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Map Distance Increase?

CadetNewb

Well-Known Member
Though the awesome Cluster Map concept was approved a while back, the plan was never initiated despite approval due to some of the clusters never being finished from what I understand. For those that aren't familiar, the map was going to simply consist of 'Clusters' belonging to each faction, and a smaller map would basically be filling in the detail of each individual one. Most importantly however, was the fact that distances on the map were going to be increased, hence, why the main map wouldn't have specific details. It was going to be too large. Right now, the distances on our map - and therefore the ones used in RP - are absurdly short.

The biggest, baddest ships Yamatai has for an example, can make it to the border world of Jiyuu in one hour and forty eight minutes. A trip between Nepleslia and Yamatai would be about 4 minutes in that same honking space battheship. With such short distances, it becomes unrealistic for any situation to develop more quickly than any response can be had. We need a few days at least for an invasion to properly settle on a planet so we can have a campaign to take place for an example. Not an hour or two. Even if GMs come up with reasons for why these incidents festered, it starts looking silly if it's always something coming up, as the suspension of disbelief wears thin, fast. "Oh, there's an attack? Well, we can't get over there in an hour or so because, uh...Space Whales! Yes, they're everywhere! We'll check in a few days or a week later."

An issue as simple as travel time is a lot better and gives GMs more wiggle room story wise.

I'm basically suggesting we put another zero or two to all the distances labeled on the current Star Map as a stop-gap before any additional changes are made. Since it was part of the Cluster Map, which was approved, implementing this individual component of it shouldn't be too much of an issue.
 
I stumbled over that issue to when I researched the FTL travel speed in the wiki and compared it with the map. Fact is: Right now it makes almost no sense in military terms for e.g. the Star Army to station a fleet anywhere else than in Yamatai or maybe additionally in the KMS, because whenever an attack occurs the Star Army would just have to send a large enough part of their force into the affectet system and drive the aggressor out with overwhelming force as the Star Army could react to any attack almost instantly (a few hours travel time even to the farthest of systems is de facto instantly when it comes to significant military operations).
Yet the problem is in my eyes not the distances (which I consider to be reasonable) but the insane FTL speeds that SARPiverse ships put on the scales - speeds measured in lightyears per minute! WTF? :confused:
I do realize the intend behind it, to spare the players long and boring flight times, but it just has an incredible influence when it comes to the internal logic of the SARPiverse, especially when it comes to military operations.

PS: To add something more constructive: I would change the speeds from ly/m to ly/h, thus deviding the speeds by 60. With these speeds interstellar travels would actually become interstellar travels and not just puddle jumps and even the fastest Yamataian ships would need almost a week from Yamatai to the edge of the map.
I realize though that this would be a major change, but at least for me it would feel way more realistic.
 
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I'm all for the Cluster Map. That has 100% approval from me. I feel Exhack gave up because people weren't willing to fit to the standards/nomenclature he had painstakingly created, but at this point people just need to step up and get it done even if it won't be perfect. We don't need perfect - the present starmap isn't perfect. Just a change in condition that we can polish later in bite-size fashion will be enough.

...and I mean "borrow present concept and complete it". Not "I have a better map idea and I will completely redo it my way". Arieg tried that. It showed promise, but he gave up on it... which made it a lot of wasted enthusiasm and effort.

@Rattenkind
You say this, but the funny part is that SARP ships have already had a speed revision in the past; I was the one that championed it back then, with arguments very much like yours. Ships such as the Sakura-class (its present contemporary is the Plumeria-class) went to a speed of 200 000c using its CDD (Star Trek warp speed SARP-equivalent) and its Fold drive (which kinds of teleports the ship Macross-style) went at 20 light years per minute..

What you see today is 1/10th of the speeds we have some years ago. "WTF" indeed, but SARP is presented as per Wes' vision. He resisted the above change significantly; I'm not sure about how he feels about it today - I doubt he feels it's broken.

Personally, I've grown to accept that interstellar speeds in SARP are mostly insignificant. Even if you have a ship with a 'weak' fold drive, you'll get to your destination quickly enough to not really see the difference. Strategic maneuvering in warfare is more spontaneous, and higher fold speed mean higher interceptions in case of trouble. Military-wise, it makes longer-term maneuvering and placement significantly less relevant. I think it sucks too, but I have different values than Wes' does in this regard, and I've learned to shut up and accept the head honcho's vision. Sometimes these kinds of things feel like sloppy cutting-around corners to me, but this is hardly the worst offender.

What salvages that to a degree right now is Hill spheres - regions where you're forced to drop out of FTL to navigate via sublight, meaning in-system forrays have units commit their presence and it takes an investment to close in/withdraw. It makes contested zones mostly the outer orbit of planets - with little conflict actually possible in deep space.

My concern, presently, is the balance of sublight speeds, the significance of in-system objects, weapon ranges and delays-to-impact. Right now, it's kind of half-hazard, and that's a rotten foundation that I want - at least in my plot - to see more sense into. For ships able to maneuver at 0.3c the presence of a planet, interplay with its gravity, moons and such are mostly irrelevant. A ship moving to maneuver in-combat behind a moon will be quickly moved up to and exposed again because, hey, uber-speeds. I don't think we need 0.3c, but then again, I want to find the right numbers which will fit interactions within an environment going from the vicinity of an earth-like planet, to that of a ringed gas giant.

If I can achieve that and see it work, maybe I'll have a more credible basis for building outwards. Until then, though, divided by sixty changes don't strike me as effective enough to warrant the edits in the wiki to implementation.
 
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I'm agreeing with what you're saying Fred. The reason why it's a bad idea to make all our ships slower Rattenkind, is that it means we have to edit all our articles. That's a lot of work. Editing a few numbers on a map is far more easy and less labor intensive. I would like the Cluster Map to be implemented as well, but since that isn't happening, I think this patch is a good idea in the meantime.

Also, Fred also has a point about absurd STL speeds - I personally compensate by assuming that the Relativistic Distortion of traveling that fast becomes too much for all ships to handle past a certain point. Above around .2c, distortion would make it impractical to target someone actively moving or be targeted, so accelerating to that point would be a form of basic evasive maneuver. Ships would have to slow down to attack speed instead. This is going off of some harder sci-fi I read though, and I don't know how well that goes here with other GMs. A little off topic though, so pardon me.
 
As for the map, it's been the same way for about a decade now and, as others have noted, I have no interest in retconning the historic distances in between Star Systems.

Although the cluster system never was fully realized, the traditional map that is still currently used is basically considered one big cluster for cluster map purposes, and clusters outside of it can be submitted and get approved on a case-by-case basis. I realize the existing main map is starting to get tighter. Right now I'm really trying to keep the RP in the main map where possible but once it's fully explored, all the new systems will be in other clusters that we can put as far away as we like.

tl;dr we're keeping our historic map the same, but there will be increasing opportunities to make far-away stuff and you can already get exceptions on a case-by-case basis.

The whole "anyone can be anywhere within the hour" removes almost all the dramatic tension of any scene.
It took 15 minutes or so for Star Army ships to respond to pirates in Floodwaters's plot and there was no lack of dramatic tension! The battle was over before my ships arrived.
 
Let me bring up a small example. In the Akahar, we have got seven hours ICly until aid arrives. Seven. Hours. That's enough time for everything to go to glorious hell and back. Now, Luca's mentioned that his plots "move at the speed of plot," but it's far more interesting, as a player of said plots, when help does not arrive so easily. As one of the other players has mentioned, it's easier to justify a "We were in the area, so we came in to help!" than a "They invaded the entire planet and made planetfall for several days while the capitol world is just an hour away!" with our current distances. A simple factor of ten makes things far more lucrative for danger. Our current system is great for first responses, but not for siegebreaking or real saving the day action.
 
The battle was over before my ships arrived.

You are taking that out of context, there was no battle in that case, or at least anything that warranted being called that considering the time it took, which is exactly the problem. Being a player from that plot, I can safely say that the tension was much more between the characters than from this situation you mention. The battle was over because said pirates knew exactly that would be the minimal time it would take and got out before the ultrapolice arrived.

For someone who had been in posting in that thread since the beginning, it was, quite simply, a disappointment. Tensions started rising from the moment the mission started due to how the characters mixed (or didn't), then came the grand finale where they would have to work together to overcome some major difficulty, which never happened because the moment was too short and not meaningful enough to warrant being called a good closing to that chapter. As a player, it felt like getting to the apex of a roller coaster only to be told the ride was over. Furthermore, I am sure I also am not the only one with this sentiment.

Last but not least, so I don't go off-topic: I see the Systems that @Floodwaters is working on the "edge" of the map and trying to give them a 'frontier' feel, which I totally support despite the relatively small distances. But what worries me is how can it be a frontier when people can arrive there in 30 minutes? Furthermore, if the travel speed is already so advanced, what stops people from wanting to settle in far away as the current technology allows?
 
Also, it should be pointed out that with the current distances, there's no reason for us to waste time settling everything nearby, with all the shit that goes on in this area. Any sane settlement would take place about as far away from our current area as possible, and according to the current drive speeds, that is quite a long ways indeed. Why not look at building stuff off map now, rather than just getting around to it once there's absolutely no room for anything local?
 
It's as they say. In hindsight, the current distances makes all previous wars look silly as well. With travel times so short, it should have been a quick, massive slaughter as everything is so close together. How can a siege go on for a month, when a planet is literally an hour away from Yamatai during any war? With the distances involved, it's like a dormroom war, where everyone is literally next door.

And as much as I enjoy the thought of several dorm-rooms of Neko going to 'war' with each other, it's not a good thing in this case.
 
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Also, it should be pointed out that with the current distances, there's no reason for us to waste time settling everything nearby, with all the shit that goes on in this area. Any sane settlement would take place about as far away from our current area as possible, and according to the current drive speeds, that is quite a long ways indeed. Why not look at building stuff off map now, rather than just getting around to it once there's absolutely no room for anything local?
Given the density of populated planets in the known sector, the implication is that crossing 500 light-years of space would cross through something like 20 unknown species' territory. Aside from leaving empty space between clusters, which is already the plan I outlined above, how would that be dealt with?
How can a siege go on for a month
The way to do this is to have enough ships that you can blockade the system's Hill sphere so that any ship entering the STL zone gets stopped. Even if systems were further away from each other, a siege still be a game of ship numbers and not response time.
 
Your response still neglects to take into account the points raised above about good storytelling and entertaining engagements.
 
The way to do this is to have enough ships that you can blockade the system's Hill sphere so that any ship entering the STL zone gets stopped. Even if systems were further away from each other, a siege still be a game of ship numbers and not response time.

Except that this doesn't work, since you could easily just drop in a ways out, and lob asteroids. A defensive position locks ships in place as much as it protects anything. Or even more to the point, drop in a long ways out, and come in under stealth.

Also, the threat of races in travel? Wut? Wes, we've already established it's nearly impossible to fight someone at FTL speeds. The "dealing with them" would be to pop out of FTL, take a look around with the setting's supersensors, and immediately head back out if you see something there. Again, with the speeds our ships have, you can be further away than can be realistically populated in several centuries, in a matter of minutes. Space is BIG. The odds on being able to run out of travel capacity before you find SOMEWHERE that is empty are effectively null, again, because of those speeds.
 
Kinda missed my point Wes - how can a siege go on for a month when backup is an hour away?

But, besides that, don't forget the others. Both Mog and Foxtrot have very valid points as well. In storytelling, as Mog said, it's a lot easier to justify friendlies just happening to be in the area, than no help coming when the home system is an hour or two away. On top of that, Foxtrot is correct to say that if backup is so nearby, the most logical thing to happen is that they show up and ruin the fun before it even properly beings.
 
No disrespects intended, @Wes , but it's simply impossible to blockade a system's whole hill sphere. To cover e.g. the sun's hill sphere, which is something between 2-4 lightyears in diameter, you would need circa 4*10^15 (4 quadrillion!) ships, assuming a weapons range of one light-second. Even if my numbers were by a few decimals the amount of ships needed would still be insane. :rolleyes: Blockading a system just doesn't work.
 
You don't need to fill the perimeter with ships. Once some invading ships come in, the defending ships can use their STL drives to intercept.
 
Your response still neglects to take into account the points raised above about good storytelling and entertaining engagements.
Neither of these are at all dependent on the distances between star systems. We've had twelve years of good stories with the distances as they are.
Kinda missed my point Wes - how can a siege go on for a month when backup is an hour away?
If you're talking about planets, I already answered you. If you meant star systems, sieges don't last a month and they're not supposed to at that proximity. Unless politics are involved...
Except that this doesn't work, since you could easily just drop in a ways out, and lob asteroids.
The NMX actually have used this tactic already, with some success.
Also, the threat of races in travel? Wut? Wes, we've already established it's nearly impossible to fight someone at FTL speeds.
FTL combat is not allowed in SARP, and I'm not suggesting it.

Personally, as a GM I find travel downtime sounds romantic but in practice it's a pain in the ass.

Final answer: Consistency is important in the setting. We're not going to retcon the distances between the known star systems, because it would possibly invalidate years worth of past RP. We've all been using the familiar map for years and changing it would be like pulling out the rug from under us. Factions are used to being close neighbors and it'll continue to be that way. If you want to make a new sector/cluster that's far away from the main map, you can submit it in the NTSE.
 
I appreciate this thread being unlocked a lot Wes. Even if you disagree, it means a lot to be able to freely talk about it.

Focusing on the topic though, we've been able to RP for the last 12 years by simply not addressing the issue even though it causes problems. Yes, GMs can and do sweep it under the rug using whatever plot devices they need for their story, but they shouldn't have to pull out the toolbox for something as small as this and work abnormally hard to engineer a situation that's developed.

In regards to planetary sieges, what I'm saying that IC, it should be impossible to siege a planet for even a week. The reason for this, is that the calvary is a short drive away. I could probably make it from Long Beach to Los Angeles and the fleets would arrive to break the siege. If a GM wants to do a plot where it's about people trying to fight off a planetary siege, and over time, it's nearly impossible. Assuming they don't decide to overlook this and go forward with it, it looks silly in hindsight. The question. "Why wasn't the military there sooner?" crops up, and when someone goes to answer that, it makes said military look weak and/or incompetent.

The biggest issue that I haven't brought up yet, but Aendri touched on though, is that the current short travel times between worlds poses a major threat to all factions, Yamatai included. For an example; an opposing force, could literally "Core" the Yamataian Star Empire in an instant and hollow it out. Reaching its inner worlds in an hour or two, bypassing all the outer ones, becomes trivial since the only major thing that would pull them out of FTL would be the Hill Sphere. Even if the SAoY arrived in time to attempt an intercept in this example of how things could go horribly wrong, the badguys can still open fire on installations and planets. Intercepting those shots is possible, but far, far from perfect - a single directed energy weapon from a ship would likely bloom at maximum ranges, but just touching a planet's atmosphere would likely cause megatons of force. In other words, these short distances give attackers the advantage. Not defenders.

But this horrible knife fight can be mitigated by increasing the travel distance, and therefore time. Rather than a hop to the core being easy, it's a longer, and more troublesome trip, making it more likely that the enemy will try to advance world by world. Though some worlds will be lost, trading territory for time to fight back is more viable this way, much in the same way Russia had when facing down Germany in WWII.
 
I'm not entirely certain which distance version I would prefer myself. It would be a pain to retcon all the articles and remove the references to the existing distances, but folks also have point when they say that it would also make more sense for locations to be spaced further out.

as4.postimg.org_67cb3tei1_Star_Army_Map_Redo_Sample.jpg

I have been working off-and-on with a redone version of the main map; a sample of which is linked above. Mainly i've been attempting to make the map visually more appealing, and I had been wondering whether or not to stay with the current distance scale, or change the distances displayed (ie x 10 the distance of everthing) so that it was more like the clustered map scale and travel times would be a little longer.

Given how fast and how easy it would be for ships to travel with the currently accepted tech, explored space should be much, much larger than a area only a few hundreds lightyears across. Though I understand why one would want to not retcon things and keep the current scale as well.

I have also been toying with the idea of adding co-ordinates for locations to the map, ie Yamatai at the center would have the location of [ 0 / 0 / 0] and some Example star system would have the co-ordinates [ 12 / 5 / -15 ] written next to it.

With exact co-ordinates one can easily calculate an accurate distance between two systems, in addition to acknowledging the fact that space is three-dimensional and all the star systems on the map aren't really on a single two-dimensional plane as a map like this would suggest.

To find the distance between two stars when using three-dimensional coordinates, we need only apply the Pythagorean formula:

D = Square root of (X^2 + Y^2 + Z^2)

Here, D is the total distance between the two stars in lightyears, while X, Y, and Z are the distance between Yamatai and our Example star system along each of the three axes. X = 12, Y = 5 and Z = -15 in this instance.

In the end, D = 19.84 lighyears :D

If anyone else would like to make suggestions on what other details I should include in the map (I'm already planning on adding borders, just haven't gotten to it yet in the sample), feel free to suggest something. Hyperspace tradelanes / routes I'm considering as well, though I don't want to make the map look too cluttered.

I'm also extending the size of the map in all directions a little, showing more space beyond what is already explored and allowing more easily for the inclusion of new systems and areas.
 
That's... really good!
But at the same time, also really saturated. Information-wise, it makes it a bit of a jumble. It feels very dense.

Maybe it's the font chosen for it, and how much of it is bolded. Everything seems bolded; just different sizes. Perhaps that needs to be worked on?

I like how it shows stars inbetween the star systems we know. This implies that space is really big, and that the system we've bothered to list on the map are the one's of interest. Maybe some of these stars are actually alone, uncharted, not of interest, but still locations one could end up in.
 
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