One theme in the Star Alas series is the UFP’s use of Deep Space bases. These bases are far away from water worlds, located outside stars FTL transition limit gravity wells. Star Atlas 1 lists Spectre, a minor planet Sol X. Way the heck out in the Solar System’s Oort cloud. It's the biggest fortress in the best protected system in the sector. Other Star Atlases include the Federation's deep space bases in Imperial and People’s Republic space. And perhaps, in other places they aren’t expected.
In the twentieth through twenty-second centuries Terran humanity became a technological space faring culture. IRSOL monitored their painful progress. In secret, from the edges of the Solar System. The IRSOL moved outward, farther from the Sun as humanity ventured into space.
Later, in the twenty-sixth and twenty seventh centuries, the UFP takes up that strategy. They monitor potential friends and enemies from the edges of their star systems. Quiet, unseen, unsuspected. Watching space traffic, listening to electronic communications. Beyond the hyperdrive transition limit. Most people that get that far from a star kick in the FTL drive and keep going to another system, other worlds.
The Feds aren’t most people. Or rather, the High Republicans of the Terran Union weren’t most people. During the earliest stages of the Terran diaspora, the High Republics didn’t have FTL. They struggled, then thrived in vacuum colonies.The Moon, L5 cylinders, Mars, Mercury, the gas giant moons, even Pluto. If you can colonize Pluto, which they did, you can live on any icy airless rock anywhere.
There’s little evidence other Star Nations build extensive deep space facilities. They ignore the possibilities of a true space based civilization. Later Terran colonists, blessed with FTL drives, found better places to live. They know about deep space colonization, but didn’t bother without good reasons. Most examples we see involve big money from mining. No investment in turning hell worlds to deep space homes. Why would they colonize hell worlds? If you keep looking you can find nicer places, safer, cheaper to settle. Other races mirrored their priorities. They seek colonies on planets that remind them of home.
It’s cold in deep space. No useful solar power. Nothing to breath. Nothing but dirty ice to drink. Far from wet planets with breathable atmospheres. They will have construction and maintenance costs as high as Starships. And unlike starships, deep space bases will never visit habitable worlds. Never feel the warmth of a main sequence star. Hell. But the High Republic built there, found new lifestyles, and they stayed.
Strategic and operational advantages must be immense to justify the expense and danger. of deep space basing. And the eyes of High Republic natives saw those advantages.
At the edge of the Solar system, the great fortress Spectre demonstrates these advantages. It’s outside the Solar hyperdrive limit. Ships launching from Spectre can go FTL without long STL transition travel. Quick reaction forces save precious hours. Likewise, incoming traffic avoid long STL travel, and crowded inner Solar system traffic orbits. The base has privacy. Nobody goes there without good reason. If their reason is spying they will be detected a long way away.
There’s no weather on Spectre. It’s seismically stable. It’s a good place to store expensive things. Like surplus battle fleets. Unprotected Federation citizen die on Spectre, but they know how to protect themselves. Warehousing and airdock facilities are unmatched anywhere in known space. The guns of Spectre are known a dozen sectors away, unmatchable firepower. The Azzies and GPR consider attacking that base to be a pointless suicide mission.
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Showing posts with label Source books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Source books. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Starship Size Follies
I recently noticed starship dimensions changed during the run of the Space Opera RPG. Took me long enough, it’s only been out for three and a half decades.
In book 2 of the Space Opera rules, on page 54, a starship ton is defined as 3 cubic meters or 100 cubic feet. (That’s an old maritime standard.) Further, a deck will have a height of 2.5 meters.
Several example hulls are listed. The largest is a million tons, with dimensions of 700 x 95 x 45 meters.
That’s significant since the foreword specifically calls out Star Wars and Doc Smith’s books as material Space Opera is intended to emulate. If it can’t “do” big enough ships, it can’t emulate the source material.
Three “Seldon’s Compendium of Spacecraft” followed. The first one kept the same dimension rules. Seldon 1 covered smaller ‘civilian’ and ‘police’ ships. The Spice Runner is a reasonable knockoff of the Millennium Falcon.
The next two Seldon Compendium books covered military ships of the Space Atlas same setting. Seldon 2 covered four major Human-centric Star Nation’s space fleets. Seldon 3 covered four more Star Nations dominated by aliens.These books included a stealthy rule change. A Starship ton now equal 30 cubic meters or 1,000 cubic feet. There was also an example of a ship bigger than one million tons. An Imperial-class Star Destroyer was now statistically possible.
Good enough for Space Opera, in it’s original Star Atlas game setting. None of the Star Nations is rich enough to get into the Death Star building business.
A problem with this change is some of the existing deck plans were distorted. The Nike and Nemesis class ships are in both Seldon’s 1 and 2, with the same deck plans. We can simply “stretch” the scale from feet to meters, and height and width are taken care off. But the ships have the same number of decks. The suggested vertical spacing even shrinks a little. It’s a good thing most Space Opera ships with deck plans don’t have side or front views. They’d look as flat as pancakes.
But let’s not get crazy here. I’m already ignoring Skylark 3 weapon range is 50 million light years. Not even Space Opera can handle something like that.
Besides, if I have to re-read Skylark of Valeron, I might puke when I get to the scenes where the Naked Galactic Rebel Princesses use Richard Seaton for eugenic experiments. With Dorothy's full approval.
SF Writers Know their Fans.
In book 2 of the Space Opera rules, on page 54, a starship ton is defined as 3 cubic meters or 100 cubic feet. (That’s an old maritime standard.) Further, a deck will have a height of 2.5 meters.
Several example hulls are listed. The largest is a million tons, with dimensions of 700 x 95 x 45 meters.
The Problem
Those examples are big enough for a Star Trek ship but too small for a Star Wars Star Destroyer. Too small for many of Doc Smith’s ships. Skylark 3 was a cigar two miles long and 1500 feet in diameter. About 18 billion cubic feet! An Imperial Star Destroyer is half as long, 80 percent as wide and all pointy and flat.Call it 2 billion cubic feet. These are a heck of a lot larger than 100 million cubic feet.That’s significant since the foreword specifically calls out Star Wars and Doc Smith’s books as material Space Opera is intended to emulate. If it can’t “do” big enough ships, it can’t emulate the source material.
The Solution
We can either Change the Genre or Change the GameThree “Seldon’s Compendium of Spacecraft” followed. The first one kept the same dimension rules. Seldon 1 covered smaller ‘civilian’ and ‘police’ ships. The Spice Runner is a reasonable knockoff of the Millennium Falcon.
The next two Seldon Compendium books covered military ships of the Space Atlas same setting. Seldon 2 covered four major Human-centric Star Nation’s space fleets. Seldon 3 covered four more Star Nations dominated by aliens.These books included a stealthy rule change. A Starship ton now equal 30 cubic meters or 1,000 cubic feet. There was also an example of a ship bigger than one million tons. An Imperial-class Star Destroyer was now statistically possible.
Good enough for Space Opera, in it’s original Star Atlas game setting. None of the Star Nations is rich enough to get into the Death Star building business.
A problem with this change is some of the existing deck plans were distorted. The Nike and Nemesis class ships are in both Seldon’s 1 and 2, with the same deck plans. We can simply “stretch” the scale from feet to meters, and height and width are taken care off. But the ships have the same number of decks. The suggested vertical spacing even shrinks a little. It’s a good thing most Space Opera ships with deck plans don’t have side or front views. They’d look as flat as pancakes.
But
There are also the even larger Death Star and the Skylark of Valeron. And the Dahuk.But let’s not get crazy here. I’m already ignoring Skylark 3 weapon range is 50 million light years. Not even Space Opera can handle something like that.
Besides, if I have to re-read Skylark of Valeron, I might puke when I get to the scenes where the Naked Galactic Rebel Princesses use Richard Seaton for eugenic experiments. With Dorothy's full approval.
SF Writers Know their Fans.
Thursday, March 15, 2018
Monday, February 12, 2018
Seldon's Starcraft 2 and the Space Opera Trillion Credit Squadron
Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun.
Trillion Credit Squadron
Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, using the ship combat rules and slugged it out to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander. The results were very interesting; Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using his AI Program while designing his fleets and won the national contest two years running.
Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absense, we can use published examples. Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3.
The compendiums sad Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures.
Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundred of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships for their relatively few chosen crews. Their ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but merely for destruction. The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.
Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for the top of the line Battlestars.
I built a spreadsheet model for buying warships. List out the classes and their prices, pick and choose and compare.
For example, take the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. One point two five million tons, crews of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters, and tens of thousands of tons cargo. Each mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. With crack gun crews, a Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships. Big bad mama-jammers.
With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants
Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.
A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yeilds 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups.
More to follow!
Friday, February 2, 2018
How much is a ton of Starship?
In FGU’s Space Opera RPG (1980) Spaceships are sized in Tons. Section 9.9 in Book 2 on Page 54 tells us a ton of ship equals a volume of 3 cubic meters.
(Or you are a true blue patriotic American fanatic, 100 cubic feet. Not equal, but close enough for D&D.)
Ships in Book 1 and Seldon’s Compendium of Space Craft Vol 1 (1981) are constant with this volume to weight ratio.
But in Seldon’s Volume 2 (1984) there’s a stealth rule change. A ton of ship is now 30 cubic meters. This ratio is repeated in Seldon’s Volume 3 (1988). We can be reasonably sure it’s not a typo.
The Nike Scout and Nemesis Corvette class ships are in both Seldon’s Volume 1 and Volume 2. In Vol1, there are volumes listed for these ships. This is consistently 3 cubic meters per ton. Volume totals are not in the stats in Seldon’s Volume 2 and 3.
I don’t believe any of FGU’s published Space Opera deck plans included a scale. They work just as well scaling 1 square meter up to 100 square feet. Triple the width and length add a few centimetres headspace and deck thickness. A drawing scaled for 3 cubic meters equals one ton easily translates to 30 cubic meters equals one ton.
Handwave, Handwave, close enough for D&D.
Actual weight/mass of these ships doesn’t matter. In the Space Opera game, ships use ultra-science inertia-less antigravity faster-than-light space drives. They don’t violate the laws of physics as we know them. Space Opera sends rampaging hordes of bugs to devour the laws of physics. Space Opera tech is "Sufficiently Advanced"!
Why the change? I speculate the Nemesis corvette inspired the change. That boat carries a company of space marines. Somebody familiar with shipping requirements of a military unit may have seen the deck plans. And had a fit of the giggles. It was the 1980s, the news was full of stories about military transportation during the Gulf War.
Same for anybody who tried to fit in Fighter bays. Same for anybody who tried to figure out how some of these ships made money trading. Any ship that can’t carry standard shipping containers does not have a cargo bay. It has a broom closet.
This sort of thing was not unique to the Space Opera game. I remember it affecting the more popular Traveller Game. I was surprised while reading Traveller High Guard. A Traveller ton is 13.5 to 14 cubic meters. The volume of a ton of liquid hydrogen. Why? A ton of water is a single cubic meter. Real world ships have 3 to 5 cubic meters of interior space per displacement ton. Early deck plans published by Judge’s Guild were tiny, compared to later plans for the same ships.
So a ton of Space Opera ship takes the volume of two tons of Traveller ship. A Nike class scout is 7.5 times the volume of a classic Traveller scout. It has a bigger crew, more and bigger guns, better defenses, and ridiculously higher performance.
So a ton of Space Opera ship takes the volume of two tons of Traveller ship. A Nike class scout is 7.5 times the volume of a classic Traveller scout. It has a bigger crew, more and bigger guns, better defenses, and ridiculously higher performance.
Friday, April 1, 2011
A is for Atlas.
Star Sector Atlas that is.
The Space Opera default setting is published in a series of numbered sector atlases. Five of these were published. Each starts with a historical essay, written in character by a fussy academic or scheming intelligence officer.
In each Atlas, there's a two dimensional projection of the sector. Sectors are a 3d cube, 200 light years on a side. Yes, that means a little high school level geometry is required for space travel. Given the Space opera game's typical 10 or 15 light year a day hyperdrive, this means no two worlds in the sector are more than a few weeks apart. Major shipping lanes are marked. There are lists of transport lines operating in the sectors.
The map is followed by an alphabetic listing of the various planets, each with about twenty useful statistics (major imports, exports, types of government, gross national product and personal incomes, probability of being lynched by cheerful xenophobic lynch mobs, military installations and like that). Several of the atlases include orders of battle for local armies and space forces, with notes about unique local weaponry.
Atlas number 1 is for the Terran Sector, home of Earthlings and the Federation. The Atlas begins with an essay written by an IRSOL (UFO aliens in flying cities) leader and academic. He tells how the IRSOL found Earthlings living in gravity well squalor and fighting each other. With his leadership, his benevolent alien race intervened to lead Earth to a new age of Galactic Enlightenment. After centuries of light handed manipulation the Earth became a Mature Civilization(TM), with only a few billion deaths along the way. They would have died anyway.
In turn Earth leads the idealistic do-gooder United Federation Of Planets (where have we heard that before?). Now the IRSOL are preparing the Eartlings and their Fed for their role as cannon fodder in their upcoming defense against the Big Bad sometime expansionist and mysterious Starrkadd Empire. In the meantime there's galactic do-gooder fun to be had taking up the Earthman's burden of civilizing the Aliens. And dealing with renegade Earthlings, all of whom you can bet voted for the wrong side in the last election.
The planets in sector one include a mix of human and aliens. All the major Human Powers have some presence in the sector, along with the Bugs and Lizards and other hostile inhuman enemies. There are, therefore, lots of folks to trade with or kill as appropriate for the Players campaigns. Plants in this sector include the obligatory ice world with big game, a jungle planet with really big (dinosaur) game, and a clone of Dune. Dune clones show up two or three times in the different sectors, so every campaign has an opportunity to smuggle drugs and guns and rebel against off world oppressors, while riding big worms. Something oddly Freudian about that, but I digress.
Atlas 2 is set umpteen hundred light years away, in the home sector of the Mercantile League, a bunch of Libertarian Earthlings who ran away from cruel earth oppression back in the day. Now they have their own planets. In Sector 2, the Leaguers can trade with and otherwise exploit their alien neighbors, keep an eye on pretty much the same foreign earthling ex patriot star nations as the Federation in Sector 1, and sweat over the menace of the local snake people to their greedy little hearts content. Oh, and dress funny, in homage to the honest plain dealers of the Roman Republic. (????)
The League is a pretty nice place to live, comparable to the Federation. However, the League is not such a big deal in interstellar politics as the Feds. The plutocrats in charge see little profit in meddling in others business, except if there's money in it. I reckon most traditional space mercenary action adventures would be set in the League.
Atlas 3 is another umpteen hundred light years away, at the center of the Azurich Imperium. The Imperium, as much as they deny it, are Space Nazis, Earthling self-exiled space Nazis. So heroic adventurers from the Fed or the League don't have to feel the slightest bit upset when they blast Impie bastards into itsy bitsy pieces. The Starmaster will make more. The Azzies oppress Doggie aliens, raise bird aliens for meat, and are just generally despicable. Their only good point, (and it's rather dubious) is they hate space commies. Oh there's hidden rebel bases and a bigmongous Federation Space fortress for those that like that sort of thing.
Atlas 4 would have been about the exiled earthling space commie soviet socialist republic if they'd ever published it, which they didn't. Instead they jumped to the much more interesting Ranan space Maoists in Altas 5. Ranan have the distinction of not being earthlings. They are humaniods with retrograde feet. The Ranan inhabit bunches of overpopulated politically oppressed (or occasionally, semi liberal) Chinese Maois sterotype planets. They trade with the league, but have running cold and hot wars with the Fed, the Azzies, and the Bear aliens. The Atlas includes a brief description of another space commie group canine alien Mir.
They skipped more numbers to get to Atlas 11 and 12, from Phil Mcgregor's home campaign. Evil Korellian bastards (Spartan Mongol Klingon type aliens) oppress the noble and heroic rebel Earthling Confederacy. Pretty good stuff, but hard to move characters from other areas here, as it's umpteen Thousand Light years away. But some how the IRSOL and Federation Intellegence are snooping around and writing the footnotes. Oh, and the Korellians are distracted by border wars with (guess who) the Starkadd. It's a perfect time for the Confederacy to rise and overthrow their oppressors.
The Space Opera Sector Atlas series contains many playable adventure settings, providing a place for just about every space opera thrope imaginable. They're available from drivethru in scanned PDF format for a few dollars. Many are available in print directly from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
The Space Opera default setting is published in a series of numbered sector atlases. Five of these were published. Each starts with a historical essay, written in character by a fussy academic or scheming intelligence officer.
In each Atlas, there's a two dimensional projection of the sector. Sectors are a 3d cube, 200 light years on a side. Yes, that means a little high school level geometry is required for space travel. Given the Space opera game's typical 10 or 15 light year a day hyperdrive, this means no two worlds in the sector are more than a few weeks apart. Major shipping lanes are marked. There are lists of transport lines operating in the sectors.
The map is followed by an alphabetic listing of the various planets, each with about twenty useful statistics (major imports, exports, types of government, gross national product and personal incomes, probability of being lynched by cheerful xenophobic lynch mobs, military installations and like that). Several of the atlases include orders of battle for local armies and space forces, with notes about unique local weaponry.
Atlas number 1 is for the Terran Sector, home of Earthlings and the Federation. The Atlas begins with an essay written by an IRSOL (UFO aliens in flying cities) leader and academic. He tells how the IRSOL found Earthlings living in gravity well squalor and fighting each other. With his leadership, his benevolent alien race intervened to lead Earth to a new age of Galactic Enlightenment. After centuries of light handed manipulation the Earth became a Mature Civilization(TM), with only a few billion deaths along the way. They would have died anyway.
In turn Earth leads the idealistic do-gooder United Federation Of Planets (where have we heard that before?). Now the IRSOL are preparing the Eartlings and their Fed for their role as cannon fodder in their upcoming defense against the Big Bad sometime expansionist and mysterious Starrkadd Empire. In the meantime there's galactic do-gooder fun to be had taking up the Earthman's burden of civilizing the Aliens. And dealing with renegade Earthlings, all of whom you can bet voted for the wrong side in the last election.
The planets in sector one include a mix of human and aliens. All the major Human Powers have some presence in the sector, along with the Bugs and Lizards and other hostile inhuman enemies. There are, therefore, lots of folks to trade with or kill as appropriate for the Players campaigns. Plants in this sector include the obligatory ice world with big game, a jungle planet with really big (dinosaur) game, and a clone of Dune. Dune clones show up two or three times in the different sectors, so every campaign has an opportunity to smuggle drugs and guns and rebel against off world oppressors, while riding big worms. Something oddly Freudian about that, but I digress.
Atlas 2 is set umpteen hundred light years away, in the home sector of the Mercantile League, a bunch of Libertarian Earthlings who ran away from cruel earth oppression back in the day. Now they have their own planets. In Sector 2, the Leaguers can trade with and otherwise exploit their alien neighbors, keep an eye on pretty much the same foreign earthling ex patriot star nations as the Federation in Sector 1, and sweat over the menace of the local snake people to their greedy little hearts content. Oh, and dress funny, in homage to the honest plain dealers of the Roman Republic. (????)
The League is a pretty nice place to live, comparable to the Federation. However, the League is not such a big deal in interstellar politics as the Feds. The plutocrats in charge see little profit in meddling in others business, except if there's money in it. I reckon most traditional space mercenary action adventures would be set in the League.
Atlas 3 is another umpteen hundred light years away, at the center of the Azurich Imperium. The Imperium, as much as they deny it, are Space Nazis, Earthling self-exiled space Nazis. So heroic adventurers from the Fed or the League don't have to feel the slightest bit upset when they blast Impie bastards into itsy bitsy pieces. The Starmaster will make more. The Azzies oppress Doggie aliens, raise bird aliens for meat, and are just generally despicable. Their only good point, (and it's rather dubious) is they hate space commies. Oh there's hidden rebel bases and a bigmongous Federation Space fortress for those that like that sort of thing.
Atlas 4 would have been about the exiled earthling space commie soviet socialist republic if they'd ever published it, which they didn't. Instead they jumped to the much more interesting Ranan space Maoists in Altas 5. Ranan have the distinction of not being earthlings. They are humaniods with retrograde feet. The Ranan inhabit bunches of overpopulated politically oppressed (or occasionally, semi liberal) Chinese Maois sterotype planets. They trade with the league, but have running cold and hot wars with the Fed, the Azzies, and the Bear aliens. The Atlas includes a brief description of another space commie group canine alien Mir.
They skipped more numbers to get to Atlas 11 and 12, from Phil Mcgregor's home campaign. Evil Korellian bastards (Spartan Mongol Klingon type aliens) oppress the noble and heroic rebel Earthling Confederacy. Pretty good stuff, but hard to move characters from other areas here, as it's umpteen Thousand Light years away. But some how the IRSOL and Federation Intellegence are snooping around and writing the footnotes. Oh, and the Korellians are distracted by border wars with (guess who) the Starkadd. It's a perfect time for the Confederacy to rise and overthrow their oppressors.
The Space Opera Sector Atlas series contains many playable adventure settings, providing a place for just about every space opera thrope imaginable. They're available from drivethru in scanned PDF format for a few dollars. Many are available in print directly from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
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