Space Ships Tabletop Games and Pics General

To talk about tabletop space games, sci fi media or simply to post pics of cool space ships.
This time, how do you guys like your FTL systems?

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Worm wholes/space gates/jump points for me, space trade lanes, choke points etc, it makes for interesting dynamics if the majority of space ships have to pass for them, like blockades.

Anyone has tried Full Thrust Continium? It seems an oldie game but interesting in the way than you can make nearly an kind of ship.

Here some FT lite for anyone interested, FT continum can be found in the net in there, with some cool goodies like rules for WH40k ships, Star wars or Star Treck.
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Armored space traders for the win.

This very much. Arbitrary point-to-point FTL goes full space opera in no time flat, because it gives small crews and individuals lots of power. Heavily restricted FTL makes it a major point of conflict for factions.

You could probably do something similar with heavily-regulated and/or rare FTL juice.

I'm polishing my Diaspora-based homebrew at the moment, I'll probably post it when I'm done. And nobody will read it

The concern for me with jump points is the celestial mechanics of them. Like do they orbit the star, do they have mass and a gravity well, is there a solid core to them, how large is the radius of the area you can jump from etc.

This shit bothers me.

Its FTL, you have to draw the line somewhere.

The technobabble spacemagic field being weak at the Lagrange Points of large planets is a good one. Forever War and humans in Sword of the Stars did that, I think.

Quantum teleportation for stargates that you have to get to their destination at sub-light is good too, since quantum translates to techmagic. And nobody wants to blow up an asset that will take tens of thousands of years to replace, but they do want to blow each other up for it.

When I'm designing a space opera setting, my first concerns are generally military.
The first question is, of course, what's stopping people from warping bombs right into the middle of enemy cities? 'Nothing' is a legitimate answer, of course, but it results in an interstellar political landscape dominated by MAD. Gravity-limited FTL and wormholes both prevent this from happening, although I've always thought gravity wells preventing jumping to FTL is an obvious dodge.
The second question is, can fleets in hyperspace be intercepted? If they cannot, than the notion of a 'front line' is rather ludicrous, as the only limitations on the ability of the enemy to deep-strike at vital infrastructure are their own logistical limitations. (Which can, of course, be significant.) Every world would have to be a fortress to fend off drive-by shootings.

>interstellar political landscape dominated by MAD
You have to deal with this in the case of relativistic weapons anyway.
At least MAD seems to work. For at least one instance of human society, anyway. So far.

>front line
Another fun scenario is unless you have ludicrously large fleets chances are good your ships are spread so thin across your territory as to be useless for defence, only there for detection (and flag waving). The decisions a strategist/admiral may have to make re: gathering ships for defence potentially waiting a long time, losing many worlds, before a strong enough force is gathered, and then whether to go on the offensive or defensive. If it's not a strict military hierarchy and you have to deal with bickering captains in the fleet a la the Greeks waiting to sail on Troy and you're really getting somewhere.

Another question to consider is communication. If there's no FTL comms device you need couriers to jump around with orders and intel. Which of course begs for interception and plot hooks in general.

>Relativistic weapons
I'm not convinced of the overwhelming power of RKKVs against major space-faring civilizations. Velocity works both ways; if you're travelling fast enough to break a planet, then hitting a random pebble will completely vaporize you. Interception actually gets easier in some ways as speed approaches c; less time to react, but destruction of the projectile becomes easier.
Besides, either you're assuming that objects retain their velocity coming out of FTL, or else you'll have to make a very interceptable run-up to ramming speed, which would require your projectile have its own escorting fleet, and if you've already got a fleet in-system why tie it down with an escort mission instead of just using nukes?
>Another fun scenario is unless you have ludicrously large fleets chances are good your ships are spread so thin across your territory as to be useless for defence
Which means any combat will likely turn into a planet-burning race, unless ground defenses are generally equal or superior to orbital attackers and will take long enough to reduce that reinforcements will arrive. Which would still technically be a planet-burning race, just a slow and inconclusive one.

I will user, if only to steal idea from it.
In the setting I'm working half assed, only capital ships or tenders like Jump ships from Mechwarrior have FTL capabilities without going in a space gate. It's a expensive way (I'm using antimatter as the rare fuel because I want to limit the space magic as much as I can, unless the elder races are involved) and it has a limited weight limit and distance, but to go to ungated systems or atack heavily defended systems is pretty handy.
Stargates are conected to the system stars and are constructed be an elder race than change incredible large quantities of rare metals in echange of incredible advanced tech, and space gates are one of the most demanded item because is comparatively cheap and useful (in part are subsidized be them, to allow the younger races to trade more easily). Jump systems can't be used near strong gravitational points like planets or stars, so a FTL atack tend to be slow enough for at least a report of the imminent atack. It isn't instantaneos too, weeks of space voyage in the wrap/space gate dimension bubble(working in the name), than can be intercepted. I have to really work on it I know.

>RKKV
II see what you're saying in terms of fleet resources. It could be cute to redirect and speed up a comet to intercept a colony to force the enemy to move some ships to deal with it, leaving a weakness at wherever those ships were before. A bit far fetched, I know.

>ground campaigns
I think space superiority would settle it pretty quickly. Sure you'll have deal with guerrillas and that's fun stuff storywise, but the assets you're invading the planet for in the first place can be seized and held if you have ships in orbit no problem. Unless your objective was the hearts of the people.

What's the most interesting balance of power dynamic? Space UN makes me groan, but I like the out-numbered and out-tech'd civilisation struggling to win against a superior enemy.

I like the power dynamics of a galactic empire in the process of collapse, mostly because it's the best environment for PCs to murderhobo through. The last remnants of central authority mostly shooting at each other, suddenly-isolated garrisons fending off rioters nightly, corporations scrambling to become nations out of sheer self-defense in the power vacuum as every minor power starts carving out their own little empires, pirates joining forces in vast fleets to pillage entire worlds. For sheer density of stuff happening it's tough to beat.

Galactic Cold War could also serve as a good setting, with spies, space privateers, two superpowers fighting a proxy war for resources on a planet, bounty hunters, etc, etc.

Yeah, that's my second-favorite. And generating plots is as easy as opening a history book!

Low level space western/pirate in an dying empire is the best, lawlness, plunder and oportunities for roleplaying than nearly write themselves.

What are good ways to rid off heat in space? After generating loads of heat between power generators than convert terawatts of energy, weapons than use GJ and all that a simple radiator is enough?

Mass Effect mentions starships using heatsinks in extended battles, and releasing water droplets from the front to cool the hull.

Other than that, you get the handwavium of heat being recycled into more power somehow, or getting dumped into hyperspace.

I prefer a sorta-kinda Alcubierre drive for space settings I write.

Sorta-kinda because it has a limitation I'm not sure the real thing has: It's ridiculously sensitive to tidal forces. If the force of gravity differs too much from one end of the Alcubierre metric to the other- on the order of micronewtons per square meter- the metric goes wonky in weird, unpredictable, and usually catastrophic ways.

The smaller the Alcubierre metric is, the closer it can safely approach astronomical objects in FTL. Larger spacecraft have to drop out farther away and come in on reaction drives

It creates a nice tension between how small you make the Alcubierre spacecraft and how big it has to be to carry what it needs to complete its mission. This results in a wide range of sizes and capabilities for Alcubierre ships.
Small enough ships, around 20-30 meters can Alcubierre deep enough into a stellar system that they can shuttle between some of the planets. In military operations, these can sally from carriers from across the stellar system, like some sort of space fighter.

It also allows FTL interdiction, by using Alcubierre technology to generate disruptive gravity perbutations over a wide area. Along with the ridiculous small sizes required this prevents uninterceptable IPBMs-they can be reliably intercepted and destroyed close to their target, and even if they hit they have to be really, really tiny, with not a lot of volume for mass or warhead.

For hard scifi? Some form of radiator.
What the previous user mentioned is called a liquid droplet radiator. You spray droplets of coolant out of a boom, and collect it back up with another boom behind that one.
Its really lightweight for it's effectiveness, but you do have to figure out some way of compensating for thrust. And, for best results, a reliable way to handle liquid tungsten.

Tungsten? Seems expensive, water doesn't cute it like in Mass effect? Also what's the problem with handling Tungsten?

Tungsten has the highest melting point of pretty much any material known to man. This means handling molten tungsten is close to impossible because any plausible container would also melt.