The Laws of the Handwave

[Valles]

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If we didn't, the whole first season goes out the window because we can't have plausible space battles against those Boskonians that Haruhi's so worried about... I think what's already been written pretty much forces us to have them as "easily duplicated".

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Nonononono! Forcefield tubes (which I am against, but I don't consider that relevant to my argument) are not in the slightest bit neccessary for boarding operations.
A physical hatch with plasma cutters ringing it and sprayers for some sort of, of fast hardening putty for a pressure seal could do just as well - fly up, ram, latch on, then fire up your cutters to slice the hull open and charge.
For that matter, you could probably do without the pressure seal and hatch if you were willing to stick your marines in armored space suits and let them swim over on their ownsomes.
There's also the Nautilus approach - armored prow, hatch right behind, anti-shock field for your crew and a whole lotta relative velocity.
Finally, I've suggested this before and it kinda sank without a trace, but I've got what I think is a fairly simple way to allow space dogfights and such.
See, the gravitational effects of a major body eventually snap a Speed Drive's maximum speed down to 'fast highway' levels, right? By saying that other drive fields can have the same effect, we force our ships into close proximity at relatively low velocities - ie...
A smaller ship approaches a larger. At a distance determined by their combined mass, they go to atmospheric speed, and stay there until they can get far enough apart to 'disentangle' their drive fields. If this distance is, as I would suggest, no more than a few times visual range, and if there's something in the 'wavium's safety protocols that tries to nuke the range of any hardtech weapon firing through their drive fields (ie, increasing the dissipation rate of a particle beam or something - probably this means that they end up losing energy in all directions and radiating flashily as they fire) then we've got everything we need for a dogfight dropped right in our laps.
That's if both ships are small and lightly armored. Large, tough ships will end up exchanging broadsides or something close to them, and mismatched opponents will have something like a kamikaze scenario to deal with as the boarding craft, by virtue of their size, simply aren't tough enough to stand up to the kind of weapon you can build into a larger hull.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[Norgarth]

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Speaking of such things, do we want to compile a list of the characters' "bests" somewhere? It would help writers (old hands and newcomers both) avoid stepping on other people's toes, and might inspire a few character crossovers...

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The Guiness Book of Fenspace Records? __________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Sirrocco]

Valles: the thing that you suggest for dogfighting is a workable kludge, but I think the question more becomes whether we *want* all that much in the way of space dogfights at anything more than the "you're trying to board, and I'm trying to stop you" level - or pehaps "I want to board, but I'm trying to soften you up first." As far as I can tell, the majority response to that is "no."
Personally, my vote goes for "boarding parties yes, force tubes no." If nothing else, it means that different raider ships will tend to come up with different ways to board, and Fenspace thrives on variety.
Incidentally, the "unfriendlies with hull-cutters" idea means that people are going to *need* to have ways of dealing with sudden loss of hull integrity on their craft, or else they'll die from the vacuum before the raiders even get to them. Alternately, you could figure that at least some of the raiders are out there to capture people and vacum-vulnerable things, and would have designed ways to take the ship without venting it.
For example: a sort of limpet assault pod. you get into the pod, hook it on to the ship, and cut your way in. The pod prevents the interior from losing air pressure - or at least from losing it too quickly. pods designed to fuction off a wide variety of handwaved adhesives/megamagnets/etc, and are well gooped on the contact edge.
Also - a nice, solid reason for Reavers to be mostly focused on capture rather than kill.... Aside from the obvious experiments in biomodding, reavers tend to be pretty unpleasant people, often with a lot of blood nd death on their minds. Their ability to make handwavium devices that work well is limited. Thus, they seek to capture other, more peaceable types, so they can chain them to the floor, and force them (under various threats of unpleasantness) to make devices that the reavers can use and/or pervert. As a bit of a balance, once they've *got* something, their literal bloody-mindedness often means they can force it to do what they want it to more readily than most Fen, which in turn makes them appropriately threatening on the battlefield. Sure, the gear breaks down faster, but you can always grow more handwavium.

[Valles]

I can see your point about dogfighting, but...
This particular handwave - if I may be pardoned the pun - is neccessary if we intend to have people piloting these ships on their ramming runs. Without it, hitting another ship that isn't cooperating is like trying to shoot a bullet out of the air.
The degree of futzing around to be done before the final grapple will vary according to the power of the weapons, the emphasis the combatants placed on defense in their design phase, and of course the mood of the author. This can get you anything from a WWII dogfight like in classic space opera, to Hellenic age 'board or lose', to exchanging broadsides yardarm to yardarm, to crossing the t from the edge of the horizon like in WWI.
It's perfect. It adds options, rather than taking them away.
Ja, -n

===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

[CattyNebulart]

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This particular handwave - if I may be pardoned the pun - is neccessary if we intend to have people piloting these ships on their ramming runs. Without it, hitting another ship that isn't cooperating is like trying to shoot a bullet out of the air.

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Not at all, assuming it takes a few minutes to get up to max speed the relative velocities won't be that different, unless of course they are going for a head on colision, which will be dificult to archieve.
Also this wouldn't affect people with an acceleration drive which would just give wierd results.
Besides how would their absolute velocity be defined? For when they are near a large mass, it is the mass, but when they are in space it becomes relative to what? Each other? Then two ships racing side by side will eventually accelerate to lightspeed.
Besides with that handwave Convoys need to saty out of visial range of each other and while space is plenty big I don't like that image.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bluemage]

One of the ideas I'm working on involves hardtech missiles, so let me just ask this:
What happens if I handwave an empty missile casing? What about one with an engine? Will it give me the same sort of benefits as 'waving a ship hull? Does it still work, as long as the timer/proximity sensor, payload, and flight control software are kept completely hardtech?
I'm thinking that 'waving a missile casing would produce a stronger casing. Same with the engine- better, faster, stronger. Quirky, yes- but stronger. Mind you, a normal explosive wouldn't penetrate its own casing if the casing was 'waved by those rules, but with some pre-added fault lines, that might provide increased armor penetration while remaining mainly hardtech.
Essentially, this boils down to: can a component be 'waved, and combined effectively with hardtech, if the original component could be combined in that fashion?Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines...

---

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Brother Atom Bomb of Courteous Debate. Get yours.

I've been writing a bit.

[Epsilon]

Okay, I'm not going to participate in this as a storyteller but as an mildly interested party I just wanted to point something out.
Why are people so worried about weaponized handwavium when there are already thousands and thousands of weapons of mass destruction in fenspace?
Do you realise how much damage a Buick Skylark will do if it smashes into something at .1c? That's one percent of LIGHTSPEED. That's 29,979,245 meters per second. Ye gods.
All I need is a engine that will send something in a reasonably straight line and and iMac and I can destroy any city on the planet. From the Oort Cloud. Without warning.
Do you realise how hard to intercept something moving at .1c would be? Even for other things moving at .1c it would be damn hard. Space is BIG. Even just within the solar system space is HUGE. Tremendous. Mind-numbing titanic. And there is no way to keep track of it all.
Unless Earth has some sort of sophisticated orbital defense system that is several tech levels beyond anything hard tech could produce in the next ten years it is screwed. Forget payloads. Forget guns. Three tonnes of detroit steel traveling at one percent of the speed of light will blow up stuff real good.
Now, I can understand if you want to ignore this for the purpose of genre emulation. But if you're so concerned with weaponized handwave then the problem isn't nukes, since you already have thousands of them in the setting already.
-------------------
Epsilon

[M Fnord]

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Do you realise how much damage a Buick Skylark will do if it smashes into something at .1c? That's one percent of LIGHTSPEED. That's 29,979,245 meters per second. Ye gods.

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That comes out to, assuming you use a spherical 1998 Buick Syklark of uniform density.... *does math* 145 megatons. Not bad, all things considered.
What was it Nyrath said? "Friends don't let friends use reactionless drives in their universe"?
Oh, and that's ten percent of lightspeed.

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Now, I can understand if you want to ignore this for the purpose of genre emulation. But if you're so concerned with weaponized handwave then the problem isn't nukes, since you already have thousands of them in the setting already.

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Actually we don't have any nukes, just kinetic energy weapons. Big difference.
More seriously, the weaponized handwavium restrictions aren't about stopping kinetic weapons, they're in place to stop people from building Wave Motion Guns, Reflex Cannons, Death Star lasers, widgets that can cast Dragon Slave and other in-genre methods of obliterating the enemy with corcuscating beams of lambent force.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Morganite]

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)

[Sirrocco]

Also, Speed Drives Don't Work So Good In Gravity Well. In particular, we already have a rule that says that you can't get to orbit and back without a bit of time spent in between. For one thing, air friction is one of the things that handwaving hulls does basically nothing for.
We may wish to say that the further in towards the gravity well you are, the less comparative speed you can draw out of a generic speed drive. Initial rule was "gravity helps some, hurts others" but I don't think there are any ships yet described with a deliberately "good in gravity, poor elsewhere" build and it *is* a really good nit.
Another thing to remember about handwaved weapons is that it's the intent that's the big part. If you are handwaving a missile casing with the intent of building a space station, it's fine. If you're handwaving a missile casing with the intent of blowing folks to kingdome come, then you're going to have some troubles.
We may also wish to come up with some handwavey reason why handwavium supertech effects don't function when too distant in space/time from a directing intelligence. Obviously, the requirements involved would depend on the thing in question, but we could at least prevent the "shots from the Oort cloud" effect.
I'm not sure that those answer the entirety of your isse between them - particularly given the existence of people who'd be willing to die in oreder to hurt their enemies, but I do think they at least help a bit.

[M Fnord]

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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.)

---

I'm not gonna lie. The original purpose of the 'wavetech weapons ban was to throw a wrench into arms-racing. I didn't want to see contributors trying to out-twink each other with an endless stream of death ray dick measuring, so I suggested that handwavium can't be used to create death rays.
ETA: Actually, there were two reasons. The first was the one I said above. The other is rooted back in the original proposal where the Mundanes would make just as much use of handwavium as Fandom, only in dull and uninteresting ways. I wanted the 'wave to be something that could only be used for peaceful purposes, in order to keep the 'danelaw from sparking World War Three by weaponizing the shit. It was a desperate handwave in it's own right, but dammit I didn't want to write a depressing story about how the mundanes blew themselves to hell and left the fen squabbling over the wreckage of Earth. ---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[classicdrogn]

I think, the only real way to let travel work and avoid the "space rocks from Gamelon" bombardment issue is to step out side the setting, say You Just Don't Do That because it's out of genre for the kind of story that's intended to be told, and work from there. Kamikaze drones, coil guns, ramships, fine, whatever, but nothing more than anti-ship even with in-'verse justification. Inelegant, perhaps, but trying to rules-lawyer weapons out of possibility by tweaking the local version of physics is just a challenge to find another loophole.
- CDSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
For the next 72 hours, Itachi intoned, I will slap you with this trout. - Spying no Jutsu, chapter 3
"In the futuristic taco bell of the year 20XX, justice wears an aluminum sombrero!"hemlock-martini
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[robkelk]

(Bluemage)

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Essentially, this boils down to: can a component be 'waved, and combined effectively with hardtech, if the original component could be combined in that fashion?

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I certainly hope so - that's how I designed "Noah's angels"...
(Epsilon)

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Unless Earth has some sort of sophisticated orbital defense system that is several tech levels beyond anything hard tech could produce in the next ten years it is screwed.

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Well, there is a Star Wars Fen base in L5 orbit, right beside Stellvia; it makes a certain amount of sense for various 'Dane governments to offer both stations incentives to protect the planet, but that only covers at most one-sixth of the Earth's sky. Also, how they'd protect Earth is something To Be Determined...

(Morganni)

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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?

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The bigger one. It moves more slowly, so it changes more slowly...

(M Fnord)

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...where the Mundanes would make just as much use of handwavium as Fandom, only in dull and uninteresting ways.

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"The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us will go to the stars."

(Edit because inspitation hit just after I pressed "Add Reply"...)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[drakensis]

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Unless Earth has some sort of sophisticated orbital defense system that is several tech levels beyond anything hard tech could produce in the next ten years it is screwed.

---

The 'use a massdriver to accelerate a rock' kinetic weapon is a verified way of getting around the weapons limit. But as per the 'Law' for weapons only one person can use that trick and he's unlikely to be making more, since he got caught and handed over to certain offended individuals.
Just flying a suicide run won't work with speed drives, although it might with an acceleration drive. Does anyone have any suggestions about this?
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[kestrel404]

First, this goes under the heading of 'don't break the shared world'. It's common sense. If you try to break the earth, other authors are going to be unhappy. So there's already a rule for this.
Second, if somebody starts launching asteroids at earth, there will be a lot of people who notice. NASA keeps a close watch on the nearby sky. Amateur astrology is probably getting a huge boost with all the activity in the solar system. And there happens to be a significant population now orbiting the planet, including a bunch of over-active (and often bored) AIs. SOMEONE will notice the asteroids before they get here. And someone else will be more than happy to haul them into orbit for mining ('cause mining closer to your customers is more prophitable) instead of letting them go to waste by smashing into the giant gravity well (Earth/Mars/Venus/etc.).
If we're talking asteroids accelerated to extreme velocities (higher than .1c), then we have to ask: Who did it, and HOW? Accelerating something close to C is REALLY, REALLY tough. Doing it away from the sun, over a distance of lightyears, can be accomplished with solar sails and nifty engineering. Through the vastness of interstellar space, you can collect and use interstellar hydrogen. If you're trying to do it within the confines of this solar system, you're going to need LOTS OF ENERGY. Somebody's going to notice something like that BEFORE the asteroids start flying.
In other words, if somebody comes along and says, 'Oh, I'll just use accelerated asteroids', then someone (most likely Sirocco) will be right there to raise a fuss.
"Not this again!" Minerva said. "Albus, it was You-Know-Who, not you, who marked Harry as his equal. There is no possible way that the prophecy could be talking about you!" - Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality, Chapter 84

[CattyNebulart]

Weapons, and loopholes in general, fall under the lause of don't break the universe.
We can discuss it, but I am sure that solutions to neutralize most threats an be thought of quite easily one we start thingking about it. As mentioned, the orbital populations will be quite an obstacle to overcome for most schems.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Sirrocco]

Well, like Classic was suggesting, we could run with a Universal Law of Drama. You know, like Undocumented Features has "the goodguys win" as a law of physics. Nothing that extreme, though. Perhaps something like "No one pursues destruction for its own sake." and/or "Large-scale villains are motivated by avarice, not hatred."
Under that theme, people who managed to get a means to destroy chunks of the Earth would likely be trying to use it as blackmail, or sell highly surgical strikes for large quantities of money or some such. This gives the heroes enough time to track them down and stop them (Though not necessarily prevent them from doing damage altogether.)
I suppose we could also just run with the "we don't do that - it breaks the world" rule. That may even wind up being the best available alternative. It just feels so *kludgy* to me. (Yes, yes, I know. The irony is forming little condensation droplets on the walls as I type.)

[Morganite]

(Responding to Fnord's last post.)
Both those seem like quite good reasons. And I wouldn't really see it as a problem if it weren't for the Boskonian plotline. As it is, it seems to me like any outcome other than "The Boskonians win" under these rules would be difficult to make believable. Which I don't think is anyone here's idea of fun.
-Morgan.
"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)

[Sirrocco]

For the Boskonians, it's actually pretty easy. Just remember - the Boskonians are in it for the money. Most of the time they don't attack ships in order to kill people - they attack ships in order to take slaves and steal stuff. Up close to pretty much the very end, they wouldn't have any desire or use for a weapon system that would cost significant money to use and utterly destroy the target. It's counterproductive for them to hit large civilian targets destructively, particularly large mundane civilian targets. It upsets people, and doesn't give they any more money. There are potential exceptions - like protecting their thionite production and/or doing a hit hired out by some wealthy organization - but on the whole, just doing damage just isn't worth it.
Also, I woud like to propose "Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean." as one of the Rule 0s.
Also, one that's just come up - I think it was pretty much acepted earlier, but by all means discuss it if you disagree - "Handwavium conserves mass, energy, and momentum. The handwave conservation of energy is a bit loose. Generators of the 'It's getting energy from *somewhere* - I'm just not sure *where* exactly.' school are explicitly permitted. The conservation of momentum is pretty much just a technicality, given that the most common form of speed drive functions by surfing on grav waves. Still, they're all there, and you should be able to give some sort of vague justification about how any suspicious-looking devices avoid breaking them."

[Kokuten]

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avoid the "space rocks from Gamelon" bombardment

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As for the reason that noone is using kinetic energy weapons against the Earth, or as terror weapons..

After the Professor Incident, mentioned in the Grand Unified Timeline, the Fen, and by low profile communications, the 'danes, have agreed on the Eridani Edict.
Again borrowed from the Honorverse, the Eridani Edict is even adhered to by pirates and genetic slavers - you don't huck nukes or KEW at an inhabited world. If you do, _everyone_ is your enemy. All doors are closed to you, and all hands will be raised against you.
Earth is the Mother Planet. No matter who you are, that's where you came from.
The existence of the Eridani Edict, even with the 'weapons-friendlier' 'wavium upgrade, will keep the conflict at a ship-to-ship or fleet-to-fleet level.
Incidental pebbles and dust and buicks can be accounted for by the atmosphere.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[M Fnord]

Okay, this is the latest revision of The Rules. Discuss.

---

GENRE DIRECTIVE:
This is not a dystopia.
Fenspace is intended to be an optimistic near-future space opera. What this means is that neither the Earth nor the rest of the solar system are wracked by wars, corruption, crime, environmental collapse, peak oil, etc. At least, no more so than as of where we stood on New Year's Day, 2007. There are potential rough patches ahead, but the bulk of humanity is looking forward and has better than even odds of making it through with civilization still intact. There are still Big Bads, a shadowy conspiracy or two and plenty of mooks for the heroes to smack around of course, but they are defeatable.
In this light, those who wish to write stories involving catastrophic Mundane wars using handwavium-enhanced weaponry, the total corruption & greed of earthbound politics, the general apathy and/or suckiness of the human race, etc. are kindly invited to do their own thing elsewhere.
(Any attempt to argue that the world must suck because it's "realistic" will fall on deaf ears. As a wiser man than the Management once said, "Only a bitter little adolescent boy could confuse realism with pessimism.")
THE RULES:
Rule #0: This is a collaborative writing project, which means there's a whole bunch of people adding their ideas to the pot. As a contributor, you're expected to behave like the adults that you are (or at least are pretending to be on the internet) when participating. As the man said, "Don't be mean. We don't have to be mean."
a) Offering constructive criticism (why don't you do this?) is good. Saying 'you can't do that' is not constructive.
b) Since this is a collaborative writing project, no one writer can hog all the Good Stuff without upsetting the other writers. Don't step on anyone else's toes - don't consume too much Cool at once, don't try to be better than the already-established "best in Fenspace" at something, and talk with people before you do things that No One Else Can Do.
c) When Rule #0 conflicts with any other rule, Rule #0 trumps the other rule. As Mustrum Ridcully would put it, they're "more of a guideline".
Rule #1: Handwavium is like a cat; it doesn't go where you tell it to, it goes where it wants to. If you're trying to get a random device with no plan in mind, then that's exactly what you'll get. If you have a specific device or set of devices in mind, you will get something close but not exactly identical to your specifications within these limits:
a) You can't show handwavium a picture of your desired genre vehicle and have it build one for you.
b) Handwavium has to be combined with existing hardware in order to accomplish anything. For best results the device should have some tangental relationship to the desired end goal: a car's engine becomes a spacedrive, a fence becomes a collapsible air dome, a laptop becomes an AI-capable supercomputer, etc.
c) Handwavium has quirks. The more complex and interesting the device you're trying to build is, the quirkier it will be on average.
i) Some strains of handwavium are quirkier than others.
ii) Quirks don't apply to critical life-support systems - air, water, food, sewer. Power systems can be quirky, but never to a life-threatening extent.
d) If handwavium is like a cat, then using it to create weapons is like giving a cat a bath; difficult and full of extreme pain. To wit:
i) Any attempt to use handwavium to create advanced genre weapons (phasers, antimatter bombs, any type of anime death ray, etc.) will fail without reservation.
ii) Handwavium is not naturally explosive, either chemically or nuclear. Adding handwavium to an explosive device will just destroy the handwavium.
iii) Handwavium can be used to enhance simple weaponry (swords, knives, staves, clubs, etc.) but the enhancement will not increase the total effectiveness as a weapon - a waved sword may not need further sharpening, but it won't become a Hackmaster +12.
iv) Weapons designed and built using no or effectively no (=
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Sirrocco]

Well, like I'd said, I'd like to include "don't be mean. We don't have to be mean" and the conservation of mass/energy/momentum in there (or perhapps just a "handwavium does not change the laws of physics, even if it *is* really good at finding loopholes."
Other than that, though, everything looks good.

[robkelk]

Fnord, the current Rule 2c should be part of Rule 0. (I proposed making it a new Rule 0c, and moving the current Rule 0c to Rle 0d). Other than that, I'm happy with what's written.

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[robkelk]

---

I think, the only real way to let travel work and avoid the "space rocks from Gamelon" bombardment issue is to step out side the setting, say You Just Don't Do That because it's out of genre for the kind of story that's intended to be told, and work from there.

---

I've got a "maybe this'll work" idea on how to stop space bombardent without relying on Fennish displeasure (there's always some yahoo who won't care about that), but I'm going to write it up in shortfic form to see whether it'll work properly. Expect to see it in a day or two (after which I can get back to the Convention...)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Bob Schroeck]

If people liked the concept, Rule 1E should be revised to allow the intelligent weapons idea that came up in another thread.
Rule 2A conflicts with established characters, as someone has already pointed out. The Saiyajin, the Jusenkyo curse, and a couple others. I would suggest it be changed to:

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Biomods are physical alterations and like anything else that makes substantial invasive changes to a biological system, may well cause corresponding changes in physical appearance.

---

-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...