Enough ragebaiting anon, get in here! We are making a sci-fi setting one post at the time. Art is welcome.I start.>Humanity has reached into the stars>The ships go with sub-space tunnelling,>The tunnels take longer to set up the farther they are trying to go>Inter-planetary trips can be days>Inter-system trips are usually years>Cryo-sleep exists, but spent time, is still spent time.
>>98413712Sub-space doesn't make any sense for FTL. You have to go up in dimensions, not down as that name implies. High-space would fit better.
>>98413712>subspace travel speed varies by gate and engine quality >conscious travel while gating is, despite time laps, sleepless unless in induced coma >various mnemonic implants, wetmemes and condition have been developed to hold off madness of long term travel with no sleep >most of these have complicated side effects
>>98413854I like that. It's like High-Seas.
>>98413881Do they try to keep conscious as a necessity for steering the ship? Or to attack/defend themselves from other travellers? Or is it a religion thing?
>>98413935>conscious crew requirements >insurance liability requires fully certified and competent captain, crew, engineer, etc. otherwise no insurance company will cover the ship or trip>also helps to have human decision making processes rather than fully automated shipping which caused enough incidents it fell out of favour >potential for alien contact requires human crew rather than automated systems to avert automated defences or programs accidentally starting the 2nd interstellar war
>>98413712Sol is still a fractured mess. Current big dogs are the NatBols and a weird Hyper Christian Corptocracy. Ayy worshipping scientologist types are everywhere in the Outer Worlds Alliance.
>>98413712>High-Space FTL Drives take up a large portion of the ship's mass>As a result, the needed mass for armor and weapons leave most Warships not FTL capable without the construction of a Jump Gate or significant sacrifices.>Jump Gates are two ends that maintain a single High-Space tunnel and are specifically paired to each other.>Costs needed to construct these systems and numerous difficulties to repair them have them under numerous treaties that declare attacking them a war crime and limit how high tolls can be placed on civilian vesselsSpace Panama/Suez canals with different ship designs needed for ones that have access to those or not. The classic triangle of Mobility vs Offensive vs Defensive - further layered with the long travel times having a baseline requirement for a lot of cargo space for just basic supplies that Age of Sail era designs especially needed to struggle with.
>>98414300Despite the agreements, they vital control points. There is always at least one space station around it, and plenty of warships, mostly to guard access to it.It started with federal fleets, but as the years went on between getting supplies and new ships, the chokehold weakened. Some splinter fleets declared themselves High-Space Nobility. When you need to dedicate 4 years (a whole election season) to spend another fleet, and they are prepared to meet you with guns and minefields, you have no choice but to open negotiations.Still, not all gates are guarded by High-Space Houses, there are plenty still in the grasp of planetary, colonial, or federal forces.
>>98414531I mean not an election season, but a whole mandate of a democratically elected government, before new elections are held. Nobody wants a catastrophic gate-control war on their hands who wants to be re-elected.
>>98413979>Power armor was originally built for crews operating in High-Space>Environmental sealing in case of depressurization>Monitoring vitals at a distance>Increased carry capacity for heavy machinery>Enhanced strength aimed at easing long-term work>Later got adopted at close quarters where you don't want to fire off a gun
>>98414610You'd need densely armored suits way bigger and heavier than modern ones for space walks in normal space anyway. The radiation hazard grows exponential the further away you get from protective magnetic fields like the suns heliosphere as well as earths. You'd have so many charged particles zipping through your eyeballs it'd look like a fireworks show every time you closed your eyes. I imagine they'd look a lot like deep sea hard suits with only external pinhole cameras since electronics are just as vulnerable to damage from getting blasted with particle accelerator tier radiation as flesh.
>>98413854Going up in dimensions implies that you're traveling through time, and if you go far enough, hyper-time. So your FTL solution is going to be like pointing your ship in the direction of the Andromeda galaxy, hitting the gas, and ending up in the other side of the universe a mere 1 million years after the Big Bang because you miscalculated the temporal vector component of your trajectory. The exact second that you launch your engines is going to determine the 'when' of your arrival, you'll have to time your FTL jumps to the exact microsecond, which also means launch windows between specific planets will be completely chaotic and incomprehensible. You might not be able to jump between two specific worlds for two hundred millions years, until suddenly the 'stars align' and your hypertemporal vector will put you exactly where you wanted to be... just a few million years out of phase with your original time, either in the past or the future.In short, you don't want to use higher dimensions for FTL. We don't technically know if there's anything above the 4th dimension but if there is, it's a bad idea to mess with it. Oh, and I forgot that because hypertime is complete bullshit, an FTL launch using this method could end up creating ten quadrillion copies of you and your ship and your crew that all get placed in different times and locations by your FTL drive.
>>98413979Not sold on the sleepless thing as well thought out. You want to tell me Sol to Alpha Centauri takes a year awake? No fucking way. Besides which, if you came up with tech that could keep someone up with no sleep, you need to think about the knock-on effects on society when suddenly there is the opportunity to cut out sleeping for 8 hours a day. Execs would be all over that shit. Probably more and more mentally unstable as time goes on, and increasingly willing to force people to greater and greater lengths to normalize not losing 1/3 of a lifetime to sleep. This is the kind of societal shift that causes fucking wars just on principle. I doubt you'd get much beyond the first colony before you have Sleepers and Wakies at each other's throats. There'd be an instinctual mistrust.
>>98415164>Not sold on the sleepless thing as well thought out.Sounds like you're already onto interesting conflict elements thb. Increasing capacity with little thought to the long term consequences or social rifts is obviously a thing corporations would do, or even have them as part of profitable plans and transhuman ideological modes.
>>98415121matter cant exist in 4-dimensions because our electrons only have stable orbits in 3-dimensionsin 4-dimensions, our electrons would quickly fly off away from their nucleus causing you to degrade into hyper-dimensional goop in a burst of exotic radiationso you would need handwavium just to enter a higher dimension, never mind the time travel shenanigans and causality-breaking some kind of "bubble" around the ship that retains only 3 dimensions
>>98414806Clan Elemental suit, you say
>>98415235>>98414806its a bit more complicated99% of interstellar radiation is molecular-sized radiation like apha radiation, which can be reliably stopped by simply thickening the external skin X-rays, gamma rays, etc, only make up 1% of the radiation, although they are the most damagingthis is mostly an issue for long-term travel, either a single months long trip, or cumulative over dozens of short tripsa short spacewalk wouldnt need special shielding, since it would be thick enough to stop proton-sized particles just by being thick enough to operate in a vacuum you would receive an above-average dose of radiation from trace quantities of stronger radiation but this can be handled by just setting a strict schedule for how often people go out for spacewalks
>>98415121Time isn't a dimension, its the measurement of X, Y and Z.>>98415214You already exist in four, possible more dimensions but perception of them isn't practical for survival.I'm talking out of my ass of course but not really any more so than anyone else. Its a matter of taste, whether you want to stick to old models and ideas or use more bleeding edge ones published in the last three years. It isn't as if theres any tangible evidence one way or the other yet. Though I agree with the drive bubble idea, I call it a tesseract envelope in my own stuff.
>small ships armed with lasers and missiles (like generic sci-fi ship)>war ships armed with magnetic weapons in long spinal mounts (halo-style)>mega warships armed with particle cannons that coil up in the center of the ship then extend into a spinal mount this is the progression of weapons i imagine for sizelasers are really short ranged but utilitarian for dislodging space debris and missiles dont require any unobtanium to operate particle cannons are virtually unblockable with conventional passive armor, depending on the particle used as a projectile, and can be accelerated to near-light speed for insane range and reduced enemy reaction time at the cost of needing copious amounts of science-fiction juice to operateand magnetic weapons are an in-between that have more range than lasers, more velocity than missiles, but operate on more grounded principles than particle guns
>/tg/ makes a sci-fi setting>it's already fantasy before the first post
>>98415314>Time isn't a dimension, its the measurement of X, Y and Z.Time is the 4th dimension. That's why you'll hear the four dimensions as a whole referred to as space-time. It's physics.
>>98415394fantasy is simply another worldthis can extend to mean other time periods, including the far past or the far futureso science fiction is fantasy, except in the colloquial sense where sci-fi simply means rayguns and robots while fantasy means wizards and warriorsunless your only definition for sci-fi is historical fiction
>>98413712>Inter-system trips are usually yearsThat has some big implications, if 'years' means anywhere from 2 to like 50 years.It's what Rimworld does to make an incredibly, in theory, rich setting that can have close to everything you can think of, like 40k. But I'll just shoehorn what ideas can be used from the game:>The timescale is big enough that technoarchaeology is a thing, as empires fall and rise within FTL travel times>Archotech exists, incomprehensible technology created by hyperintelligent AI that can usually do impossible things>The Rimworld has many ancient ruins and complexes from ages past, dangerous and filled with unpredictable threats but also with ancient technology or artifactsWhile the game isn't really about going into dungeons, the ancient complexes are excellent material for an RPG. Combine that with the frontier aesthetic the game has and you can have cowboys with revolvers looting centuries-old, futuristic dungeons with archotech artifacts avoiding murderous robots.
>>98415460year-long travel also has very few real world analogues to draw frommagellans circumnavigation of the earth "only" took 3 years and a few dozen people from the original crew actually survived to weather the entire journeystandard trans-atlantic commutes were about a half-year in length, and already seen as a gruelling and mind numbing journeyspacemen willing to spend 5+ years of their life one-way, and then do it for the rest of their lives, would be closer to arctic explores in temperament and internal motivation
>>98415121>ftl travel is only possible due to incredibly complicated computers performing insane calculations beyond the pale of humans>works perfectly well nearly every time>0.000127% of the time (i.e. when plot demands it) something goes wrong and crazy shit resultsNGL, this sounds like a plus for an interesting setting, not a drawback. FWIW, I chose that failure rate because it's the percentage of a given commercial airliner crashing in 2025 so it's a number acceptable to a risk averse society, but it happens frequently enough that you can base a story (or adventure, or campaign) around it without stressing credulity.
>>98415474>oops, our computer didnt carry the one and caused causality to break>every passenger is now suffering an existential breakdown at the realization that an uncaused effect has occurred
>>98415410That's literally "fiction"This is also /tg/ and fantasy means "swords and sorcery", sci-fi means "lasers and spaceships"
>>98415395I already explained why its not really correct to make that assertion as if its gospel.
>>98415491>That's literally "fiction"fiction extends to anything that didnt actually happen, this includes things that happened in our worldromcoms are fiction but not fantasyspeculative fiction is the accepted broad umbrella term for both fantasy and science-fiction because the colloquial definition of fantasy far outstripped the technical definition of fantasy
>>98415394Explain what you mean by this.
>>98415550they wontits an automated reply that goes in every sci-fi thread
>>98415555Yes, and the lack of reply will make my counterargument for me.
>>98413712>>The ships go with sub-space tunnelling,>>The tunnels take longer to set up the farther they are trying to goBuilding on this: the subspace tunneling is actually a form of rapidly chained micro-wormholes. The fabric of spacetime is not smooth, its fractal layers of small wrinkles on top of big wrinkles. You COULD make a direct wormhole between your point of origin and your destination, if you were a *fucking moron* and were willing to convert the mass of a gas giant into pure energy to make it happen. Instead, the way FTL works is to strategically created short range wormholes that 'pinch' spacetime in such a way that they don't actually take you where you want to go, but instead cause a cascade effect were the folds of spacetime shift and carry you in the direction you are headed.This takes a long time to chart a navigation path, which can take even longer if someone else uses FTL anywhere within a few lightyears of you because then you have to restart the entire process from scratch again because all of the variables have changed. So the actual 'digging' of a FTL trip could take days or weeks, but then trip itself is over in a matter of hours... so long as you don't get stranded halfway by some bad math and have to re-chart the rest of your course.
>>98415670Needing "converting the mass of a gas giant into pure energy" seems like it would a bit excessive and thereby prevent the Jump Gates of >>98414300 that are noted to be common enough to be a significant factor in ship design, and that governments do allow some to slip from their control to those of the "High-Space Nobility" of >>98414531.I think we need an adjustment here or way to reconcile things so that Jump Gates are possible without that sheer quantity of energy, in a way that using a Ship-Based FTL drive would. And it's something that said Ship-Based FTL can't simply upgrade themselves to have/mount.
>>98415670And continuing on stuff that needs to be reconciled, the >which can take even longer if someone else uses FTL anywhere within a few lightyears of you because then you have to restart the entire process from scratch again because all of the variables have changed.Would render fleets a bad idea but they are absolutely known to exist at significant number. I do think this is just a matter of scaling back the AoE, because Light Years is pretty excessive. You literally couldn't have more than one FTL ship within a several star system radius if so.How about Light-Seconds instead of Light-Years? So a little bit past Earth-Moon Distance. Would push for Port Authorities around planets because everyone's needing to time when they start up their jumps and arrive, but it's less of an issue going inter-system because there's a ton of room at the edge of every solar system someone could fly out to first before starting up the trek.Also may want to make it so new jumps can't disrupt old ones. Once more, without that you literally couldn't have the Jump Gates, especially without shrinking the AoE.
>>98415394>>98415410>>98415491FTL is always going to be the stuff of fantasy, and we are going to include it anyway. Because without it, it's boring. You can only have>Cyberpunk where technologically advanced humanity begins to oppress itself>Post-apocalypse Earth that shakes up the status quo, and maybe makes people live in space>Mars-Earth dichotomy, where the only other planet within reach gets colonized>A new star system where humanity arrives million years later, and they might as well be aliens.I guess you can also have the option where it is a single star system, full of aliens, but then they would be Not-Humans anyway, and people would bitch about how they are just humans with forehead lines.While we are at it, 99.99% of the planets are also not going to be desolate rocks with no atmosphere either.And maybe spaceships will go "weeeeow" and "pew pew pew" while in space as well.
>>98416464>While we are at it, 99.99% of the planets are also not going to be desolate rocks with no atmosphere either.the anthropic principal is in full effect, thoughthe habitable planets would be the first places we visitso even though they would be staggeringly rare, they would still account for 100% of the planets the players will visit because thats where people would bein any case, FTL is fantasy because sci-fi of any kind that isnt a borderline documentary is fantasy
>>98413712Now for the worldbuilding. Aftermath of the 4th world war/second solar war. Minor sea level/temperature rises. The EU has collapsed after the 3rd world war, so former member states are pretty much on their own, asside from france and germany, pretty much all the other nations are irrelevant. The continent is still recovering from 2 world wars and internal demographic issues, which have more or less been reversed. The UK suffered a civil war and has fractured. Russia is still an oligarchy and is currently embroiled in conflicts across central asia and a is making moves over the Belarusian DMZ. China has more or less transfered over to a "democracy" but the CCPs successor parties still more or less holds a majority. North korea has reunified the korean peninsula after south korea demographically collapsed, literally just walking over the border. Japan has become more or less of a 21st century scandanavian nation, with a good welfare system and small economy, it is no longer a relevant power. Much of south east asia is in anarchy after being the main conflict zone of the last 2 world wars. Australia and New Zeland are doing rather well, being largely self sufficient diversified economies, they are currently carrying much of the region. Africa is still a shitshow, but certain areas are doing well, notably uganda, ghana, moroco, egypt and botswana. Much of east africa is in ruins due to constant wars in the horn of africa and the sahel. South america is a mixed bag, with some narco insurgencies ravaging rural areas, and it is largely contained due to militarism in central america. Mexican cartels have more or less gone "legit", the families becoming extremely influential, often holding large monopolies ect ect. The middle east has had a very rough. After the gulf states pretty much ran out of oil, the region fell into war, with most of the countries having become 4th world dumps living in the ruins of skyscrapers. Mecca was destroyed, so that caused problems.
>>98416509Iran and iraq are not much better, and have largely devolved into bickering ethnostates. Israel and turkey are currently in a stalemate in what once was syria, israel has since genocided its Palestinian population has been nuked and as a result suffers from internal strife. India has had some areas succede, but has largely reformed ino a hindu military junta. It has developed significantly but much of the population still lives in squalor, it has replaced china as the worlds cheap manufacturing hub, though the quality is someho worse than what the chinese used to make. Really just spitballing for earth here, I have some ideas for the rest of the solar system and other coutires I missed, but I have no idea on how to dea with north america.
>>98415395>Time is the 4th dimension. That's why you'll hear the four dimensions as a whole referred to as space-time. It's physics.Dude, current model (and that was 2~3 years ago, it could have changed) is 11 dimensions + Time, or 12, depending. Everyone agrees time isn't exactly a dimension proper, or its the dimension of all dimensions at once. 3+1 is about 50 years late.
>>98416543For the US it's still kicking and still the only Superpower. However, America left both the UN and NATO becoming isolationist. After their second civil war, which was mostly a handful of cities and blue states trying to secede cause a quick "war." Some states were broken up like CA into California and the State of Jefferson (JF). Where a big chunk of OR and WA broke off to make the State of Jackson (JK). America also ended up claiming chunks of Canada after they fractured mostly Alberta, British Columbia, and the Northwestern Territories. Though America is still a powerhouse they been since the 20th century. They stop being the world police, however many PMC were formed after the "service grants citizenship" amendment was passed and some of the biggest PMCs rival most country full military in all but people.
>>98421368For outside of Earth. The Moon now known by most as Luna is it's own nation called the United Cites of Luna (USL) along with Mars being called the Mars Republic (MR). They broke off at the same time from Earth and the UN, though it was hinted that America had a hand with it as after seceding, they granted many favorable contracts and trading deals with the US. Though most see it as bribes to stay out of it any conflict as only America has the (Space) Navy for a "planetary Invasion." Both Luna and Mars are Underground Cities and space stations. As no terraforming can be done. However, life in their cities isn't bad especially compared to some places on Earth. They're also small outposts scattered across the system. Some are own by Corporations, some by Nations on Earth, or by Luna or Mars. They can differ from being as good as a city on Mars or as bad as 4th world dump. Depends on the place.
>>98421418I find the idea of homogeneous stellar nations to be a bit stale desu. Luna makes a bit more sense to be a single nation, but I like the idea of mars being a mish mash of earth nation, martian nationalists and corporations. Make mars a ground for intrigue, with several factions trying to seize the planet, for example: Free Mars; A VERY loose coalition of martian successionists from all ends of the politcal spectrum, constantly infighting and barely held together by the fact that they can only really win against macro corps and terran nations. Some factions are backed by earth powers/corpos to undermine their enemies, the coalition will 100% turn on itself the minute they gain power. Church of Later Day Saints; Seeking to establish themselves amongst the stars, the mormons have used their vast wealth to establish several colonies throught the sol. Some of the first major settlements on mars where founded by them, and they are doing pretty all right. They want to claim the planet as their New Zion, more moderate factions want to achieve this peacefully by simply capitalising on their infrastructure monopolies, eventual conversions and exerting general influence, while others call for a crusade against non believers. They are overall very friendly to the US and are considered to be autonomous American interstellar territoires. Then there its just earth nation stations, mostly just european, american, brazilian, russian, chinese, and indian. These range from fully developed above and underground habitats, with agricultural and industrial capacity, to glorified research stations. Russia, China and America have orbiting stations, extensive satalite networks, shipyards and interstellar infrastructure. Some smaller nations have a few hab zones in larger stations, or have joint ventures with other nations or corporations. There are a few independent stations, run my macroconglomerates such as Xmazon, Alphasoft, Toyundai and SamSon, ans successionist stations.
>>98421707Martian seperatists mostly hold sway in smaller nation stations, a few of which they have even seized, notably Nigerias, Turkey and Argentinas station cities, as well as terran macroconglomerate Rio BHPs orbital platform. As a result, they have managed to establish ramshackle stations in the rest of the Sol. They have since been cracked down on and they are currently way to weak to engage more established stations, but they are able to take random mines/research outposts every now and then. The main faction of Free Mars is currently Republic of Mars, which is a moderate movement that seeks to establish a democratic martian state, however they are not as militant as more radical groups such as Identity Mars (larpers who think Martians are their own seperate race) , the Martian Peoples Liberation Army (third worldist communists), the Sons of Olympus (a seperate olympus mons seperatist movement), Red Dawn (Martian militarists/fascists?), Children of Mars (yet another militant group) and the Liberty Mars (lulbertarians who control FMs orbital platform). Despite Republic of Mars being probably the more legitimate/internationally recognized and functional faction, they need these other groups guns, so tough luck.As for the rest of the sol, its mostly a patchwork of colonies/orbitals/stations clustered around the jovian moons, such as Europa, Ganymade, Calisto and Io, saturns rings, titan and thats about it. Tye furthest point of colonisation in the sol is Pluto, which mostly serves as a hub for ships headed off to Centauri, Barnards and Luhman. Most of these stations are firmly under earther, lunar, martian and corporate control, however there is currently a insurgency around Jupiter as Jovian Seperatists attempt to follow their martian brothers footsteps, they have mostly devolved into piracy and terrorism, with their most successful attack destorying a few small hab domes on europa by hurling mining waste/small asteroids at the planet.
