Re: Gravity, Tech & others (was Re: Orbits, etc)

On  9 Jul 98 at 9:30, Brian Bell wrote:

> Perhaps you are correct. We played a diminishing return rule when
> our ships gravity drive was in a gravity well. But this is just PSB.
> It explained why streamlining cost so much (not only hull design but
> extra thrusters and gravity well compensators). Again just PSB.

Well, that's a bit of PSB I was toying with too :)

> The main thing that I did not like about 7500km/mu/15 minute turn
> was that you had to reach extreemly high game speeds to reach other
> planets or jump points. An AU (distance from the sun to earth) is
> 19,946.666 mu using this scale. This is 207 DAYS at a speed of 1. 4
> days at a maximum increase of 8 each turn. Four days is a lot at 8G.
> And your speed would be about 3072 (quite a lot to decelerate from)
> when you passed it by. And this is only 1 AU. I was using 2 AU out
> of the rotational disk. Someone else had that you had to get
> completely out of the gravity well of the SYSTEM. Of course if you
> can jump (go FTL) from anywhere in the system this is not a
> limitation, but does give rise to the kamakazi FTL jump (no flames,
> please). --

I binned FTL drives exploding spectaculalry as something far too open 
to abuse, I just have them break down if you jump at the wrong place.

As an aside, in our setting we limit how close to a body you can 
enter FTL, but do allow it inside system, between planets. We are 
also toying with the idea of having special entry/exit points for 
FTL, initially we used Lagrange points, but it felt like too much 
PSB. So I'm searching for definable places in systems that can be 
used as places that FTL drives can be used nearish to planets for 
travel between them, and for between systems. Any ideas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Slattery	     richard@mgkc.demon.co.uk
It was pretty good. Even the music was nice. 
     Yogi Berra, after attending an opera
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