1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
Read the Ark Royal series. Self published on Amazon, so the writing is pretty standard, but the story itself is good and the space warfare is really fleshed out. Quite enjoyed those books.
>>46568023
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Wormholes or pre-human alien artifacts that have been reverse engineered.
>2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Pretty much boils down to "I'm the author and this is my fetish." It's much more practical to attack crew and commandeer ships at ports.
>3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
See above. Otherwise, don't bother explaining it unless it's relevant.
You're telling a story, not showing how clever you are.
>>46568079
You have me intrigued. I will give them a look.
>>46568023
I really wish I could remember the name of this novel I read maybe 15 years ago about an interstellar society that had FTL travel but it wasn't instantaneous, so cultures were fairly isolated and technology varied between worlds by several hundred years. The main character had some kind of ultra powerful AI waifu that could hack any computer system.
Anyway, the setting was neat.
>>46568149
That is the sequel to Ender's Game. Speaker for the Dead. That was really cool because they could communicate over any distance instantaneously, but when they were actually moving ships faster then light they were still bound by relativity.
>>46568131
>You're telling a story, not showing how clever you are.
If you learn nothing else about Sci Fi, learn this. A lot of people could benefit from it.
Unless you're rotating parts of the ship or using continuous acceleration to simulate gravity whatever you come up with is going to be total technobabble.
Don't even bother trying to explain artificial gravity, if it's there it's there, the more you try and explain how it works the more attention you'll draw to how little sense it makes.
>>46568023
>FTL Travel
Psionics.
Psionics accidentally discovered higher levels of reality they can interact with using the right attunement, making them very weak Time Wizards. However, due to the pretty much incomprehensible nature of said levels, Perils of the Warp are in full play.
You need one psion for every two other passengers to ensure a safe trip, and people at risk, like infants, aren't allowed to go.
depending on the size of the ship you're trying to ship, you need anywhere from one hundred to a thousand psions working together- which is material for an incomprehensibly large disaster, as you might have guessed.
Fortunately, anyone can become a psion if they have a strong enough will to do so (and aren't criminals/etc).
Space warfare would probably work more like submarine warfare then battleship warfare. Running silent with passive sensors so that the enemy cant find where you are and launch a rail gun slug at 50km/s straight up your ass.
>>46569009
That's pretty sweet actually, I like it. Doesn't really fit into the setting I'm thinking up (its fairly low-magic so far) but its a neat concept.
>>46568023
1. It's never come up in 250+ hours of playing and gming star wars. It just works. Dirac sea, son, tachions, or whatever.
2. In and out. You're dropped to your location, you do your job, and you go home. You're also not given any information, so you can't disclose any in case you get captured.
3. Electric field to grav field nikola tesla bullshit. Tell them to not waste my time with stuff that already exist on wikipedia.
>>46569098
An example exchange.
>"Philip, where the hell is the engine?"
>"I've got it- Where are you?"
>"We were supposed to step to Drop Point 5, weren't we?"
>"Yeah, on Mars. Where are you?"
>"What? We're at the main Centauri outpost."
>"Wow, uh..."
>"Just get over here and bring the engine with you. Someone will blink it back in. Fucking dumbass."
>>46568023
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Gates like in Mass Effect/Cowboy Bebop. You can only FTL to places where a gate/teleporter/whatever was built by explorers/colonists using sub-FTL tech.
2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Subvert the force fields/space lasers/pewpewpew. Shaceships fire traditional artillery shells with a special oxidizing powder designed for use in space and computer assisted aim. Rounds arent stopped by forcefields but by futuristic alloy armour. Naval Dreadnoughts have armour so thick it has to be made in zero gravity and its not uncommon to see Pirate ships with several layers of tattered mismatched armour salvaged from victim ships. Space battles are basically old naval battles, with people trying to outmanoeuvre each other and firing off massive collateral damage causing volleys of shells.
>>46568023
1. Relativity as we know it now is only partially true. More nuanced and complex formulas and mathematics that require far more advanced computers to even begin to fathom lead to a more complete understanding of what relativity started at, much like newtonian physics before it. This means that FTL is possible without breaking causality. This should be passed over, because FTL should be used to help drive the story, not the other way around. This is essentially the sci-fi equivalent of "a wizard did it" and so long as it's internally consistent you don't need anything more.
2. Depends on the delta-V of the ships involved. If they are low delta-V, long range missiles, combat drones, and railguns and lasers fired at standoff range of several light seconds or more because anything closer is and instant auto-hit from any kind of directed energy weapons. At high delta-V combat can become more action packed, with high-speed space jousting where ships use their relative speed with the target to both use the doppler effect to decrease the target's reaction time and increase the speed of the fired projectiles.
3. I don't like it, but that's personal taste. I just like the look of spinning rings on ships and stations. It's like my architectural fetish and it's the only reason I don't put artificial gravity into my setting more often.
However, that said, I do find zero gravity combat more interesting, as well as zero gravity architecture. In a setting with artificial gravity ships and stations should still be built with the idea in mind of it failing. Ladders and hand holds all over the place, nets and velcro strips all over for items, regulation sippy-cups, especially for hot drinks, ect. The layout can also be much more labyrinthine, as nothing is stopping one deck from having a different orientation than another, so you can have interiors built like space-efficient Escher sketches with pockets of zero-G for cargo or heavy lifting areas and recreation centers.
>>46569056
>space warfare
>anything at all like submarine warfare
are you fucking kidding me
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardetect.php#nostealth
>>46569577
...Signal dampeners?
Fooling sensors with false information?
>>46569636
There is no stealth in space.
Send a copy people's mind across interstellar distances by email. Since the signal travels at lightspeed, there's no violation of causality or need to harvest titanic energies to make wormholes, warp drives and other FTL methods to send matter to other stars.
>>46568187
>>46568149
That's not ftl.
It's near light and this subject to relativity.
The most important element of space warfare, is while you can clearly see the relative positions of the enemy fleets, you have a lag of information due the light speed limit. A ship light seconds away from you could have moved into a different position by the time you shot your laser.
The second, important element is orbits. Ships don't travel freely in space, they follow orbits and gravity of the planets and the nearby star.
>>46569577
Half that page is dedicated to reasons on how it is possible
>>46569056
>>46569577
>>46569636
>Nicoll's Law:
>It is a truth universally acknowledged that any thread that begins by pointing out why stealth in space is impossible will rapidly turn into a thread focusing on schemes whereby stealth in space might be achieved.
And so it begins.
>>46569056
>submarine warfare
>Submarine that detects the other first attempts to maneuver into the baffles of the other submarine, close distance and launch weapons
>the incredibly loud transient created by weapons launch alerts the target ship, which then launches countermeasures, it's own torpedoes (using presets rather than a specific firing solution)
>Both ships accelerate to near maximum speed, and make extreme course and depth changes while launching countermeasures
>entire situation becomes incredibly unclear due to broadband jamming noise and simulated engine tonals from countermeasures
>Maybe a torpedo hits something, or not.
I don't think that's quite how space combat is going to go down.
>>46569811
This is the opposite of true.
It's going to be like Napoleonic warfare. With flashy colors in your sensors, everyone sees you. However, since the distances are so great, you need volume of fire to hit anything beyond a couple of light seconds due the lightspeed lag.
>>46569838
I was thinking more like both ships are submarines until they're detected by the enemy, and then they're destroyers. If one detects the other, he'd be all stealthy and sneaky-peaky while lining up a killing shot. Then if he fucks up, the enemy ship will probably have a good idea where he is after tracing the path of the rail gun slug, missiles, whatever, and then its a clusterfuck of coloured lasers.
>>46569907
Or, you know, you can fire a missile.
>>46568023
Subspace wormhole whateverthefuck corridors that connect different star systems. You go in one end, traverse a couple hundred thousand kilometers worth of twisting Star Wars tube filled with gas at atmospheric pressures and come out the other end. To be able get through the gas tube in any acceptable amount of time, your space ship is going to have to use some kind of nuclear ramjet. This explains why your space ships look aerodynamic and have intakes.
>>46569880
Did you miss everything under the header titled "Stealth in space is possible"?
>>46569939
Or lots and lots of missiles, cause even today we're pretty good at killing those things if its just a single one. Some Belgian or German company can even blow up mortars mid-air with lasers!
The single most important element of spaceship design is heat management. Vacuum is neither cold, nor hot. There are no atoms to interchange heat. The only way of getting rid of excessive heat is radiation. Radiation is the most inefficient way to get rid of it.
A nuclear-powered ship armed with military-lasers is going to produce a lot of heat. The way to eliminate excessive heat is with huge radiators all over the ship. Radiators are huge and vulnerable, so you want to hide them in battle and use temporary heatsinks. You can only fire so much energy-weapons before they become too hot. Missiles could be used not just to destroy enemy ships but also to force the enemy ship to waste laser-shots vs these missiles.
>>46568131
>You're telling a story, not showing how clever you are.
The problem with this is if you have players/readers who are decently educated in cosmology. If you have lazy mechanics, it will cause disbelief suspension problems in more educated players.
For example, a major difference between Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica is their technobabble. People try and argue that Star Trek's babble is nonsense intended to sound "sciencey", but it's far from that. It is very carefully designed to match with hypothetical models of spacetime. For example, a sensor array might use something called a "tachyon pulse receiver" to try and detect something that is moving faster than light, and a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that moves faster than light. Now, in BSG's case, which tries to steer clear of technobabble but occasionally has to use some, will literally just compound irrelevant scientific jargon so you get a "Isotopic Diode" that stores power. If whoever is listening knows what either an isotope or a diode is, they are going to be like "...wtf?".
Same goes for things that are physically impossible. Moving through space time at faster than light speeds is impossible, and designing a propulsion/deflection system that allows this could ruin someone's suspension of disbelief.
In my opinion, you will probably want to go with the bubble approach(or something similar) that star trek has carefully designed for a reason. The idea is that you create a bubble in spacetime that encases an object, and use massive amounts of energy to collapse spacetime in front of it to reform it after the object has passed through to "cheat" faster than light speeds. The object itself isn't actually propelling itself within the warp bubble, the bubble is being artificially moved by altering spacetime around it. This is about as close as you're going to get with out current understanding of physics to FTL without bothering educated people, at least that I'm aware of.
cont'd next post
>>46570297
Pretty sure those bubble whatever metrics still break causality and let you travel back in time if you play your cards right. There's not really a way around that, I think, other than flat out saying relativity doesn't apply.
What if Civilization needs to build Dyson Spheres, or at least Dyson bubbles (may satellites collecting energy) to generate enough energy to open a wormhole or synthesize exotic matter with anti-mass characteristics?
>>46569984
You'll launch as few as you can get away with because you have a finite amount of ordnance on board.
>>46570297
cont'd
Another thing to keep in mind is that we can achieve great speeds over half of light speed with our current level of technology, but not with our current level of resources. The idea is that you basically detonate nuclear explosions behind an armored disk at precise intervals to accelerate an object in motion at great speeds, and slow it down by detonating nuclear explosions in front of the object at precise intervals. The amount of energy and resources it would take to do this, and this is without considering prevention of collision of small space objects, is absurd to think of at the present moment. It's just a fun thing to think about when working with space travel in settings.
As for the OP:
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Warp bubbles, as explained.
>2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Very quickly and lethally, involving things like radiation and nanomachines. This is only the "likely" half, though, as that's not as interesting(or at least "exciting", I find it interesting). As far as interesting goes lasers and explosions are things people seem to like.
3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
I don't. The best ways to create something that looks like artificial gravity are to give an object a centrifugal spin, which is something that we could produce with current technology, where you would basically fall to the inner-outside of an object due to it's speed of angled rotation, or to somehow impossibly, "magnetically"(??!) contain an object of dense mass at the center of a spherical object to create literal gravity without crushing the spherical platform around it.
desu just ditch artificial gravity because it doesn't make sense when you could just as easily use literal gravity.
>>46570478
Every one of these missiles is another target for the enemy lasers to take down. Every time they fire at one, it's a shot not hitting your mothership and more heat accumulated on their ship. The missiles may or not win the game of saturation, but it forces the enemy ship to waste shots on other targets rather than your ship.
>>46570297
>The problem with this is if you have players/readers who are decently educated in cosmology
One, most players aren't.
Two, the actual problem is with players who are decently educated in cosmology and can't ignore things. I'm decently educated in computer sciences, and do you think it ruins media for me when literally every single thing out there treats the average computer as a beeping miracle machine that can do anything, that when hacked people shout things like "strengthen the firewalls" and "they're taking down the mainframes"? If scientific accuracy really ruins your fun like this, there may be a problem.
>>46570665
>>46570385
I'm not certain how warp bubble mechanics would allow someone to go back in time, even a little bit. It would definitely allow the illusion of traveling forward in time, but so does traveling at high speeds below light, or traveling from an object of light gravity to an object of much greater gravitational pull and then back to the object of light gravity. Which obviously create no causality issues and are well-known and observed with our current understanding of physics.
There is a paradox that's itching the back of my mind now that you said this though, that I had a grasp on once and I can't bring it forward. When I was learning about FTL and time paradox ages ago.
>>46570665
Why have a system that can cause disbelief issues in some people when you can have a system that doesn't and works just as well?
The only reason to not do this is laziness.
>>46570794
It's my understanding that the specifics of how you do it don't matter. If you can go from A to B faster than a photon could, you can combine that and a bunch of regular accelerations to take you back in time.
>>46570628
>but it forces the enemy ship to waste shots on other targets rather than your ship
I'm not sure why you'd assume that the main battery armament and point defense armament of a ship would be the same system. Realistically their point defense armament is likely to have much shorter maximum range than their main armament and couldn't actually cause damage from the range that you're launching missiles from.
How about missiles/drones armed with lasers/railguns to outflank the thermal resistent armour on the front or the sides of the ship? In space, it is trivial for two ships to always offer the most resilient part of their armor to the enemy. But what if you add drones, missiles and other ships?
>>46571037
because distances flanking is not likely to be something you can do on a tactical level.
>>46570854
I don't really understand how this is actually a paradox, as it suggests that multiple instances of photons from the perspective of an observer cannot occupy the same time from the same object.
For example, say there are 100 light years between planet A and planet B, and you can travel five times the speed of light. You can travel to Planet B in 20 years, and then see yourself leaving Planet A 80 years later. This isn't a paradox, you are not interacting with yourself, you are just seeing a reflection of yourself relatively 20 years ago for you.
Instead of waiting 80 years to see yourself leave, you could also immediately turn around and travel from Planet B to Planet A. It would take 20 years, and you would arrive at Planet A 40 years after you left. I do not see the paradox. You can't interact with a reflection of yourself.
>>46570839
Because, as I said, most people aren't gonna have a problem, and in my personal experience the <5% that do are usually unpleasant in the first place.
>>46571546
It's a paradox because you are receiving data/information from the Future. You could violate causality and decide NOT go to this planet after seeing it.
>>46570297
> It is very carefully designed to match with hypothetical models of spacetime.
The scripts of Star Trek episodes literally have [technobabble] written in places where the actors need so say science-sounding nonsense to move the plot forward. They just have a collection of madlibs phrases to fill in blanks where they need some weird science bullshit to solve a problem and save the day.
>>46571600
So it is laziness. And really, if you think someone pointing out a hole in something you've constructed is unpleasant, just build something without holes instead of blaming others and calling them unpleasant because you made mistakes.
You could just work and read a little bit more and not make mistakes in the first place.
>>46571608
I do not understand how you are receiving information from the future by sending information faster than light. If you send a message 5x the speed of light to an object 100LY away, it will arrive there 20 years later, and they will see you send the message 80 years after that. That's not seeing something from the future, that's just seeing something faster.
>>46568023
1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Actually I've found it far more interesting to subvert this expectation. I have a new appreciation for settings in our own solar system. Especially far-future stuff with a terraformed Venus and Mars.
Something I've wanted to see in a setting for a long time is something that takes advantage of what I like to call "the Firefly solution." Set the game in a distant star system that was settled by human generation ships centuries ago.
>>46571701
Source? The technobabble in Star Trek is way too relevant to the concepts they are referring to for that to be even remotely true, unless you are referring to ToS which isn't canon.
>>46571546
This isn't about seeing things. It's about making a round trip that literally ends in the same place as it began, but at an earlier time. Look at the axes in the diagram. The ship ends up in the same position on the space axis as it started, but at an earlier moment on the time axis.
>>46571875
How does it get there, though? It doesn't make sense that it would get there by traveling FTL.
Say you move 10 feet at 10x the speed of light, and back to where you started immediately. Photons will have traveled 2 feet by the time you have returned to your original position, not backwards(whatever that would even mean). On the way back, you are intersecting a reflection of yourself that from their perspective is from the "future", but a reflection of yourself does not perceive.
>>46571546
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyonic_antitelephone#Numerical_example_with_two-way_communication
Here's an example with numbers.
FTL = Time Travelling. It's simple.
>>46572000
It gets there by applying the FTL travel in a different frame of reference. I don't know enough about relativity to be able to explain that in an intuitive way, but here: >>46572025 is a wikipedia link that goes through a numerical example. Just replace the tachyons with space ships.
I really want to run a setting similar to Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
But I can't figure out how to do it and still have it be fun.
>>46571799
Relativity dictates that there is no objective time frame. You are assuming that there is.
The time you spent underway will be different to the amount of time you have been gone from your home planet, but both will be correct at the same time. The universe essentially updates at a rate of c, which is the speed of causality, not light. Light has no mass, and thus it moves at the speed of causality. If you go faster then that, you have broken causality and can travel through time.
In order for FTL to be possible, you must either disprove relativity or disprove causality. You cannot have both.
>>46572100
>>46572025
So what I understand is that there actually is no paradox with FTL between two stationary objects, but there is a paradox between two objects that are moving away from each other.
I cannot find a way to demonstrate this paradox with a simple example, which bothers me a lot. If I convert the example I was using before:
Planet A and Planet B are 100LY apart, moving 1LY apart every year
Sending a message from A to B at 10x light speed takes 20 years. Responding immediately takes an additional 22 years, arriving 42 years after the initial message, not before it was sent. I do not understand.
I'm not even saying it's wrong, I'm saying it makes no sense to me, and I'm not satisfied with an argument from authority.
>>46571799
Do I need to point out the physics involved with my fictional universe's method of travel, or can I simply say "You go to the next system"? How often do you sit down with your players and give them an explanation of how the stuff around them works in the middle of a game?
>>46572445
> between two stationary objects
Everything in the universe is stationary. You are stationary and the rest of the universe is moving relative to you. This is a correct statement. I am stationary, and the rest of the universe is moving relative to me. This is also a correct statement.
At the same time.
You cannot say something leaves A, moves faster than c to get to B in 20 years, and then say the trip took 20 years. The trip was much shorter for those in the ship, it would be longer to an observer moving at a different velocity, it only takes 20 years to the observers watching the ship leave.
All of these travel times are correct when describing the same trip, at the same time. You don't experience 20 years faster within the ship, it was just not 20 years for you. There is no correct view of time, at all, and all of your explanations operate under the assumption that there is.
>>46572378
>The time you spent underway will be different to the amount of time you have been gone from your home planet
I agree. The time you spent away traveling FTL will feel like a year, relative to time on earth where a thousand years will have passed.
From what I understand, this is not a paradox but an illusion. It's not that you are traveling forward in time, it's that time is moving extremely slowly for your relative to a much slower object. In this illusion, there is no way even remotely to travel back in time, nothing suggests it's possibility.
This is why I don't understand.
>>46572582
No, but if someone asks how you're traveling faster than light and you say that it's a really powerful propulsion device, that's lazy and could cause disbelief suspension problems for someone with mild education.
For the same reasons human NPCs don't use 500 foot long, 2-ton spears in fantasy settings. Because it doesn't make sense. Having someone just do this might upset your player's disbelief suspension.
>>46572645
Two objects moving parallel at the same speed are stationary relative to each other.
I don't understand why time moving relatively quickly for one person compared to another is a paradox, as that's already a reality experienced by people in earth's orbit on space stations, where clocks have to be adjusted for this reason.
>>46572764
No, dude. You need to apply time dilation to the time that passes ON THE PLANETS. In your example that's particularly weird because you have them moving apart at light speed, meaning that from the perspective of each planet, time on the other planet will appear frozen.
You're saying that they're 100 light years apart right now, so let's say they synchronized their clocks 100 years ago when they met. Planet A sends a signal to planet B. From planet A's perspective, the signal takes 11 years to get there, so it arrives in the year 111. From Planet B's perspective, where time is frozen, it arrives in the year 0. They immediately send a message back, this message takes basically no time to get there because the planets are still in the same place because it's the year 0, and there you have your time travel.
>>46572764
It's not an illusion. An illusion assumes there is an objective baseline to be hidden in the first place. There is none. You are not experiencing an illusion of time moving slower, you are just experiencing time.
Your perception of time is exactly as correct as all others. None of them are illusions. They are all 100% real, authentic spacetime, no sugar added.
>>46572999
Haha that's funny, didn't even consider that was just using arbitrary numbers. Replace the movement with 10% LS and additional years of travel to 10%.
Planet A and Planet B are 100LY apart, moving 0.1LY apart every year
Sending a message from A to B at 10x light speed takes 11 years. Responding immediately takes an additional 11.1 years, arriving 22.1 years after the initial message, not before it was sent.
As for your example, it physically makes no sense. Say they synchronize their clocks to year 0 when they met 100 years ago, so that each planet is the same year at the same time. A sends a message to B at year 100, getting to B at year 111. B's time is....frozen? what? why?
>>46573159
Yes. So you move FTL for what seems like a year to you, and go back to earth, where a thousand years have passed relative to you.
What's the problem?
>>46572764
http://www.theculture.org/rich/sharpblue/archives/000089.html
>>46573251
It's in the equations. If you go faster than c, the numbers become imaginary.
>>46573216
>B's time is....frozen? what? why?
Because the formula for relativistic time dilation looks like this:
The time that passes on the other planet equals the time that passes on your planet times sqrt(1-(v^2/c^2)).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Time_dilation_due_to_relative_velocity
If v, the velocity, is the same as c, light speed, then v^2/c^2 is 1, and 1-1 is zero, and the square root of zero is zero. Meaning that in order to calculate how much time has passed on the other planet, you take how much time has passed on yours and multiply that by zero. Time is frozen.
You keep getting your results because you don't take time dilation into account at all when doing your calculations, even if you say you know it's a thing.
>>46573359
Why? What makes this a paradox and an impossibility?
>>46573298
This is suggesting that intersecting with a reflection of yourself is a paradox, when it is not. Read the comments on the article.
>>46573251
>>46573251
>So you move FTL for what seems like a year to you, and go back to earth, where a thousand years have passed relative to you.
No, that effect happens as you approach v (speed) approach asymptotically to c (lightspeed).
>>46573449
How would B send a response to A when time is frozen for them relative to A?
>>46573251
All of your math is fine when talking about relativistic speeds slower than c. The moment you break c, none of your equations work anymore. You broke causality. You broke the chalkboard in half.
Stop calculating it as if you didn't just break c, because it will not and never will come out properly.
>>46573488
The paradox is that you moved faster than the universe refreshes. You just moved at 100fps in a game locked at 60. You moved outside of your light cone, and if you didn't you now have the ability to if you want. You have either proven relativity wrong or proven causality wrong. If you just broke c then they cannot both be correct.
>>46573554
Why would surpassing C result in a time paradox in this equation?
People always talk about FTL.
What about traveling at C exactly?
Would the people traveling at C even experience time?
I'm ignorant.
>>46573573
From Planet B's perspective, all the FTL signals the Planet A ever sends arrive in the year 0, they reply to them all and then never hear from Planet A again.
>>46573574
In what way does the universe "refresh" at light speed? It only works that way from the perspective of an observer. Moving 100 FPS at a game locked at 60 FPS simply moves you faster through that game, not back in time in that game.
All I see you saying is "It doesn't work because it can't work because you can't", there is no sensible explanation. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying what you're saying doesn't make sense to me.
You're saying that numbers stop working after surpassing c. Why?
>>46573703
Why do their responses arrive at planet A before planet A sent their initial messages? How does that make sense?
>>46573805
It doesn't make sense, dude, that's the point. You apply your math and something weird happens.
If you allow signals that travel faster than light, you allow sending signals into the past. That's what time travel is. Breaking causality. Letting the effect happen before the cause.
>>46573771
Not that anon.
It doesn't work because our models say it doesn't work and we can't test that it doesn't work but the things we have tested show our model is correct so we can only assume that our model is also correct in that aspect and that it just doesn't work.
>>46573771
Because it isn't light speed, it's the speed of causality itself, which light moves at because photons have no mass.
The speed of causality, c, is the fastest speed at which information can possibly move in this universe according to general relativity. A photon is information with no mass to weigh it down, and so it gets to move at c.
From the perspective of a photon moving at c, you can go anywhere in the universe instantly, but time around you is passing infinitely fast, so by the time you get anywhere the universe will have ended.
The speed of c is not the arbitrary speed of light. Passing it means data is now capable of moving into its own past.
>>46573574
And do you expect the GM to write new physics equations to explain the FTL in his universe since relativity doesn't accurately reflect what happens at super-luminal velocities?
>>46573657
Time is part of the equation. If you surpass c, you have to work with imaginary numbers.
I'm not a hard sci fi guy. Actually, I'm more a "robot wizards fight technobarbarians" guy.
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
My setting's Aether Drive is a combination of a deuterium plasma reaction drive and an enchanted urn filled with the machinery needed to work with it, made from special metals, plated in decorative ceramic depicting various arcane sigils that keep the energies of the otherworld in harmony while pulling on the connecting threads between it and our world and used through a combination of computer commands and prayer.
The end result is Traveller-style jumps, more or less.
>2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Boarding action is common, ships are expensive and an A-Drive explosion has been known to summon unknowable horrors from the temporary rip in the veil which might just decide to eat you for pulling them out of their warp-nap. Aside from that, sublight fighter-interceptors use a combination of an onboard wizard, long range swarm missiles, conventional blasters and grappling tethers to swing debris at shit.
>3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
Similar technology to A-Drives, though this is often turned off in sleep cycles in order to prevent overcharging the devices that the enchantments power. Overheating is a common end result of too much continual use, so frequently you wind up having to figure out why the air vent on Deck 3 is shooting out a jet of plasma or why the hallway to Solars is currently full of things that look suspiciously like your dead relatives with tentacles and extra eyes beckoning you to come join them in a language you understand, but don't recognize.
>>46573888
But why does sending a signal FTL send it back in time? That doesn't make any sense at all. Sending a signal FTL and having it travel, well, faster than light, makes perfect sense. Moving FTL and experiencing time slower relative to someone moving slower makes perfect sense. Moving back in time in this instance doesn't make any sense and I haven't seen any sensible explanation for it.
>>46573956
So basically affirming the consequent with a mathematical model? THAT makes sense.
>>46573771
>You're saying that numbers stop working after surpassing c.
Yes
>Why?
Because most or all of them turn to infinity.
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Spacetime folding, or more accurately, 'scrunching.' A given vehicle induces a contraction of spacetime in front of it, and an expansion of spacetime behind it, and while it's technically not moving at FTL speeds through its normal little bubble, it effectively does. It's technically not impossible, but requires astounding amounts of energy and things we're not sure even exist, but it's not completely out.
Just fudge the energy expenditure down to feasible levels and you're gold.
>How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
You take a pill that blocks the biological mechanisms of muscular and skeletal catabolism. Or you've been gene-modded to maintain muscle and bone mass in zero G.
>What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Like warfare today works, but potentially far more catastrophic.
Conflicts are mostly going to exist between state (or equivalent) and non-state actors, with non-state actors engaging in violence for political and ideological gain, and state actors killing them because they're starting to fuck with the economy.
Secret agents and special forces versus terrorists and insurgents.
The worst such conflicts could get would be legitimate space traffic and vehicles being comandeered by non-state actors and used to disrupt or destroy infrastructure by turning them into kinetic kill vehicles.
>>46574042
Also yes this is basically Outlaw Star and Nobledark 40k having a retard baby populated by the aesthetic direction born of the lovechild of Destiny and Asura's Wrath. The choice was intentional.
I still don't know what system would best handle it.
>>46573973
Look, I'm only coming into this now, but you've got to stop saying this
>The speed of causality, c, is the fastest speed at which information can possibly move in this universe according to general relativity.
because it makes you sound like you stopped studying physics fifteen years ago.
Again, coming into this now, I think something you've been overlooking when trying to talk it through with >>46572764 is that FTL is _absolutely permitted_ by both relativity and most theories of quantum gravity. Hence the need for the CPC.
>>46574049
>But why does sending a signal FTL send it back in time?
I just went through it with you, didn't I?
Planet A and planet B sync clocks. They can only do that while they're in the same location, because otherwise they'd have to send their clocks with space ships, and we all know that the time that passes on the space ship depends on how fast it flies.
Planet A and planet B start moving away from each other. Let's say at "close to light speed". According to that formula, the one that keeps being shown to be correct by the GPS satellites, times moves slower on the other planet, from each planet's perspective.
In the year 100, planet A sends a signal to planet B. From planet A's perspective, time on Planet B moves extremely slowly, so by the time the signal reaches planet B, it's still the year 10 or something there. Planet B does the same thing in the other direction, and the net result is that the return signal arrives on Planet A in the year 3 or whatever.
>>46573973
I understand this concept, from the perspective of a photon no time travels as it moves, and that time dilation is directly proportionate to an objects mass.
What I don't understand is why we assume that hypothetically moving faster than c reverses time from your perspective. That doesn't make any sense to me, why we would make that assumption.
>>46574003
Why does working with imaginary numbers lead to a causality paradox?
>>46573977
If there is no time dilation in your setting, you're already being lazy. If there is time dilation in your setting, just extend it exponentially past FTL and that works just fine.
>>46568023
warfare would be affected by the FTL because it would influence the logistics that the civilization was using
it would also affect the size of ships and fleets used based on how vast colonization efforts are
If Casuality is such a headache, why don't you say that there's a law of physics that prevents the creation of paradoxes? See Novikov self-consistency principle, Parallel Universes, Consistency Protection, Restricted Space-Time Areas, and Special Frames.
>>46574255
Except then you get time travel, which breaks causality.
Causality is ok with time travel if you don't have relativity. Relativity is ok with time travel if you don't have causality. It's like one of those love-triangles of ex-friends you still want to hang out with but they get into a fight any time they all get together at once.
Beyond that, any mathematical evidence would essentially just be an entire wiki article long string of technobabble that requires a degree in mathematics to understand fully or write properly, but translates to "it don't work", which is essentially what everyone has been trying to say repeatedly.
>>46574388
> just extend it exponentially past FTL and that works just fine.
>Just extend it past infinity!
M8, that is more or less what causes the time travel issue.
>>46574446
>Causality is ok with time travel if you don't have relativity.
Nah, I don't think causality is okay with time travel ever. You probably wanted to say FTL travel.
>>46574411
>Special Frames
Those sound like the kind of thing everybody tacitly assumes anyway.
>>46574569
I did. Got messed up since with relativity FTL and time travel are essentially the same thing. Sorry.
Travelling within this universe at FTL is impossible. That's why almost all the plausible tricks involves manipulating space-time in such a way that you are not physically moving. Your space-time bubble, your isolated frame of reference is doing it for you. Since no information is leaving the bubble, there's no violation.
Just don't do it in real space. Go through something other than real space, where things like objective distance and the speed of light behave differently.
>>46574641
Technically yes, but I'm fairly sure that once you get to your destination you need to exit the bubble yourself, thus causing a violation.
>>46574446
>Except then you get time travel, which breaks causality.
Again, hence the need for the CPC.
For example, Krasnikov tubes seem pretty much undeniably possible so far according to quantum gravity. The Chronology Protection Conjecture suggests that it should be impossible to use multiple Krasnikov tubes to build a time machine. It has been argued that, according to Loop Quantum Gravity theories, that trying to bring two K-tubes with opposite clock differences into close proximity ('close' being measured in multiple light-years for long tubes) would result in the collapse of the tubes due to a rapidly inflating fluctuation in vacuum energy within the tubes (I seem to recall it being a consequence of the holographic principle, but honestly can't remember)
>>46574687
Doesn't help unless the way of entering that other space specifies something like the reference frame in which you can do it. Like if you have all these jump nodes that are stationary to each other and you can only use them if you're stationary to them. That could work, I think.
As soon as you allow them to move relative to each other, shit gets weird again, which is a problem considering that stars move relative to each other.
>>46574294
Why does time on planet B move according to A's perspective? That doesn't make sense. Time on Planet A is moving equally slowly from B's perspective, but that is an illusion caused by moving away from each other, causing photons to arrive between planets at a much lower rate.
You're making the mistake of thinking time actually moves slower on Planet B than it does on Planet A. It does not.
>>46574544
Light speed =/= infinity.
>>46574811
What about the gravitational centre of galaxies or the centre of the local group? Galaxies aren't orbiting anything, they are moving away from each other because space-time itself is expanding. It would be ironic, if FTL is only possible for travelling across galaxies, but not stars.
>>46574834
>You're making the mistake of thinking time actually moves slower on Planet B than it does on Planet A. It does not.
Yes it fucking does. It actually, literally, physically goes by slower. That's what the term "time dilation" means, and probably the crux of how you're misunderstanding relativity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
>An accurate clock at rest with respect to one observer may be measured to tick at a different rate when compared to a second observer's own equally accurate clock. This effect arises neither from technical aspects of the clocks nor from the fact that signals need time to propagate, but from the nature of spacetime itself.
>nor from the fact that signals need time to propagate
http://www.physicsguy.com/ftl/html/FTL_part4.html
>>46574862
For the purposes of the conversation, it is, since he just said to extend the effects of relativity exponentially at FTL speeds, and the effects of relativity at light speed is essentially infinity. Zero time passes for you, and infinity passes for the observer.
>>46574811
If you're already going to allow yourself access to 'unreal space' of some sort, then you can easily allow the nodes to be in relative motion, simply assign a property to your 'unreal space' such that roundtrip spacetimes are always conformal
>>46574691
>Technically yes, but I'm fairly sure that once you get to your destination you need to exit the bubble yourself, thus causing a violation.
No, because as soon as you enter the bubble there is no exchange of information meaning you're free to go as fast as you want without breaking causality.
What you can't see can't break causality.
Wait...
>Enter space bubble
>FTL
>Exit space bubble
>See yourself before you entered space bubble
God damn it how does the alcubierre( or however it is spelled) drive work?
>>46574903
Galaxies are still moving relative to each other, and not in a uniform way. Many are on collision courses with each other, while others have already collided. Three mini-galaxies orbit our own, and are the remains of the Milky Way ramming and consuming a smaller galaxy some unfathomable amount of years ago.
>>46575023
It works by breaking causality.
How are different species able to breath the same air? I always found it annoying that in most Sci-Fi settings, it's just explained as every species being able to breath relatively the same atmosphere, with some exceptions.
>>46575023
It works because it's not a 'drive', it's a metric that represents a solution to an equation. The bubble is energetically symmetric, so it would appear to be unphysical to be able to actually pick a direction when you turn on the drive. There is no way of differentiating forwards and backwards when you collect the energy required to support the bubble.
>>46574740
Do you need weird shit like matter with negative mass to build those tubes, or does it work with what we've seen to actually exist?
>>46575270
Because most settings presume ayy lmaos share a rocky world origin, and have a photosynthetic foundation to their ecology.
>>46575368
Doesn't seem like that would be enough. I mean, different oxygen content alone could fuck you up, couldn't it?
>>46575270
Because oxygen is a very efficient and abundant resource to run biological metabolisms on.
I always hate the "lol aliens will be totally impossible to imagine to us!" garbage. We know how physics work, so we know there are some things that just don't fucking change. Based on those universal constants, we can make some damn good assumptions about what an alien will look like and potentially what biological processes it will be based off of simply by assuming that evolution will select whatever is most likely to lead to reproduction and survival on their homeworld.
Realistically, there aren't that many gasses that could be used to efficiently fuel a metabolism. It has an excellent mixture of stability and efficiency.
Of course, off the top of my head, the Volus from Mass Effect and the Grunts from Halo both breathe methane, which is another good choice for evolution.
>>46575347
Negative energy is, almost universally, a feature of interesting spacetime metrics. Basically, whenever you want to build something cool with general relativity you need to overcome the tendency to collapse. You do this by using (usually) cosmic strings with negative tension. Think of then as the springy plastic spine that holds a pop-tent up. Except made of one-dimensional spacetime, and not under compression, but intrinsically possessing negative tension, such that the two ends _pull_ away from each other.
>>46575566
So, not that much like a springy pop-tent, now that I think about it...
>>46575484
Yeah but don't ever fucking say that aliens would be humanoid because "convergent evolution:
It took several, some completely random, mass extinction events for our ancestors to even exist.
>>46575428
Not really. You get a different oxygen content at different altitudes. We only use a tiny percentage of the oxygen we breath in anyway. So long as the number is high enough you're good to go. Worst case you need some kind of implant or an O2 mask to supplement the local air.
Of course if there is some gas in the local atmosphere that happens to be poison to you, then you're in trouble, or if the local air has a mixture of other gasses in such a content as to be toxic, like carbon monoxide or a frighteningly high amount of carbon dioxide, then you're also fucked.
>>46575600
Hm, humanoid seems eminently likely. Why wouldn't it be (don't make an appeal to difference for differences' sake)? An alieumz would be almost certainly a former aquatic species, that then dragged itself onto land and crawled about, and eventually began to use its front limbs for manipulating its environment and carrying young. So its probably going to be humanoid or centauroid.
>>46575650
>Why wouldn't it be
As I've already said, it's incredibly unlikely as it took several inconsistent extinction events just to lead to apes. Us apes are the only humanoids and not all of apes are even intelligent.
Any life bearing planet is probably going to have more or less extinction events, with different causes and different survival conditions meaning the surviving species even they become intelligent won't look similar because the circumstances of their survival wouldn't be similar.
>>46575650
Nope, my ayy lmao are evolved from single thickness sheets of organic material formed in preassure faults. They are tenfold symmetric and highly dendritic due to their evolutionary origin, looking rather like a folded hankie hanging from a mechanical armature
>>46575600
Fuck that noise.
But they would "likely" have something akin to bones, especially in their grasping organs and legs, as that offers the most efficient method of leverage and accuracy when moving and handling objects. They would likely be omnivores, since a larger diet has a greater likelihood of surviving the inevitable food shortage, and would likely have a predatory past due to that tending to lead to smarter and more active brain activity, leading to a larger chance of evolving intelligence.
There are other very likely things, some of which even we don't fit, but all of them are just "very likely" to happen, so think of it like something you roll for. Most aliens you find will check all or most of the boxes, but some won't, and those will be the weirdos. For example, it would be incredibly hard for any form of life that lives purely in water or in air, (like a gas giant) to develop any kind of society, since that requires a method of collecting data (writing) and metallurgy, which are both incredibly difficult or impossible to develop in such environments.
Of course, another race could have helped them, like the Hanar from Mass Effect, whose tentacles are terrible for using tools, and environment would have normally all but prevented their development of metallurgy to any technically competent level under most circumstances, but were helped by the presence of super advanced alien tech.
What would look like an Alien made of exotic matter from the early or a previous inflationary cosmic age?
>>46576120
Seriously? Most things made of exotic matter wouldn't be perceivable directly, so wouldn't look like anything. Something from a 'previous inflationary cosmic age' would currently be several time the size of the observable universe, so would look like, well, the edge of the observable universe.
>>46575763
You say its incredibly unlikely, yet you don't say what would be more likely. Almost all of the elements are pretty obvious -- early life is going to form in a liquid (probably waterish soup), its going to crawl out to land (aquatic life may be intelligent but its not going to be able to progress to the metalworking stage), from there its going to get manipulating digits, and its going to start raising its body more and more so it won't have to doubletask its manipulators.
So the vast majority of intelligent, civilized aliumz are going to be humanoid or centauroid, likely with plenty of utter primitives like dolphins and perhaps advanced octopoid type life that can't progress past the limits of their watery home.
Creatures that are too different from this mold are almost certainly going to be uplifted or custom modified.
>>46576512
>So the vast majority of intelligent, civilized aliumz are going to be humanoid or centauroid,
You still haven't really given any reason other than "nuh uh!"
A fucking kangaroo fits all your "requirements", but there's no reason to assume an intelligent being would look humanoid any more than they would might look a kangaroo.
And before you use human intelligence as evidence, there's a lot of dumb shit ape species than there are intelligent apes.
>>46576649
>You still haven't really given any reason other than "nuh uh!"
Hm? You got that backwards, "nuh uh" is your sole argument.
>A fucking kangaroo fits all your "requirements",
>there's a lot of dumb shit ape species than there are intelligent apes.
This conversation seems to be going over your head. You seem to be under the retarded assumption that anywhere I have said that humanoids will be intelligent tech users... you are very, very sad.
>>46576882
>Hm? You got that backwards, "nuh uh" is your sole argument.
Wrong nigger.
My argument is statistics.
What is the chance of a intelligent life bearing planet having a similar climate as earth?
What are the chances of that planet going through similar extinction events as earth?
What are the chances of those extinction events having a similar fitness requirement as earths did?
You say humanoids are the most likely form for intelligent life but look at how few humanoids there are on earth alone, how dumb they are except for the exception ( us ) and how there are non-humanoid species more intelligent than our own cousins and ancestors.
>>46576882
Not the same anon, (I'm this one >>46575812), but the 'life begins in water' hypothesis is no more well supported than the deep-hot biosphere or the clay hypothesis
>>46577033
>My argument is statistics.
If you want to play that game, sure. Available statistics refer to one planet and one species: human.
From this we can gather that 100% of intelligent tech using aliumz will be exactly fucking like us. Good job.
>What is the chance of a intelligent life bearing planet having a similar climate as earth?
From statistics? 100%. That's the problem with forming statistics from one example period where the only possible values are 0% or 100%.
>but look at how few humanoids there are on earth alone,
Doesn't have anything to do with the topic, as I'm not trying to speculate as to what non tech using ET fauna would be like (anything and everything, including a lot of stuff like dolphins that can't ever advance).
>how dumb they are except for the exception ( us ) and how there are non-humanoid species more intelligent than our own cousins and ancestors.
Yet those other non humanoids show exactly how far you can get (not even to fire) without arms and legs, or if you prefer, differentiation of manipulative limbs and locomotive limbs.
>>46577235
If you like, you can go back further than that to the origins of anaerobic metabolism.
>>46568023
Sublight only, automated jumpgate seeders.
Extreme range gauss cannons to disable engines, then boarding if appropriate. None of that WWI dogfights IN SPACE bullshit.
Spinning.
>>46577287
>If you want to play that game, sure. Available statistics refer to one planet and one species: human.
I already knew you would pull that argument and I have a counteragument: Whales.
Do you think whales are "optimal" form for life that is large and in water? No, there were things bigger than whales in that past whales current form is just chance.
Similarly, just because humans are currently the most intelligent creature we know of doesn't mean the human form is the most optimal for intelligence.
Also, it's funny you're using the extreme exception as evidence humans are the most optimal form?
What about other animals who have been proven to be reasonably intelligent? Whoops, elephants aren't humanoid. Whoops, corvids aren't humanoid. Whoops, octopi aren't humanoid either! Oh, I almost forgot about dolphins. They don't even have hands.
>>46577287
>100% of intelligent tech using aliumz will be exactly fucking like us
That's a mind boggling retarded thing to say. The only things they need are big brains and fine motor ability. The layout could be completely different.
>>46577415
>I already knew you would pull that argument and I have a counteragument: Whales.
Nope. Sorry, I already knew you'd pull the cetacean card waaay back here >>46576649
>Do you think whales are "optimal" form for life that is large and in water?
Nobody's talking about what the optimal form of life is. Why are you addressing a point I already raised, examined, and dismissed about 45 minutes ago?
>doesn't mean the human form is the most optimal for intelligence.
Yet we're not discussing what form is the most optimal for intelligence. Try again. I didn't even begin to speculate as to whether we're more or less intelligent than dolphins, only that they're suffering from utterly arrested development, and even speculated there may certainly be intelligent octopoid aliens etc.
> Oh, I almost forgot about dolphins.
I didn't, I covered them 45 minutes or so ago ago.
>Oh, I almost forgot about dolphins. They don't even have hands.
Which is why the height of dolphin sophistication is raping small animals to death instead of making fire and so forth, meaning they're not going to become fancy tech using aliens on their own.
>>46577543
>That's a mind boggling retarded thing to say.
Because you took it out of context, retard. He wanted to use statistics for what tech using aliens would be like, a sample size of 1 won't produce accurate results.
>>46577634
>He thinks non-human intelligence has to be as intelligent or more intelligent than us to care about non-human intelligence.
I'd love to see the egg on your face if you met an intelligent alien and it felt the same way.
>>46577713
Nobody's talking about who's "more intelligent" at all. Dolphins could very well be more intelligent than us. Certainly a dolphin is unbelievably superior to a human at figuring out how to rape something without using hands.
>>46577793
You keep talking shit human.
Come to the beach if you're so touch. Small dick simian. Stiff rebar cock ape.
>>46577851
I have the utmost respect for dolphin sexual prowess.
>>46577954
That's right brick dick you better calm your ass down.
>>46569056
That sounds pretty boring.
I'd rather have Jutland in Space. Pic unrelated.
>>46577543
Not really, given that he was asked to use statistics and there's exactly one known example of intelligent life. Based on that the probability of an intelligent species coming from a planet with a climate and geological history identical to that of Earth would be 100%.
He was giving a dumb answer to a dumb question.
Reasonably it's fair to assume that some intelligent species with technological civilizations may bear resemblance to humans in terms of general body plan. It's also entirely probable that some aliens will be giant floating telepathic starfish.
>>46569343
Sounds pretty neat, actually.
It's worth noting that modern powder contains it's own oxidizer as is, and shouldn't need more.
>>46569577
>implying
>>46579473
>Jutland
>not based Victorian naval combat
Ewww gross
>>46579571
I don't understand why you screencapped that post, were you just too lazy to type out your own opinion?
>>46579789
Not him, but I'd say he doesn't think it was worth answering himself.
Keep in mind that the guy he's replying to linked an entire website.
>>46579915
Normally you reserve posting screencaps for posts that include something you'd consider to be a particularly convincing or humorous argument for your particular opinion, which that one really isn't, it just states the dudes opinion.
I agree with it in a general sense (with the exception that it conflates electronic warfare with stealth), but it doesn't do anything at all to explain why.
Possibly I'm too concerned with posting etiquette.
>>46568023
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Space magic. Call it what you must, but at the end of the day that's what it boils down to.
>2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
I'm going to go with interesting here. I prefer something along the lines of WWII naval combat, with some exceptions.
You have carriers sending waves of nuclear or casaba-howitzer armed strike craft at enemy capital ships, with fighters attempting to escort them, while also intercepting enemy strike craft. Meanwhile you have the battleships and battlecruisers lining up for a thermonuclear weapon-and-railgun slugging match somewhere in between the carriers, with an occasional break for shooting at smaller ships. You then have cruisers or even squadrons of cruisers flying about harassing the enemy battle line, performing escort duties, and engaging enemy cruiser squadrons and smaller craft. I'm not quite sure where the smaller craft fit in here, but the destroyers and the like would probably be seen screening and attempting to nuke carriers. I have yet to decide whether stealth ships are a thing in-setting.
There is also the more than occasional boarding action, which is a shotgun, grenade, and carbine-filled clusterfuck for both involved.
>3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
Once again, space magic. Unless you like your spaceships to be either rotating cylinders or skyscrapers or somewhere in between.
>>46579691
>based
>goes with the Russian defeat at Tsushima for his picture
Otherwise, the Victorian era is acceptable, but I'll always prefer post-dreadnaught battleships.
>>46580047
Not guy you're responding to.
Its a canned response to a very pretentious website that doesn't merit a long elaborate post. So, yes, its 100% in accordance with posting etiquette.
>>46580103
Tsushima was a great naval battle even if it was incredibly one-sided.
I like pre-dreadnoughts more because the ships were much so varied in design and because everything was designed with a ram, because ramming is super important.
>>46580179
>victorian era
>time period where shipbuilding technology is advancing so rapidly ships are near obsolete by the time they're comissioned
>nobody really has a clue how to build a battleship and is basically guessing
>tumblehome everywhere
>casemate guns everywhere
>battleships with submerged torpedo tubes
Funniest point in naval history for real. It would also be a sound basis for a setting where the factions aren't used to space warfare and are developing naval capabilities rapidly and haphazardly. The first use of ironclads and the transition to all-ironclad navies might be a good analogue for the emergence of force field technologies.
>>46580052
It's also worth noting that there are no shields in-setting. Just space CIWS and meters on meters of ceramic-backed armor plating.
>>46580179
The Russian Baltic Fleet/ Second Pacific Squadron was a hilarious clusterfuck as well.
Also, out of curiosity, are there any actual examples of pre-dread on pre-dread ramming actions?
>>46580440
To be fair, it took even longer than that to really "figure out" how to actually battleship. Then the Washington Naval Treaty happened and a corresponding hiatus on battleship design with it. It's a shame, really.
On an unrelated note, have either of you anons heard of Rule the Waves? I have a feeling it would be of interest to the both of you.
>>46568023
>1. What are some good ways of justifying FTL travel in a scifi setting?
Somebody manages to build stations that enlarge stable microscopic wormholes. Wormhole stations are maintained by governments due to their impossible complexity and going through one is like having to deal with the TSA. There is no faster than light travel outside of these. There are no faster than light ways to communicate.
>2. What are some interesting/likely ways for futuristic space warfare to work?
Warfare between nations is non existent. Knowing who did what in space is easy to see making regulations easy to enforce. While private citizens fighting one another is discouraged, it is not enforced until deadly force is used by either side. Carrying highly destructive weapons or retrofitting any of your equipment to be used as a potential weapon of mass destruction removes your citizenship and makes you an interplanetary terrorist. As an international terrorist if you come too close to a monitored sector you and your crew will be terminated via repeated strikes from every defense laser in the area.
>3. How do you explain artificial gravity / how does your setting change without it?
Living quarters spin while the rest of the ship remains in freefall.
If you go faster than the speed of light, you can't interact with anything and nothing can interact with you.
You're like an insanely fast ghost
And time just gets slower and slower and never actually stops. Even light is affected by time to some super small degree
>>46580857
>Also, out of curiosity, are there any actual examples of pre-dread on pre-dread ramming actions?
Yes, there's one. Literally just one. The battle of Lissa.
>>46568023
> dm
Because I fucking said so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wteiuxyqtoM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGsbBw1I0Rg
1. Don't get too technical or your details will get scrutinized.
2. Read stuff by Evan Currie, ignoring fighter jets in space. His ship-to-ship stuff is pretty well thought out. Lasers and missiles. No real combat outside of a few light seconds. Real stealth is impossible, but its actually pretty hard to detect something in space if it is smaller than a few hundred km and if it's albedo is low enough. Unless you figured out how gravitons work.
3. Centrifugal force (that coriolis is a bitch)
