Introduction
The Alpha Dawn rulebook has the following rules about the use of subspace radio between star systems:
Quote:
Subspace Radio. A subspace radio is used for sending messages between distant planets and star systems. Subspace communicators send coded tachyon beams that must be broadcast from very carefully aimed dish antennas to hit their target planet or system. A subspace message crosses one light-year in one hour. The radio uses a type 1 parabattery. Sending a message uses 100 SEU.
Later, the rulebook makes the following comment in the section about layovers during travel in the Frontier:
Quote:
If the characters are working for a company that is flying them to their destination, their ship probably will not stop over in a system for more than one or two days: just long enough to pick up supplies, fuel and news.
Taken together these comments suggest that communication can pass readily through the Frontier, especially for important messages coordinating such groups as the UPF, StarLaw, and various companies. The comment in the layover section suggests either that ships cannot be contacted when jumping through the Void (hence the need to catch up with news) or that subspace radio is bandwidth limited, so that bulk of entertainment and non-essential messages are carried by starships.
I personally find the second scenario particularly attractive; isolation between different systems and the concomitant differentiation of cultures in different systems is enhanced when subspace radios can only send the most essential messages. This would make each inhabited system highly and rapidly interconnected, however, most communication between systems requires waiting on ships that travel one light-year in one day. This brings to mind the “sneaker-net” phenomenon of the 20th and 21st century computing environment, in which carrying disks between computers is faster for transferring large amounts of information than using wired or wireless connections.
Pushing this concept to the extreme of a Frontier without subspace radios changes a number of aspects of the standard setting. First, intersystem couriers become a major force holding together the Frontier. Second, news outside of the system is always old, which is particularly problematic for large organizations that span multiple systems. And third, travelers and/or pirates in the Frontier can reach new systems before the news of their misdeeds. Although this concept might involve modification of certain adventures (such as reaching the subspace radio in the Streel compound in Mission to Alcazzar), simply making the subspace radio a non-commodity item opens up a large number campaign possibilities.
Bonded Couriers
Although all ships can carry information as “cargo”, bonded couriers were established to ensure both the validity and the security of the information they carry. Governments, banks, small corporations, and even average citizens are customers of these couriers. Similarly, large enough organizations are unwilling to trust couriers outside their direct control and therefore employ their own private courier fleet (often with secret navigated pathways between systems). The ability to corrupt, attack, or otherwise influence these couriers could lie at the heart of many schemes involving criminals, warfare between the mega-corps, or the Sathar.
Several large bonded courier companies compete for Frontier-wide services. These companies are more likely to have the most sophisticated infrastructures and protocols; however, some of their reputations have been darkened in recent years due to allegations that bribery from mega-corps and/or fanatical association with various cults has caused some sensitive information to be leaked, occasionally to various news services. To speed communications, these larger companies do not bring their ships near to inhabited worlds. Rather, these ships dock for supplies and communications download and upload at space stations, which communicate to inhabited worlds via encrypted electromagnetic signals. These facilities are typically armed and sometimes have their own fighter patrols (either owned by courier company itself or listed as “vital infrastructure” and supported by UPF and/or local militia forces).
Not all couriers have Frontier-wide range. The smaller carriers have short runs and frequently specialize in connecting small regions of the Frontier and doing so more efficiently than other carriers. For example, the Vrusk-colonized systems of Kizk-Kar, K'aken-Kar, and K'tsa-Kar are linked by a carrier that minimizes intersystem communication times by setting a secret rendezvous point between the systems in which information is rapidly exchanged with other vessels that only travel between the home system and the rendezvous point. This information distribution substantially reduces the communication time between Kizk-Kar and K'tsa-Kar and has made these routes unprofitable even for the larger courier companies.
Unlike mega-corps that produce physical products, the courier companies gain clients solely through the trust of their clients. Conflict between the major couriers has been as viscous as any of the conflicts between the mega-corps. Empty space between systems and outer regions of various solar systems are littered with the remains of courier ships destroyed and ransacked hulls of courier ships exposed to vacuum. Thus, modern courier vessels are well armed and armored and several have had distinguished records fighting along side UPF and local militias in conflicts with Sathar invasion forces.
Message drones
One potential solution for automated message delivery is through the use of uncrewed vehicles carrying messages. These message drones are particularly useful for regions with little ship traffic or in military situations where information can be returned, even if the ships themselves are destroyed. The Knight Hawks rules suggest, however, that even an uncrewed ship capable of jumping into the Void will be prohibitively expensive. Thus, these drones would not be disposable. These very valuable ships are owned by only the richest governments, mega-corps, and probably the UPF. These ships are also targets for thieves, pirates, and rival mega-corps both for the information they carry as well as the ship itself. The importance and expense of message drones could easily be motivations for adventures in which characters send, intercept, retrieve, or destroy message drones.
Large system-spanning organizations
In the absence of rapid intersystem communications, all large organizations must give local systems sufficient autonomy to operate effectively in-system. For many organizations, this autonomy gives rise to substantial changes in operating procedure from system to system, which can cause headaches for travelers. Additionally, sufficient separation (including separate administrative branches and bank accounts) has caused some mega-corps to split along system lines. Newly-formed subsidiary branches have on occasions rebelled against the parental organization, using differences in local legislation and StarLaw to legally support their efforts. Historically such corporate “rebellions” have been most successful in cases where the parent company and the branch are in Frontier systems with different biases in racial makeup.
The problem of slow, courier-based communication is particular acute for the UPF and StarLaw, which must be able to organize and transport forces to systems that are under attack or are undergoing local problems such as large scale mob assaults and anarchy. One solution adopted by both organizations are standard responses, such as “launch all battleships to a specific rendezvous points upon reports of attacks on this system”. These standardized responses help minimize the lag in responding to news by avoiding additional communications with headquarters located in other systems. The triggers for the organizations and their specific responses are regularly updated and kept under the tightest possible security. A sophisticated attack on the Frontier could be engineered by various parties by intercepting couriers and planting false news reports that would trigger known responses by the UPF and/or StarLaw to move them away from the site of the subsequent real assault.
A second very real problem for both the UPF and StarLaw is the same as for the mega-corps. Local autonomy (and different points of view) can tend to cause various branches in different systems to respond differently and on occasion fair to respond to reports according to current standing orders, especially when local events prevent reallocation of forces. Both the UPF and StarLaw are large enough organizations that they can exchange personnel between systems in an attempt to minimize the local effects; however, these programs are frequently criticized and have not been clearly demonstrated to work.
Using the communication lag
The disadvantages of the slow communications has for many organizations has been used as advantages. Perhaps the best known cases have been individuals and some corporations withdrawing large sums of credits from the same bank account on multiple worlds before the various branches can updated. The most famous of these incidents, reported by StarLaw to involve over twelve individuals on twelve different worlds, has led to the development of the quantum-encrypted “account bar” that travelers carry from world to world; however, recent rumors suggest that even these measures are not sufficiently secure.
Another clear case of individuals gaming the communication lag, which has been much harder to prosecute, is a novel form of “insider trading” where individuals who learn of specific events can beat news reports to more distant starsystems and make strategic purchases and sales of stocks to make money off of corporate losses and mergers. This is a fairly expensive crime; however, it is difficult for StarLaw to trace them, as perpetrators book passage with special (and often illicit) carriers having faster, and frequently more dangerous routes than those standardly used.
Crime waves have also spread similarly, in which sophisticated criminals or criminal cells concoct a specific crime with a profitable modus operandi that they then repeat on system after system before the news of these specific crimes are reported and defenses against them can be launched. Pirates have similarly launched raids sequentially against multiple systems, calculating the lag on the UPF response to pick subsequent targets.
Lack of subspace radios in individual campaigns
For seasoned Star Frontiers gamers, the easiest way to incorporate the concept of a Frontier without subspace radios might be to start a new campaign in which this modification has been applied. For the campaign to “feel” different, it is important that the characters are forced to interact with the implications of the lack of subspace radios directly. For example, characters might be forced to attack or defend specific courier vessels, investigate deep space espionage involving mis-information placed on a courier vessel, “out-run” news traveling from one system to another themselves, carry a message themselves, or deal with the consequences of poor communications in the exploration of systems outside of the Frontier.
The lack of subspace radios might not completely fit in with current campaigns in which the use of (or consequences of) subspace radios are in full force. The role of information courier (and their use as a source of adventures) could still exist and be important for high-level communications that must not be intercepted. Alternatively, subspace radios could fail throughout the Frontier (with the failure zone propagating through the Frontier at the speed of light). Causes for these failures might be a natural event, a scientific experiment gone awry, or tachyon jamming preluding a Frontier-wide attack. In any case, many different entities might enlist the characters to investigate the source of these failures. The consequence of a sudden failure of subspace radios, however, would likely be very disruptive, and many of the infrastructure changes detailed above would not preexist and would only be set up in the short term in an ad hoc manner.
Restricted access to subspace radios
An alternative to the complete elimination of subspace radios is to treat them as a newly developed technology not available for regular use or whose use is filtered through a “controlling organization” that has access to them, potentially the UPF, a mega-corp, or even some fanatical cult. The importance of the organization controlling access to subspace radio service depends on their ability to keep the technology behind the radios secret. All sites of subspace radios, therefore, have the highest possible security with both ground and space forces ready to defend these installations. If the controlling organization is not the UPF or the local system government, the presence and action of these military forces may cause political problems; however, the reliance of the UPF and the local system governments on rapid subspace communications almost always gives the controlling organization the upper hand.
More insidiously, the controlling organization may apply its own agenda to what messages are passed and what information becomes available to the general public. These organizations rarely modify information that is publicly available and can be readily learned through normal ship-borne information traffic; however, simply delaying this type of information or modifying secret communications between governments, the UPF, or mega-corps could be done to provide direct or indirect leverage for the controlling organization.
With a Frontier with restricted access to subspace radios, characters could be recruited into investigating and/or infiltrating the organization behind the subspace radios in order to hunt down political ties, outside influences, or the schematics for the radios themselves. Characters might also be recruited by the organization controlling the radios in order to protect an installation or hunt down messages or radio schematics stolen from them. The central role of these organizations in the Frontier could easily embroil characters in adventures that interact with the political heavyweights of the Frontier.
Acknowledgments
This alternative view of the Frontier was inspired by a few messages about subspace radios I have read but have been unable to relocate in an old Star Frontiers mailing list archive. Message drones were inspired by message torps in the Legion of the Damned series by William Dietz. The restricted subspace radio access is a scenario inspired by Comstar in FASA's BattleTech Universe.