GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
I've read those books. You are being overly charitable.
Traders and Gunboats - Has Landed!
- Thread starter MongooseMatt
- Start date
except you would not only trip an alarm but also have a lot to cut thru. not really realistic
i actually would have a hard time naming a worse one. for example, it took four versions of the 6ed CRB to get a playable one
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
If I can cut through an armored hull, then it should be simple to cut through a fuel tank. Also, nowhere does it say that the fuel tank isn't one big tank that wraps around most of the ship. I am not worried about a fuel tank alarm in a firefight. "Oh no! The fuel tank got shot!" I am fairly certain this happens often as most fuel tanks aren't armored, but they are self-sealing for the smaller holes. Use explosives (grenades) on the crew first. They won't even bat an eye when a fuel tank alarm goes off on an empty fuel tank.
Do you know what it takes to store liquid Hydrogen? Plus if you think the tank is just a huge open space you don’t understand anything about structure integrity. I suggest you look at cutaway drawings of various real rockets.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Cost of fuel tank, essentially none, tends to imply it's integrated with the hull.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah, so a hull-cutting tool should go right through it. Same with explosives designed to breach ships' hulls.
murphzero
Mongoose
I think, when we are all discussing an imagined universe where faster-than-light travel is commonplace and psionics exist, any insistence on hyper-realism is going to necessarily be selective.
Rather than insisting on your imagined theory of far future realism, it would be more useful to identify in game consequences of a given alternative theory and detail the pros and cons that go along with that alternative.
e.g. "if you allow cutting into a starship's fuel deck, you will need to account for the chance of missing the target or the fuel tank not being empty."
There is no reason that an imagined future where tons of hydrogen fuel can be converted into faster than light travel cannot also contain devices capable of cutting through the side of a ship's fuel tank.
More useful would be a list of possible mishaps (detected, in-tank security robots, trace fuel ignition, etc) that could make such an attempt an interesting part of an adventure.
For example, without getting too real, if a tank full of hydrogen gas is vented into hard vacuum because a cutting charge blew a hole in it, would hydrogen ignite in the absence of oxygen? it shouldn't, but perhaps the breach is also venting from elsewhere....or would it just vent out?
The hard science answers don't have to rule the day, but if you made the decision that the fuel could ignite in some fashion, then you have to deal with an enterprising PC/villain who will deliberately try to place a cutting charge against a ship's fuel tank to blow it up.
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CordwainerFish
Emperor Mongoose
And at the end of the day, "hard SF" has rarely meant more than "the author uses sciencey words to describe their magic".
I don’t doubt there’s a way to cut into the tank my point was that just cutting in and moving around especially in combat isn’t realistic at all. The tanks are specifically designed to hold in high pressure ultra cold liquids in a vacuum environment. You can hand wave all realism in the name of sci-fi if you want but you might as well be playing a fantasy game instead of a sci-fi.
By the way it’s not Hydrogen Gas read the books it’s Liquid Hydrogen so you not venting your exploding once you crack the tank, pressure being even greater in that case. Even worse since you’re superheating the pressurized hydrogen while trying to cut into the ship.
You can allow whatever you want in your game but I would tell my players that trying to do that durning combat is a sure way to be rolling up new characters. Now don’t get we wrong I applaud my PCs for thinking outside the box but I’m not going to hand wave the realistic challenges or support something absolutely impossible just to make my players happy.
murphzero
Mongoose
I think the larger point is that the pursuit of realism, in the context of a game that utterly depends on being unrealistic, is wasted effort.
There are rules, there are interpretations, and there are the game effects that result from them.
Game effects offer & deny choices to players, with dice rolls to sort out uncertainties. These have real world, game-mechanic rationales that matter.
Rationales within the setting for why a given rule exists are fluff, regardless of whether they are earnest attempts at science or merely pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.
There are rules, there are interpretations, and there are the game effects that result from them.
Game effects offer & deny choices to players, with dice rolls to sort out uncertainties. These have real world, game-mechanic rationales that matter.
Rationales within the setting for why a given rule exists are fluff, regardless of whether they are earnest attempts at science or merely pseudo-scientific gobbledygook.
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
Special Forces p119 has rules on that.
If you’re going to throw out any form of realism than you are not playing a sci-fi. Also claiming that the game depends on being unrealistic says your playing fantasy. Sci-fi might not always depend on our current knowledge for everything it is based no imagined advancing in knowledge. When the rules don’t cover a what happing you have a choice of one of two guiding principles 1) this is sci-fi so we draw on real life and scientific knowledge, or 2) this is fantasy so it’s magic.
GypsyComet
Emperor Mongoose
The Battletech RPG "A Time of War" in its first pass. That book is enormous, didn't need to be, and revels in it.
The RPG for the French setting of Cadwallon (home of the Rackham skirmish game Confrontation), though that can be blamed mostly on only one translation pass from French.
The first edition of the RPG for the Warzone setting, only partially attributable to translation, as some of the placement issues transcend language.
It also has Science in it. You should just go ahead and play Starfinder fantasy in space seems to be your thing.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I figure that Traveller is Science Fantasy, not Science Fiction. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We have trouble figuring out what may occur at TL-8 with any degree of accuracy, so anything beyond that definitely falls into Science Fantasy more so than Science Fiction. FTL travel is science fantasy, not science fiction as We have no evidence that FTL is even possible. We have hypothesis that it might be possible, but none are strong enough to actually become theories, much less laws of physics. Just look at CT and how they thought computers would advance in the future. In hindsight CT looks more like Spacepunk as opposed to Science Fiction.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Fusion power plants - science fiction
reaction drives based on fusion - science fiction
gravitics - science fantasy, or are they? Could it be our current theories are close to a breakthrough but we are not there yet?
FTL - science fantasy, but again is there any truth to the multidimensional nature of reality as proposed by many scientific theories, could we one day use other dimension to sidestep Einstein's stranglehold on FTL
psionics - fantasy, or will we discover that the quantum nature of our consciousness can do a lot more than we ever thought possible?
Push gravitics to TL9 and then jump to TL10 and you have TL8 as a fusion engine near future hard sci fi setting.
Unless you can show that any of the current crop of GUTs and TOEs have the potential for gravitics or interdimensional travel...
I always think of James Clark Maxwell - before his equations the universe of electromagnetic radiation was not only unknown, we didn't even know it was possible. Every technology we have now based on frequencies of electromagnetic radiation beyond visible light would be magic. You can't accidentally discover the radio transmitter and receiver unless you understand the wild theory of electromagnetic fields which may or may not be correct - fortunately it proved itself to be correct.
*ps I know we had discovered IR and UV as beyond the visible spectrum but no one had a clue what was going on, Maxwell and others opened up a whole new paradigm - to get gravitics a similar paradgim shift will be needed, and jump requires yet another.
reaction drives based on fusion - science fiction
gravitics - science fantasy, or are they? Could it be our current theories are close to a breakthrough but we are not there yet?
FTL - science fantasy, but again is there any truth to the multidimensional nature of reality as proposed by many scientific theories, could we one day use other dimension to sidestep Einstein's stranglehold on FTL
psionics - fantasy, or will we discover that the quantum nature of our consciousness can do a lot more than we ever thought possible?
Push gravitics to TL9 and then jump to TL10 and you have TL8 as a fusion engine near future hard sci fi setting.
Unless you can show that any of the current crop of GUTs and TOEs have the potential for gravitics or interdimensional travel...
I always think of James Clark Maxwell - before his equations the universe of electromagnetic radiation was not only unknown, we didn't even know it was possible. Every technology we have now based on frequencies of electromagnetic radiation beyond visible light would be magic. You can't accidentally discover the radio transmitter and receiver unless you understand the wild theory of electromagnetic fields which may or may not be correct - fortunately it proved itself to be correct.
*ps I know we had discovered IR and UV as beyond the visible spectrum but no one had a clue what was going on, Maxwell and others opened up a whole new paradigm - to get gravitics a similar paradgim shift will be needed, and jump requires yet another.
Apparently you don’t understand what science fiction is. It’s not about accuracy if it was that it would be just fiction about predicting what science may someday develop. Look at Jules Vern’s writing which is very classic science fiction.
Science fantasy is defined as “Science fantasy is a subgenre of speculative fiction that combines elements of both science fiction and fantasy. Science fantasy stories are scientifically logical and often include explanations for any supernatural elements.”
While Science Fiction is defined as “fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.”
Traveller is absolutely in the latter category and has no supernatural elements in it. Using your definition you remove basically the genre of Science Fiction since by its definition it portray things that are not proven by science.
By the way we have several FTL theories https://sites.imsa.edu/hadron/2024/...d-limit-is-faster-than-light-travel-possible/ these have been proven by math which is often the only proof we have for advance physics Chaos theory is another example as is quantum physics neither has been proven outside of mathematical proof.
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