TLT

[Braden Campbell]

Because half the fun is in getting there, generally. If there was total, instantaneous travel throughout the Three Galaxies, there would be no need for Pirates, Runners, or spacers. It would just be Dune.

My vision of the UWW excepted.

Now, some kind of advanced trans-warp, where ships tunnel though normal space and end up going 20x faster than we can now (ie 200 light years per hour) I might allow in some very specific cases.

[glitterboy2098]

plus your limited by location. you can't just port from anywhere to anywhere, your limited to specific spots. for example, the 'blackhole' teleport thing requires a blackhole. those tend to be fairly rare. so it's great if your like voyager and need to get to the otherside of the galaxy, or if you need to travel between galaxies, but it's useless for the short haul.

gateways run into the same issues. you can only travel from one gateway to another gateway. if your destination doesn't have one, your out of luck.at best, you can gate close, and finish the trip normally.


with both, it has major military drawbacks as well. it's easy to predict where a fleet will emerge, since the destinations are limited. also, most will restrict the movement of ships to a few at a time, so they slow down fleet movements as a whole, allowing the enemy to engage you peicemeal as you arrive.


i see most of the TLT being in the 3G's, but it's a suppliment ot the normal gravitic and phase drives, not a replacement.

[Syndicate]

I kinda have it in some of my games...heh...

[glitterboy2098]

i don't see phase world drives as anything but straightline affairs. so a 200 ly trip might require four 50ly hops between different stars, with each period between hops spent refining your position and the course of the next hop.


self correcting navcomps are nice, but useless when you can't correct a course inflight.

[glitterboy2098]

hahaha.... but if you can't see the scenery, what's the fun in going FTL? Both Star Trek and Star Wars' ships can look out.

star wars ships can only see a distorted 'tunnel effect' (which seems to have no releation to the outside images),star trek has the 'star streaks', which are just the outside image distorted by the warp feild.

Wait... I think Star Trek uses viewing screens with views captured from visual sensors on the exterior. That could work.

doesn't matter. this isn't like the blindspot of Niven's hyperdrive. you have to have something to see outside if external veiws are used.
depending on the drive, you may or may not.

But I usually do not see the FTL vessels as being only able to go straight..... Doesn't make much sense. You have all these vessels and vehicles that can turn, twist, climb, dive, slide, side-swipe...... and the most advanced vessels can only go straight at top speed?!

manuvering in FTL has nothing to do with it's STL manuverbility. it has everything to do with the method of FTL.

i see gravitic drives in the 3G's FTL as a based on the Alcubierre Drive

flight is straight line because once you've set up the distorsion feild, you can't alter it except to dismiss it. you can generate the feild in a way to travel in any direction (even backwards), but once you've turned it on, your stuck going the way you chose until you turn it off. all you'd see outside is massiveley red or blueshifted images of distant objects. you exist in an isolated part of the universe, so much so you might as well be in another universe.


fold drives don't actually move, just 'pop' in and out.
i'm still debating phase drives, but i'm thinking phase drives combine gravitic and fold methods. you can't see out, because you are no longer in the visible universe, and there is nothing to see.

starwars drives drop the ship into 'hyperspace', a wormhole like region where distances are shorter. you can see out, but all there is to see is a 'tunnel' effect caused by your ships passage.


star trek drives create a feild that 'grabs' 'subspace', which is like hyperspace. the ship then accellerates to FTL in normal space due to the interaction between space and subspace. the drive feild distorts the outside veiw, creating those 'star streaks'
only ST warp drive can manuver at warp, but since it never actually leaves normal space, it's very possible. because of how they are supposed to work, you can later the strength of the feild on different axis', creating a course change. but you can't do too severe of manuvers (Hull stress reasons), and at FTL speeds, you have to have near omnicient timing to avoid colliding with things in your path.

[glitterboy2098]

But doing combat in FTL is kinda stupid. You are travelling faster than your laser beams...... How do you attack your opponent? By "dropping" a beam when your enemy is behind you?

again, it depends on the FTL method.

in trek, combat occurs at FTL speeds either by FTL capable torpedo's, or by closing fast enough and at nearly the same velocity so that your warp feilds overlap, allowing you to fire beam weapons.

in B5, ships can fight normally because hyperspace is just another universe. it's just not a good idea.

in SW, ships can't fight while in FTL.

fold drives and Alcubierre Drive make it impossible as well.

[Greyaxe]

The only way to fight at FTL speeds is to match the speed of the ship you wish to engage and get clost enough so the FTL fields touch. anything taking place inside the FTL field will move as if you are standing still. Falling out of the FTL field means getting left behind.

[Braden Campbell]

Greyaxe has been reading Fleets of the Three Galaxies...

Yes. In my article (soon to be canon?) when a Phase World ship travels at FTL, their CG-field extends out 40' from the hull (you cannot run at FTL with shields up since the CG-field replaces the varriable force feild.) Any weapons fired from the ship drop down into Realspace after 40', and the they leave the CG field.

So in order to fight an other ship at super-luminal speeds, you have to match the speed of the target vessel (so that the two ships are no longer moving relative to the rest of the universe) and pull within 80'. When the CG fields are overlapping, you may now fight normally... or board it for plunder and womens if you are a Space Pirate!!

ARRRRRG!!!

[glitterboy2098]

Greyaxe has been reading Fleets of the Three Galaxies...

Yes. In my article (soon to be canon?) when a Phase World ship travels at FTL, their CG-field extends out 40' from the hull (you cannot run at FTL with shields up since the CG-field replaces the varriable force feild.) Any weapons fired from the ship drop down into Realspace after 40', and the they leave the CG field.

So in order to fight an other ship at super-luminal speeds, you have to match the speed of the target vessel (so that the two ships are no longer moving relative to the rest of the universe) and pull within 80'. When the CG fields are overlapping, you may now fight normally... or board it for plunder and womens if you are a Space Pirate!!

ARRRRRG!!!

i can live with that rule. it's not irreconcilable with the Alcubierre Drive method, and it makes FTL combat impractical for most situations.


though the similarity to the trek method suggests that you could build FTL torps for FTL combat.

say, a Cruise missile with a short duration 10ly/h FTL drive, and a warhead off an LRM. close to within a few AU, and start volley firing.

[Braden Campbell]

Yes, you could build such torpedos... but they would be retardedly expensive!

And you're right: actual combat almost never occurs at FTL speeds, and boarding at FTL is near suicide. What you do is match speeds with your target, blow off the engines, then fight in Realspace.

[Nekira Sudacne]

Wow! 40' at FTL is in itself suicidal! Even if the fields were to be overlap at the extreme end, it would still be only 79'.

That's like driving at 160mph with only 2 feet of space in between the 2 cars!
oh..... that's almost a kamikaze-style attack.....

May be, Braden, you can come up with the rules for a Picard-Manuevre from ST:TNG.


Gadrin, Crusade was supposed to be the series more than a few hundred years into the future of B5.

the picard manuver was overrated. it only gave you a 50% chance to avoid attack.

[Greyaxe]

Bradens theory is accurate. You simply cant get into battle at faster than light speeds. Only the most daring and brave ever make that attempt aka PC party.

[Esckey]

Isn't much stopping the victim of a FTL attack from simply cutting back on the throttle or stopping, though I imagine going form 5 LYPH to 0 MPH or any speed below 1C would prove hazardous to the health of the FTL drive(s)

[Braden Campbell]

Yeah. If you're going 60 mph and you throw it in park...


You'll stop, but you wont be starting your car agin any time soon.


The pirates section will have a safe decelleration time ---- maybe one minute per every light year an hour you were going. Anything faster, and you'll pork your ship.

[glitterboy2098]

Yes, firing in such short range during FTL flight, would generate debris. Since FTL ships essentially has no FF, those debri will be travelling at incredible speed. Even a small piece will cause the attacker behind a considerable impact damage.

actually, since the ships are both travelling at the same velocity, the relitive velocity of the debries would not be that high.

now, anything that escapes the CG feild would intantly decellerate to high sublight speeds. (say, 90% C or so). anything that hits that, travelling FTL or not, is in trouble. (though presumably phase world ships have something equivelent to the star trek 'deflector' to keep small bits of debries from hitting the ship in flight.)