Hi Dennis, Actually, That makes a lot of sense. I've heard of the stutter drive concept, and you aren't the first person to suggest such a thing. I've seen it in a few science fiction stories, and its a pretty good concept all things considered.
I don't know if you have ever read any of Elizabeth Moon's books, but she frequently uses this stutter drive or jump drive concept to get ships from one place to another without having to fly directly from point A to point B. Instead, as Elizabeth Moon imagines it, there is a series of jump points scattered throughout the galaxy, and a ship bound from Slaughter Key to the Moscow Confederation might have to travel to a dozen jump points before reaching its destination rather than a direct course from planet A to planet B. They simply perform several short hops or jumps until the ship reaches its destination. I think this works especially well for any kind of text adventure or mud, because a game developer could set certain jump points where the player could rest, refuel, pick up supplies, etc. There could be an outpost or station there similar to the various truck stops along the U.S. interstates which services passing ships. Cheers! On 8/13/12, Dennis Towne <[email protected]> wrote: > Thomas, > > Now that I've laid out the actual position physics takes with respect > to FTL, my plan for space games has been to throw out general > relativity and time travel, and add FTL instead. In other words, any > universe I build that has FTL in it is probably going to be a simple, > ordinary, cartesian, newtonian universe as most people would > understand it. In this kind of universe, light might still travel at > a certain speed, but there's no light speed limit and no paradoxes or > time travel problems like you'd get in a relativistic universe. > > To address the FTL problem with inertia, I'm going to be using the > 'stutterdrive' concept: when your ship goes FTL, it spontaneously > disappears from one place and reappears in another. There are no > inertia problems because you're not actually accelerating. If you do > a thousand of these tiny jumps per second, it looks like you're moving > smoothly, even though you're just jumping around really fast in space. > > To handle the energy problem associated with this, I'm going to > declare that the energy required for each jump is some minimal amount > plus the gravitational potential difference between the two jump > points. This means that for jumps into a star system, you might > actually end up getting energy back from the hyperdrive, though I'll > probably just make it inaccessible to players for various plot > reasons. > > In order to limit speeds, declare a maximum rate at which any drive > can be used. Explain it away as "it takes one millisecond for space > to flatten out after doing a jump, so you have to wait that long > before doing another one." > > The final plot device is to give the stutterdrive different distance > quanta based on the depth of the gravitational field it's in. In > interstellar space, you get one maximum jump distance of some amount > that makes it feasible to go between stars. As you enter the deeper > gravitational field of a star system, declare that the jumps suddenly > get shorter, so that detailed maneuvering in the star system is > possible. As you get closer to a planet, have another change in the > jump size to let you maneuver there. > > It's a neat setup that I've thought about for a long time. It's got a > consistent framework even though it's a bunch of plot device > handwaving, and as long as you've got a consistent framework you can > build other stuff on top of it. > > Dennis Towne > > Alter Aeon MUD > http://www.alteraeon.com > --- Gamers mailing list __ [email protected] If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to [email protected]. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to [email protected].
