Reciprical Warp Drive

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is an alternate FTL drive for the Traveller game, instead of having a minimum distance required from an planetary body, this drive requires a minimum velocity relative to the most massive star in the system before the drive can be activated. this drive also has a secondary feature, it can accelerate the starship at its drive number times the acceleration of Earth's gravity when below the required velocity for Warp Drive activation, this replaces the maneuver drive which is used at lower tech levels.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Correction, I decided to make all the drives the same tech level and make it clear that these Warp Drives can also be used as Maneuver drives when the ship is below the velocity threshold for actually going to warp. These drives take up more volume than the equivalent maneuver drives that do the same thing, so if you want to make a non-warp spaceship it would be cheaper to use a maneuver drive, and the resulting ship would be more maneuverable as a result.

the setting this is used in also has artificial intelligence. the treatment of AIs is sort of like the way Psionics are treated in the classic traveler campaign, basically AIs are outlawed, but many ships have them anyway, its just that the AIs have to keep a low profile. I am assuming that a tech level advances once per century, so tech level 8 occurs in the 21st century, tech level 9 in the 22nd century and so on. it is not until the year 3000 AD that the reciprocal warp drive is invented in the Sol System, previous to that, the Maneuver drive in conjunction with low berths or without were used to colonize the nearby star systems. Although theoretically capable of achieving high fractions of the speed of light, most starships max out at 10% of light speed to avoid the complications with collisions and the heavy shielding required to protect against cosmic rays at such high velocities. So basically before 3000 AD, colony ships, as those were the only kind, took ten times the number of light years in years to reach their destination. the power plants had to be operating for the entire duration of the trip to keep the low berths operating, in some other cases people chose to take generation ships and live onboard giant moving cities, these move massive starships had thicker shielding and could reach 25% of the speed of light instead of just 10% Sleeper ships were smaller than the Generation ships because they did not have to support entire ecologies and farms onboard in route.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the Solar System as of the Years 3000 AD to 3050 AD, maybe you might recognize the source of my inspiration:
This setting is Tech Level 17 by the way, the Warp Drive was recently invented at the turn of the Millennium, before that these political entities were confined to the Solar System, some extra solar colonies were established using the maneuver drive and they quickly became independent due to the light years time lag, and the lack of any FTL drive prior to the 4th millennium. The United States of Jupiter was for a time ruled by a dictator, often referred to as "the Tyrant", he was later deposed and things have returned to normal.

 

[Old School]

Neat concept. I do think they are too slow. Hard to see tech levels this high using drives that are significantly slower than A TL11 combination of manuever and jump drives.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Neat concept. I do think they are too slow. Hard to see tech levels this high using drives that are significantly slower than A TL11 combination of manuever and jump drives.

Well it is a slow warp drive, but you start out with 6 drive numbers at 6 rates of speed, the fastest one moves at 417 times the speed of light, and that will bring us to Alpha Centauri in about 3.8 days, actually not too bad when compared to the Jump drive. It is called the reciprical warp drive because it goes at the reciprical speed from your entry speed when you enter warp. the low number warp drives require your ship to reach a higher sublight velocity before the warp drive will put you at warp Warp 1 goes at 100 times the speed of light after you reach 1% of light speed. For Warp Drive 6 you need only reach 0.24% of light speed before it puts you to 417 times the speed of light. 417 is the reciprical of 0.24%.


In this setting, the Jump Drive was never available, the Solar System and the nations listed therein were largely confined to the Solar System for 1000 years and the warp drive was discovered at the beginning of the 31st century. Of course warp drive vessles don't need seperate maneuver drives, so they can carry more cargo than the 3I counter parts. There are two competing superpowers in this setting, you have the United States of Jupiter, and the Saturnian Federal Republic which is sort of a combination of both Russia and China. Uranus is Europe, Neptune is Australia and so forth.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the completed Solar System. the starting point of this campaign setting.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is the nearest destination outside the Solar System

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is a map of sectors 1, 2, and 3. Each square is 1 light year across.