Hi all.

I've noticed that for purposes of space travel, Aberrant is lacking any way to really hustle across the empty space that makes up damned near the entire universe. While warp and teleport provide instantaneous movement, there's no adequate (or properly-scaled) movement type that allows more conventional travel across the vast distances that can be found even within the solar system.

Even with hypermovement 5, a nova flying between the planets would be moving at only 2500 km/h. At this speed, a one way trip to the moon would take five days, and a trip to Mars would require from 967 to 6720 days, depending on the position of the Earth and Mars at the time of the trip.

I'd like to suggest a new power to make space travel more feasible for those willing to devote the points into the power:

SPACE FLIGHT:
Level: 3
Quantum Minimum: 4
Dice Pool: Dexterity + Space Flight
Range: Self
Area: N/A
Duration: Maintenance
Effect: Allows character to fly at the speed of (power rating x .2c)

Description:

Each dot in this power allows the nova to travel at two-tenths of the speed of light (.2c, or 60,000 km/s). This power may only be used outside the gravity well of a planetary body. It can never be used in an atmosphere, or near the surface of a planet. Some other means of transport must be used to get from planetary orbit to the surface of a planet.

Time Dilation Effect:

At these velocities, the relativistic effect of time dilation becomes non-trivial. The passage of time for the nova travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light is greatly slowed compared to those who are not in motion. The scaling factors are (as predicted by special relativity) are as follows:

At .2c, time moves .9798 times the normal rate for the nova.
At .4c time moves .9165 times the normal rate for the nova.
At .6c time moves .8000 times the normal rate for the nova.
At .8c time moves .6000 times the normal rate for the nova.
At 1.0c time stops for the nova.

In other words, if a Nova with one dot of Space Flight travelled for 10 seconds at .2c, they would only age 9.798 seconds, and the trip would have felt to them as if only 9.798 seconds had passed. To the rest of the universe, it would seem as if the nova had been travelling for 10 seconds.

At higher levels, the dilation effect becomes more pronounced. A nova travelling to Pluto with three dots of Space Flight would arrive on Pluto after 19 hours had passed on Earth, but the trip will have only taken 11.4 hours by their own wristwatch.

At five dots of Space Flight, the nova is travelling at the speed of light, and apparent time stops completely. To the nova's point of view, the trip required absolutely no time at all. However, they will discover that the rest of the universe has aged the appropriate amount of time. In other words, it is possible for a nova with Space Flight 5 to travel to a star ten light years away and then return, and not age even one second. They would, however, find that twenty years had passed at home.

This provides obvious difficulty for a character who sets off alone for the stars at the speed of light. They are essentially taking themselves out of the game for a period of time equal to the duration of their voyage.

This power confers no ability to survive in space.

I forgot to factor in time dilation for travel at relativistic speeds. I'm going to crunch the numbers for each level of the power and add it to the description text.

Edit: done.

I will go ahead and second this.

Okay, questions:

We have several Q6 folks. What happens if they have Mastery on this? They go faster than light. You have the dilation thingy going, would that be effected?

Again, we have several Q6 folks. What extras would apply? Would there be an extra to allow a nova to ignore time dilation?

Mastery (1) is a problem, since it doubles the effect. Novas travelling at greater than the speed of light would actually travel backward in time, as causality would be reversed. It'd be hairy-complicated, and I really don't want to inflict that on anyone. Either I'd need to re-scale the power so that mastery (as well as maxing) avoids exceeding the speed of light, or some work-around for speeds greater than c would have to be devised. I'm reluctant to introduce a new concept of FTL travel, as I don't think I'm qualified.

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Ignoring time dilation would make Space Flight 5 indistinguishable from teleport, and would have the added bonus of not requiring a die roll to travel an infinite distance in zero time.

In other words, that would be broken as hell, so I'd have to say no to an "ignore time dilation" extra.

For the sake of simplicity, I would recommend the following change to the time-dilation effect:

At .2c, time moves .95 times the normal rate for the nova.
At .4c time moves .90 times the normal rate for the nova.

A touch less accurate, but it makes it a good deal easier to figure on the fly for game purposes.

As for the time-reversal FTL issue, I think that one's a non-starter; it just brings up too many problems.

However, even without Mastery, there is the option for a Q6 nova to take six dots in the power... which is 1.2c, and thus FTL. As such, some way of dealing with FTL need be done. Considering the massive-huge power of a Q6+ character, I'd be tempted to rescale it as follows:

o = .2c, .95 dilation
oo = .4c, .90 dilation
ooo = .6c, .80 dilation
oooo = .8c, .60 dilation
ooooo = 1c, time stops
ooooo o = 2c, time stops
ooooo oo = 4c, time stops
ooooo ooo = 6c, time stops
ooooo oooo = 8c, time stops
ooooo ooooo = 10c, time stops

For Mastery, let it go ahead and double it, with anything hitting 1c or higher going into "time stops" mode.

It would, at any rate, help to explain some of how the post-Aberrant War diaspora happened, with enough time for novas to go out, find new worlds, colonize said worlds, then have some of them trucking back here within 150 years.

Not the most scientific way of handling it, I know... but then, this is Aberrant, which isn't exactly known for its scientific integrity in the first place.

Sandcaster: If you're comfortable with FTL travel by novas, then I'm happy with the scale you've introduced. Also, your figures for time dilation are much more workable.

That was a very well-thought-out response, thanks.

Okay, neat idea. My comments would be;

- The power once activated remains activated for a minimum of one turn. This is admittedly to prevent the power from being used in any form of combat except with novas traveling at similar speeds.

- On the side bar between Hugin, Flicker and Sandcaster... Why are you discussing what happens after time dilation affect causes subjective time to stop? Think about it, if time has stopped then the nova is never going to drop down from C or FTL speeds. They've removed themselves from the game because without duration there will never be a moment when they can choose to slow down.

Alternately;

- If you're going to allow travel at or beyond light speed, the nova has broken the perceived laws of physics just as if they'd introduced technology so advanced it appeared magical. Introducing that level of technology automatically awards taint to the nova. Why wouldn't breaking the light barrier?

Remember: the speed of light isn't just good idea. It's the law.

I figure that at 1c+, it is effective teleportation, with the added bonus of "if you don't run right into the Black Hole, you should still be okay. Essentially you say, I want to go to 10AU from that star ... there, and your off. Once in that solar system, you start puttering around at .9c to have a look around at any planets or things of interest that you can actually see.

Hmmm ....
What about "Space Sight/Sense"? Kind of like ESP, but only in space, and only to detect gravitic anomolies, but with a massive range (probably in the AU's to be at all effective)

How about this idea, make this as an extra to flight, or even as a extra for hypermovement(flying only) and have each dot still count as .2c, and all other time dilation effects still count.

According to the laws of Relativity, any object with mass cannot travel the speed of light. As you approach the speed of light, your mass also increases. This means you would require more power the closer you got to C.

Think of a football field. You are on the one yard line. You double it and you are on the .5 yard line, double it again, and you are on the .25 yard line and so on. You can never reach the goal, only get infinitesimally close. To actually be at C, you would need an infinite amount of power to move an infinite amount of mass. Infinite power would be something akin to Q10.

Of course, at some point, your mass would be so great that you would bend light itself and collapse space-time. At which point you would form a quantum singularity and a black hole. In a quantum singularity, you have an infinite amount of mass in an infinitesimally small space.

I would set the power like this:
0 = 0.5c
00 = 0.75c
000 = 0.825c
0000 = 0.9125c
00000 = 0.95625c
00000 0 = 0.978125c
00000 00 = 0.9890625c
00000 000 = 0.99453125c
00000 0000 = 0.997265625c
00000 00000 = 0.9986328125c

The algebraic formula is: X+{(1-X)/2} Where x is the previous value. Ex: 0.5+{(1-0.5)/2}= .75

Obviously the Law of diminishing returns apply. FTL would need to involve a different mechanism such as folding space or warping.

To deal with the "it's effectively teleportation" issue, I suggest the following:
"This power can only be used in space".

RE: Time Dilation.
Physics is not our friend in Abby. I suggest:
"In theory, someone moving at this speed should experience time dilation. In practice, nova immunity to their own powers prevents this."

RE: Duration
Make it a "per scene" power.

RE: FTL
"With enough dots in this power a nova can move faster than the speed of light. This does not send them back in time, although if they have Q8 they could buy Time Travel.

RE: Effect
You might as well make it 0.5 per dot in the power.

RE: Effect
Any use of this power in combat will, generally speaking, remove him from the combat field unless he is fighting someone else who also is moving at similar speeds. Because of the speeds involved it is quite difficult for a nova using this power to come closer than a few hundred miles from his desired destination. This power is not increased or effected by Hypermovement or Enhanced Movement."

Re: "Teleportation at +1c" - Only in the eyes of the user. Objectively, it's still taking time for the nova to get wherever; it's just the nova who has no sense of time passing and to whom is "just there" at the destination.

Re: White Rat's bit - I understand your desire for scientific accuracy... but that just isn't workable in a game (at least, not in a playable game). While the speeds and effects I recommended above don't work in Really Real World (TM) physics, they make as much sense as anything else does in Aberrant.

Pg. 34 n the APG has a blurb about "Going Interplanetary". In it, Cyrus Katarak talks about travelling near light speed. He talks about Lumen, who transforms into light, which has negligible mass, to travel at near the speed of light, or himself who teleports and uses warp to reach those speeds. None of those Nova are able to actually breach light speed.

The only place where traversing galactic distances is hinted at, is with the power Spatial Manipulation, which is the folding or bending of space. It seems that even the designers of Aberrant understood that travel at FTL would only be possible with means other than accelerating mass to C. That is why they have space travelling Nova traversing vast distances with Warp and Teleport, or changing into a material which has no mass; light or magnetic waves.

Simply making a power which breaks one of the fundamental laws of the universe, a level 3 power, is grossely overpowered. To be able to break the FTL barrier so easily and efficiently, would require a Q power level of at least 8, if not higher.

Now, you could make the FTL power that Flicker describes a level 4 power, which is only usable in a form which has no mass...i.e. gravity, magnetism, EM radiation, etc. In this way it would preserve the laws of the universe, and match a power like Masteried Teleport or Masteried Warp.

Q6 Mastery on Teleport or Warp turns 10x per succ into 20x per succ, and the Q6 itself gives 6 auto succ.

For a teleport specialist that's enough to move to the other solar systems, easily.

The issue is whether this kind of space travel should be available to Q5.


Another way to approach this is to use (glup) the weakness system on Teleport.

Weakness: Not inside an atmosphere.
Weakness: Takes 20 min of concentration to invoke.
Weakness: Must go at least one light year, no short hops.

Those are probably all -5 weaknesses. With them we 15 more dice to throw at the problem and average 6 more succ.

It seems that teleport would be faster than the 299,792,258 meters per second of C. The closest star Proxima Centauri is 39,900,000,000,000 km away, meaning it would take about 4.2 years to get there at the speed of light.

The distance between the earth and Sun is 150, 000,000 kilometers, also called an AU (Astronomical Unit). With 8 successes, you could cover 200,000,000 km, or 1.25 AU. You would need to do this 199,500 times to reach Proxima Centauri. With thirteen successes you would need to do it ~2.o times. to reach the nearest star.

Travelling at the speed of light would be innefficient and slow compared to a teleporter with a quantum of 5 and 8 extra successes, not to mention a Masteried Teleporter.