Contra-Gravitronic FTL Drives - Rules and Stats

[Warshield73]

So in various posts over the last probably year or so I’ve discussed ships, tactics, and most recently system/planetary defense and defense platforms. Now in all of those discussions one thing that has come up is the use of FTL in combat and it was quickly apparent that we are all operating under very different assumptions about how it operates. Most of my assumptions were based on how I had been using it in game for the last 20 years so I went through all the books to try and gather just the canon information and there isn’t much.

These are all the Rules I found:
DB 2: Phase World, Pg. 152-153
This is the bulk of information that we have on CG drives and really all it provides is a description of how the drives work in a “scientific” sense and really only provides one rule:
- FTL must be shut down a minimum of 10,000 miles from a planet but twice that is “safer” but how it is safer is undefined.
Note: After discussion this rule may only apply to approaching a planet with an atmosphere and not leaving one.

DB 3: Phase World SB, Pg. 6-7
The only material in this book is the rule that ships in intergalactic space can move at 5 times it’s listed speed.

Questions remaining:
- How far away from the galaxy do you have to be for this speed to kick in?
- Is it a gradual increase (i.e. at a few hundred lightyears you can do twice the listed speed and then at another distance triple, and so on) or is it immediate.

This is important information to have because ships can go “up” or “down” or above or below the width of a galaxy and fly place to place at 5 times listed speed.

DB 6: Three Galaxies, Pg. 131-133
The only specific information in this book is a list of prices for FTL engines. This list appears to be uniform and no way seems dependant on ship size or mass. This means that the same 75 million credit CG-F drive can move a Proctor fighter at 6 LYpH can also be used for a Protector class Battleship.

Questions remaining:
- What is the weight and size of a drive? So how much space in the ship is taken up by the drive?

If the same drive works in both a Black Eagle and a Packmaster then it must be tiny.

DB 13: Fleets of the Three Galaxies, Pg. 11-12
The only material in this book that I have found is basic rules for combat at FTL.

We also get the basic understanding that Dreadnought class ships require a very specific drive system that is enormously more expensive than drives in smaller ships.

Discussion Topics
First, if anyone finds information in the books that I missed please let me know and I will add it to the discussion.

Second, here is a list of questions that I think need to be answered about FTL drives to determine both their tactical and strategic uses:
1- How long does it take to activate an FTL drive? Is it always hot and ready to go or do you have to “spin it up”? At the very least you would probably have to set a course with nav space.

2- How is the 10,000 mile safe zone determined? Is it determined by gravity or mass? Does jupiter and the sun have the same 10,000 mile zone as an earth sized planet?

3- What happens when you activate the drive early or deactivate it late? Does it just shut down or not work? Does it take damage or blow up?

4- What is meant by “twice that (meaning 20,000 miles) is safer”? Can there be a negative effect for coming out of or going into FTL between 10k and 20k miles?

5- How accurate is your “exit” from FTL and how fast are you traveling when you leave? Can you exit exactly 100 feet off the bow of another ship or is it a wide exit point

6- How far away from the galaxy do you have to be for this speed to kick in and is it a gradual or immediate effect?

7- What is the cost, weight and size of a drive? Do you use the prices in DB 6 as is or with mods? Is there a power requirement?

Edited only to remove quote boxes

[Warshield73]

Here are my answers:
1- Civilian ships take 5 minutes, ships with military drives (no I never really defined those terms) take 2. Note a good engineer can reduce this time to a minimum of 1/4 the time but at a penalty and the risk of starting all over again if failed. A ship’s drive can be on standby but that gives off a large heat and grav flare that makes a ship easier to detect even reducing stealth if you have it. You also have to have to plot a course which can be done at the same time.

2- I use 1G = 10k miles so a planet with a 0.5G is 5K miles. Stars I gave separate values to measured in hundreds of thousands of miles.

3- I have a mishap chart that starts with “works fine” at the top and ends with “engines go boom” at the bottom. It has a sliding scale based on distance so you are more likely to be OK at 9,000 miles and more likely to have engines go boom at a 1,000.

4- Between the Minimum and safe there is a small chance for minor mishap as well as a penalty to Navigation Space.

5- Your exit is a 1,000 mile cone and you are moving at about Mach 25, this was listed as the maximum speed in DB2, and you slow to your maximum speed over time. You are at a massive penalty to maneuver until you slow to your maximum speed. This means you can run into something if you come out too close. You can narrow your exit by nav space roll with a penalty.

6- Gradual so at 1,000 LY you get X2 speed and at 4,000 LY your speed is X5.

7- I use the costDB6 as a baseline but it does go up with mass and the speed is also dependant on power.

I am really interested to see how others have worked with this and if you found other things in the books that I missed.

[Blue_Lion]

Ugg those book quotes really are not straight from the book but paraphased, had to look at what you where referencing on a few of them,

1-Typically in most sci-fi shows starting a FTL is a few seconds. And PB tends to fallow cinematic approach. Would any one let you get away if you need to spend 8 combat rounds charging your drive. Typically cinemetically if there is a significant delay in starting ftl it is navigation based. IE plotting a safe path so you do not smack into something. I would think if the writer wanted a spin up time they would mention it in the stats as a spin up time would affect its use to escape.

2-The answer is in what you are paraphrasing. 10,000 miles away from a planet. When measuring distance away from something you measure from the closest surface. This also avoid having to figure out anything based on a variable that is not considered common knowledge. Remember Keep it simple(KISS) so you do not need to slow down the game with math.

3- You risk going splat. When a FTL ship hits the atmosphere it is destroyed. In addition planets will have artificial statelites and drifting degree that you can hit at ftl speed destroying your ship. So the safety feature to prevent an impact that would destroy the ship. The only reason to come out to late a failure of the safety feature which most likely means you hit the planet atmosphere destroying your ship, or ramming another ship.

4 It allows for a larger margin of error.

5-Depends on your navigation system/navigator. As I understand it CG negates the affects of gravity and inertia- so you can come out at any sub-light speed your ship can travel at. (most ships use cg sub-light drives as well.

6-Unless PB specifies a distance outside the galaxy once you are past the last solar system in the galaxy it kicks in at full affect.

7-because they do not specify a size difrence then it applies to all ships below the stated cap. In technology TGE is stated as having a drive that accedes a cap so it applies to all ships below that size. Ships are not stated with target able location, even when mounted on a a "fighter". At times it is linked to a main engine so the size would be comparible or smaller to sub light drives.

[Warshield73]

Thanks for posting these, it really is fun to see how others do this.

Ugg those book quotes really are not straight from the book but paraphased, had to look at what you where referencing on a few of them

They're not quotes. No quote marks, except when I was making fun of the idea that this was science. Let me know if there is a rule I am missing or if something isn't clear. My whole point is that the technology that governs most of the movement in the Three Galaxies has very few rules and is poorly defined.

1-Typically in most sci-fi shows starting a FTL is a few seconds. And PB tends to fallow cinematic approach. Would any one let you get away if you need to spend 8 combat rounds charging your drive. Typically cinemetically if there is a significant delay in starting ftl it is navigation based. IE plotting a safe path so you do not smack into something. I would think if the writer wanted a spin up time they would mention it in the stats as a spin up time would affect its use to escape.

"Jumping into hyper-space aint like dusting crops boy". Oddly enough we got this rule, like we did so many others, from the old WE Star Wars game. Shows like Star Trek and Star Gate have a nearly instant FTL but SW, Honor Harington, and BSG it takes time. In the case of BSG it takes long enough to blow up a few ships before they can escape. But when we started this all we had was the SW (which at the time we had all the old Legends books and the OT) and ST. My players proffered SW. As for what the writer wanted, they didn't say so that is why it is here.

2-The answer is in what you are paraphrasing. 10,000 miles away from a planet. When measuring distance away from something you measure from the closest surface. This also avoid having to figure out anything based on a variable that is not considered common knowledge. Remember Keep it simple(KISS) so you do not need to slow down the game with math.

I can see this and I'm sure it is what most people do but it just didn't make sense when dealing with gas giants and stars. The math was never a problem as the base is 10,000. Most of the time people could do it in there head. Also are moons like Phobos and Deimos (Mars) realing going to need a 10,000 mile clearance.

3- You risk going splat. When a FTL ship hits the atmosphere it is destroyed. In addition planets will have artificial statelites and drifting degree that you can hit at ftl speed destroying your ship. So the safety feature to prevent an impact that would destroy the ship. The only reason to come out to late a failure of the safety feature which most likely means you hit the planet atmosphere destroying your ship, or ramming another ship.

Most ships would not hit the atmosphere and none would who are leaving. I'm not sure what safety features you are talking about. The book makes it sound impossible for the drive to work.

4 It allows for a larger margin of error.

Not sure what this means.

5-Depends on your navigation system/navigator. As I understand it CG negates the affects of gravity and inertia- so you can come out at any sub-light speed your ship can travel at. (most ships use cg sub-light drives as well.

This makes sense. I wanted something really kind of cinematic and to limit the effect of FTL in combat. SO you let them exit exactly where they want if they make the roll?

6-Unless PB specifies a distance outside the galaxy once you are past the last solar system in the galaxy it kicks in at full affect.

How do you stop players from going "up" or "down" from the plain of the glaxy so they can travel at 5X the speed between 2 points in the same galaxy?

7-because they do not specify a size difrence then it applies to all ships below the stated cap. In technology TGE is stated as having a drive that accedes a cap so it applies to all ships below that size. Ships are not stated with target able location, even when mounted on a a "fighter". At times it is linked to a main engine so the size would be comparible or smaller to sub light drives.

Not sure I understand what you are saying here but I do understand just using what is in the book. A Black Eagle and a Pack Master using the same drive just made no sense to us.

Thanks again.

[Blue_Lion]

From your first and second post it it looked like you where asking how people would address a set of questions. You asked in the first post then awnsered in the second that is a odd format for a debate.

While you did not use quote marks. You used quote brackets with book and page number. That on the boards gives it the impression you are quoting the books when you are not. You used a quote command just like you did to quote me just now.
I did have to look up what the 10,000 mile rule was because it was not clear what you where talking about.

1- I will say using acronyms unrelated to the board subject you should list what the acronym is when you talked about star wars you wrote it out so what is SW. And it is not from the old star wars game but the movies and star treck shows, once the nav had the course they pulled a lever and jump to hyper space so the delay was in navigation not the drive itself. Battle star Glatica -reboot(assuming that was BSG) the delay was in the plotting the jump coordinates not the jump itself that is why I said if there was delay it was on the navigation side. Not familiar with Honor Harrington.-You asked how long to activate the drive not how long to jump we have no information but the lack of a written delay makes the default system answer none, but if you want you could have it take time using rule 0.


2 Does not apply to stars and moons just planets. Perhaps the 10K is because of large atmospheres of gas giants and they needed a simple rule to cover all planets.

3 If you are approaching a planet at ftl and did not come out of ftl then use you risk splatting on the atmospere because any ship traveling at ftl that hits a atmosphere goes splat like a bug. In-fact the book is very clear that is the risk because-The rule for CG is saying it is like the phase drive which has a 70% of plunging into a atmosphere. And hitting a atmosphere at FTL destroys any ship. With the same limit on CG drives same problem.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer).

-The safest distance is in reference to the previous sentence to let you know at what range it disengages. It also is the exact same range as the phase drive 10K miles to 20K miles.

(Feature on this was a bad word choice on my part the correct would be safety rule as it does not happen automatically looking in the book.)

The rule specifies when you approach a planet not leaving so it does not require a ftl ship get 10k miles from a planet to jump away you just need to be out of the atmosphere to jump away because it does not work in atmospheres.

4 If you can not understand that 20K is safer because it has a margin of error of 10K before you hit the 10K limit that is really nothing I can help with.

5-Not the role I said navigation systems hard ware not roll, if your systems is damaged even with a correct roll there could be a margin of error. If your system is in good order and top of the line you might be able to jump in right where you wanted to with a skill roll. If your navigation systems light years off course. Also phase drives need to for safety stop every 11.5 hours.

6- never happened so never dealt with it but is it really that big a deal most the time. You would travel normal speed up or down to leave the system the 5 times then need to travel up or down the galaxy at normal speed to reach the planet. So would only really matter on long jumps across ed the galaxy. I do not see wasting in game time for long travel productive or needed.

-If you do have a problem the answer is- who rescues a ship broke down outside of a galaxy? (say no one and suddenly leaving a galaxy becomes a huge risk.)

Usually when a ship comes out of ftl in a movie it appears to just stop or traveling at normal speeds, so that would be cinematic. If you where looking for ways to limit it use then you should ask for that. (If you had I would not have replied.)

7-You got a mouse in your pocket? Who is this us? it makes sense to me. We do not have different CG drives so different sizes and they work by negating the affects of gravity/mass in ftl travel. Perhaps they can not make it smaller and work, and the size has a mass limit for capital ships. Then they would have to use the same drive. -The idea that the drive needs to be bigger is coming from you not the book.

Given that this by your own words seams to be just a way for you to make things harder on the player this will be my last post on the topic good bye.

[drewkitty ~..~]

snip...

Ugg those book quotes really are not straight from the book but paraphased, had to look at what you where referencing on a few of them

They're not quotes. No quote marks, except when I was making fun of the idea that this was science. Let me know if there is a rule I am missing or if something isn't clear. My whole point is that the technology that governs most of the movement in the Three Galaxies has very few rules and is poorly defined.
...snip

You put said text in a Quote Box. Thus I agree with BL that the usage was inapropriate for paraphrased text.

-------------

I might have to revisit the text I wrote up for using CG drives in the Milkyway Galaxy (HU). With the suplemental text for the starship construction text found in the AU:Galaxy Guide.

Thou, my favorate ship system that I invented is the 'Pie Lancher'.

[Warshield73]

From your first and second post it it looked like you where asking how people would address a set of questions. You asked in the first post then awnsered in the second that is a odd format for a debate.

First, not looking for debate. I was very clear in the OP that I was trying to understand how people used this as every time we discuss Phase World ships people were making assumptions like a ship can just jump in the middle of combat to FTL without restrictions. All I want is to try and come up with what are the canon rules for CG drives and then see how people work with them.

As for the second post not sure why this is a problem worth comment. I have seen this all over the boards where a person posts then answers it. I thought it looked weird too but I wanted to keep my answers separate from the question.

While you did not use quote marks. You used quote brackets with book and page number. That on the boards gives it the impression you are quoting the books when you are not. You used a quote command just like you did to quote me just now.

OK, I understand. I wanted to show where the rules come from so the quote boxes seemed the best way to keep them organized. I changed it. and I also tried to clear up that rule. And this is more or less the point what are the actual rules for FTL, right now focusing on CG as it is the most common.

I did have to look up what the 10,000 mile rule was because

Because why, you trail off here so not sure but I did add the words "from a planet" does that help?

1- I will say using acronyms unrelated to the board subject you should list what the acronym is when you talked about star wars you wrote it out so what is SW. And it is not from the old star wars game but the movies and star treck shows, once the nav had the course they pulled a lever and jump to hyper space so the delay was in navigation not the drive itself. Battle star Glatica -reboot(assuming that was BSG) the delay was in the plotting the jump coordinates not the jump itself that is why I said if there was delay it was on the navigation side. Not familiar with Honor Harrington.-You asked how long to activate the drive not how long to jump we have no information but the lack of a written delay makes the default system answer none, but if you want you could have it take time using rule 0.

People use acronyms on these boards all the time without explaining them, I know because I hit google for them a few times a week. I said Star Wars and then used SW I assumed people can follow it and I stand by it. You are right I should have use stated Battle Star Galactica before BSG. In BSG you constantly hear them order the drives to be "spun up" in addition to plotting the course so that is what I was going for.

I agree the default would be zero but to me breaking the laws of physics should require more so that is why I ask.

2 Does not apply to stars and moons just planets. Perhaps the 10K is because of large atmospheres of gas giants and they needed a simple rule to cover all planets.

Care to be more specific about does not apply? Does this mean you can come out of FTL at any distance from a moon or star with no limit or do you think there is a different range applied? What about moons with an atmosphere or planets without?

3 If you are approaching a planet at ftl and did not come out of ftl then use you risk splatting on the atmospere because any ship traveling at ftl that hits a atmosphere goes splat like a bug. In-fact the book is very clear that is the risk because-The rule for CG is saying it is like the phase drive which has a 70% of plunging into a atmosphere. And hitting a atmosphere at FTL destroys any ship. With the same limit on CG drives same problem.

CG-drives, like phase drives, have to be disengaged when approaching a planet. The safest distance a ship can travel at Faster Than Light (FTL) speeds is 10,000 miles (16,000 km) away from a planet (twice that is safer).

-The safest distance is in reference to the previous sentence to let you know at what range it disengages. It also is the exact same range as the phase drive 10K miles to 20K miles.

(Feature on this was a bad word choice on my part the correct would be safety rule as it does not happen automatically looking in the book.)

The rule specifies when you approach a planet not leaving so it does not require a ftl ship get 10k miles from a planet to jump away you just need to be out of the atmosphere to jump away because it does not work in atmospheres.

This is what I have been looking for is just trying to figure out what is the base rules. So this means that if leaving a planet you could just go to FTL once you hit a hundred miles or so from the planet and if the planet has no atmosphere you could just go to FTL on the surface as you are taking off? The wording in the book is kind of poor here so I can see that as a valid reading. I wouldn't want to play in that game because it means people constantly using FTL to try and move around the battlespace but I can see that as a reading.

4 If you can not understand that 20K is safer because it has a margin of error of 10K before you hit the 10K limit that is really nothing I can help with.

You could try context. margin for piloting roll or navigation if you come out of FTL at any speed you want exactly where you want 10,000 miles is as safe as 100,000. Given what you said in your answer for #3 I can not see an in game reason for a player coming out at 20,000. For instance I said between min and max there was a nav penalty. Do you have that or is it a text description?

5-Not the role I said navigation systems hard ware not roll, if your systems is damaged even with a correct roll there could be a margin of error. If your system is in good order and top of the line you might be able to jump in right where you wanted to with a skill roll. If your navigation systems light years off course. Also phase drives need to for safety stop every 11.5 hours.

6- never happened so never dealt with it but is it really that big a deal most the time. You would travel normal speed up or down to leave the system the 5 times then need to travel up or down the galaxy at normal speed to reach the planet. So would only really matter on long jumps across ed the galaxy. I do not see wasting in game time for long travel productive or needed.

-If you do have a problem the answer is- who rescues a ship broke down outside of a galaxy? (say no one and suddenly leaving a galaxy becomes a huge risk.)

Usually when a ship comes out of ftl in a movie it appears to just stop or traveling at normal speeds, so that would be cinematic. If you where looking for ways to limit it use then you should ask for that. (If you had I would not have replied.)

OK, thank you.

7-You got a mouse in your pocket? Who is this us?

What? First, the Who is this us should go first, it sets up the mouse. When I read mouse in your pocket I thought I was witnessing a stroke on screen. Second I made these rules with my players hence the us. I am sorry if my choice of pronouns confused or offended.

it makes sense to me. We do not have different CG drives so different sizes and they work by negating the affects of gravity/mass in ftl travel. Perhaps they can not make it smaller and work, and the size has a mass limit for capital ships. Then they would have to use the same drive. -The idea that the drive needs to be bigger is coming from you not the book.

Yes I was clear on that in the OP. I wanted to see if people agreed on the rules and how others applied them. For instance everyone on the previous three threads that lead to this one assumed that FTL drive did not work in the 10,000 mile range, even you seemed to be saying that on the Planetary Defense and Planetary Defense Platforms but now that doesn't seem to be a rule you agree with. I wanted to figure out the rules to facility conversation as it felt like every time I tried to discuss this the rules changed.

Given that this by your own words seams to be just a way for you to make things harder on the player this will be my last post on the topic good bye.

OK, I am unsure why you seem to be taking these so personally. I never said it was to make it harder on players it was to set up limits that both the players and NPCs must follow. The restrictions I put in were designed to create obstacles for PCs to overcome and I will that in this game at convention the player that probably half the time wins MVP is the engineer because when they are trying to escape he is the one that turns that 2 minutes into 15 seconds. Every obstacle is a chance for a player to shine.

Under the base rules a berserker could drop from FTL 3 miles from the players and unload 20 CMs on them. My rules don't prevent that but it does make it harder and adds an element of risk.

snip...

Ugg those book quotes really are not straight from the book but paraphased, had to look at what you where referencing on a few of them

They're not quotes. No quote marks, except when I was making fun of the idea that this was science. Let me know if there is a rule I am missing or if something isn't clear. My whole point is that the technology that governs most of the movement in the Three Galaxies has very few rules and is poorly defined.
...snip

You put said text in a Quote Box. Thus I agree with BL that the usage was inapropriate for paraphrased text.

I really did think that saying I was just listing rules in the OP was enough to clear up any issues but I changed it. Hope it helps.

I might have to revisit the text I wrote up for using CG drives in the Milkyway Galaxy (HU). With the suplemental text for the starship construction text found in the AU:Galaxy Guide.

That is the reason for this. I just wanted to see how people handled this as I was getting tired of one preson on a thread using one set of assumptions and then another person using a completely different set. Feel free to post or link to that text.

[Blue_Lion]

the trail off most likely happened one of the times my laptop acts up. (Some times it will highlight and dealate whole blocks of text while I am typing.) because it was not clear what you where talking about.

Your group where not in the discussion, there is no reason I would know who you refereed to with the plural in the context of the reply.



I will say your first post was clear that you knew people did not see it the same way that you did warshield73, so your statements are not consistent with yourself. And if you are creating obsticals for players/PC to over come that is making things harder for players.

You asked a question on 4. This goes to flavor text vs rules. Rules add mechanical value to the game. Flavor text adds flavor or non mechanical characteristics to the setting. While there is no rule that shows a higher risk the flavor tells it is safer to have a buffer.(many times flavor text has no rule that reflects it.) Common sense is having a margin of error is safer than not having a margin of error.

If you are not looking for a debate why break up and challenge my replies. Your actions and words are not matching up so I see no point in continuing.

[drewkitty ~..~]

snip...

I might have to revisit the text I wrote up for using CG drives in the Milkyway Galaxy (HU). With the suplemental text for the starship construction text found in the AU:Galaxy Guide.

That is the reason for this. I just wanted to see how people handled this as I was getting tired of one preson on a thread using one set of assumptions and then another person using a completely different set. Feel free to post or link to that text.

Since it was submitted for Rifter publication it is not on the web.
While I do have a copy...it is a 'recovered' version. The hard drive of the comp I had it on went ka'put. But I had written notes and some partal draft printouts.
Therefore the two ways to get them are bug PB/Wyane to get publish them (I'd Personally perfer this option.) or..... *tags a PM*

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

How do you stop players from going "up" or "down" from the plain of the glaxy so they can travel at 5X the speed between 2 points in the same galaxy?

I wouldn't.

Travel between distant places in the Three Galaxies is too long as it is; imagine trying to play a Juicer in this setting.

This seems like a perfectly viable way to shorten those times without having to invent something new.

[Warshield73]

the trail off most likely happened one of the times my laptop acts up. (Some times it will highlight and dealate whole blocks of text while I am typing.) because it was not clear what you where talking about.

Your group where not in the discussion, there is no reason I would know who you refereed to with the plural in the context of the reply.



I will say your first post was clear that you knew people did not see it the same way that you did warshield73, so your statements are not consistent with yourself. And if you are creating obsticals for players/PC to over come that is making things harder for players.

You asked a question on 4. This goes to flavor text vs rules. Rules add mechanical value to the game. Flavor text adds flavor or non mechanical characteristics to the setting. While there is no rule that shows a higher risk the flavor tells it is safer to have a buffer.(many times flavor text has no rule that reflects it.) Common sense is having a margin of error is safer than not having a margin of error.

If you are not looking for a debate why break up and challenge my replies. Your actions and words are not matching up so I see no point in continuing.

I could have sworn you already said this so not sure if it means anything. I have only one response and that is I will ask you to stop telling me what I think and what my motives are. I stated my reason for this in the thread and you do not get to tell me or anyone else what they think or intend.

How do you stop players from going "up" or "down" from the plain of the glaxy so they can travel at 5X the speed between 2 points in the same galaxy?

I wouldn't.

Travel between distant places in the Three Galaxies is too long as it is; imagine trying to play a Juicer in this setting.

This seems like a perfectly viable way to shorten those times without having to invent something new.

A juicer would be an uncommon OCC in Phase World (I also believe juicers live twice as long in Phase World if that makes a difference) so I'm not sure how big a concern it is. Also, the books are clear that space travel is supposed to be long and dangerous so when I worked this in I was simply trying to maintain that.

[Blue_Lion]

Now in all of those discussions one thing that has come up is the use of FTL in combat and it was quickly apparent that we are all operating under very different assumptions about how it operates.

That is the expectations you set in the first post.

Yes I was clear on that in the OP. I wanted to see if people agreed on the rules and how others applied them.

So yes it was clear in the first part you knew we are all operation under different assumptions about how it operates. So your original statement is a acknowledgement that every one is doing it different. Your latter statement that you where clear that you where looking to see if people agree on the rules is inconsistent. If I missed something please point it out.

I am not telling you what you thinking or your motives I am telling you how you what your statements are telling me. Big difference. Making obstetrical for players to over come = making it harder for players.(So your own words are telling me your goal is to make things harder for players and I have no interest in that) https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/obstacle

In every phase world campaign I ever ran the players never had military grade ships so avoided ship to ship warfare. FTL was a background mechanic that gets them to the planet where the adventure was. My players know that if they try to exploit something like shooting the weak helmet of body armor the NPCs will so we have a unofficial truce that neither side does it keeps the game fun. So they do not look for exploits, if a rules lawyer attempts to do so the party usually warns him if he keeps it up they get voted out of the group. (When I run any one can join but the group votes after a set number of sessions if they will stay with the group, and they can vote disruptive players out of the group any time after the set number of sessions. Basically I allow the players to decide who sticks around and set the tone for what they want to have the limits of fair play be.) -How I see and use things is nothing like how you stated you use them as you are already aware. Debating difference of opinions on things like that is unproductive.

I do not recall in any other debate saying that ships could not jump away closer than 10K miles. I did ask for confirmation if there was a gravity restriction. Here I looked up the rules you gave page numbers for.

[Borast]

1-Typically in most sci-fi shows starting a FTL is a few seconds. And PB tends to fallow cinematic approach. Would any one let you get away if you need to spend 8 combat rounds charging your drive. Typically cinemetically if there is a significant delay in starting ftl it is navigation based. IE plotting a safe path so you do not smack into something. I would think if the writer wanted a spin up time they would mention it in the stats as a spin up time would affect its use to escape.

"Jumping into hyper-space aint like dusting crops boy". Oddly enough we got this rule, like we did so many others, from the old WE Star Wars game. Shows like Star Trek and Star Gate have a nearly instant FTL but SW, Honor Harington, and BSG it takes time. In the case of BSG it takes long enough to blow up a few ships before they can escape. But when we started this all we had was the SW (which at the time we had all the old Legends books and the OT) and ST. My players proffered SW. As for what the writer wanted, they didn't say so that is why it is here.

Um... the first season of Battlestar Galactica aired in 1978.
Palladium Books published Rifts first in, what, 1990ish?

[Borast]

How do you stop players from going "up" or "down" from the plain of the glaxy so they can travel at 5X the speed between 2 points in the same galaxy?

I wouldn't.

Travel between distant places in the Three Galaxies is too long as it is; imagine trying to play a Juicer in this setting.

This seems like a perfectly viable way to shorten those times without having to invent something new.

So you want them to travel in the fancy of the galaxy?

That being said, simply leaving the ecliptic plane would not necessarily speed your travel, since you'd theoretically need to leave the gravitational envelope of the galaxy to gain the speed boost. While the physical hazards that would slow you down would be mostly avoided by doing this (in fact, this is used in several sci-fi books I've read).

For the juicers, if travelling from one end of the galaxy (or from one galaxy to another), they can always be placed into stasis/hibernation for the duration of the trip.
Besides, if you're talking about HUMAN juicers, 3G humans live much longer than Rifts humans. Because of the level of medical care, genetic treatments, etc.; I would suggest modifying the expected lifespan of a 3G juicer by using the formula given for non-human juicers. May only be an extra 3-10 years, but sill... Every little bit helps!

Ciao

[Warshield73]

1-Typically in most sci-fi shows starting a FTL is a few seconds. And PB tends to fallow cinematic approach. Would any one let you get away if you need to spend 8 combat rounds charging your drive. Typically cinemetically if there is a significant delay in starting ftl it is navigation based. IE plotting a safe path so you do not smack into something. I would think if the writer wanted a spin up time they would mention it in the stats as a spin up time would affect its use to escape.

"Jumping into hyper-space aint like dusting crops boy". Oddly enough we got this rule, like we did so many others, from the old WE Star Wars game. Shows like Star Trek and Star Gate have a nearly instant FTL but SW, Honor Harington, and BSG it takes time. In the case of BSG it takes long enough to blow up a few ships before they can escape. But when we started this all we had was the SW (which at the time we had all the old Legends books and the OT) and ST. My players proffered SW. As for what the writer wanted, they didn't say so that is why it is here.

Um... the first season of Battlestar Galactica aired in 1978.
Palladium Books published Rifts first in, what, 1990ish?

Was referring to the RDM BSG 2004-2009. The original BSG has nothing to say on or about FTL. Despite being made after the first Star Wars and Star Trek TOS all we ever see is the ships moving at sub-light.

How do you stop players from going "up" or "down" from the plain of the glaxy so they can travel at 5X the speed between 2 points in the same galaxy?

I wouldn't.

Travel between distant places in the Three Galaxies is too long as it is; imagine trying to play a Juicer in this setting.

This seems like a perfectly viable way to shorten those times without having to invent something new.

So you want them to travel in the fancy of the galaxy?

That being said, simply leaving the ecliptic plane would not necessarily speed your travel, since you'd theoretically need to leave the gravitational envelope of the galaxy to gain the speed boost. While the physical hazards that would slow you down would be mostly avoided by doing this (in fact, this is used in several sci-fi books I've read).

I would tend to agree with this but there is nothing in the books about it. If you look at my second post where I list my house rules that is a part of it.

For the juicers, if travelling from one end of the galaxy (or from one galaxy to another), they can always be placed into stasis/hibernation for the duration of the trip.
Besides, if you're talking about HUMAN juicers, 3G humans live much longer than Rifts humans. Because of the level of medical care, genetic treatments, etc.; I would suggest modifying the expected lifespan of a 3G juicer by using the formula given for non-human juicers. May only be an extra 3-10 years, but sill... Every little bit helps!

Ciao

I could have sworn that in one of the books it describes how long a juicer in the Three Galaxies lives but I can't find it. Truthfully juicers aren't much of a concern in Phase World as they are described in DB 2, pg. 43 as rare. But also remember that the system is supposed to be slow, in DB 3, pg. 7 likens FTL travel to "to sea travel during Earth's pre-industrial days, when a trip could take months or years, and was not something people did unless they had a good reason".

[Borast]

Um... the first season of Battlestar Galactica aired in 1978.
Palladium Books published Rifts first in, what, 1990ish?

Was referring to the RDM BSG 2004-2009. The original BSG has nothing to say on or about FTL. Despite being made after the first Star Wars and Star Trek TOS all we ever see is the ships moving at sub-light.

True. Without seeing the scripts, or binge watching my DVDs of the original show... I vaguely remember references to it, and almost every episode was in a new star system. Then there was the comment about making the jump to Earth in the last show of the original show. Whether it is a hyperspace system, or a foldspace system, there is, unfortunately, no canon references.

[glitterboy2098]

original BSG was vague on the issue of FTL. no explicit FTL was ever mentioned, yet they were constantly visiting new star systems. did not help that they often used star system and galaxy interchangeably.
the closest you got was mention in a few episodes of galactica being able to "reach lightspeed", but since the rag tag fleet was also stated to be unable to do so this was clearly supposed to be different from how they were getting from system to system.

note that TOS BSG was not along in this problem,..Space 1999 had similar issues. most early scifi shows paid less attention to the technical side of their stories than to the plot and message. even star trek was guilty of this, though they were more consistant than most with the nature of their ship means of travel and capabilities.

[Borast]

Space 1999 had similar issues. most early scifi shows paid less attention to the technical side of their stories than to the plot and message. even star trek was guilty of this, though they were more consistant than most with the nature of their ship means of travel and capabilities.

One of my favourite shows.
Other than how an explosion in a dump of radioactive material can provide enough energy to throw the moon out of no only terrestrial, but solar orbit...without destroying the entire moon! And even worse, how they managed to jump from one star system to another without becoming captured.
Most of the "hard" science, even if not strictly logical, had some roots in real tech. (Although I prefer ST communicators, at least the '99 coms had screens to let you see who was calling.)
As per FTL - the Alphans had none, but, if memory serves, some of the races they met did...mind, it's been how long since they were in their initial broadcast?

[Warshield73]

original BSG was vague on the issue of FTL. no explicit FTL was ever mentioned, yet they were constantly visiting new star systems. did not help that they often used star system and galaxy interchangeably.
the closest you got was mention in a few episodes of galactica being able to "reach lightspeed", but since the rag tag fleet was also stated to be unable to do so this was clearly supposed to be different from how they were getting from system to system.

note that TOS BSG was not along in this problem,..Space 1999 had similar issues. most early scifi shows paid less attention to the technical side of their stories than to the plot and message. even star trek was guilty of this, though they were more consistant than most with the nature of their ship means of travel and capabilities.

I have only seen a few episodes of Space 1999 and that was more than 20 years ago so I can't speak to that show but BSG ToS I watched the entire season last year.

A lot of people say that Trek and Star Wars are the extremes in technical description with Trek piled with techno-babble and SW framed by the famous line "this one goes here and that one goes there". But really SW is more of a middle. We have basics of Hyper space and the like and the RDM BSG is along these lines as well. The talk about FTL, we know the basics of it but nothing all that technical.

BSG TOS is the extreme. We never hear about how they travel, we never see it, it never playas a part in a single story, it just happens. Even the '70's Buck Rogers had stargates, BSG nothing.

[glitterboy2098]

Space:1999 had the moon blown out of orbit due to an industrial accident. it then spent the whole show flying through space at sublight speeds, yet it was already outside of the solar system by the end of the pilot, and was passing through a new star system every episode. yet there was no indication that thousands of years passed between episodes.. in fact there were recurring characters and multi-episode plotlines suggesting only days, weeks, or months.

in short, worse than TOS BSG. at least in BSG you could speculate on some sort of unnamed FTL present on the ships. hard to do that when your "ship" is just earths moon that happened to have a few research bases on it, on a ballistic trajectory caused by an explosion.


(on an interesting, if rather off topic note, originally Buck Rodgers and TOS BSG were going to be the same setting. the "terra" series of episodes ("greetings from earth", "baltar's escape", and "Experiment in terra") were originally scripted as part of an introduction to the planned buck rodgers setting, but the studio execs didn't like the idea so the story got a rewrite. had that crossover actually happened you could have speculated that BSG used a version of the "stargate" set up for FTL)

[taalismn]

Space:1999 had the moon blown out of orbit due to an industrial accident. it then spent the whole show flying through space at sublight speeds, yet it was already outside of the solar system by the end of the pilot, and was passing through a new star system every episode. yet there was no indication that thousands of years passed between episodes.. in fact there were recurring characters and multi-episode plotlines suggesting only days, weeks, or months.

The episode novelizations attempted to explain this by having the Moon go through what sounded like a wormhole effect, though the author was of necesity unable to go into details on this, since it suggested that something more than just a big nuclear fission explosion had taken place to send the Moon on its way. It generally appeared in the text as beginning and ending lines 'and the Moon slipped away into spacial distortion again-"

[Warshield73]

When you look at FTL in most sci-fi there is usually an element of the mechanics driven by plot. JMS said when asked about how fast Whitestars traveled in Babylon 5 said they moved at the speed of plot. In fact of all the science fiction I read and watch the only one I can think of that builds it's plots around the mechanics of FTL would be Honor Harrington books. Now the Expanse in both books and TV have strict statistics for space travel but it is all sub-light.

Games are different though. The old West End Star Wars gave pretty good rules for Hyperspace with distances and speeds based in some part on what we saw in the OT. WE did a great job of providing specific limits to Hyperspace which make the game more interesting. In some ways the Phase World FTL system is just as incomplete as many of these TV shows.