08-17-2015, 04:33 AM
(08-17-2015, 03:51 AM)Umbra Wrote:(08-17-2015, 03:39 AM)SilverOtter Wrote: They will require minor-to-severe modification to be useful again. Depends on how ingrained you made their backstory with the world.
Yeah... Probably wasn't a smart move setting Sirius' background in Abraxis. Thankfully, it's easy enough to translate it to whatever city.
(08-17-2015, 03:48 AM)SilverOtter Wrote: Right now, I'm putting thought into logistics. Mostly this involves FTL, so I'm placing complexities and limits on that. I'm also doing some thinking about communication (got a good idea running around my head).
Mind sharing with the group?
Alright, making FTL less of a god tech. What I'm currently working with is posing power limits: Arbitrary large amount of energy required = Distance in tens of light years, to the power of the Mass to be jumped.
I also want to make FTL more expensive and heavy, mostly to prevent everyone and their grandma from flying a ship with one, at least into an atmosphere. I want to make it more clear that FTL is ripping a hole in the universe rather than basically teleporting everything into the right dimension and out.
To note: the energy going into the FTL drive would not be all at once. It is basically pouring in energy to keep the hole stable over that distance, and to counteract the gravity fields of the mass you're throwing through it. However, this makes FTL dangerous if you miscalculate the energy you need. Oh yes, and gravity fields disturbing FTL still stands. Most modern computers abort the jump right where you are/should be near-instantly if gravity-fuckery starts making it go unintentionally stable.
Otherwise, they are the railed-to-your-destination tech as before.
Second, communication. I have an idea for how galactic communication would work. The idea is part commdisk (remember that thing?), and part Battletech's Hyperpulse network.
The idea is that there is a galactic network (duh), made up of nodes. These nodes are in orbit around the sun of a solar system, and are outfitted with two-way solar-range communication, and FTL tech.
Computers that want to use the network/whatever-Net will send solar-range signals to the node nearby, which will send it off, in internet fashion, throughout the network of nodes, to the destination node, and the computer on the other line.
Nodes will be expensive, and the more signals they want to handle at once, and the farther distance you want it to go, the more expensive they become. Most planets will not have them, mostly at the edges of faction space and throughout freespace. Most faction homeworlds have a huge, "supernode" that can handle the largest amounts of traffic at once, and send it for solar systems upon solar systems (note, this is only when sending outwards from this node. Sending to it means using the smaller, lower-range nodes). But for the most part, you send signal, signal uses whatever-I-decide-to-call-this.
If you want to shut down all communication, it's almost impossible due to the similarities to the internet (which was built to work with damages to any part of the line, merely going around it), but you can eliminate a solar system's communication by shutting down or destroying their node.
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