Comments on Librium Universe Infodump thread

[frigidmagi]

Comment here.

[frigidmagi]

Ladies and Gentlemen a question:

Do we want interdiction tech in the Librium Universe?

[Hotfoot]

Offhand, I'd say yes. In-universe, it would seem to make sense to have it, insofar as artificial gravity exists, and gravity wells mess with it.

It also allows for good, old fashioned "it's a trap!" moments, which are great fun. There should probably be some sort of limitation, like it's not as good at blocking a hyperspace window as a natural gravity well, or something....of course that's just an off the cuff suggestion.

[The Silence and I]

I also point out that as described gravity wells do not interfere with hyperspace travel, only the entry into or exit from hyperspace. So you could prevent ships from leaving, or mess up those than arrive, but not "pull" ships out of hyperspace.

[frigidmagi]

magi (12:21:03 PM): Oh? If you got ideas, telling me or putting them in the comment thread would be great.

Knife (12:23:08 PM): Your barrens idea has merit but with the exsisting ftl drive you've got, make little sense. Since an alternate dimention would have little to do with depopulated areas of the galaxy.

magi(12:23:55 PM): Ships have to stop to resupply. The barrens are places where there are no places to get new oxygen, water or food.

Knife(12:23:58 PM): ANother thought for you, with 'portals' (I'm assuming more or less like a B5 type ftl) little notice to what happened outside of a starsystem would be the norm. Inter stellar space should be a void.

magi (12:24:20 PM): Alright.

Knife (12:24:31 PM): So the focus would probably on the trade routes themselves.

Knife (12:25:10 PM): Well charted and the like. If the portals are in system and open in another system, all outside space would be a barren.

magi (12:26:01 PM): Yes, but like I said, ships can only carry so much fuel, oxygen, water and food. On a long trip they have to stop and resupply.

Knife (12:26:09 PM): That would also mean most offensive and defensive fleets would be focused on a planatary scale with little to no range per say, rather fighting a sudden enemy.

magithis (12:26:21 PM): That's where the barrens comes in.

Knife (12:26:30 PM): Indeed, which is why I mentioned trade routes, or really just well known charted routes.

Knife (12:26:51 PM): Each planet in the 'empire' would only have X amount of 'exit vectors'

magi (12:27:04 PM): Most travel likely sticks to that. I'll stick in there when I edit it.

Knife (12:27:09 PM): That would take them further along in that route.

Knife(12:27:22 PM): Cool, just a couple of ideas for you to kick around in your head.

magi (12:27:27 PM): Sorta like the Silk Road and such?

Knife (12:27:48 PM): Yup, something like that. espically if your talking long transit times.

Knife (12:28:15 PM): Various worlds would either be made or ruined by the fickles of the traders and the amount of protection they would get.

Knife(12:28:51 PM): Sine an enemy could only jump them at entry/exit points, most 'militaries' wouldn't need long range ships or possibly not ships at all but more static defenses.

Knife(12:29:22 PM): Those defenses could be arrayed on the entry/exit vectors to and from other worlds along the route.

magi (12:30:26 PM): The idea I'm pushing is that most nations use sub light ships with only the big dogs using Hypercapable warships. I think I'm right when I say that if a merchant hypership costed 1 million to make (pulling the value from my ass) then a fully equipped warship would likely cost something like 10 or 15 million not even counting the cost of the crew.

Knife (12:30:45 PM): This would actually open your universe to a logical reason for fighters and even mines since only a certain amount of space would be needed and known for coming and going ftl.

magi (12:31:17 PM): Good point. Fighters would be mostly a defensive weapon in this set up thought wouldn't it?

Knife (12:32:22 PM): Indeed. You could do that. If the 'jump points' are fixed then any hyperspace capable ship would be atleast X amount. If you added weapons and armor/shields to it, X plus Y amount. While a static ship/station to defend the 'jump point' would be cheaper without the hyperspace capability. Plus cheaper short range ships and fighters/drones.

magi (12:33:08 PM): 15 fighters are cheaper then 1 destroyer and all that.

Knife (12:34:02 PM): Yup, which would appeal to smaller worlds or even cheaper leaders of worlds. Why spend so much on a capability they don't want: IE attacking other worlds, when just defending theirs is cheaper and easier.

Knife (12:35:07 PM): Such a scheme would negate piracy, but perhaps a good mafia like situation where they steal from the drop off stations or the shuttles/elevators on the way down to the planet instead of hijacking the ship itself in transit.

magi (12:38:37 PM): I imagine there are places like Somalia where the government either doesn't exist or can't stop piratcy. Hell some nations might sponser pirates in order to make sure Traders stop at their place, the only "safe planet."

Knife(12:39:05 PM): Indeed.

Start discussing damn it all.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I have always been a fan of fixed jump points, There are not going to ever really be ships defending a point in space anyway, because there is no real way to track enemy fleets and "meet them in the field" Same with piracy. Even in a universe where there are not fixed jump points, pirates cant possibly track ships and interdict them

[Destructionator XV]

I didn't actually read the sci fi flick thread (I now intend to, however), and am going to comment on a few things as I see it in the info dump thread...

Note that I am a little bit of a hard sf snob, so you might just ignore some of my objections I'll be raising, as they will probably be coming from that direction.

And on with it:

It is generally considered wise to keep a light minute of space between you and a gravity well per "G" that gravity well is producing.

First off, I assume by g you mean Earth == 1g.


EDIT: I neglected radius and density below, so it wouldn't actually be as horrible as I thought at first glance. Still pretty icky though. I should probably think about this after sleeping, and get back to you. Nevertheless, my last paragraph definitely still stands. /EDIT

EDIT2: Then again, while I neglected radius and density for the first 300,000 one, I did do a proper calculation for the second thing.

Anyway, I just read Frigid's post in the other thread where he proposed it, and it was clear there that he was talking about G being the surface gravity. My general objection stands - gravity doesn't scale linerally with distance, and the absolute numbers still seem damning, which is what the paragraphs after where I talk about a second rule of thumb are about.

Anyway, I'm tired. I should be back tomorrow.

/EDIT2

Now, gravitational force is based on two things: mass and distance. Given how you used g here, you seem to mean either gravity generated or surface gravity. In either case, it will be rather linear with mass.

All right, this leads to the first problem I see with this. The sun is about 300,000 times more massive than the Earth. Hence with the assumptions above, gravity well for the sun = about 300,000 Gs.

If you need to keep one light minute for each G, that is 300,000 light minutes - over half a light year!

That's a loooong way to go in sublight before you can enter/exit hyperspace, even if you have Star Trek style magic sublight drives.


The second problem is one of realism with your linear rule of thumb. Gravitational fields drop off with the inverse square of distance - their strength is like it is spread across the surface area of a growing sphere (in fact, that is from where the math comes).

So, the gravitational force would drop off long before the 300,000 light minutes shown above.

A simpler rule of thumb might be to get to a point where the gravitational force upon you is less than X, where X is a number you make up that fits the distances you like. For example, if X is half a gee, then you'd have to be about 45,000 kilometers away from the Earth's surface to do the jump. This is a little higher than a geosynchronous orbit; the Space Shuttle can get there somewhat easily.

You'd want to play with X to get a distance you like. Working with your description and guessing your intent, one light minute from Earth would be a very small number for X. Let's calculate it. It would be about 1 / 8,000,000 G. (calculation)

How far would you have to be from the sun?
mass sun * gravitational constant of the universe / r^2 = 8e-5
(why 8e-5? 1g ~= 10 m/s^2)

Msun * G = 8e-5 * r^2
sqrt(Msun * G * 8e5) = r
r = 1e13. This is in metres (or it should be; I didn't properly check my dimensions here.)... that's about 500 light minutes. That's still a lot - a bit beyond Pluto.

My math might be wrong, but that is actually about what I expected; the sun is a lot bigger than the Earth.



Readers of my blog (I know I haven't posted recently, but it isn't dead!) may recall the entry titled something like 'Energy, Power and FTL: Gravity is Significant!' or something along those lines where I discussed this same issue with my own universe. I was looking at it from a conservation of energy and, by extension, a power generation issue, but the problems there and the problem described above are interrelated - the Sun is just huge.




Naturally, you could discard the calculations and proclaim your hyperspace system works however you want; it is yours to make as you please. If you are doing soft-sf, this is probably more paletable than working out a consistent system with the calcs (I've been working casually on my own hard-sf system for about a year now, and still haven't got formulas and numbers I am actually happy with, but a fresh approach might have better luck than I). But at the same time, with soft-sf, I wouldn't mention how it works at all, that is, don't actually mention gravity. Just say it doesn't work close to large objects and be very fuzzy on the why.

[Dark Silver]

Yes, Adam brings up the point rather well about the distance required from a star is you go with the "1 light minute per Gravity force of the object" rule.

I think it would be rather simpler to say the Jump Holes could open no closer than (Using Earth as an example) Lagrange Point 3 or 2....

They have to be somewhat stationary positions, compared to the rest of the solar system's orbit - and the two pulls of gravity would effectively be canceling each other out - thus giving you a "void" of gravity for the jumpgate to open.

Obviously, this ties in with my next suggestions.

You were talking about how Jump Holes should be fixed points, well, go one better - some systems have their own relays which is nothing but a massive Jump hole Generator. Each of these is basically a Hyper spacial relay with send/receive and a small quarters for minimal crew. When a ship gets close to the target destination/approach, they send a coded signal to the relay, which then verifies it with the local planetary government version of the FFA. If the ship checks out on flightplan/registry etc, they open the jump point, and the ship can enter/exit.

This would give the benefit of increased trade being possible, since the ships only are required to have the sublight engines to transverse Hyperspace, but they do not have the cost of adding on the jump point openers. Of course, this would only work for well funded/colonized systems/rich planets - these jump points would be expensive to build and maintain - so much so that any planet who is not very well developed (read: new outposts, farming worlds, etc etc) would not be able to afford their upkeep, much less the cost of building.

The ships with their own jumpdrives would still be there, they would be the explorer types, military ships, or even pirate vessals who want to bypass the security of the established/defended jumpgates.

[Destructionator XV]

I think it would be rather simpler to say the Jump Holes could open no closer than (Using Earth as an example) Lagrange Point 3 or 2....

Problem here is Lagrange points are defined for any two objects, but not for any one. For example, there is an Earth-Moon L3, but saying Earth L3 by itself is meaningless.

They have to be somewhat stationary positions, compared to the rest of the solar system's orbit - and the two pulls of gravity would effectively be canceling each other out - thus giving you a "void" of gravity for the jumpgate to open.

And you've fallen for one of my pet peeves! Lagrange points are not where gravity cancels out - if they were, an object could not orbit in one!

The Lagrange points are the points around object A with an orbiting object B, where object C, of negligible mass to objects A and B, can remain stationary relative to both objects A and B.

In other words, it is a place where object C's orbital period is equal to that of object B. So if object B takes a month to orbit object A (like the moon around the Earth), object C in any one of the lagrange points will also take a month.

Orbiting is of course impossible if the gravity actually cancelled out.



Your next suggestion still works anyway.

[Dark Silver]

Ah..see...astro-sciences where never my strong point. I thought I had a decent suggestion in that first one, I should do more research prior to making those type of suggestions.

[frigidmagi]

Let me just say thanks for your thoughts Adam. Glad to have comments and people offering suggestions.

First off your assumation is wrong. Don't get me wrong the math is good and it makes perfect sense, it's still wrong however. The Sun is about 28 G's or so. So the unhealthy area to hyper in and out of the solar system due to the sun is 28 light minutes. Seriously Adam, I did check alot of this out before I suggested the mechanic. Even more importantly I sat down and thought out what it would mean for trade and warfare. Basically the inner system cannot be jumped into. Hell you have to aim for areas between the orbit of the outer planets or jump on the far side of the sun. While this is nowhere near Hard Sci-Fi (you like it... I don't and have no intention of writing one. No offense meant this is strictly a personal taste issue not a declaration of which is better) and it isn't going anywhere near Hard Sci-Fi

This means it's mostly likely that alot of trade is carried out solely in the Outer System (on large space stations around a Gas Giant Fuel Depot would be my thought). Quick planet killing raids are impossible. They'll always see you coming to have enough warning to get up the defenses. On the flip side alot of the Hyper capable inferstructure is likely out in the Outer System. This also means a star system that wants trade must develop it's outer system. No cramming everything around the orbit of your habitable planet here young man.

Also, gents these aren't jump points or anything like that, the ships carry engines which open portals to hyper. It's just there are places where it is very unhealthy to open these portals. If a ship wanted to it could open a portal that dropped it into the void between systems... It's just a question of why would you want to? Yes there are military reasons why doing so make sense but most traffic isn't military.

Let me say that again. The ships are not using jump points. They're using Hyper engines. It is simply that there are enviromental effects you have to take into consideration.

Now it can be changed to jump points if enough of the writers disagree with what I've put up there. I just plan on fighting that one out though.

That said, could we get you write an alien race or transhuman group?

[Destructionator XV]

The Sun is about 28 G's or so.

Yeah, that is the surface gravity, which is what I neglected before edit #1.

Basically the inner system cannot be jumped into.

Yeah, that is a good thing defense wise. In my own universe, I made FTL trivially blocked to do the same thing; no one likes a warship appearing out of nowhere right on top of them.

No offense meant this is strictly a personal taste issue not a declaration of which is better

Absolutely; no problem.

This means it's mostly likely that alot of trade is carried out solely in the Outer System (on large space stations around a Gas Giant Fuel Depot would be my thought).

You might also get more than just a lot of trade - in addition to that, you would want workers out there, people might want to live close by. It is possible that the outer system would become more populated than the inner system, since that is where the jobs would be.

Not necessarily, of course, but I'd imagine at least some systems would end up looking like that.

And the view out a window in orbit around Jupiter or Saturn would surely be breathtaking.

No cramming everything around the orbit of your habitable planet here young man.

hehe. I've been refining my calculations and it looks like putting a huge civilization all around the Earth is impractical anyway, and there are some economic reasons to think the asteroid belt might be very well developed, with a great deal of people living there.

Though, 22 light minutes is beyond the asteroid belt, too.

That said, could we get you write an alien race or transhuman group?

Perhaps. I'll have to think about it; most my time spent writing tends to go toward my 'verse, but I might adapt something for both. Or something else entirely. Anyway, we'll see.



I'm probably going to continue reading the other discussion thread a little bit tonight, and will post some comments here again. While you are writing softer-sf, I'll still have a little bit of my bias, but I'll throw out what I think, and you can choose incorporate the parts you like or ignore it all; I try not to take these things personally. :)

[Destructionator XV]

I saw some discussion in the other thread about engine types. Things like ion and fusion torch were thrown around.

I'd be against classifying them like that. Once you bring in a specific classification, you are asking for assholes like me ( ) to come in and nitpick it apart.

Ion drives have pretty good efficiency, but horrible thrust, and that is a limitation that won't go away with magic technology.

Another note is ion drives have very hot exhaust - they are no good for stealth. In fact, stealth without something like magic cloaking devices is impossible in space anyway.


Anyway, for soft-sf, what I would do is avoid mentioning the specific types and numbers. My preference here is to use some sort of brand names: rather than trying to say 'ion drive' or whatever, say 'General Kinematics Model S-660'. Assign it whatever properties you need for the story you are telling, and keep away from mentioning specific performance numbers.

The latter lets you have ideas of what is better, and you can avoid a lot of nitpicking with intentionally being vague on how it operates. Besides, brand names sound cooler anyway.

[frigidmagi]

You'll note that I've steadfastly avoided telling you what the STL engines are.

[Knife]

Meh, just because you don't write it down doesn't mean you'd want writters notes of what it is or at least what it can do.

Personally, with the scheme you guys are working on, I'd do a multi tiered STL engine. You're looking at system wide travel, so a ramp up to high fractions of c aren't necessary. Just reasonable transit times in system.

Go with some sort of sail, my personal favorite is the M2P2 type system, so you don't have any actual sail, nor no real outrigging. Acceleration is slow but since it runs off of plasma you might as well have a multistage plasma engine to run it. Think of it like a NERVA type rocket. On 'idle' you're producing enough plasma to run the M2P2 without huge stores of ejecta/fuel. But since initial acceleration would be terrible, you could throttle up the plasma engine for that initial get-go.

Each ship could, by SOP, carry enough ejecta/fuel for at mininum two accelerations (one acceleration to get going and on deccleration) with a normal load out for four accelerations (in case of emergency and to get going again at reduced speed and subsequent decceleration). Bingo fuel if you will.

[frigidmagi]

Okay so basically it sounds like what you guys want is a minium and maxium performance standards for the engines?

Other things I would like folk to discuss, how is FTL communication handled? Do we have some sort of FTL radio? A Hyper portal beacon array?

What do you want to see posted on the info dump thread next?

[Hotfoot]

A few things on comms from the convo I had with Frigid:

-Radio Relays that use hyperspace. If ships move with thrusters, I don't see why radios should be any difference, just give them a boost so they can make it through the distortions of hyperspace and such. Have a realspace side to the relay that broadcasts through, say, a microwormhole. Destroy that end of the relay, and a ship has to travel into hyperspace to connect to the relay node. Normal ship comms are just too weak to broadcast a signal very far (the boosting equipment is big and expensive, not many ships would have it, but some obviously would). Combine improved speed over normal ships and the lack of a range limitation within the relay network, and comms are useful but not perfect, and courier ships can still be useful for especially sensitive data.

Thoughts?

[The Silence and I]

On the subject of FTL communication.

How hi-LARious would it be if we didn't have any? Eh? Eh?

Not biting? Well here's something else:

Hyperspace allows radio communication between objects within itself, however hyperspace is very energetic and detecting ordered signals among what is basically uber powerful (but clumsy) jamming requires a large facility and many detectors. Opening a gateway into or out of hyperspace (on hyperspace--think B5 and you won't be far wrong) consumes a large amount of power proportional to the area of the gateway and this power consumption does not decrease with time.

For these reasons FTL communications between systems are difficult and involve the afore mentioned hyperspace facilities (see Hotfoot's post) which perform the actual transmitting and receiving. The smallest feasible gateway is maintained between this large hyperspace facility and a smaller one in realspace and messages are relayed between the two.

The massive power costs of these gateways mean virtually no one can afford to maintain a gateway large enough for use as a jumpgate (like the ones in B5). Additionally, the energies of hyperspace mean close range communication is all that is possible with the equipment found on any starship. The huge communication facilities are actually required, and hyperspace-side boosting facilities may be needed to transmit across longer stretches of void thanks to the ambient energies (vulnerable to attack!). So don't get lost in hyperspace, no one can hear you scream.

(By the way, the power requirements of the gateways are arbitrary. frigid wanted some means of explaining why no one has jumpgates, so I cooked up a ludicrous power bill no one wants to pay.)

As an aside,
starship jump drives are mobile gateway generators. Starships can no more maintain a large gateway than a station can, so the trick to entering and leaving hyperspace is to generate the gateway for as brief a time as possible (think milliseconds) to keep energy costs down and fly through at sufficiently high speed. If your velocity relative to the gateway is too low your capacitors will run out of juice before you finish crossing. Wanna guess how badly that will ruin your day?

I'm open to suggestions in particular concerning how the relative gateway velocity is determined (obviously we don't want it to be zero) and I'm thinking gravity fields, which screw with the gateways already, might have something to do with this. Better gateway generators might be able to provide relative velocity above and beyond what cheaper or older generators can, which would cut the energy requirements, reducing the fuel needed (or increasing range) and the size requirements of the capacitors. I need to think on this more.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Okay so basically it sounds like what you guys want is a minium and maxium performance standards for the engines?

Other things I would like folk to discuss, how is FTL communication handled? Do we have some sort of FTL radio? A Hyper portal beacon array?

What do you want to see posted on the info dump thread next?

I approve of the idea of using a receiver in real space which transmits packets of data into hyperspace for amplification and transmittance through hyperspace. One question I have that comes out of it is whether or not these have national or factional alliegances or are they neutral and protected by treaty? I would imagine that these would be critical as relays, even those that are not your own because it would be more efficient to bounce signals off of nearby gates instead of point to point transmittance. This would make destroying these things really bad even if they are your enemies relay points.

Also, wouldn't this have implications for FTL sensors as well?

[The Silence and I]

I approve of the idea of using a receiver in real space which transmits packets of data into hyperspace for amplification and transmittance through hyperspace. One question I have that comes out of it is whether or not these have national or factional alliegances or are they neutral and protected by treaty? I would imagine that these would be critical as relays, even those that are not your own because it would be more efficient to bounce signals off of nearby gates instead of point to point transmittance. This would make destroying these things really bad even if they are your enemies relay points.

Loosing even one station, depending on its position, could be crippling for the FTL communication network, and it makes sense that the network should be protected by some manner of treaty. The basic problem is that hyperspace is too energetic for signals to travel far, so a good station might be able to transmit to an equally good station a few tens of lightyears (measured in realspace) but any greater distance will garble the message and obscure it. This range limitation may at places require relay stations to be set up around otherwise useless stars, which posses no inhabitable planets.

Also, wouldn't this have implications for FTL sensors as well?

Quite. Unless some other mechanic is to be introduced there can be no FTL sensors that work on objects in realspace.

[SirNitram]

Given the general state of Hyperspace technology is monitored by the mysterious Wanderers, I would wager they take a dim view of people destroying relays. They don't want people getting funny ideas of how else to handle communications FTL, like dumping huge blasts of energy through what is now their home.

[rhoenix]

Given the general state of Hyperspace technology is monitored by the mysterious Wanderers, I would wager they take a dim view of people destroying relays. They don't want people getting funny ideas of how else to handle communications FTL, like dumping huge blasts of energy through what is now their home.

Actually, they might think it's hilarious to see someone's relays get torched given what I've read so far, but I do agree that they'd be deeply upset about someone trying to do anything "unsophisticated" within their realm, like Nitram said, belching out large swaths of energy for communications.

Ergo, they might think it's funny if one side in a war destroys the others' relays, but heaven (or hyperspace) help you if you try to get cute and just power your way through hyperspace without using a relay.

With that in mind, I'd also like to drop another idea I had about the Wanderers - that they aren't the only race who gets upset at people who mess around with their home.

Given the hints given about alien artifacts and civilizations, perhaps a very old alien race has been doing essentially the same thing for millennia, but this small faction of humans is the only one that ended up calling hyperspace their home. Either by cooperation or coercion, the Wanderers now take up the same role, and study the ruins of their elders left behind in realspace either because they wish to advance and are learning by example as well as tutelage by the Elders (in the case of cooperation), or are quietly trying to find ways to escape the yoke of control now imposed upon them by the Elders (in the case of coercion).

If this is followed, I'd imagine the Elders as something like the Shivans from the Freespace games, only in this case rather jaded and tired with it all until this small, gifted faction of humans showed up. Perhaps the humans are one of the very few races throughout the long history the Elders have seen that found Hyperspace travel by psionics first, before technology.

Also, the topic of shielding has not been broached, that I've seen. If it is, unlike most scifi I've read and played, I'd suggest separate particle and energy shielding; simply because it makes more sense to me to separate the two, instead of having an all-purpose one. Perhaps as a late advancement far in the future the two types could be combined, but not yet.

[SirNitram]

The Wanderers know there was an ancient civilization; the realspace ruins are studied by them. Whether there are more in hyperspace is a secret they keep tight to their chest. No need to invite looters into your living room.

[rhoenix]

The Wanderers know there was an ancient civilization; the realspace ruins are studied by them. Whether there are more in hyperspace is a secret they keep tight to their chest. No need to invite looters into your living room.

Quite so - the Wanderers (in following my posited idea above) would know about an ancient civilization, and a few select others of humanity might, as well. However, only the Wanderers would know that this ancient civilization is still around.

[frigidmagi]

Alright folks simple question: What do you want added to the Librium Universe Info thread?