a lot of energy. Could be fueled by a scoop of some kind) * Matter-Antimatter reactions (requires antimatter, which is very expensive and hard to come by. Probably in the realm of very powerful civilizations, most races only dream of it). > Well, when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, delivery is everything. > Either it gets there to do the job or it doesn't. That is to say, either > you have an effective weapon, or you don't. No government is going to > let itself be defenseless, so you can be sure they will invest whatever > it takes to turn FTL into a weapon if it is at all feasible. Cost isn't > going to be an issue. They'll build it regardless of cost. Even if it > bankrupts their society. Of course, this is assuming they think the > same way we do, which, for their sake, I hope isn't going to be the case. Well, this isn't a stable way of reasoning, sooner or later the armament spiral might erupt into war or bankruptcy. Most civilizations have seen this, and try to have reasonable amounts of weapons - enough to meet any probable threat, but not more. After all, interstellar war is both bloody and unprofitable for most participants (but it could shift the all-important trading routes). > > I have to look at it. One could say that speed behaves like the logarithm > > of the energy; each doubling of energy might give one lightspeed, or > > something like that. > > Please do. I took a brief look at the formulas in that paper, then > closed my eyes to keep them from wobbling out of focus. Math does > that to me sometimes :-) And the math in his paper is especially headache inducing. Very hard to visualize. Energy requirements seems to increase with the square of the speed and linearly to the size of the ship. If you need 1 unit of energy to reach the speed v, you need to 4 units of energy to reach 2v and 9 units to reach 3v. You can cut some corners by making a smaller ship or accepting tidal forces inside it. > > > Yep. What sort of debris do you envision. Just a bunch of > > > stray atoms? > > > > I think they can handle small things, but asteroids or heavy junk might > > be dangerous. I would imagine that the stabilizers compensate for it, but > > it might cause a worrying "flicker" in the fields. > > No, I mean, if the field fails before they manage to depower. For example, > the drive hiccups in mid-ftl. Do you think they'd just be so much space > dust? No flight recorder? Nothing? Depends on the kind of hiccup. A small one: a barely perceptible flicker of everything, nothing more. A bigger one: tidal forces suddenly pull and push on things, perhaps with deadly force. Long, elastic objects orthogonal to the direction of moment is stretched and pressed into odd shapes (this includes the crew), objects aligned to the ship are strangely untouched. A big hiccup: the ship is suddenly a cloud of particles and tiny fragments, most accelerated to relativistic speeds. > > If a ship moves towards a sun, it will accumulate large amounts of solar > > wind and light, which could be an energy source (hardly enough to start > > and stop the ship, but probably significant nevertheless). If you travel a > > lightyear straight towards the sun, you will scoop up all the sunlight > > along your path in a rather short time as seen from the ship. It might > > even be a problem in some systems; your ship could overheat if it moves > > too close to the sun at FTL speed. It might be a good idea to place heat > > shields or solar panels in front of the ship. > > Hmm... this might be another way to limit the drives and protect planets > of the inner system. Yes, and it would make a rather neat ramjet too. If a race used a quite weak field which didn't require the normal huge energies (it would move rather slowly), it might be able to use the influx of particles to power the field in regions with dense dust and gas. But it would probably not work well in our vicinity. > > I also found that we are living in a slightly unusual corner, "Gould's > > Plane" or the "Local System". The stars in our vicinity are not completely > > aligned with the rest of the galaxy, something *big* happened here around > > 67 million years ago which changed the dynamics. > > Okay, I had a vague feeling something like this might be the case. > I don't know why there isn't more information about it. Did whatever > happened leave a any sort of larger than expected gap between the > Carina-Saggitaurius and Perseus arms? From what you write, the gap > is around 4000 parsecs. Is that larger than what you'd expect if this > "event" did not happen? Not what I can see. I think the Local System is smaller than that, maybe a few hundred lightyears across. I'll look it up in more detail. > Also, is there any mention of what this even might have been? Maybe a few very large supernovae in a short span of time? (This might have been the result of Galactic intervention). > 67 million years is not really all that much time. I'm not saying > that its "yesterday", but in terms of the galaxy's total age, it's > a small fraction, and hence qualifies as fairly recent. I wonder if this has anything to do with the extinction of the dinosaurs. > Yeah, I know. I'm way too detail-oriented. I am considering going > back to the Sol is Origin type map which is basically a copycat of > the 2300 map. My original plan was to make the galactic core is > origin, and our coordinates were something obcene like -15200,15800,600 > or something along those lines (of course, this was using units of > 1.34 light years or something like that). The end result was that > Sol was about 30k light years out from the origin. A third option is > to tilt the map slightly and let the origin be some local area of > commerce, some system anywhere from 50-100 light years from Sol. > Right now I'm leaning slightly toward option #1, sol as the origin. > It's easy to do (since the data is already set up that way) and > it also provides players with a nice frame of refernce. Of course, > I don't want to look too much like a 2300 copycat either, and > I could easily envision GDW squaking, "Hey, you stole our data." > Nevermind that its public domain. > > Any comments? Well, it is rather simple to remap the data, so humans would probably remap it around sol anyway. The same goes for star names, they might exist in several languages ("Arcturus; Nice-Orange-Shadowcaster; Ghtttt-99). Some questions we might want to discuss: How much contact does different races have with each other? How large do you want to make the ships? How much long-range travel are there? What do races trade with each other? Have fun, and good luck!