NationStates Jolt Archive

Anyway, the point is that I am a Modern Tech nation, but am building up a factbook on an Invisionfree account for use as Future Tech. I am creating all of my ships and most of my technology from scratch. For most of my technology, I try to use real physics, or concepts that have at least been theorized in modern times. This has its advantages and its disadvantages. But that's not important right now, and when I start actively RPing in FT you will all learn about that quickly enough.

Now, I have been reading a number of people's Future Tech RPs, and people seem to have developed a huge misconception regarding sublight (relativistic) travel versus superluminal stuff. People use sublight engines when travelling within a star system. Reasonable, but people don't seem to realize that travelling at the speed of light (c), it takes a number of days to traverse a solar system. Since sublight implies much slower speeds, people should actually be spending many days or weeks clearing their solar systems and activating their superluminal devices. However, I see people doing so in a number of minutes or hours. That kind of velocity requires speeds well in excess of c, and some people have showed sublight propulsion systems with speeds in the orders of magnitude of c.

Tactically, this means if enemy ships arrive in your system, they will usually have the initiative unless you knew they were coming. They can jump in and begin firing, and it will take hours or more for you to get ships in to respond. Also, when travelling at speeds even a fraction of c, your ships cannot simply stop dead. Even advanced technobabble technology wouldn't save your ship. With modern technology, you would need to spend days gradually slowing down. Assuming some sort of technology for Future Tech, you should be spending at least an hour slowing your ship down from, say, .5c to a dead stop.

Now, I know people want to enjoy themselves, and I know this is Future Tech, but I don't think asking for sublight propulsion that is actually in speeds lower then c is out of the question. I know there is a fine line between fantasy and reality and all that, but many people have gone beyond that line. Anyway, this is just my random rant and opinion.

OoC: That's why I like wormhole drives (granted, I have no idea if this is physically possible), they're a lot quicker than standard FTL drives (near instantaneous travel within a certain distance).

Well, one way to eliminate the problem would be to use worm holes or hyperspace when travelling long distances and using standard rockets when travelling short distances. This still doesn't make it reasonable to have STL engines that are FTL, maybe excessive rant could make it but I don't think people would enjoy it.

That's why rather than using a 'sublight' drive, I use an N-space drive for travel in systems and either an E-drive or H-drive depending on ship class to replace FTL drives.

That's why rather than using a 'sublight' drive, I use an N-space drive for travel in systems and either an E-drive or H-drive depending on ship class to replace FTL drives.
Which means...

I use gravitic impellers, they can accelerate, in their current form at least, at a maximum of 600 Gs, with a 5% safety margin on their inertial compensators(if those break everyone dies from being crushed by gravity, fun isn't it?). At 600 gravities they can reach speeds well in excess of .3c, the necessary speed for entering hyperspace, and they can only hyper a certain distance from a sun, determined by the size of the sun in question.

N-space stands for Normal space and the N-drive manages to keep the laws of physics relativly intact. It bends them but not to far.
E-drive and H-drive travel in different dimensions where the laws of physics are not in effect.

While I agree with you for the most part, there are a couple problems with your argument:

First, light takes (approx.) 8.3 minutes to travel from the sun to earth, not weeks or days. This means that from Sol to Pluto, it'd take 5.4 hours. Of course, ships moving at a speed a good deal slower than light (.1 C or so) would find journeys significantly longer (54 hours, with my example, slightly over 2 days).

Secondly, a group of ships could not simply jump in and begin firing, unless they jumped only a few lightseconds away from their target. Otherwise, they too would have to hike to their target. FTLi (Faster Than Light Inhibitor) would help an awful lot in this scenario, especially when used to a radius of a few lightdays or even lightyears.

This all becomes moot, of course, when precision or instantaneous FTL comes into the picture. By either dropping into realspace with pinpoint accuracy or making a series of microjumps, the system could be traversed in seconds.

I use Hyperspace manipulation for FTL and advanced Ion Drives for STL.

I'm also rather conservative about speed, at least relative to future-tech. My Ion drives can only go up to half-light, and I stick to that. It would take me 18 hours to reach the orbit of pluto. I've also managed to get my Hyperspace tech to move my ships at 50x light speed. Yes, it takes me a year to get 50 LY. It really galls me when I see people crossing the galaxy in seconds. This completely destroys the strategic element, not only for war, but also for exploration and economics.

I'm also rather conservative about speed, at least relative to future-tech. My Ion drives can only go up to half-light, and I stick to that. It would take me 18 hours to reach the orbit of pluto. I've also managed to get my Hyperspace tech to move my ships at 50x light speed. Yes, it takes me a year to get 50 LY. It really galls me when I see people crossing the galaxy in seconds. This completely destroys the strategic element, not only for war, but also for exploration and economics.
I've never seen why people would put a limit on their STL speed. Anything, with enough time and energy can reach nearly lightspeed (.999999999c). And instant FTL doesn't change much with exploration or economics. Think of it like air-mail vs. sending something via a cargo ship. The plane gets their much in advance, but plenty of work still needs to be done: unloading the plane, refueling, getting the goods to their owners, etc.

On the exploration front, again, much work must be done: Mapping the system, its planets, scanning, taking samples, etc.

I work on the principle of jump points and in-system jumps (example: freespace and freespace 2)
It takes about a day or two to cross an entire system anyways, or a couple hours to a week through a jump point, depending on distance and stability... so I think I've balanced the issue some.

We use Warp Travel; tearing a hole in reality; sliding into the warp and navigating through to our desired destination. Very fun, aside from the unfortunate Daemonic incidents ;)

For FTL, wormhole generators are used. They're simple, and well understood in sci-fi, which saves me a lot of time.

As for Sub-light, we use inertial engines. They use a micro black hole's rotational energy, and redirect it to propel a ship in a linear path. Advantages? Huge acceleration, (Black hols rotate extremely fast, so sapping even a small amount of that is more than enough to push a ship somewhere.) pretty much no exhaust, (Making stealthing our ships much easier.) virtually no need to refuel, (Black holes are theorized to continue spinning well into the end of the universe, long after the last star has gone out.) Plus, as an added bonus, I can later utilize that same black hole for making quasars, which provide a huge boost.

But, no one seems to like them though. As the fighter I've made uses them, but every one who buys them insists on replacing them with ion-engines or something... I mean, with the benefits my system offers, why even think about ion drives? Oh, well.

For FTL I use a TMD, a system I developed personally at a secure military stardock operated by The Federal Union. We are the only two nations that have it (cept those who bought my Firebat class battlecruisers). To learn more about it, click on the Firebat link in my sig.

For sublight, I use plasma drives. Of course, nobody really explains how they work, so I kinda made my own version, which I am not willing to release the stats of just yet. Of course, I agree with you that it should take weeks to move around a system, but in NS, physics often dont apply. At least, thats what ive noticed...

For FTL, I use the Alcubierre Effect, which can achieve speeds up of to 200,000 times the speed of light. It is akin to "warping" in Star Trek, although my version is more true to the laws of physics (as they theoretically apply to FTL travel) and isn't fitted with all the absurd qualities given to it on Star Trek for the purpose of plot, which they all too often do.

For STL, I have three different technologies. The Bussard Ramjet, which can get up to .2c, a thruster (primarily for fine maneuevering) that utilizes something similar to the Hall Effect in physics, and a system based loosely on the modern day VASIMR, which is the RL low-tech version of ion engines.

Ramjets need air. LOTS of air. They would be impracticle on a starship for so many reasons. Unless of course, you mearly call it a ramjet. Then its just confusing.

Bussard Ramjet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

I have modified it slightly, so that it is a bit more feasible, but that is the general premise.

Ill look at the link in a minute. Busy designing a new ship right now, but im sure it vindicates your possition. Ill tell you later.

For FTL, I have two: KK (or Posigrav) Drives, which are essentially black holes strapped to the front of a ship, with the ship inside the event horizon, enabling it to move FTL. My second is the Mobius Continuum, which is essentially a parallel dimension without dimensions (ie, space or time). Without space or time, it exists everywhere at once. A particular type of psyker can open "doors" to the Continuum by manipulating a certain set of equations.

For STL, I have plasma drives, which simply vent plasma out of a fusion reactor and into space, and the KK drive, which works just fine for pulling me forwards at STL if I tone down the singularity to place myself outside the event horizon.

Ok, I just read it, and I gotta ask: ARE YOU INSANE?! A massive scoop like that on a combat vessel? Maybe i missed something, but wow, thats bad planning. That scoop would be taken down so fast...

My ships use Ion drives wih a relatavistic thrust stream to produce linear accelerations in the thousands of Gs range. They're modeled after the relatavistic jets produced by super massive black holes.

I've never seen why people would put a limit on their STL speed. Anything, with enough time and energy can reach nearly lightspeed (.999999999c).

I COULD go that fast with my Ion Drives, but the acceleration is so slow that my ships would be beyond the gravity well of the system they happened to be in. If I could use hyperspace within a gravity well, I wouldn't need sublight drives.

And instant FTL doesn't change much with exploration or economics. Think of it like air-mail vs. sending something via a cargo ship. The plane gets their much in advance, but plenty of work still needs to be done: unloading the plane, refueling, getting the goods to their owners, etc.

I should perhaps have said that instant transportation destroys *A* strategic element. I'm thinking right now of the Master of Orion series. It takes years to reach even nearby systems. Entire civilizations can be isolated in the vast darkness of space.

Picture your empire as a set of causality loops. On your core world, transit and communication is nearly instantaneous. The core world is aware of every event occuring within it. Farther out, in the colonies, movement of people and goods between worlds can take weeks, even months. Although the communication is instantaneous, the bandwidth is much more limited. Again, farther out, in the darkness of space, remote probes and mining outposts can be cut off for years from home. When they return, your entire society could have changed. A civilization with limited infrastructure is not totally aware of itself: it possesses a subconscious.

Let me put it another way. With slow transportation, the galaxy is a wilderness. With rapid transportation, the galaxy is a Walmart.

Einhauser: My Bussard Ramjet works on a similar principle, and only my noncombat ships have large ramjets. My combat ships have "refined" the technology to the point where the scoop is relatively insignificant in size. However, not even all of my combat ships have them, as they favor other forms of propulsion.