Anyone else read “The Expanse” series?

[Old School]

This ties in with my comments on my dreamed up homebrew setting in another thread. I think the MgT2 rules would have to be tweaked more for an Expanse type setting.

The deal with the Epstein drive is that is doesn’t have a specified limit on what acceleration it can produce. Every ship with an Epstein seems to be able to faster than humans can survive. Torpedoes have Epstein's as well, and because they have no crew they can reach much higher acceleration, although I don’t remember if a limit is ever specified. So either you have an Epstein or you don’t. No differences in size of drive as a percentage of the ships volume are apparent.

A setting with everyone getting a 1G handwavium drive plus high burn thrusters on warships, would be plausible, but I wouldn’t call it the Expanse setting.

The PDCs being gauss rounds vs lasers isn’t as big a deal. Short range beam lasers per the traveller rules would work fine. Only difference would be that pdc can run out of ammo in an extended fight.

 

[Condottiere]

I find non gravitated hulls viable even within Traveller, as cheap commercial options, especially for insystem traffic, especially as most commercials ships tend to be one or two geed acceleration in any case, so putting a cap at 1.4 seems reasonable. And healthy.

What I'm grappling with is one week non gravitated without a double hull or hamster cage, since it's not clear to me that you can accelerate in hyperspace.

 

[Old School]

Whats wrong with one week in null G?

 

[locarno24]

Whats wrong with one week in null G?

Nothing, given a decent exercise regime.

In the expanse, the ships are shown as being in acceleration far more often than not.
(and yes, I know, in part that's because filming 1G scenes is infinitely cheaper than 0G scenes, but it's also because 1G continuous makes it a heck of a sight faster to get anywhere!)

A setting with everyone getting a 1G handwavium drive plus high burn thrusters on warships, would be plausible, but I wouldn’t call it the Expanse setting.

I would just use the two narratively as a single system - i.e. you can use it for 1G without tracking fuel, but if you go to a high-G burn, you will have to deal with fuel limits (and the penalty for high-G environments!)

 

[Condottiere]

Sadly, everything begins to droop under gravitational load; however, it appears that how physical bodies are optimized to function under one standard gravity.

I'm no Bones, but apparently the moment you leave the sweet embrace of Mother Earth, your body starts breaking down, with any number of examinations and tests onboard spacecraft and after touchdown verifying that humans start losing bone and muscle mass, their eyesight worsens, and who knows what else. There was even one set of twins involved, to check the differences.

Based on my personal experience, the run of the mill human is not going to want to spend daily hours on a treadmill, especially if you're only a passenger, not a highly trained astronaut.

As far as I can determine, there's a range between seventy to one hundred forty percent of Terran standard gravity that will allow a human to inhabit without undue consequence to their general wellbeing,

With that information, I derive that minimum cruise speed would be 0.7 geed constant acceleration for a non gravitated hull, and 1.4 for long haul express.