With the speed issue, it seems we've sort of got two conflicting desires. On the one hand, we want to be able to get around quickly, because we do. On the other hand, being able to engage in kinetic bombardment with ease is also troublesome.
If ships slow down when they get too close to each other, that sort of deals with that. And speed drives already have to slow down around a planet, so that also handles that.
Which leaves the more traditional (at least in the "they did it in Schlock Mercenary" sense) method of getting up to speed on a course for your target, letting go of your Adequately Heavy Object, and heading off about your business.
The simplest way to handle that would be to just say that when an object leaves a drive field, it loses the velocity imparted by that field? (AKA, it probably stops moving.)
I still don't like this idea of not being able to make weapons on purpose. Sure, you shouldn't be able to just spontaneously build things like what Fnord listed. They should have to be something really *weird*. But if you can't even try to do things *on purpose*, there won't be any justification for most people to have any effective weaponry at all... except for the Boskonians. And it's hard to make a story containing any kind of conflict work with that kind of force imbalance. (The only exception to this I'm aware of is "invulnerability comedy", which isn't exactly suitable for this setting.)
Now, on to a different question... gravity fields. When you have two ships (or things larger) with artifical gravity, and one intersects the other, whose field wins for what purposes?
-Morgan. Irony!"I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me."
---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
-----(Not really)
If ships slow down when they get too close to each other, that sort of deals with that. And speed drives already have to slow down around a planet, so that also handles that.
Which leaves the more traditional (at least in the "they did it in Schlock Mercenary" sense) method of getting up to speed on a course for your target, letting go of your Adequately Heavy Object, and heading off about your business.
The simplest way to handle that would be to just say that when an object leaves a drive field, it loses the velocity imparted by that field? (AKA, it probably stops moving.)
I still don't like this idea of not being able to make weapons on purpose. Sure, you shouldn't be able to just spontaneously build things like what Fnord listed. They should have to be something really *weird*. But if you can't even try to do things *on purpose*, there won't be any justification for most people to have any effective weaponry at all... except for the Boskonians. And it's hard to make a story containing any kind of conflict work with that kind of force imbalance. (The only exception to this I'm aware of is "invulnerability comedy", which isn't exactly suitable for this setting.)
Now, on to a different question... gravity fields. When you have two ships (or things larger) with artifical gravity, and one intersects the other, whose field wins for what purposes?
-Morgan. Irony!"I have no interest in ordinary humans. If there are any aliens, time travelers, or espers here, come sleep with me."
---From "The Ecchi of Haruhi Suzumiya"
-----(Not really)