RE: OT Flavor was Near-Topic: G forces

On Wednesday, February 06, 2002 11:51 AM, Brian Bilderback
[SMTP:bbilderback@hotmail.com] wrote:

> There are two ways to do FTL jumps in my setting.  One is to pilot an
STL 
> ship through a fixed jump gate.  The other is to pilot a FTL ship.  In
both 
> cases, you do not get accelerated to C, rather, you enter a sort of
"Jump"

> stae, which might be a fold, an artificial wormhole, something along
those

> lines (Help me get creative with this one).  It takes a large device
to 
> create this effect, which is why only large ships, usually warships or

> exploration vessels, have them.  it's much more economical to build
one 
> large one in the system and let gobs of ships use it.  Furthermore,
because 
> of the PSB, if you jump from one system to another through a fixed
gate,
you 
> can cross much larger distances safely.  jumps from a gate to an
ungated 
> region of space, or in a self-jumping ship, get less accurate and more
risky 
> the farther from the starting point you get (Please don't go into
arguements 
> about whether it should be this way - this is flavor, this is how I
want
the 
> flavor, please help me string together enough BS to make it
plausible).
The 
> reason for this is I want much of FTL travel to be long and arduous.
> 
> Suggestions?

It depends on what sort of time dilation you want to look at.

PSB mode on:
Scientists of xxyy century postulated that mass could be transmitted as
energy through a sub-dimension or "hyperspace fold".
Once technology caught up enough, a test ship was constructed, which
worked;
after a fashion.
It was found that although travel was instantaneous from an outsiders
point
of view, those actually travelling suffered a time dilation of one day
per
light year travelled.  This meant that during travel, heavy maintanance
was
required on the jump engines to maintain the energy output or the ship
would
often "mis-jump", sometimes hundeds of light years off course.
Further developments of the technology resulted in the development of
Point-to-Point Jumpgates, which guarenteed the ship would arrive at the
destination, as power was only required during the transmittion or
reception
phase, resulting in a much smaller power requirement, as the travelling
ship
would be able to coast through the "hyperspace fold" to the destination.
Although time dilation still occurred for the crew, it resulted in much
more
reliable travel.
In the end, large explorer ships would seek out new systems using their
own
jump engines and construct destination gates before returning home
through
the completed gate (as the destination was known).  During war, it was
found
that shutting down a gate prevented the transmitted ship from ever
coming
out, so warfare developed where larger warships would use their own jump
engines to capture a target jumpgate, before re-activating it so support
vessels could transit through.

Game Mechanics on:
Jump Engines in this universe cost 20% mass & a Jumpgate requires FTL
tender
drives of double normal to transmit ships through.

Brendan