 October 1, 2012 - 7:11pm | Reference: Rethinking the Plague Worlds So I'm planning some uses for the plague worlds in my campaign for my kids. I'd love some input from others in this project.  The short version of the thread I linked to is that I'm planning a story line that has Alpha, Delta, and Gamma being the main planets of a long-dead civilization. EDIT - MOST RECENTLY I'm thinking: Gamma - Originally the cradle of the civilization - heavy population at the time of the civilization's death. Destruction was almost complete, but whatever method was used was not as complete as on Delta. What was left behind was a wasteland with some survivors. Some people survived in underground bunkers. Some plants and animals survived as well. "Gamma" world has now warped these remnants into something else. Delta - The first colony - completely annihalated in a cataclysmic attack by the Clikks thousands of years ago. The remains of the planet - NEED NEW IDEA - perhaps some uber violent mutated life form rules as top of the food chain now. Something so dangerous it would warrant a quarrantine. Uninhabitable System - A Clikk super weapon destroyed the atmosphere of this planet, completely killing every living thing on the planet. Binary Star - A small colony that died out once contact was broken off from the homeworlds. Or Perhaps a group survived but over the millenia no longer remember their roots. Perhaps an industrial civilization? Alpha - The newest colony. An outpost at the time of collapse. Perhaps the colonists died out without support from the homeworld. - No plague world. Perhaps they were wiped out by the same weapons. Another possibility I'm considering is some hostile alien being discovered ala Aliens or Pitch Black. |
 October 2, 2012 - 4:56pm | Personal take here. Delta - Compared to other Sci-Fi games SF has the fewest planets to play with. Making Delta an instant kill planet takes one planet away. Go with bad radiation but some limited time on planet is possible with the right equipment. Also thinking radiation should not interfere with scanning and finding some clues. Gamma - Sounds good. Alpha - Sounds good but only as the starting point of the campaign. Players start there and find the clues which lead them to Delta where their hopes of vast riches and fame are shattered by the complete devastation. Until they find the clues that lead them to Gamma. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 October 3, 2012 - 2:10am | I use the plague worlds as post-apocalyptic planets. The UPF does not have an accurate idea what is there, because when they sent ships to scout out those systems in the early days of exploration, they did not return. Those systems have been listed as "dangerous", and are off-limits to everyday travellers. My campaign has been in continuous play for a long time, with several different groups, which has given it plenty of opportunity to develop into a rich, complex setting. I consider myself lucky to have players at all these days. And yes, one of those groups is my own kids. |
October 3, 2012 - 2:17am | In re-reading your initial post, Once, I like what I see. Each world has a different tone, and a different level of destruction/recovery. I also like the whole "cradle of civilization" idea. |
October 3, 2012 - 12:37pm | In re-reading your initial post, Once, I like what I see. Each world has a different tone, and a different level of destruction/recovery. I also like the whole "cradle of civilization" idea. Thanks. You know at first, I was considering JUST re-explaining the plague worlds. But I like what you said on the other post about the larger frontier being an empire at some point prior to an interstellar war. I hadn't really thought of it like that, mostly because Jedion has done such a fantastic job in his Frontier Timeline project, that I was kind of "Done" with the core worlds. I need to chew on the idea a while. |
October 3, 2012 - 12:49pm | This was one of my favorite posts from the forum thread: Maybe a technological virus was engineered by one
political group for use against another. It infects tech of all sorts
(robots, computers, fancy toasters, etc.). The original idea was that
the virus would cause the circuitry to identify itself as defective or
as an enemy and destroy itself or at least shut down. But the creators
of the virus had no idea that it would interact with primary function
programming the way it did, and so the robots, computers, and automated
systems of the planet identified its designers as defective enemies and
started trying to destroy them. This technological war was brutal. UPF and various corporations with interests on the world all tried desperately to help, but nothing they could do would immunize their technology from this virus, which now was infecting nanites (once used for construction and repair, now simply vehicles for the spread of the virus to "liberate" tech still slaved to the defective creators). The virus kept mutating and causing off-shoots to the core tech regime, some of which is occasionally helpful to creators but none of which are powerful enough to stand up to the ruling technocracy. Eventually the world was regretably identified as a plague world, leaving behind a very small remnant population unable to be rescued and unable to interact with technology in any way. These few remaining people live their lives in hiding from the word's oppressive unceasing hunt for biological "creators". No ship of the frontier is permitted to come within 1 light year of the planet, out of fear that the ruling tech might develop wireless technology which can breach firewalls and other defenses of ship's passive sensor arrays. It would be fun to be hired to land a ship (which will likely turn against its passengers on the way down!) and rescue the daughter of a merchant that was forced to jettison in an escape pod when attacked by pirates. Being forced to use simple tools and items against a technologically superior foe would be a lot less like an armed rescue operation and more like a cat and mouse game, trying to avoid direct confrontation where possible. How would such a rescue operation end? How could they get offworld? This could be a great explanation for why planets that have surviving descendants are not seen in the frontier space lanes. A technological virus would single handedly wipe out interstellar travel. I think one of the MANY incarnations of Traveller uses this premise as well. |
 October 3, 2012 - 3:32pm | I think this virus idea is interesting but I don't see how you can keep it contained. At least not with the technology setting of the Frontier and not as described. To me it basically becomes a Beserker (ala Fred Saberhagen) universe with the twist that anytime a Frontier vessel comes in contact with one of the ship, it is infected and turns on the Frontier races. The Sathar will probably be immune to the virus (unless they co-opted too much Frontier tech) but possibly not from the "kill the biologicals" imperative. Like I said, I don't see how you could keep this contained to a single system. It is described as an evolving infection and I think all it would take was to infect one level 6 robot brain that could then direct others and it would be off and running. If you assume there is some sort of AI directing it, then the first ship they captured would show that there were "creators" on other systems and would provide astrogation information. Maybe you could limit it by invoking the "human needed for astrogation calculations" that KH implies and say the AI can't figure out how to do the jumps, but really all that is is just math and an infected computer with a level 2-3 analysis program could probably figure it out. And if your SF universe uses the 1 LY/day travel type of FTL (ala warp drive style) described by AD, limiting it is even harder to justify I think. Then all you need is a ship and a telescope to keep it pointed in the right direction  .The original post brings up another issue as well. There is no way to enforce a 1ly radius quarentine on the system (or any system for that matter). If you assume KH style jump travel between systems, You'd have to post ships/sensors at regular intervals to patrol the entire volume of space enclosed within that 1 ly as ships could show up anywhere. Otherwise a ship could jump in and jump out and no one would know. Of course that means that all of those ships/sensors would be exposed to the very threat you are trying to guard against. And if you had that many ships in the area, you wouldn't even have to worry about the wireless aspect being developed. All they would have to do is build a few rockets to get things moving with a nanite (something I don't have in my SF universe) or small robot payload. Get it going in the general direction of some of the ships, deploy the payload to disperse an ever increasing cloud of nanites, and then wait. Eventually some of those nanites or small robots will run into one of the patrolling ships and then you've got it. And even if you use the AD style 1ly/day warp drive style FTL, and assuming that ships not using FTL drive can detect ships passing that are, you'd still have to patrol the entire surface area of that sphere to keep ships from entering. At 1 LY radius, the sphere has a total surface area of 1.124x1027 square kilometers (that's 1.125 thousand trillion trillion). For comparison, the standard KH energy sensors (which are way underpowered in my opinion), has an effective range of 500,000 km or can sense ships crossing a plane that covers 7.85x1011 square kilometers. In other words, you'd need ~1.43x1021 ships/sensors to patrol that sphere (that 1.43 billion trillion i.e 1,430,000,000,000,000,000,000). It's not going to happen  . There is no way to pay for it, let alone build it. And even if you increased the effective range of the sensors by 1000 (which is probably too much), the number of sensors needed only drops by a factor of a million (lose 6 zeros off that number) which is still way to many to deal with.However, if a plausable way of limiting the virus to the single world can be explained, it would definitely be a fun campaign to run. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
October 3, 2012 - 4:20pm | Yes, I like that too. Very much like what I did. |
October 3, 2012 - 8:04pm | I think this virus idea is interesting but I don't see how you can keep it contained. At least not with the technology setting of the Frontier and not as described. To me it basically becomes a Beserker (ala Fred Saberhagen) universe with the twist that anytime a Frontier vessel comes in contact with one of the ship, it is infected and turns on the Frontier races. The Sathar will probably be immune to the virus (unless they co-opted too much Frontier tech) but possibly not from the "kill the biologicals" imperative. Like I said, I don't see how you could keep this contained to a single system. It is described as an evolving infection and I think all it would take was to infect one level 6 robot brain that could then direct others and it would be off and running. If you assume there is some sort of AI directing it, then the first ship they captured would show that there were "creators" on other systems and would provide astrogation information. Maybe you could limit it by invoking the "human needed for astrogation calculations" that KH implies and say the AI can't figure out how to do the jumps, but really all that is is just math and an infected computer with a level 2-3 analysis program could probably figure it out. And if your SF universe uses the 1 LY/day travel type of FTL (ala warp drive style) described by AD, limiting it is even harder to justify I think. Then all you need is a ship and a telescope to keep it pointed in the right direction .The original post brings up another issue as well. There is no way to enforce a 1ly radius quarentine on the system (or any system for that matter). If you assume KH style jump travel between systems, You'd have to post ships/sensors at regular intervals to patrol the entire volume of space enclosed within that 1 ly as ships could show up anywhere. Otherwise a ship could jump in and jump out and no one would know. Of course that means that all of those ships/sensors would be exposed to the very threat you are trying to guard against. And if you had that many ships in the area, you wouldn't even have to worry about the wireless aspect being developed. All they would have to do is build a few rockets to get things moving with a nanite (something I don't have in my SF universe) or small robot payload. Get it going in the general direction of some of the ships, deploy the payload to disperse an ever increasing cloud of nanites, and then wait. Eventually some of those nanites or small robots will run into one of the patrolling ships and then you've got it. And even if you use the AD style 1ly/day warp drive style FTL, and assuming that ships not using FTL drive can detect ships passing that are, you'd still have to patrol the entire surface area of that sphere to keep ships from entering. At 1 LY radius, the sphere has a total surface area of 1.124x1027 square kilometers (that's 1.125 thousand trillion trillion). For comparison, the standard KH energy sensors (which are way underpowered in my opinion), has an effective range of 500,000 km or can sense ships crossing a plane that covers 7.85x1011 square kilometers. In other words, you'd need ~1.43x1021 ships/sensors to patrol that sphere (that 1.43 billion trillion i.e 1,430,000,000,000,000,000,000). It's not going to happen . There is no way to pay for it, let alone build it. And even if you increased the effective range of the sensors by 1000 (which is probably too much), the number of sensors needed only drops by a factor of a million (lose 6 zeros off that number) which is still way to many to deal with.However, if a plausable way of limiting the virus to the single world can be explained, it would definitely be a fun campaign to run. Perhaps if we built a large wooden badger... I like the premise in general. I think the thing that appeals to me the most is that it would answer the question of how a spacefaring civilization is no longer in space, especially if remnants of their civilization survived. I think I would use the idea as a component of a more comprehensive TOTAL WAR as opposed to a single explanation for everything. Perhaps a long, protracted interstellar war. With several stages, the last being a virus that knocked out the civ's space travel capabilities, and culminates in their worlds being defensless against later orbital assaults. These assaults were the end of it, leaving the planets a nuclear/bio wasteland. One of the things about the BSG reboot was the Cylon Virus that affected all the newer vipers and battlestars, etc. shutting them down before the fight. It was spread by networked computers. Adama had all the old-skool ships ready for mothballs and they survived to fight another day. Perhaps the virus could be limited by only working within a prescribed type of technology. For example, a crystalline based tech like the Eorna/Mechanon, but not affecting 'lower' IC based tech like in the frontier. Simliar to the aforementioned 'Networked Only' scenario. Anyways interesting stuff. I'm thinking that these are NOT the tetrarchs, but some other civilization, perhaps a contemporary of the Clikks? I need to find out more about them. I guess if it's to be 800-900 years, the Sathar would work. Longer would probably need to be Clikks? |
 October 4, 2012 - 5:35am | you could do things like say that the Royal Marines are a little bit anal line Adama was and thus their computer security measures are better than most and thus a Royal Marine vessel gets a save: 40% or whatever. Computers by level might have different susceptibility as well- a lvl 1 computer might be too stupid to corrupt? its save is 80% Higher level equipment lvl 5 or 6 might become infected and be able to tell you that its been infected and report programs x & Y are now corrupted and z is about to crash, you have 136 secounds before full system corruption- allow the PCs a RS check to get in one action before this happens- something like pulling a plug or throwing a circut breaker to shut down the device or computer. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 4, 2012 - 2:38pm | Wow a virus which knocks out technology and leads to a Frontier wide technology collapse resulting in Post Apocalyptic problems. You do realize this is the basis for MegaTraveller. You can find alot of good ideas on how far and fast planets would fall from this virus and what survival rates would be from the source books. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
October 4, 2012 - 4:15pm | Wow a virus which knocks out technology and leads to a Frontier wide technology collapse resulting in Post Apocalyptic problems. You do realize this is the basis for MegaTraveller. You can find alot of good ideas on how far and fast planets would fall from this virus and what survival rates would be from the source books. I remembered reading about this stuff somewhere in Traveller. Thay have SO MANY different versions I couldn't remember which one :) |
October 4, 2012 - 4:33pm | This was version 2 an attempt to renew the game by going backwards. Which should have been a hint about how it was going to go over. A for effort and giving us alot of good things to work with. D for thinking this was the direction the entire Imperium should go with. You can think of Megatraveller as the Zeb's Guide of Traveller. You either loved it or hated it but generally used some not all of it. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
October 4, 2012 - 5:10pm | Millions of years ago, the Tetrarchs existed. We know a few things about them. We know that they left behind ruins, on many planets. We have seen their heiroglyphics, depicting Humans, Vrusk, and other species (some of which we cannot identify). We know that they had a civilization that spanned the entire galaxy for a very long time. We do not know what role Humans & others may have had in their society. Did they manipulate us like chess pieces? Did they have a hand in our development? Are we related to them? We do not know. The Tetrarchs have also been referred to as the Ancients, or the First Ones. No matter what you call them, they remain just as mysterious. Slightly less mysterious is the fact that at some point between 10,000 years ago and 1000 years ago, there was a different technologically advanced spacefaring civilization here in the Frontier. They appear to have been human. Their relatively recent ruins are scattered throughout the Frontier. Unfortunately, someone picked over these ruins long before our current age, and there is little left that can give us information about these people. What little information we do have comes second-hand from a handful of writings by a mysterious species known as the Clikks, who appear to have traded with them. Although much of the Clikk language has yet to be translated, we know that they referred to these humans as the "Thinkers". Whoever the Thinkers were, we know that they traded slaves and technology with the Clikks. We believe that Thinker technology was better than our own in many ways. There are stories that they had machines so small that they could only be seen with a microscope, and that these "micro-machines" could enter the body, and repair it when it was injured. There are also stories that their computers were vulnerable to germs and viruses, like living organisms. There are many myths & legends about the Thinkers, and it can be hard to separate facts from folk tales. Many years ago, we were very lucky to find the remains of a crashed Thinker ship, apparently shot down in some ancient war. As every Frontier child knows, that discovery led to the reverse-engineering of a Thinker engine, which facilitated the development of the Ek Tsimin stardrive, the immediate predecessor to our modern Void engines. Who were the Thinkers, and what became of them? Did they wipe themselves out in some great star-spanning war? Did they have some connection to the Tetrarachs, or were those First Ones just as mysterious to them as they are to us? We may never know. |
October 4, 2012 - 6:12pm | My plague worlds are: |
October 5, 2012 - 6:35am | The Thinker systems include Beta, Delta, Gamma and Zeta. The ancient Thinker home system is (according to the Zebulon's Guide map) the "system without habitable planets" just below Madderly.
This is great stuff. I was thinking about doing the same thing with the homeworld being the uninhabitable planet. Figuring it is uninhabitable because of the war... I love the whole ancient death machines angle... |
October 5, 2012 - 6:35am | The Thinker systems include Beta, Delta, Gamma and Zeta. The ancient Thinker home system is (according to the Zebulon's Guide map) the "system without habitable planets" just below Madderly.
This is great stuff. I was thinking about doing the same thing with the homeworld being the uninhabitable planet. Figuring it is uninhabitable because of the war... I love the whole ancient death machines angle... |
 October 7, 2012 - 11:50pm | bossmoss, that was an excellent setting set-up. I may tap you for some work for the StarFrontiersman. |
November 13, 2012 - 8:11am | So in my setting, I'm planning on using the lines from the jump routes and the shapes of the stars as the logo/seal/flag representing the fallen empire. Perhaps including Prenglar system as well. The beginning of the plotline can be the discovery of one of the planets - probably Alpha - and there have the PCs discover artifacts with a common symbol. The Binary Star System would be an unusual feature that a frontier astrogator could hone in on to give a frame of reference to the other star systems. I like what RT said here: "Delta - Compared to other Sci-Fi games SF has the fewest planets to play with. Making Delta an instant kill planet takes one planet away. Go with bad radiation but some limited time on planet is possible with the right equipment. Also thinking radiation should not interfere with scanning and finding some clues. - True - I think I was trying to capture the idea that an entire planet was destroyed by something - but the uninhabitable planet in the area will do the same job nicely! Gamma - Sounds good. Alpha - Sounds good but only as the starting point of the campaign. Players start there and find the clues which lead them to Delta where their hopes of vast riches and fame are shattered by the complete devastation. Until they find the clues that lead them to Gamma." This is a great angle. Kind of an anti-reveal. I want to funnel everything to Gamma and have there be some crazy GW-type stuff going on there. I'm even thinking of running new characters born ON GAMMA - not giving my kids too much backstory, but causing them to think we're playing a different game. Run some adventures where they develop their characters a bit, and then have the series culminate in them being discovered by "themselves" ie their main Star Frontiers characters somehow. I wouldn't want mutants running unchecked through the frontier, but I do like my kids having more heroic characters and would allow them to have the only mutants before the system got quarrantined by the UPF. |
November 13, 2012 - 8:51am | Fleshing it out a little more: I think that I'm going to have the Clikks be the reason for the extinction of this Fallen Empire. I'm thinking of having the FE and the Clikks being contemporary species, both the progeny of the mysterious ancients. Perhaps the Tetrarchs set them up as an alien ant farm, but as the FE grew and gained in technology, the Clikks were rising up against their Ancient masters and finally threw them off, causing the disapperance of the Tetrarchs 10k years ago. The Clikks were shorter lived as a civilization but began their reign by enslaving or destroying other regional powers. The FE was destroyed as a race as they were a threat to the Clikks' climb to power. The Clikks, like the Goa-uld in SG-1 used the technology of their former masters, but lacked the ability to re-create it or in many cases to repair it. Once ancient gadgets and weapons started being destroyed or breaking down, their power began to wane. Once this happened, other slave species, such as the Sathar/Ssessu and the Zuraqqor began to ascend to power as the Clikks waned. In the long view, I'm thinking that the Clikks should be the new bad guys that make the Sathar look like school yard bullies. I plan on having SW 2 be an event that pushes the Sathar back - a couple of Sathar planets get revealed and destroyed - they get pushed back - still dangerous, but not the looming overarching threat they are made out to be in the AD setting. The Clikks are probably somewhere off the map, engaged in an on and off war with another race the frontier has yet to encounter. I'd love to have the PCs have a couple of encounters with them on a small scale: Aftermath of Starmist have there be some threat where they are almost unleashed from stasis or something... I'm thinking the uninhabited planet in the FE could be a place that was heavily populated, but some weapon the Clikks used destroyed the atmosphere in the span of a few hours. Something to give the impression that if they ever returned/turned their eyes to the frontier, the battle would be short. Kind of like the Reapers in Mass Effect, but never have them as more than a vague threat... |
November 13, 2012 - 4:52pm | You know back when I went to seminary we had requirements for the degree that included a paltry few credits in science, math, englis, psycology & there always be one whiney baby that would cry about, "I came here to study the Bible why do I have to take this science class anyway?". So when I took the science class the professor figured she would try to make the class aplicable and required we do a term paper on survival. Having been a hardcore camper and backpacker i was already bored with the though of doing that and did a report on surviving nucleat war. Long and the short of it is there are three major radio active elements produced in a nuclear explosion that you have to worry about each with different half lives. You're not going to have insane levels of radio activity after 900 years. - i just reread the opening post and thought I should mention that. If you are careful and wait something like 5that days after a nuke you cqn come out if the bomb shelter. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 13, 2012 - 6:50pm | You know back when I went to seminary we had requirements for the degree that included a paltry few credits in science, math, englis, psycology & there always be one whiney baby that would cry about, "I came here to study the Bible why do I have to take this science class anyway?". So when I took the science class the professor figured she would try to make the class aplicable and required we do a term paper on survival. Having been a hardcore camper and backpacker i was already bored with the though of doing that and did a report on surviving nucleat war. Long and the short of it is there are three major radio active elements produced in a nuclear explosion that you have to worry about each with different half lives. You're not going to have insane levels of radio activity after 900 years. - i just reread the opening post and thought I should mention that. If you are careful and wait something like 5that days after a nuke you cqn come out if the bomb shelter. You raise a great point. I editied my original post as I was already going to chuck the idea of the instant-kill planet anyways because of Rattraveler's comments. I need to come up with another couple of ideas. I want the main thrust of the group of planets to be the Gamma World planet. I don't really want to emphasize too much on the other planets (read: don't want to spend THAT kind of time) - so I'm looking for simple, feasible solutions. I guess a wall-E kind of wasteland with only insect and minor plant life could be a possible outcome on one of the worlds. Or perhaps the Clikk atmospheric weapon claimed two of the systems... |
November 13, 2012 - 7:02pm | I just did a quick search of the internet and found that the information just on wikipedia is more extensive than what I remember but when I did that report the internet was just begining to be called the world wide web and my most fruitful research was done the old fashioned way in an actual library. I still think that intense radiation levels are not plausible but I like the idea of lingering contamination that is an environmental hazard- I seem to remember writing an article on radiation sickness for the SFman a while back. also it seems to me that to have 5 different causes for 5 different destroyed planets is too coincidental what if it was one primary cause like an attack by overwhelming force from space but with secondary contributing factors- on one planet bio labs had experimental samples released into the general environment with bad results, one another tectonic and volcanic activity was catalyzed by the attack and this lead to serious destruction. on another something else I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 13, 2012 - 7:14pm | I just did a quick search of the internet and found that the information just on wikipedia is more extensive than what I remember but when I did that report the internet was just begining to be called the world wide web and my most fruitful research was done the old fashioned way in an actual library. I still think that intense radiation levels are not plausible but I like the idea of lingering contamination that is an environmental hazard- I seem to remember writing an article on radiation sickness for the SFman a while back. Yeah - the setting needs an ongoing contagion or something to make the GW setting work. Maybe a microbial/mutagenic bioweapon instead? An engineered life form that causes death for most, mutation for the few stongest. A few millenia and the little guys chill out a bit, but mutations still occur. Maybe the Clikks are too far in the past to feasibly cause a GW setting. Maybe nature would recover after several thousand years. Maybe a few planets survive the Clikks after they take out two of their planets. Later on these guys kill themselves off in an interstellar war. Or maybe the Sathar finish them off? BTW - what do you think of the name: The Akaiian Imperium? (uh-kay-un) |
November 13, 2012 - 9:24pm | Sounds like Acadian, but its pronouncible which is also important. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 14, 2012 - 12:39am | @OFO, I am sending you a file I was remastering for the SFman. It is an old article from Imagine magazine called "The Sarafand Files". It might give you some ideas for your plotline. |
 August 7, 2016 - 1:05pm | There is no way to enforce a 1ly radius quarentine on the system (or any system for that matter). If you assume KH style jump travel between systems, You'd have to post ships/sensors at regular intervals to patrol the entire volume of space enclosed within that 1 ly as ships could show up anywhere. Otherwise a ship could jump in and jump out and no one would know. Of course that means that all of those ships/sensors would be exposed to the very threat you are trying to guard against. And even if you use the AD style 1ly/day warp drive style FTL, and assuming that ships not using FTL drive can detect ships passing that are, you'd still have to patrol the entire surface area of that sphere to keep ships from entering. At 1 LY radius, the sphere has a total surface area of 1.124x1027 square kilometers (that's 1.125 thousand trillion trillion). For comparison, the standard KH energy sensors (which are way underpowered in my opinion), has an effective range of 500,000 km or can sense ships crossing a plane that covers 7.85x1011 square kilometers. In other words, you'd need ~1.43x1021 ships/sensors to patrol that sphere (that 1.43 billion trillion i.e 1,430,000,000,000,000,000,000). It's not going to happen . There is no way to pay for it, let alone build it. And even if you increased the effective range of the sensors by 1000 (which is probably too much), the number of sensors needed only drops by a factor of a million (lose 6 zeros off that number) which is still way to many to deal with.What if you posit that a) subspace/FTL communications do not exist (admittedly screamingly non-canonical, but that's the way I like to play it), and b) astrogation works the way Terl Obar's described, where the length of the trip is basically due to the need to develop a precise enough fix on the destination? Then, rather than having to monitor/interdict the entire surface of a 1-ly radius sphere around the system under quarantine, couldn't you just station ships along the jump routes to that system from the nearby systems? This would not rule out the possibility of jumping to some point in deep space and then jumping from there into the quarantined system, but that approach might be astrogationally chancy enough to keep most beings from attempting it. Or perhaps fuel/overhaul constraints could limit that tactic. Alternatively, could the quarantine be “enforced” by an artificially (somehow) induced Kessler effect? I'm thinking about this at least as much in terms of system defense strategies in a strategic Knight Hawks game (http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/5578) as in the original post's plague-world virus scenario (though that has me interested too). |
August 7, 2016 - 6:36pm | It would be easier to enforce the jump route restrictions on the outbound leg in the other systems. There really isn't an inbound jump lane. You could show up anywhere in the system, only if you were exactly accurate in your line up pre jump would you be on a vector between the two systems. More likely you'll end up above or below the plane or left or right of center or some combination. Small errors in your line up vector will result in large errors at the other end. While there is probably an area of higher probability, it will still be very large. There are problems with interdiction at the origin system as well but they will probably be smaller. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
