[TML] Scientific realism

[John Kwon]

On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 1:08 PM, Anthony Jackson <ajackson at iii.com> wrote:

> Jerry W Barrington wrote:
>
> > I'm thinking of investigating Attack Vector: Tactical, as it attempts to
> get
> > back to the physics of the matter instead of starting from what the
> author
> > would *like* things to be.
>
> That's something of an exaggeration. Ken Burnside did quite a bit of
> tuning of the tech assumptions to try and produce a tactically
> interesting game.
>

I don't believe there will be any major fundamental changes in our real life
understanding of physics (certainly not one that will suddenly usher in
antigravity and FTL travel as mere engineering problems),   So on the topic
of tech assumptions, I have to have a few handwaves in there, and adopt a
"view" of those handwaves that lends the campaign some consistency.

Take "jump flash" for instance.  I have no real reason for it to be in
there, other than I like the idea (especially if it looks like the jump
sequence in the Babylon 5 series).

As for the "real life" physics of space combat, we're already on the cusp of
having the real ability to at least fight in near Earth orbit - there are
now several missile systems employed by the US that work in tests (and some
in combat).  Is there a real reason that all of the missiles that work are
"kinetic kill"?

So, in my campaign, the missiles are kinetic kill.  It's probably going to
do more damage than anything short of a very, very large thermonuclear
weapon.

I limit the lasers in my campaign to 50,000km, and the particle beam weapons
to 5000km (fusion weapons in my campaign are essentially particle beam
weapons, not fusion/plasma weapons).  Instead of huge accelerators, in my
campaign the accelerators are laser-driven, so they get to be more compact.

Yeah, there are a lot of changes.  But I feel that when Traveller was first
written, things like HE missiles sounded ok for space combat - and particle
accelerators that used lasers to drive the acceleration didn't even exist.

And of course, there are shows and movies that have neat ideas that just for
cosmetics, I like to have in the campaign.