Space travel rules/speed

[jbgibson]

For game mechanics, consider if all your players are on the same timeline or not. If there's a big difference between interstellar transit time and travel-time to what your system uses for jump points, you can't have players A&B making three transits of 10 days out to safe distance from star (or to the nearest wormhole or to the spot where physics permits folding - whatever) plus 10 minutes (or 10 months) in FTL, whilst players C goes to the same place with one jump... If everybody's in the same sequence of events, there's no problem with a turn or unit of game time to be the same for the 10 days as for the 10 min or 10 months. A stretchy, rubber clock, if you will.

If you intend for players to be jumping hither and yon across a galaxy, and interacting in real time, pick an FTL system that matches your needs. Like others mentioned above, maybe the constraints are how much energy you have to spend, or how big a ship you can use. Or how much unobtanium your ship has in its tanks :-). But it always takes one turn or two turns to transit - something nice and simple.

If you don't want players to get dropped from the game by the delightful problems others mentioned above (You have arrived at a dead end with no exit. Good bye. Go get the rest of us some pizza.) then maybe make all your interstellar travel from predefined transit points, and leave the "Galactic Engineer Corps" and their slow/expensive/catastrophic initial placement of gates/wormholes/fold points off-board and out of play.

If you want to force some decisions and tradeoffs, set some kind of parameter like big ships make the transit point unusable longer than small ones. Or the same armor that makes ship A well-nigh invulnerable causes a percent chance of a random alternate destination instead of the one you planned <evil grin>. Ship B uses shields instead, not protecting from thermoplasmic disruptor lances as well, but actually enhancing ship integrity in warp space (pick your own technobabble).

Exploration & battle both, eh? Do you intend to have a mapped-out sector to work in, or will someone's decision to "head 500 light years thataway" automatically leave him somewhere interesting and useful? Are you going to severely limit the number of possible destinations, like Cherryh's Chanur or Alliance/Union universe? Is there a gamemaster, or does everybody play? If no gamemaster, are you going to rig something random to set the characteristics of places before they're explored? Maybe picture a Settlers of Catan board of randomly placed hexes, with players only turning them over when they get to them. Or a set of Battleship boards so each player has their own secret map, and they annotate it or stick in pegs or whatever to match their own unique knowledge - the aforementioned hexes stay face down the whole game with players getting a peek at their characteristics when they get there. Or a mixture - some predetermined ones are "already mapped" and common knowledge. Or a player needing money (energy, mana, supplies, fuel) could trade knowledge of places he's been "to the community" and publishes it to the Atlas Galactica by turning over one or more hexes so all can see from then on. Hey, that sounds interesting - if you don't try something like that maybe I can work up something to do with my Catan games' hex tiles :-).

Or how about a map system a little like that of Nexus Ops - semirandomly preplaced hexes where the different terrain is visible, but some token or characteristic has to be 'explored' to find - a mine or a new unit, in Nexus. Interstellar "terrain" could be what, observable characteristics of stars? Rudimentary data found in the Travellers' Guide to the Link Network, recently translated from the ancient language of the link builders... but some things aren't known until you get there - is there a local civilization with gas stations and recreational facilities? Did the star go nova since the guidebook was written, and there's nothing of interest there?

[Fuse]

There will be a game master and also some pre-generated places, but most of the area will be unknown to humans.
The way I've been thinking on it the game takes place just as humans are starting to expand and travel beyond our own solar system. As yet there has been no encounter with 'intelligent' alien life,
though an earth-like planet was discovered complete with vegetation and life forms (animals, insects, etc).
I plan to have some sort of mapping system (thanks for the ideas ), probably hex based, where players on a quest venture out on a set path.. or those who just want to explore can see what they find out there. There will have to be a limited number of places, but I came up with a dice system for generating planets/planetoids so that will help.

Here's a picture of the ship I'm designing. It's the ship that discovered the first earth-like world and it's going to be artwork in the rulebook.

[Boethius61]

If you are going with an 'early in space' theme then I have a possiblity that no one has mentioned (unless I missed it). It is the idea I used once in a space campaign. Basically, it is the use of Warp Ferries. The tech to go faster than light is still new and takes a lot of energy/machinery/whatever. Warp capable ships are thus HUGE. No small craft can manage it. The ferries are like small cities or space ports in themselves. But . . . the ferries have to stick to open spaces. They can't go into systems or too near stars or other collision hazards. Thus PCs would then have to hitch a ride on a ferry to go places, then sublight it a little when they get close. The travel time is determined by four factors, how long before the next ferry arrives, how many ferry transfers they need to do, how fast the ferries travel, and how close they get to their destination.

This has a few of advantages.

1) No need to overthink the problem. The PCs travel time is determined by the speed of plot. You need them to take a long time, then the next ferry isn't comming for a while and it is a slow beast. On the otherhand if you want them to get somewhere quick, they can hop a ferry right away and the journey is a quick one.

2) You can use the ferries themselves as adventure locals. A giant techo-city hurtling through space at faster than light . . fun fun fun.

3) You can impose long trips if you need. These would be timeframes remaniscient of the age of sailing ships. Say the PCs are exploring . . . they take the ferry to the latest new route destination then head out to explore at sublight. Taking weeks or months to get to someplace new. Perhaps they will find a safe destination worthy of a new ferry route. This also allows for rewardable suffering. The PCs are the exporers who do the hard long trips to scout out new ferry destinations. Its tough work but they get the recognition when they do things like find an earth like planet (to use your example).

I know this isn't exactly what you were asking. I guess what I'm saying is that, IMHO, you shouldn't make a system for speeds and such. After all you are intending a less rules intensive play. As soon as you make a chart or speed table or any of that, you have a rule set that constrains you. Just pick a time unit that suits your vision, whether it be days, weeks, or months and use it as you need it. Personally, I would favour the longer end of things but that is just me.

Seriously, there is no need for some precise star chart with defined measurements and detailed speed ratios. As an added bonus you can map out your star chart anyway that suits your fancy without having to worry about your PCs grabbing their rulers and calculators and out mathing you.

[Redrobes]

Been reading this thread with some interest. A long time ago I might have said different stuff, but like Torstan, I also read Iain M Banks books and he has a masterful fixed system in place that deals with travel and time in space. He has FTL because basically you just have to have it given that its 4 yrs to get from Sun to Proxima Centauri our very next closest star. A campaign might burn through your character lifetime in a few system jumps without cryo or something equally as fantastic tech.

In Banks' books the Culture have various grade ships from fairly light transporters to these things called General Systems Vehicles (GSVs) which are vast billion population scale floating islands of ship. These things go the fastest but at the same time they dont deviate course or stop much either so you normally need to hop onto a ship and accelerate up to very fast speed and dock with it to hitch that ride which is like that FTL barge. So maybe any ship can do FTL but not for very long.

He also seems to have some heuristics about how long the comms is to and from a GSV. Now obviously you need FTL comms or else you cant ask to dock with something going FTL. I reckon its important that the comms is a lot faster than the fastest ship but not infinite speed either.

Another slightly unrelated point is the compute power which in his books the best is in the Minds of the GSVs. All smaller droids have varying degrees which although high is still on a measurable level so you can for instance, comms to the closest GSV and get a better answer tho it might take a while for the result to get there and back.

So yeah, read all his Culture novels. Got the Algebraist next to me unread at this point tho. Something to look forward to I remember Player of Games being one which had a lot of this time delay, ship speed stuff in it.