Technology of the Daufesk Universe

This file explains the technology available to Daufesk Hardware, a corporate entity existing within the state of the People's Systematic Technocratic Republic of Daufesk, which occupies the planet of Daufesk and orbital space within the star system of Daufesk where the eponymous planet is located. In general, GURPS Vehicles (2nd edition) has been used to form the technological background; in general terms, Daufesk is a TL 9 society (with some changes and restrictions -- see below). It exists within a galaxy populated by a large variety of cultures on many tech levels, but TL 9 is sort of "state of the art" in most happening technological cultures. And the universe of Daufesk simply does not allow many of the more "cinematic" ultra-tech advances postulated at "vanilla" GURPS Tech Levels of 10 and above; it is generally a "hard-science" universe. While there may be cultures elsewhere with (for instance) materials technology which might rate as TL 10 or better, or more perfect medical technology, or somewhat more efficient rockets and power plants and so on, or significantly better nanotech devices, there are no reactionless drives or "force fields" or "contragrav generators" anywhere in the Daufesk universe. Or so it seems, anyway.

Special rules and assumptions

I am using most of the addenda/rules outtakes from the keyboards of GURPS Vehicles designer David Pulver and realism guru MA Lloyd, as well as some of my own knowledge of basic physics. For instance, I've got correct figures for maximal delta-v capacity of spacegoing reaction-drive vehicles (I know Newtonian mechanics, and I know calculus, so I see no reason to ignore the fact that the vehicle's total mass decreases as it's using reaction mass). Also, I'm not overly keen on rounding off just to get neat figures, so I tend to get somewhat less round numbers for structural surfaces and top speeds and accelerations and so on than I would if I followed the book slavishly -- usually I retain at least one more significant figure than the book suggests (at least where the book wants me to only have two significant figures).

Conditions particular to the Daufesk Universe

Daufesk hardware produces state-of-the-art TL 9 weapons and vehicles, with a few restrictions. Reactionless drives do not exist, nor do the unrealistically wonderful high-thrust fusion rockets. Also, energy banks are somewhat less effective than "vanilla" TL 9 power cells: There are two basic options to choose from. Most folks use "TL 9 advanced batteries", which are to TL 8 advanced batteries what vanilla TL 9 power cells are to vanilla TL 8 power cells. Applications where the energy bank must be light and/or compact use TL9 superconducting power cells, which are much more expensive for the same energy capacity. Both types of energy bank are rechargeable; superconducting power cells are capable of fast discharge (fast enough to dump their entire energy content into one shot from an energy weapon) while regular batteries can only dump about one percent of their maximum energy content per second.

TL 9 Advanced battery: Each kWh weighs 2.4 lbs, takes up 0.048 cf, and costs $72.

TL 9 Superconducting Power Cell: Each kWh weighs 0.72 lbs, takes up 0.0072 cf, and costs $216.

Daufesk Hardware also uses antimatter for some energy-intensive applications (most significantly in antimatter-thermal rockets); standard TL 9 figures for antimatter fuel bays are used, but the smallest practical antimatter containment vessel is for 1 gramme of antimatter and weighs 500 lbs (so you can't build them small enough to use as warheads -- tacnuke and micronuke warheads use other technologies to get more bang into smaller warheads at lower prices, but those technologies don't allow you to bleed off a continual and controllable trickle of energy like you can with antimatter).

Interstellar travel

Interstellar travel in the universe which the citizens of the P.S.T.R. of Daufesk are pleased to call home follows certain special rules. All FTL travel is done by way of jump points (or wormholes, or whatever you want to call them). These only occur naturally (at least, no method is currently known by which new jump points may be created), and permanently link two "points" in space. In their natural state, these points behave like point masses of negligible mass, and thus may move around in orbit around a star, for instance -- they do not have electrical charge, and it's practically impossible to move them around. A typical star system may have several dozen or several hundred jump points lying around, but most of them don't lead anywhere very interesting (the majority correspond with some point in interstellar space). Starships equipped with jump drives (at TL 9, the best available jump drives are twice as heavy and costly as the standard jump drive listed in Vehicles -- that is, 16 lbs, 0.32 cf and $280 per ton of jump-capacity) can traverse jump points on their own, but due to the less incredible energy bank technology of this particular universe, we see that 36% of the total mass of any such ship must be energy bank -- and of the expensive kind, at that. (Per ton of jump-rating, the energy bank will weigh 720 lbs, take up 7.2 cf, and cost $216,000). Any ship with a jump drive is able to detect natural jump points at ranges of several AU. Obviously, the vast majority of jump-drive ships are specialized scouts. Daufesk Hardware's R&D department is rumored to be attempting to modify jump drives so they can be powered by a matter-antimatter reaction; such an advance would have enormous consequences for general travel and exploration as well as for strategy and politics, since more and larger jump-drive ships would become affordable.

However, it is possible to permanently dilate a jump point -- this is a major engineering effort of the kind that only prosperous nations and equivalent corporate entities can afford, and even for them it is the kind of investment they need to think about. A dilated jump point is permanently open, and each end is anchored to a body looking like a giant hula hoop -- fly into one hoop and come out of the hoop at the other end of the "wormhole", no jump drive required -- so any interplanetary ship is also an interstellar one, albeit limited to the total "graph" of all connected star systems (where the locals will let you pass without blowing you up, etc). It doesn't require a power supply to stay open, although destroying the hoop will mean that the hole collapses back to its natural state -- releasing quite a few gigatons of hard gamma rays in the process, so any ships or space stations which were in the immediate vicinity of either side are probably toast. Most such hoops are therefore of quite sturdy construction, and surrounded by defenses and traffic control stations at both ends. Since it is quite possible to move these hoops around by normal means (though they tend to mass many thousands of tons, so it's not usually done without some forethought and preparation), whoever is in authority can put their hoops where they like. So in most "safe" civilized regions, jump-point hoops (also known as gates) are in lowish orbits around the system's mainworld (for convenience), while "wilder" areas (where there are known, or thought to be, hostiles or potential hostiles within a few star systems, for instance) tend to have their jump-gates positioned a bit further away from vulnerable spots (suffering some inconvenience for the sake of safety). Miscalculations have been known to happen.

When traversing a jump point, whether a natural or a dilated one, a ship does experience a certain time dilation effect -- going into the hole, shipboard time will run slower than local outside time (going exponentially toward a factor of about 90, which takes about four and a half seconds subjective or about 90 seconds objective) before the ship appears to vanish. This process is repeated in reverse when a ship emerges from a jump point, and in between a certain amount of time elapses at the jump-point ends while the ship seems to not exist at either end, before it begins to reappear -- this time depends on the jump-point, and actually varies somewhat for the same jump point (though rarely more than +/- 10%); it is usually in the range of a few hours for most points, but there are known points where the time-loss is best measured in days or even weeks. Clearly, a ship going in or coming out is rather vulnerable, which means that the defender holding a jump point has a massive advantage over any would-be attacker. The fastest way to communicate between star systems is to send whatever message through the jump point carried in the data banks of a starship and then transmit it via radio or other light-speed communication immediately after the starship reaches its destination. Indeed, most jump-gate authorities maintain small "fleets" of unmanned message drones which jump back and forth on a regular basis (as well as making extra trips for urgent messages); in some backwaters the propagation of news might be left to casual travellers.

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Copyright nonsense: Theoretically, the Daufesk universe and everything in it is my creation and should therefore be considered to be my "property". But it is freeware, for what it's worth. Anyone can use it as they please, with one exception: Nobody's allowed to make any money off it (yeah right, as if that's going to happen) without me getting my slice of the pie, okay?

GURPS and everything pertaining thereto is copyright and trademark and whatever of SJ Games.

Last modified: Mon Jun 2 14:36:45 DST" 1997