Spaceships

It depends on the story, really. Each one produces a different shape of society and a different shape of narrative. Sometimes I'm in the mood for Star Wars and sometimes I'm in the mood for Revelation Space, you know?

>No FTL. Sub-lightspeed accessible

Stop right there.

Once you cross that line, you have to acknowledge that any FTL is time travel so you can arrive at your destination before the light of an certain event and hence violate causality.

Sub-lightspeeds are cool and accesible with Pulsed nuclear engines either Orion drives or inertial confinement fusion, 30% the speed of light is not out the realm of possibility.

The problem starts when you realize that 30% speed of light is pretty much a relativistic kill vehicle, so the dynamics of war change a lot now, even inside a solar system we pretty much will see the equivalent of nukes and maybe small tactical relativistic kill vehicles to just create a few dozen miles in depth crater inside a planet as a bridgehead.

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>hard
No FTL, unless it's bleeding edge, poorly understood, and is treated as a big deal in-setting.
>(((hard)))
Wormhole generators. Hard enough to keep the autists satisfied, but soft enough that you can have your star-hopping adventure.
>soft/space fantasy
Plothole space, especially of the Grossly Incandescent Space Hell variety. Space fantasy only: drive failures don't cause the ship to evaporate, but instead results in demonic incursion, giving players the opportunity to rip and tear.

You know how an asteroid can fuck up a planet? Take that asteroid, and speed it up to FTL. If you don't strictly NEED that planet, then it's the be-all-end-all of siege warfare.

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E = mc^2 makes fast spaceships relativistic kinetic kill vehicles.

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Unfortunately no, wormholes still violate causality if it allows for FTL.

All FTL options violate causality, period. As soon as you add a third observer who is travelling towards or away from the ship(s), it all falls apart.

There's no magic bullet around it, aside from saying that the science is wrong and inventing your own science-fantasy interpretation.

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>Unfortunately no, wormholes still violate causality if it allows for FTL.

Yes, they do, but you can ignore that for most practical purposes by postulating a wormhole network that considers itself a universal frame of reference and avoids the easy exploits around this by Visser radiation handwaves.

Does that even work with the Alcubierre Drive, since the whole trick of it is that the ship is not moving at relativistic speeds, just the space-time bubble around it?

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I really like Hyperspace and stargate/portal options, but then again I don't play hard scifi so realistic physics of space travel doesn't matter to me. Currently i'm waiting and stealing all these images for when Starfinder releases.

In that they use something called the Drift, a hyperspace style FTL that was created by a tech god, who is the fusion of three different technology gods (clockwork god, android god, and AI god). Whenever you use the Drift, you sometimes pull chunks of the surrounding plane into the Drift, and you can use it to get to and from other dimensions too. Which means you can be flying to a nearby star system to pick up cargo and get waylaid by an encounter with angels trying to get home, or demons stalking the flight lines between stars, or other more stranger things.

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At >c velocities, the interface fills the bubble with amazingly excessive amounts of radiation inside and out. So if we're really using a 'hard' setting, Alcubierre drives can't approach c without self-destructing.

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>aside from saying that the science is wrong
Except that's 100% certain.

We *KNOW* that the relativity-based model of physics is not comprehensively correct, just a useful approximation in most cases, the way Newtonian physics was before it.

The fact that we have a model of physics that depends on entirely unobserved theoretical "dark matter" and "dark energy" making up the majority of the universe in order for its preconditions to hold together at an interstellar scale means we are wrong about something fundamental.

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>Plothole space, especially of the Grossly Incandescent Space Hell variety. Space fantasy only: drive failures don't cause the ship to evaporate, but instead results in demonic incursion, giving players the opportunity to rip and tear.

Now this I like. Perfect for an intro adventure to the campaign. Especially if it was all only known by the higher eschelon and a few scientists and hidden from general knowledge as possible conspiracy theoretics or crazy talk from religious fanatics.

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>a model of physics that depends on entirely unobserved theoretical [...]
Reminder that the existence of antimatter was predicted by one guy being really autistic and insisting that his formula for 4d quantum wave propagation had to look pretty. I'll buy that there's some weird invisible shit until we have a better theory out there.

It's also great for (in works leaning more towards fantasy than space) having some space crusades, where people have the actual, physical backing of the forces they champion. Even in the less fantastic form, you could have certain favored groups just "happening" to find the most efficient paths for jump and have fewer drive failures, and all the theological arguing that ensues.

I have occasionally toyed around with the idea of psychic powers being caused by hyperspace travel (although not going full 40k with it) to explain why there are people running around with blatantly obvious psychic powers when there was no such people back when humanity was confined to Earth. Potentially also use it to explain why none of the inevitable ancient, hyper-advanced aliens are around anymore- they kept using hyperdrive, so they kept getting more and more psychic until they ascended to a higher plane of existence.

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Dark matter's been observed as well as something that only interacts gravitationally can be. It's quite a sure thing (though the details are less so).

Dark energy's definitely still on the "the fuck?" side of physics, though.

no FTL with relativistic effects
Realistic, and for realm building. Each world is completely isolated culturally/technologically from others. Allows for interesting war aspect, as anyone with an "interstellar ship" can hold a planet hostage, and easily kill those fuckers that pissed your great grandfather off. Limited galactic options though, as why would you follow any type of centralized authority. Any reps your planet sends will arrive after you die, why would your grandchildren trust some old fuck who disapeared for a hundred years or so to represent you. Communication as well, taking only slightly faster than you can physically go there (Ender series had a mumbo jumbo solution that worked somewhat). All in all, best setting for books. Potentially games as well. Some ancient civ or some other mcguffen spread over multiple planets. Each very unique, have a water world, desert world(THE SPICE MUST FLOW), world with all cyborgs, world with no tech, world with monarchy, world with mega corps, ect. the possibilities are endless. Literally the best adventure game, and should players die, new people can be recruited creating a diverse party with very different backgrounds(Farscape).

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How well would WW2 naval combat translate to space combat? What would have to change to make things work?

Removing the 3rd dimension.
1. increase range to such an extent you will hardly ever fight over 2 vectors(LOGH).
2. location fiat, battles in areas with very limited navigable space
3. gentlemens agreements(lol)
4. make it only a board game(BFG looking at you kid)
5. humans shake their perception terribly, all aligning up in the same axis when in formation, and then attacking together in such a fashion(Battle Room in Enders Game)
6. dont explain it, just do it, justify it with fun, ease of rules, ect

Its very hard to justify 2d, in the most 3d environment you can have, when you are not making a game. Games only depict it this way as it becomes exponentially more complex to accurately use 3d in anything more than 1 ship, 1st or 3rd person games. Controlling more than 1 ship in a 3d space would give people headaches.

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The 3rd dimension really isn't that significant in space combat anyway, on account of the ecliptic plane and the importance of gravity slingshotting for getting around star systems.

Attacking from above or below would take such an enormous expenditure of fuel that it would likely mean the attacking ships would be very poorly armed and armored for their size compared to the defenders around whatever planet or asteroid base was being attacked.

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BDs have been out for ages. Stop using those disgusting looking camrip webms.

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God I fucking love battletech ships. Mind posting more pics user?

>remove the planet-ramming problem.

But that's half the fun.

What you want to do is go full Lensman and start ramming planets into things.

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Rogue One has many flaws but the space battle over Scarif sure as hell wasn't one of them.

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That was such an amazing scene where Vader's ship jumps in and wrecks the rebels.

They really fucked up the music though. Needed some bombastic Imperial March variant instead of the quiet soundtrack they used.

why do the rebels always send in those pumpkin/football shaped transports into battle?

because it obviously was a trap

>Unfortunately no, wormholes still violate causality if it allows for FTL.
>All FTL options violate causality, period. As soon as you add a third observer who is travelling towards or away from the ship(s), it all falls apart.
But what if the third observer can't observe? As in, he can't see what's going on inside the wormhole/bridge. To him it just looks like someone disappear, then reappear somewhere else.

because they're fast and relatively well armed, and beggers can't be choosers

I'm talking about the transports no the frog face cruisers.

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That's much better than the other one which had a huge bar on only one side of the ship. Looks kind of cool, but would completely throw off the center of mass. Oh, there it is.

I imagine getting hit by a bubble of spacetime moving faster than the speed of light would hurt a lot, even if the ship inside "Wasn't actually moving at all"

While leaving the ecliptic is hard, it's not that difficult to enter an inclined or even retrograde orbit around a planet or moon, you only need to make a very small adjustment to the angle you approach it, and suddenly you'll be coming in at an angle.

Interplanetary space is more or less 2d, but in orbit, threat vectors are a complete hemisphere, with the Horizon being the most dangerous (anything could pop up out of it) and the space "above" you being something to keep an eye on as well.

We aren't wrong about relativistic effects and causality breaking of > c, period. We can be wrong about a lot of things, and have newer models, but the truth of relativistic effects and causality breaking is an universal truth.

You are arguing that gravity doesn't necessarily exist because we haven't the most perfect theory possible for it. This isn't how it works. Yes, we can find ulterior development and affine our understanding of gravity. This doesn't mean that gravity doesn't exist, or that we will suddenly find a theory that say that gravity doesn't exist. Gravity exists kiddo. You are not failing out of the earth because it exists.

We see gravity. We experience gravity. We know gravity exists. Our understanding of the universe makes gravity obvious. Our understanding of it can be flawed, but gravity won't suddenly disappear in a puff of logic because a new theory appears.

Same thing with relativistic effect and the causality breaking effects of speed superior to c. We know, for a fact, that they exist. We can certainly create new theories, affine our models, call it something else, say that it is caused by something else, prove it is only an aftereffect of some quantum gravity theory. But relativistic effects won't suddenly disappear in a puff of logic. They exist.

>can't physically exist in our universe
>IN our universe
that's the whole point of hyperspace. it ain't IN our universe at all!

>Limited galactic options though, as why would you follow any type of centralized authority.
Ender's universe solved it by having the government control the ansibles, so the colonies have a choice to either comply or be cut off from the rest of humanity at least for several generations

>violate causality
I fully admit I don't understand quantum mechanics, but still, this idea that outrunning a particle can constitute "violation of causality" sounds like violation of common sense. Same as "if you move in circles around a space string you can go back in time", which even scientists admit is obviously impossible and likely will be proven to be a mistake by future discoveries.

Even if it IS true, it is the kind of scientific thing that should be disregarded first and foremost, when making allowances to accommodate your sci-fi.

>my science fantasy setting
>ships getting remass through siphoning shit from subdimensions via magic like some sort of eldritch bussard collector + ultra efficient monopole based conversion drive = warships can be extremely heavily armoured
>plasma screens magnetically suspended kilometres from the ship and heated to act as a sort of regenerating super-Whipple shield that also effects (most) types of lasers and particle beams
>full body phased arrays and banks of sandblaster railguns and swarms of (sometimes nuclear) micro-missiles for active point defence

Is this cool? My problem is that these ships need to have extremely powerful drives (almost light-hugging) because FTL isnt readily available for style reasons so they have shitloads of firepower by definition but I also don't want combat to be instant knock out he-who-hits-first wins, but I also don't want to introduce perfect sci-fi energy fields into the setting.

That looks like a good ship for a (((merchant))) republic.

>in the far future...
>warfare is reduced to deadly bumping car battles but with FTL spaceships
>making every battle outcome a simple matter of what ships have the better AI controlling it

You're outrunning the information speed cap of the universe. Light simply happens to travel at that speed because it is the fastest speed that can be traveled.

I don't get why FTL users don't like the consequences. FTL is a perfect plot device, it gives god-like power to the first jackass who gets their hands on it and does a little basic engineering.

I need realistic spaceships, my bros.
Give me all your ugly ass, spinning-shit-around-an-axis kind of ships, please.