Interstellar empire with just M-drives

[Pyromancer]

I'm toying around with the idea of a precursor race that didn't develop the J-drive. But M-drives in Traveller are still very powerful. A ship can get to the next star system in a few years, and the time spent for the people on board would be even shorter due to relativistic effects. So a small stellar empire with just M-drives is feasible. How could such an empire look like?
- Worlds would be even more independent than in the 3I.
- Vast terraforming projects. You have to pick almost every planet, no matter how uninhabitable it looks, because the next one might be a decade or two away.
- More in-system megastructures. Expanding is very expensive, so more energy is spent on local improvements instead.

Do you have further ideas?

 

[mike wightman]

According to MegaTraveller the first starfaring races evolved in out galaxy billions of years ago. None of them invented FTL travel via jump drive, but some colonised their region of space by STL means - sleeper ships, long lived races just put up with the travel times, some used electronic personality transfer.

IMHO some of these precursor races are probably still around - something attracted Grandfather's interest after all...

Speaking of Grandfather, he was the first to discover jump (IMTU it's a bit more than a discovery and has major repercussions later on).

IMTU I also still have the sparklers who use a psionic jump drive they invented after encountering the Ancients. They originally colonised STL using psionic hibernation to make the journeys manageable.

It's probably worth mentioning that the Vilani began their intersteller exploration and colonisation vis STL means - they had several systems with colonies before they invented the jump drive.

Cultures that use STL and develop all the resources of their systems may well end up as Kardashev type 2 and have constructed dyson swarms around stars.

I would recommend watching the youtube videos of Isaac Arthur for inspiration.

 

[McPerth]

And don't forget the Islands Cluster history according TCS campaign...

 

[Timerover51]

I'm toying around with the idea of a precursor race that didn't develop the J-drive. But M-drives in Traveller are still very powerful. A ship can get to the next star system in a few years, and the time spent for the people on board would be even shorter due to relativistic effects. So a small stellar empire with just M-drives is feasible. How could such an empire look like?
- Worlds would be even more independent than in the 3I.
- Vast terraforming projects. You have to pick almost every planet, no matter how uninhabitable it looks, because the next one might be a decade or two away.
- More in-system megastructures. Expanding is very expensive, so more energy is spent on local improvements instead.

Do you have further ideas?

Given the very slow communications speed between systems, and by that I mean physically moving from one system to another, you will not really have an empire. What you will have is a principal planet and a number of colonies, all of which are essentially independent. When any feedback is limited to speed of light transmissions, all of the information back is several years old, and all responses are that much older. As the colonies are all going to have to "bootstrap" their own development, attachment to the colonizing planet is going to be very tenuous after a generation or two.

 

[flykiller]

Do you have further ideas?

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Gallery/index.php?n=1963

 

[kilemall]

Probably an emphasis on improving low berth tech, and/or increasing longevity so 1000 year life spans makes a 5 year subjective journey no big deal.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Other non-Jump Empire references in the OTU
- The Traveller 5 rules have the NAFL (Not As Fast As Light) drive, so its a thing...
- Vilani and Vargr. The Vilani had a six star system Empire before inventing (or finding you conspiracy nuts) Jump Drive. This was a labor of about a thousand years.
- GT:IW. The Suerrat had an empire of 24 systems without Jump, before the Vilani found them
- The Great Rift. The Kursae referenced in Traveller 5 are talked about in more detail, having developed an empire that spanned 3500 parsecs across what is now Charted Space!! Without Jump...

 

[Ulsyus]

- The Great Rift. The Kursae referenced in Traveller 5 are talked about in more detail, having developed an empire that spanned 3500 parsecs across what is now Charted Space!! Without Jump...

That's pretty impressive, though as 51 mentioned it may not have functioned as we'd normally envisage an empire. Don't empires normally centralise power and see a flow of resources and trade towards the center? That'd be pretty difficult with an interstellar polity only held together by STL travel.

I've written in one of the races in the Ahriman sector as having expanded using NAFAL drives until contacted by the Solomani. It was going to be a modest polity, the sort of thing that wouldn't take entire lifetimes to travel from one side to the other of.

Back on the theme of cohesive political structures, wouldn't a local governor need to have fairly drastic proconsular powers in order to deal with crises in his system several years comms away from the homeworld, let alone hoping for assistance from them?

 

[whartung]

There is perhaps an interesting background placed by being in a system that was not just colonized in this way, but continues to get new arrivals from the mother world.

While the communication back home is tenuous at best, the communication FROM home is as real time as anything else, just delayed.

If you're getting arrivals every 1 or 2 months, while the colony may drift from the will of the mother world, as there's little chance or need for "enforcement", the actual culture may well drift very slowly.

Local rule will still have to prevail, for example, if the mother world sent a new Governor, he may be hard pressed to enforce his office if the locals have a liking to the current one.

But culturally, the drift may well be very slow depending on how strong the culture was going in. And you could still send trade missions back, even though the round trips are quite long.

Could be interesting to explore.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

That's pretty impressive, though as 51 mentioned it may not have functioned as we'd normally envisage an empire. Don't empires normally centralise power and see a flow of resources and trade towards the center? That'd be pretty difficult with an interstellar polity only held together by STL travel....
Back on the theme of cohesive political structures, wouldn't a local governor need to have fairly drastic proconsular powers in order to deal with crises in his system several years comms away from the homeworld, let alone hoping for assistance from them?

The implication with the Kursae in the text is that they might be like cicadas (or mayflies). There was an explosion of growth, a regression to TL 4, then mass disappearance across space

Agreed "control" is needed. Lockstep: A Novel by Karl Schroeder had a solution for STL empires. The Empire in question is "awake" for a set period of one month. At the end of the period, everyone including the emperor goes into cryo-sleep or stasis for years. During the sleep time, STL trips are performed. Ships that arrive early park in orbit waiting for the wake up signal, In this manner, everyone lives in the same time and STL "feels" like FTL. There are obvious possible exploits. I only read the sample, but it is implied that staying awake is effectively a death sentence as you live between the "ticks of the clock" as nothing is powered/working except for the travelling spaceships and stasis mechanisms.

 

[mike wightman]

Where are you getting these details for the Kursae from?

I have searched the T5 rulebook and there is no mention of them being limited to STL. They achieved significance post Grandfather, so they may have had jump or higher drives, they may even have achieved very high TLs before regressing as the technology chapter mentions advanced races may do.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

The Great Rift set from Mongoose Publishing
Book 1 - Pages 11 and 12.

It greatly expands the OTU, reintroduces TNE J-6 calibration points and fuel caches, introduces Collectors to MgT

And my favorite, Phobetor star system, the "Anglo-American" Shackleton colony ship which established its colony in IY -1. With low tech K'kree (no one know how they got there) and high tech Vargr (recent immigrants) too. :devil:
Hilarity ensues...:coffeesip:

 

[Pyromancer]

For those who are interested, there's a design for a STL colony ship on this TAS News Feed:

Slower-Than-Light-Colony-Ship

 

[epicenter00]

We humans live less than 100 years on average at this point. Our productive years are even less than this (though this is getting longer).

The reason why we're so invested in this idea of "Faster Than Light" travel is this limited lifespan. This lifespan colors everything we do as a species as its locked into our instincts we need to do things in a certain period of time or it's the same as not doing it at all.

Take for instance, if we had some alien species with a much slower metabolism or even one that had evolved from a species that went into hibernation (or both!). Imagine an intelligent species of what we might consider plants; the "lifeform" consists of a clonal colonies. Their interpersonal communication is immensely slow - it takes weeks to say a few sentences of abstract knowledge in their non-verbal communication passed via symbiotic pollinators that transmit modified pollen to specialized "flowers" where the RNA-equivalent is read for information. (Reactions to danger and so on would be much faster.) These insects are as a "part" to these creatures as our mitochondria are to us. Yet, they are able to build things, they have a civilization. They can produce starships.

A species like that might have members that regularly live to be older than 100,000 (Earth) years. Jump drive would seem instantaneous to them. STL drives that take thousands of years to traverse between worlds would be plenty fast for them. They might colonize the universe because to them, things like Ice Ages or what we humans refer to as "long-term climate shifts" are as frequent and disturbing as droughts to us. Things like Krakatoa just "happened yesterday" or Chicxulub meteor are things that (to them) occurred just "a few thousand years ago" and are of serious concern. The sun is not constant and bright to them as it is us, they can literally see it wax and wane in brightness like an old room fan over the millennia.

They could have an "empire" with trade and even a kind of centralized administration.

Even the perception of time is relative, after all.

 

[Pyromancer]

I calculated some travel times:
A voyage starts with a 20 week acceleration phase at 4 g that brings the ship up to 92% of the speed of light, followed by a coast phase. During the coast phase, the main reactor is powered down to conserve fuel, and only the small auxiliary reactor powers the ship's systems. As the ship approaches it's destination, the main reactor is powered up again for the 20 week deceleration phase.

This mission profile results in the following travel times:

1 parsec: 94 weeks on board (200 weeks for outside observer)
2 parsec: 165 (385) weeks
3 parsec: 235 (569) weeks
4 parsec: 306 (753) weeks
5 parsec: 376 (937) weeks
6 parsec: 447 (1121) weeks

 

[whartung]

This mission profile results in the following travel times:

1 parsec: 60 weeks on board (200 weeks for outside observer)
2 parsec: 88 (385) weeks
3 parsec: 115 (569) weeks
4 parsec: 142 (753) weeks
5 parsec: 169 (937) weeks
6 parsec: 196 (1121) weeks

So, just for curiosity.

Given that 6 parsec trip (with time dilation).

Assume that the ship was launched on Jan 1, 2040.

Also assume that the ship arrives at the destination and landing day is considered "January 1, Year 1", with simple, 30 24 hour day months (so even February has 30 days).

On arrival they send a high powered message to the home world telling them they've arrived.
For the sake of discussion, a parsec is rounded to 3 light years, so they're 18 light years away. When does the landing message arrive at the home world?

Meanwhile, the host planet is sending 5 more ships that leave every 30 days after the first.

What is the schedule for the landings at the new world for the other ships? What days do they arrive?

(Showing the math would be interesting, but not required.)

 

[Adam Dray]

I calculated some travel times:

I ran 1 parsec and 4-g acceleration/deceleration through this calculator and get 194 weeks of planet time and 69 days of ship time (and max speed of 0.9916 c).

I get 0.928 c for a 1-g acceleration and 1 parsec.

 

[Pyromancer]

I ran 1 parsec and 4-g acceleration/deceleration through this calculator and get 194 weeks of planet time and 69 days of ship time (and max speed of 0.9916 c).

That's odd. Since they accelerate all the time, it should take less time, not more. I have to check my formulae...

 

[Pyromancer]

As long as I accelerate/decelerate the whole time, I get the same results as this calculator.
If you type in .764 ly and an acceleration of 4 g, you end up with 40 weeks on board and .92 c as the top speed.
So my error is probably in the coast time. Weird.

Got it. I missed a square root in the formula for the time dilation. I've corrected the values above.

 

[Pyromancer]

So, just for curiosity.

Given that 6 parsec trip (with time dilation).

Assume that the ship was launched on Jan 1, 2040.

Also assume that the ship arrives at the destination and landing day is considered "January 1, Year 1", with simple, 30 24 hour day months (so even February has 30 days).

On arrival they send a high powered message to the home world telling them they've arrived.
For the sake of discussion, a parsec is rounded to 3 light years, so they're 18 light years away. When does the landing message arrive at the home world?

The message arrives at the home world (travel time) + (signal time) after the ship launched.
So 1121 weeks + 18 years (= 939 weeks) = 2060 weeks after launch.
(Measured on the home world.)

Meanwhile, the host planet is sending 5 more ships that leave every 30 days after the first.

What is the schedule for the landings at the new world for the other ships? What days do they arrive?

They arrive every 30 days after the first.
(Measured on the destination world.)