StarNES: Updates Without Number (Epoch I)

Yeah, choice would be key. The listed FTL tech bases were placeholders, I cannot understand Dark Matter in any way shape or form so I would be more inclined to replace it with intertialess drive or something. I'd rather keep the amount of alternate, approachable universes down to two, or even one when you consider that the none-space drive would see you not existing rather than being in a different universe!

I might just condense it to something like:

Discontinuous: Your FTL sees your ship somehow dip out of space/time and appear in another part of space/time. Not necessarily instantaneous, but damn near close.

Continuous: Your FTL sees your ship travel through space/time, though not necessarily n-space (normal space).

These two broad categories would then be broken up into sub categories.

Discontinuous
+Gates (Pretty much portals you open up and step through somehow)
+Teleportation (Near-instantaneous travel across space/time that blips you from point a to point b, maybe even c, d, and e)

Continuous
+Fixed (Your ships travel along set paths, be they natural paths or manufactured ones)
+Non-Fixed (Think warp-bubbles, hyperspace, etc. etc. etc.)


Again, all WIP.


I still think that we shouldn't have it on record for something that we were never told about until it became a warning on our record...

As long as it doesn't affect me, though, who cares?

It was on record and I made a point to mention it in the update preceding your orders.
 
Could you have a jump gate universe like Cowboy Bebop? Ie everything is STL, except for prebuilt Gateways, which allow FTL between set points? The wormholes in this setting already work that way.
 
Yeap, easily doable! It would fall under the 'Gates' category. Though I've made only a few 'branches' for the FTL 'tree' there are really as many branches as you guys can convince me to make. i.e.

Discontinuous
+Gates
--Gateways (STL drives, but a network of constructed gates allows travels between set points in the galaxy)←Your original idea
~~~Cindorran Flicker-Gates (STL drives, but a network of constructed gates allows for ships to enter a 'blink' state where ships flicker in and out of the universe as they travel along a highway that link other existing gates)
~~~Minnamonnon Obsidian-Gates (STL drives, but a network of constructed gates situated near 'wells' of dark matter allows for ships to pass into the dark matter wells and emerge in other dark matter wells situated near a different gate)

And so on so forth, so your initial idea can be adapted by other races, or other races will abandon their FTL for yours. As empires grow I imagine certain technologies of the less-successful spacefaring races will simply become defunct, causing the end of Epoch III to see only a few key types of FTL in wide use.
 
I don't think I'd allow for the (initial) combining of FTL's, that would more so be a product of spacefaring races interacting and conquering/coexisting with each other.

Also, I think you're limiting yourself too much if you say that gates are in of themselves limiting!

You can have:

+Transmitter Gates where your ship travels via relays constructed around some sort of special stellar signature (like a star's energy or something); your ship 'downloads' from one point, is transferred through space, and recollects itself in its new destination.

Mechanically something like this could have players spend GC¤ to travel via one of two ways: established gates or 'star' (or whatever else) transitions; the first option is guarenteed to work (that is result in the ship from getting a to b, not necessarily 'work' ;)) While the second option allows for the player to 'roll' a chance for their ships to transport to a new quadrant/hex that has a yellow star or higher (or whatever else the player defines as the 'stellar signature' that a system can give off that was manipulated in the first place when their FTL was first being developed) where they can build a new relay.


+Keyed Gates where your ships travel to various coordinates around the galaxy that are input into key-gates; two types of these gates exist, Big Keys are the massive key-gates that allow whole armadas to blip about the galaxy with nary a care in the world, Little Keys are personal gates attached to civilian ships that allow for coordinates be input to preform FTL, though weight limits, ship-size, ordinance, etc. factor into this method of travel.

Mechanically something like this allows for two GC¤ options concerning travel:
Use of Big Keys to transport fleets to already known-to-exist/constructed Big Keys/safe coordinates; or use of Big Keys to transport a fleet randomly into the galaxy by entering random coordinates that would see me 'roll' to see how far off your intended target you.


Think outside the box! I'm literally just pulling this stuff out of my rear.
 
Babylon 5 or Stargate travel systems yay for them.
 
Babylon 5 or Stargate travel systems yay for them.
Let's go with Stargate travel! Both gates((Just one gate to any other gate, each gate has it's own code)) and Hyperdrive((Fast fast fast -> Milky Way to Pegasus -> 2 weeks travel.)). The gates would generally, when placed on worlds be small and mostly be on habitable and up worlds. These gates would be good for sending ground troops to other places. These would only connect to these types of gates. These small gates could also be placed in space but wouldn't be good for large ships.
The other gates would be much larger and only connect to gates of their size. Found in space only.
 
I like the idea of far interstellar travel being a very dedicated effort, but that short hops are easy: Travelling a couple hexes is really easy and cheap, but that the price and time taken takes exponentially longer dependent on distance. That way, Wormholes would actually be useful, and not just a curious Oddity. (And would allow for some interesting artifacts in Epoch 2)
 
I'm gonna build a Pokemon center on every planet and then use Abra for FTL.
 
Not if I comet every arena!
 
Abra can learn Reflect and Protect, so bleah.
 
Well you still can litter the sector with precursor remnants of stargates, so, yeah. Best of both worlds.
 
Free teleportation. Why WOULDN'T you use it?
 
Because it's free for your enemies too? The NES in my sig that's struck out revolved around a crumbling galactic theocracy desperately trying to hold back a race of borg/space zombies from reaching a teleportation gate. When the NES died went on hiatus, let's just say things weren't going well.

Also, it's a trains vs. cars argument. Trains are more efficient, but cars can go anywhere.
 
Nutra, what's your thoughts on Long Distance FTL? I think it should be difficult, so as to not Cheapen the Existence of Wormholes?
 
Free teleportation. Why WOULDN'T you use it?

Tons of side effects, not all of them involving borg-like enemies, though.

Some forms of FTL have it so that you need to charge up uninterrupted for a turn or two, depending on the distance, meaning your enemy has ample time to just mess with you.

Other forms of FTL see you entering a state that renders it impossible/difficult to interact with things that are not also in that state.

A few forms of FTL literally railroad you along certain paths and makes it impossible/difficult to change said paths, and changing those paths is pretty risky.

So on so forth. Also none of the 'teleportation' FTL's are 100% teleportation.


edit:

@thomas: It will be difficult/take multiple turns. Exception would be certain types of gates, but I'm planning on gates having a limited range, which would necessitate constructing ($$$!) a string of gates, so certain types of gate will never really achieve 'long' distance FTL.
 
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