Hey Stras Acimovic and John LeBoeuf-Little,
I’m running a one shot of Scum and Villainy tomorrow and was wondering if you had any more details on how space travel works in your setting. There’s Gates, which seem to link from one Gate to at least one other Gate (Rin has 2 gates, but has gates to 3 systems) and back but then you also have hyperspace lanes and regular space travel. So, couple of questions:
* Are hyperspace lanes just for in-system travel or can they sometimes take you between star systems?
* Do you use a jumpdrive to interact with a hyperspace lane?
* How fast is travelling in a hyperspace lane compared to regular engine power? * How fast can ships go without any of these extra dimension hijinks?
(I suppose when I’m asking about how fast something is, I’m really asking roughly how long it takes to get from one end of a system to another or from one system to a neighboring one: Hours/Days/Weeks etc)
Obviously I can and will fill these gaps in myself but I just thought it’d be cool to have an “official” word on how this all works.
Awesome work on the play set guys, can’t wait for the full release! 🙂
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I would totally ask my players those questions.
Bryant Durrell Very good point. The specifics would shape the feel of the game quite a bit, so collaborating on the answers would help create the tone your group wants. EG If gates are the only method of inter-system travel it becomes a lot harder to move around whilst avoiding the cops / smuggle stuff.
Lewis Wakeford thank you for taking my brief note and expanding on it to make it a real argument — that’s exactly what I was thinking but I was in a rush to get on the bus this morning and you put it better than I would have.
I had a game where you had to use a gate to go hyper and leave a system, but could enter a system from hyper (at risk) without it.
There will be a Sector sheet in the doc in the probably not too distant future with some info about this. The folks here have some good advice (ask your players the questions) is always the best answer to anything you don’t understand (forex what are ghost keys? We have no clue in base blades! Talk it out at your table).
But there are some thing we do know. Gates only link to other gates. There’s no popping out and back. How long it takes to go between gates and what that looks like? Totally up to your table. They are on the outsides of systems usually. So for us – it would be in the pluto region. And they are often fixed in space, which means that trips through the system take variable times. Folks plan vacations for when it’s “cheaper” to get to the gate. We partially picked this because it makes sending waves and warrants a little more tricky (courier ships go through and broadcast) and makes systems just a touch more contained, so it gives players less of a shadowrun style … the moment you do something everyone knows, and videos of you are on every planet. It just takes a bit to transmit data everywhere and you can have cool missions intercepting stuff.
But realistically, flying out to Pluto would take many months at non-relativistic speeds – so we added Hyperspace lanes to help you get out and back faster. So it’ll take a couple weeks to get out to the gate and back to another system depending. How this works? Up to your table. What exactly are the routes? Up to your table, but there are big, publically mapped, guild-used routes. And there’s smaller or less known routes. And persistent rumors of large but unstable routes smugglers and pirates sometimes use. The details of this are up to you and your table.
For the game I’m in currently? We do use the Jump Drive to hook into them. And we generate large, translucent sails that end in lightning where they interact with the lane itself. And we have to stop every day or so to let the engine cool, and clear our charge. But how exactly this all works is up to you the group. What I’m saying in this part isn’t some sort of cannon.
If you don’t have a ship with precursor hyjinx (where do you think Jump Drives come from? The Starsmiths closely guard those secrets) there isn’t a preset speed. Most folks have to actually fly in atmo, or make it out to the Hyperspace lane anyway. I’m sure ships have more conventional drives to handle that (ion engines, or nuclear engines of some kind). The exact top speeds are very hand-wavey because I don’t want people wasting time worrying about trajectories and doing physics calculations.
Let me know if you have any other Qs.
Stras Acimovic Thanks for taking the time to reply. That’s more than enough detail to satisfy my curiosity. 🙂
Stras Acimovic​ very cool. Sort of similar to FTL in Diaspora, where you have a handful of systems connected by slipgates (which you need a sensitive to access), but not necessarily connected to each other. So, to get to System C from System C, you have to go through System B. And System B might also connect with System D. The problem arises when System B, a hub system, starts throwing it’s weight around because it’s a nexus for FTL.
You still have to get to the slipgate, though, which is always on the outskirts of the system, so that can take weeks/months.
Would it possible that a dangerous hyper lane could possibly get you out of a system, but would take you extra time/resources as well as be perilous? Or are hyperlanes only intra system?
Stras Acimovic one question:
According to page 21, the Nightbreaker (capital ship of the Maelstrom) has a jumpgate inside it. So is this gate completely useless until they get control of a second jumpgate?
Or is this simply an outdated info from a previous draft version?
Jörg Mintel I love that. Establish the rules of the setting…then break one!
Maybe the Nightbreaker just carries it and deploys it for instant reinforcements wherever it wants to pick a fight.
Maybe it can launch fighters through it to emerge at another gate.
Maybe it can gate itself, so it can emerge at any other gate.
Maybe it’s for loading things into the Nightbreaker from a secure home base.
Maybe it’s for turning a sun into a weapon.
It’s not outdated Jorg! It’s awesome that you caught that! Three things.
1) The Precursors built the gates, they understand the rules.
2) Artifacts tend to break rules.
3) There is a giant Precursor “thing” that broke and is generating the Ashtari cloud where the Banshee picked up both the Nightbreaker and hides her fleet. And the Legion hasn’t been able to pin them down yet. Hmmmm >_> Engines and Jump Drives work weird there, but the Pirates have a different type of engine hat lets them putter around just fine. HMMMMMM >_>
Understand that I’ve given you all the rules I intend to put on a page ^_~ From here you get to decide what it does with your table. But it’s not a mistake.
I’m really glad folks pay attention and ask detailed questions like that. It means you’re really engaging with the system/setting. Which is awesome.
I will tell you something else weird. We won’t see it in S&V, but the Hegemon and a few of the noble houses and the military have ships that generate gate-like effects and allow entire swarms of ships to go places.
Stras Acimovic Yes, I assumed that if the Nightbreaker has a build-in gate, then also capital military ships will have one 🙂
I was confused because the situation-paragraph under THE MAELSTROM mentioned that Alanda is searching a way to jump systems; that seemed odd to me if she had her very own jumpgate.
But I think I get it now: Alanda wants to keep this a secret, because if word gets out that she possesses such a major Precursor artefact, it would paint a very big target on her back.