That's one way to slice the math, but such a ship wouldn't really be a 4G
ship, but a 1G ship in four planes (1Gx4). And since those four planes
don't correspond to the six degrees of freedom, thrust in those six
degrees would be compound thrust so would be less than 1G.
I'd be inclined to say that you compute the power, mass, volume, and
surface area for X number of Gs for your hull, then install as many of
those as you want, although you don't need power for all of them at the
same time. You reach diminishing returns pretty fast on anything except a
forward-pointing braking thruster in case you decide you want to be able
to decelerate in the direction your ship is pointing. And there would be
big implications for hull streamlining as well.
The traditional "flames come out the back" model ends up solving too many
problems, not the least of which is that once you really dig into the 6
degrees of freedom issue you're calling into question the whole flat map
abstraction which is just too hard and clumsy for traditional tabletop
games.
> You could go with the multiple thrust bells, each one reducing the thrust
> of the main bell at the back to provide it in another direction.
>
> I.e. a Ship with 4G of thrust puts in 3 extra bells at points of a
> tetragon (so there are 4 thrust bells each equidistant from the other),
> but the ship only has 1G of thrust on each (so the mass demand of the
> three extra bells is made up by the smaller bell in the rear). Great for
> system defense as it is nimble, but poor on the chase as it only has 1G of
> thrust.
>
> http://clowder.net/hop/tetships/tetships.html
> (The extension of the Babylon 5 Starfury concept)
>
>
> Todd Kes
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Thu, 4/23/15, [Traveller_TNE]
> <> wrote:
>
> By the way, here's another thing we
> didn't do in FFS, talk about how many
> different axes of thrust you can have. The assumption is
> always that
> you've got the one big "thrust bell" at the back and you
> change your
> attitude to point the thrust in whatever direction you need
> to bend your
> vector. Logically you could build a ship with "thrust bells"
> on multiple
> axes so you could change vectors without having to change
> attitude, but
> that didn't fit with 99.9% of what people usually want to
> build, so we didn't take the time.
>
I would love to see a board game with telescoping z axis stands. Colored
and notched and or ratcheted perhaps...
Easier on a computer simulation. Also would happily model detailed BL
level damage...
On Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 08:33 [Traveller_TNE] <
> wrote:
>
>
> Todd--
>
> That's one way to slice the math, but such a ship wouldn't really be a 4G
> ship, but a 1G ship in four planes (1Gx4). And since those four planes
> don't correspond to the six degrees of freedom, thrust in those six
> degrees would be compound thrust so would be less than 1G.
>
> I'd be inclined to say that you compute the power, mass, volume, and
> surface area for X number of Gs for your hull, then install as many of
> those as you want, although you don't need power for all of them at the
> same time. You reach diminishing returns pretty fast on anything except a
> forward-pointing braking thruster in case you decide you want to be able
> to decelerate in the direction your ship is pointing. And there would be
> big implications for hull streamlining as well.
>
> The traditional "flames come out the back" model ends up solving too many
> problems, not the least of which is that once you really dig into the 6
> degrees of freedom issue you're calling into question the whole flat map
> abstraction which is just too hard and clumsy for traditional tabletop
> games.
>
>
>
> > You could go with the multiple thrust bells, each one reducing the thrust
> > of the main bell at the back to provide it in another direction.
> >
> > I.e. a Ship with 4G of thrust puts in 3 extra bells at points of a
> > tetragon (so there are 4 thrust bells each equidistant from the other),
> > but the ship only has 1G of thrust on each (so the mass demand of the
> > three extra bells is made up by the smaller bell in the rear). Great for
> > system defense as it is nimble, but poor on the chase as it only has 1G
> of
> > thrust.
> >
> > http://clowder.net/hop/tetships/tetships.html
> > (The extension of the Babylon 5 Starfury concept)
> >
> >
> > Todd Kes
> >
> > --------------------------------------------
> > On Thu, 4/23/15, [Traveller_TNE]
> > <> wrote:
> >
> > By the way, here's another thing we
> > didn't do in FFS, talk about how many
> > different axes of thrust you can have. The assumption is
> > always that
> > you've got the one big "thrust bell" at the back and you
> > change your
> > attitude to point the thrust in whatever direction you need
> > to bend your
> > vector. Logically you could build a ship with "thrust bells"
> > on multiple
> > axes so you could change vectors without having to change
> > attitude, but
> > that didn't fit with 99.9% of what people usually want to
> > build, so we didn't take the time.
> >
>
>
>
> I would love to see a board game with telescoping z axis stands. Colored
> and notched and or ratcheted perhaps...
>
> Easier on a computer simulation. Also would happily model detailed BL
> level damage...
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 08:33 [Traveller_TNE] <
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Todd--
>>
>> That's one way to slice the math, but such a ship wouldn't really be a
>> 4G
>> ship, but a 1G ship in four planes (1Gx4). And since those four planes
>> don't correspond to the six degrees of freedom, thrust in those six
>> degrees would be compound thrust so would be less than 1G.
>>
>> I'd be inclined to say that you compute the power, mass, volume, and
>> surface area for X number of Gs for your hull, then install as many of
>> those as you want, although you don't need power for all of them at the
>> same time. You reach diminishing returns pretty fast on anything except
>> a
>> forward-pointing braking thruster in case you decide you want to be able
>> to decelerate in the direction your ship is pointing. And there would be
>> big implications for hull streamlining as well.
>>
>> The traditional "flames come out the back" model ends up solving too
>> many
>> problems, not the least of which is that once you really dig into the 6
>> degrees of freedom issue you're calling into question the whole flat map
>> abstraction which is just too hard and clumsy for traditional tabletop
>> games.
>>
>>
>>
>> > You could go with the multiple thrust bells, each one reducing the
>> thrust
>> > of the main bell at the back to provide it in another direction.
>> >
>> > I.e. a Ship with 4G of thrust puts in 3 extra bells at points of a
>> > tetragon (so there are 4 thrust bells each equidistant from the
>> other),
>> > but the ship only has 1G of thrust on each (so the mass demand of the
>> > three extra bells is made up by the smaller bell in the rear). Great
>> for
>> > system defense as it is nimble, but poor on the chase as it only has
>> 1G
>> of
>> > thrust.
>> >
>> > http://clowder.net/hop/tetships/tetships.html
>> > (The extension of the Babylon 5 Starfury concept)
>> >
>> >
>> > Todd Kes
>> >
>> > --------------------------------------------
>> > On Thu, 4/23/15, [Traveller_TNE]
>> > <> wrote:
>> >
>> > By the way, here's another thing we
>> > didn't do in FFS, talk about how many
>> > different axes of thrust you can have. The assumption is
>> > always that
>> > you've got the one big "thrust bell" at the back and you
>> > change your
>> > attitude to point the thrust in whatever direction you need
>> > to bend your
>> > vector. Logically you could build a ship with "thrust bells"
>> > on multiple
>> > axes so you could change vectors without having to change
>> > attitude, but
>> > that didn't fit with 99.9% of what people usually want to
>> > build, so we didn't take the time.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
Meanwhile...
http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/
So assuming that it can ever be scaled up to the size of something as large as a manned spacecraft, are we looking here in Traveller terms as reactionless thrusters or more like something akin to stutterwarp? Or is it something completely different?
Me too, but cost of components... There'd also have to be a step in the
sequence of play each turn where everyone ratchets all of the objects up
or down to allow for the fact that someone just dove through the "hard
deck" or everything is now six feet off the table top. Constantly
calculating the hypotenuses for range determination would be annoying.
Perhaps a bit of string dangling from each ship with range bands marked on
it. More expense or DIY projects... I think the traditional miniatures
rule that prohibits pre-measuring would have to be voided, the sensors and
F/C are too sophisticated for that to make sense. I know Sulu used to fire
phasers by just eyeballing through the Enterprise's windshield, but I
never even believed that at the time. When Uhura called attention to the
lack of sensor fusion by saying, "it's gotta have a tailpipe" I just about
went through the roof.
> I would love to see a board game with telescoping z axis stands. Colored
> and notched and or ratcheted perhaps...
>
> Easier on a computer simulation. Also would happily model detailed BL
> level damage...
>
> On Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 08:33 [Traveller_TNE] <
> > wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> Todd--
>>
>> That's one way to slice the math, but such a ship wouldn't really be a
>> 4G
>> ship, but a 1G ship in four planes (1Gx4). And since those four planes
>> don't correspond to the six degrees of freedom, thrust in those six
>> degrees would be compound thrust so would be less than 1G.
>>
>> I'd be inclined to say that you compute the power, mass, volume, and
>> surface area for X number of Gs for your hull, then install as many of
>> those as you want, although you don't need power for all of them at the
>> same time. You reach diminishing returns pretty fast on anything except
>> a
>> forward-pointing braking thruster in case you decide you want to be able
>> to decelerate in the direction your ship is pointing. And there would be
>> big implications for hull streamlining as well.
>>
>> The traditional "flames come out the back" model ends up solving too
>> many
>> problems, not the least of which is that once you really dig into the 6
>> degrees of freedom issue you're calling into question the whole flat map
>> abstraction which is just too hard and clumsy for traditional tabletop
>> games.
>>
>>
>>
>> > You could go with the multiple thrust bells, each one reducing the
>> thrust
>> > of the main bell at the back to provide it in another direction.
>> >
>> > I.e. a Ship with 4G of thrust puts in 3 extra bells at points of a
>> > tetragon (so there are 4 thrust bells each equidistant from the
>> other),
>> > but the ship only has 1G of thrust on each (so the mass demand of the
>> > three extra bells is made up by the smaller bell in the rear). Great
>> for
>> > system defense as it is nimble, but poor on the chase as it only has
>> 1G
>> of
>> > thrust.
>> >
>> > http://clowder.net/hop/tetships/tetships.html
>> > (The extension of the Babylon 5 Starfury concept)
>> >
>> >
>> > Todd Kes
>> >
>> > --------------------------------------------
>> > On Thu, 4/23/15, [Traveller_TNE]
>> > <> wrote:
>> >
>> > By the way, here's another thing we
>> > didn't do in FFS, talk about how many
>> > different axes of thrust you can have. The assumption is
>> > always that
>> > you've got the one big "thrust bell" at the back and you
>> > change your
>> > attitude to point the thrust in whatever direction you need
>> > to bend your
>> > vector. Logically you could build a ship with "thrust bells"
>> > on multiple
>> > axes so you could change vectors without having to change
>> > attitude, but
>> > that didn't fit with 99.9% of what people usually want to
>> > build, so we didn't take the time.
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
Since it involves the infamous EmDrive, the smart money is still on
"experimental error." I'm always struck by how the standard illo of the
EmDrive looks so Steampunk, cobbled up in the shed behind old Dr. Horatio
Lazarus' house.
You raise an interesting parallel, stutterwarp was another directional
field that followed the orientation of the ship, but fortunately all you
had to do was shut it off to "decelerate."
Your real point, I think, is that if real, this subverts the normal SF
division of drives into normal space vs. hyperspace drives, and says that
your normal space drive IS a hyper space drive.
> Meanwhile...
> http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/
> So assuming that it can ever be scaled up to the size of something as
> large as a manned spacecraft, are we looking here in Traveller terms as
> reactionless thrusters or more like something akin to stutterwarp? Or is
> it something completely different?
>
>
Reading the article and examining the warp drive diagram again, I am
reminded of Marc's standard 1980s-era convention FAQ answer to how
antigrav drive worked to propel an air/raft through the atmosphere. He
explained that it created a positive node (or push up) at the back of the
air/raft and a negative node (pull down) at the front of the air/raft, so
the air/raft was constantly "sliding down hill" and that created its
forward motion, which is similar to what that warp diagram shows. How much
fun it would be to try that in an atmosphere is another issue.
So on that basis it looks more like an inertia-less drive. Newton not happy.
Bonus off-topic minefield: The ring ship looks an awful lot like the
semi-official spaceliner Enterprise that was in a bunch of books and made
it onto the wall of the recreation room in STTMP. How come Marc and the ST
guys always know this stuff in advance?
> Meanwhile...
> http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/
> So assuming that it can ever be scaled up to the size of something as
> large as a manned spacecraft, are we looking here in Traveller terms as
> reactionless thrusters or more like something akin to stutterwarp? Or is
> it something completely different?
>
>
Comparing that response to the now-inaccurate subject line, I am reminded
of something I forgot to put into the 4-axis thrust reply. All of that
only applied to TNE ships, as previous Travellers all had inertialess
M-Drives so "thrust bells" were never an issue. I assume that subsequent
editions of Traveller have repudiated the "no inertialess drive" heresy.
> Reading the article and examining the warp drive diagram again, I am
> reminded of Marc's standard 1980s-era convention FAQ answer to how
> antigrav drive worked to propel an air/raft through the atmosphere. He
> explained that it created a positive node (or push up) at the back of the
> air/raft and a negative node (pull down) at the front of the air/raft, so
> the air/raft was constantly "sliding down hill" and that created its
> forward motion, which is similar to what that warp diagram shows. How much
> fun it would be to try that in an atmosphere is another issue.
>
> So on that basis it looks more like an inertia-less drive. Newton not
> happy.
>
> Bonus off-topic minefield: The ring ship looks an awful lot like the
> semi-official spaceliner Enterprise that was in a bunch of books and made
> it onto the wall of the recreation room in STTMP. How come Marc and the ST
> guys always know this stuff in advance?
>
>> Meanwhile...
>> http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/
>> So assuming that it can ever be scaled up to the size of something as
>> large as a manned spacecraft, are we looking here in Traveller terms as
>> reactionless thrusters or more like something akin to stutterwarp? Or
>> is
>> it something completely different?
>>
>>
>
>
>
Yeah, just trying to give people lines. Flipping through the books was
just as bad.
As far as the game, the trick would be in using something with easy
tooling or better reusing something widely mass produced like you toy
telescopes or something lol
On Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 10:04 [Traveller_TNE] <
> wrote:
>
>
> Me too, but cost of components... There'd also have to be a step in the
> sequence of play each turn where everyone ratchets all of the objects up
> or down to allow for the fact that someone just dove through the "hard
> deck" or everything is now six feet off the table top. Constantly
> calculating the hypotenuses for range determination would be annoying.
> Perhaps a bit of string dangling from each ship with range bands marked on
> it. More expense or DIY projects... I think the traditional miniatures
> rule that prohibits pre-measuring would have to be voided, the sensors and
> F/C are too sophisticated for that to make sense. I know Sulu used to fire
> phasers by just eyeballing through the Enterprise's windshield, but I
> never even believed that at the time. When Uhura called attention to the
> lack of sensor fusion by saying, "it's gotta have a tailpipe" I just about
> went through the roof.
>
>
>
> > I would love to see a board game with telescoping z axis stands. Colored
> > and notched and or ratcheted perhaps...
> >
> > Easier on a computer simulation. Also would happily model detailed BL
> > level damage...
> >
> > On Fri, Apr 24, 2015, 08:33 [Traveller_TNE] <
> > > wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> Todd--
> >>
> >> That's one way to slice the math, but such a ship wouldn't really be a
> >> 4G
> >> ship, but a 1G ship in four planes (1Gx4). And since those four planes
> >> don't correspond to the six degrees of freedom, thrust in those six
> >> degrees would be compound thrust so would be less than 1G.
> >>
> >> I'd be inclined to say that you compute the power, mass, volume, and
> >> surface area for X number of Gs for your hull, then install as many of
> >> those as you want, although you don't need power for all of them at the
> >> same time. You reach diminishing returns pretty fast on anything except
> >> a
> >> forward-pointing braking thruster in case you decide you want to be able
> >> to decelerate in the direction your ship is pointing. And there would be
> >> big implications for hull streamlining as well.
> >>
> >> The traditional "flames come out the back" model ends up solving too
> >> many
> >> problems, not the least of which is that once you really dig into the 6
> >> degrees of freedom issue you're calling into question the whole flat map
> >> abstraction which is just too hard and clumsy for traditional tabletop
> >> games.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> > You could go with the multiple thrust bells, each one reducing the
> >> thrust
> >> > of the main bell at the back to provide it in another direction.
> >> >
> >> > I.e. a Ship with 4G of thrust puts in 3 extra bells at points of a
> >> > tetragon (so there are 4 thrust bells each equidistant from the
> >> other),
> >> > but the ship only has 1G of thrust on each (so the mass demand of the
> >> > three extra bells is made up by the smaller bell in the rear). Great
> >> for
> >> > system defense as it is nimble, but poor on the chase as it only has
> >> 1G
> >> of
> >> > thrust.
> >> >
> >> > http://clowder.net/hop/tetships/tetships.html
> >> > (The extension of the Babylon 5 Starfury concept)
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > Todd Kes
> >> >
> >> > --------------------------------------------
> >> > On Thu, 4/23/15, [Traveller_TNE]
> >> > <> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > By the way, here's another thing we
> >> > didn't do in FFS, talk about how many
> >> > different axes of thrust you can have. The assumption is
> >> > always that
> >> > you've got the one big "thrust bell" at the back and you
> >> > change your
> >> > attitude to point the thrust in whatever direction you need
> >> > to bend your
> >> > vector. Logically you could build a ship with "thrust bells"
> >> > on multiple
> >> > axes so you could change vectors without having to change
> >> > attitude, but
> >> > that didn't fit with 99.9% of what people usually want to
> >> > build, so we didn't take the time.
> >> >
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
>
>
The was Alan Dean Foster's drive too, project a gravity well in front of the ship and fall into it.
Derek Stanley
Sent from my iPhone...
> On Apr 24, 2015, at 10:40, [Traveller_TNE] <> wrote:
>
> Reading the article and examining the warp drive diagram again, I am
> reminded of Marc's standard 1980s-era convention FAQ answer to how
> antigrav drive worked to propel an air/raft through the atmosphere. He
> explained that it created a positive node (or push up) at the back of the
> air/raft and a negative node (pull down) at the front of the air/raft, so
> the air/raft was constantly "sliding down hill" and that created its
> forward motion, which is similar to what that warp diagram shows. How much
> fun it would be to try that in an atmosphere is another issue.
>
> So on that basis it looks more like an inertia-less drive. Newton not happy.
>
> Bonus off-topic minefield: The ring ship looks an awful lot like the
> semi-official spaceliner Enterprise that was in a bunch of books and made
> it onto the wall of the recreation room in STTMP. How come Marc and the ST
> guys always know this stuff in advance?
>
> > Meanwhile...
> > http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/04/nasa-may-have-accidentally-developed-a-warp-drive/
> > So assuming that it can ever be scaled up to the size of something as
> > large as a manned spacecraft, are we looking here in Traveller terms as
> > reactionless thrusters or more like something akin to stutterwarp? Or is
> > it something completely different?
> >
> >
>
>
"Your real point, I think, is that if real, this subverts the normal SF
division of drives into normal space vs. hyperspace drives, and says that
your normal space drive IS a hyper space drive."
That's exactly my point. This raises the possibility that pretty much everything we think we "know" about the separation of normal and hyper/jump space propulsion is wrong. However, faster than light travel will probably still require a large amount of energy (and the capacitors to handle that energy), so it might be a significant amount of time before the equivalent of Captain Kirk is zipping back and forth through space.
In Traveller terms, it could be that this is an alternative means of propulsion, but isn't nearly as efficient/cost effective as HEPLaR + jump drive.
Dave wrote:
>Me too, but cost of components... There'd also have to be a step in the
>sequence of play each turn where everyone ratchets all of the objects
>up or down...
How well does the Honor Harrington simulation do it? I think the Saganami Island Tactical Simulator (SITS) has tilt boxes and stacking tiles, but I've never played it and so don't know how well it stacks up. (See what I did there? ;-) ;-)
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/17022/saganami-island-tactical-simulator
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520)
http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw
"I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
Dave wrote:
> How come Marc and the ST guys always know this stuff in advance?
Oh, that's right! He'd left GDW before you arrived. I guess you missed out on learning the Ultimate Secret^TM, about how the Roswell Incident was caused by the crash-landing of a Vilani spaceship...
<g, d & r>
----------------------------------------------------------
David "Hyphen" Jaques-Watson ..at.. Beowulf Down (Tavonni/Vilis/SM 1520) http://www.tip.net.au/~davidjw "I file things in historical order, with a hashing algorithm of gravity"
As you observed, it's similar enough to Stutterwarp that it might not be
worth breaking out into a separate category. Stutterwarp functioned,
within the bounds of creativity, just about like ST's warp drive, in that
you were travelling FTL while remaining in and seeing the normal universe.
In terms of to know, or to think we know, or might know if this is true or
not true...that is the self-posing question.
> "Your real point, I think, is that if real, this subverts the normal SF
> division of drives into normal space vs. hyperspace drives, and says that
> your normal space drive IS a hyper space drive."
> That's exactly my point. This raises the possibility that pretty much
> everything we think we "know" about the separation of normal and
> hyper/jump space propulsion is wrong. However, faster than light travel
> will probably still require a large amount of energy (and the capacitors
> to handle that energy), so it might be a significant amount of time before
> the equivalent of Captain Kirk is zipping back and forth through space.
> In Traveller terms, it could be that this is an alternative means of
> propulsion, but isn't nearly as efficient/cost effective as HEPLaR + jump
> drive.Â