Warp Traveller

[Reynard]

Players able to jump anywhere in a subsector with ease and a sector with little trouble. That should be a referee's planning nightmare because you KNOW players will demand it. Traveller was built to use the limitation of jump so a small area could be fleshed out in greater detail. Warp will force worlds to be built more like a Star Wars or Star Trek universe with no actual location until the players need to be there for an adventure and will be described by the amount of time to reach it rather than distance. Rather than making maps, the referee makes a list of planets then a note saying how much time it takes to get between other worlds already visited.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Players able to jump anywhere in a subsector with ease and a sector with little trouble. That should be a referee's planning nightmare because you KNOW players will demand it. Traveller was built to use the limitation of jump so a small area could be fleshed out in greater detail. Warp will force worlds to be built more like a Star Wars or Star Trek universe with no actual location until the players need to be there for an adventure and will be described by the amount of time to reach it rather than distance. Rather than making maps, the referee makes a list of planets then a note saying how much time it takes to get between other worlds already visited.

You could create a set of pregenerated world cards. That is the Referee doesn't know where the players are going to go, but he would have a deck of cards with all the information he needs, so if the player heads 10 parsecs out, the referee draws a card from the deck with all the information he needs. You could also sort them by degrees of habitability, so if the PCs say they are looking for a specific type of world, you could draw from a particular deck and decide how far away it is from the player characters. I think on Average there is one truly Earthlike world per subsector, if the Referee is not fudging his rolls. An Earth clone world has a size of 8, an atmosphere of 6 hydrographics is more flexible as that is how we get desert worlds, jungle worlds and ocean worlds for variety.
The chance of throwing a 10 by rolling 2d6-2 is 3 in 36 so 3 in 36 worlds will be size 8.
To roll an atmosphere of 6 rolling 2d6-7+8 (size), you need to roll a 5, chances of that are 4 in 36 size 8 worlds. to get 36 size 8 worlds, so 1 in 432 worlds will have both a size of 8 and an atmosphere of 6, and each of those worlds will have hydrographics from 3 to A since a world can't have more than 100% hydrographics, this is basically what a Star Wars planet looks like. A subsector has 50% of its hexes with something in it, a subsector has 80 hexes in it, 40 of them are worlds Every 10.8 subsectors has what I call an Earth clone world or a "Star Wars" planet. A world where the atmosphere is breathable and the gravity is close to 1 g. A sector has 16 parsecs so there are 1.5 Earth clone worlds per sector so you roll 1d2 to determine how many Earth clone worlds their are per sector. Average distance between those worlds is 32 to 40 parsecs, with a warp 6 it would take 5.333 weeks to 6.666 weeks to travel from one sector to the next and just ignore all the other planets unless the PCs decide to do otherwise. There are 431 worlds that aren't Earthclose worlds, and in a society with warp drive, people are very picky, they want a world where their don't need a spacesuit or environmental suit to live on, most wouldn't even tolerate a respirator or a filter mask, all those planets are passed over to get to each Earth clone world. A typical setting would be a map that is 8 by 10 sectors across with about 120 Earth close worlds on average 256 parsecs by 400 parsecs Probably with a map of this scale, we'll want higher warp numbers Either a warp 30 to 40 would be ideal. We could have the warp drives scaled from warp 10 to warp 60 or we can just say that warp 1 allows the ship to travel 10 parsecs in a week instead of 1 and go from there.

 

[Reynard]

Yeah, see that makes it rougher for the referee when everything become a random draw for what happens next. A card system to hold system data can be good for easy access to mapped out worlds thought it could just as easy be a list on paper or a computer but it should not be a surprise scenario for the ref.

A game in which players with so much latitude in movement must have a way for the ref to control the scenarios over such a huge area so worlds become independent of a map but, instead, a location and journey time since warp is no longer dependent on stepping stones along the way. You see that in other RPGs that aren't dependent on map detail.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Yeah, see that makes it rougher for the referee when everything become a random draw for what happens next. A card system to hold system data can be good for easy access to mapped out worlds thought it could just as easy be a list on paper or a computer but it should not be a surprise scenario for the ref.

A game in which players with so much latitude in movement must have a way for the ref to control the scenarios over such a huge area so worlds become independent of a map but, instead, a location and journey time since warp is no longer dependent on stepping stones along the way. You see that in other RPGs that aren't dependent on map detail.

Stepping stones is an artificial device, a real starship which didn't have FTL wouldn't worry about stepping stones either. Distance traveled is a function of velocity and time. If I made a subsector map where every hex was 40 parsecs across instead of 1, then every hex would have an Earth Clone World in it, there would be 80 worlds on that map. With a Warp 10, it would take 4 weeks to travel 1 hex, with warp 20 it would take 2 weeks, and with warp 40 just 1 week.

Maybe I ought to redo that chart and indicate that the warp drive uses matter and antimatter as fuel while the maneuver drive just uses hydrogen for its fusion reactors. Now that's an idea. What of I also reduced the costs of spaceships but made up for the costs by making antimatter a significant part of the ship's cost? Does that seem like a good idea? I always thought Traveller spaceships were hideously expensive anyway. What if a Launch cost Cr1,400,000 instead of Cr14,000,000?
A Scout Type S costs Cr27,540,500 What if I made the Scout Ship without the antimatter cost Cr2,754,050 instead? and made the antimatter fuel cost Cr25,000,000 instead? That would be for, the 4 ton power plant or about Cr6,250,000 per ton of power plant, lets say its for 4 years of operation instead of just a month. After 4 years the antimatter in the power plant is depleted and the power plant is removed and replaced with another power plant with another 4 years worth of antimatter. Lets just say no fusion power plant is required if there is an antimatter power plant. Fusion power plants are used in system ships because they are much cheaper.

Refueling an antimatter power plant is a delicate process, and the antimatter costs way more than the power plant anyway so no one bothers. Antimatter power plants are sold like nonrechargeable disposable batteries. When a power plant uses up its supply of antimatter it is destroyed in some safe place, as their may be a residual about of antimatter left inside the magnetic bottle, the the result usually is an explosion out in deep space. Antimatter power plants have a lot of fail safes built in to prevent containment failures, it is simply not worth it to refill an old used power plant who's containment device may not be up to date with industry standards anyway. So instead of buying more antimatter, you buy a new power plant with antimatter in it. Unlike the rulebook, this antimatter is available at teck level 10, but it is much more expensive! Antimatter starships are not allowed to land in populated areas, on the off chance that an antimatter explosion might occur Starports are all located in space a safe distance from the inhabited planet, a space port handles all nonstarships including shuttles.

This would make this setting more Star Trek like, don't you think? I believe antimatter would not be legal on a planet's surface, only the military would have access to such stuff Antimatter starships would be designed like the Enterprise, that not designed to land.

What do you think of this?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You know, after thinking about this, I might as well incorporate the power plant into the warp drive itself, add the volumes of the warp drive and the power plant together, as otherwise all Warp A drive would require antimatter power plant A anyway, and that power plant would be there soley to power the warp drive anyway, as in Star Trek, the warp drive is also a power plant, and it could output power equivalent to the same letter fusion power plant. The warp drive is a huge vulnerability for the starship, warp drives would be eject-able, and if you did that, you may want an auxiliary power plant to power the ship and a separate maneuver drive as well so the former starship isn't dead in space. I figure a warp drive can be used as a maneuver drive, but you might want a separate maneuver drive anyway, in case you have to eject the warp core due to containment failure. The warp drive can separate from the starship and warp away to a safe distance or at least maneuver away to a "safer" distance if withing 100 diameters of a world. the warp core, all by itself may be able to accelerate at least 10 times as fast as it can accelerate when pushing a starship, lets say Warp drives can accelerate 10 to 60 gees when attached to a starship and can accelerate 100 to 600 gees when they are not. Since the warp drive cancels out all feelings of acceleration, those within the warp bubble do not feel the 10 to 60 gees when the starship accelerates that fast. Traditional fusion powered maneuver drives only accelerate at 1 to 6 gees, so they are considered slow, that is one option. People would use them still because they are so much cheaper than starships, a fighter however might be antimatter powered and would have a warp drive simply because it needs to catch up with a starship. The problem here is that starships would always outclass system ships within a gravitational well. Maybe you'd want this, this would explain why their are no fighters in Star Trek, it simply isn't worth while to have a 10 ton fighter with its own miniature warp core and its own supply of antimatter under the control of a single pilot in the cockpit. Starship combat would be between 100+ ton starships. Interstellar space travel would be expensive in this universe. It is at least good that you don't have that bulky hydrogen taking up space, thus you can have more staterooms or cargo space to pay off the cost of your warp drive, which is most of the cost of the starship. There would likely be no 100 year old starships in this setting, or else they would just sit in museums if they had historical significance, if 90% of your starship's cost is the warp drive + antimatter, you might as well just buy a new starship every time you run out of antimatter. Having seperate warp drives is just a device for the owner to customize his particular starship. Now a starship can last for more than four years by the way. The four years is actually running time. Lets call it warp years, when the warp drive is powered up the clock is ticking, when its powered down, its still consuming power for antimatter containment, but at a much lower rate, lets say a warp drive when powered down can last 400 years until its antimatter runs out if brand new. When a warp ship is parked in orbit, every 100 days it spends doing nothing uses 1 warp day of antimatter. The clock is ticking when the warp ship is maneuvering in orbit as well lets say a warp ship gets ten days of orbital maneuvering for every warp day of antimatter it has. Using a warp drive for maneuvering is still expensive, so a merchant might prefer to use his dedicated maneuver drive with auxillary fusion power plant instead and go from 1 to 6 gees, if pirates show up, then he just engages the warp drive to go ten times as fast, get to the 100 diameter limit quickly and then warp out!

How do these rules sound? I will make new tables for them if you like.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is what the new Drive Table looks like with considerations that were discussed:
A little typo here Warp Drive C is 34 tons, not 24! I'll submit a corrected table later along with some other tables including travel times.