It occured to me while trading today (yeah, we traders don't have much to do but think while the slow Moth gets to 3,000 meters...), that it is fully possible that the people of the Vendetta universe actually *DO* have the technology to create artifical wormholes.

Now, I know the intra-system jump effect is basically just the wormhole effect, 'cept for the exit (I was here when the "bullet" effect was around. Such fun :'( ) Anyway, take out knowledge that this is just a kludge for the one day eventual replacement of the effect. And think about it.

It entirely plausible that these people can create wormholes. Not only that but be accurate within systems to within apprixmately 256 points within said system, including stations, stars and planets (the well known points). This would not require as much energy as inducing a wormhole to another system (As shown in gameplay). Hopping across a pond, so to speak.

Now the reasoning can split into two seperate sides:

One: Exactly like I said. Hopping across a pond is different from taking a transcontinental flight. That is to say, it's not impossible to reach another system using the intra-system drive, it's just marginally better than our current day slingshot around a star method which takes us about 8 to 9 months to reach the next nearest PLANET, not system. Plus batteries die and powerplants fail due to fatigue. So... all in all, improbable but not impossible.

Two: It can be done. Wormholes can be created artifically. Not only that, but with the resources found on Joe Shmoe's ship, it can be done. Only one roadblock: Space is BIG. I mean... really REALLY Biiiiiiiig. Let's look at the numbers:

Let us assume that Vendetta is set in the Milky Way galaxy or a cluster of similar proportions. To make it easier.

The area of a cylinder is πr^2h
The thickness (height) of the Milky Way is 1,000 ly
The radius of the Milky Way is about 45,000 ly

That comes out to 6,361,725,116,250 cubic ly. 6.4 TRILLION cubic lightyears.

Now, no one is arguing they'd explore even a frction of that with their wormhole creation technology. But the volume was needed for...

Density (Which is equivalent to Mass over Volume)

I'm gonna replace mass with the estimated number of stars, which is about 300,000,000,000 stars.

That equates to about one star for every 21.206 cubic ly.

Going by sight, the view of our Sun from pluto makes it look like just another star in the sky. And it is only 1/1,621th of a lightyear from Sol, our Sun.

Same goes for heat measurement. Ruling out Hubble power or better telescopes on ships, plus the time and patience to scane all 360x360 degrees of sky before reporting back to base, it's very unreasonable to find a nearby star even when one is *in* the system.

So what is my point to all this?

Point = Wormhole creation tech is possible for these folk, it just isn't really useful for much else than travel between known places and expansion of maps of known places. Oh, and stumbling across existing wormholes.

does that belong in rp?

I'd put it in General but that's usuallly propogated with stuff like "I IZ R TEH LEAVING" and such.

Anyway, no one complained for this thread:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/13755

:p

:P

Of course the galactic residents can create artificial wormholes, essentially that's how they can go about 10 AU's in 10 seconds with intra-system jumps.

I'm putting the average size of a system as one solar system, sooo... 10 billion mile diameter (Pluto is 4 billion miles out, Kupier belt and oort cloud farther still, so we'll say 5 billion mile radius to have a nice even number of 10 billion mile diameter for one system, OK?)

You can jump across 16 "sectors" in the same time as one sector - 6 seconds or so, so essentially the net speed of our ships while jumping in-system is about... 6 sec * 10 * 10 = 1 hour, 10 billion * 10 * 10 = 1 trillion miles. So we're going 1 trillion miles an hour, give or take.

The Milky way has a diameter of 100,000 light-years, which works out to 5,878,499,810,000,000,000 miles. Say 6 quintillion miles. So we'd be able to, with ONLY our intra-system drives, traverse the entire galaxy in the span of 6 million hours, or 685 years. Nevermind that the distance from Deneb to Sol is only supposed to be 2600 light-years, which works out to 15,285 hours travel time, 636 days, a little under 2 years.

Ooooooh but we can't do that since then the premise of the game is then crap. Right. So...

The ingame fix:
I suppose that since our ships use gravity pulses to move and such, that we use the mass of local stars to jump intra-system. If we get too far away from a massive object (i.e. the system's sun) we can't generate a jump field and we're left with only thrusters.

Which is why it would take ages just to go from Sedina to Latos without wormholes, and why all wormholes have been discovered near planetary systems - some probably exist in deep space, but we can't get to them without spending thousands of years in transit to locate them.

I *DO* think that system-to-system wormholes shoud contain some kind of "ring" or human-constructed mechanism that makes them "work". Otherwise passing asteroids would activate the wormhole with a little extra energy. I'd say that the ships don't have enough juice to do this on their own, PLUS it would work well with the previous suggestion of border control and customs and whatnot. Of course, pirates could no longer hang out at government-controlled wormholes.

Anyway, that's MY explanation.

You forget, they have no idea whch way Earth is. Sure it's only 2 years away. You'll eventually get to Tokyo from New York if you keep circling the globe :P

No idea where earth is?

Try asking a modern day astronomer how far you would have to displace him in the galaxy for him to not be able to tell you where earth is.

easy. we have a map:



it's not they dont know where it is. it's that there's no way to reach it.

I've always assumed there was some sort of device placed in the middle of each system (between sectors H-8, H-9, I-9, and I-8) that was used to channel the relatively nearby wormholes' properties to allow inter-system skipping. That's why systems are always in between wormholes, and why the ability to skip drops off any more than 8 sectors North/South, and 8 sectors East/West, giving us this 16 by 16 grid of space to play around in. Maybe the device is like a 4th dimensional cube, or something, and the 256 precise sectors correspond with the arrangement of the cub's 256 vertices, or something, and that's why there's specific spots you can jump at, why you can't jump to sector D-12.5, for example.

Nice Pluto edit. :P

Hey, if NASA can edit why not UC?

http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/grammarian.htm

And I thought the entire 256 sector thing had something to do with future human civilization's realizing the fantastic benefits of early 90's VGA technology? Isn't that why we seem to only be able to utilize 256 colours of paint for our hulls?!

Technology, like everything else, is a big giant loop! I predict the expansion pack will contain ships powered by steam (actually, that would be wicked... steampunk anybody?)

NASA didn't edit Pluto off the map, it's them dang astronomers. (NASA already got their money to send DH over to pluto, so they couldn't care less.)

I always assumed that the different sectors related to a system's lagrangian points...

Lagrangian points would definately explain why you tend to jump into a sector within the cluster of asteroids at hand. I like this explanation best. Thanks for teaching a new word.

It would be a nice explanation if every sector was at such a point, and that is not the case.

Suspension of disbelief?

Ship computers are 8-bit devices. Two systems got already lost in a system crash because someone forgot to maintain the backups.

Regressive technology? Hahahaha.
I want an 8-Track in my Vulture.

Seriously, I unabashedly like my explanation best for reasoning as to why we haven't gotten back to "old" Sol. And Deneb is actually supposed to be the same Deneb that we know from earth - 2600 light-years away.