How old are the oldest ships in the Three Galaxies...

[Warshield73]

In one of my convention games one of the center pieces / locations is a very old, but still frontline, Hunter Destroyer. I gave the age of this ship at just over a hundred years. Another scenario had a crappy rundown freighter that had half speed and about 30% less MDC that I said was almost 300 years old.

All of this got me thinking how old is old for a spacecraft in Three Galaxies. I am not talking a class of ship but a specific hull from launch to scrap. I am also thinking about near continuous use.

Now in DB 2 it does say that the rate of technological improvement has slowed and that militaries are unwilling to spend billions on newer systems that had only slight improvements. Add to this in the real world we have aircraft carriers that are over 50 years old I figure the life of an MDC spacecraft using contra-gravity has to be longer than that.

So first if there is anything in the books I missed please post it but aside from that what do you think a really old ship is in the Three Galaxies?

My numbers are simple:
Frontline military starts to get old before 100 years and probably gets phased out shortly there after
IDFs, local defense forces, and lower tier navies probably hit 150
I figure secondhand military and civilian freighters can probably hit 300 years before they are useless.

Has anyone else considered this for their game

[SolCannibal]

In one of my convention games one of the center pieces / locations is a very old, but still frontline, Hunter Destroyer. I gave the age of this ship at just over a hundred years. Another scenario had a crappy rundown freighter that had half speed and about 30% less MDC that I said was almost 300 years old.

All of this got me thinking how old is old for a spacecraft in Three Galaxies. I am not talking a class of ship but a specific hull from launch to scrap. I am also thinking about near continuous use.

Now in DB 2 it does say that the rate of technological improvement has slowed and that militaries are unwilling to spend billions on newer systems that had only slight improvements. Add to this in the real world we have aircraft carriers that are over 50 years old I figure the life of an MDC spacecraft using contra-gravity has to be longer than that.

So first if there is anything in the books I missed please post it but aside from that what do you think a really old ship is in the Three Galaxies?

My numbers are simple:
Frontline military starts to get old before 100 years and probably gets phased out shortly there after
IDFs, local defense forces, and lower tier navies probably hit 150
I figure secondhand military and civilian freighters can probably hit 300 years before they are useless.

Has anyone else considered this for their game

Though i'm more of a Rifts player and GM having done too little stuff in Phaseworld, that's a pretty good subject indeed.

Not speaking of something massive like the carriers but the aircrafts themselves, we have the F-15, that served in american air forces from the mid-70s to the late 2000s before being incrementally phased out (though some variants are still in USAF service and seeing upgrades, at least according to the wiki) to the extreme case of the ridiculousness that is B-52, that has been around since the mid-50s and scheduled to still be in use in 2050s.

Those things can already be quite scattershot in our tech level and i imagine can only get exponentially hairier as the scales of space travel, materials engineering limitations, cultural hangups of a number of societies & states over varying degrees of automatization or AI and a number of other issues get mixed in the equation. Honestly, taking some real world examples as reference and then adding an extra zero behind might work just as well.

That said, i can also see models that are perfectly functional and effective being phased out for economical or political(lobbying) reasons among other things.
Still remember using a flip screen "tricorder" cell phone for a 12+ years with little to no regrets - and having to abandon it because my girlfriend's cat decided to chew the cable, only to find out its type of charger wasn't produced anymore.

(Yes, comparing cell phones to military vehicles may sound ludicrous, but so is a bunch of business financing a military coupfor the sake of mines for production of those same batteries, i guess)

[Crimson Dynamo]

I mean, if there are cultures out there with generational ships (or even just ships created by species with exceptional lifespans) that they created before gaining access to FTL drives, they could be thousands of years old. It's kind of an impossible subject to really address just due to things like that.

Though I suppose if you want to narrow it down to just the most popular and well known cultures/governments in the Three Galaxies, and specifically their militaries only, that would arguably be doable. Which I get is where you're coming from based on the poll if nothing else. But, I mean... it's just kind of a "well they're military vessels; they'll be as state-of-the-art as their civilization can afford."

But in reality, not everyone cruises around in the hottest new thing. The poor, especially, will probably have ships older than even they're aware of that have been built, rebuilt, upgraded, downgraded, and generally cobbled together so many different times that each would would qualify as a whole fleet of Theseus ships. I'd dare even say that's probably the norm outside of the wealthiest elite, military, and commercial organizations.

[SolCannibal]

I mean, if there are cultures out there with generational ships (or even just ships created by species with exceptional lifespans) that they created before gaining access to FTL drives, they could be thousands of years old. It's kind of an impossible subject to really address just due to things like that.

A very good point indeed, the 3 Galaxies has a ginormous variety of species, a number of them with a much longer lifespan than humans, what can strongly influence their expectations on acceptable ship durabilty in most peculiar ways, depending on how available resources and the ups & downs of how their race from ground in the prime homeworld to space and the stars beyond happened. You can have civilizations that build things to stand for millenia, or groups from equally long-lived (or even the same species, but growing from zero to hero in a whole different and independent part of the 3Gs) not giving a damn because they are all so damn ephemeral (by their standards) and recycling or discarding individual ships or whole models with the ease we mend or discard shirts with holes.

Though I suppose if you want to narrow it down to just the most popular and well known cultures/governments in the Three Galaxies, and specifically their militaries only, that would arguably be doable. Which I get is where you're coming from based on the poll if nothing else. But, I mean... it's just kind of a "well they're military vessels; they'll be as state-of-the-art as their civilization can afford."

Not exactly. "As they can afford" in itself is a concept that can be quite elusive indeed - american supersonic jet fighters from the 60s-70s were in fact even faster than the models produced in later decades, a conscious design change decision taken in account of fuel and material fatigue expenses when compared to questionable edge against missiles, preocupations further agravated by the multiple oil crisis in the 70s. Meanwhile, as pointed in my previous post, you can find a "dinossaur" of the middle of last century like the B-52 still rumbling around with fair expectation of being in service for at least one other generation with just a few updates (mostly related to computacional power).

But in reality, not everyone cruises around in the hottest new thing. The poor, especially, will probably have ships older than even they're aware of that have been built, rebuilt, upgraded, downgraded, and generally cobbled together so many different times that each would would qualify as a whole fleet of Theseus ships. I'd dare even say that's probably the norm outside of the wealthiest elite, military, and commercial organizations.

As an aside, while i have no idea whatsoever of how precise or factual it might be, your comment of adjustments, adaptations and continuations made me remember this thing here.

[Nevermore]

The Millennium Falcon is probably a good example of their last point. It was pretty old even by the time Han Solo got his hands on it, and it had been modified so much as to be unrecognizable to its original design let alone function as a tugboat.

[SolCannibal]

The Millennium Falcon is probably a good example of their last point. It was pretty old even by the time Han Solo got his hands on it, and it had been modified so much as to be unrecognizable to its original design let alone function as a tugboat.

Depends on the source i guess - while it's true that the Falcon is insanely modified having changed hands a number of times, with at least one owner possibly being an late republic or imperial engineer that smuggled an experimental hyperdrive into the ship, it's still visually recognizable as an YT-1300 corellian freighter, though a customized and quite scummy-looking one.

(At least based in what i remember from Lando's & Han's respective novels, artbooks & WEG's rpg - must admit i haven't watched the Solo movie, so no idea whatsoever what does it add or not on the Falcon's most elusive backstory)

[drewkitty ~..~]

There is a disconnect between the title of this topic and the poll question. TY for making changing votes available.

[glitterboy2098]

well we kno0w that the packmaster carrier was a wolfen design from before the formation of the CCW. which was 700 years prior to the current timeperiod, (per DB13 pg7)
since there are only 90 packmasters in existence, and none have ever been used, captured, or built outside the wolfen Republic/CCW, it seems probably that at least some of those 90 are pre-CCW in origin, since if ships were being retired or mothballed, the odds of some third party obtaining them is pretty good, given the setting.


also, the FWC formed 100 years prior to the current, and captured its doombringer at that time. so the FWC "Hopebringer" is over 100 years old. (though oddly, the CCW was apparently in the dark about the doombringer class until about 25 years prior to the current, per the fluff for the Emancipation-Class. though the timeline on Db13 pg7 indicates that 25 years prior was when they figured out how to build the same size of ship, and 50 years prior was when they learned of the doombringer's existence, so the fluff entry may be wrong)

the dwarven ironships were all built before the UWW was created, and no others have since been built. and the UWW formed "long before the CCW was even a concept", so at minimum 700-1000 years prior. the lack of any mention on the timeline is annoying, but it is indicated that the UWW formed in part to protect agaisnt the Kreeghor.. which means that it would have formed at some point after 5000 years prior. the fact their main enemies at the time were the splugorth suggests that it would be closer to 5000 than 1000 years.

so that means the ~3700 dwarven ironships are all potentially 4000+ years old.

note too that the mention of the kreeghor could be including later enemies that helped shape the UWW, if so then it is possible that the UWW's origins predate the third galactica era and the Ironships are 10,000+ years old.

[SolCannibal]

the dwarven ironships were all built before the UWW was created, and no others have since been built. and the UWW formed "long before the CCW was even a concept", so at minimum 700-1000 years prior. the lack of any mention on the timeline is annoying, but it is indicated that the UWW formed in part to protect agaisnt the Kreeghor.. which means that it would have formed at some point after 5000 years prior. the fact their main enemies at the time were the splugorth suggests that it would be closer to 5000 than 1000 years.

Didn't the UWW come to be directly from an ad hoc war alliance of Star Elves, Warlock Council & Dwarven Guildmasters against one of the Splugorth empires, that they managed to topple and would form the core of their territory? Pretty sure i've seen that in the books.

[glitterboy2098]

yep. the elves were at war with one of the splugorth kingdoms, and the Kittani were beating them pretty badly, so the Star Elves sent out a distress call for aid and a fleet of 4000 dwarven iron ships came to help them. which turned the tide. it gets mentioned in DB2, DB3, and DB5. sadly there is no timeline reference that i have found. the presence of the Kittani means it had to be within 38,000 years, since that is how liong it was since Splynncryth found them and gave them a home. probably more like 30,000 to give time for them to propagate throughout splugorth holdings. the closest we get is the fact that the Elvish king at the time is still king in the current period "thousands of years later". so yeah, the UWW has been around for a long time, and using those original ironships the entire time.

[SolCannibal]

yep. the elves were at war with one of the splugorth kingdoms, and the Kittani were beating them pretty badly, so the Star Elves sent out a distress call for aid and a fleet of 4000 dwarven iron ships came to help them. which turned the tide. it gets mentioned in DB2, DB3, and DB5. sadly there is no timeline reference that i have found. the presence of the Kittani means it had to be within 38,000 years, since that is how liong it was since Splynncryth found them and gave them a home. probably more like 30,000 to give time for them to propagate throughout splugorth holdings. the closest we get is the fact that the Elvish king at the time is still king in the current period "thousands of years later". so yeah, the UWW has been around for a long time, and using those original ironships the entire time.

Yeah, quite vague and loose indeed, something definitely not helped by the UWW book's "forever in hiatus" status to boot. At most we know it's much older than the CCW, possibly of the same age or older than the TGE (making the formation of both star-nations somewhat parallel is convenient from a timeline perspective, with either conflict dispersing the Splugorths interests and in a way feeding their mutual success histories), that has existed as such for about 5 millenia (as a new emperor is chosen every thousand years, what has happened for times already, according to DB2) at least.

[glitterboy2098]

yeah, the DB13 timeline puts the establishment of the TGE at 5000 years prior.

and i agree, the TGE and UWW forming around the same time would be interesting. honestly, if i was writing it, i'd probably make the splugorth involved in both stories be the same kingdom.. and the war with the UWW is what weakened that kingdom enough to allow the Kreeghor to rise up and throw off their slavery.

[SolCannibal]

yeah, the DB13 timeline puts the establishment of the TGE at 5000 years prior.

and i agree, the TGE and UWW forming around the same time would be interesting. honestly, if i was writing it, i'd probably make the splugorth involved in both stories be the same kingdom.. and the war with the UWW is what weakened that kingdom enough to allow the Kreeghor to rise up and throw off their slavery.

I do keep them separate because the text in DB2 does mention the core of the UWW's territory was formed from the dominion they defeated - also, because two Splugorth dominions falling at basically the same time could generate quite the mad scramble of the other Splugorth kingdoms trying to dash the insurgents, reap spoils from the possessions of fallen rivals, both things, backstab still existing rivals distracted with any of the previous.... pretty much leading into a chain reaction of their collective efforts sabotaging each other and eventually opening the field for their decadence and rise of the younger star polities of the 3Gs.

Much like the two world wars would contribute to european colonial powers overspending and extending themselves, making room for the later rearrangement of hegemonic powers that would shape up the backdrop of the Cold War in some ways.

[Warshield73]

There is a disconnect between the title of this topic and the poll question. TY for making changing votes available.

Yes, I didn't cover what I was thinking very well. I was trying to get two questions in the poll and couldn't make it work so I stripped it down with the wrong question.

I believe the baseline for spacecraft will probably be frontline military units as those will always be updated and replaced more regularly than civilian freighters. So I wanted how old frontline units and what is the oldest hull. Still I hope the actual post covered it.

Though i'm more of a Rifts player and GM having done too little stuff in Phaseworld, that's a pretty good subject indeed.

Not speaking of something massive like the carriers but the aircrafts themselves, we have the F-15, that served in american air forces from the mid-70s to the late 2000s before being incrementally phased out (though some variants are still in USAF service and seeing upgrades, at least according to the wiki) to the extreme case of the ridiculousness that is B-52, that has been around since the mid-50s and scheduled to still be in use in 2050s.

Those things can already be quite scattershot in our tech level and i imagine can only get exponentially hairier as the scales of space travel, materials engineering limitations, cultural hangups of a number of societies & states over varying degrees of automatization or AI and a number of other issues get mixed in the equation. Honestly, taking some real world examples as reference and then adding an extra zero behind might work just as well.

That said, i can also see models that are perfectly functional and effective being phased out for economical or political(lobbying) reasons among other things.
Still remember using a flip screen "tricorder" cell phone for a 12+ years with little to no regrets - and having to abandon it because my girlfriend's cat decided to chew the cable, only to find out its type of charger wasn't produced anymore.

(Yes, comparing cell phones to military vehicles may sound ludicrous, but so is a bunch of business financing a military coupfor the sake of mines for production of those same batteries, i guess)

As Drew pointed out I didn't spell out what I was talking about very well. Hopefully it is good enough to keep this on track.

As for fighters I did mean all spacecraft, fighters to dreadnoughts so yes the F-15 and B-52 reference are relevant and in fact may be more relevant than aircraft carriers. A CV floats in salt water that is trying to destroy it and is under constant stress from maneuvering whereas bombers spend most of their time parked. A spacecraft, in vacuum, using a CG field won't be under that level of strain.

As for your point about ships being replaced after a brief period of time I figure in a major military like CAF or TGE even UWW the only time you would retire a new unit is if it is seriously flawed or if it was a new design that they decided not to adopt in which case they would probably just hand them over to an IDF or backwater unit.

I mean, if there are cultures out there with generational ships (or even just ships created by species with exceptional lifespans) that they created before gaining access to FTL drives, they could be thousands of years old. It's kind of an impossible subject to really address just due to things like that.

A very good point indeed, the 3 Galaxies has a ginormous variety of species, a number of them with a much longer lifespan than humans, what can strongly influence their expectations on acceptable ship durabilty in most peculiar ways, depending on how available resources and the ups & downs of how their race from ground in the prime homeworld to space and the stars beyond happened. You can have civilizations that build things to stand for millenia, or groups from equally long-lived (or even the same species, but growing from zero to hero in a whole different and independent part of the 3Gs) not giving a damn because they are all so damn ephemeral (by their standards) and recycling or discarding individual ships or whole models with the ease we mend or discard shirts with holes.

I think how long the race lives will only be a factor if that race has more advanced technology or magic. We know ships like the Dwarven Iron Ships last millennia but they are high level magic that can't even be made anymore. Regardless of life expectancy if a race is using standard materials and CG drives then the service life of a hull will be about the same.

I actually thought about the generation ships which is why I included the part about continuous use. A ship floating between systems at set fraction of C for decades or centuries will not have as much stress as something hopping from system to system on the weekly, at least as far as the technology in the three galaxies is concerned.

Though I suppose if you want to narrow it down to just the most popular and well known cultures/governments in the Three Galaxies, and specifically their militaries only, that would arguably be doable. Which I get is where you're coming from based on the poll if nothing else. But, I mean... it's just kind of a "well they're military vessels; they'll be as state-of-the-art as their civilization can afford."

Not exactly. "As they can afford" in itself is a concept that can be quite elusive indeed - american supersonic jet fighters from the 60s-70s were in fact even faster than the models produced in later decades, a conscious design change decision taken in account of fuel and material fatigue expenses when compared to questionable edge against missiles, preocupations further agravated by the multiple oil crisis in the 70s. Meanwhile, as pointed in my previous post, you can find a "dinossaur" of the middle of last century like the B-52 still rumbling around with fair expectation of being in service for at least one other generation with just a few updates (mostly related to computacional power).

This is why I included the quote or rather paraphrased the quote from Phase World. It said specifically that militaries were unwilling to spend billions for minor improvements the way we see on Rifts Earth. This is why some classes of ships, from fighters to carriers and ground vehicles as well, are in service for centuries.

But in reality, not everyone cruises around in the hottest new thing. The poor, especially, will probably have ships older than even they're aware of that have been built, rebuilt, upgraded, downgraded, and generally cobbled together so many different times that each would would qualify as a whole fleet of Theseus ships. I'd dare even say that's probably the norm outside of the wealthiest elite, military, and commercial organizations.

As an aside, while i have no idea whatsoever of how precise or factual it might be, your comment of adjustments, adaptations and continuations made me remember this thing here.

First props for Ship of Theseus reference. Indeed if you look at settings like The Expanse this is the case. However, even in that setting it becomes clear that a hull hits a point where it is more expensive to make it functional than build new. That setting makes use of real physics with high rates of acceleration/deceleration so the stress on those hulls is much higher than the magic CG drives of PW.

The thing about PW though is that it is an FTL system. What happens if you have a major structural failure at 2 LYpH? It doesn't say but I can't imagine it will be good. So yes I think the poor and the desperate will use whatever they can get their hands on but as a general rule the major components of a ship (engines and hull especially) will have a definite limit on use, just not sure where that limit is.

The Millennium Falcon is probably a good example of their last point. It was pretty old even by the time Han Solo got his hands on it, and it had been modified so much as to be unrecognizable to its original design let alone function as a tugboat.

Depends on the source i guess - while it's true that the Falcon is insanely modified having changed hands a number of times, with at least one owner possibly being an late republic or imperial engineer that smuggled an experimental hyperdrive into the ship, it's still visually recognizable as an YT-1300 corellian freighter, though a customized and quite scummy-looking one.

(At least based in what i remember from Lando's & Han's respective novels, artbooks & WEG's rpg - must admit i haven't watched the Solo movie, so no idea whatsoever what does it add or not on the Falcon's most elusive backstory)

I spent a little time reading up on this and the origins above for the MF appear to be from Legends. In Canon, and I did see the Solo movie (it was OK, sort of ehhh), the MF as owned by Lando appears to be fairly new while still being extensively modified.

But to the topic you can modify a hull all you want at some point it will simply be too old to fly, whether that is a decade or several millennia at some point it will be considered too old to be safely flown by anyone who is not desperate, I am just trying to determine that age.

Thank you Glitterboy. You make a lot of good points here, enough for me to move up my estimate of service life to the 100 to 250 years range.

well we kno0w that the packmaster carrier was a wolfen design from before the formation of the CCW. which was 700 years prior to the current timeperiod, (per DB13 pg7)
since there are only 90 packmasters in existence, and none have ever been used, captured, or built outside the wolfen Republic/CCW, it seems probably that at least some of those 90 are pre-CCW in origin, since if ships were being retired or mothballed, the odds of some third party obtaining them is pretty good, given the setting.

First I want to point out that there is a difference between the first two books and the most recent books, especially Fleets and Thundercloud, but even Outbreak has a lot of conflicts with the original material.

In DB2 and DB3 it is indicated that the war that brought the Wulfen into the CCW ended about 100 years ago (it even says that the CCW stopped the Wulfen from expanding their empire) but the timeline in Fleets has them as basically an original member. This means that the life expectancy of a ship, even a ship class, is radically extended.

The description says a dozen Packmasters fought and perished in the war with the TGE and that the design was used. I always thought this meant that all existing Packmasters were built after the war but that is not specifically stated. Even with that under the new timeline this ship class has been in service for about 700 years while induvial ships maybe 500, it doesn't say.

I agree with your point about the age of the class though. It seems likely that if the class was 500 years old at some point a ship would have been mothballed and maybe captured by soemone else but on the other hand capturing a ship this size and holding on to it would be hard for a nation-state much less a pirate group.

also, the FWC formed 100 years prior to the current, and captured its doombringer at that time. so the FWC "Hopebringer" is over 100 years old. (though oddly, the CCW was apparently in the dark about the doombringer class until about 25 years prior to the current, per the fluff for the Emancipation-Class. though the timeline on Db13 pg7 indicates that 25 years prior was when they figured out how to build the same size of ship, and 50 years prior was when they learned of the doombringer's existence, so the fluff entry may be wrong)

Yes even in DB3 the Hopebringer was 100 years old. It has major penalties due to damage (and I presume age) which is one of the reasons I had originally put the service life of most military hulls at 100 or so years.

As for the "fluff" text yes the timeline doesn't just conflict with all of the earlier books but it even conflicts with itself. It is really hard to imagine that a rebel group could capture one of these ships and it still takes 50 years for the CCW to confirm its existence, especially with them working so closely together, but that is what is listed there.

As for the Doombringer class it was built after the machine people came into the TGE 400 years ago (this conflicts with DB2 which strongly hints that some machine people were still around from the time of the take over) but before the rebellion 100 years ago. It also states in DB3 that several Doombringers were destroyed by the CCW but fleets specifically says the only losses are to the FWC so that is a mess too.

the dwarven ironships were all built before the UWW was created, and no others have since been built. and the UWW formed "long before the CCW was even a concept", so at minimum 700-1000 years prior. the lack of any mention on the timeline is annoying, but it is indicated that the UWW formed in part to protect agaisnt the Kreeghor.. which means that it would have formed at some point after 5000 years prior. the fact their main enemies at the time were the splugorth suggests that it would be closer to 5000 than 1000 years.

so that means the ~3700 dwarven ironships are all potentially 4000+ years old.

I meant to specifically exclude magic ships, especially the Iron Ships, but I didn't. I think these ships in particular are so radically different (they are compared to rune weapons) that they really add nothing to the discussion of the average tech ship. That being said DB3 specifically says that no new Iron Ships are built after the UWW is founded so the 3,137 Iron Ships are not potentially 4,000+ years old, they ARE over 4,000 years old. Again DB2, DB3, and Anvil make the UWW sound younger than this but nothing specific, so we get this rather ridiculous age for the UWW and by extension the Iron Ships.

note too that the mention of the kreeghor could be including later enemies that helped shape the UWW, if so then it is possible that the UWW's origins predate the third galactic era and the Ironships are 10,000+ years old.

This doesn't fit the timeline in any of the books, it is just an inconsistency between the earlier and later books.

yeah, the DB13 timeline puts the establishment of the TGE at 5000 years prior.

and i agree, the TGE and UWW forming around the same time would be interesting. honestly, if i was writing it, i'd probably make the splugorth involved in both stories be the same kingdom.. and the war with the UWW is what weakened that kingdom enough to allow the Kreeghor to rise up and throw off their slavery.

I do keep them separate because the text in DB2 does mention the core of the UWW's territory was formed from the dominion they defeated - also, because two Splugorth dominions falling at basically the same time could generate quite the mad scramble of the other Splugorth kingdoms trying to dash the insurgents, reap spoils from the possessions of fallen rivals, both things, backstab still existing rivals distracted with any of the previous.... pretty much leading into a chain reaction of their collective efforts sabotaging each other and eventually opening the field for their decadence and rise of the younger star polities of the 3Gs.

Much like the two world wars would contribute to european colonial powers overspending and extending themselves, making room for the later rearrangement of hegemonic powers that would shape up the backdrop of the Cold War in some ways.

The founding of the TGE is one of the places where the Fleets Timeline really screws up the history and in this case there is no excuse for it. We are given actual numbers in places. It says each Emperor is supposed to rule for about 1,000 years and that the ceremony to create a new emperor has happened 4 times in history.

Now you can say the dweller created the first emperor before the Dominion was founded, which I do, so the current emperor could be the 5th one. We also know from the description of the Dweller that the current Emperor has only been in place for 20 years, since the last war, and that his predecessor died early (decades or centuries we don't know). This means at most the Dominion/TGE is 4,000 years old and may be as young as 3,000.

I always feel the need to say that I really like what Campbell tried to do with his two books and it was really great to get new material for Phase World. The problem was he had created a lot of changes to the setting through making the timeline as ancient as possible without really dealing with the consequences from the other books in things like vehicle descriptions.

Think about this. All of the Wolfen designs, tanks and spacecraft, are described as being around for at least 500 years under the new timeline. It is the best carrier, the best tank and the best IFV. Hell the IFV is better than most tanks. This means that tech development in the three galaxies isn't slow it has stopped.

Now a one hundred year old dreadnought class and a 120 year old carrier design seems far fetched but OK you could work with that. But 500? That is just hard to reason out. By comparison the technological development in the Three Galaxies is far slower than even Star Wars canon.

The reason I created this thread was I was trying to put what I thought was a really old ship for the players to find into the timeline and I realized it's practically a baby ship.

I appreciate the input on this so thanks to everyone and again sorry about how confusing the poll was.

[SolCannibal]

Now you can say the dweller created the first emperor before the Dominion was founded, which I do, so the current emperor could be the 5th one. We also know from the description of the Dweller that the current Emperor has only been in place for 20 years, since the last war, and that his predecessor died early (decades or centuries we don't know). This means at most the Dominion/TGE is 4,000 years old and may be as young as 3,000.

Definitely possible - truth be told, the thing i find the hardest to swallow (not to say hilariously unbelievable) considering all we have seen described about the TGE is the idea any, what to say all of the Kreeghor emperors managing to stay in the throne for that whole millenium without interruptions, coups, assassinations and more.

I always feel the need to say that I really like what Campbell tried to do with his two books and it was really great to get new material for Phase World. The problem was he had created a lot of changes to the setting through making the timeline as ancient as possible without really dealing with the consequences from the other books in things like vehicle descriptions.

Well, i'll be the first to admit that Fleets of the 3 Galaxies is the Phaseworld book i have messed less with, in fact i dare say my vision of the setting might be strongly colored by my recent back-&-forth reading of the books while debating in the forums in the least year, so my perspective is definitely slanted.

Think about this. All of the Wolfen designs, tanks and spacecraft, are described as being around for at least 500 years under the new timeline. It is the best carrier, the best tank and the best IFV. Hell the IFV is better than most tanks. This means that tech development in the three galaxies isn't slow it has stopped.

Now a one hundred year old dreadnought class and a 120 year old carrier design seems far fetched but OK you could work with that. But 500? That is just hard to reason out. By comparison the technological development in the Three Galaxies is far slower than even Star Wars canon.

The reason I created this thread was I was trying to put what I thought was a really old ship for the players to find into the timeline and I realized it's practically a baby ship.

I appreciate the input on this so thanks to everyone and again sorry about how confusing the poll was.

Well, i think part of the issue here might be of a difference of perspective and familiar RL expectations and trying to wrap one's mind around the dissonance more than anything.

Let's try to tackle the subject from a slightly different angle, so to speak, the core matter potential vehicular lifespan and how it relates - but NOT exactly corresponds - to our rate of technological development or equipment obsolescence, though day-to-day life all and the market all too frequently wrap those things in the same package.

"Technology" is not, contrary to what COMPUTER-tech related news media keeps bombarding us, an unified package in constant progress - while "capacity doubles every 5 years" might be true for data storage and processing speed matters (and how many of us actually have reliable sources to corroborate that and to what degree), that kind of truism definitely does NOT apply to a number of other sectors, like energy production, storage, vehicular speed and so on. In many of these and others areas the progress has been much smaller, closer to a turtle crawl by comparison even.

- Nuclear fusion technology is something many of our best engineering minds in power generation have struggled with 6+ decades and while we have had some advancement, it's quite debatable how close we actually are to make it anywhere near economic feasible.

- Energy storage? Having the right resources to produce certain types of batteries has become so much of a big deal that we have things like the bolivian coup attempt being financed by lythium starved international business interests.

- Contemporary jet fighters? Even slower than those of the 60s-70s, investment in supersonic speeds has been mostly minimized if not outright abandoned due the issues of fuel consumption, material fatigue and more. The lions share of advancement in aerial fighting revolves around fuel efficiency, avionics (what goes back to computing power in data storage & processing speeds) and ever smarter missiles (ditto).

- Space technology..... well, need i to point out that the most hyped event of the sector in the last decade, SpaceX, the first successful orbital launch done wholy by the private sector, basically involves getting public access rocket tech older than what NASA currently uses and applying to it a lot of computer tech that didn't exist in the Cold War era? (Ok, i admit some exageration here, but Elon Musk himself said some bull$#!t along those lines).


All those ramblings above are just commentary on our own RL contemporary tech & realities vs a bunch of expectations all too frequently ingrained on us by media and propaganda. Bottlenecks exist, sometimes it takes time to get through them - if even practical or possible - but at the same time we have a number of ups, downs, false starts, adjustments & "make up advances" along the way.

As one struggles with different scales and resource limitations, challenges growing exponentially is not out of question at all, so i have not much of a problem with the idea of one or several FTL societies hitting on a point where they have little to nothing to advance on a model per se except for little incremental adjustments and modifications or substitution comes more due to scarcity issues, economical factors, changes in tactical or strategical policy, business lobbying and so on.

[Warshield73]

Now you can say the dweller created the first emperor before the Dominion was founded, which I do, so the current emperor could be the 5th one. We also know from the description of the Dweller that the current Emperor has only been in place for 20 years, since the last war, and that his predecessor died early (decades or centuries we don't know). This means at most the Dominion/TGE is 4,000 years old and may be as young as 3,000.

Definitely possible - truth be told, the thing i find the hardest to swallow (not to say hilariously unbelievable) considering all we have seen described about the TGE is the idea any, what to say all of the Kreeghor emperors managing to stay in the throne for that whole millenium without interruptions, coups, assassinations and more.

You would think so on the surface, and in fact I have had this be a big issue in academic and intelligence circles, but what they don't know is The Dweller. The Dweller gives power to Royal Kreeghor and witches but the most to the emperor. Look at his abilities and then imagine what it would take to kill him. Even blowing up his ship in orbit he has a good chance of surviving for rescue or can use magic to escape.

The power structure of the TGE means that the only beings who can take him on are the Royal Kreeghor, who spend most of their time competing with each other, so any attempted coup is going to be by a small number of RKs.

Finally, let's say an RK actually manages to kill the emperor and seizes power. Then what? If he descends the stairs to the dweller and he is not happy the dweller will eviscerate him and then choose another. If he never goes down to the dweller he will call another to be emperor and the witches will make it happen.

On the other hand it is possible that the Dweller actually does this. The last emperor died in suspicious circumstances and his replacement was called so maybe the Dweller finds an ambitious and RK to depose the emperor and then replaces him. THis seems less likely as the description in DB2 says the current emperor goes with the new one down to the Dweller so at least most of the times it is not through a coup.

Truthfully a powerful supernatural intelligence is the only way a government like the TGE can work.

I always feel the need to say that I really like what Campbell tried to do with his two books and it was really great to get new material for Phase World. The problem was he had created a lot of changes to the setting through making the timeline as ancient as possible without really dealing with the consequences from the other books in things like vehicle descriptions.

Well, i'll be the first to admit that Fleets of the 3 Galaxies is the Phaseworld book i have messed less with, in fact i dare say my vision of the setting might be strongly colored by my recent back-&-forth reading of the books while debating in the forums in the least year, so my perspective is definitely slanted.

Slanted for or against? Not sure I understood.

Think about this. All of the Wolfen designs, tanks and spacecraft, are described as being around for at least 500 years under the new timeline. It is the best carrier, the best tank and the best IFV. Hell the IFV is better than most tanks. This means that tech development in the three galaxies isn't slow it has stopped.

Now a one hundred year old dreadnought class and a 120 year old carrier design seems far fetched but OK you could work with that. But 500? That is just hard to reason out. By comparison the technological development in the Three Galaxies is far slower than even Star Wars canon.

The reason I created this thread was I was trying to put what I thought was a really old ship for the players to find into the timeline and I realized it's practically a baby ship.

I appreciate the input on this so thanks to everyone and again sorry about how confusing the poll was.

Well, i think part of the issue here might be of a difference of perspective and familiar RL expectations and trying to wrap one's mind around the dissonance more than anything.

Let's try to tackle the subject from a slightly different angle, so to speak, the core matter potential vehicular lifespan and how it relates - but NOT exactly corresponds - to our rate of technological development or equipment obsolescence, though day-to-day life all and the market all too frequently wrap those things in the same package.

"Technology" is not, contrary to what COMPUTER-tech related news media keeps bombarding us, an unified package in constant progress - while "capacity doubles every 5 years" might be true for data storage and processing speed matters (and how many of us actually have reliable sources to corroborate that and to what degree), that kind of truism definitely does NOT apply to a number of other sectors, like energy production, storage, vehicular speed and so on. In many of these and others areas the progress has been much smaller, closer to a turtle crawl by comparison even.

I agree with all of this, the problem is that we do see tech advance over this period of time. We know that both Phase and CG FTL drives are substantially faster than they were 500 years ago. We know new weapons systems have been introduced. We even know that CG FTL drives can now move much larger ships (dreadnoughts) then they could a few hundred years ago.

The other problem with this is that it doesn't take society or story into account.

For society are you telling me in 500 years no company has managed to get the CCW government to buy a new tank or IFV for the simple reason it looks newer. Or for that matter that the makers of the Maniple and Phalanx wouldn't try to replace it themselves for more profits? It just makes no sense.

From the story point of few it makes the setting feel stagnant and uninteresting. The other problem is that even with FTL drives half as powerful as the current ones the populations of the two major groups would have easily explored and settled all of the Three Galaxies. Making them this old just makes the entire setting calcified and lethargic.

- Nuclear fusion technology is something many of our best engineering minds in power generation have struggled with 6+ decades and while we have had some advancement, it's quite debatable how close we actually are to make it anywhere near economic feasible.

- Energy storage? Having the right resources to produce certain types of batteries has become so much of a big deal that we have things like the bolivian coup attempt being financed by lythium starved international business interests.

It is possible that M/AM generators are the best they can get and that any given area area of tech might stagnate for decades or even centuries. But not all of them and not millennia. As for the physical resources needed for tech, that can be an issue for a planet or even a star system but once you move to galactic and intergalactic scale it is just not an issue.

We had this discussion the board a while ago about that asteroid that had hundreds of trillions of dollars of minerals on it. I, and others, pointed out that as soon as an asteroid like that came into reach the value of each of those minerals would crash and the real value of that asteroid would be in the tens or maybe hundreds of billions. Once you increase the scale scarcity just isn't going to be that huge a factor except for resources that can only occur under certain conditions.

- Contemporary jet fighters? Even slower than those of the 60s-70s, investment in supersonic speeds has been mostly minimized if not outright abandoned due the issues of fuel consumption, material fatigue and more. The lions share of advancement in aerial fighting revolves around fuel efficiency, avionics (what goes back to computing power in data storage & processing speeds) and ever smarter missiles (ditto).

- Space technology..... well, need i to point out that the most hyped event of the sector in the last decade, SpaceX, the first successful orbital launch done wholy by the private sector, basically involves getting public access rocket tech older than what NASA currently uses and applying to it a lot of computer tech that didn't exist in the Cold War era? (Ok, i admit some exageration here, but Elon Musk himself said some bull$#!t along those lines).

I think this kind of proves my point. Where are the smaller missiles? Or the more efficient spacecraft? even if tech stagnates there will be innovation even if it is just making old systems more efficient.

All those ramblings above are just commentary on our own RL contemporary tech & realities vs a bunch of expectations all too frequently ingrained on us by media and propaganda. Bottlenecks exist, sometimes it takes time to get through them - if even practical or possible - but at the same time we have a number of ups, downs, false starts, adjustments & "make up advances" along the way.

As one struggles with different scales and resource limitations, challenges growing exponentially is not out of question at all, so i have not much of a problem with the idea of one or several FTL societies hitting on a point where they have little to nothing to advance on a model per se except for little incremental adjustments and modifications or substitution comes more due to scarcity issues, economical factors, changes in tactical or strategical policy, business lobbying and so on.

There is just no indication that resources for these ships are scarce and again my problem is more story than tech. Everyone flying around in ship designs that are one to five centuries old just feels stagnant, like the point of the story should be no innovation or new technology, which it isn't.

To me this just comes down to an author making changes he wanted in a setting and then not dealing with the consequences those changes bring. But since this is a TTRPG the great thing is we can just house rule it.

[kronos]

A thought about the Wolfen equipment possibly being hundreds of years old, depending on what timeline you're using.
Maybe the Wolfen don't make new classes, but merely alter the one in use every so often with new tech. Older versions are upgraded or scrapped if too old to hand the new tech. Like upgrade blocks or Variants (but not true variants).

Like our automotive industry. The VW Golf has been in production since 1974, but minor changes made every year or couple of years, with significant changes internally and some external ones every 5 years or so.
They're ALL VW Golf, but not the same VERSION but there is nothing to designate difference to the average Joe than year made and if a sport model, and fuel type.

Many 3G ships are probably the same. A hull may, baring combat, spacial wear n tear, be usable for a couple of decades if there isn't huge tech upgrades, thn scrapped and replaced with a newer built version with marginal upgrades (slightly better armour that is a fraction lighter with same protection level due to improved manufacturing techniques) but not significant enough to affect game play/stats.

The packmaster has probably gone through 3 or 4 block upgrades since its creation, with any originals only maybe surviving 1 or 2 upgrades before too old to handle the newest upgrades like the beefed up CG drives over the last 50 years vs 100 years ago.

Magic ships like the Dwarven iron ships wouldn't work they same because MAGIC

[Crimson Dynamo]

Who needs new hulls when you have force fields readily and cheaply available to protect them from daily wear and tear of space travel?

[Crimson Dynamo]

Who needs new hulls when you have force fields readily and cheaply available to protect them from daily wear and tear of space travel? (Nevermind, you know, mega-damage materials that would ignore most of said daily wear and tear anyway.)

[Warshield73]

A thought about the Wolfen equipment possibly being hundreds of years old, depending on what timeline you're using.
Maybe the Wolfen don't make new classes, but merely alter the one in use every so often with new tech. Older versions are upgraded or scrapped if too old to hand the new tech. Like upgrade blocks or Variants (but not true variants).

Like our automotive industry. The VW Golf has been in production since 1974, but minor changes made every year or couple of years, with significant changes internally and some external ones every 5 years or so.
They're ALL VW Golf, but not the same VERSION but there is nothing to designate difference to the average Joe than year made and if a sport model, and fuel type.

Many 3G ships are probably the same. A hull may, baring combat, spacial wear n tear, be usable for a couple of decades if there isn't huge tech upgrades, thn scrapped and replaced with a newer built version with marginal upgrades (slightly better armour that is a fraction lighter with same protection level due to improved manufacturing techniques) but not significant enough to affect game play/stats.

The packmaster has probably gone through 3 or 4 block upgrades since its creation, with any originals only maybe surviving 1 or 2 upgrades before too old to handle the newest upgrades like the beefed up CG drives over the last 50 years vs 100 years ago.

Magic ships like the Dwarven iron ships wouldn't work they same because MAGIC

This is how I do it in my game. The Hunter Destroyer in my game, under the old timeline, was on Block 4 and the Warshield is on Block 5. Truthfully this is a good way to handle it with huge automated factories that do small, system level, upgrades over time make a lot of sense. Also, as I mentioned in another topic, when you have fleets spread over 3 galaxies keeping your supply chains simple with a few standard designs would make logistics and training a lot easier.

Still, just feels...stagnant for lack of a better word.

Who needs new hulls when you have force fields readily and cheaply available to protect them from daily wear and tear of space travel? (Nevermind, you know, mega-damage materials that would ignore most of said daily wear and tear anyway.)

You may not be wrong on this. While I think force fields won't protect from much except battle damage, the mega-damage materials would certainly reduce wear and tear. TO me though the biggest savings on this has to be the contra gravity drive. By eliminating the stress of G forces on the frame it really has to limit the damage from just everyday movement. But these ships have regular thrust engines that fire for acceleration and that will cause stress on the mountings at the very least.

The problem is that those ships the launch themselves at thousands of times the speed of light across the galaxy so that has to add some stress there.