New Paizo SF RPG: Competitor with Traveller?

[AnotherDilbert]

2001 was never hard sci-fi to begin with.

I have to agree with Shawn on this point as 2001 was released in 1968 which nearly a decade before the demarcation between Hard and Soft Science fiction became a literary talking point.

A tangello colored dog is still tangello, even if the color “tangello” wasn’t defined when it was born. That its classification hasn’t been updated according to this or that database doesn’t mean that it isn’t Hard Science Fiction.

Agree with that.

I do not have high expectations of movies, anything that does a good job of showing weightlessness, and the effect of spinning habitats and acceleration, as I vaguely recall 2001 doing, gets a gold star from me.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

But Jump requires a "supercomputer".

So the trivialness on realspace navigation is irrelevant to shipboard computers.

Now, if you questioned why spacecraft can only use a single computer at the same time...

Evasion, and Fire Control are also unnecessarily “supercomputer” rating software. There is no case to be made, outside of the purely fictional “Jump Calculations”, for a supercomputer. Better to just drop the computer to the size of minimum nonsense.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Have you tried hitting a small violently manoeuvring object, that tries to not be seen and not be hit, at 300 000 km with a meson gun?

Have you tried to scan for and keep tracking simultaneous identity, attitude, vector, and location for a few thousand enemy, friendly, and non-combatant craft in a few million (or hundred million) km, some of whom (or you yourself) may be travelling at relativistic speeds?

We know that current warships certainly do use supercomputers.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Oh, it should also be noted that they’ve only recently been able to fully simulate an internal combustion engine, which also requires supercomputing power.

Fully simulate? Every gas molecule? The deformation of every imperfection in the metal? In real-time? You seem have access to better computers, and better physical models, than I have ever heard of.

 

[Nerhesi]

The problem is that Hard Science fiction isn't an absolute definition. It is obvious by your bias here that you seem to connect Hard Science fiction with "Realism".

Hard Science fiction, just as equally, does not have to be realistic at all, just internally consistent. By definition, it needs something that is NOT realistic, hence the fiction aspect - and this is not just the story.

So error here is in your assumption that your personal defition of Hard Science fiction, isn't the only one, nor was it ever the one intended for traveler (which always had jump drives, meson guns, and a ton of other unrealistic handwavium).

No, Hard Science Fiction does have an absolute definition; that being minimalist application of broken physics; which, in essence, puts it firmly within “realism”, to the extent it can still be called “Science Fiction”.

Unfortunately, that is blatantly false. That is your definition - not an absolute definition.

Example - from published works:

There is a degree of flexibility in how far from "real science" a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF. Some authors scrupulously avoid such technology as faster-than-light travel, while others accept such notions (sometimes referred to as "enabling devices", since they allow the story to take place)but focus on realistically depicting the worlds that such a technology might make possible. In this view, a story's scientific "hardness" is less a matter of the absolute accuracy of the science content than of the rigor and consistency with which the various ideas and possibilities are worked out.

Therefore, there exists at least opinion, and it is even more rigorous (published, quoted partially on Wikipedia) that disagrees with you. Therefore, there is no ABSOLUTE definition.

So basically, your argument is your opinion, and is no more valid than any other. Granted - it is less valid actually because it would seem published media, and the vast majority in this post disagree with you - therefore, without absolutes, you're opinion is not shared by the majority. (Read: Less valid, not any more correct or incorrect).

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Have you tried hitting a small violently manoeuvring object, that tries to not be seen and not be hit, at 300 000 km with a meson gun?

Have you tried to scan for and keep tracking simultaneous identity, attitude, vector, and location for a few thousand enemy, friendly, and non-combatant craft in a few million (or hundred million) km, some of whom (or you yourself) may be travelling at relativistic speeds?

The difficulty with hitting a target has nothing to do with the extent that calculation can be used to overcome that difficulty. There are problems computers can’t solve, like evaluating the choices of a sophont. The movement of an enemy ship along an assumed course, however, is trivial vector math.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Oh, it should also be noted that they’ve only recently been able to fully simulate an internal combustion engine, which also requires supercomputing power.

Fully simulate? Every gas molecule? The deformation of every imperfection in the metal? In real-time? You seem have access to better computers, and better physical models, than I have ever heard of.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among others, is pioneering this sort of research into ICE efficiency.
Oh, and here’s more, being done by Argonne National Laboratory.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Unfortunately, that is blatantly false. That is your definition - not an absolute definition.

No, that is its absolute definition. It’s the criteria against which material should be judged which is vague.

You’re arguing about the border of the Gaza Strip when we’re talking about the location of Jerusalem being in Israel; it doesn’t matter where Gaza ends... Jerusalem is still in Israel.

 

[fusor]

No, that is its absolute definition. It’s the criteria against which material should be judged which is vague.

Cite please.
If there's an absolute definition of hard science fiction then you should be able to find it and point it out to us, right? It seems that the reality is that there are about as many definitions for it as there are authors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction
http://www.tor.com/2016/01/21/how-do-you-like-your-science-fiction-ten-authors-weigh-in-on-hard-vs-soft-sf/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ben-bova/what-is-hard-science-fict_b_6594994.html

 

[legozhodani]

What has any of this to do with the OP?

 

[Reynard]

It's a Traveller thing.

 

[rust2]

What has any of this to do with the OP?

Nothing, but at least it has inspired me to search and use the "Ignore User" function of this forum. :wink:

 

[Reynard]

Wait, you can do tha..........

 

[Condottiere]

The Force is strong with this one.

 

[legozhodani]

I never use the 'ignore' buttons. There is always something I could learn or be amused by. I was just curious likethe OP about what other scifi games there are out there. Been playing traveller since '79 so doubt I could ever bother to move, just curious.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The difficulty with hitting a target has nothing to do with the extent that calculation can be used to overcome that difficulty. There are problems computers can’t solve, like evaluating the choices of a sophont. The movement of an enemy ship along an assumed course, however, is trivial vector math.

I think you missed a few points. We have no idea how a fictional meson gun works, or how fictionally difficult it is to control. We have no idea how good fictional sensors are. So we have no idea what the computer is actually doing.

You do not know where the target is. You have an approximation of where the target were a while ago, and an approximation of what vector the target had. You have no idea what the target have done since. You are firing at a probability cloud. But the uncertainties are not entirely random, giving your computer something to calculate.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

I do not have high expectations of movies, anything that does a good job of showing weightlessness, and the effect of spinning habitats and acceleration, as I vaguely recall 2001 doing, gets a gold star from me.

There are scenes in 2001 that have billowing clouds in vacuum, and a ship's captain leaning on the back of someone's chair in zero-g.

Hard-sci-fi is just slang for rule-of-cool (if you're into simulators, which Traveller and many a sci-fi are not). Was hoping T-T had found his HardSF RPG by now, that the world so desperately needs, apparently.

T-T, you wouldn't happen to be Ryan in Boston who loves robots, would you?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

The difficulty with hitting a target has nothing to do with the extent that calculation can be used to overcome that difficulty. There are problems computers can’t solve, like evaluating the choices of a sophont. The movement of an enemy ship along an assumed course, however, is trivial vector math.

I think you missed a few points. We have no idea how a fictional meson gun works, or how fictionally difficult it is to control. We have no idea how good fictional sensors are. So we have no idea what the computer is actually doing.

You do not know where the target is. You have an approximation of where the target were a while ago, and an approximation of what vector the target had. You have no idea what the target have done since. You are firing at a probability cloud. But the uncertainties are not entirely random, giving your computer something to calculate.

When in doubt, you extrapolate from real circumstances.

How a single weapon performs a firing operation on a stated target won’t be governed by some “central computer”; it will be a subsystem installed as part of the weapon. Given the size of the stated weapons, those systems are small.

“How good” a Sensor is has nothing to do with anything; the relevant part is, “What does the useful data consist of?”. A sensor is only going to report information in a useful capacity over the network. Position, orientation, velocity, rotation, acceleration, and angular acceleration are important for ships, and that’s 17 values each. The masses of planetary bodies, and the details of their orbits, are 7 values each. There will be some voxel data for radation sources of various kinds, but cubes of 1.5m per side is plenty useful, and easy enough as a minimum requirement. Multiply the dTonage of an object by 4, and then assume at least 8 bytes per cube, and then multiply that by how many different readings, and how many different objects must be visible at once (GMs usually play it like only one). The datasets really aren’t that large.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

There are scenes in 2001 that have billowing clouds in vacuum, and a ship's captain leaning on the back of someone's chair in zero-g.

Hard-sci-fi is just slang for rule-of-cool (if you're into simulators, which Traveller and many a sci-fi are not).

Failure of a director to achieve complete realism within the limits of earthbound resources is by no means a failure to achieve Hard Science Fiction.

No, it is not slang for anything. That you think it is only reveals your ignorance.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

A sensor is only going to report information in a useful capacity over the network. Position, orientation, velocity, rotation, acceleration, and angular acceleration are important for ships, and that’s 17 values each. The masses of planetary bodies, and the details of their orbits, are 7 values each. There will be some voxel data for radation sources of various kinds, but cubes of 1.5m per side is plenty useful, and easy enough as a minimum requirement. Multiply the dTonage of an object by 4, and then assume at least 8 bytes per cube, and then multiply that by how many different readings, and how many different objects must be visible at once (GMs usually play it like only one). The datasets really aren’t that large.

I fear for your players.