Uh, looking at the starship speeds and map

[Nightowl]

I was thinking more along the lines of "sprint" mines that sort of react to drive fields by charging at them, but hey, if people don't like them, so be it.

Arieg, we're looking for an excuse for ships to go slower, not blow things up.

Aendri, yes you can leave the system backwards and make a huge roundabout loop, but what is the navigational logic to that?

Anyway, that does not solve the main problem, how to get ships to go slower. I gave a suggestion that I think would help solve the problem without massive retcon or tech spec change. Any other possibilities?

 

[Aendri]

The problem is that the tech specs are what invalidate your solution, Nightowl. it makes navigational logic because like I said, you might get ONE ship. But as soon as you've taken out one ship like that, FTL communication systems mean that everyone will know you're doing it, and ship speeds mean they can just randomize their vectors heading out of the system, and they might lose an hour, on a 3 hour trip. I'm pretty sure any traveler or shipper in the world would be willing to make that trade, and that means from every instance past the first, not only would you have remarkable pissed off whatever military that system belonged to, but it would never work again outside of pure luck on your placement.

Any solution to this needs to be something simple, straightforward, and unblockable, probably unreversible to boot. Not something that can be controlled, but something that is just a fact of life. That is why we're looking at things like tech modifications, or major events that would change SARP physics. We need something that would make sense IC, be explainable, but not be something that could be fixed or countered/avoided.

 

[paladinrpg]

Well, I know I have heard once that some outside creatures or entities (Sourcians? Others?) might be upset at the damage to the space/time/dimensional "environment" that certain aether weaponry and other drive systems cause (for example, the NMX in tech writeups say that they blatantly disregard this fact). So could that be some kind of lead-in for these concerned others to start to alter space itself and create a universal wide anti-FTL effect to preserve said environment? It would be like a clear pond suddenly becoming muddy - you can go through it, but it's a slog instead of a zip across.

In fact, this could be a fun meta-plot event if done right, where all DATASS nations suddenly get paranoid at the "Great Distance" suddenly existing between them...

 

[Blizzard]

I like what Paladin suggested. We could make up a plausible reason why current FTL is bad, then just DC and Marvel the crap out of our universe to change what we wanted to.

 

[Moogle]

Psst, @OsakanOne this is your cue to come in and do the Naga laugh.

Also Black Claw leftover tech is a possibility.

 

[paladinrpg]

I like what Paladin suggested. We could make up a plausible reason why current FTL is bad, then just DC and Marvel the crap out of our universe to change what we wanted to.

Yeah, pretty much like that.

Psst, @OsakanOne this is your cue to come in and do the Naga laugh.

Actually, the whole reason I suggested this was upon recalling a lengthy discussion I had about 'Dark Sourcians' with @OsakanOne a ways back.

 

[Aendri]

It might be cool to have it happen in a plot, that way we can have players involved directly. Going with the Black Claw idea, maybe a plot finds a hidden, ancient Black Claw facility, investigates, and accidentally sets off some top secret failsafe weapon, or some such. Leave them stranded out wherever the base is, struggling to get back to civilization with the pieces to try and figure it out, while everyone else is in full panic trying to figure out why their drives no longer get them from place to place as fast.

Could be a fun way to set up a long distance plot and still bring the effects home on the rest of the setting.

 

[Blizzard]

Ya know, the only problem I'd have with this would be the speed of play. If you'll kindly check out Eucharis Mission 23, it effectively took my whole summer vacation to launch a shuttle and retrieve a ground team. I'm almost terrified to know how long it would take to RP one day in hyperspace.

 

[Aendri]

A lot of that is dictated by the players, to be honest. If the players stay active, and the GM stays active, you can get times where you'll go through 3-4 pages of posting in a day, as happened a time or two with the TFL plot, and others. A lot of the slowdown is just people not staying quite as active (I know I'm guilty of it for sure).

 

[paladinrpg]

Hmm. If I didn't have a lot on my plate getting two plots up and running already for this year, I'd totally be willing to run something like that if requested.

Also there is the idea that maybe it could have been done on purpose by someone who put the team up to it...

 

[Aendri]

I've got a couple ideas, assuming something like that was approved, but that all hinges on the FMs signing off on it.

 

[Moogle]

Besides missions only take place once every three months at minimum, so it's not like the "in-between" times will be all that changed.

 

[Doshii Jun]

Ya know, the only problem I'd have with this would be the speed of play. If you'll kindly check out Eucharis Mission 23, it effectively took my whole summer vacation to launch a shuttle and retrieve a ground team. I'm almost terrified to know how long it would take to RP one day in hyperspace.

Topkek

No matter how fast a starship is, nothing outpaces speed of plot.

 

[Nightowl]

It might be cool to have it happen in a plot, that way we can have players involved directly. Going with the Black Claw idea, maybe a plot finds a hidden, ancient Black Claw facility, investigates, and accidentally sets off some top secret failsafe weapon, or some such. Leave them stranded out wherever the base is, struggling to get back to civilization with the pieces to try and figure it out, while everyone else is in full panic trying to figure out why their drives no longer get them from place to place as fast.

Could be a fun way to set up a long distance plot and still bring the effects home on the rest of the setting.

That sounds like a good idea.

Topkek

No matter how fast a starship is, nothing outpaces speed of plot.

 

[Eistheid]

Effectively there is no difference between a GM saying it took 6 hours to reach a destination or 6 months, if they don't want to focus on that time it's easy enough to skip over. After all most missions only take a day or two of IC time but often span over months OOC...

Increasing the travel times will have two notable differences to me:

1. Characters will have more time IC to socialize, train, and otherwise develop while the plot skips ahead OOC (Or possibly it would be touched upon IC through side threads or something.) This could be handy to give Characters a longer background and familiarity with their fellow crew. It could also allow for skills to be developed and improved between missions which otherwise wouldn't be possible. Basically the longer gap there is IC the more chances for a character to grow IC instead of remaining green for 3 years of OOC time because it has only been a couple weeks IC.
2. It's a logistics nightmare for most military factions. At present you can have support, new gear, supplies, or really anything you can think of delivered within a couple days at most which allows for GMs to have needed equipment brought to the players in a timely manner IC. If we increase the travel times not only do we increase the time for reinforcements and create a period of tension when you know that it might take days for support to arrive, but now if you need something for a specific task... Like deep sea equipment. You would have to find something to keep the crew busy while you wait for the supplies to be delivered.

The question to me is whether or not everyone wants the increased amount of down time between sections of action IC, and also whether having more distance between systems and longer times would lead to further development of pre-existing systems. As it stands SARP's locales could use more work... Would somewhere being more remote suddenly make it more interesting to people? Or would we just have the same poorly detailed systems that just take longer to get to?

 

[Nashoba]

Eistheid,
I made that same argument the first time the subject came up.

 

[Eistheid]

Sorry Nashoba, I didn't mean to go over already covered ground. As much as I try to dig through the archives and keep on top of what has, or has not been done before I inevitably miss things.

Given how much this subject has been talked about in the past I'm not confident that I have anything to add that hasn't been said before. With this in mind, the one thought that occurs to me to share is that I'm of the opinion that should GMs want to increase the threat and tension in order to give the players a sense of isolation, they should perhaps consider spending more time planetside. After all planets are obviously very big. If you deprive the group conveniences like orbital access, or shuttles for making jumps around the world, suddenly they have to make do with more familiar travel times. Going from location to location now takes hours instead of minutes, longer trips could take days. Giving PCs the task of holding off a foe while achieving the means to get back in contact with their ship in orbit, or get a message out to the fleet at large would give a tense scenario that doesn't rely on travel time between systems.

If we aren't allowed to retcon the present system distances, and no one is interested in writing up new systems at greater distances, the only option is to get creative with the circumstances in a system or on a planet to create the sense of foreboding and isolation that the travel speeds prevent.

 

[Aendri]

The problem is how much of our technology just doesn't work with that, Eis. We'd have to remove TONS of equipment to make that work. Hell, even most PAs are capable of much faster movement than most traditional vehicles, and have communication suites that are pretty impressively powerful. Short of depriving players of pretty much all of the iconic gear, it's just hard to get that sense of isolation and distance, and outside of specific plots or situations, that's just not fun.

 

[Eistheid]

Personally I wouldn't mind going through a mission with nothing but personnel scale resources (meaning no PA or similar). Especially if the mission was set up in an interesting way such as things going wrong while on shore leave or something similar, where in the players would have to regroup and figure out how to get back to their home ship. So the lack of iconic gear wouldn't be an issue for me in that scenario.

Honestly I find the speeds for PA to be a bigger problem than the FTL speeds. I have a hard time taking combat seriously when a Mindy can do two laps of an earth sized planet in under a second. Unless somehow PA have managed to articulate their joints at ridiculous speed without tearing apart the pilot's limbs (an impressive feat since the forces exerted upon the pilot would be comparable to kinetic kill weapons), tracking a target to fire upon them is functionally impossible. I highly doubt most people imagine PA combat involving PA relocating themselves at 99,930 km/s (62094 miles a second) which is well beyond what a human eye can even track.

I guess my point is that with how the majority of the setting's technology is handled even if you had to wait a week for reinforcements to arrive you're already functioning at such a competent level that the threat would largely be artificial anyway. So if you want to make your players feel like the situation is high stakes you're going to have to take away most of their kit anyway. Either that or we need to start overhauling existing equipment to bring them more in line with how they're supposed to be played as opposed to the present state of escalated numbers that are most likely not played properly IC.

 

[Aendri]

Well, I tend to look at the max speeds like the Mindy's as a "maximum attainable velocity", not something you could use in all circumstances. You know, you've gotta get some straightaway acceleration, in a vacuum, and continuous. In air, the atmosphere itself, and the lack of ability to go straight would cut your speed down pretty heavily, though they could still easily outrun most jets. And even moreso when you take into account maneuvering and reactions, because the pilot would have to slow down enough to not just see something, but be able to react to it before they were 10 miles away. Still stupidly fast, but much, much lower speeds are required to actually function in a combat zone than the theoretical maximums.

That theory made even more sense while Yamatai was restricting the bodies people could enter service with, because it would stand to reason that a neko who is hardwired into the suit controls and sensors would be able to handle higher speeds while maintaining reaction and control than someone using physical controls.

The point I'm trying to make is that we just need to work to improve how we present things as GMs. It's not just about fixing the information on the wiki, it's about using common sense to adapt that information to the situation. It's just like when you're talking about a weapon, how it has both a maximum range, and an effective range. It CAN operate out much further than you really should be using it.