"Multi system Combat without Spaceships" Topic

Let us assume that in a time long from now, We don't have a better way to get to Orbit and space travel is limited to thruster technology.

What handwavium technology can we insert into a setting to allow us to fight over different planets in different Star systems.

There is always the classic Star Gates. An Ancient and misunderstood lost tech of a Solar subway system.

There is the concept of gate technology that opens passages between system.

I was just exploring what other ideas are there.

Thanks

Tesseracts.

Dimensional travel.

String surfing.

One cool Idea I came up with (or I think I did) was that FTL travel is impossible, but TIME Travel is not. You can go backwards and forwards in time. BUT your position in the UNIVERSE doesn't change. Not your position on EARTH, but the universe as a whole. So as you travel in time, the Earth and sun and galaxy MOVE--leaving you (and your ship, hopefully) behind. By calculating stellar motions and traveling the right number of years, you can end up in other star systems. You might even be able to get back to Earth. Of course there are a million other problems with this system, but it is different and cool :)

Orbital Elevators to get stuff up into space, along with small spacecraft/shuttles being launched off the backs of aircraft.

Laser propulsion seems to be one of the best theoretical ways to get spaceships to distant planets and stars quickly, though keeping them focused on vessels so far away would seem to be a real challenge, as well as how to get them back, or to maneuver around stuff that might get in the way, e.g. asteroids, comets, meteors, dust clouds, radiation belts, etc., etc.

Orbital Elevators will completely change access to orbital space. Sure, it's a 5-day trip up to GEO Station (36,000km at 200-300kph) and another 5 days to the end of the whip, but you're basically paying railroad freight costs to get there.

Once you're in orbit, you're halfway to ANYWHERE.

The problem with laser propulsion is that you need 300 megawatts of laser to get one newton of thrust. The laser system used in the movie Avatar would have enough power to make a pretty good approximation of the Death Star, if not Starkiller Base.

Per Frank Herbert's Dune: have your spice-empowered Navigator fold space around the ship.

Well, looks like some basics have been covered – A drive system that moves back in time but forwards in space would be the Manschenn Drive of A Bertram Chandler's books, and it has some other intriguing possibilities for this discussion, as sometimes, the Drive malfunctions and sends ships way back into the past or into an alternate timeline.
As for folding space, this has been around for years and there's no theoritical reason one couldn't do it from a planetary surface as well.
Stargates are a lot of fun for various reasons – the most well-knwon used a lot of computer time to locate each gate due to planetary movement and access to better routes might be a cause for conflict.
But let's move into other territory. Since the late 70s, telpathy has been a bit of a dead genre in "Literate" SF for reasons that reflect modern scientific thinking more than anything else ( But Kudos to the TV show "Ascension" for coming up with a clever excuse and a neat go-around ) but computer technology has been moving towards techniques that might do just as well. Combine that with other techniques, and you might be able to invade other planets in the bodies of the locals, by downloading minds into their brains and taking control. Better yet, you could even send instructions to create a force of your own in another society, by modifying the technique used in Robert Sawyer's novel "Rollback" or for our older English readers "A For Andromeda".

Basically all the other systems of travel (without needing to go into space) end up being a stargate. No need for them to be lost ancient tech either, they could be the regular tech in the fictional universe in question.

Another possibility is not going to different planets but going to different Earths by jumping parallels. Each one can be as similar or different as desired. A number of stories cover this as possible source material.

Wormholes a'la "Farscape".

Very similar to star gates are wormholes. We happened to find one when we sent a probe to Jupiter and it just…disappeared. (cue dramatic music).

Generation ships…really big ones…with room to grow. So we send one to Alpha Nextsunium and it takes 300 generations to get there. When it takes off, there are only a few hundred people aboard and it's mostly powered down. But when it lands it fully functional and has a population of a few million, and they are looking for a bigger place to call home. There's your battle for another planet, we just won't be around to see it.

Traveller 2300/2300AD –

Stutterwarp is used for FTL interstellar travel
can also be used for insystem travel altho at STL speeds

obtaining orbit is still the old fashioned way
altho a 'bit' more efficient
using MHD turbines

space elevators are available
but are few and expensive

TransMats. Send a STL ship to another system. It lands and the A.I. sets up a Matter Transporter grid Like those matte airfields. You then transmat a explorationt, then set up a outpost, then a colony. Read that somewhere.

Take a massive copper rod and coat it with the Platinum Group element "Metal X". Next, while exposing said rod to the radiation field of a particle accelerator, apply an electric current to the rod. This will generate a field that will accelerate a ship faster than the speed of light.

Permanent stargates between points on different worlds, and trains running through them. Trains are cool.

One of the Takeshi Kovacs novels by Richard Morgan is set on a world surrounded by ancient satellites that shoot down basically anything more advanced and/or threatening than a low-flying light helicopter. They use balloons to stimulate them into providing a cool lightshow and fireworks. Fortunately, they have FTL comms and can send mindstates to be downloaded into a new body on arrival, so they don't need to ship people around.

You could always go a bit supernatural. You can't build space navies, but if you find a gate deep in the earth's mantle you can travel through the elemental plane of fire, or go through the plane of water via deep ocean trenches, and come out on another world. Crackpots say there are gates to the so-called plane of void in space, but that's ridiculous.

Folding space works, though I'd think that some place like a La Grange point would probably work best. LGP to LGP travel. I seem to recall this from a book, but from a gaming point of view it is good too because you have entry/emergence points that can be defended or have customs posted. Sort of like a star gate, I guess, though not a physical device that is subject to harm.

farcasters

One thing I can't remember seeing much of is what if you can FTL jump from a planets surface but still need a self-contained vessel to do it? would these space-hopping vessels be built on tank-style chassis, as hovercraft, or like submarines, or instead as otherwise-immobile fortress-like structures?

So, to take a step back, why the requirement for multi-planet combat but no starships?

-Will

For one thing, no spaceships means no arguments about dropping rocks from orbit, or massively powerful engines burning everything. You also don't have to handwave gravity or deal with zero-g.

(seriously though, trains)

Well you can handwave away all of those issues and still have starships; that's why I'm curious why the specific requirement for no spaceships, since that might also make certain non-starship solutions a better fit.

Trains are cool though!

-Will

What fullerene said.

and I am missing the train reference.

or creating a Sci-fi ground campaign without the Space ship combat component

Trains? Galaxy Express 999

Dimensional travel that goes nowhere, but it does take you to alternate Earths. Perhaps there's a limitation that you have to be in orbit and out of the atmosphere in order to bridge the gap between parallel worlds.

tberry7403, you might be skylarking around, but that's a reference I've not heard in a long time . . . A long time :)