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the description in the phase world book is not only way to simple, but rather difficult to understand.

how do you interprete it?


personally, i see the slower than light version of the drive as utilizing "Dark Energy" (which is beleived to have "counter gravity" properties) in a Diametric drive.

the faster than light function is a Alcubierre drive, warping the fabric of space infront and behind to move only its effective position.

actually, i've been helping develope a system to replace the Mach system for phase world.

uses units of 10,000 kph. (stole mattbaby's MARK term...1800 Marks is lightspeed.)

we're also working on defining G's of accelleration for non gravitic drives, and as a way to showcase a ships manuverbility. for example, if a ship can accel/decell at 5G's, it has a better chance of dodging attacks.


it looks to work much better than palladiums silly "machs in space".

except that by using Mach, even as a quick term for 700mph units, no ship in phase world can actually break orbit.

in order to use PW as written, you have to suspend your belief so much, its vitually impossible to get into the setting.


one of our goals in rewriting certain aspects of the system (which are being designed to be "plug and play", just substituting new numbers for the existing ones), is to bring phase world up to the level of "classic" SciFi, like Niven, Clarke, Asimov, Weber, and Saberhagen.

gadrin wrote:I use GURPS to define the various types of physics for my version of Phase World (this is for space drives, weapons and so on).

Mutants in Orbit talks about many of the drive types and the Phase World book refers the reader to it. They talk about a "traction drive" which seems to be close to the PW model.

However Rifts with its STL as "Mach" and FTL as super-science is a bit of a contradiction. It's STL drives are much slower than real-life science and its FTL is much faster than most sci-fi (I think it's even faster than Trek which is pretty close to the mastery of science and technology).

I find it's best to downplay any kind of "realism" or "physics" in a super-science setting as it just becomes a lot of mumbo-jumbo, and relegate it to the background, unless you have a real reason for making a part of each adventure.

Too much analysis will have you either scrapping the setting or merging it with something you like or are familiar with.

I got a friend who figuerd out that 3 light years per hour in Rifts works out to around warp 7 in Star Trek. I don't know his exact numbers, so I'll ask him about it this weekend when we next play.

Go get'm Gadrin...

I too try to explain things "as-is" in the system. This is not to say that there aren't problems, just nothing I can't handle....yet. CG...same as everyone else's opinion. There are polarities of gravity...positive and negative. This means they can be repelled. For space travel...same as printed in the book...creating gravity wells and gravitronic "netting".

glitterboy2098 wrote:actually, i've been helping develope a system to replace the Mach system for phase world.

uses units of 10,000 kph. (stole mattbaby's MARK term...1800 Marks is lightspeed.)

... would be to use the universally accepted A.U. as mentioned in the Manhunter book's description of the various spacecraft included there. This is a measurement called "Astronomical Units". In effect it describes the average distance between the center of the Earth and the center of the Sun, which amounts to about 93 million miles, or 149,597,870 km.

I would suggest to use this distance because it is the believed distance that permits life to evolve successfully, which would indicate that most intelligent races that reach the stars, would have a similar distance from their sun. (Unless they evolved on a world orbiting a different type of star of course, which could burn hotter or cooler than Sol.)

Most of the ships described in the Manhunter book have a sublight speed of anywhere from just over 1.5 to just under 3 A.U., though to be honest I'm not sure if that's per hour or per day. If I would have to guess, I would say per day. Here's why;

Even if it were per day, judging by the Black Eagle's maximum speed of Mach 16, which is 10,720 miles per hour, the Black Eagle can only cover 257,280 miles in a 24 hour period at maximum speed. (That is, of course, for the version without a CG-Drive that permits light speed.) I mean, with the distance to the moon being approximately 250,000 miles away, if I did my math right, it would take a Black Eagle 23 hours and 36 minutes to reach Luna from Earth, without factoring in acceleration, deceleration, take-offs, or landings.

Meanwhile a ship, moving at only 1 A.U. per day, could reach Luna from Earth in only 3 minutes and 52.2 seconds, not factoring in acceleration, deceleration, take-offs, or landings. (Here's the formula I used; 1 A.U. or 93,000,000 miles per day divided by 24 hours to come up with miles per hour. Then, I took the distance to be traveled, in this case 250,000, and divided it by the miles per hour, this gives me the time it takes to travel this distance. In this case the travel time wound up to be less than 1 hour, so took this decimal and multiplied it by sixty to determine the minutes. The decimal from that I again multiplied by sixty to determine the seconds.) I think these sorts of speeds are FAR more realistic for space travel than the Mach numbers. As for Marks, I think that is too 'Star Trek' for Palladium, they may even run into licensing issues for using the term - but I could be wrong.

As for acceleration time, you'd want to keep that right around 3 Gs for passenger type spacecraft or up to a maximum of 5 Gs for fighter pilots who are wearing G suits. I'd help you for determining acceleration for these

1 G is reputed to be 32 feet per second squared, BUT it's here that things get a little fuzzy for me, so I'll leave the rest for you.

Any physics majors or professors around here care to shed some light on the topic of acceleration and G forces?

I believe that CG drives are in effect gravity field generators that consistently create a gravity well in front of the spacecraft, altering it's orientation to the vehicle, to change direction. Essentially you 'fall' through space. The jury is still out on the effects felt by the crew, however. I think that larger ships would have the ability to create an artificial gravity field to prevent or diminish the effects of inertia in space. Smaller ships, like shuttles and fighters though, I think they would have to accelerate and such in such a fashion that they do not create any undue stress on the pilot, crew, passengers, etc.

However, as pretty much all of the CG powered ships in Phase World have thrusters, I'm quite certain my theory is incorrect. I would have to guess by that standard, that they are CG assisted spacecraft rather than true CG spacecraft. What I wonder, is how these things propel themselves with thrusters. On earth, jet aircraft can essentially be driven by ducted fans that use nothing more than powerful electromagnets to propel themselves, and heat exchangers from the reactor's liquid coolant medium Providing extra thrust. In space, there's no air, so that becomes a little difficult. You'd think they'd require some sort of exhaustable fuel supply, like an ion or chemical drive. Heck, even a spacecraft powered by water would be sufficient, but again, it would be a finite fuel supply. (Water, separated to oxygen and hydrogen, and then subsequently burned in a thruster using an electrical current to ignite them.)

Traction drives again wouldn't require much in the way of thrusters, unless they used another form of propulsion for acceleration and deceleration.