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View Full Version : Futuristic Starlight [d20 inspired, development thread]



lesser_minion
2010-01-20, 05:52 PM
Part of my plan with Starlight was to make the game in both futuristic and fantasy flavours, and also to try to design it to support crossovers between the two styles.

This thread is mostly for developing the futuristic version of the game.

The main goals for this are to develop a set of rules for playing games set in a relatively hard space-opera setting (not ridiculously hard, however), including ideas for vehicles, weapons, technologies, and spacecraft that should be supported.

If anyone has any suggestions for things I should add support for, feel free to post them.

Currently, the plan is as follows:


The character classes will include Survivor (tough guy), Rogue (diplomatic or charming guy), Sneak (stealthy guy), Commander (leader), and Adept (psychic guy). The same classes will feature in the fantasy version, but will generally work differently.
Exactly how the various forms will work in a futuristic setting has yet to be determined - I'm not too keen on the idea of "tech powers", although it is fairly tempting.
Generally, there won't be much supernatural influence unless you're combining these rules with the fantasy ones. There will be psychic powers, but mainly because it's a little easier to have interstellar travel when there are already a few overtly supernatural elements to the setting.
Spacecraft will have design rules, as will some land, air and sea vehicles.
Support for humongous mecha and transforming robots is being considered. It probably won't happen beyond small-scale power armour type units, however.
Nice ideas for handling realistic movement in zero G could be useful. I'm not sure how detailed things like spacecraft combat will be.
As part of the 'firm sci-fi' assumption, there are quite a few popular sci-fi tropes that I'm going to try to avoid. These include: stealth in space, nanotechnology-as-magic, and reactionless drives (those things are scary). And no Star Trek style sound in space (Star Trek has actually featured sonic weapons in space, which is why I'm picking on it).


This is meant to support the other half of the system, which I haven't posted a thread for yet. There is a thread for common elements, however.

All I really need for this thread is suggestions for what to include - if you'd like to see something in the rules, post it here.

imp_fireball
2010-01-20, 07:19 PM
please don't make any suggestions like "just use d20 Future".

LOL, this should be implied.

If you have the creative energy to make something like this, chances are you're already aware of several systems, like say, d20 future for one (which basically flirts with the 'easy to die' or 'any one who is at the top of the chain of command or is the most educated/knowledgeable/good at inventing stuff is also the most powerful or has a very high ECL' (take the president of the united states doesn't need his mooks... something from tvtropes)).

gnownek
2010-01-23, 10:21 AM
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122283

Feel free to use any ideas you see in here. I started out trying to do a mini game but discovered you have to do so much to get a sci-fi game working.....

lesser_minion
2010-01-23, 10:24 AM
Thanks. That should be pretty useful.

Heavy weapons, exotic weapons, and vehicles will probably be a feature of the game, and game balance might require that similar resources are available to each side of a battle, to compensate for the lack of small thermal exhaust ports just above the main reactor.

Mulletmanalive
2010-01-23, 11:27 AM
While the thermal exhaust port thing is a little over the top, most warships have specific weaknesses that they go to great lengths to try to cover, including rudders, keels and the blind spots on aircraft. As anything above a certain size is designed by committee, it's not a big stretch to imagine a dozen people noticing the issue and not saying anything because it's technically someone else's department and they don't want their heads bitten off by managers.

Hence, designing weak-points into super weapons isn't anywhere near as stupid as TV Troupes makes out, especially considering the average poster there has an inflated self esteem and no knowledge of engineering process.

For FTL travel, can machines create psionic effects and the like? Assuming that psionics functions on some form of higher dimensional warping, Star Trek FTL slip-streaming would be perfectly viable [create an envelope of normal space around the ship and displace yourself into sub-space/hyperspace where Plank's constant is different and relativity doesn't apply (I'm going on a half remembered tech-manual i can't be bothered finding but i think that's right)].

The other obvious version would be some massive enhancement of Psychoportation [assuming you're using it] based on technology and probably bioengineered clone brains...

The practical effect of the latter is a mental image that's somewhere between the spelljammer helm and the navigators from 40k with the pilot sat there in a sort of brain stethoscope.

lesser_minion
2010-01-23, 02:37 PM
Spacecraft do have weaknesses, but they aren't especially heroic ones. I don't really see something like a serious "if you shoot this then the whole thing explodes" ever coming up.

The real weakness of spacecraft is in the form of heat - a ship the size of the Enterprise from Star Trek would need absolutely ridiculous amounts of 'sail area', and without it the crew would literally cook.

The problem is that blowing up massive bits of hollowed-out diamond in order to sauté the owners inside their own ship is less than heroic. That's why we have deflector shields, which are evidently capable of radiating heat into space far more efficiently and also defending the spacecraft.

I'm pretty sure interstellar travel and comms will both be based on the idea that spacecraft can spontaneously 'jump' between areas rich in exotic matter (imaginatively referred to as portal space or portal zones). Whether or not the idea is ever extended to people remains to be seen.

Mulletmanalive
2010-01-23, 02:58 PM
Rodendary actually accounted for a lot of that with his constant use of plasma for basically everything. While they have ridiculously small ram scoops, the ships on star-trek are surprisingly well thought out, science wise, displacing most of their heat via magnetically charged superheated plasma.

Then again, they do rely on dilithium for nigh 100% photon to electrical charge conversion [shrug].

Perhaps you should amend the first post: you seem to have established far more of your setting prior to my posting, so without knowing what you're going to shoot down, there's no point in trying to help.

lesser_minion
2010-01-23, 03:27 PM
Good point. Sorry about that.

I've added in a list of tropes that don't really fit with 'firm' science fiction - nanotechnology-as-magic being a particularly hideous example.

I'm actually a bit wary of the 'portal space' idea, so I'm not exactly shooting down your suggestion.

Star Trek is only really soft because of countless muck-ups. TOS was actually vaguely hard when released, and it's certainly a lot harder than Star Wars (the Death Star's superlaser requires the energy equivalent of 1000 times the Death Star's rest mass each time it fires).

On the flip side, Star Wars generally plays sound in space a little more accurately than Star Trek (Star Wars actually describes a lot of the sound effects as 'audio simulation' used by computers to warn fighter pilots of things they can't see. Trek not only has sonic weapons in space, but those weapons are unbelievably powerful thanks to someone completely failing to understand the decibel.)

Mulletmanalive
2010-01-24, 08:18 AM
Space Stealth in hard sci-fi. Murcury vapour cooling set to multiple superstructure vents. Inefficient but it'll briefly turn a solid report into a massive cloud of warm gas on a scanner.

Are you assuming DRADIS or silhoutte detection or the hugely amusing Atomic Rockets assumption of heat detection?

I have seen an inertial based combat system on the web. It's not a game, it's a science project; seriously, don't bother. Most stellar combat is going to take place between the varying levels of orbit simply because finding an opponent in the big black is a pointless waste of time. Hence, you have a set of stacked planes.

Remember that any action that allows you to attack above, below or to the sides of the target presents a similar target area to your opponent and in a gravity-less environment, side on defilade is more of a risk than enfilade fire, except at close range, where raking comes back into currency [seriously, the whole guns at the front design is just begging to be shot; reactor, cooling hub and magazines in a straight line!]. Two fleets making a point of staying on the same plane as one another isn't unrealistic from a tactical POV, given the risks of 3d movement and the fact that there WILL be a down [the planet].

For a simple, inertia inclusive combat system, check out Full Thrust. The previous edition is internet free at the moment because of the upcomming rerelease and 3rd editon.

Johel
2010-01-24, 10:01 AM
In G zero gravity, in the void, acceleration matters a lot.
The more powerful it is, the faster you'll get to your destination, as speed will build up endlessly until you say "stop" and enact an opposite force to slow the whole ship down. However, too powerful acceleration (or deceleration) will simply crush your crew, unless inertia dampeners are used. This is also true to change direction, as suddenly turning right or left will enact tremendous forces on the ship and its crew.

Therefor, the sheer speed of a ship doesn't matter much, as any ship will eventually reach any speed. It's only a matter of time and said time depends of the ship's maximum acceleration. The best ship will be the ship with both powerful acceleration capacity and excellent inertia dampening capacity, making him both fast and agile.

Starfighters are a waste.
A misconception in most SF stories is that a fighter is always faster than a starship because, IRL, aircrafts are a lot faster than ships. Space isn't the ocean or even the sky, however. While water and air slow down whatever cruise in them while also exhausting their heat, space void doesn't.
Starships will use stockpiled matter as a way to exhaust heat and to propel their own mass, increasing their acceleration rate. That's why a huge starship can become a very fast starship : it can travel for longer period, which means it accelerate longer, allowing it to reach greater speed than smaller starships. A starfighter, having very few mass, can't accelerate as long. And its maximum acceleration rate will likely be the same as the starship, as it depends on the inertia dampeners.

At the same time, whatever is used to generate the acceleration can likely be used as a weapon. If the propulsion stop, the starship keeps moving forward, though the acceleration is lessen. All the excess of heat that was exhausted to accelerate can now be used to propel a kinetic weapon. If the starship had a acceleration limit because of its inertia dampeners, said limit doesn't apply to a unmanned kinetic weapon, as it's just a glorified rock flying at high speed toward its target. A starfighter can do the same but with a lot less mass, it won't make the same damage.

Less speed, less fire power, less armor and less autonomy... the starfighter is just an expansive missile, in fact.

Laser weapons :
Laser weapon is basically light energy which, upon impacting matter, convert into heat, which is difficult to exhaust in space. Because of this, it looks perfect as a weapon, as the "projectile" is both accurate and fast.
Only problem is that creating the light requires power and the inefficiency of the process will generate heat...which will have to be exhausted away from the ship. So, great but only if you can make the process efficient. Let's say they can...

Energy shields :
Also, laser can be blocked very easily by spraying cloud of light-reflective material (that's it, something on which light does not convert into heat easily) which will act like a flare for the defending ship. Not terribly efficient but since any ship has to exhaust heat one way or another, let's use this. Each starship will pack huge loads of a dust that both reflects light and conducts heat. Whenever necessary (either to accelerate in a given direction, to exhaust some excess heat or to defend against laser weaponry), the ship will spray some of the dust.

Kinetic weapons :
If shield are really efficient or if using laser weapons generate too much heat, kinetic weapons are the right way to do thing. Basically, rather than using that dust for shielding or heat exhausting, you propel it at the target. Only you don't actually propel just the dust. You also propel some good-sized chunk of rocks. If the enemy ship is following you, then you just have to fire the rocks at them at a very slow acceleration. As the rock is already traveling at the same speed as you, a slow acceleration toward the enemy is in fact a slow deceleration away from you...which means it will impact the incoming enemy ship.
The whole point of fighting with Kinetic weapons is to place yourself in the traveling direction of your opponent and drop things. You spare a good amount of mass/fuel/energy while he will have to produce very powerful acceleration for his projectiles to catch you and, more important, for him not to reach a higher speed than his own projectiles, so that he won't impact them... Anyway, however get in front wins.

Ramming
Hum... No.
Given their traveling speed, ships should never get close enough from each other for this things to occur the traditional way.
Even for friendly boarding, only small shuttles should be used, so that a navigation accident only destroy the shuttle, not both ships.
If a crazy captain get past the "polite" distance between his ship and another, said other ship will either change course or fire.

Boarding torpedoes :
The attacking ship fires a torpedoes at the target. The torpedoes is very well armored, is full of people and has the best inertia dampeners ever, as it will have to accelerate/decelerate very quickly.
If fired at a target going away from the attacking ship, the torpedoes will have to accelerate until it slightly exceed the target's speed, then match the target's acceleration rate. For this, torpedoes will likely be several hundred meters long, with 90% of their hull filled with matter. If the torpedoes impacts, the boarding party might survive if the dampeners did their job. If the torpedoes miss, then the boarding party will know a slow painful dead as they ran out of fuel and can't exhaust their own heat. Given the speed involved, a recovery operation is unlikely to occur.
If fired at a target going toward the attacking ship, the torpedoes will just be dropped. Having the same relativistic speed as the attacking ship, they'll use their propulsion to slow down and match the speed of the incoming target, then slow down some more and let the target impact them. This is actually safer and can even be done with a several million kilometers long cable, so that a failed boarding will not result in a lost crew. The cable will also allow for smaller torpedoes, as heat can be directly pumped from the attacking ship into the torpedoes, which then use it to slow down. The cable, being in the way of the propulsion vent of the torpedoes, will have to be very heat-resistant or even better, be a superconductor itself.

lesser_minion
2010-01-24, 01:04 PM
Generally, we ignore heat detection - it's assumed that somebody will see you if you go on a Hohman because you have to get past a lot of patrol craft and one of them will catch you on radar.

Any kind of burn gives anyone who cares to look all of the information they need. Otherwise, the enemy knows exactly where to patrol and is able to make sure that ships can be detected. It assumes a lot of infrastructure, but the end result is pretty simple - strategic stealth is impossible, and tactical stealth is worthless (for manned spacecraft).

You can accelerate to a ridiculous speed and coast, but you're still giving the enemy a long time to spot you - and since the enemy saw you enter the system, and every course change you made since that, how are you hiding exactly?

I think a massive cloud of warm gas on a scanner isn't going to fool anyone, especially if it wasn't there five minutes ago.

Space fighters are remotely-piloted missile buses. Manned spacecraft are, as you said, a complete waste.

Voiding remass as a defence against laser weaponry is quite an interesting idea, which I'll consider. The question is knowing that you're about to be hit by a laser though.

Yora
2010-01-24, 04:48 PM
Starfighters are a waste.
A misconception in most SF stories is that a fighter is always faster than a starship because, IRL, aircrafts are a lot faster than ships. Space isn't the ocean or even the sky, however. While water and air slow down whatever cruise in them while also exhausting their heat, space void doesn't.
Starships will use stockpiled matter as a way to exhaust heat and to propel their own mass, increasing their acceleration rate. That's why a huge starship can become a very fast starship : it can travel for longer period, which means it accelerate longer, allowing it to reach greater speed than smaller starships. A starfighter, having very few mass, can't accelerate as long. And its maximum acceleration rate will likely be the same as the starship, as it depends on the inertia dampeners.

Also note: Massive capital ships are also useless. During World War One and Two most major powers tried to build bigger and bigger ships so they would have enough armor and firepower to defeat any other ship. In the end you got such monstrocities like cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships as the Hood, Bismarck, and Yamato. They could do that job, but being so big and heavily armed, they always bacame the primary target for all hostile ships and being so incredibly expensive, Admirals were very reluctant to risk them getting into combat. And once there were airplanes and torpedos, these floating fortresses could be destroyed or crippled by one good hit. As a result, there are almost no warships larger than destroyers in service anymore, except for aircraft carriers. And even those frigates and destroyers usually have only one loosy cannon to frighten pirates in tiny boats. If you would want to destroy a ship, you'd use rockets from a very safe distance.

And the same things would likely all apply to space warships as well. All they need is an engine to get them fast, a reactor to power the engines and weapons, and living space for the crew that maintains the ship.
Cargo ships are an entirely different thing. As cargo transport in space gets very expensive, you would want to make as few runs as possible, so they would be build with cargo holds that are as big as possible. The Nostromo from Alien would fit that category.

lesser_minion
2010-01-24, 05:53 PM
Actually, larger capital ships make a lot more sense in space, where there are no useful spacecraft that are analogous to the things that give them trouble. About the only fleet asset that would ever come into play is some kind of cruiser.

Submarines wouldn't exist - any ship can be equally good at hiding, and equally bad at hiding when attacking an enemy system.

Fighters are remotely-piloted missile buses or 'lancers' at best, and are dealt with by the same point defences you should have established against missiles (whether nuclear, kinetic, antimatter, laser, or exotic).

And torpedo boats are in the same boat as fighters.

Destroyers might be used, but they'd have a much less impressive sounding name. Their real role would be as hospital ships, recovery craft, and emergency point defence.

Johel
2010-01-25, 02:12 PM
Also note: Massive capital ships are also useless. During World War One and Two most major powers tried to build bigger and bigger ships so they would have enough armor and firepower to defeat any other ship. In the end you got such monstrocities like cruisers, battlecruisers, and battleships as the Hood, Bismarck, and Yamato. They could do that job, but being so big and heavily armed, they always bacame the primary target for all hostile ships and being so incredibly expensive, Admirals were very reluctant to risk them getting into combat. And once there were airplanes and torpedos, these floating fortresses could be destroyed or crippled by one good hit. As a result, there are almost no warships larger than destroyers in service anymore, except for aircraft carriers. And even those frigates and destroyers usually have only one loosy cannon to frighten pirates in tiny boats. If you would want to destroy a ship, you'd use rockets from a very safe distance.

And the same things would likely all apply to space warships as well. All they need is an engine to get them fast, a reactor to power the engines and weapons, and living space for the crew that maintains the ship.
Cargo ships are an entirely different thing. As cargo transport in space gets very expensive, you would want to make as few runs as possible, so they would be build with cargo holds that are as big as possible. The Nostromo from Alien would fit that category.

See lesser_minion's answer.
The void is not the sea.
The void is not the sky.

A small ship, in space, is a ship with less autonomy, less accelerating capacity and less firepower, all of it because it can't pack enough mass. And I'm not talking basic supply, as we can assume these things are recycled. I'm talking of the thousands of cubic meters of oxygen/nitrogen/hydrogen necessary to cool and propel the ship. Add to that the fact that, if a ship can pack more mass inside, it can thicken whatever armor it's using to deflect impacting objects, heat and light.

In a space battle, since you are moving at several kilometers per second, it wouldn't matter much for me if you are 10m large or 10km large :

If I got laser weapons and one of the current targeting computer, my ship can calculate your vector, speed and acceleration, fire a laser several millions kilometers away, and still hit you after a few shots. Meanwhile, since you can do the same, a larger hull will mean I can spread the heat more efficiently or at least seal the damaged sections to avoid a atmosphere leak.
If lasers are unavailable, I then go "short range", that's it a few thousands of kilometers away from your ship, and drop thermonuclear missiles that will detonate, each blasting a 100km radius sphere with raw light and heat. Mind you, even such blast would be terribly inaccurate, as the sheer speed of your ship would allow you to leave the threatened area a few seconds only after a missile detonate. Being big would then mean that I can more easily absorb the blast with my armor...or get away from the area by burning as much fuel as I can to accelerate further.
If both lasers and targeting computers are unavailable, then I can still go the "Old School" way and simply saturate with large shells the general direction in which you go. And since such tactic would ask for millions of tons of rocks, I'd better be very large and armored.

Vadin
2010-01-25, 02:26 PM
Switching over to a discussion of mechanics, combat!

Psychic characters fuel themselves with mental energy taken from themselves, from those around them, and from the environment in general. Using any more than the most basic powers expends this piled energy, and they must gain more (whether through actively pulling on someone's mind or from just taking in the ambient energy around themselves).

Mechanically? Points! Points that they can restore over time passively and/or by active use of their lowest level powers instead of D&D's standard points per day (personally, I've never been a fan of anything being per day).

Martial characters- usually not too terribly interesting to play. An idea? Something similar to psychics! But instead of a slowly returning pool of points, a pool of combo points that they increase with each successive hit. Using an opening maneuver gives enough points for the next tier of attacks, which can be used with the expenditure of combo points.

An example: Jack the Ripper uses one of his base level maneuvers on a cop, and hits! A hit with this attack nets Jack 2 combo points that he can expend to use a more powerful maneuver. He uses it on the cop and breaks the man's legs and the maneuver gives him 1 combo point for a successful attack. He could use this combo point on a slightly less powerful move, or use one of his weakest maneuvers again and hope he hits and gets a total of 3 combo points.

The thinking behind the combo point system for martial maneuvers is a rising and falling cascade, where success begets success as the enemy is beaten back and forced into submission.

lesser_minion
2010-01-25, 06:55 PM
That's quite an interesting idea. I'm still thinking of exactly how to handle combat, although I might have some example forms in the pipeline soon.