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Anti-Matter and Repulsorlifts
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 9:09 pm    Post subject: Anti-Matter and Repulsorlifts Reply with quote

Some interesting reading...

Figured I'd post this in case any of you are looking for technobabble on why repulsorlifts work...
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Whill
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PostPosted: Tue Nov 09, 2021 11:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Anti-matter is extremely volatile so that seems to a very dangerous explanation for a technology so ubiquitous in Star Wars.

Also, those are speculative maybes, when the main premise of Star Wars technologies seems to be based on completely fictional tech. Artificial anti-gravity seems just as fantastic as artificial gravity, but Star Wars has tech to generate these forces. Whereas the wikipedia page has real life scientific possibilities that could actually be proven false someday.

This is interesting speculation for, Will we ever have real life anti-gravity tech like in Star Wars? But trying to insert too much science into Star Wars can sometimes backfire and assault disbelief suspension.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As my idea about dark matter being hypermatter will likely be proven false, as well, but it's immaterial for the purposes of establishing fictional laws of a fictional universe. Since it's established that repulsorlifts require a mass / gravity field to push against in order to function, having repulsorlift function on some form of negative-mass material would explain quite a bit. It's just a matter of wording the technobabble properly.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 2:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Point.
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 1:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've also been thinking of potentially having anti-matter as a negative-mass material be found in hyperspace, tending to concentrate in the empty areas between stars, which would help justify the limited hyperspace map routes. Of course, there would need to be something to keep it from ejecting itself from the galaxy entirely... Electromagnetism, maybe? A material that is negative-mass but still electromagnetic would be caught in a push/pull of repelling one force while being retained by another...
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Whill
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PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 3:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That's not needed with the existing explanation for hyperspace travel. You can just point your ship in any random direction and jump to lightspeed if you wanted to. You may get lucky and not hit anything, or you may get unlucky. Routes are relatively safe paths determined by data from years of hyperspace travel on them. I don't see the need to say that route are avoiding anything in hyperspace when all they need to avoid is mass in realspace, what they already do now.
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.

PostPosted: Wed Nov 10, 2021 7:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
That's not needed with the existing explanation for hyperspace travel. You can just point your ship in any random direction and jump to lightspeed if you wanted to. You may get lucky and not hit anything, or you may get unlucky. Routes are relatively safe paths determined by data from years of hyperspace travel on them. I don't see the need to say that route are avoiding anything in hyperspace when all they need to avoid is mass in realspace, what they already do now.

Yet something seems to greatly slow the proliferation of new routes. If it was just open space, scouts would've trailblazed new routes all over the place over the course of thousands of years. If it was just a matter of pointing your ship in the right direction and doing a series of short, low-velocity jumps, sure, it'd take months or years, but that's nothing compared to a few millennia. As such, there needs to be something to explain both the slow pace of new route proliferation and the confinement of existing routes to largely non-linear paths, as though the route is avoiding something.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 11, 2021 9:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

All routes start out as slow, minor routes and some become major routes over the centuries of travel. Over the millennia, there would be routes that would come and go. Formally major routes could slowly become minor after years of disuse due to newer routes. Routes could shift to avoid something, like a gas cloud or rouge planet that joined the path which wasn't there previously. But those would be minor deviations on the galactic scale.

More than all that, there is a key factor you are missing form your consideration. Routes are not non-linear because they are avoiding something. It is just the opposite. Routes would have thousands of systems they go through that aren't on any maps we have. It's the only way the numbers of populated systems canon says there are in the Empire working out. Routes are nonlinear in a galactic view because they are always changing course to go through many systems along the way. They are hitting something much more than avoiding anything.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 12, 2021 3:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think there's more to it than that, though. Consider the following quote from Twin Stars of Kira:
Quote:
History of the Kira Run

Attempts have been made in the past to bridge the expanse between the overlapping lengths of the Harrin Corridor and the Enarc Run, but all failed to find a safe and reliable passage linking the two. The paucity of star systems between the two routes coupled with the high degree of deep-space hazards led to the failure of previous expeditions. (emphasis mine)

That is, until an enterprising team of free-traders uncovered the references to Kira Prime. The discovery of a system - even if it were a dead system - in the area between the two routes was the breakthrough that was needed. Realizing that they could use a system with an established location as a stopover point or navigational reference, the Haik expedition set out from Ropagi to plot a new hyperspace route.

The attempt succeeded. Taking a bearing from Kira, the adventurers were able to plot a safe course to Ropagi in the Enarc Run. As more passages were made, the way became easier. As the hyperspace path was further explored and refined, reliable travel became possible.
The text in the first paragraph indicates a manifold problem, affected by both the absence of systems in the intervening space and the presence of deep-space obstacles. We've discussed elsewhere that objects in realspace aren't going to shift all that much in astrographic terms, and that the rate at which navigation data falls out of date seems much too fast to be explained by obstacles shifting position in realspace.

By introducing some sort of mass-negative material that is more likely to congregate in the open spaces between stars, it adds a layer of meaning to the presence of planets along a route, in that the routes are "island hopping", using the (relatively) empty spaces created by the presence of gravity in a star system as a relative safe zone within which hyperspace travel is easier.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 13, 2021 1:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Twin Stars of Kira. That's a deep cut.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 13, 2021 1:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Twin Stars of Kira. That's a deep cut.

There's limited reference in the WEG material to the difficulty of pioneering a new hyperspace route, but that's one of them. Others include the Drift and the Deegan Gas Clouds in the Elrood Sector, particularly the Drift, where the gas clouds limit long-range scans in realspace, which greatly increases the Difficulty of plotting micro-jumps. GG8: Scouts briefly touches on it on pages 32-33, but beyond saying that unknown routes are longer and much more difficulty, it provides little information as to why, beyond saying that it requires scouts to make micro-jumps.

But the thing is, once a route is mapped, it's not going to change all that much in strictly astrographic terms. Even if it takes a year or two to map a relatively safe route (accounting for time spent backtracking to avoid obstacles, and then retracing the route multiple times to build a larger data-set), the route itself isn't going to vary all that much within, say, a human life-span. That's why I'm looking for a viable cause of route decay that occurs at a much faster rate, and having the cause be in hyperspace itself makes it a lot easier to explain how routes could become obstructed at speeds not possible in realspace.

I suppose, since gas clouds exist in realspace, I could just go with hypermatter clouds in hyperspace that greatly slow hyperspace travel speeds on account of the radiation levels involved...
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pakman
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 18, 2021 11:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

As always, fascinating topic.

As someone who is both a star wars fan and a bit of an astronomy nerd (used to work in the educational outreach at a museum doing astronomy work with kids and science fairs, and actually had a job at a telescope shop in college one summer - perhaps my coolest job ever) this is a topic I have given some thought to in the past.

I think the the question of "what causes route decay" is a good one.

However, we do have to be careful in the fact that game designers often may not have the time or information resources to come up with ....realistic answers in our game.


My thoughts
I see two parts to the answer, both inspired by real world;

1 - Changes in the physical bodies present.
2 - lack of quality in the routes or data.

While we can try to come up with all sorts of exotic ways the physical world (comets, systems, rogue planets, brown dwarfs, dust clouds etc.) I think the biggest part might be - the quality of the maps.

or rather - just how detailed they may have been at the time they were made.

Did they detect every single body in the area ? or just the most obvious.
Did they record all the details for each object's mass and velocity? or just a rough estimate.
Were some objects missed due to haste, equipment issues or lack or procedures or even operator skill.

I think some issues with routes could be that in a route mapped 70 years ago, object X was either not detected, or was considered too far etc. to matter. Well, 70 (or 700...space if big) years ago maybe it was not.

Now, you could say - but those things could be found later - well, if there was the budget, bureaucracy, data to do so.


Side Question
So, can you turn in hyperspace? even a little bit?
I think that would limit routes... a lot. I imagine that ships have to regularly exist hyperspace - maneuver a bit - then make another jump.
(I interpret this as in star wars when hand said he had lost those imperials, it was one such of those jump exits - and re-entry stops - there were no imperials there chasing them).

I am fairly certain I had seen some material (either game company, or fan made) that had a differentiation for systems that were required vs. optional stopping points on routes (including better terms for them).


Summary
So, while I think it is useful to consider the various astro causes - we should not forget the ....human (or otherwise) elements in complicating things.

Oh, and love these types of discussions....
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 19, 2021 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

pakman wrote:
As always, fascinating topic.

And as always, a response from you that defies a quick, simple answer. Wink

Quote:
However, we do have to be careful in the fact that game designers often may not have the time or information resources to come up with ....realistic answers in our game.

True, but the hints they drop give us clues about the parts of the physical universe that are wholly beyond our science, particularly hyperspace. Since hyperspace is completely fictional, it presents a clean slate as to what it actually contains, and WEG has, on occasion, delved into what could be there (see Otherspace). So, if fluff/game rules defy physics, we either have to change the game to suit or we can adjust the parts of the game that don't have real life rules to comply to.

Quote:
I see two parts to the answer, both inspired by real world;

1 - Changes in the physical bodies present.
2 - lack of quality in the routes or data.

I agree, with the stipulation that "physical bodies present" includes obstacles in hyperspace.

As to your point on the quality of maps, I agree in principle, but my impression is that, for whatever reason, routes seem to deteriorate far faster than would be indicated simply based on the drift of objects in realspace. The biggest indicator is ships equipped with Limited Navcomputers. Much debate has been had over the years as to whether or not a ship can make a round-trip between two points by using one of those Course Slots, except in reverse, or whether or not each jump would require a completely new course calculation. While there's no clear explanation, the implication is that, under the RAW, at least, map quality degrades quickly, in a matter of months, not decades.

Quote:
Did they detect every single body in the area ? or just the most obvious.
Did they record all the details for each object's mass and velocity? or just a rough estimate.
Were some objects missed due to haste, equipment issues or lack or procedures or even operator skill.

Fair points. My running theory is that, while traveling in hyperspace, ships have two sensor systems that still function; gravitic sensors which detect and triangulate mass shadows by bearing and strength over the course of the trip, and radiation sensors that read hypermatter density along the route in a manner much like a geiger counter (which is important because a ship's shields can only block so much radiation before it begins to leak into the ship; the faster the ship goes through a hypermatter cloud, the more impacts, the greater the radiation).

All this sensor data is logged in the ship's flight recorder, and the data is then sold to BoSS (who use the data to update and maintain accurate hyperspace maps) in trade for a discount on current navcomputer updates. Characters can still buy the nav updates without sharing their flight recorder data, but it costs more and may attract official attention (so it's usually best to get it from the black market or by bribing a BoSS employee). The end result is that the accuracy of a route map increases in direct proportion to how heavily traveled the route is, as the BoSS uses the data to build 4D maps of the terrain (reflecting and predicting the encroachment of gravitic anomalies and hypermatter particles on a route, and how the route shifts to accommodate).

Quote:
So, can you turn in hyperspace? even a little bit?

The WEG maps strongly suggest that you can. The Hyperdrive Multiplier is an aggregate measurement of not only how fast a ship can travel in a straight line but how well it can negotiate any curves in the route (picture a car driving on a mountain road).

Quote:
I am fairly certain I had seen some material (either game company, or fan made) that had a differentiation for systems that were required vs. optional stopping points on routes (including better terms for them).

This is backed up both by WEG maps and various pieces of fluff, talking about planets being vital links on trade routes, or being the main/only access points into a sector. Look at the map for the Elrood Sector, with only one way inor out. Same with Tapani.

Quote:
Oh, and love these types of discussions....

Ditto
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 20, 2021 3:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

The Tapani Sector is not a good example. Fluff established Tapani is particularly cluttered with galactic debris, so much that traveling hyperspace in the sector in the time of the Empire still required the use of hyperspace navigation buoys, otherwise a vestige of Old Republic hyperspace travel. There are several statements that explain the map and differentiate travel from the norm in the galaxy. Just saying.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sun Nov 21, 2021 9:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
The Tapani Sector is not a good example...

Oddly enough, in doing some reading to verify, it brings up an unexpected point. While the Tapani Sector is unusually "cluttered", the way it describes the functioning of the hyperspace beacons bolsters my point in other ways. Stellar drift must be happening awfully fast if a ship has to update its course at every system along its route. This requires thought...

You know, it wouldn't take too much twisting to have the Tapani Sector be a "Dune-in-miniature". Replace the hyperspace beacons with a navigator's guild and the sector becomes impenetrable to anyone (including Imperials) without the assistance of either the guild or their own, independent navigators. Or maybe something darker like lobotomized Force users wired into the ship's systems, ala the Hybrids from Battlestar Galactica. It also adds much greater importance to the Force Sensitive PC with Instinctive Astrogation...

But I digress...
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