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Proposed Setting Revisions for 2011

Then Yukari should be preforming an STL tactical jump every few seconds for best effect (as there is no downside to this). Naturally, the enemy should be doing the same thing. This would make it virtually impossible for one ship to ever hit another.

Ships instantly starting and stopping at full speed is so unrealistic and far removed from reality that the numbers and stats for the ship don't ever really factor into it. Essentially you're just writing what you know from playing X-wing. This means that players can only ever do what the GMs tell them they can do allowing for no creativity on the part of the players. (See: Galaxy quest and repeating the computer)

For this kind of scenario rules aren't even needed because only the GM can decide what can be done. It also promotes the 'my gun rips a hole in the universe' style tech because effectiveness is related only to how damaging it sounds.

---

As for Wes's suggestion.

These rules still promote FTL warfare and do nothing to handle ships constantly moving around at STL speeds. The winning strategy is to just have one more ship than the opponent, this way you can always have one ship moving at FTL speeds while the other fleet is stuck. If their ships are in a planetary gravity well you can bombard them with fire and then move without any danger.

There is also the question of why the anti-ftl is single target (everyone starts using NAM style interdiction beams?) and why planets can project an AoE field but ships can not (ships have already demonstrated the ability to create 1g worth of gravity). Also, what about MASC drives which ignore interdiction entirely?
 
FTL Weapons: Exactly what has been used so far. And this one worked in anti-FTL fields. However, this has become the problem (it was neat to begin with, but has become overpowered) which is being fixed. Or is trying to be fixed. This, and ships engaging in combat at faster-than-light speeds, which also happens.

Anti-FTL: Developed because of the above note. And power armors have FTL in this setting (though that possibly could be removed), so it isn't beyond the scope of possibility that ships have anti-FTL.

Those have got to be some of the most OP stuff i've ever seen, with the
  • possible
(unlikely) exception of the Lorath missiles, which actually have the decency to have limitations. Come on, one of those even claimed to be small and lightweight.
So these are the reasons why the crazy idea of Anti-FTL exists? I think a severe look at what tech is being allowed needs to happen. Hence why I believe these proposed revisions should happen
 
Frost, I would like to remind you that you are pretty new, so don't expect us to appreciate you deciding so soon after you join that parts of the setting are OP. Regardless of whether they are or not, try actually RPing a bit more in the setting before declaring things which other people worked to create, which you have never used or seen used, are overpowered.

And honestly, it seems like all this is coming down to is a difference in GMing again. Uso likes playing things exactly to what specs say they can do, whereas Fred and Doshii both enjoy rewarding players for good, high-quality writing. Neither of you are wrong, but you're making it an argument anyway.
 
This is what has been debated for a while now, Frost. We have already agreed that it needs to change, and it's good that you agree. But, unless you have a proposition on how to change it, your sentiments are nothing new. The "how" is the purpose of this thread.

(Given the nature of text-only communications, I hope that you read this as a "here's the situation" notification -- since you're relatively new to the site -- and not intended to be read as derision in any way.)

Edit: Appears Aendri beat me to the punch.

Also, OP is relative to the other technologies in play. The situation as it stands came about because Yamatai and Nepleslia are the two oldest factions on the site and therefore have had time to up their technology base. The reductions being proposed would make the difference between them and younger factions a bit less insurmountable. Yamataian and Nepleslian technologies grew to the state that they are at now because the story universe they were linked to at the time featured tech that was was even more powerful than what is seen now (and was still a rather well-made roleplay since nearly everyone involved had near the same level of technology). Since we broke ties to that universe, we've been looking at ways of bringing things down to more reasonable levels. It's just been a very long process, as some like the way things are. Not many, but some.
 
Well, again, Uso hasn't been really reading what I wrote and only made the assumptions he wanted to use. My limiting factor to tactical jumps in combat is a simple give-and-take for the advantage gained along with a classic "the engines cannae take much more o' this, Keptin!"

Sooo... yeah. Going back to topic.

Wes said:
Here's my suggested changes to anti-FTL:

- Only planets can project AoE Anti-FTL fields (we need to figure out a good max range).
- Ships can still project Anti-FTL fields, but they are single target only.
- A ship can only use one Anti-FTL field at a time. Because of SCIENCE.
- Anti-FTL fields can only be used successfully on ships of the same or smaller size class.
- Anti-FTL fields don't stack
- These is no counter to an Anti-FTL field*

*Side effect: Because CFS/CDD will no longer be more effective against Anti-FTL, we will only need one FTL system on future ships. This means we can remove CDD from the CFS as has been suggested in this thread.

Long dissertation ahead:

I suggest we base off the AoE Anti-FTL range of planets by inspiring ourselves from Hill spheres.

aupload.wikimedia.org_wikipedia_commons_thumb_e_ee_Lagrange_po9150c7fc3aed18b6c354adc1a04a57d0.png
L1 through 5 are Lagrangian points. L1 and L2 probably illustrate what boundaries Earth's Hill Sphere has.

What are Hill spheres? They are the gravitational sphere of influence of planets; the maximum distance at which each individual planet's gravitational influence is stronger than the more distant sun and planets.

Following the above notion, Earth's Hill Sphere is 1.5 million kilometers in radius (5 light seconds), which is a fairly big playground considering Earth's moon is only 1.3 light seconds away from the planet. A ship dropping out from FTL would be 5 minutes away from the planet if it went at 5000kps. Perhaps enough time for any friendly forces present to respond to the attack the way Wes previously wished his defense networks would do.

5 minutes wouldn't be that long a time either, since more defending vessels would either be protecting installations maybe midway in the Hill Sphere, or guarding the perimeter proper. In this case, it'd probably be a lot better than the present Interdiction drive 499 light seconds in term of pacing and center most defense actions around points-of-interests like planets rather than any other random spot.

That's for Earth. Jupiter's Hill Sphere stands at 0.35 AU (roughly 175 light seconds) so in the case of gas giants, the distances to be crossed is a lot more significant and long - considering that'd end up taking nearly 3 hours to cross with that same 5000kps thrusters I mentioned earlier... ouch.

That does make me wish we still had some viable access to low-end FTL travel to make that more manageable - more on that later.

* * *

Convenient technobabble for the above could be that while a superluminal drive can endure entering certain gravity masses (such as that exerted by a star) but react poorly to being exposed to two major gravitic forces at the same time (a star's sphere of influence + a planet's Hill sphere) which would be why most superluminal vessels would drop from FTL speeds in order to close on such a body.

I suppose space stations could simulate their own Hill Spheres through an anti-FTL effect and via the same concept not be based on a planet, though they would need be based in a star's SoI to keep in theme.

As for single ship targeted Anti-FTL, I'd vote for the graviton beam to be repurposed to not only serve as our tractor beam equivalent, but also as something which would simulate the same effects. I like this a lot more than a vague single-target anti-FTL concept because it's an established object/technology that kind of goes in the same vein as the gravity mass idea. It can be hit, destroyed, and it's the best thing before actually striking a ship's FTL drives with weaponry.

In light of my above suggestion - if taken - we'd need to establish just what Anti-FTL means.
  • Does it mean no FTL propulsion while under the effect?
    • If so, then the only way to go back to superluminal speeds would be to physically exit the zone.
  • Does it mean that an actual hyperspace event still needs to be generated, but will be just delayed?
    • In that case, anti-FTL is really just a speedbump to departure, regardless of where a ship is. There will be a need to figure out how a ship going at FTL will behave when entering a anti-FTL zone, and how restarting FTL propulsion in that zone to cross through some part of it (either for movement or escape) will work.

* * *

I'll admit that I find it hard to justify, in that light, actually having ships with two separate FTL systems. The gimmick of saying that CDD is for use mainly in star systems feels weak. I like 'warp speed' style FTL, but not enough to be blind to the inconsistency.

Another point of concern is how this may mean that shuttles, to operate well, will require fold drives of their own to acceptably travel in a star system alone. Fold drives have been ingrained to have such high speeds that I'm mentally balking at that idea.

Finally, there's also the problem the Hill Spheres of gas giants like Jupiter will offer. 3 hours to get from the Hill sphere's boundaries to the gas giant itself (aside from the fact that such action would usually be undesirable) is really long. It really makes me wish that some faster alternative would be tastefully available.

Here's my thought on that. Shuttles and ships have thrusters. Those thrusters provide those ships with the necessary propulsion to give them speeds that are on a scale acceptable for navigating around planets, moons, asteroid belts and serviceable in combat - like my often mentioned 5000kps.

Shuttles and ships also have access to gravimetric engines (at least in regard to Yamatai, like in one of my earlier posts in this thread) that would serve to render space 'more slippery', allowing ships to travel at faster speeds provided the proper investment be made so that a 'tactical jump'-like burst of speed in ship-to-ship combat would have the proper caveats so to not be overpowered: from warm-up times/required time to generate proper 'warp bubble', wear-and-tear from quick combat activation, to compromising gravimetric shielding in favor of higher speeds.

Inside a planet's Hill Sphere, that would allow them their sublight speeds listed in our ship stats, such as the common 0.33c - going at 100 000kps would quicken travel across Earth's Hill Sphere from 5 minutes to 15 seconds; and travel across Jupiter's hill sphere in 8m45s. The former is a lot quicker, but not exageratingly so, and the latter makes for much better story pacing in comparison to almost 3 hours.

Outside the Hill Sphere, crafts with gravimetric drives would be able to go to near-lightspeed (almost 1c). In that fashion, they could acceptably travel through a star system in an acceptable traveling time value while still being inferior to a vessel capable of super-luminal speed. For example, if a Yamataian FTL vessel would fold out around Sol's Kuiper belt and then send a shuttle to Earth, it'd take that shuttle roughly 7.5 hours to cover a possible 55 AU distance (depending on planetary alignment)

A shuttle taking 5 minutes to launch from Earth and get out of its Hill sphere to then take 7.5 hours to get to the outer reaches of Sol's Kuiper belt sounds decent enough to me.

* * *

Finally, I'd motion to generalize somewhat the FTL method used for the setting. Interstellar traveling tech could be measured on the same speed-basis, but use different visuals to achieve it.

This would make it possible for me to use the warp-style FTL like CDD, Wes to use the teleportation-style fold (as seen in the classic-Macross anime series), and other people to use the wormhole-style FTL portals (like seen in the newer Macross Frontier anime). Launch visuals would be different for cosmetic/imagery purposes, but they'd all still essentially do the same thing - thus giving Wes what he wants, and giving the rest of us that would like to use different imagery what we want too.
 
Starships can be prevented from making FTL jumps by targeting them with a graviton beam. This effect is not cumulative (more graviton beams do not make it work any better) and it only works on ships of the same or smaller size class.

FTL devices other than teleportation modules cannot be used inside a planet's Hill Sphere.

Does it have to remain a constant or is it a one shot kill deal?
 
I'm not sure what Wes can reply to that. I'm not even sure I understand what you're getting at from the questions.

Soresu, can you elaborate on what you mean, and the intent behind the questions?
 
I think he's asking if the beam has to be maintained (like a tractor beam on Star Trek) or if it's a graviton beam that acts like a beam weapon (except it just knocks out the FTL thing for a limited amount of time, no other damage). Also, I would add in case it was also his intent, whether a hit by a graviton beam would kill the FTL capabilities of a ship until the means of FTL are repaired or whether it's a temporary inhibitor...to use terms from the old sailing days of yor, it would be the difference between using grappling hooks to keep ships together in a fight (tractor beam-style) and destroying the sails off the other ship to keep it from running (one-hit-kill of the other ship's engines).
 
Thanks MissingNo.

The way I pictured it, a graviton beam projector would be the usual device which is able to grab and then move/drag/tow an unshielded target as well as disrupt the FTL propulsion. A shielded target would not be seized, but the beam being projected over it would still disrupt use of FTL while it is maintained, and perhaps for a very limited time if the beam loses contact (a few seconds until the hardware can return to normal operation).

Since a shielded target is not seized by the graviton beam, it leaves room for the target vessel's navigator to try dodging it. Alternatively, it could be countered in a few other ways - the most obvious being to target and disable the offending projector.

If you have multiple vessels using graviton beams on a target, the effect is not cumulative, but the target vessel is mired in sublight as long as even one of those graviton beams lingers on it.

As for the vessel in pursuit, while the graviton beam is maintained, he has the extra time to try and target the FTL engines to disable them. I remember plenty of times in Star Trek (my oh-so-favorite reference point =P ) when a vessel was intent on escaping but couldn't because of non-dramatic damage to their warp drives; so a couple of well-placed hits could end up doing the trick without having to represent 'major damage' having been done to the target.

That way yields more interactivity and use than what we had before, so I'd see it as something positive. This said, I'm personally against the 'zap-and-your-FTL-is-disabled-for-x-amount-of-time' kind of graviton beam. I'm all for giving it a combat application to fill in the vaccuum of interdiction, but I'm not fond of the idea of further weaponizing it.
 
Are Anti-FTL beams going to move at C or will they be instant?

Will the MASC drive be bound by these rules?

And can we get an Anti-FTL page that has the explanation about hill spheres so players characters can talk about that when plotting their FTL movements?
 
Are Anti-FTL beams going to move at C or will they be instant?
Light-speed, probably.

Will the MASC drive be bound by these rules?
They should be.

And can we get an Anti-FTL page that has the explanation about hill spheres so players characters can talk about that when plotting their FTL movements?
Yes, we will need to create one.
 
I'm a little amazed. Uso didn't complain. does that mean he actually approves of the Hill sphere idea?

Wes said:
Will the MASC drive be bound by these rules?
They should be.

Well, the way I phrased it, MASC would actually be bumped up to be a Fold drive-equivalent superluminal propulsion system. Nothing stops Exhack from keeping MASC to its currently stunted speed values in comparison to Fold for purposes of faction flavor either.
 
I like hill-spheres, it gives a definable boundary to the 'planets create interdiction fields'. That is something that could be folded into the rules as they are now very effectively (see: No retcon, solid explanation/numbers for something we left undefined).

But I still like the Interdiction system we have now over the proposed single target one, but I would need to see more details put onto the wiki before I can comment any more than I already have.

And seriously, none of the rules count unless they go up on the wiki so to implement the Fred-Spheres proper it needs to go up as a wiki page. Everyone forgets what is said in these threads in a week or two.
 
These 'hill spheres' does this mean we will be required to draw up maps for every system, or every system we tend to go to now? Because if we do... it could be a very labor intensive process considering the number of stars we've visited in the SARPverse.

EDIT: I also think before any decisions are made regarding the MASC Drive, Exhack should be spoken to about this by Wes as the two of them had a prior agreement regarding the drive. After all it is his system so fair is fair regarding it. Since hopefully, we don't go about these changes in a way that pulls the rug out from under all the work the poor guy's put into the Iroma. Rules or no rules. So I'll try and see if I can either get Exhack in here or if something maybe arranged down the road to keep things running smoothly.
 
I'm sorry, but This isn't right.

This is completely dishonorable and unjust! I can't let Uso get away with what everyone here is content to let him do to the iroma! Appeasement will not be allowed, We are not a site made of Neville Chamberlains

Wes, if you are going to let Uso have his way with the technology of the Iroma, who Exhack, their faction manager, has built from the ground up, without any Iroma players or GMs pitching in on this, You are nothing better than the British parliament who taxed the american colonies to pay for their wars against the French! If you go through with this, you are nothing better than King Leopold of Belgium and his Belgian Congo! If letting the setting revisions go through means that Uso has his way with the Iroma, then I move that EVERYONE goes against setting reform. We voted on this for a reason, so that this wouldn't seem like Wes was a Tyrant. But if what Uso and Fred are pushing for goes through, then it is still a tyranny! Just a Tyranny of Wes' "Friends" who use Wes to push their own agendas through, against the wills of others.
 
Er... I have nothing to say about Five's post.

However, I thought the survey said that we weren't up for making all FTL systems point-to-point? Wouldn't that mean that the MASC drive is fine? Also, isn't it actually under-powered compared the the rest of the setting?

Anyway.

Exhack should get a look at this.
 
Oh wow Five. Way to just go and blow up and make yourself look ridiculous. If you're not somehow banned by this mudslinging, especially in Wes' direction, it'll show that Wes has a very tough hide and far more mercy than I would've ever had. as far as I know you were here on probation and promises of good behavior - and Wes was actually your strongest supporter... and now you start dissing at him like this? Wow.

It's nothing of the sort of what you said. MASC isn't being hurt. Actually, MASC can probably still do everything it needed to do, and provided Iroma ships act in Hill spheres that same as other ships, I really don't see what the big deal is. I mean, it's not like, when in a Hill Sphere, that you'll actually need to go at uberhigh speeds. I'm thinking that - hopefully - the lower-speed available in the Hill Sphere around Iroma worlds won't end up making a difference.

More importantly, in term of classification MASC is pretty much being but on par-and-equality with other superluminal systems like Fold (seeing how Fold is now going to fill up the role CDD had for Yamatai). This means that MASC only needs to be concepted as weaker as long as it suits Exhack's wishes to promote the flavor and pacing of activities in his faction.

I admit I'm interested to see if Exhack is cool with this, but I've seen him watch this thread in the past and read through its content while not leaving a reply. I was hoping that - seeing how there were no objections from him - that meant he was cool with the direction this was going toward.
 
I'd like to see CDD/CFS still being capable of sublight speeds though...if only as a backup STL propulsion system.
 
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