Uh, looking at the starship speeds and map

[Firebrand]

I was just curious and bored, and I was looking at all the starship speeds and the distances and size of the map.

And it doesn't add up at all. Between the ludicrously high FTL speeds and STL speeds, the map should be far larger than what it is, because otherwise everything is within hours or minutes of each other. Going at the fastest speed of 0.75 LY/m and starting at Yamatai, it takes an hour and a half to go 120 Light Years.

And then you have the STL speeds, which are all kinds of crazy: A star system is a huge place, and with these STL speeds its effectively trivial to even go interstellar distances the long way.

Okay, Okay, I know what you're thinking. What's so bad about all of this? Well, in m opinion, I think that there being longish travel times, maybe a week or at least a day, between various destinations is good for RP. It gives time for things to happen and for PCs to decompress. It means there can be like tension and stuff, and it makes the world feel more broad and expansive. As it is with the FTL speeds we have, the setting feels small and crampled and ready to explode.

I think I have a rework for the FTL speeds and distances: We leave the distances the same, but we take a hammer to the FTL speeds and go in reverse. Rather than started with how fast we want things to be, we go with how long we want travel to take and go from there. Maybe we say we want it to take 1 week to go ten lightyears, and then go back. Or so on and so forth.

Just as a note, before people get up in arms about my impetuousness, this is just my suggestions and stuff.

 

[Moogle]

We tried. And by tried I mean failed. And by we, I mean myself and a handful of other people trying to suggest better idea. There's a whole thread on it in here somewhere

 

[Eistheid]

This deals with FTL

This deals with Map Size

 

[Nashoba]

As has been said, the subject of Map size and Reducing FTL speeds has been done over and over, and it never succeeds.

 

[OsakanOne]

Everybody wants this fixed except for Wes who enjoys his overwhelming advantage of numbers and the freedom to railroad anyone in the setting with ease, but then wonders why there's nobody to pit his toys against.

Like wrestling, heroes are worthless without villains, stakes and odds stacked against them.

This essentially makes all combat in the SARP functionally pointless against a larger force, ergo no conflicts of interest happen without trapping someone inside a solar system -- at which point, everybody gangs up at the gate and your house gets filled with angry thugs.

Its not fun but management doesn't care.

 

[Nashoba]

Actually the reason it has never succeeded varies, we had a plan to create clusters which would spread out the area and more than one person would be responsible for updates. It failed because very few people who agreed actually did their work.

The main issue Wes has is not as Osaka said, Wes is concerned with continuity, we have years of role play with events being documented. It creates some issues that in a previous war or mission it only took x number of hours, and now it takes days or longer.

 

[Moogle]

Not doing X because we have it RP'd in history is a pretty weak reason, given how we no longer have magics or ranged psionics.

 

[Aendri]

More to the point, we have enough BS science in the setting already that we could easily throw in some cataclysmic superevent that radically alters how fast we're capable of moving, or the distance between things, or so on, and we wouldn't even really have to justify it all that extensively to have it fit in.

 

[Moogle]

I was actually going to suggest a way to make GAO a "credible" threat the last time there was a discussion of this by finding some crazy bomb or something from the Black Claw that increased the distance between everything.

 

[paladinrpg]

You know, that's not a half bad idea.

 

[Nightowl]

A bomb that makes the whole galaxy move further from any other object? Must be one hell of a bomb.

I'm more for "navigation hazards", but it is hard to justify a galaxy wide event. I'm thinking more of "X faction's raiding ships have been randomly scattering mines throughout the spacelanes to harass shipping and hinder troop movement between planets" and something like a travel advisory for ship captains not to use their full speed in order to better detect and avoid mines. Something like the current trend of IED-ing convoy routes, forces people to slow down for safety. So technically, there will be no change in stats, the ships can still use their old speed, this avoids the need to retcon since it is a new event, but still slows down travel unless someone is in a tearing great hurry and wants to risk a mine strike. Most will probably slow down to avoid taking a hit for no good reason.

 

[Aendri]

Mines are literally worthless in a space system. The sheer quantity required to cover the ridiculously huge expanses of space that you would have to mine in order to limit access to a single, small system, would be utterly beyond any worth. You'd spend more on mines than entire space-faring nations could afford.

 

[Professor Chibi]

The mine idea only works if there's a single "lane" for ships to go through via the top speeds. If it's more like sins of a Solar empire where you bounce between gravity wells then yes the mines are only useful near the planets themselves.

 

[Aendri]

Mines aren't even useful on that scale. Mines are a concept that only work in a 2d combat theater, where up and down don't factor in as much. You would need exponentially more mines to cover the extremes of a solar system than a single flat disc of space, and the cost would beggar the nation that tried. Even if you stick just close to the planets themselves, the mines are more of a hazard to you than anything else, since they obstruct all movement, not just enemy movement, and the enemy isn't required to come that close anyway.

 

[Nightowl]

Is there really a need to mine/IED every lane? I do get the point about the amount needed, but you don't really need to flood it all, just one or two and people will have to slow down "just in case". You don't need to blow up every ship, no more than you need to blow up every vehicle that uses a road. Just even one in a hundred convoys being hit is enough to have a travel advisory out. Look at piracy, only a few hundred cases compared with the thousands of ships using areas like the Gulf of Aden or the Straits of Malacca, but it is still enough to get a "High Risk" warning out.

As for locations to mine, I'd say system to system straight lines. Not many reasons to fly in curves.

Anyway, it is an option and a suggestion. If people dislike it, you can just file it somewhere.

Edit: Er... Aendri, I'm talking about someone using mines as a harassment system against you, not you using it as a defensive measure.

 

[Moogle]

Mines are. . . Not an inherent danger. They're boring. Artificial. Not to mention, with FTL as I understand it, there is no dodging, ducking, dipping, or diving that sort of thing in transit, so all it would do is make less people travel.

 

[Aendri]

Well, and to be perfectly honest? You could leave your system headed in literally the opposite direction of the place you're going, and as soon as you hit FTL, the difference would be all of a minute or two with our FTL speeds. The problem is that mines are STATIONARY, not whether they're being used defensively or offensively. Mines, by their very nature, rely on restricted movement options, and that just flat out doesn't apply for a setting with planets as close together and speeds as high as they are. The travel time for even the slowest FTL ships is still so stupidly high that there's no real need to worry about picking an exact route to save time. You could pretty much swing by another planet for fries and a shake on your way, and only lose an hour or two.

 

[Arieg]

To be honest we probably need to figure out where FTL doesn't work in system and get comprehension on this distance.

 

[Aendri]

That's not the problem. The problem is that wherever you are in a system, you can leave it in any direction, and even at sublight speeds, be out of the system in a reasonable time frame. You can feasibly travel from major planet to major planet in less time than it takes to cross the US by car, even accounting for that STL speed. That means that travel is legitimately a non-factor, and makes mining anything, defensively or offensively, effectively impossible. You might get one ship, but you'd never get more than one.

 

[Arieg]

Yea mines.... good on the ground, terrible for everything else at least in SARP. Your better off with FTL capable anti-ship missiles, a star system wide Safeguard style defense system, and a good reaction force of strikecraft.