[RFC] Reverse Limit Break

[HRogge]

Hi,

I had a crazy idea yesterday what is going on at the Little Big Bang Labs around Nostromo. I need a bit more SCIENCE! and less "Science" there.

An accident with a larger (and self-contained) Mass Effect core force the catgirls to eject the core... which shortly afterwards detonate, directly on the Limit of Nostromo.

It somehow interacts with the FTL limit of Nostromo and creates a short burst of gravity which race outwards... and carry the FTL prohibiting effect with it. For some time (minutes? hours?) the Limit of Nostromo is increased by a few lightminutes/-hours before it snaps back. Several gravity engines in the area are misfunction or just forced out of FTL, some of them need to be repaired.

It creates a "WOW... lets try this again" kind of reaction among the catgirls there... but it might take a year or two until the effect can be reproduced under controlled conditions by a series of satellites around Nostromo.

Would this be an acceptable event for Fenspace?

[robkelk]

--
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

[HRogge]

*smile*

do not expect the story soon (I am still busy with the Gas Station ^^)...

it will most likely begin in 2021 or 2022.

[classicdrogn]

The obvious question is why they would want to, perhaps not so much is whether playing with something that pervasive has secondary effects... ISTR something about an unresolved ME2 plot that had suns aging unnaturally quickly that had some kind of link to mass effect technology.
--
"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

[HRogge]

The obvious question is why they would want to, perhaps not so much is whether playing with something that pervasive has secondary effects... ISTR something about an unresolved ME2 plot that had suns aging unnaturally quickly that had some kind of link to mass effect technology.

*LOL* yes, maybe...

but then its good CI is doing the experiments at Nostromo and not in the Solar System.

[Ace Dreamer]

So, if I understand this, the effect knocks ships out of FTL, and can damage the engines of ships not in FTL that use gravitic drives? Or, does it only affect ships in FTL? If a ship doesn't use a gravitic engine (say a Trekkie 'Warp Drive', which uses subspace), is it affected?
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[classicdrogn]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.
--
"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

[Ace Dreamer]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

It is interesting that it doesn't do that.  The Visitor and the Galactic Girls are canon, and they could do that.  That suggests that either they had a "traveller from other worlds" exemption from the local limits of physics (or a Skuld reality hack), or the local physics allows it, but (for some reason) handwavium wont do 'dimensional'.  Which, given how much it can and does do, is really interesting...
((I'm assuming here that 'magic' is something which runs above at least one layer of underlying physics, and that handwavium doesn't break the underlying laws of physics, it just exploits aspects of them not known to 21stC human science.))
Edit to add meta physics bit.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

My idea was that every FTL drive would be knocked out (because its suddenly inside the Limit), but the damage will be mostly limited to gravity engines (rule of plot/drama, whatever the author of a story needs).

[robkelk]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

Well, http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... (Too_Much)]this particular Word of Mal implies that there are differences between different FTL drives... but that applies to the stuff in the Whole Fenspace Catalog, not to 'waved ships' drives.
--
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

[HRogge]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

Well, http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?titl ... (Too_Much)]this particular Word of Mal implies that there are differences between different FTL drives... but that applies to the stuff in the Whole Fenspace Catalog, not to 'waved ships' drives.

I would guess this "Limit flare" will affect all FTL drives that are affected by the limit.

I could see the end of the planned story with a request from CI to GJ for more resources to research the effect... to try to build a "stop FTL ship" torpedo for GJ and Space Patrol in the end (not sure they would succeed with this).

[Norgarth]

And of course the Warsies are going: "Cool, we can make an Interdictor!"
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[HRogge]

And of course the Warsies are going: "Cool, we can make an Interdictor!"

Nostromo has a mass in the same category as Jupiter.. so making it mobile would be "difficult".

Unless the effect can be reproduced on smaller things like large asteroid (or generated completely artificial).

[M Fnord]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

Handwavium FTL works on the same principles no matter what you call it - hyperspace, subspace, etc. That's why it's pinned to a set velocity of 500 times the speed of light, why you have to go (star mass in Sol masses * 40) AU out of the system to make it work, etc. This isn't to say there aren't other forms of FTL possible in the Fenspace universe, there are. Some of which are mathematically described in the Catalog. But the thing is, those are all hardtech. As of the '22 update so far nobody's built an hardtech FTL engine.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[HRogge]

That means Nostromo has normally a Limit of 80 lightseconds radius (or 0.16 AU).

[ECSNorway]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

Handwavium FTL works on the same principles no matter what you call it - hyperspace, subspace, etc. That's why it's pinned to a set velocity of 500 times the speed of light, why you have to go (star mass in Sol masses * 40) AU out of the system to make it work, etc. This isn't to say there aren't other forms of FTL possible in the Fenspace universe, there are. Some of which are mathematically described in the Catalog. But the thing is, those are all hardtech. As of the '22 update so far nobody's built an hardtech FTL engine.

Which is not to say people haven't tried. There are stories about some of those experiments.
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.

[Ace Dreamer]

We'd need the Word of Mal to de definitive, but I'm pretty sure that no matter what they call it or how it's dressed up Trekkie or Warsie or any other fandom's FTL is the same as the FTL everyone else gets from the 'wave. I know it canonically does not do multidimensional reindeer games like bags of holding or travel to other worlds.

Handwavium FTL works on the same principles no matter what you call it - hyperspace, subspace, etc. That's why it's pinned to a set velocity of 500 times the speed of light, why you have to go (star mass in Sol masses * 40) AU out of the system to make it work, etc. This isn't to say there aren't other forms of FTL possible in the Fenspace universe, there are. Some of which are mathematically described in the Catalog. But the thing is, those are all hardtech. As of the '22 update so far nobody's built an hardtech FTL engine.

Which is not to say people haven't tried. There are stories about some of those experiments.

If you've got one working FTL scheme, the obvious thing to do is study it.
Instruments that would detect an FTL emergence, which themselves operate FTL, would fit the genre.  Yes, these would be wave-tech, but you might learn useful stuff from them.  Does FTL emergence or entry cause a disturbance on FTL communications would be a good question to answer.  Presumably at least some ships have ways of testing which side of the Limit they're on, without just trying to go FTL.
If handwavium has a single underlying mechanism to its FTL drive then you might learn a lot by trying to find out how these differ and how these are the same.  Hard tech instruments that show something interesting happens when you go FTL, or even cross the Limit, would be an obvious target.  It is very likely that theoreticians would be working hard on trying to come up with a model that includes FTL; this includes ones on Mundane Earth.
Seeing as you seem much less likely to kill yourself then FTL communications may be seen as a lower-hanging fruit.  Hard tech that even twitches in response to FTL comms would be a really good start.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind

[HRogge]

If you've got one working FTL scheme, the obvious thing to do is study it.

Thats one of the reasons the Litte Big Bang Labs were moved to Nostromo. That might also be the reason why Hades is on the Limit (not only to study the limit but also FTL tech?)

Instruments that would detect an FTL emergence, which themselves operate FTL, would fit the genre.

The Trekkies have their subspace sensors (with Kitten-problems).
CI will be doing experiments with IDAR (Interwave Detection And Ranging).
Other groups will most likely have similar tech.

Yes, these would be wave-tech, but you might learn useful stuff from them. Does FTL emergence or entry cause a disturbance on FTL communications would be a good question to answer. Presumably at least some ships have ways of testing which side of the Limit they're on, without just trying to go FTL.

FTL is not really a different engine in Fenspace I think... outside the Limit your "maximum speed" is just much higher.
But it might depend on which implementation of the "Wavium FTL".

If handwavium has a single underlying mechanism to its FTL drive then you might learn a lot by trying to find out how these differ and how these are the same. Hard tech instruments that show something interesting happens when you go FTL, or even cross the Limit, would be an obvious target. It is very likely that theoreticians would be working hard on trying to come up with a model that includes FTL; this includes ones on Mundane Earth. Seeing as you seem much less likely to kill yourself then FTL communications may be seen as a lower-hanging fruit. Hard tech that even twitches in response to FTL comms would be a really good start.

"Finally someone who recognize why we moved out into the middle of nowhere, days of flight away from friends."