 January 31, 2010 - 9:16pm | Originally developed as a method or hazardous cargo and mining applications the science of teleportation has expanded in the Frontier to become more frequently used for cargo and even people. It is an expensive system and requires special skills and equipment to sucessfully operate. Teleportation is a type of Ultra tech in SF and FS which uses technology to convert matter into energy trasmitt that energy and reconstruct that energy back into energy on the other side. Teleportation could also be accomplished via dimensional travel, would require some form of technological device, and would have similar results. The primary components required are 1. The teleportation sending device. 2. The teleportation receiving device (If Needed). 3. The teleportation relay device or network (If Needed). 4. The teleporation control system and or Operator. 5. An independent Power Supply. 4. The Subject, Cargo, or Object To Be Transported. The primary Types Of Teleportation Are 1. Direct Line Of Sight, Site To Site Teleportation. 2. "Closed Circuit", Site To Site Teleportation. 3. Relay Teleportation Utilizing A Satalite Or Starship. Standard Success: 1. Sucessful Teleportation of person or object from one place to another. Optimal Successes: Sucessful Teleportation of difficult item/person under adverse conditions. Standard Failures: 1.System disruption, no teleport possible, system does not work at all due to technology failure or signal disruption. 2. No Teleportation possible, system failure or interuption detected and failsafe prevents teleport 3. Teleportation is successful, targeting failure. however subject or object is teleported to wrong location. 4. Teleportation failed but Operator At Receiving End is able to successfully capture transmission. Commonly results in teleportation illness for 1d10 hours. Catastrophic Failure: 1. Teleportation Failure, Part or all of transmission lost. May results in serious injury or death for any biological. Cargo is damaged or only partially received. 2. Signal Scrambled, Transmission received but badly disrupted. Results in death for any biological. Cargo is damaged or unusable, may catch fire or change chemical make up to volatile state. 3. Teleportation Successful, targeting failure, results in target being teleported into a dangerous location such as a solid object, space, underwater, etc. Special Failures: 1. Hijacking & Kidnapping 2. Jamming (Resulting in teleport failure, target failure, or reception failure) 3. Signals Crossed (resulting in target failure.) General Teleportation Sucess Rates: Simple Cargo / Raw Materials 98% Drallasite Passenger 90% (biological Simplicity) Human, Yazarian, Vihm, Gha!kuuk'aa Passenger 85% Vrusk, Sathar Passenger 70% (Biological Complexity) Cyborg, Cybot Passenger 65% (Extreme Biological Complexity) Complex delicate or volatile cargo 60% or less |
 February 1, 2010 - 6:50am | Nicely done. What kind of distances are you looking at? What kind of facility/power requirements? can a ship be equipped with one? I like what you have here. I might use it as an experimental type thing for a compaing, but I cant see this in my SFU. I dont like StarTrek type technologies. The primary component list is great. I think there should be a receiving station or it will be too trekky. Catastophic faliure. lol. JASON: What? What? ALEXANDER:(singsong) Nothing. JASON: I heard something. A squeal. GWEN: Oh no. Everything's fine. TEB: But... the animal is inside out. JASON: I heard that! It's INSIDE OUT! TEB: And It exploded! Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
February 1, 2010 - 4:37pm | Though Star Trek is the king of the Transporter plot device it is my least favorite teleportation concept. I am thinking something along the lines of the movie jumper except using a device to allow any "person" to teleport. I will include elements from the following sources: Star trek, Star Gate, Jumper (Movie), the fly, and some ideas of my own. First of all its not easily accessible technology, hard to find, hard to operate. Distances would be limited by the type of teleport being used. Obviously line of site and closed circuit would be easiest with shorter distances. However relay teleportation could easily use distances of a starship in orbit or use the starship as a signal relay to a farther location. The simple fact is this the farther the distance the greater the chance of failure. I do agree that a receiving device of some sort would be a prudent and more realistic concept much like the transporters used in the Star Gate franchise. One idea I am considering is how teleportation would be a kick-ass way to deliver special ops into a hot zone. The receiver could be deployed by a drone or pod that lands on the planet and then deploys. Troops are teleported to the receiver unit. |
 February 1, 2010 - 4:52pm | This tech is written a lot better than bap-bins. +1 I would considered this to be "cutting-edge" technology in the frontier, vastly expensive and extremely experimental. I can see it used as a plot device. Suggestion: add some types of material that just are not able to be re-constructed. Examples; diterium (used in parabatteries), certain types of metals, some types of plant/animal life (perhaps the animal will be transported but when re-constructed it's lifeless). |
February 1, 2010 - 5:10pm | I am thinking something along the lines of the movie jumper except using a device to allow any "person" to teleport. I liked the line-of-sight concept and would expand it to include the following; A character can even be considered to have line of sight to someone viewed on a live camera feed, but doing so requires an appropriate skill check. (Fill in the skill). |
 February 1, 2010 - 5:18pm | Personally, I'm somewhat off the Star Trek-style transporter where the object is converted to energy and reconverted to matter. The amount of energy contained within a mass the size of a human being would rip off the atmosphere of the planet you were beaming down to. That being said, I've been kicking around the idea of my characters discovering a Stargate-type device that connects all the planets in the Frontier and eventually being part of a SGC-like organization to keep the knowledge of the devices from the Sathar. There are probably just as many problems inherent with wormhole travel as there are with matter conversion, but I'm not aware of them yet so I can still suspend my disbelief. "Rome didn't build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing those who stood in their way." |
February 1, 2010 - 5:38pm | Stargate's could be considered "artifacts" (see my other thread).
Voidgates Dr. Rhendart of New Haven Laboratories was experimenting with a new gel that allowed pilots to withstand 15g's of acceleration. By pure accident he discovered that he could hurl a biological substance from speed 0 to speed 1%c with no ill side effects. His next logical step is to mount a void engine in the lab (like the ones found on spaceships) to see if he can transfer living beings from one planet to the next star system. |
 February 1, 2010 - 5:45pm | Though Star Trek is the king of the Transporter plot device it is my least favorite teleportation concept. I am thinking something along the lines of the movie jumper except using a device to allow any "person" to teleport. I will include elements from the following sources: Star trek, Star Gate, Jumper (Movie), the fly, and some ideas of my own. First of all its not easily accessible technology, hard to find, hard to operate. Distances would be limited by the type of teleport being used. Obviously line of site and closed circuit would be easiest with shorter distances. However relay teleportation could easily use distances of a starship in orbit or use the starship as a signal relay to a farther location. The simple fact is this the farther the distance the greater the chance of failure. I do agree that a receiving device of some sort would be a prudent and more realistic concept much like the transporters used in the Star Gate franchise. One idea I am considering is how teleportation would be a kick-ass way to deliver special ops into a hot zone. The receiver could be deployed by a drone or pod that lands on the planet and then deploys. Troops are teleported to the receiver unit. Special ops, hell. With this tech, you can insert advance teams with teleport receivers/gates/whatever, drop your invasion fleet out of jump, get in close and, while the warships are engaging the enemy's warships, the transports start beaming/gating in troops into multiple points simoultaneously, massively disrupting the enemy's ground defense, ala the Zhodani or even COBRA troops when they set up the MASS device. And, if you make teleportation tech an offshoot of your FTL tech, whoo, boy, you wouldn't need the invasion transports, just warships and advance teams on the other end setting up receivers to reassemble the invasion force. An example of the latter can be found in Roger MacBride Allen's first novel, The Torch Of Honor. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
February 1, 2010 - 7:44pm | Imagine a device that could block, nullify, inhibit or redirect transporting troops. Colnolel Jaksin of the Five-0-First "We might not have the shiniest armor, the most powerful weapons, the ability to voidjump behind enemy lines but we do have is guts to face our enemy head on. To see the fear in their eyes and the knowledge that only we will stand at the end of the day." Galactic News "Yes that's right Brink, Jaksin's 501st was the only platoon that arrived planetfall. Intelligence says that all other platoon's nadar showed they pop'd out near Vege's moon some five light-seconds away. All accounted are spaced." |
February 15, 2010 - 4:37pm | I am putting this together for a future issue of the Frontiersman, so if anyone has any ideas please post. I dont want to put too much here bc but I am working on it. What i have decided for certain. Teleportation is a new and relatively rare and expensive technology. The technology was developed from a new mining process that was used to extract valuable minerals from rock at the subatomic particle level. Teleportation is not regulated but the equipment and training is. Most organic and organic materials can be teleported with the exception of items that may become altered or volatile in the disintegration or reintegration process, may pose a safety hazard, or may radiate energy that disrupts the transmission signal. I have a list started of no teleport items but dont want to release too much here. Cybernetics are kind of up in the air, in general i am leaning towards teleportation of cyborgs having negative results ranging from cybernetics getting fused to the host or malfunctioning bc the computer has trouble interpreting oranic and inorganic being meshed together. So I am leaning towrards no on cybernetics but was wondering if this should include synthetic medical implants as well such as metal screws, artificial limbs, medical devices, etc. |
 February 21, 2010 - 1:50am | I personally do not like the teleport/ beaming from star trek. (And to introduce it into the game when they don't even have gravity plating for ships is a bad idea.) And if you have teleportation relays why have ships? when you can travel via beam ( ala They Live). I personally never aloud the tech in my games. Also it can make game play unbalance, whats to stop the Sathar or any bad guys from beaming rock and stuff from a core of a planet and beam in a planet busting bomb? And like stated above the amount of energy that it would take to transform matter to energy is outrages. The power it would take to allow jumpers would be gigantic, you'll have to have huge batteries, unless you have them powered by micro fussion/ fission power plants. Now the idea of star gates that use stable wormholes is another thing. But if you can bend gravity and generate worm holes you can have artificial gravity. Gold is for the mistress-silver for the maid-copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.But Iron-Cold Iron- is master of them all |
February 21, 2010 - 2:52pm | Well thank you for your input Artmic but I have to humbly disagree. The system i am proposing is very limited and somewhat dangerous to use. Sathar couldnt core out a planet with it because you would have to have a terminal large enough to receive the rock being removed. This isnt Star Trek transporters, this is a teleportation device. It is not capable of "beaming" anything to anywhere with or without a transporter pad. It has a limited range of 10,000km or 1 SFKH Hex. And why would Sathar bother with coring into a planet anyway when they can already nuke the planet from orbit. The technoloby is more akin to making a cellphone call you have to have a sender and a receiver. Now, we did kick around the idea of making a "drop-able" teleporter pod to allow for troops to be teleported into battle but the game mechanics for this were a little too far out there. But as far as teleporting to an overhead space station, starship, or from one place on a planet to another is really quite reasonable and possibly less expensive then a shuttle ride. The only reason I even mentioned Star trek is that they, and Star Gate, are the two kings of the teleportation genre. While what i am designing may look a lot like a transporter the game mechanics will be considerably more restrictive and limited then that of Star Trek. As far as the power involved being outrageous, well void travel is pretty outrageous too but it works in the game because we are willing to speculate that it does. No one really knows how much energy it would take, forty years ago microwave ovens would have been looked at the same way. Today it takes a battleship to mount a prototype rail gun, a 747 to mount a thermal laser, and a tank sized vehicle to haul around a sonic disrupter. All of which is little more than hand held technology in SF. I would humbly propose that a teleportation device would not only be realisitic in the SF universe but it would actually fit it. Thanks for your input. |
November 6, 2010 - 12:47pm | If wonders never cease, while re-reading the alpha dawn rules I discovered something very interesting. Teleportation is actually mentioned by name as an ability in the canon rules. To my amazment I actually found in the creature creation table that limited teleportation of upto 8 squares is listed as an abillity. Basic Rules, Alpha Dawn edition, Pg.14 designing your own creature. abilities, #3 teleport. Parahprase: can teleport upto eight spaces every three turns. Now mind you, my teleportation article coming out in a future issue of the Frontiersman is a much more larger scale, the fact of the matter is that teleportation is a canon ability as specified in the canon rules. So, for all those nay-sayers out there all i have to say i......(bampppppphffff) Unfortunately the transmission from AZ_Gamer has been interupted as he can no longer be found at his previously location at subspace radio comm station 602. |
November 6, 2010 - 9:49pm | Funny.. I just read the basic book 2 weeks ago and I totally skimmed that part. Preconceived ideas got in the way is my guess. :-) |
November 7, 2010 - 12:32am | I think that a compound extracted from creatures with natural ability to teleport can be used to improve the teleportation sequence and reduce teleportation illness |
November 9, 2010 - 12:47pm | There is a special cat, if he sits on your shoulders while you teleport it nullifies any illness.  |
November 21, 2010 - 8:27pm | The problem isn't teleportation in and of itself. It's the concepts behind the scenes. To clarify I hate transporters in Star Frontiers. If you want transporters go play Prime Directive or something. -Ellzii |
November 21, 2010 - 10:35pm | Now that's interesting, have the tech work using the Void. The gear shoots your atoms to .1c and wa la, your in the Void. Oh wait, how do you slow down. Grr... well I thought it was a good idea.  Does it matter how the tech works behind the scenes or is it enough that the tech is part of a setting and does x, y and z? Personally I prefer tech-babble over real-science for some stuff. It just works because the Referee says it works and this is how your character interacts with it. Imperial Lord, give me a shizzle on this one homeslice! |
November 21, 2010 - 11:50pm | Well Ellzii, I guess you will just have to read the article when it comes out in the Frontiersman issue #16. Over the last two years I have introduced a lot of new ideas and technology based on a singular premise. Star Frontiers, one of the all time best RPG to ever be created, was created over twenty years ago. Unfortunately as an out of print and unsupported game system its impossible to know exactly what direction the game would have gone in if TSR were still printing and making supplements for it today. Sooner or later, fans of various Sci-fi staples would eventually create SF tech that was inspired by if not copied from their favorite sources. Looking at the Art and direction of the original SFKH it is easy to see they borrowed a lot from Anime at the time such as Star Blazers and novels such as the robot series by asimov and starship troopers. It has been my goal in my articles and artwork to bring some new ideas from my past game experiences to offer new rules and tech to allow different kinds of sci-fi staples to be added. I'm sure eventually I will do something with Gate technology as I don't think one system is particuarly better than another it just represents different levels of tech. A void / star gate would definitely require a much higher level of tech than a teleportation device. As for how it works, no I am not going the direction with the Fax machine teleporter as proposed in such movies as timeline or the prestige. I am sticking to the grand ole idea of molecular disintigration and reintegration. It is extremely speculative fiction, I'm right there with you on that one. However, it can be a very exciting plot device that is very usable in the SF universe. And as mentioned earlier in the thread, it is cannon as specified as an abillity in the Alpha Dawn rule book. How exactly it works, no one can really know that any more than anyone can really know how a void jump really works. One of the most essential aspects of SFKH game play is void travel, No one can travel at 1% of C so know one really knows how void travel works. Yet, theoretically, we suspend disbelief and say ok, so it works and we manage to travel faster than the speed of light without reaching the actual speed of light or using something that folds space. Simply put, its something intended for the fun of the game. If you like it, use it and have fun with it. If you don't like it, well simply dont bother reading the article. As stated the tech is not a super-tech transporter as seen in star trek. In fact its extremely well balanced and its use is neither common place nor entirely safe. It is cutting edge, its expensive, it malfunctions often, and sometimes very bad things happen if it isnt used right or under the right circumstances. You cant "beam" anywhere at anytime and you need a sending and receiving terminal with a skilled operator to work it. Certain races and technologies interfere or complicate its use. I am an artist by hobby and not everything I create for the game has an exact scientific explanation. I often rely on input from our real-life scientific experts here (Yo' Terl) to help me figure out how this stuff works or how to make it fit. I hope you enjoy the article in the upcoming Frontiersman. Thanks for your input. |
November 22, 2010 - 10:50pm | I just finished reading the competition module "Trouble On Janus" that is on the starfrontiers.com site. White its not exactly canon it does pose an interesting point. The Sathar technology in the module is a lot more radical than my proposed teleporter. And this tech made it into a proposed module. Anyway, I did some research while at work today and came accross an article about real life teleportation experiments with atoms at the University of Maryland and Michigan. Essentially the physicists on the team were able to transmit properties from one atom held by an electrical field in a vaccum chamber to another in a separate chamber one meter away using a high speed laser pulse to cause the atoms to emit photon particles which interacted in a state of quantum entanglement between the two atoms. The end result was that properties or information encoded on one atom were transfered to the other during the quantum event. While its a really small step in creating a real teleportation, it is very close in principle to the fictional device I describe in my article created by the Blue Star Mining Company as a mining process (Teleporting properties of valuable materials out of ore without the need to cut the rock itself). If anyone wants to look it up the article is in the January 2009 issue of Time Magazine. While the article ultimately concludes that in our world teleporting humans would be unlikely because of the complexity involved, in the SF universe it may not only be possible but may be science fact. |
November 23, 2010 - 12:37pm | Off topic. Is Trouble On Janus worth re-mastering? Anything you would add, get rid of? |
November 23, 2010 - 4:42pm | Might be, but its not my cup of tea. I was more interested in the fact that it had some liberally radical technology for star frontiers. |
 November 25, 2010 - 7:16am | Off topic. Is Trouble On Janus worth re-mastering? Anything you would add, get rid of? My impression of the Trouble On Janus is that its a SF module written by a Traveller player. its worth including it in the ball park of canon material but with less weight then you might give to Zebs Guide. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 25, 2010 - 2:36pm | I just OCRed Trouble on Janus. After I clean it up it will be on the download area of Port Loren public Library. Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
November 29, 2010 - 12:10am | I had completely forgotten about the Bap Bins from Zeb's guide, well then I guess that (as well as the prviously sited passage in Alpha Dawn) puts the whole teleportation as canon argument to bed and tucks it in. (zeb'd guide Pg. 42 Bap Bins). |
November 29, 2010 - 4:40am | Took me a moment because I am using a unmastered Zeb's. It's page 18-19 for those of us who have not switched over. There are comments on the skill though that I found very interesting. "Technicians who operate these devices are at least level 9." The second thought roaming about my head was that was the only mention of it in the whole book. Nothing in the equipment section on it, because they don't want PC's buying them and playing with the things. The last thing I noticed was "The transferral requires a bin to be at both the departure and arrival point to work. The current maximum range between bins is 5000 km." |
November 29, 2010 - 6:32am | There are a variety of controls that can be emplaced and leave the tech in The listing gives it a max range- 5000 km but for some reason I also envisioned it as requiring a hard connect between bins back in the day You could enforce high energy cost for using a bap bin to the point that they do have a use but most people just take the sub orbital suttle. But when you absolutely possitively have to get something there this minute you use Fedzap Most bap bins could also be rated for non biologicals ie living organisms dont come out the other side alive, limiting them to just freight. to limit the pattern and I'll just whistle up a clone of myself issue- state that there is no such thing as a pattern buffer and the machine doesn't have the ability to do that, its been tried but didn't work and some scientist wrote a paper on the physics of why it doesn't work. I think most people will understand if you talk to them out of character that you are just not interested in playing a game where the PCs become god which is what they are trying to do with that. PS: this could be an interesting plot hook: a body arrives in a bap bin that only rated for freight- was it murder or suicide- PCs investigate, Holonews at 5. PPS: it could be that the tech is a trade secret of one mega corp and very tightly controlled to preserve their monopoly I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 29, 2010 - 2:25pm | Bap Bins. Many Years ago at the First FrontierCon we had an interview with one of the big names behind SF. I cant recall names right now. But, he said the only reason he created Bap Bins was that his group would never get aboard a shuttle or ship again after playing Crash on Volturnous. the bins accidently made it into the final product if I recall properly. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
November 29, 2010 - 6:03pm | Bap Bins. Many Years ago at the First FrontierCon we had an interview with one of the big names behind SF. I cant recall names right now. But, he said the only reason he created Bap Bins was that his group would never get aboard a shuttle or ship again after playing Crash on Volturnous. the bins accidently made it into the final product if I recall properly. thats funny I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 November 30, 2010 - 6:34pm | Though they would have to get on a ship to at least get to where the bap bins were so they could bap on down.... " 'Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." |
 December 16, 2010 - 4:35pm | I have a game rule on bapping credits or anything of value is that a certified person has to be present for credits to be bapped for a fee of course. Any bapped credits that are not handled in this way will have an anomaly that will have them declared as counterfeit and you will be arrested. In my game any transactions over a certain amount can be audited. The credits will be subjected to scans and compared to a encoding that is kept classified for proof of authenticity. With more on any art objects that have value has to be in a holding area until proof that it is the real deal. The list of why you do not use a bap bin to transport certain items is very long and has no limit to what can be added to the list of things that can happen when a bap bin gets used to frequent. You will see the players start to look seriously into using shuttles to transport items. If it is cargo, you better have a legitimate cargo manifest from the pickup point to the drop off point. My group found out the hard way that fuel pellets cannot be bapped. My ruling is the more basic the structure the safer it is to bap and bap created stuff will always have a problem with it somehow. So, feel free to bap all you want just make sure it is something that does not have any value that could be questioned. I have available in most of the systems a "FedEx" type of service that will transport the stuff for you for a fee also but not reflected to the items value but you can provide your own security for a fee per person with a spacers license to escort cargo. The real fun is watching the players get and upkeep the license to transport or get a cargo license, just a way to fleece the players of their hard earned credits, lol. You have to make it tough for them to sneak stuff around so that if they are trying to do some not so ethical or moral exchange that it is not new to the system and the chance for getting caught is high and could carry a high price for just trying even if you did not mean to. |
