Re: [GZG] Asteroid fields and the Great Monkey Dance :-D (was: Re: The Great Premeasuring Monkey Dance

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http://lists.csua.berkeley.edu/mailman/listinfo/gzg-lOn Fri, May 8, 2009
at 8:41 AM, Samuel Penn <sam@glendale.org.uk> wrote:

> On Friday 08 May 2009 12:59:34 Doug Evans wrote:
> > On the other other hand, I believe the original phrase used was
'asteroid
> > swarms' not belt.
>
> Tom B's post mentioned "Asteroid belt racers".
>
> I deliberately didn't reply to "asteroid swarms" because that's a
> lot more ambiguous as to what it means :-)
>
> > Local conditions, while age-of-the-galaxy rare for a Star
> > Wars version, can vary, and other world systems are proving stranger
than
> > our current experience.
> >
> > I accept denser populations than we currently experience as a real
> > possibility, and worth modelling.
>
> I think we come back to the earlier discussion about just because
> we don't know for sure that something is impossible, doesn't mean
> that we can throw in anything we want if we want to aim for realism.
>
> Star Wars dense fields have two problems (in the long term):
>  1) Why haven't frequent collisions ground the rocks to dust?
>  2) Why hasn't gravity pulled them into a single planet?
>
> Some asteroids are thought to be little more than piles of rubble,
> so an impact could give you a temporarily dense field. Something
> like the destruction of Alderaan would probably create a short term
> dense field as well.
>
> FWIW, I agree that dense fields are worth modelling, simply because
> that's what tends to turn up in SF and they can be fun to game in.
> I still like to play around with what's known to be possible however.
>

I agree on both points. I just wanted to point out that more often than
not,
the lack of dense #s of asteroids is going to probably be the rule in
most
solar systems. Caveat: those solar systems that have gas giants which
will
sweep clear the debris fields, like ours have, that is.

>
> Assuming we have one highly unlikely dense asteroid field in our
> campaign universe, what sort of interesting terrain could ships
> be fighting within, in all the other solar systems?
>

There ain't much "terrain" in space (that's why they call it "space" ;-)
).
But you could do planetary ring systems.

Another way to get  locally dense significantly-sized objects might be
to
play in a very very early developing star system, where the forming gas
giants have not yet swept clean the lanes of debris.

Or jump in a nebula.  Who the heck knows what's going on in there??
(could
play havok with your firecon sensors, too ;-) )

Mk