What if the tech levels came in at their originally stated decades?

[Werner]

Originally Posted by Proneutron

I simply have the drive create small gravity well(s) in the direction of desired movement. Above you makes you "fall up". Above and slightly ahead makes you go forward while maintaining altitude. No need for "negative" grav wells. We KNOW regular grav wells exist. Negative (hills) grav make not. But, whatever explains it so the players can work with it is good enough

That sounds like a Lorax drive. Do you know what a Lorax drive is? There was a book written by Doctor Seus called the Lorax, it was about environmental degradation, and in it was this creature called to Lorax, he was trying to convince the protagonist to stop destroying the environment for profit, well to make a long story short, in one scene the Lorax lifted himself up by the seat of his pants and pulled himself up through a hole in the clouds.

No matter how strong you are, you can't pick yourself up off the ground without pulling or pushing on something external to yourself, that is what I call the Lorax drive, because the Lorax just did something that was physically impossible, he violated one of Newton's three laws of motion, namely that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which is why you can't lift yourself off the ground by your own seat of your pants, and why a gravity drive or any sort of drive must push or pull on something to achieve acceleration, and pushing and pulling on yourself will not work. On yourself the action and the reaction work on the same object, you, and unless you split yourself in half, you aren't going anywhere without pushing or pulling on something besides yourself.

[Proneutron]

Originally Posted by Werner

No matter how strong you are, you can't pick yourself up off the ground without pulling or pushing on something external to yourself, that is what I call the Lorax drive, because the Lorax just did something that was physically impossible, he violated one of Newton's three laws of motion, namely that every action has an equal and opposite reaction,

That's isn't how gravity works. If you create a gravity well you WILL be drawn into it. You aren't picking yourself up. It isn't a tractor beam that you project and it curves around to grab yourself.

[Condottiere]

Tractor and repulsor beams would be negative and positive concentrations of gravitons.

[Proneutron]

Originally Posted by Condottiere

Tractor and repulsor beams would be negative and positive concentrations of gravitons.

Not according to how they work on ST for instance. They work completely different than how a created gravity well works. They work like they are a physical "rope" or solid bar that extends away from the ship but is attached to the structure of the ship. Not a grav device at all.

[Werner]

Originally Posted by Proneutron

That's isn't how gravity works. If you create a gravity well you WILL be drawn into it. You aren't picking yourself up. It isn't a tractor beam that you project and it curves around to grab yourself.

The source of the gravity is what pulls you, and whatever has greater mass will be less effected than the lesser mass object. If you put a 1g gravity field around a tennis ball, then on its surface will be 1g, if you go to twice its radius, it will be one 1/4 g and so on. So if you had a Starship and you threw a tennis ball with grav plating ahead of it, and then by remote control turned its gravity on, it will come flying back to the hull of the ship, bounce a few times and stick to the hull and the ship itself will barely move at all, because it has much greater mass. The same force is exerted on both the Starship and the tennis ball, because the ball has less mass, that force will move it more.

What you are describing seems similar to a warp drive, a typical warp drive as currently conceived consists of two rings, one at the front of the Starship and the other at the rear or bow and stern. These warp rings don't actually accelerate the ship, instead what the bow ring does is deflate space in front of the ship, while the stern ring expands space behind the ship, the velocity of such a Starship is not limited to the speed of light as that only applies to objects moving through space, not the contraction and expansion of space itself.

[Proneutron]

Originally Posted by Werner

The source of the gravity is what pulls you,

The source of the gravity is the curved space. Mass emits gravitons which cause the space curvature. If by artificially creating "gravitons" at a point in space away from you it curves that space, you will fall towards it.

[Werner]

Originally Posted by Proneutron

The source of the gravity is the curved space. Mass emits gravitons which cause the space curvature. If by artificially creating "gravitons" at a point in space away from you it curves that space, you will fall towards it.

A warp drive would do that be separating the virtual particle pairs in a vacuum, and then moving the positive particles to the forward warp ring and the negative particles into the rear warp ring. High densities need to be achieved in both rings to create the warp bubble. Velocity remains the same where ever the warship warps to, and upon collapse of the warp bubble the ship needs to match velocity with the destination (world/space station) in order to land/dock with it.

Suffice to say, this is not a standard Traveller campaign if a warp drive exists, not quite Star Trek either.

[Proneutron]

Originally Posted by Werner

Suffice to say, this is not a standard Traveller campaign if a warp drive exists, not quite Star Trek either.

Yes, that's why I don't use warp drives.

[Werner]

Originally Posted by Proneutron

Yes, that's why I don't use warp drives.

Not much different from hyperspace in Star Wars. Originally hyperspace was a shortcut through the 4th dimension, but it morphed into a kind of warp drive.