Re: [FT] FTL Travel

In message <3.0.3.32.19981025234041.008909e0@popmail.voicenet.com>
	  John Crimmins <johncrim@voicenet.com> wrote:

>	For one thing, accuracy is questionable.  The best gates
available, owned
> and operated by the U.N., will put a ship within three hundred miles
of its
> designated point of arrival, assuming that the distance traveled is
five or
> less lightyears.

That's pretty damn accurate. Assuming 1"=1000km, that's well within
an inch on the gaming table - dropping an SD, or even a swarm of
missiles, right behind the enemy would be possible.

If you want it to be inaccurate, I'd suggest millions of km for the
best systems, or at the very least hundreds of thousands (which would
allow you to come out within the Earth-Moon system, more or less).

>	Gates also allow FTL communcation; most modern ships are
equipped with a
> miniature gate system through which signals can be beamed.  As a
result,
> communication over long distances can be chancy, but it does allow
sporadic
> contact under most conditions.

Which of course allows the use of gates in a tactical setting - send
through coordinates of enemy fleet to nearby jump gate, and drop half
a dozen battleships right behind them.

>	So how do other people work FTL?

My favourite has always been the Traversable Wormhole, as exposed
by Stephen Baxter quite a bit. They are two way, instantaneous travel,
but the gates themselves can only move STL. They're also affected by
relativistic time delation, allowing time travel between the two ends,
but possibly in a limited sort of way (Baxter allowed time travel,
physicists who are working on the theory tend to assume that *something*
will prevent anyone from breaking causality).

You end up with instantaneous travel between regions connected by
wormholes, but slow expansion around the edges.

-- 
Be seeing you,	     http://www.bifrost.demon.co.uk/Gaming/Gaming.html
Sam.		     ----------------------- Roleplaying and Wargaming