Mutants in Orbit questions! I feel lost.

[Esckey]

In my games I simplified travel and fuel.

Added another zero to the fuel ranges. Meaning that you can get to Mars(when it's on it's closest approach) on about 7.8 full standard tanks of fuel, with a couple of extra tanks of gas you can easily get there with almost no worries of running out. Not bad comparing the old number of 78 tanks of gas, if Mars is at it's farthest and the addition of the zero to the ranges it still will only take 39 tanks of fuel. With the addition of fuel stations along the way(heavily armed and armoured sovereign stations) the ranges between destinations is reduced even farther. Travel time is still just as long though

And I got rid of the orbital differences between Mars and Earth, something I really hated doing cause it would be an easy way to add in "seasons" instead of just letting the PCs wander off to Mars anytime they please. Plus it's easier on my mind cause I'll just wind up forgetting just how far away Mars is at any given time of the year.

[glitterboy2098]

my vision of mutants in orbit (especially the belt) for rifts is more along the lines of The Island Worlds (a great book by Eric Kotani and John Maddox Roberts).


if you haven't read it, i'll summerize.

in it the belt was colonized by earth when the worlds resources started to run out.

the belt became a collection of unaligned "Island Worlds" inhabited by all people who just didn't fit into earth society. (geniuses, religous fanatics, rebels, nuts, wackos, survivalists, ect.)

in the belt you have groups like salamis, an idependant military force, waiting for when the belters decide to succed from earth and form their own nation; Avalon, the closest thing to a capitol the belt has; Aeaea, an ultra tech research station; as well as places like the Golden isle of Shiva, who desire Jihad against the infidels, the ever praying monks of Iona; ect.




i always felt such a setting would be closer to what the rifts version of mutants in orbit should be like.

roughly the same tech level as the AtB version; just far more developed and populated, since in rifts humanity's been around in space far longer.

all it takes is some innovation to fill out the belt, and pushing the edge of the human explored solar system out to jupiter/saturn. (i'd go for saturn. have early stage colonies on jupiters moons, and have saturn being visited recently. you can get really inventive with this. NPC's planning long duration trips to mine the Oort clound, sightings of life under europa's ice, ect.)

[Esckey]

Mars, specifically how long between conjunctions, and then to fudge it entirely from that data. Still, I'd feel pretty weird getting rid of it entirely.

Think it's closest approach is like every 2 years or something. Edit: And according to this site it's about every 2 years and a month http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/mars/mars_orbit.html check it out its' cool


@Glitterboy

I kinda do that sorta thing with my games, it's not just the belt(and there aren't that many) theres more independant stations. Even have a mall that orbits the Moon(It's basically the only way to buy goods that were made on the Moon or made from raw materials taken from the moon). But I prefer my PCs to stay within the belt cause travel time just gets annoying, especially if you have a base of operations somewhere nearer to the zone.

Our longest lasting MiO RPG was fairly long(a several months of once a week play, before drifting off. Still play it occasionally) and in those games we got guys that are in their early 30s(started late teens, early 20s) while our longer lasting games (Have a PF one that's been going on for like 3 years of once a week sessions) I don't think we've even made it through one full year game time yet. Geez figure we've played the MiO one like 45 times and 10 years has past game time while the PF one that we've played 150+ times we probably havn't even made it through a full year. All cause of the travel time and I'm starting to ramble here so on to something else

The only comparison I've found to indicate how much fuel it actually takes to move those distances is the "add 50 tons" option for a double-size fuel tank. Which of course does nothing to account for the difference in size between a giant superfreighter self-sufficient ship, and a one-man flitter with systems so minimal the occupant is required to wear a spacesuit with hose hookup.

Ooooo good point. Well I figure the bigger the drive(can tell by the fuel amount) the bigger the ship will have to be. I can't see a tiny ten man shuttle being powered by a Plasma drive but I can see it using a chemical drive.

[Esckey]

I'm also thinking of just how big the engine itself is. If a Plasma drive is like 10feet high, 10 feet wide and 20 feet long then it's probably going to wind up being bigger or just as big as the rest of the said courier ship. Granted even I don't care about this, got one ship that's like 40m long,5m high and 30m wide at the rear(shaped like a triangle) and it has 4 ion drives on while I got another ship that is 480m long and 130m wide with 9 engines on it, 3 plasma and 6 ion. The ion engines are 30mx40mx10m(WxLxH) and the plasma are 40x40x10. And they both move just as fast as the other one(which is fast) I typical draw the ship out on graph paper then assaign it what stats I think are resonable or just cool

[Esckey]

You know if your willing to write up some detailed rules for making ships this would be great for PW cause there like almost no rules at all in PW. I've never knwon what TMF is so I always ignored that part.

There's a story line behind the Moon doing the whole Mall thing, that and I incorparated alot of the material from the Rifts(Love those VR bots) section into my game. Just no MDC and toned down abit.

[Iczer]

Hmm......

I don't often post here.

1) those with expensive tastes could look up the rules for space travel in (whitewolf's) Trinity game. It is heavilly oversimplified, with an emphasis on story over actual time. After all, there is very little difference to a journey that takes 6 months as opposed to 9 months, aside from time reliant factors that is.

2) The Aliens unlimited Galaxy Guide has a better than average ship building system. Obviously it would have to be scaled back incredibly (it uses thousands of SDC and, of course, uses units of light speed) but it could be used as the core for retooling the ship creation rules.

Batts

[gaby]

What spaceship,s weapons do you allows?

They must not be to high tech.

[Rallan]

Right, there's not many points left to make, but I'll make 'em anyway.

First up, mining the gas giants is just flat out impossible. Not only does it take forever and a day to get out there with the conventional drives most MiO ships use (they go roughly as fast as real spaceships, which means even a trip to Jupiter can be a couple of years each way), but physically mining the gas giants is impossible with the technology available. You can't get close enough to physically skim the upper atmosphere because you don't have the thrust to escape Jupiter's pull. If you accidentally get the angle wrong and do more than just skim, you're hosed the moment you plunge into the atmosphere. If you build a station in orbit and dangle a zillion-mile hose down into the atmosphere, the convection of Jupiter's weather (and the gravitational pull on the parts of the cable that are going slower than the orbital velocity for their height) will rip the damn thing off. It ain't viable. About all you could realistically do would be to mine the moons of the gas giants, but there's not really anything on them that would justify the expense when Mars, the Moon, and the Asteroid Belt are providing the orbit community just fine.

Second up, distance. Everything I said about distance being impractical gets thrown out the window the moment you use a Traction Drive. Constant 1G acceleration that can be kept up forever? The solar system is suddenly a very small place after all. How small you ask? Fortunately I worked out the math in another thread, and it's very small indeed. Earth to Jupiter takes less than a week. If you accelerate nonstop for a week, coast for two days, and brake for a week, you can do an Earth to Neptune run in 16 days (and towards the end of the first week you'll fly past Saturn at almost 2% of the speed of light). If Neptune and Pluto were on opposite sides of the solar system, a run of constant acceleration followed by constant braking could get you there in under a month.

So logically, considering that traction drives open up the entire solar system for exploration with travel times that are shorter than a chemical drive run from Earth to Mars, anyone doing new stuff for MiO should update things to reflect how orbit's back yard is a lot bigger than Kevin Siembieda realised.

[glitterboy2098]

or stick with trction drives being extremely rare, as in canon, and pretty much impossible to build more of. (i'd assume traction drives require huge outlays in resources and lots of manhours to construct, so it is unlikely more than a handful exist. all of which are likely to be dedicated military vessels, even if they weren't originally intended for that role..)

all other ships rely on Cold sleep or cyrogenic suspended animation to make interplanetary trips viable for their crews. for the crew, its been only a short time. everyone else has to wait the months or years of the trip.

it would be hell on families (uncle bob leaves 3yr old nephew fred to go on a mission to the belt, returns after a subjective trip of a few months to find 7yr old Fred wondering why uncle bob hasn't aged...), but it would allow players to get around the solar system without dying of old age first. jump into the cyrochamber, get thawed out at the destination, let a computer do the dull work of getting there. you'd just need to keep in mind that years pass in the interm and things might change, old contacts age or die, ect...

[glitterboy2098]

it's that statement of reaching lightspeed after 1 year of a ccelleration that says it can do 1g of accell. because thats how long at 1g of accell it would take to reach the speed of light (or a very close approximation thereof)

so the damage is done.

the best way to limit the collateral damage is to make the drive incredebly rare, say with only 6-12 ships known to have it, all pre-rifts, and new ones being too expensive in manpower and resources to build to make it worthwhile.


of course, those handful of ships would be the only effective military force between the starships of the Arkhons and the orbital community. Arkhons have countergravity propulsion systems like those in phase world. everything a traction drive ship can do, an arkhon ship can do better.

luckly most of the arkhon ships are crashed on mars...

[Rallan]

macksting, Arkhons are the big baddies in Rifts: South America 2, and are pretty much the only power on Rifts Earth to have a presence in space.

[Rallan]

Ah, so this conversation is about Rifts, which has a higher technology level.
Please, try to keep it to After the Bomb (which is, after all, where we're posting), less you confuse me entirely.

In that case Arkhons don't exist at all. Problem solved

[gaby]

I have some questions on what shipweapons that are allow and not too high tech,In Orbit is set only in the Solar system not in the 3 Galaxies.

So What weapons do that are allow in Orbit game?

[Rallan]

I have some questions on what shipweapons that are allow and not too high tech,In Orbit is set only in the Solar system not in the 3 Galaxies.

So What weapons do that are allow in Orbit game?

Well the Rifts part of MiO gives them stuff that'd be pretty much state of the art by Rifts Earth standards. Power Armor and giant mecha as good as anything that had been printed in Rifts up to that point (including new Glitter Boys that still hold their own as some of the best GB variants), and rail guns and energy weapons that are pretty much what you'd expect robots and vehicles in Rifts to be packing. The one thing the Rifts section lacked was stuff about mega-damage weaponry for infantry, but (for obvious reasons) mega-damage weapons probably aren't a popular choice for use inside ships and stations.

Over in the AtB section of the book, hand-held weaponry really doesn't seem to be much more advanced than the real world. Flechette and buckshot weapons (maximum tissue damage on live targets, little penetration value on armor, furniture, or a ship's superstructure) and drugged/poisoned dart weapons are statted, and are implied to be more common than conventional projectile, explosive, or energy weapons. They don't give a zillion and one specific weapons to pick from though, they just stat out generic examples.

[bigwhitehound]

I know this thread is dead but what the hell.
Distance Earth to Mars:225 million km on average
Speed of our space shuttle (orbiter) about 17,580 miles an hour or about MACH 26.5
At that speed we are looking at 1 year and 46 days to Mars

I got this from a NASA web page

[glitterboy2098]

I know this thread is dead but what the hell.
Distance Earth to Mars:225 million km on average
Speed of our space shuttle (orbiter) about 17,580 miles an hour or about MACH 26.5
At that speed we are looking at 1 year and 46 days to Mars

I got this from a NASA web page

it's worse than that
the shuttle listing is for low earth orbit, the point the shuttle can reach with just enough delta-v left to nudge itself back to earth.
escape velocity for earth (the velocity you have to reach in order to leave an earth orbit, and go anywhere else) is about mach 34 or higher.

a hohmann transfer orbit, the most efficent inter-body method of travel, requires even more overall, though how it works is complicated, involving accelleration at the start of the trip and decelleration at the end.

long story short, MiO's ship's have nothing to do with reality.

[bigwhitehound]

I know this thread is dead but what the hell.
Distance Earth to Mars:225 million km on average
Speed of our space shuttle (orbiter) about 17,580 miles an hour or about MACH 26.5
At that speed we are looking at 1 year and 46 days to Mars

I got this from a NASA web page

it's worse than that
the shuttle listing is for low earth orbit, the point the shuttle can reach with just enough delta-v left to nudge itself back to earth.
escape velocity for earth (the velocity you have to reach in order to leave an earth orbit, and go anywhere else) is about mach 34 or higher.

a hohmann transfer orbit, the most efficent inter-body method of travel, requires even more overall, though how it works is complicated, involving accelleration at the start of the trip and decelleration at the end.

long story short, MiO's ship's have nothing to do with reality.

Yea it's to bad really, if the book and most RPG games would have more reality in them; at least get the speed, travel times and range of everything right. They would be a lot more fun and maybe more people would play them and or become involved in REAL science.

[glitterboy2098]

i've done my best to provide a simple, [relatively] easy to use fix, but without a better ship construction system getting it to work with MiO takes alot of kludging, and the result, while functional, still isn't pretty. then again, i created those rules focused more on Phase World, so that isn't too surprising.

[bigwhitehound]

i've done my best to provide a simple, [relatively] easy to use fix, but without a better ship construction system getting it to work with MiO takes alot of kludging, and the result, while functional, still isn't pretty. then again, i created those rules focused more on Phase World, so that isn't too surprising.

Great work! I will need to read all of it a few times but it WILL be added to my future games. You should at least inform Palladium about this, I know they know all ready; but it never hurts to remind them that many RPG players, their $$$$$$$$ source, are smart people and many of us like realism in our games.

In the mean time, happy flying.

[glitterboy2098]

i've done my best to provide a simple, [relatively] easy to use fix, but without a better ship construction system getting it to work with MiO takes alot of kludging, and the result, while functional, still isn't pretty. then again, i created those rules focused more on Phase World, so that isn't too surprising.

Great work! I will need to read all of it a few times but it WILL be added to my future games. You should at least inform Palladium about this, I know they know all ready; but it never hurts to remind them that many RPG players, their $$$$$$$$ source, are smart people and many of us like realism in our games.

In the mean time, happy flying.

i know braden has read threads where i've linked to my ruleset, and i actually got to discuss it with carl gleba in a chatroom once at gateway to the megaverse. i eventually plan to turn this into a rifter article, i just have other projects that take up much of my time. like rifts:scandinavia.

my Phaseworld annex has more stuff too, though i've been focusing on my own original corner of the universe in order to avoid clashing with anything Braden or Gleba come up with. i've also got notes from my old techmanual, which tried to present slightly more science grounded technobabble for phaseworld's drives, weapons, and defenses... rewriting the old thread to be more coherant and to include some of the more recent findings in things like alcubirre metrics and quantum particles is something i haven't had time to do yet, though i've put up the outline so people know what i plan to cover. (the techmanual is another thing i'd love to send to the rifter, but i doubt they'd print it. too technical and too big..)

at some point i hope to rewrite the RIFTS:Space portion of MiO too..got great ideas for that, just i refuse to start more projects until i finish some of the existing ones.