[Discussion] Year 2016 Revision on FTL speeds.

[shadowclasper]

I think that this is the first step in a lot of stuff that just made me go "I'm not sure I want to play here"

When there are no limitations on technology, there are no interesting stories. How can there be meaningful stories about anything except 'monster of the week' when travel times are nearly instantaneous, ships can't be interdicted, and there's a source of infinite energy that fits in the size of a car engine or smaller?

Fixing FTL is just the first of many issues that need to be addressed to help nip in the bud the issues that CadeNewb is bringing up.

Also Sensor ranges. Jesus christ. Why have spies, why have secret bases, why have ANYTHING if you're able to see perfectly and instantaneously what's going on more than a lightyear away? Sure, have instant sensors due to the distances. Relativity is interesting to read about in stuff, and unfun to roleplay with.

But what if it's got a limited range? What if sufficiently large masses can block it? So you can see to the edges of your star system, but not, say, behind the gas giant without something communicating and viewing? Wars in systems become more interesting and stealth in space becomes about blocking information and delaying it to relativistic speeds by destroying sensor arrays on the edges of systems.

It means that wars are INTERESTING and can use TACTICS more complex than 'shoot everything at it'.

 

[CadetNewb]

Thanks @shadowclasper , you've made my point very clearly. Most new players simply don't like this short travel time and understand very well why it's a bad idea. Simply put, if there's no flaws or limitations, there's no dramatic tensions that make it feel so, so much more awesome when the big damn heroes come flying in to save the day when it looked like all hope was lost.

The one and only downside is being unable to go to Yamatai like a trip to Disneyland when you live in the OC. I think we can do without.

 

[shadowclasper]

Also, I'll say this, it's a hallmark of rp communities that are openly welcoming, but have a glass ceiling for how important anyone new can become.

Amia Island was a perfect example. The hardcore mary sue original base of characters had a bunch of items, abilities, and characteristics that would have never been allowed by anyone else. The excuse? "Well they got them when we didn't know any better, but it would ruin the story continuity to not grandfather in those broken items and objects".

The end result? Newbies eventually leave because this crowd utterly dominated every event. Nobody else could be heroic, nobody else's new factions or ideas, or conflicts could do anything. Evil was beaten at every turn, and the people who wanted to try to play not-good-guy factions had to relegate themselves to minor mischief rather than actually being a TRUE THREAT to the status quo (and thus, dramatic and interesting) or have themselves literally pounded into the dust by PvP.

People who found ways to mechanically beat the stuffing out of people? They tended to get retconned out of the story by the old guard's GM friends.

When you have overpowered story aspects, it stinks of that exact kind of foul play and dishonesty to most roleplayers worth anything.

 

[raz]

While I've already agreed that slower FTL would be nice—really liked Frederick's hyperspace calculations—I don't particularly buy the whole "slow FTL enhances RP" argument. The wars we've had have been strategically interesting and future wars look even more so because the enemy is off-map (it's not like player factions will ever fight, ever). We've got almost 20 years of archived RP to prove it.

What happens during FTL transit ultimately will not change in RP, and I think it's important to acknowledge that in this discussion. Stories are up to players and GMs to tell and current RP format, style, and length won't be impacted much however this goes.

 

[shadowclasper]

It enhances RP by making certain facets make more sense.

Without the ability to interdict FTL, and with distances being so SMALL, there is literally no reason for the borders to exist. In fact, the empires would all be jumbled up around each other, and the size of the post-human populated space would be ENORMOUS comparitively. The easier it is to travel, the FURTHER a field you go. If everything is only hours away from Yamatai, why the hell aren't humans spread far further afield? Why are other races not being encountered far more frequently to limit expansion at all? Why are there separate empires at all with that quick amount of traversal?

Keep in mind, we also have perfect matter manipulation and an endless source of energy here. Yamatai also can pump out thousands, if not millions, of perfectly loyal super soldiers every single DAY without straining their resources, and send them out to colonize new worlds. So population growth isn't a reason EITHER for them.

It creates cognitive dissonance because the setting as it is presented makes absolutely no sense within the limits presented (IE: almost none. With FTL like this, and the powersource and obvious reproductive ability of Yamatai due to super-cloning and the ability to bootstrap fully intelligent adults in only a few days or less, they should have taken over the damn galaxy by now unless they are opposed by forces with EQUAL capabilities).

edit: Sorry for picking on yamatai specifically here, but I'll be perfectly honest, they're front and center on these issues due to being the most accessibly public faction in everything, the most played, and thus the easiest example to pick. The fact that they can do all this stuff, or if it's been retconned and changed, they can't and the wiki hasn't been editted sufficiently to correct that, is part of what scares off new people.

 

[raz]

This has quickly shifted to a discussion of Yamatai's technological power in general, which really is not a problem if you go read some Star Army plotships instead of focusing on wiki numbers.

More on topic, my main point is that slowing FTL speeds is, at a base level, simply equivalent to having a new loading screen/scene wipe between travel. That's it.

 

[Fred]

Thanks Raz. I was also worried the topic was starting to derail again.

As a GM, I think it's nice to say "yeah, we could do a JP during that transit time; I'm sure we can squeeze that in that 12ish hours". That way, JPs done of events slightly in the past can be done, rather than having to say "No, the trip takes only 12 minutes, you don't have the time to take a shower and eat lunch while talking to your friends". So, just on that level, I'd say it's an enabler.

Sure, I could arrange for things to happen differently, but I still see an advantage in being able to have just that. You'd end up having the option to use the travel time, or just glossing over it.

Another thing I think I'd appreciate out of slower FTL speeds is the dramatic tension of reinforcements not coming in anytime soon. I did not appreciate Wes being able to have the 1st XF to meddle in the tragedy that was the Battle of Taiie. I don't really appreciate how Wes' battle tactics essentially involves fast ships in large numbers zerg-rushing any position without anykind of advance warning as if rewarding a spontaneous whim, like that time when Irim and Hanako crashed on the meeting Melisson was having with Nepleslian Senators. Some of my scenarios are protracted battles/situations where you are stuck in a predicament... and seeing ships fold in within the hour would kind of ruin it.

It's also valuable on a broader view of the setting on the level of ships being where being important. If a Yamataian world is not garrisoned, then any hostile force (pirates/raiders) can come in, but within half-and-hour, a huge yamataian warfleet zerg could fold in and deal with the problem. If the response would take a week to come in, then the notion "if only we'd left a squadron of ships here" would become both relevant and important.

I'm sure someone like Zack would have brilliant suggestions on how to cope with it... but I'm not greatly interested in coping so much as I am in being enabled to do so, and credibly. To have the setting support me, rather than my having to interpret it more to my liking in this fashion, like many GMs report ending up doing. It's kind of bothersome, especially when you're a GM that sits down to actually crunch the numbers to make a situation credible, but then he squints at the results and realizes "I can't do it like that, it'd make for a piss-poor story."

 

[shadowclasper]

Apologies, my point was that it all plays into the same general thing though. The FTL speed, combined with so much else, detracts from the setting coherence and such. Fixing the FTL speed goes a long way to help fix that, and it provides more opportunities for RP.

 

[Fred]

@Wes
Still awaiting your input, since I asked for it in this post. Nothing can happen without your say so, based on what was discussed before the break, and since I wrote that post (a few more people have made their input since).

In addition, someone mentioned to me (I guess he wanted to stay anonymous, so it he sent the idea by conversation rather than in here), that even though we can probably cope, it's fact that everyone new bothering to sincerely understand how our setting works gets this shock regarding FTL speeds. We're always going to have this reaction, and unless something is done, it's still going to crop up.

But this doesn't affect only new roleplayers, it also affects everyone whom bring fresh eyes here... and this includes anyone judging our nominated threads in those roleplaying cup awards. Some of our nominations have yielded wins, but that's mostly on our roleplays. Our setting didn't do us any favors, and any judge trying to get any technical discussions/relate with maps-and-distances crosses and ETA to arrival is going to get the same "culture shock". It's a disheartening thought to consider someone judging our entries, only to come to the same conclusion our new players sometimes do after exposure. but these judge, they don't relate with our setting and they have other entries to cover; they won't give a second glance because they've made friends already - they'll get an impression, stick to it, and move on -- with that reflecting on our standing.

I agree with Zack that our themes could use an extra looking at to make sure everything adds up, but I'm still certain this starts with a reduction of that FTL speed standard first off all because it's going to be an omnipresent issue anyways.

We could also make a poll proposing the changes ironned out here so far, and see how much the community supports them.

 

[Zack]

Lets talk about all of this in context of the thematic elements of the site:

There are a few things that are very well established: Space travel is safe, Yamatai has a professional army, and the Kyoto sector is densely packed with habitable worlds. You could probably argue for a few more things, but I think the above is fairly save to say. There is more than a decade of RP backing up the above.

While adding in dangers to space travel may be fun, I don't think it really works with the setting. After all this isn't 40k, this is 80's anime inspired. FTL will likely be safe and will continue to be safe. It also makes sense to use Hyperspace style blink in / blink out because that is what we see in series like Macross. SARP isn't really about the dangers of space travel, it is full of advanced societies doing things advanced societies do.

Fred brought up the Battle of Taiie and I think this is a good example of why the proposed speed changes won't work. After all if you can't do a 'we're far from help' story with what we have available on the site right now, I don't think adding a few minutes of travel time is really going to change that. After all even if we went through with these changes that just means the SAoY will deploy its starbases out a little bit more. Yamatai has show that it's got the largest and more professional army out there repeatedly. If you're in Yamatai's back yard you can expect that they'll show up as quickly as possible if there is a chance they get to use their starships. There is plenty of RP to back that up too and at this point its part of that faction's character.

And then there is the idea of changing the speed settings so much that all the planets are really far apart. This goes against all of the existing RP where planets in the Kyoto sector are just a short trip away. Much of the tension from the early Nepleslian RP is from Yamatai's fleets being right on the doorstep, and it made for great, tense, RP. The problem people have with the map is that it doesn't convey this scale well. Luckily, you guys already came up with a pretty good idea for a fix, the implementation was just botched. You need to convey that the Kyoto sector is a small densely packed area of planets, and the best way to do that would be to show more of the setting.

IE: Something like this:

View attachment 5890

Namely, put the cluster system to use and then create a larger scale map that drives homes the thematic elements we have: The Kyoto sector is small and densely packed.

Throwing a few small sectors out there that maybe have 1-2 races would be a great way of reinforcing the above: The Kyoto sector is special.

It would also be a great idea to add in some isolated star systems way out in the void. I would argue that there is a lot of WW2 flavor around the site, and I know people would love to have some island type areas to fight over.

This would also be a great way of helping establish the sheer size of the space. I think it is fairly well established that the setting feels oddly small when you learn how fast ships travel, adding in a lot of empty space and far off locations would do wonders for the people who want to tell the 'far away from home' type stories.


Edit:

ONE MORE THING!

Because I completely forgot to address this: Does decreasing speeds make for better stories? I mean, obviously not. We can point to all sorts of examples like Star Wars to Shlock Mercinary but the example I want to bring up is specifically Shlockian:

When the comic strip started, our heros were limited to hyperspace gates and slow travel, then the Tetraport was created allowing instantaneous travel. Suddenly having this ability is crazy-powerful and instead of forgetting about it (or retconing it out of the setting) The characters had to learn to adjust and adapt to their new world. A lot of the latest arc of the comic deals with Humanity coming to terms with now being able to live forever... and the bottom line is this is Sci-Fi, go explore what the setting has rather than trying to remove what you don't like!

 

[CadetNewb]

While I've already agreed that slower FTL would be nice—really liked Frederick's hyperspace calculations—I don't particularly buy the whole "slow FTL enhances RP" argument. The wars we've had have been strategically interesting and future wars look even more so because the enemy is off-map (it's not like player factions will ever fight, ever). We've got almost 20 years of archived RP to prove it.

What happens during FTL transit ultimately will not change in RP, and I think it's important to acknowledge that in this discussion. Stories are up to players and GMs to tell and current RP format, style, and length won't be impacted much however this goes.

To be honest? My impression is that a lot of people find the setting's FTL distasteful, with GMs and players having to simply look the other way, do some gymnastics to circumvent it, or otherwise find a way to basically ignore the fact that travel times are very fast here. Yes, we got good RP - years of it - but fast IC travel times did not contribute to it. Rather, it was a detriment to good RP, and the best RP occurred when worked around or outright ignored it to get said good RP. The biggest thing that bothers me though, is this;

It's always easier for a GM to justify backup arriving In-Character than it is to justify backup not arriving In-Character, even with slower travel times.

If we need to go fast, we can always go faster. It's harder to justify going slower. Same with reinforcements. If you really need it for a plot or story being told, help is always there, waiting to arrive. There's always something in the GMs' bag of magic tricks to have someone answer Gondor's call for aid, but not the other way around. At least, not without a lot of effort, gymnastics, and pain in the ass. Lots and lots of it.

The real trick, I believe, is always trying to set the stage for a story so that there isn't help around. That's hard.

Fred brought up the Battle of Taiie and I think this is a good example of why the proposed speed changes won't work. After all if you can't do a 'we're far from help' story with what we have available on the site right now, I don't think adding a few minutes of travel time is really going to change that.

I have to call you out on this. It's simply not "adding a few minutes" as you just claimed. With what Fred is proposing, going from Yamatai to Nataria is EIGHT HOURS - that's eight hours to send forces from the core of the empire to its very doorstep.

But that's not the only problem I see with what you said.

Much of the tension from the early Nepleslian RP is from Yamatai's fleets being right on the doorstep, and it made for great, tense, RP.

The thing is, having an enemy nation essentially have its military forces at your borders is inherently tense, so that's all well and good from the Nepleslian standpoint. But, with our too-fast travel times, Yamataian characters won't have much to worry about since those forces can be so easily repositioned. As a Yamataian GM, I can't have a plot centering around what happens elsewhere in the empire because those very ships deployed are not defending Yamataian worlds. The places that'll take time to get to from the front lines and save. There isn't anywhere near as much tension on the Yamataian side; it's flat out boring in comparison. By having slower travel times, a realistic, double-edged blade is created regarding force deployment; they simply can't be everywhere at once.

And that's RP gold for Yamatai - it may not be what the characters want, but it's sure as hell what players want.

Perhaps more importantly though, what Fred said is hard fact. Any outsiders looking in, whether they be new players or someone judging our RP, will not like seeing such quick FTL travel times @Wes . That's simply bad for the site, and we can't have that. We will not change their minds on this - it cannot be done - but what we can change is our FTL travel time.

That much, is certain.

 

[Zack]

Plenty of other settings have fast or instant FTL times and it doesn't harm their stories. If you can't manage to tell a story about help not being instantly available with what we have in the setting now, I have little reason to believe you'll be able to tell that story if you add a marginal amount of travel time.

I have to call you out on this. It's simply not "adding a few minutes" as you just claimed. With what Fred is proposing, going from Yamatai to Nataria is EIGHT HOURS - that's eight hours to send forces from the core of the empire to its very doorstep.

And this is exactly what I mean. The travel time is already at least 2 hours, though generally the travel time has been established in RP as more like 4-6ish already. Adding 8 more hours in there isn't going to change a whole lot. This is also exactly what I mean when I say if you can't tell a story about help not being instantly available now, you won't be able to do it after the change either.

(On a side note, I also don't expect travel times to double like above either, there are a bunch of knock-on effects from the above change. Changing the mechanics behind FTL will also drastically change how you can defend star systems and it will start making sense to position responding forces further out from the star system. You'll probably see more starbases in deep space like the old days so Yamatain forces can maintain about the same response times.)

(On a second side note, if you want an example of instant-trans-galactic teleportation being possible and STILL being able to tell a great story about how help isn't going to arrive in time, go check Season 4, Episode 16 of Stargate Atlantis, aka: Trio, aka: The episode where even with all the most advanced technology in the universe, our heros find themselves trapped in a hole!

Even on a thematic level, SARP has been about what happens when starships arrive, not what they do while traveling.

-----

On another side note: At current speeds it would take about 10 weeks to cross the milky way. If we wanted to try and fix the map problem we could end up galaxy map like the kind you might see for star wars:

View attachment 5897

Planets in the setting are already about an average distance from one another, compared to IRL which is kinda nice, but again the Kyoto sector is supposed to be densely packed with planets and I think it would be nice to add some buffer space around the sector filled with uninhabitable star systems.

 

[Amaryllis]

How is adding 8 hours not significant? How is a few minutes not very different from 8 hours? I can easily imagine a large space battle being completed or the outcome largely decided in 8 hours or less. How long do SARP space battles take? Do people generally have the same idea as to how long they take? I don't imagine it taking long for super future weapons to do great damage to a planet once a battle is over.

 

[Zack]

Current travel time between the Yamatai and Nataria is about 4-6 hours. If you can't have a dramatic 'holding out for help' scene in that amount of time I don't think you'll be able to do it with 4to6 + 8 hours.

 

[CadetNewb]

@Zack

I have the distinct impression you are being deliberately obstructionist in not only how you simply do not address the valid points made against your position, but also in how you have misleadingly interpreted the very facts laid out in front of you. I honestly don't appreciate you playing dumb or evading the points made; it's obvious and insulting.

First and foremost, 8 hours is NOT the typical travel time. It's the travel time from YAMATAI TO NATARIA. This is the same as someone waking up in the morning and leaving his front door to grab the morning newspaper. It's also obvious to everyone else that something more significant than the Yamatai-Nataria trip, would take far, far longer. A trip from Yamatai to Jiyuu or Lor for an example would be around 90 hours. That's nearly four days. Long enough that even getting back to defend Yamatai should something happen be a serious concern. And definitely long enough that a GM can justify all sorts of events unfolding before the players even arrive when a crisis breaks out.

Second, I have to make it very clear that this is not Schlock Mercenary or Stargate Atlantis. THIS. IS. SARP.

What is ideal for other settings is not going to always be ideal for ours. Concepts and ideas are not all 'One-Size-Fits-All', and here, our setting is focused more on warfare and combat, not having one quick stand-alone episode after another. Wes himself has said that Yamatai needs war, and in order for the embers of war to become flames, we need time. If we ramrod some war through, trying to ignore the fact that the whole thing broke out when travel times between locations are so short, it looks really, really dumb. New players spot this fast, and it's usually a turnoff. They, deep down, realize that the long total wars we've had should have realistically been over in a few days like a Cold War going Hot, everyone just spamming their nukes.

High speeds are lethal.

Current travel time between the Yamatai and Nataria is about 4-6 hours. If you can't have a dramatic 'holding out for help' scene in that amount of time I don't think you'll be able to do it with 4to6 + 8 hours.

Oh, having a 'dramatic holding out for help' scene can be done with that short amount of time. But there's plenty of RP types that become a lot harder to justify when you only have that much time to work with. Especially when you want to make sure the military doesn't look incompetent. They had better show up when the trip is that short. Meanwhile, in that time, you just can't have a long and drawn out siege or have a planetary revolt rear its ugly head without looking like an idiot.

Fast travel times limit military RP by not allowing the flames of war to be fanned. And we need war.

 

[Zack]

You seem to think you can't have war without slow travel times.

Of course you can look at any of the existing RP or any other setting with fast travel times to see that this clearly isn't the case.

8 hours, of course, is not the typical travel time. But that doesn't really matter. The moment your fleet is approaching a planet it is stuck in the no FTL zone. If you don't have enough ships at a planet when an enemy fleet shows up it isn't like you're going to be able to get help in a reasonable amount of time anyways. Everything is still hours away and ship vs ship battles take a fraction of that time. Optimal strategy would be to pre-position your starships outside of the no FTL-zones and then have them jump in on any fleet that attacks one of your worlds. The obvious counter-play is for the other side to stash its starships in a similar manner and jump in on the other group of ships. Ultimately high end strategy is getting involved in fights that you can win without creating a runaway effect of everyone having to send in all of their ships, basically space-mexican-standoff.

I could write plenty on the subject of how to use starships in SARP but I don't feel I need to.

For every example of fast FTL speed being the worst thing since Satan, there is another example of fast FTL speed being just fine. It seems silly to blame fast FTL for killing RP when it is used just as often to keep plots moving.

But even that isn't the main reason I object. The main reason I object is because this is an arbitrary change just like the last one. There doesn't seem to have been any thought given to how this will affect the setting at large or how it would change the feel or the thematic elements of the site. It is a change being made literally because it is the easiest change to make. It doesn't help that people are going through and trying to back-justify the change with stuff they've found (examples like that should have been caught beforehand when figuring out how to make a major rules change to an established setting).

Can map-shock be fixed in a better way? Almost certainly.

Can drama be maintained in a setting with high FTL speeds? Easily.

Is there a need to apply a retcon to well established setting elements on a whim? No.

 

[CadetNewb]

First, having only a few hours on hand to work with as a GM is simply not enough to get certain things done. A lot of things need at least a day or two to fully mature into the desired RP. Quite frankly, examples of fast FTL and slow FTL are not as relevant as you seem to think, just as I've said before; we are looking very specifically at SARP's needs, not theirs. They don't matter; SARP does. Second, this is in no way as arbitrary as you are making it out to be; we know we need longer FTL times, but it's trial and error. The first time simply wasn't enough, and this time, working with the examples that Fred has made and double checking what's on the table, it's looking better than what we currently have. Is it ideal? Is it perfect? No. But just because the solution is not ideal, does that mean we should not consider adopting it?

Hell no.

Though map-shock theoretically has better fixes, this is thus far the best candidate on the table so far. I mean, do we really want to implement a Sector or Cluster system where nobody will want to fill in all the little details to further expand a setting where we already have plenty enough to work with, and in some places, still lack sufficient detail? No. Hell no. Can drama be maintained in a setting with high FTL speeds? Yes. Easily? No. With the widest variety of crisis and scenarios to pick from? No. Hell no. It's like Forest getting rid of his braces and having the option to walk OR run at his leisure, not just always walk and only walk.

And regarding this retcon Fred is proposing? Retcons aren't bad or evil; only the shoddy ones are. I would rather retcon the speeds while leaving previous RPs intact, respecting them and openly acknowledging a retcon was made rather than going with something that's ideal but will never work out due to being way too overambitious. The reason why is that this type of well done retcon shows that the setting matures, and matures well. It's the kind of retcon that people can flat out respect, especially when what it's retconning is so silly or absurd.

Hell, look at the Star Wars EU. Shit got crazy at times, and not in a good way.

 

[Zack]

we are looking very specifically at SARP's needs, not theirs. They don't matter; SARP does. Second, this is in no way as arbitrary as you are making it out to be; we know we need longer FTL times, but it's trial and error.

This is exactly why I am against this retcon.

If you don't want to look at what other settings have done, if you don't want to take time to consider the knock-on effects of a change, if you want to make major changes by trial and error why should I have any faith that this is going to be done right?

Last time this exact same thing was proposed by Fred, I did the math, correctly pointed out that this wouldn't fix the problem, and then the change was made anyways. What is going to happen this time? Honestly: probably nothing. Will it solve the problems brought up before? They will almost certainly still be around. Will this cause new problems? Yes, it goes against established setting themes (Kyoto sector being densely packed) it normalizes many of the FTL methods when the way to go should be limiting things to hyperspace only, and it requires yet another rethink of out strategy works in the setting (though in all fairness you're more likely just going to see starbases moved around a bit and sensor nets going up on the map all over the place again).

 

[CadetNewb]

Again, you're being horribly misleading, and in a way that is so utterly lacking that it has to be deliberate. We will obviously pay attention to what other settings do, but ultimately, SARP has its own unique needs. In other words, we won't copy them just because it works out for them, as what works out for them may well not work out for us and SARP. This may be hard for you to swallow, but since this setting is quite unique in comparison to others, we're in uncharted territory more often than they are, meaning that there will be trial and error involved. You complain that last time the changes were insufficient, and argue that this time, they are also insufficient. Instead of simply saying so, I'm going to say this;

Why don't you give us some examples why? I've done so myself, and unless you do so yourself, your position has nothing to stand on, and Fred's proposition looks very strong in comparison.

 

[Dumont]

So I was actually going to reply to this as soon as it cropped up, but then it turned into a slinging of technicalities about light years per minute and that sort of thing and I lost all interest. But then I got asked to respond to this, and I'm a sucker for feeling that my opinions matter.

My original opinion on this was something along the lines of: Your speed doesn't matter, as everything will always travel at the speed of plot anyway. The only use of a quantification of ship speed in a text based roleplaying game is going to boil down to whether one ship can chase down another in a direct race. Everything else will arrive the moment the GM goes later that day/week.

Beyond that the main arguments I'm seeing for all this are along the lines of: Excess speed removes all tension in battles, that the FTL shouldn't be adjusted in lieu of the map providing greater distances, and how fast speeds add to tension.

Battle tension sounds like it should be answered with a revision of the ability to be omniscient, and making GM's communicate better. 'Oh I suddenly know you're there and pop in to play hero' is more or less cheating in my book, and could have just as easily been prevented by someone going 'Hey, I'm trying to have a tense and dramatic game with my players', and then someone else understanding that this is what people are here to have fun with.

The map should probably be expanded in some way in my opinion simply because the setting is at a point of stagnation. Everything is already known and there's clear lines drawn as to what is the biggest and baddest of them all. This in my opinion detracts from the setting as a whole since it's just boring to not be one part of something bigger.

Fast speed and response time does add to tension, but at the same time even if it took one week to get an entire empire crushing fleet to turn up that is still a giant empire crushing fleet. You can easily replace 'they can come here at any second' style tension with 'They might have already launched' tension. Saying that things have to be able to fall to hell in a second in order for tension to exist is nonsense. I'd sign up for or even potentially GM a plot in which one Yamataian ship gets the invasion order on some other group falsely and has to be stopped. SARP style Dr. Strangelove sounds awesome. At the same time this could just as easily be changed by making it so that all actions weren't immediately known by everyone everywhere.

Stop playing poker while looking at everyone's hands, suspend disbelief for stuff happening in transit, communicate behind the scenes more so that people can have fun with a well structured story.