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?
Space Ships Tabletop Games and Pics General
Jose Scott
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Angel Jenkins
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.
Jonathan Powell
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.
Aiden Powell
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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Joshua Nguyen
Armored space traders for the win.
Anthony Brown
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
Camden Garcia
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.
James Evans
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.
Joseph Fisher
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.
Blake Fisher
>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.