Slower Than Light Starships

[Tom Kalbfus]

For My Timeships campaign, I decided to set it on a timeline where there is not otherwise any other FTL drive, the only problem is that the Time Drive does not arrive until Tech level 20. On my timeline that does not occur until 2766 AD, there is a lot of time to colonize the stars using slower than light drives. Below is an example of a Far Trader without the Jump Drive, the jump fuel tank remains and with a reactionless drive, the results can be pretty impressive:

Not this setting has everything the OTU has except no Jump Drive. Research on faster than light technology instead focused on the creation of tachyon particles using unstable wormholes, the tachyon particles kept on disappearing after a certain distance was crossed, so while the researchers were working on the mechanics on how to build a Time drive, colonization of nearby stars proceeded using the reactionless maneuver drive only. Low Berths were often used to save on life support and in storing multiple year's supply of food for the crew. This thread will concentrate on the economics of slower than light starships, and what that means. Of course the Solar System gets developed much more extensively, with terraforming projects going on with Mars and Venus, since interstellar travel is much more time consuming and expensive. A starship can make several interstellar trips in its operational lifetime, after each trip and expensive overhaul is required, a lot of the ship's parts will need to be replaced or upgraded.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

A possible destination for a slower than light campaign with 4 habitable planets.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is a sample of the landscape of Aurora

As I said before, this setting is also part of my Timeships timeline. An alternate timeline was created when the inner planets of the Solar System were removed to make way for the construction of a ringworld, sometime beyond the year 3000 AD, since these planets were of sentimental value, giant timedrives were created that were capable of transporting entire planets, those planets were sent to the nearest sunlike star, which was Alpha Centauri, but in the past, along with a bunch of low tech humans. Aurora is future Earth sent into the past. Boreas is Future terraformed Venus. Heimdall is a future terraformed Mercury, Frigga is a future terraformed Mars. A future Earth's Moon still orbits Aurora. The names were chosen before the true nature of those planets were discovered, they just at first considered the sizes to be an amazing coincidence. Slower than light starships arrive in this system from Earth, and they have a lot to keep them busy, and have some natives to deal with as well.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here are four slower than light common starships. One common run is to go between the Solar System and Alpha Centauri and back. The four planets of the alpha Centauri system are populated by primitive humans, the highest native tech level there is TL 3. There is some debate with the halls of the UN about what to do about them. Since there is a lot of disagreement among the various nations, no action has been taken, each country and company has their own policies, some have claimed territory while others dispute it. There is a fair bit of conflict over the various resources of the Alpha Centauri System, and some conflict with the natives as well. Sometimes proxy wars are initiated with interested power arming the natives to be used as troops against rival factions.