Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

[crazygrox]

Waiting at jump 3 for the next war is probably sensible, but depending on how the fourth war goes they might urgently need further technological improvements before the fifth war starts.

 

[gammoregan]

So will they be able to use the jump-3 drive along with that double-jump technique to go beyond jump-3, for ships that carry a double load of fuel?

I imagine an interstellar civilization with all 3 of these things compared to just jump-2 and nothing else would be almost night and day.

 

[Asmodyne]

So happy to see even more of this! The Saunders aspect is interesting, and I think its neat to see more people building on top of what she has brought to the table.

 

[Cyrus2]

I like that she's leaving hints in her work for others to pick up and expand upon.

 

[Fumbles]

I love how Mira has a complex mix of friendly concern, professional obligation, and intellectual curiosity going on. It's nice to enjoy a character that isn't one-note.
Our main character and the topic of her concern also continues to impress and entertain.

Chiming in with others, I love seeing how the scientists and engineers around her make use of the theory she produced. Makes the setting and her surroundings important, instead of window dressing.

I imagine this drive, created with her pseudo-magical engineering power, will have quite the reputation among technicians, spacefarers, and the public alike.

 

[Blade4]

To be honest, I really like the idea of other scientists picking up where Sofia left off and nabbing innovations for themselves. Sure, Sofia could trailblaze the entire tech tree on her own but there'd be no point, since the Confederation wouldn't be able to keep up with that sort of ridiculousness. Sofia was trying to stall her creations anyway; now she gets a totally natural method by which to pace the stuff she makes!

Also, I like the idea of Dr. Saunders getting something to show for his work. I'm sure he's very happy and feeling mighty fulfilled, and that's enough to make me happy. I'm simple like that.

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At the same time the Confed looks to know she is a full on anomaly but a bloody useful and loyal one. They just dont know how to talk to her about it and she is to scared to talk for fear she will be locked up in a cage or a padded cell. Which is going to leave Mira in a very awkward and perhaps dangerous place trying to act as mediator and friend. Still Sophia is very young and she has dropped enough if the Confed is not stupid they can thrive hard. Though the coming spy games are going to get insane. The Vilani are going to be beyond desperate to get a jump 3 drive but direct war could go very bad very fast. Offers of mountains of gold or nobility for scrap of technical data. Trying to seize any ship they think might have one. Perhaps a actual envoy from the Vilani government to cut some actual deal not just a frontier governor doing things becuase the actual government is to far away to even try to manage things?

 

[Fellgar]

Transhuman Protocols (Generic Cyberpunk) cost me 600cp, but it was worth every point.

As the perk description said, "You can take any technology or procedure that you understand and easily figure out the flaws, pitfalls, drawbacks, and unintended or negative consequences, and as long as you put in the time you'll figure out how to get past them."

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Oh yeah. It is all coming together. Not socially applicable but the ability to make sure the machine you build does something in exactly the way you want it too. Yeah. Worth.

Author's Note:

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Yes, cue the screeching that Sophia is actually letting the jumpdrive research be led by someone else, down another path. And yes, it's largely due to the emotional reasons she acknowledges herself. But she still has an entirely logical point that with the original main quest completed – which it was, in chapter 8 – she doesn't have to operate on super time pressure anymore, and that not forcing the pace too much both avoids spooking her chain of command and lets the social dislocations of what she's doing not go supercritical.

Still figuring out which tech tracks and what big social effects I should try next, but at least I can progress some characters and set some stages.

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Meh, it serves a purpose. Not what I would have done but I can see why she would do it. Frankly all I care about is that BT teleport ftl is getting implemented. It has advantages over the normal jump tech like the ability to travel through space between systems, the fact that technically it is instant travel, the fact that at the far end there is a way to get up to jump 18 at least. Frankly it looks to have more potential then the jump tech in the canon of the setting.

So I am interested in seeing what new tech your going to have her pick up. You have a decent ftl method in both movement and communication. So what next? Better slow then light drives? Ones that give insane maneuverability in real space? Something that would provide a massive tactical advantage and a lesser strategic advantage? Where you could go from mercury to pluto within a half a day or something?

 

[Blaflaix]

I was just self-aware enough to realize that I hadn't realized how lonely I'd been until I actually had someone to talk to that wasn't a co-worker or someone else I could keep at a professional distance.

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So another side would be that they notice Sophia doesn't have any close friends and her social "safety-net" is a bit threadbare.
Isolated people can get pretty squirrley without any social checks stopping them, and it would only take one bad breakup to spiral into "I'll show him, I'll show them all!"

Preemptive counseling/friending would seem like a good precaution.

 

[Blade4]

Actually what are the chances of if the Vilani government upon finding out about ftl coms and jump 3/free jumping they send a full delegation to earth? With a blank check as long as they get the tech and preferably Earth into the empire in some fashion. Yes the reflex thing to do would be war but to deal with earth would mean marshaling a horrifying amount of their fleets and putting them a relative few hands to try and drown earth but even that might no be enough. If they have those kind of breakthroughs they might have others that could make direct battle to dangerous and frankly they could. If Sophia drops anti missile systems and navy ppc and lasers? The Confed could make key node systems slaughterhouses while raiders = rampage through back lines and the Vilani would be hard pressed to stop them.

The vilani should really really want this tech. Their empire is so large it literally only functions because of social engineering keeping things in line and cannot expand at all without risk of fracturing. Just a ftl com line between periphery capitals and homeworld would greatly ease the bureaucracy and speed up critical decision loops. The ftl drive advances would allow the Vilani to enter a new expansion phase. Of course many in the empire would rather these secrets stayed locked up and the status quo stay...

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

Trying to just be The Golden Goose what Earth will not want to risk The Goose. Without being The Weapons Grade Uranium Goose that gets taken to a black site and never leaves? Is rather reasonable.

If, part of me now having made than analogy wants to see the, "Peace was never an option," Untitled Goose Game Goose turning up just for the hell of it.

 

[asdsaadsasd]

I really liked this chapter. Maybe it's because I enjoy watching determined highly motivated competent individuals working like clockwork to achieve a goal like in say the better episodes of Star Trek.

In my opinion one reason why most Forge stories fizzle out is that the MC in those stories makes all scientists and engineers in their setting obsolete so there's not much of a story left as why would they interract with anyone if they can do everything on their own. Some add an AI to have someone for the MC to talk to but that does not allow us to be immersed in the world.

On a re-read I really liked the interactions with the terraforming team where Sophia met the staff helped them achieve their goals using their own aproach and the data they spend a large part of their lives collecting. If she would have solved the terraforming project with say nanobots and made all the teams efforts be in vain it would not have felt half as good.

Thank you for the chapter.

 

[Vrenze]

I like that she's leaving hints in her work for others to pick up and expand upon.

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She didn't do that intentionally though. She explicitly stated she didn't realize the math could be used to leapfrog the Jump-3 development and was surprised by it.

The vilani should really really want this tech. Their empire is so large it literally only functions because of social engineering keeping things in line

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It functioning entirely because of social engineering is exactly why Earth cannot be allowed to continue existing once they find out about both things, possibly even just the FTL comms. Earth is too much a destabilizing element that, from the Empire perspective, barely looked at the idea of Jump tech before improving it beyond Empire capability AND made a better communication method.

 

[Blade4]

It functioning entirely because of social engineering is exactly why Earth cannot be allowed to continue existing once they find out about both things, possibly even just the FTL comms. Earth is too much a destabilizing element that, from the Empire perspective, barely looked at the idea of Jump tech before improving it beyond Empire capability AND made a better communication method.

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Save by the time they find out about it and confirm Earth will have upgraded and probably won a war or perhaps 2. The frontier governor really wants that war but the tech upgrades mean that trying will probably end up with their fleets out flanked and slaughtered so by the time news reaches the homeworld in like 5? years earth could have seized a good section of said frontier and be digging in and by the time the empire can marshal fleets a decade or two could pass making it even worse odds. the shadow emperor and his court might decide diplomacy and trying a generational strategy trying to bring Earth into their system is better than trying to fight a war they have functionally already lost.

 

[SemiSaneAuthor]

the shadow emperor and his court might decide diplomacy and trying a generational strategy trying to bring Earth into their system is better than trying to fight a war they have functionally already lost.

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That requires said Interstellar Empire to be rational actors. With things like, "Starting an Interstellar Empire when you have Jump Two and can't have FTL Comms," is ... Well, that requires vision. But not rationality.

 

[Ovid]

So, I know nothing about GURPS. So I'll view this through a Stellaris filter. The problem with developing a new FTL drive that lets you ignore previous blocking-terrain, is that the newly opened up territory might already be claimed. Could be a Devouring Swarm that wants to eat all your biomass, could be a Fanatic Purifier who thinks your existence is an affront to their gods, could be a Fallen Empire who just had a insect violate their borders.

What I mean to say is, that tester ship could very well be getting into a crap load of trouble if the cosmic dice roll badly. At best, unclaimed space for humanity to expand to. Mid-tier, a neutral empire that could be an ally or trade opportunity. At worst, an active threat to humanity's existence.

I'm unsure if I want the MC on it for the test voyage. If hostile empire, she could be forced to escalate rapidly. But also runs the risk of her dying with the ship.

 

[wellis]

She hasn't built a jump-9 ship yet, is the thing. She has blueprints in her head for Battletech jumpships, which would be the equivalent of jump-9 once built, but the k-f jump drive needing hundreds of tons of germanium as a catalyst to work means she didn't feel she could convince anyone to sign off on building a prototype until she'd proved her jumpspace theories.

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Honestly, I think other Traveller setting FTL drives would be better than K-F jump drives. While these other drives also fall under the "parsecs per week" aspect of the OTU jump drive, their mechanisms are often quite different and how the "parsecs per week" range differs, in my opinion, makes them more flexible than the OTU jump drive:

1. Zimm Drive
The Zimm drive is the FTL drive of the Cepheus Engine setting, Clement Sector. This setting is a small ship setting thanks to particular quirks of the drive. Essentially imagine a jump drive that can only go up to J-2, but it also can allow for FTL travel inside a system.

However, it comes with a caveat: specifically, at TL 12 the Z-bubble can only cover a ship up to 5000 dtons, with a 25% chance of the bubble collapsing at that size (at TL 13, the size of the bubble can cover up to 7500 dtons and has a 30% chance of collapsing at that size).

For a ship between 2000 dtons & 5000 dtons, a Zimm drive takes up 3% of the tonnage of a ship and costs 2 million credits per ton of drive. It's the same for a TL 13 manufactured Zimm Drive (taking up 3% of the tonnage of a ship)

Spoiler: Zimm Drive

Spoiler: TL13 Zimm Drive

2. Alcubierre Drive
This is an alternate FTL drive the Clement Sector books offer up if you don't want to use its default FTL drive, the Zimm drive.

This is the same warp drive of Miguel Alcubierre fame, and follows much of the same rules as the Zimm drive (like only travelling 2 parsecs in a week) but it has a number of differences:

1. A Zimm drive requires the typical Traveller amount of needing at least 10% of a ship's tonnage in fuel per parsec. An Alcubierre drive requires only 5% of a ship's tonnage in fuel per parsec.

2. While a Zimm drives only takes up 3% of a ship's tonnage, an Alcubierre drive is larger, taking up 8% of a ship's tonnage. In addition, a particle energy accumulator is needed as well which takes up 10% of the ship's tonnage

3. Alcubierre drives require paired negative field rings to be built into a ship as well in order to utilize the warp field to propel the ship. At TL 9, these take up 10% of a ship's tonnage, but advances in technology at TL 12 allow for them to be shrunk to only 5% of a ship's tonnage [the physical rings are replaced with negative field emitters].

4. Alcubierre drives require "flat metric" space i.e. any space free of gravitational influences, meaning much further out in a solar system.

5. Alcubierre drives generate a lot of radiation, meaning ships equipped with them require additional substantive radiation hull shielding in order to not harm the crew (takes up 1% of a ship's hull).

Spoiler: Alcubierre Drive

3. Hyperdrive
The hyperdrive is the FTL drive of the Cepheus Engine setting, HOSTILE. This is a hyperdrive that is much like a warp drive in that instead of a drive rating based on range in parsecs per week, it uses a drive rating based on speed in parsecs per week.

The fastest hyperdrive, at H-6 (having a speed of 6 parsecs/week), requires 7% of a ship's tonnage.

It also does not use fuel, just electricity from the ship's power plant (but since in HOSTILE reactionless engines were never developed, all fuel tanks are for their fusion plasma rocket manuever drives)

In addition, hyperspace knowledge allows for genuine FTL communications!

Unfortunately, it comes with a number of issues:
1. If a ship is moving heavy loads, the speed of the ship in hyperspace can slow down dramatically.

Spoiler: Example

2. Hyperspace is a realm that is dangerous to organics. Specifically, unless a biological organism is sedated and frozen, exposure to hyperspace while inside a ship can lead to potential epilepsy, comas, insanity, etc. However AI and robots are unaffected by all of this.

Hence why all ships with hyperdrives carry enough advanced low-berths to keep humans safe and sedated. And these low-berths are hardly as terrible as default Traveller's low-berths are.

In addition, there may be strange creatures and freaky things in hyperspace, that can potentially affect ships or get on board and stalk crew if they're unlucky.

3. While hyperdrives can be quite fast when everything is mapped, hyperdrives are tied to hyperspace points to enter and exit. Scouting out hyperdrive points has to be done years in advance potentially, slowing exploration to a crawl ultimately.

Spoiler: Hyperdrive

Spoiler: Hypersleep

Spoiler: Hyperwave Transceiver

4. Superluminal Drive
The superluminal drive of the Twilight Sector setting is another drive similar to a warp drive in that it focuses on speed instead of range for the drive rating. It follows the typical rules for Traveller drives like requiring 10% of a ship's tonnage be in fuel, and travels x parsecs per week. This drive, interestingly enough, was reverse-engineered from a wrecked alien derelict found on Europa.

The main difference with a jump drive, beyond the fact it focuses on speed versus range, is that microdrops are possible (even if fuel hungry and inefficient), allowing for potential quick jumps inside a solar system.

In addition, thanks to superluminal drives, humanity there was able to figure out how to create FTL radios:

Spoiler: Superluminal Drive

Spoiler: Gravity Radio

5. Negmat Projector
A negmat projector, from the Gentleman Abroad series, is a type of keyhole drive that utilizes negative matter in order to open wormholes at specific areas of stressed spacetime in a star system (nicknamed "rabbitholes) in order to travel instantaneously between parsecs.

For tonnage and cost of installing the drive, it's the same as a typical jump drive. The big differences are as follows:

1. The negative matter in use in it requires advanced infrastructure to develop it (possibly up to TL 15) but does not allow electronics more advanced than TL 9 to function in its presence.

2. Negative matter has to be created and stored in ports. It cannot be skimmed from gas giants or extracted from ice or water. It costs 4x as much as hydrogen does (500 Cr per dTon of hydrogen vs. 2000 Cr per dTon of negmat).

3. Negmat projectors however, utilize one-quarter of the fuel a jump drive does when performing a burrow compared to a jump drive's jump.

Meaning one tank of negmat can let you burrow up to 4 times instead of just once.

Of course, you can't wilderness refuel and negmat costs 4x as much as hydrogen does.

4. Finally, the production of negmat allows for artificial stargates, called "Janus gates", to be made that can connect distances beyond X parsecs. However, this means if two systems that were connected by rabbitholes are now connected by Janus gates, the direct rabbitholes connection cannot establish and one must travel a longer route via rabbitholes in order to reach said system, if not using the Janus gates (because the direct rabbithole route is gone, you have to travel more circuitously if you want to travel only via rabbithole)

Janus gates do not have to be established far away from a planet and can often be situated in the langrange points of a planet.

Spoiler: Negmat Projector

The interesting thing about negmat projectors is due to how they work, the "core" and "rim" of a nation can literally be right next to each other. The core worlds can be connected via stargates directly to each other, while the frontier has to be reached without using stargates, meaning going through rabbitholes.

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Because frankly, at least all versions of Traveller drives can be shrunk down to fit 100dton ships. You can't do that with a K-F drive.

So, I know nothing about GURPS. So I'll view this through a Stellaris filter. The problem with developing a new FTL drive that lets you ignore previous blocking-terrain, is that the newly opened up territory might already be claimed. Could be a Devouring Swarm that wants to eat all your biomass, could be a Fanatic Purifier who thinks your existence is an affront to their gods, could be a Fallen Empire who just had a insect violate their borders.

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Except all the territory the Terrans may try to exploit here is basically taken by the Vilani. Because in canon, the Terrans did develop the J-3 drive (meaning a jump drive that can jump 3 parsecs per week). That was terrain ignoring and it, along with the meson cannon, meant they could strike deeper and faster against the Vilani, than the Vilani could do to them.

 

[Blade4]

That requires said Interstellar Empire to be rational actors. With things like, "Starting an Interstellar Empire when you have Jump Two and can't have FTL Comms," is ... Well, that requires vision. But not rationality.

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They must be semi rational because they have set up their empire for long term stability and it has worked for more than a thousand years. Problem is outsiders they don't readily absorb and their internal systems to control the ambitious makes them look schizophrenic to said outsiders. But they have dealt with outside threats before. They just don't ,can't, realize the threat mired in internal nonsense and their empire so large the decision loop is to long to recognize or deal with earth. Not helped they are about to get OCPed hard.

 

[Ovid]

Except all the territory the Terrans may try to exploit here is basically taken by the Vilani. Because in canon, the Terrans did develop the J-3 drive (meaning a jump drive that can jump 3 parsecs per week). That was terrain ignoring and it, along with the meson cannon, meant they could strike deeper and faster against the Vilani, than the Vilani could do to them.

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Wait, Terran space is completely enveloped by Viltani territory? Reading the one Viltani bitch commander's perspective, it sounded like one factor that made the greater Viltani dismiss the Terrans was because the Terrans couldn't expand because they had starless terrain blocking them off. If Human space was completely enveloped in every direction, the Viltani would have different concerns.

From prior segments, it sounded like Humans were on the outskirts of Viltani space, and because of current FTL tech, they were effectively in a dead end with the exit leading to Viltani space. But with jump-3 drives, they can jump over the starless terrain away from the Viltani territory to find other opportunities, whether mineral, diplomatic or other.

...honestly, I probably should do a full re-read of this story. I may just be misremembering.