Archive through December 11, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Prime Directive RPG: NEW KINDS OF RPG PRODUCTS:
GURPS Prime Civilians:
Archive through December 11, 2003
David: you should add the specs for the EY ships to your spreadsheet. These are all in CL23 and include the YF-L, YF-S, the Prime Trader, the Modular Cutter, and both Skiffs.
Gary, Done
OK, then I fail to see where the problem with my proposal is. I'm not thinking that dash is an issue inter-system. It's only ever an issue over long distance.
Why would any one EVER want to run the readily apparent risks of dash speed inside a star system?
I'm/we am/are missing something of the other, I think. Those numbers are consistent with what I've been considering.
To be clear, I never proposed any restriction or regulation on high warp. Only dash warp. And I thought that was the goal here, to present reason to NOT use dash warp as a normal means of travel. And to not just say "They just don't because it's not practical" but to provide some specifics so that players can decide for them selves whether to use it or not in the same way a real Captain would (To weigh out Time, effort and expense with the reward and to make the Time, effort and expense sufficiently high so as to require a very good reward.); to provide depth of background.
I'm not saying that anyone would use dash inside a system, I am pointing out that a system is already incredibly tiny at high warp so dash speeds really don't make it noticably smaller, you are already dealing with automated systems to slow down before the system or you get destroyed, I don't see dash speed increasing this risk significantly.
this is in response to the idea that the number of ships that would be destroyed by the automated defense systems would be a lot higher if ships operated at dash speed. I just am not seeing the risk be that much higher.
I don't like the idea of galaxy wide regulations being the reason for not useing dash, I just don't see the regulations being consistant enough. it's like trying to explain why no modern airliners fly at supersonic speeds over populated areas, in the US they don't due to regulations (and the regulations have prevented the development of such airliners
, but that's a different topic ), but other countries have very different policies, and the Soviet Union did run supersonic airliners around becouse they decided that the benifits (publicity and reputation) outweighted the problems (mainly cost) I just don't see some galaxy wide regulation working to prohibit this.
Well, just to reiterate, I don't feel that Regulation alone is enough. But I don't think expense is enough either.
I suppose I am also proposing some inherent dangers to Dash Warp Speeds that are mitigated by Regulation. Traffic speed laws prevent people from killing each other on the road. High speed uses much more fuel and causes wear and tear on vehicle but without speed limits people would be zipping about like crazy anyway (and killing each other and causing no end of expense to rescue units and the governments that pay them).
Now certainly space is wide open and collisions are simply not going to happen. But space has other dangers; one is breaking down light years from nothing. The cost of rescue is not cheep. Another could be a freighter, after a long dash, blowing an engine in orbit around a highly populated planet raining down poison and radiation on 1/6th the planet surface. Accidents happen and would increase if people routinely stressed their engines at Dash speeds.
With the relatively rare use of Dash Warp by civilian craft and the 1/1000% chance of that happening, this sort of disaster in very unlikely. Increase Dash Warp use by 1000 fold (common use) then there is a good chance of a disaster. One or ten disaster are no acceptable, so regulation is put in place as part of the Flight Plan process.
My proposal doesn't stop you from using Dash Warp if you have a good plan and a well maintained ship. Since yours and your crews lives depend on the ship you're on a good many ships are free to use it as needed. Most don't because of the effort needed to put it into practice.
One last question, are planetary auto defenses guaranteed 100% to always destroy any fast approaching vessel? The chances of it failing are increased when such high speeds are common place. The difference between an approach that takes a minute and one that takes a second is a very big one. What if the defenses in that direction are under maintenance? One second might not be enough. Sure a major planet might run far less risk but what about smaller planets with much less defenses (or no defenses); still talking millions of lives and a lot of revenue loss.
since ships at high warp are SO fragile ("a P-3 will destroy a DN") it seems like it should be reasonably easy to have enough redundancy in place to be solid, while it's still so little firepower that a ship operating at tac warp won't even notice it.
if you are taking a sector down for maintinance you can station a police ship there to cover the hole.
the reason I think that economics can limit dash speed is that we can make dash speed SO much more expensive that it's just not worth the time savings.
if your goods cost $100 and you can get them in a day for $600 shipping or in two months for $50 shipping which is going to be common?
yes there will always be a few people willing to pay the higher price, but not that many (especially if it would cost you $250 to replicate the object)
Perhaps the real issue is sensors. If sensors can only process so much data so quickly, maybe Dash speeds overwhelm sensors by rushing by too much stuff at once. And maybe one of these things is a hazard of some sort. I know that if my chance of falling into a previously undiscovered black hole was something I could have some influence over, believe me, I would minimize that risk.
Loren, maybe I just don't get it, but I've lost sight of where you are going with all this. Granted that I did not like the whole concept of Dash Warp from the first time I heard it three years ago. But it's in print, so ... sigh
For myself, I do not see Dash Warp as requiring permits or other stuff. I see the use of Dash Warp as being predicated on the concept that there are special areas of space -- routes between major planets, etc -- that are designated as lanes for use at Dash Warp only. Like HOV lanes on superhighways: you enter and exit it only at certain points, and you do not go slower than a certain speed. (if you don't know what an HOV lane is, lucky you! 
) Dash Routes would be surveyed in advance, kept clear of debris, and marked with buoys or whatever so the ignorant will know where they are and not wander in.
Incidentally, the best argument against using warp drive (much less Dash warp) inside a system is that there is a LOT more debris inside a system; dust, asteroids, civilian yachts that didn't file a flight plan, pieces that fell off that other ship, the Japanese space probe that has been drifing since it failed two centuries ago, etc. Hitting these at Warp would dangerously overload the navigational deflector and you could break your nose -- hit them at Dash speeds and you're a brief flash of light in the sky. You can go fast inside a system at warp (for example, Kirk doing a time warp) but it is risky, and your insurance doesn't cover it.
Crossing into Klingon space, that's a different matter.
the idea of needing to use surveyed trade routes for all dash speed travel sounds good to me, but that really doesn't address the question I started with.
specifcly let's look at the route from earth to vulcan.
this is a 16 min trip for a fast ship, it is well surveyed and close enough that ships are in good sensor coverage the entire way (so no chance of a ship sneaking in)
what is is the reason that ships don't use dash speed for this run? a fast freighter would normally take 13 hours for the run, at dash speed it would make the trip in about an hour and trips per month would go from ~45 per month (allowing for 2 hours for local nav and cargo changes on each trip) to ~240 per month with the same 2 hours of overhead on each trip for just over 5 times as many trips per month.
this would bring earth and vulcan to within commute time of each other (and I can see this getting all the permits needed)
now the advantage would not be quite as great on longer trips becouse the overhead would be a smaller chunk of the total trip
now there may actually be a service like this, charging higher fees to counter the fact that the maintinance costs are higher, but we definantly need to make sure that they are higher, otherwise I don't wee why people wouldn't use it.
Gary, even though I came up with the idea for dash speed I am not thrilled with it either, but I still haven't seen anything else that can explain the movement as needed
As it is stress that kills warp engines using Dash, how about that the extra maintenance costs are per trip, not per month? THAT would make Dash extremely expensive to use!
I know you came up with the idea for Dash; I wasn't being critical of you. I'm just annoyed with myself because I could not come up with a better idea (and I really did try).
Well, the limits on dash need to apply to all ships to be logical. They need to be enough to keep civilians from using it every where all the time but allow Military units to use it when ever needed without adding significantly to the budget or require maintenance once they get there. Often a Military unit must use Dash speed to get somewhere and must start it's mission upon ariving;no time to replace parts on the engines and such.
Sure, civilian and military engines are different but if military designs allow for easy dash travel then those technologies would find their way to civilian use and the expense and maintenance would be mitigated eventually.
Regulation wouldn't be subject to market demands as much. Consider a situation of today. DOes anyone think that, if it were allowed, oil tankers world wide would go nuclear powered? Sure, the cost is huge, but the pay off is clearly proven by the Navy. Yet, this would be insain to allow and would pose huge risk to civilization. One would first think that cost would prevent the instalation of nuclear power on oil freighters but it wouldn't. And regulation couldn't either if the cost was cheep. It is the comination that prevents it.
Dash lanes is part of my proposal in the form of Pre-approved DWFP (Dash Warp Flight Plan).
Knarf points out another hazard that fits the pallet. Both in expense and reason for regulation. Civilian ships will have various levels of computer quality. The FedX would have very high quality navigation computers and would warrent special consideration and exception. Average freighters would have the same level of systems and the EXPENSE of buying new ones adds to the problem. Pre-Approved DWFP (or Comercial Dash Lanes...CDL) would allow these ships to travel fast more safely. The problem is that there is cost to keeping these lanes surveyed and clear. The costs are paid by the Taxs and fees applied when you submit a DWFP. Custom DWFP carry less Taxes (but processing fee remain) but are far more dangerous as they may not be patrolled, are not serveyed, and certainly not cleared of hazards.
Military ships, having all the best equipement can navigate vurtually anywhere.
One last thing: Regulation would be a way for Governments to collect Taxes, Fees and Fines. I don't think they would pass that up. It isn't in their nature!
Question-
What if you treated ships as two separate catagories?
separate the ships that "routinely" use dash speeds...and treat the additional wear and tear on the equipment as shortening its life time service? say a star ship normally has 30 years of active service...but ships that routinely use dash speeds only last a maximum of 10 years?
What that means is that ships (like Fed Express transports) have to be replaced 3 times as often as "normal" ships...that way dash speed effectively would cost 3 times as much as star ships that don't (as a rule) use dash speed.
(One benefit would be to reduce record keeping of each trip down to just traking the ships build date...and ships that exceed the "life time service" would have higher operating costs than ships in "good" condition.
Just a thought.
Loren Knight:
"Military ships, having all the best equipment..."
WHAT??? I spent over 13 years in the U.S. Air Force, most of it as a Navigator/Weapon System Officer/Electronic Warfare Officer in F-111s. There was never a time when the computers in that aircraft were not at least 10 years out of date by civilian standards. I have also been told, though I certainly can't verify it for myself, that there are currently supertankers carrying oil between the mideast and Europe/U.S./Japan with automation and ship-control systems superior to those on any warship in the world.
The problem is that military procurement is an enormous bureaucracy and in this regard it is best to remember Robert Conquest's Third Law of Politics: "The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies."
Consider a concrete example from the Cold War. It is generally assumed that U.S. technology was superior to Soviet technology. And generally it was. But the Soviets were superior in some areas. I can't go into details in an open forum but areas where the Soviets were superior were always ones where no non-military (or at least no non-governmental) uses existed and any R&D would only come through top-down, government directed programs. The Soviets could compete in that arena.
Fortunately, the decisive technological breakthroughs during the late Cold War were mostly in the area of electronics, and particularly information technology. No top-down R&D could compete with the many private bottom-up R&D programs run by private companies. The explosion in information technology driven by everyone from Apple to Nintendo dwarfed anything that governments could do because of the enormous civilian commercial potential. We had that, the Soviets didn't.
But the same dynamic ensured that governmental, bureaucratic procurement methods could never keep up with the state-of-the-art. A given military radar might be the best in the world for its type, but the computers that drive its signal processing, while good, will not be the best in the world.
Organiztions like SOCOM (Special Operations Command) may sometimes form a partial exception to the principle, because they usually play by less bureaucratic procurement rules than larger conventional forces. But I would like to propose the following, acknowledging the occasional exception.
In any technology area where both A) a large civilian market exists, and B) the technology is changing rapidly, military technology within that area will not be state-of-the-art.
(I'ld like to call that Trevor's Law, but it's not original with me and I don't know who to credit it to.)
Allen Trevor: While I agree compleatly with you assesment of the current state of affairs I'm not sure the situation is the same is SFB times. We, now, are in a place of extreme growth. Where every new technology brings forth new ones.
I tend to liken the technology differences between the military and civilians more to the 19th centry. Of course there are civilian units with cutting edge technology and the FedX is certainly on the forefront. But I don't see freighters, free traders and Space Liners being on the forefront of SFB era technology. Part due to attrition the military stays in front. Freighter design stays the same for a very long time. I said what I said with the consideration that I haven't seen any freighter or freetrader improvements happen from Pre-General war to Post GW. Eventually they did get X-Tech but it was the Military that created that (I suppose it could be from another origin but how dose one explain a civilian source in all races?).
In SFB times it is the Races militarys than lead the way in Starship developement (though certainly they have civilian contractors). The reason being is that the militaries are the biggest buyers of new stuff while Freighter Captains who have a ship thats good enough keep what they have and deal. That aditude will kill a military in SFB times.
Trevor's law applies well to us in the now but I don't think it does in SFB times. Money and markets are so different. A single planets economy is vastly different from a Star Empires ecconomy.
Here is a point about Military having the better hardware is this:
How many nuclear powered container ships are there? Answer: None, because the use of radioactives is closely watched.
Now the "fuel" that we are so blythely talking about is antimatter, which is extremely more powerful than any fusion/fission reaction. Impulse drives are fusion based and with planning can generate NTW. I could even see standard frieghters not even having antimatter engines. The could be fusion powered systems that can generate much faster speeds than impulse drives but no where near the speeds of high warp.
Jeff Wile: I think that prices would just go up to cover the hight turn over rate and in turn the high turn over rate would reduce the costs of replacement ship AND their quality and then would increase the number of accidents and in turn increase costs to the government.
A problem solved by regulation that brings IN money instead of just costing money.
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Also, there is the risk of promoting anarchy if civilian ships have free access to cutting edge technology. The Orions are problem enough but fall short of being the cause of anarchy. But if civilian ships are unregulated then a situation can grow out of control. The military MUST maintain a clear edge over civilian technology. An example would be out Police of today. It used to be that the Police could easilly catch up to anyone. But high end technology be came easy to get for the average Joe. Most people are law abiding but enough aren't and the Police forces had to spend considerable money to maintain the edge over the "crazy kids in their hot rods". More police forces have helicopters than ever. Still, go further to the DEA and the technology they require to keep up with drug cartels.
Regulation doesn't keep everyone in line but it does keep most in line. It like the saying (SPP recently quoted) "A lock keeps the honest honest." Regulation is a lock.
Ken Humphries:
I'm not sure about that. Maybe those container ships don't have nuclear power because it isn't economically viable. I was once told (by a retired Navy Captain who had commanded a Ticonderoga-class cruiser in his final assignment) that the reason that so few cruisers are nuclear powered is that the increase in performance doesn't come close to justifying the enormous increase in O&M (operations and maintenance) costs. There were a few American nuclear powered cruisers (I think the class name was Virginia but I don't remember for certain) but the Ticos are not nuclear powered. The U.S. Navy has pretty much backed away from nuclear propulsion except for aircraft carriers and submarines. (The Soviet Union once had a nuclear powered icebreaker. I don't know if it is still operational with the Russians.)
I suspect that nuclear propulsion is very difficult or impossible to justify on economic grounds and is only used for ships that have some operational requirement that can't be met by non-nuclear means. Currently, only aircraft carriers and submarines (for very different reasons) pass the test.
(I need to stress that my background is Air Force and some Army so my opinions on nuclear propulsion are not based on any direct knowledge or experience. Jeremy or any other Navy types - any comments from someone who may actually know?)
There is an example of what can happen when there is an accident. The Fed CVA MacArthur crashed into Remus and nearly compleatly devestated the planet, putting Remus out of the War.
So, ya, a freighter is MUCH smaller so that's why I said 1/6th of a planets surface (one hex side). Even if it's not that much damage a single city destroyed is WAY too much to tollerate. And there is thousands of freighters, orbiting planets, thousands of freetraders landing on planets.
Another thought regarding Dash Speeds: Why do large trucks have a lower speed limit than cars? Surely, if we could cut 1/2 day off of every delivery of every truck by letting semis cruise at 65 instead of 55 that would be a huge boost to the economy. But there are inherrent dangers to going too fast and every trucker should know that. But if they were allowed to go however fast they wanted would they stay at 55? No way. They would go as fast as they could and hopefor the best. Accidents would go up and cost would go up for the government and way too many lives would be lost. Speed MUST be regulated for the good of the whole.
Now, civilian ships aren't semi-trucks, granted, but stressing engines at top levels has it's own dangers not just to the ship but the crew and others. Rescuers live can be put at risk. But that doesn't mean illegalizing Dash speed either. Regulating it keeps thing at a reasonable level.
If a freighter is designed for a faster cruise speed then that's fine, even if other freighters dash speed is less. The dangers are less. Ships are clearly rated and like a car, probably have a Red Line where their engines are being over run. This would be dash speed.
Per Davids list of speeds, Dash Speed is realative to the ship. So the regulation should not be based strickly on a single warp factor. Further, freighters top speed may be regulated as well. Clearly a freighter IS capable of better performance because AUX ship are far faster.
I don't think there is really any way around it. Expense, Regulation (on use AND design), and Hazards are what mitigate the use of Dash Warp.
Sorry guys if I'm being a pain in the neck. I wish I could be more eloquent and make my points less winded.
Loren:
I'm still not convinced a standard freighter is even capable of dash speed, based on the table on page 128 of GURPS PD. There is no line for a freighter dash speed, though there is one for aux dash. The notes below the table make clear that aux ships have better engines (as does a glance at the SSDs for the standard versus armed freighters). The notes also mention that some civilian-owned ships have this type of engine.
Note also the first sentence in the second column of that page. - "Determine whether your ship will use normal cruising speed or (if it can) dash speed." That clearly implies that there are a number of ships that cannot use dash speed at all.
I think civilian-owned freighters can be divided into two broad classes. The majority can only use standard cruising speed, but some have the "military grade" engines of the aux ships. The latter are faster even at normal cruise and are probably used primarily for "long haul" missions. They are also capable of dash if necessary.
Hey, no problem, Loren. I've been stuck in Verbose mode for ... gee, for ever?
Alan is right: regular freighters cannot use Dash Speed under any circumstances; this should have been spelled out more clearly on page 128. The fact that the entry for "Freighter Dash" was missing from the table apparently isn't clear enough.
The only freighter-type ships that can use Dash are those with "auxiliary" grade engines -- and those ships all have "aux" in their designations (AuxPFT, etc). Other civilian ships (like the Free Trader, APT, etc) have aux-grade engines as standard and can use Aux Dash at Warp 8.5. "Armed" freighters (F-AL, etc) have regular freighter engines, not aux engines.
The Prime Trader and G1/U1 (from GK) use military-grade "Standard" Warp engines, while the FedX uses "Fast" Warp engines. I'm not sure what the skiffs, Modular Cutter, and other Size Class 5 ships have; I'll discuss this with SVC when he gets back and let you know.
I should have caught this earlier, especially as we have been discussing it for a week; sorry. Consider no-Dash freighters as a rules correction for now, and I'll see that it gets into MPB.
Or we could always use the more modern Trek solution to the problem and say that too many people going too fast ends up permanently warping space in wonderful and interesting ways. As long as we did it our own way, there shouldn't be too much of a problem.
I'll assume that's a joke, Knarf. That was the single worst TNG episode, even worse than the Hotel Royale episode, or the one where they killed off Tasha Yar for no reason.
On reflection, the Skiffs must have Aux warp engines, and can use Aux Dash. I'm going to recommend that the Modular Cutter has freighter-grade engines (in order to keep the cost down in such a small ship) and cannot use Dash at all.