Alternate Ship Design Systems

[TKalbfus]

I don't know about the physics of it, but I think the warp field should be expansive say about 1 million km in radius. The warp drive pushes everything within that sphere at that warp speed. Warp factors should be in tenths following the Star Trek tradition and using a tangential scale for speed. Here is an example:

Warp Factor --- Velocity
0.1 = tan(4.5)- 0.0787 c
0.2 = tan(9)--- 0.158 c
0.3 = tan(13.5) 0.240 c
0.4 = tan(18)-- 0.325 c
0.5 = tan(22.5) 0.414 c
0.6 = tan(27)-- 0.510 c
0.7 = tan(31.5) 0.613 c
0.8 = tan(36)-- 0.727 c
0.9 = tan(40.5) 0.854 c
1.0 = tan(45)-- 1.00 c
1.1 = tan(47.3) 1.08 c
1.2 = tan(49.5) 1.17 c
1.4 = tan(54)-- 1.37 c
1.6 = tan(58.5) 1.63 c
1.8 = tan(63)-- 1.96 c
2.0 = tan(67.5) 2.41 c
2.4 = tan(72)-- 3.08 c
2.8 = tan(76.5) 4.17 c
3.0 = tan(78.8) 5.03 c
3.5 = tan(81.6) 6.74 c
4.0 = tan(84.4) 10.2 c
5.0 = tan(45+45/2+45/4+45/8+45/16) = 20.4 c
6.0 = tan(45+45/2+45/4+45/8+45/16+45/32) = 40.7 c
7.0 = tan(45+45/2+45/4+45/8+45/16+45/32+45/64) = 81.5 c
8.0 = tan(45+45/2+45/4+45/8+45/16+45/32+45/64+45/128) = 163 c
9.0 = 326 c
10.0 = 652 c

Well you should get the picture. The tenths warp factors are the tangent of tenth intervals of the angular distance between the previous and next interger warp factor. There are energy values associated with each warp factor. The energy value is one tenth the value of the rest energy of all the mass within the warp field multiplied by the warp factor.

 

[TKalbfus]

I'll amend that: The power requirement is 37,202,380 MW * Mass of everything within the warp field (1,000,000 km radius) * warp factor. For whatever object passes through the warp field while the ship is in warp, the engines must supply the power requirements for until the object leaves the warp field. This means the ship must get well away from any planets or large asteroids before engaging the warp engines, otherwise the warp field collapses.

 

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:

[quoting Robert Forward:] The size of a black hole with a mass of a billion tons is little smaller than the nucleus of an atom. The black hole is now emitting 6000 megawatts of energy, the output of a large power plant.

Half a billion tons produces 12,000 megawatts.
One quarter of a billion tons produces 24,000 megawatts.
One hundred million tons produces 60,000 megawatts.
Fifty million tons produces 120,000 megawatts
[snip] [paste]

120,000 megawatts = 120,000,000 joules per second.

E=mc^2= 1kg (300,000,000 m/sec)^2 = 9 * 10^16 joules.

9 * 10^16 joules / 1.2 * 10^8 joules / second = 750,000,000 seconds = 23.78 years to convert 1 kg to energy. The black hole needs to be smaller or the spaceship is not going far.

[snip]

10 ton black hole produces 600 billion MW, converting 1 kg to energy in 2.4 minutes and consumes a 200 ton starship in 333 days

Bingo! We have our standard 10 ton black hole power plant.

First, if that were correct I don't know what ship could contain 600 billion MW of hard radiation?

Unfortunately that isn't the correct formula. Effective temperature is proportional to inverse mass, while power is proportional to area·T^4. Here's what I've got. Black hole evaporation yields power at a rate proportional to the inverse square of mass:

P = (sigma hbar^4 c^8)/(256 pi^3 k^4)/mass² = K/mass²
P = 3.563x10^32 W kg²/mass²

corresponding to a mass loss rate derived from E=mc² thus:

P = -dE/dt = -c² dm/dt = K/m²
dm/dt = -K/m²c²
dm/dt = 3.959x10^15 kg³/mass²

So the 10 ton singularity radiates 3.563x10^24 W or 3,563 million billion MW, 6 million times more than your calculation based on inverse mass. You'd need to feed it 39,600 tons/sec to keep it from blowing up in 0.000084 seconds (tau = mass³·c²/3K).

A billion ton ship could carry fuel for two weeks with a couple hundred million tons for shielding (mostly) and weapons. I don't know how you're going to force-feed 40kt of fuel per second into an area smaller than a neutron. I have trouble picturing how to feed 1kg/s into so small a "nozzle."

Solving for mass:

dm/dt = 3.959x10^15 kg³/mass²
mass² = 3.959x10^15 kg³/(dm/dt)
mass = sqrt(3.959x10^15 kg³/(fuel rate))

For 1 kg/s = 60k tons, suitable for a megaton class ship.

 

[TKalbfus]

For 1 kg/s = 60k tons, suitable for a megaton class ship.

I'll accept that. That would be a cube shaped ship 241 meters on a side. we'll reserve 40,000 tons for the crew and cargo leaving 900,000 tons of fuel. What size crew do you suppose such a ship will have?

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
I'll amend that: The power requirement is 37,202,380 MW * Mass of everything within the warp field (1,000,000 km radius) * warp factor. For whatever object passes through the warp field while the ship is in warp, the engines must supply the power requirements for until the object leaves the warp field. This means the ship must get well away from any planets or large asteroids before engaging the warp engines, otherwise the warp field collapses.

Why?

The internal and external constiuency of the warp bubble are not related. And at present I see no reason to relate these to power or anything else, with the exception of geometry. The size of the bubble should be related to power. But mass inside or outside, I don't see any reason why this should be related to anything.

[Yes, a mass will curve the manifold internal to the bubble. But it should be pointed out just how small this deviation is. We ain't talking about black holes in this case, and even the black hole sizes you are talking about are pretty small and should have a negligable effect on the internal manifold geometry. It won't be enough to affect any of the field geometry, or the power required to form the bubble in a measurable way.]

I don't have a good handle on how the bubble's speed relates to power, and want to look at it more. I am thinking to keep the speeds slow, that the power requirements should not be a linear function, but more like a power law function, like pump laws. But this is a guess of mine for now.

[And in a way, makes some sense in that as you increase the radius of the bubble, it has a larger surface area as well as volume, as power functions anyway. As you double the radius, surface area goes up by a factor of 4 (2^2) while volume goes up 8 fold (2^3). So maintaining the same power density means needing either 4 or 8 times as much power to make a bubble twice the size.]

[I say either 4 or 8, because it appears to me the key ingredient in all this is the negative energy "ring" that runs around the bubble at the transistion between the aft expanding and forward collapsing zones of the bubble.]

As to bubble sizes. Why? Also, you are adding a problem that you later have to correct for, in that at the sizes you propose, one could warp out entire planets. Then you have to bring "the mass inside the bubble is related to power required for the bubble" thingy in, in order to keep your PCs from moving planets all over the place. This could potentially be devastating to your campaign.

 

[Drakon]

Another point. I am still not sure that you need quite that much power, and am pretty certain that you won't need such large bubble sizes. Straybow has a good point that I don't think you are getting.

You'd need to feed it 39,600 tons/sec to keep it from blowing up in 0.000084 seconds (tau = mass³·c²/3K).

If you don't feed it enough, if you are off by some small factor, things can get out of hand and you lose everything in a very dramatic fashion quite soon.

You are going to get flucutations in your mass flow. This becomes very critical, as any slight deviation from the flow rate can cause a catastrophic explosion. And with such a short time, you may not even know you got a problem until you are meeting your maker. Things are going on too fast, and your ability to monitor the situation is extremely limited even with a high degree of automation.

You have to note a change and be able to react in time to keep the thing from blowing up. And you have to do this continuously, each and every microsecond. At this size, I don't think you have a safe system. This is similar to the problem of "prompt criticality" in nuclear fission. If your nuclear reactor were allowed to be critical on prompt neutrons alone, it becomes unstable and uncontrollable, and can kill folks, damage equipment and ruin your whole day.

To lengthen the time, you need a bigger (more massive) singularity. Which means a bigger ship, and lower power out.

Also, you must keep this singularity fed at all times. There is no 'cold iron' condition where you can simply step away for a day or so. You can't turn the lights off and go on vacation, or else you run the risk of having the ship explode and leaving an very large crater.

In short, I think this effort to work around perceived problems is actually worse than the original, if objectionable setup. And also appears largely unnecessary.

 

[Drakon]

For my part, I would like to see:
1) Power generation separate from propulsion. Whatever system you use for one is unrelated to the other. There are some tradeoffs however that need to be recognized for game balance. If your jump drives (whatever propulsion system you are using) don't have a dedicated power generating system, then the power can be used for other things, like beam weapons, when not devoted to propulsion.

Land a ship on a planet, and you can do a reverse shore power thingy, where your fusion (antimatter, singularity) reactor is powering a small city. Or mount some big honking guns on your tiny ship, the only thing is, you can't use them while flying FTL.

2) IF (and that is a big IF) I am right, you can use the warp drive as a manuvering drive, at a much lower power level. Which would eliminate a redundant system. (Or maybe not. Maybe you want a lower level drive system onboard, because it is a redundancy)

3) FTL speed would be an exponential function of power available. Like either squared or cubed as I mentioned earlier. First I think it might be realistic, less rubber science, and two it preserve setting integrity. You avoid the entire universe becoming Vland quickly problem I have mentioned elsewhere.

4) Something in the design system that deals with excess heat. Nothing is 100 percent efficient. There are losses and they will manifest themselves as other forms of energy, like heat. What happens to this? How big a heat sink would a starship need?

[4a) Heat sink size would be an inverse function of the power plant efficiency. The more efficient it is, the smaller a heat sink required.]

5) As tech level goes up, power plant and drive efficiencies (which are not the same thing) would go up as well. As efficiencies go up, fuel usage rates would go down meaning the same amount of fuel would move you further, faster. Equipment size would go down. Even if the power available to the drive system would not change, because you have a more efficient drive system at higher tech levels, that same power would move you further and faster than otherwise.

Which means that while the equivalent of a jump 3 might not have been available at a lower tech level, it would be at a higher one. The trick in terms of game mechanics is to figure out where to balance all this, what the exact numbers would be. You can adjust the numbers such that it would take more fuel than was available onboard to achieve a faster speed.

[Or alternately, if you are using a warp drive system, you can get short burst of ultra fast, but you run out of fuel too quickly.]

6) Maintenence requirements would go down as tech level goes up. We learn from the past and are better able to make more reliable equipment. So less maintenence would be required.

 

[TKalbfus]

Drakon said,

As to bubble sizes. Why? Also, you are adding a problem that you later have to correct for, in that at the sizes you propose, one could warp out entire planets. Then you have to bring "the mass inside the bubble is related to power required for the bubble" thingy in, in order to keep your PCs from moving planets all over the place. This could potentially be devastating to your campaign.

The reason I have the warp bubble so big is to allow for combat around the ship at warp speeds and to fire things like lasers and missiles. This also forces the warp ship to get away from large massive objects before engaging warp, that is why the amount of mass within the warp envelope is important. If a planet is within the radius of a warp field, a warp field cannot form around the ship until the ship pulls far enough away from the planet. Perhaps a 1 million km radius is too large, but what I also had in mind is that the warp field acts as a field collector for the ramscoop. The warp field concentrates interstellar hydrogen into the maw of the starship feeding it into the mini-blackhole, it does this by collapsing the space between the interstellar hydrogen molecules. To scoop up enough hydrogen the warp field has to reach out quite a distance, but there is only so much mass that it can handle. If their is a planet out ahead, the warp field collapses upon contact and the ship comes to a dead stop, but however keeping the residual velocity it had upon entering warp in the first place. A warp ship can be pursued by enemy fighters, if they get close enough before the ship goes to warp. The fighters have no warp capability but are instead dragged along by the warp field of the starship they are pursuing.

The fighter pilots have a bit of a problem though, if they destroy the warp ship, they are stranded in interstellar space and cannot get back home.

Another warp ship can overtake the first warp ship and when they get close enough their warpfields will overlap producing a single warp field powered by both ships. The resultant velocity vector of the combined warp field is the addition of the two ships FTL velocity vectors at warp. The two ships can maneuver within the combined warp field and attack each other. One ship can change the direction of the other ship by moving within that otherships warp envelope, but eventually it will move outside that warpfield and form a separate warpfield of its own.

The reason for this is that the bigger the warp field of the ship, the sooner the warp ship can tell that it is being pursued. The ship's sensors extend to the limits of the ship's warpfield and no further, that is why I've made the warp field so big. It was not my intention that warp ships drag planets around so there are mass limits mostly for that reason. The effect is the same as having to exceed a certain distance from a planet before going into jump in Traveller. A ship cannot engage warp while sitting an a planet's surface and a 1 million ton starship is unlikely to land in the first place.

In some respects these ships are like Star Trek ships:

1) They are big and expensive so only governments and large corporations can afford them. There are counterparts to the standard Traveller starships i.e. Merc. Cruiser, but they are subordinate system ships as they have no Jump or FTL drives, that also allows them to have more powerful manuever drives or more weapons if the players so elect. These starships don't land but instead rely on subordinate craft to reach a planet's surface.

2) The PCs are generally crew, typically senior crew members with alot of crew under them. The PCs spend most of their time on the ship's bridge when they are not on a planet's surface just like in Star Trek.

3) The number of crew doesn't really matter that much, suffice to say, they are required to operate all the ship's systems and to repair them when damaged, the PCs certainly won't know all of them on a first name basis.

4) When the PCs land on a planet's surface, they can bring a number of specialists with them to deal with a problem at hand. The specialists chosen depend on the purpose of the visit. Just like in Star Trek. Although when push come to shove, the PCs make all the important decisions.

5) The PCs can also bring a number of security personelle with them ("Red Shirts"). These "Red Shirts" draw fire and are usually the first to get killed when the going gets rough. When the enemy attacks the GM usually has the NPCs target the "Red Shirts" first. So the PCs know they are in trouble when they see their "Red Shirts" get zapped one by one and they'll know that when they run out of "Red Shirts" they'll be next so they better get out of there quick. Yes, I know I'm being a little silly here, but that is another one of the traditions of Star Trek.

6) I see no reason or need for a Transporter that can beam people down to a planet's surface an beam them up again. That sort of technology opens up a can of worms that I do not wish to open. Such as what's to stop someone from beaming bombs aboard enemy starships. and the answer would be more shields and fields. So now every spaceship needs shields and fields to protect them from unwanted beam ups or have unwanted people or things beamed onto their starships. I never liked the Star Trek Transporter system very much. If such a thing were to exist, you'd need an enclosed sending booth and a receiving booth. Both booths need to be operating. The sending booth would take apart a person atom for atom, record the information on each atom's position and send that information to the receiving booth which then reassembles that person atom for atom.
The probelm here is that the receiving booth could retain this information after it has reassembled the person and reassemble him again and again and again, making many coppies of that same person who was sent only once. You don't really want this in an RPG, and you have to come up with some bogus rubber reason why the receiving booth loses all this information once it assembles the first copy. I'd rather not go there.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
The reason I have the warp bubble so big is to allow for combat around the ship at warp speeds and to fire things like lasers and missiles. This also forces the warp ship to get away from large massive objects before engaging warp, that is why the amount of mass within the warp envelope is important.

These are good, sensible game mechanic reasons. However, I think you still have a problem with PCs moving whole planets out of orbit.

but there is only so much mass that it can handle. If their is a planet out ahead, the warp field collapses upon contact and the ship comes to a dead stop, but however keeping the residual velocity it had upon entering warp in the first place.

First off, as I understand it, the warp field should not collapse on contact with matter. However it will spagettify that matter, which would be very bad for any indigenous life forms on that planet. Which is another reason you may want to scale back the size.

Second, there is no residual velocity inside the warp bubble. The ship is not moving relative to the space it is in. As near as I can tell, if the warp field collapses, the ship stops dead still. It doesn't slam to a stop with everyone flying toward the front. It ain't like slamming the brakes on a car. It just stops. The space inside the bubble ain't moving, and the ship ain't moving either. There is no residual velocity.

A warp ship can be pursued by enemy fighters, if they get close enough before the ship goes to warp.

Very easy to defend against. Kill the warp field, separate from the fighters, and then re-activate it. Leaving the fighters behind, lost in interstellar space.

Or alternately, modulate the size of the bubble. Shrink the space between the ship and the bubble walls, and let the fighters get spagettified by the bubble.

Another warp ship can overtake the first warp ship and when they get close enough their warpfields will overlap producing a single warp field powered by both ships.

Hmm... Not sure about this, this does not sound realistic. And again, I think it would be easy to defend against by modulating your warp field and thus interfering with your opponents part of the field, maybe even collapsing it to the point where he gets spagettified.

It was not my intention that warp ships drag planets around so there are mass limits mostly for that reason.

Your, or my intentions ain't the issue. You gotta think like a rules lawyer. How can these rules be twisted to give them maximum power and capabilities? They'll figure it out and argue with you. And if you do it via fiat, ("I'm the GM and I say so") your players will find that unsatsifactory.

Also you have to build the limitations into the technology at the beginning. It is not enough to say, "If I allowed this, I also have to allow that and the other thing and that would ruin the game." You cannot appeal to potential effects, you have to build it into the causes and the rubber science you are using, so those consequences don't bite you.

1) They are big and expensive so only governments and large corporations can afford them.

And this means that either a) you have to see to it that your players are rich enough to have such large ships, own a corporation or some such. Or b) hope your players are happy enough being the hired hands instead of the guys who actually run their own starships. This means the free trader version of the game is non-existent in your world

6) I see no reason or need for a Transporter that can beam people down to a planet's surface an beam them up again. That sort of technology opens up a can of worms that I do not wish to open.

I can't say I blame you. It will also put you into a post economic system, essentially uncharted territory in regards to economics. It means that trade would be solely in the area of ideas and plans for replicators. (If you got Star Trek Transporters, you get replicators in the bargain, and I can see no reason why a device that can reconstruct entire complex human beings can't also build simpler devices even easier. It is a big can of worms.

 

[TKalbfus]

Drakon said,

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another warp ship can overtake the first warp ship and when they get close enough their warpfields will overlap producing a single warp field powered by both ships.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hmm... Not sure about this, this does not sound realistic. And again, I think it would be easy to defend against by modulating your warp field and thus interfering with your opponents part of the field, maybe even collapsing it to the point where he gets spagettified.

I wouldn't want a warp field to be used as a weapon either, it is strictly for transportation. One main problem with warp combat is this.

The starship ahead can be seen from the starship behind but the starship ahead cannot see the starship that is pursuing it.

The starship behind is overtaking the light from the starship it is following.

The starship ahead cannot see the starship behind because the light from that starship cannot over take it. It is only when the pursuing starship enters the warp envelope of the ship that's being followed that the ship can be detected.

Now lets make the warp envelope a reasonable size. A million ton starship that is spherical will be roughly 1/4 km in diameter, so lets say the warp envelope is 1/2 km in radius. The pursuing ship enters the warp envelope and is detected by the ship that's being followed and the pursuing ship fires with its big guns at point blank range. The pursuer is ready, all of its weapons officers are at their stations, so it fires its big guns as soon as the warp envelope is entered. The pursued is only aware of the enemy ship's presence when it enters the warp envelope, none of its weapons officers are ready. As soon as the enemy ship is detected, it fires its big guns and blasts large craters in the ship. The crew is sucked out of the ship from their beds or rec areas. Very few crew members have time to react and get a few shots off before the ship is destroyed. The ship is destroyed and comes apart under the sudden attack. You can see my problem here, can't you?

Each ship at warp speed is vulnerable to surprise attack from behind. Now how big does the warp envelope have to be to give the defending ship sufficient warning that it is about to be attacked?

I don't believe in having all the FTL subspace sensors that Star Trek has. What can be used it its place given only warp drive? My solution was to make the warp envelope big. Another solution is to have a fleet of ships arrayed in a ball, the outer ships are sacrificed to give warning to the inner ships, but this solution is expensive. Perhaps an FTL Tachyon radio can be used. Basically the Tachyon radio moves at infinite velocity but is somewhat limited in range and direction. the tachyon radio travels in the direction its pointed in, but can only spread out in less than 45 degrees from that direction, when it hits something, it reflects back but only at the speed of light. This sort of FTL radio can't be used as radar, but there could be a sensor probe that transmits its own FTL radio signal back to the ship. These probes have their own warp drives, but since they are small, they need to be powered by antimatter instead of a black hole. The antimatter it runs on comes from the mother ship whose miniblack hole produces small amounts that can be extracted for this purpose. The probes are very small to keep the antimatter usage down to a minimum. The typical probe is about the size of a baseball and it has enough antimatter in it to keep it at warp for 24 hours before needing to return to the ship. Also these sensor probes have a tiny warp envelop and are very hard to detect.

So a sensor net is trailing the mothership and transmitting information back to the ship of what's behind. the ship's central computer takes this information and produces an image of the pursuing enemy warships that are closing in on the ships main view screens. The main weapon that is fired are the Photon torpedos. The torpedos are another mini warp ship that runs on antimatter, they have their own little warp envelopes and they home in on the enemy warships and explode ahead of it using its remaining supply of antimatter so as to inflict damage with its lethal gamma ray photons. The enemy warship flys right into the photons and takes damage unless it can take evasive action.

How does this sound as combat at warp speed?

 

[Straybow]

Well, once you open the door for FTL it's hard to restrict the milieu to c-limited communications and sensors. Traveller does this by imposing a "black box" approach to FTL travel.

Even that insulation from complexity breaks down when we start to ask questions like, "If I have a hull breach can I do EVA repairs during jump?" Any answer more detailed than "No" causes problems.

If the warp field has a radius of x what happens to objects overlapping the edge? How far does the limb of a planet have to penetrate the field to precipitate the ship out of jump? See, there aren't too many simple answers.

I prefer a system that bars FTL intercept and combat. KISS.

 

[TKalbfus]

Well, its not really warp then is it, it might as well be Hyperspace. The only time such a ship would be vulnerable is when it leaves warp.

"Sir, we're being attacked!"
"Go to warp."

Warp can be used as a shield. I think a wormhole projector eliminates some of this problem. If the ship can project a wormhole whose far end is 18,000,000 km away and can create 1 wormhole every second, it could travel 1 light year in 146 hour or 6 days. Lets just say that each wormhole persists for one minute each. Under such circumstances, its possible for the starship to be pursued through its wormholes.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
I wouldn't want a warp field to be used as a weapon either, it is strictly for transportation.

What you, or I, want is completely irrelevant. What your players will do with the rules is what matters. You have to build the limitations on the technology such that they cannot reasonably be used as a weapon, no matter how hard the players try. And you need arguments that makes sense and are consistent with your TU's laws of physics.

Spagettification at the warp bubble walls is a problem for you in that it can be used as a weapon. If its dangerous, it can be used as a weapon. And sooner or later you are going to run into some smart ass player who figures out how to do it.

Now I am still not sure why you want warp combat. Its irrelevant for the most part, as when you travel, whether it is at FTL or sublight speeds, its the difference in speeds that becomes important. Or to put it another way, the relative velocity with respect to each other that is important. How fast they are flying with respect to anything else is completely unimportant, (unless those other objects are in the combat zone, and again its still relative veolocity wrt each other that is important.)

And keeping fueling the way it is, it does provide choke points that would naturally allow for combat. With warp combat, lets face it, space is big. You have to find your target, which is very small compared to the volume of space you would have to search. We are talking dust motes in the Superdome kind of scales. (Actually more like molecules of air in the Superdome, the sizes are that vaste)

I don't believe in having all the FTL subspace sensors that Star Trek has.

Neither do I. But another strategy is to stop or turn every once in a while and check your baffles, the blind spot behind you. Just like subs do today.

How do you know what is behind you right now? You turn your head and look.

Basically the Tachyon radio moves at infinite velocity but is somewhat limited in range and direction.

Again more rubber science. See, here is the problem I keep trying to illustrate. The more rubber science you put up, the less realistic your TU becomes. Plus it gives you more to worry about from your players working out things you ain't thought of, to ruin your TU.

You make the warp bubble twice the diameter of the ship. Another ship intrudes. Shrinking the bubble spagettifies your opponent, and its over. Why does the bubble have to be twice the ships diameter? Why are you wasting all that space inside the bubble, which allows folks to sneak in and blow you up?

Or to put it another way, it is difficult to make things fool proof, because fools are so ingenious.

So a sensor net is trailing the mothership and transmitting information back to the ship of what's behind.

Again I don't see this as necessary. Just alter course to clear baffles every once in a while. Considering the vastness of space, the problems of being snuck up on, is minimal, and really could only be facilitated if you had some kind of spy in your fleet organization. Someone knowing your exact route through the wide gulf of stars. And then transmitting that information in a timely fashion back to ships that can do something about it.

I don't see warp speed combat as being realistic, necessary, nor desirable. Perhaps in a hot pursuit kind of thing, but other than that, it seems to me far simpler to wait for the ship at places like refueling points, outside a star port, or other places where the ships will congregate. As well as moving far slower compared to the background stars.

And if you have to engineer things to simply allow for warp speed combat, I think this can cause more problems than it will solve.

 

[TKalbfus]

I think a good name for the wormhole drive would be a Wormhole Bubbler or Bubbler Drive, it produces a series of short range wormholes one after another. Each wormhole connects two points in space separated by 7 light minutes (126,000,000 km) and each wormhole possesses a gravity field that pulls the ship into itself in 30 second. and then once through the ship slows down for another 30 seconds until it is outside the other end at the same distance and at a stationary velocity relative to the wormhole as when it entered. The ship then creates another wormhole out ahead of it and does the same thing. The effective speed is a little less than 1 light year per day. the average velocity as it traverses the wormhole is 150 meters per second as it falls though each wormhole. The wormhole appears 4500 meters away in each case. The wormhole ends are pulled toward each other after the ship passes though but it takes some time to do this. At 9000 meters separation the combined average gravity pull should be about 5 meters per second squared I think it should take 360 seconds for two wormhole ends to pull together and destroy the wormholes, but check my math. There is an oppotunity for an enemy vessel to pursue the ship through this "tunnel" of wormholes.

 

[Drakon]

Grin, or you could call it Stutterwarp.

 

[TKalbfus]

The main difference though is this drive leaves a trail of wormholes. The wormholes either collide with each other or slowly lose their exotic matter, which props open their throats, basically it combines with the positive mass in the wormhole and cancels out leaving a small explosion in its wake. The wormholes remain stable for about 10 minutes or so, then they vecome to small to use, and finally decay into short lived mini-blackholes that explode. This way its possible for one starship to lead a convoy of other spaceships through its wormhole tunnel. Its also possible to enemy ships to follow the starship through and attack. Basically the wormholes are created and shot out the nose of the starship where the expand to a large enough size to be transversable by the starship and whatever follows for the next 10 minutes.

 

[Drakon]

Okay, first off, you have to understand that there is a lot of, well, I am not sure what it is called. There is a lot of physics that apply to wormholes, warp drive and black holes. The first ideas about worm holes resulted from looking at black holes, especially rotating ones.

So far this seems pretty close to present theory of physics. I don't know about the 10 minute delay, I see why you want it for game purposes, but have my doubts about how accurate it is.

 

[TKalbfus]

Wormholes require exotic matter, without that they would be black holes. I don't know exactly how much exotic matter they would need, perhaps someone does, but one idea is that the negative mass of the exotic matter equals the positive mass of the black hole:
This makes it easy for a starship to make wormholes on the fly, it would just manipulate the vacuum fluxuations and concentrate alot of positive mass in one place to make a black hole and then shove alot of left over exotic mass down its throat, but I keep on thinking that this will just cancel out the black hole and there will never nothing there. A wormhole requires a curvature of space and that requires some kind of gravity. Also exotic matter enters black holes all the time, but they don't turn into wormholes, they instead just radiate away with Hawking radiation. Some physicists say a wormhole is possible so I just take there word for it, because I don't see how to shove negative mass down it without canceling it out or making it smaller.

Perhaps the negative and positive masses are in discrete lumps and kept separate inside the wormhole. Perhaps with the positive mass on the outside and the negative mass in between the two wormhole openings.

Perhaps there is more positive mass than negative mass, but there is enough negative mass to prevent the center of the wormhole from collapsing into a singularity and forming a black hole, if that's so then all that star matter which formed the black hole must be around somewhere, and a starship wouldn't be able to create them on the fly, but everything I read seems to imply that positive and negative masses equal each other.

I guess that leads to the question of do wormholes have gravity? When one sees them represented in "rubber sheet" diagrams one gets the impression that space is curved but can space be curved without gravity? To me they are just magic teleporting stargates.

I think the bestway to use wormholes are as stargates left over by some ancient civilization such as Frederick Pohl's "Hee Chee". Basically the wormholes are just there and no one at first knows precisely why. The Starships are the Standard fusion powered starships but they have no jump drives, this means they have some extra cargo space that you could add stuff in. The ancient race that left the stargates was apparently interested in life-bearing planets so each system the stargates lead to has at least 1 planet in it that at least once had life, and many still do. I think the stargates should be way out there so they don't interfere with the inner planets, they have to be somewhere we haven't looked yet. One possible location: orbiting the newly discovered planet Sedna. Sedna has a slow rotation rate that implies that it is tidally locked with a moon, but no moon has been detected. Perhaps there is something else orbiting Sedna, maybe a stargate for instance. There should be from 2 to 6 stargates in each system each leading to another system and part of a network of star systems connected by stargates. The stargates are mysterious and no one understands them completely, but they do know they work. When generating star types leave out all results that indicate red dwarfs for the primary star. A red dwarf can be a distant companion but not a primary. the same goes for white dwarfs, and spectral types higher than class F. Basically the Stargate builders liked class K, G and F stars and all the others are skipped over. One can map out these stargate networks on subsector maps, but the lines that normally represent trade routes are absolutely the only directions you can travel in from any given location. These maps don't necessarily represent actual spacial locations. One star system can be in the next hex over but located at the edge of the galaxy, while another star could be in the middle of it.

 

[Drakon]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Wormholes require exotic matter, without that they would be black holes. I don't know exactly how much exotic matter they would need, perhaps someone does,

Matt Visser does. Look up his works on the LANL archive site. You should find what you are looking for.

but I keep on thinking that this will just cancel out the black hole and there will never nothing there.

Now why would it do that? Again you appear to be confusing negative matter with anti-matter. It ain't the same thing, it react and interacts differently, completely differently than how anti-matter would react in the same circumstances.

Besides which, if you put two blocks of something into a system, you will get something out. Not nothing, and maybe not what you want. But something none the less.

Also exotic matter enters black holes all the time, but they don't turn into wormholes, they instead just radiate away with Hawking radiation.

Unproven assertion. We don't even know if exotic matter is possible. Right now, we got math that requires it to do things we want to do. And we have some tantilizing hints that it might, maybe be possible. (Casimir and Lamda)

Perhaps there is more positive mass than negative mass, but there is enough negative mass to prevent the center of the wormhole from collapsing into a singularity and forming a black hole,

That is my understanding as well.

I guess that leads to the question of do wormholes have gravity? When one sees them represented in "rubber sheet" diagrams one gets the impression that space is curved but can space be curved without gravity? To me they are just magic teleporting stargates.

Well, that is exactly what they are. But then to soemone from say, the 15th century, automobiles would be these magic horseless carriages then to.

Clarke's Law and all that.

Okay first off, you gotta understand that in General Relativity, gravity is not a force. It is a pseudo force like the centripetal force that a bucket feels when you swing it around. The water will stay in the bucket as long as you are swinging it fast enough. The reason why is that the water is trying to follow a geodesic in the manifold, a fancy way of stating that it will follow the straightest possible line within the space time framework that is available to it.

In flat space, an object in motion will move in a straight line and not change its velocity. (Unless acted upon by a force) If the space time manifold is NOT flat, the object is accelerated, or rather, changes its velocity.

[Note that velocity is a directed speed. Any change in EITHER speed And/OR direction is a change in velocity.]

So if the manifold is curved, objects trying to follow geodesics will follow curved paths as well, and will change their speed and direction. We call this phenomena 'gravity'. So any time you have a curved manifold, you get gravity. How much depends on the curvature.

I think the bestway to use wormholes are as stargates left over by some ancient civilization such as Frederick Pohl's "Hee Chee".

Or Stargate SG-1 with slight differences, putting them in orbit, etc.

One caveat I will warn you about is be careful. Once the gates are discovered, that makes travel very easy between two systems. On a cultural level, those two worlds will start to resemble each other more and more, and tech levels will be closer together sooner. It will be hard to break out of a Vland universe, where there are Starbucks and McDonald's on every planet.

The stargates are mysterious and no one understands them completely, but they do know they work.

Not bad. Of course you will have to keep your players busy, so they don't get a wild hair and try to solve the mystery of the Stargates.

One can map out these stargate networks on subsector maps, but the lines that normally represent trade routes are absolutely the only directions you can travel in from any given location. These maps don't necessarily represent actual spacial locations. One star system can be in the next hex over but located at the edge of the galaxy, while another star could be in the middle of it.

Yep. you are left with only being able to make "subway maps" Not bad.

Personally, I prefer warp drive or jump drive, rather than large stargates. Even your stutterwarp drive would be an improvement. Think about it for a moment. A Stargate is not just a way of leaving the system. Its also a way of entering the system. And not everyone who enters is going to be a friend.

Because of this, Stargates are going to come under some government control of one type or another. Perhaps military, perhaps customs, but either way you look at it, you are requesting access to it from some bureaucracy. And that might be frustrating to some of the more independent thinking players.

A problem that having your own starship would not present.

 

[TKalbfus]

What if the stargate is discovered early in the 21st century. say 2030? Spaceships can barely reach it.