Setting Travel

A primary concern of many civilizations is the movement of people and goods, those within Wandering Star included. This movement of people and goods is typically achieved through the use of interconnected logistics infrastructure consisting of a mixture of roads, rail, waterways, airways, orbital, inter-planetary, and interstellar networks.

This article provides examples of the various methods of travel in the setting while also providing guidelines to help GMs and Players determine how long a journey in the setting would take. This information is intended to give writers tools to help create a sense of scale in their writing to help impress upon the reader that distance has been traveled should the writer choose to include it rather than simply transposing characters between two points during a scene change.

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In the setting a large part of the day to day considerations of the people who live within it will be dedicated to the movement of people, and goods. In an effort to make things feel alive an interconnected, I will be working to eschew the 'FTL Minivan' variety of transportation that is present in some sci-fi settings and instead will encourage GMs and players to utilize pre-existing and interdependent logistics to travel from place to place.

For example: If one were to want to travel to another city, instead of hopping in a personal shuttle craft and flying there, one might have to use personal ground vehicles such as a motorcycle or car, and drive to their destination. Alternatively, mass transport such as buses, or trains might be used, and if expediency is required a quick trip to the airport (or maglev station) might be in order at a slightly higher expense.

Even if this traveling section is glossed over in favor of the action of the scene even mentioning it in a couple of sentences would give a better sense that the players have actually had to travel somewhere, negotiating the relatively mundane tasks that most people face.

To this end, I would encourage that shuttle craft be used primarily for spaceport to space ship, or vice-versa use and that travel ground-side be handled by bus, rental car, boat, train, plane, foot, bike, etc. Giving a meaning to including planetary infrastructure in the setting.

Beyond this, I would propose that we as a setting make the existence of personal, civilian FTL capable starships a noteworthy occurrence. Basically, if a personal civilian ship drops out of FTL in your system of its own power, it should be noticed by locals, and not just one of the myriad. Instead, I would propose that systems like FTL ferries (large ships dedicated to transporting smaller ships), and stationary FTL structures like wormhole gates (limiting fast transport to certain points in space) be used instead of personal FTL to once again make travel more meaningful in the setting by demonstrating that even our heroes usually have to commute, and perhaps even place value on the relative anonymity of mass transit to get to places since showing up in a crowd of others is less eye-catching than a lone ship.

That's all that comes to mind for now. Maybe more later.

Below will go text giving ideas as to how people get about with allusions to cultures and specific vehicle articles to be filled out as time permits.

The simplest form of transport of all. Available to almost anyone/thing capable of self-propulsion. Vehicles are limited partly by physics, mostly by their organic operators.

• Foot - Pathetic, organic, meat-based transportation provided by physical limbs and flanges.
• Person-Powered - Meat-based propulsion powering far more efficient primitive machinery.
• Animal - Using other meat-based designs to improve ones own ground clearance or speed.
• Motor Vehicle - Ground vehicles are relatively fast, but can be somewhat limited in the types of ground they can cover without special design considerations. Most of these vehicles are traction based, providing torque through a linear friction medium to create momentum.
• Train - Confined to operating on a pre-built rail of physical, magnetic, or other means. This form of transport is often fast, uninterrupted, and economic. However, passengers limited to embarking or debussing from specially built stations along the route.
• Others? (hovercraft? GEV?) - The methods of ground transport can vary highly on terrain, and specialized vehicles are not uncommon such as air-cushion, or repulsion based hovercraft, screw drives, and other such novel means.

Unfortunately some environments are not naturally exposed to air, and even these can sometimes only be reachable by crossing aquatic environments. Hydrogen solvent based or otherwise, such as mercury.

• Swimming - Pathetic meat-based water propulsion. Either naturally adapted or improvised. Not possible in all liquid environments.
• Person Powered - Meat-based propulsion augmented with artificial adaptions or machinery to produce something resembling efficient transport.
• Animal - Similar to their terrestrial counterparts, aquatic beasts capable of being domesticated can be used to provide reasonably efficient transport or utility.
• Boat (Sail and powered?) - Often using the principle of surface tension and water displacement to float upon the surface, these vessels come with a variety of means to propel themselves and are an efficient means to cross bodies of aquatic terrain.
• Submarine - For those so inclined, the vehicles that can go underwater, with the occupants either wet or kept safe from hydrogen based solvents (and other liquids) are available. However these vessels are often only assembled to withstand a certain level of pressure before being crushed.

Air travel can be accomplished by simple airfoil aircraft, or even chemical propulsion, however the primary difference for most shuttlecraft is a lower altitude, naturally limiting their safely attainable speed. Even craft able to recklessly break the sound barrier are often limited in speed by law to reduce over pressure damage to other craft and local inhabitants and nature.

• Person Powered - If you can figure out how to make heavy terrestrial limited lifeforms defy the gravity of their planet, you should probably have developed better engine technology.
• Animal - Most meat-based architecture is only barely capable of keeping itself airborne, never mind passengers.
• Glider - Unpowered flight using the forces of gravity and drag to provide a slow fall rather than true flight. Organics often see this as a form of recreation by launching from a high point.
• Lighter-Than-Air - By exciting gasses with greater buoyancy than the average atmospheric medium vehicles can be made to float, other with on board engines or free floating.
• Aircraft (Plane/Airship) - Ranging from primitive airfoil designs using drag as lift, to brute-force engine lifting, or more advanced means, vehicles able to fly can be quick to traverse regional distances, but are often limited by where they can land.

Space travel is achievable by most purchasable small craft and such, however ships looking to travel a little more widely should look into purchasing a craft with a System Cruise system installed. Trips to artificial satellites are within reach for a reasonable price.

• Surface to surface - Rare. High speed transit between two global points, very expensive, unlikely to be used by most cultures outside of emergencies or high priority transit. Accomplished through regular space shuttlecraft or purpose-built SSTO's. This method is extreme inefficient for anything short of intercontinental flight.
• Surface to orbit transit - Can be accomplished by most aircraft that don't feature air-breathing engines, however such ships may only be fast enough to feasibly transfer to low orbiting satellites and objects.
• Body-to-Body Transfer - With the advent of System Cruise systems this process has taken travel from a plant to its moon from a week to only a few hours. While not actually a form of superluminal travel, the System Cruise system may be regarded as a form of warp, making space easier and slipperier to traverse. Most systems will take about a week to cross from one side to another, a typical trip from the goldilocks zone to the edge of interstellar space (and the Jumpships that appear there) will only take a few days.

FTL is handled through a variety of means the fastest being established wormhole gates. For ships traveling between stars at FTL speeds to unexplored or unconnected locales the setting has a soft cap of 2500c for travel speed for the fastest purpose built cutting edge tech ships in the setting. Most military grade or highly advanced civilian ships will instead travel around 2000c, and the vast majority of civilian grade and vessels belonging to civilizations with less developed FTL technology will travel slower than this.

• Short range interstellar (less than 10ly) - “Local” stellar cluster travel, used for travel within the most immediate galactic neighborhood. These economic jump ships can be smaller and slower, however due to the low range within which they travel this isn't as much of a problem.
• Long range interstellar (greater than 10ly) - Much more substantial distance, requires larger jumpships, and often comes with a much larger price tag for transport. Such jump ships are often considered high value targets and often feature military protection as the price often means they are at least partly government owned.
• Fixed position (wormhole gates, perhaps teleporters, magical gates?) - Point to point transport only. Allows for instant transit at any distance but is extremely limited, time-consuming and expensive to set up and maintain. Used mostly by star governments who can justify the cost with heavily used trade shipping, or military purposes.