Let's make a sci-fi setting

FTL travel is possible because of a vast network of invisible hyperlanes connecting the stars in a haphazard fashion. A statecraft, properly outfitted, can produce a bubble of space-time, enter the hyperlane, and shoot to the other side at many times the speed of light. Travel time lasts anywhere from two weeks for the shortest hyperlanes, to three years for the longest.

> *starcraft

"statecraft" makes it better, desu.

No space aliens. Most Aliens are either pre-sapiens or haven't achieved to build even the pyramids. The only exceptions is a cluster of stars Matryoshka Brains of an obvious alien origin in the outer rim of the galaxy. At the same time, humans have followed genetic, cybernetic and evolutionary divergent path to adapt to their colonies for some time.

Ships capable of navigating the hyperlanes are enormous and full of crew over the generations, nation-states in their own right

Only the best governing and politics can take you to the stars!

What are hyperlanes?

The latest fashion trend for men and women alike is growing huge sideburns reaching down to the shoulders.

You're right user.

Picture the galaxy, now picture an intricate spider web connecting the star systems, the individual strands are the hyperlanes. Not all star systems have a hyperlane, some have dozens, the path to reach some star systems is needlessly convoluted and long.

Hyperlanes are essentially wormholes, connecting to other wormholes light years away. The path between wormholes is called the hyperlane, because the laws of physics don't apply there, allowing ships to go faster than light, and necessitating the space-time bubble, to keep the ship from suddenly not existing.

A vast network, invisible, and connecting to stars in a haphazard fashion. Try to keep up.

I've got three, one expanding on the hyperlane idea.

i.
Hyperlanes are formed by the vast gravity of stars themselves. Thus they can only be opened and closed in relatively close proximity to a star - say within the orbit of Mercury for Sol. Starships must then use powerful but still sublight drives to travel within a star system itself. These sublight drives can manage about 3 AU per day, so going from Mercury to, say, Neptune (30.1 AU), takes 10-ish days

ii.
There are no unobtanium-like substances in the universe; everything is still made from steel or titanium or whatnot, albeit with highly advanced refining and smelting processes. Due to the huge abundance of natural mineral and biological resources contained within even a single star system (gold, oil, whatever), the only commodities that have any actual interstellar trading value are luxury goods that can't be acquired elsewhere: Tau Cetan firetulips, Vegan jackalope meat, tea from Alpha Phoenicis, coffee and cacao from Sol, and the like.

iii.
While you can beam a signal into a hyperlane, it'll just bounce against the lane's walls and become gibberish after even a single real-'verse lightyear of travel. Thus while there is FTL travel there is no FTL communications. If you want to send a message to someone in a different star system, you have to hand it to a courier. A side-effect of this is that each star system must maintain its own internal currency, since there is no way for its value on the international market to be assured as up-to-date.

Genetic engineering and evolution have resulted in many human subspecies, most of them having only subtle variations from baseline humanity, but some having extreme or chimeric variations, and are unable to reproduce with other subspecies, making them almost a species in their own right.

Sounds good desu.

Spaceship weapons systems are divided between bullets, missiles, and lasers. There are other kinds of weapons, but these three categories are by far the most common.

As a general rule of thumb,

> Bullets beat Lasers
> Lasers beat Missiles
> Missiles beat Bullets

Ships traveling through hyperlanes don't just float in the middle of the space tunnel, but they have to skim the "surface" that is the border of hyperspace and real space, which sort of behaves like a non-Newtonian liquid IN SPACE.
Many ships use specialized gravity wheels to cling to the hyperspace walls so that they can travel fast enough to avoid sinking back into real space.

Though it's less common than wheels, some, more exotic ships employ the use of specialized gravity fins and skis.

> Bullets beat Lasers
> Lasers beat Missiles
> Missiles beat Bullets

...how? Wouldn't it make more sense to adapt a system like in Galactic Civilizations, where there's 3 main attack forms and 3 main defense forms?

Bullets can be mitigated by armor, but armor isn't nearly as useful against lasers or missiles.

Lasers can be mitigated by shields, but shields aren't nearly as effective against missiles or bullets

Missiles can be mitigated by point defense, but point defense isn't nearly as effective against bullets or lasers.

>so that they can travel fast enough to avoid sinking back into real space.

Ooh, I like this idea. Sinking back into real space would also be a virtual death sentence if we keep the gravity thing mentioned upthread: since you need an immense gravity well to pass into a hyperlane, falling out of one and into interstellar space means that you have no way back into the hyperlane and are thereby stranded in interstellar space, restricted to sublight travel times.

From Sol to Proxima Centauri (9.461 trillion km) at 3 AU (about 448.8 million km) per day day would take about 57 years

> ...how? Wouldn't it make more sense to adapt a system like in Galactic Civilizations, where there's 3 main attack forms and 3 main defense forms?

> Bullets can be mitigated by armor, but armor isn't nearly as useful against lasers or missiles.

> Lasers can be mitigated by shields, but shields aren't nearly as effective against missiles or bullets

> Missiles can be mitigated by point defense, but point defense isn't nearly as effective against bullets or lasers.

That's much better thought out than my rock-paper-scissors idea.

> Ooh, I like this idea. Sinking back into real space would also be a virtual death sentence if we keep the gravity thing mentioned upthread: since you need an immense gravity well to pass into a hyperlane, falling out of one and into interstellar space means that you have no way back into the hyperlane and are thereby stranded in interstellar space, restricted to sublight travel times.

> From Sol to Proxima Centauri (9.461 trillion km) at 3 AU (about 448.8 million km) per day day would take about 57 years

I like this, I like it a lot. Exceptionally skilled pilots must be worth their weight and then some in platinum.

It also might mean that there are ghost ships floating around in interstellar space from the early days of exploring hyperlanes (or the modern day with just really unlucky people), probably set on courses to return them to inhabited star systems, but with the crew inside long dead. Occasionally one might make it home so at least people can know what happened.

Maybe one of them was large enough that they could sustain a basic existence through an extensive amount of waste recycling, hydroponics, and jury-rigging the FUCK out of systems as they fail. Also cannibalism.

And it's finally drifted close enough to a star system to be retrieved...

I'm liking this idea more and more every minute.

Alternate physics in this universe. Rather than spit out radioactive rays, typically radioactive materials like Thorium, Barium, and Uranium are usually stagnant in the environment.

When slammed together, though, some of the excess matter shaves off to become a 'Thermal', an object that generates heat spontaneously for an extended period of time.

You can therefore create Thermalizer Reactors that do not require fuel, since they generate energy constantly like a Zero-Point Module at a cost of requiring significant cooling systems.

Cut to the future of a Post-WW2 world where the value of the Thermalizer (or whatever way better name some user comes up with) has increased with the development of a device called the 'Thermal Imploder' - a weapon that can, like a nuclear bomb splits the atom and releases energy, hyperexcites the output of a standard thermal rock.

Instead of Hiroshima getting destroyed by a Nuke and atomized, it's hit by a Thermal Imploder and turns into a massive heat bloom, the ground salted by hyper-hot rock that makes most of the surrounding area uninhabitable and turning the weather into a hot mess of tsunamis and hurricanes in Southeast Asia.

Runaway global warming from literally heat bombs starts to wreak havoc worldwide, only for the efforts of NASA and other space agencies to discover a way to save the galaxy: Antimatter.

Instead of combining with matter to create energy, Antimatter combined with Matter destroys it. You can create antimatter weapons that literally freeze objects to absolute zero... or smash it into a thermal chunk and create a Cold Imploder.

Cue an Energypunk universe with Epstein Drive-style rockets using thermal cores surrounded by frosters, replacing the ugly radiators on realistic spaceships.

The battlefields of the future are dangerous as fuck since at any minute you can be frozen solid by ice bombs or the air could catch fire from a thermal imploder. Upside, power armor and personal lasers are practical.

There would need to be a reason why you would have to skim on the edge or disaster rather than just float in the middle.
I think that the walls have strong gravity constantly trying to pull anything in the hyperlane out into real space, and being in the middle subjects the ship to this form all sides, instead of just one. So unless you could maintain a course where these forces all balance out, the shifting gravity will overpower a ships thrusters and pull it out of the hyperlane.

Also, if were putting wheels on our ships, would they end up being space cars? And groups of adrenaline junkies, could have races in the hyperlanes, in small personal ships/cars. Another possiblility is humans figured out how to immitate the walls of the hyperlanes in realspace, so while you still have to travel at sub light speeds, it is possible to drive on space roads form planet to planet, eliminating the need for maneuvering thrusters, and greatly decreasing fuel consumption.

How about heading down the middle of a lane is way faster than travelling along the edge, but way way more risky because of the fluctuating pull.
It requires both ridiculous reflexes and ridiculous intuition, so much so that no hyperspace-rated computers can perform the calculations in the time required.
For the hot-shots who take the risk, it comes down to about 1% piloting, 2% intuition and 98% luck. But don't tell them the odds

I actually like statecraft better

Earth is dead
Its death caused a gigantic collapse of the human empire
The only people still living on earth are stone age tier
The remaining humans have evolved after thousands of years in isolation
Some adaptations are more extreeme than others

So we've gotten FTL fleshed out, let's start developing factions.

I like the idea that the earth was destroyed and that everyone was scattered around different planets

>Earth is dead

How?

>space warfare is no more complex than scissors-paper-stone
Kill yourselves, the both of you.

from my last sci-fi setting.
>Weapons of mass destruction arent atomic bombs anymore but metric tonnes of wolfram or any other metal which survives a straight dive trough the atmosphere after being set on a collision course from another planet/station etc.

>and are unable to reproduce with other subspecies, making them almost a species in their own right.
but they are capable of interbreeding with some other subspecies which are capable with interbreeding with some other species and so on, effectively being a ring species