I bet George Lucas is working on something with bows and arrows
right now...
Alternate realities are probably the best way to get around the
limitations of science as we know it, altho warp/hyperspace/gates
cause the least amount of destruction to present scientific
principles. FTL drive seems like a pretty long shot just now.
Discovering a "gate" that allows you to pass to a place far away?
Interesting in both science and plot.
-----Original Message----- From: Denis DesHarnais
Sent: Wednesday, November 30, 2011 1:01 PM
To: tft@brainiac.com
Subject: Re: (TFT) Space travel
Also, since this is a fantasy game, there's no particular reason
things
have to be so far from each other, or that outer space be airless.
As a
matter of fact, space travel might just involve riding a balloon up
to the
giant, curved ceiling with all the little candles on it and talking
to the
dude who lights them every night. In these cases, space combat
could still
be conducted with bows and arrows.
Probably missing the point, by those are my thoughts....
On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Margaret Tapley <barnswallow@sbcglobal.net
wrote:
On Nov 29, 2011, at 2:52 PM, Mark Tapley wrote:
At 10:41 -0500 11/14/11, JAy wrote:
Okay...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/**science-environment-15698439<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15698439
>
Is this FOR REAL?!?
I mean... I MEAN... WTF?!?
Really?
Is it just me or do Mars missions have a HUGE rate of failure?
They sort of do, don't they? Not sure that's statistically
significant,
but it does seem noticeable.
Sure makes great conspiracy-theory fuel.
My thoughts on space travel, as it relates to games, are this:
For in-system travel (i.e. space bus to Mars) and space
dogfighting, you
don't need a technology level that much greater than the one we
have today
- give it fifty or a hundred more years and we'll be there,
assuming we
don't get too distracted by whatever happens on Earth during that
time.
Heck, ion engines have been used already (although they're pretty
underpowered so far - no TIE fighters yet...). And I'm betting
ships would
actually slow down from cruising speed for combat, to reduce the
accuracy
issues associated with traveling at several kilometers a second
relative to
your target.
But interstellar travel, unless you have some way of going at the
speed of
light or faster, isn't really feasible for games, since it would
take tens
or hundreds of years, depending on how close to lightspeed you got,
to get
to the next star over.
Science fiction usually handles this by giving ships a device that
allows
them to somehow bend space to make the actual distance traveled
shorter
(warp drive), or pop into an alternate dimension (hyperspace),
where again,
distances are shorter, or just teleport to wherever they're going.
The
problems presented by three- (four?) dimensional, relativistic
space as you
approach the speed of light mean that the "alternate-dimension"
idea is,
from a gamer's perspective, probably the best way to deal with it.
Basically: "screw realism, we have plot!" Unless you're a realism
junkie,
in which case go talk to the people at CERN.
Dang... I meant that to be short...
- Meg
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