Time Bubble (Moved from Medical Gear)

[Gelrir]

(Moved from the Medical Gear thread http://forum.juhlin.com/showthread.php?t=3052)


The time bubble idea is neat, and the reason for the delay (due to being underground, essentially) is appropriate ...

... but no player character or NPC can ever know it. The only people who knew anything about the Time Bubble process were part of the Project, and they didn't know about the problem.

"Time bubble" makes the Project, once again, look like the Bad Guys who deliberately kept everyone asleep for 150 years.

"They said we'd wake up in 1992, but instead it was 2139."

A minor point: the time bubble presumably meant that teams couldn't be awakened (or kept asleep) to any arbitrary date by radio or other signal. If the bubble is supposed to collapse in 1992, you can't have it collapse earlier or later ... I presume?

--
Michael B.

[kato13]

The original idea came from Jeff Schwartz in is updated version of the game "Project Phoenix". He used to be around here but I have not seen him in a while.

I have a link to PDF rules on my gaming site.

http://games.juhlin.com/files/ProjectPhoenix.zip

His interpretation is a little different than mine, but as it is science fiction you have a lot of leeway in how you use it.

I have the bubbles run time inside at about 2000 times slower than the outside world.

The generation occurs from the inside of the bubble. The fixed radius is established via regulated power flow.

EM transmission on certain frequencies can pass through the field, but interpretation of such data would require specialized equipment to compress or expand the signal due to the time distortion.

Bolt Holes could receive communication, and even communicate out, but with a significant delay. The compression effect of the field barrier generally limited the communications to very simple letter combinations similar to the ELF system.

The field was to be brought down if
1) The System receives its "Wake Up" signal.
2) The System has run for 5 years external time and the crew turn it off (assuming a "Stay Asleep" message was not received)
3) The power generation system can no longer support generation.

The system as tested would shut down instantly, but the longest test was 2.5 years (external time) and above ground. Under those conditions the the problem of temporal inertia was barely noticed. Short runs underground also did not see the problem. However when the combined effect of larger fields, long run time, and additional mass were all combined the effect was disastrous.

After the expected wakeup, there could be sporadic communications, limited by the 3 letter code system. The radio reception/compression system could also fail after a decade or so leaving them without the ability to "hear" anything while they wait for the bubble to collapse.


I used to think that caches would not have time fields (rendering them nearly useless after 150 years) but the discussion of medicines and their expiration has let me to rethink that part of the equation.

[mikeo80]

I remember talking with Jeff a long time ago. His "bubble" idea was an interesting take on the "hand wave" problem of the suspended animation in the bolt hole.

The only thing I could never figure out. The "five year external" shutdown. IF that is the case, TMP is up and running at 5 years vs 3 as planned. No big deal. Still does NOT help with the long sleep of 150+. Why no wake up? Means that in the bolt hole there are two power supplies. One for the "bubble" and one for the idiot computer and commo device to talk to idiot computer INSIDE bubble. That means somehow, the external power lasts 150+ years.

Either way, Bubble vs Suspended animation, we get the "Hand wave" magic.

We do not have a problem with medicine and other items deteriorating with the bubble. IF you go with the 150 year long sleep, at 2000 - 1 ratio of inside bubble vs outside, about 27 - 28 days pass inside bubble. No issue with things like tetracycline or other items that will decay over time.

(Math goes like this. 150 years * 365 days/year = 57540 days external, divide by 2000 = 27.375 days internal. Wiggle room for leap years, etc.)

Time to get off soap box.

My $0.02

Mike

[Gelrir]

Hmm, with a 2000:1 ratio, the team in the bubble should only have had about 2 days pass. They presumably would have just been sitting around a table playing hearts.

And ... after three or four days at most, turning off the bubble. "I don't get it, Bob, we were supposed to wake up on (1995, 2020, whatever) ... our simple sensors say the War happened on schedule (nuclear detonations, sudden end of internet/morronet, lack of any radio traffic, etc.). Let's peek outside."

Why would they wait for 27 days?

One possible solution: no matter how long the calendar sleep, the "time in the bubble" turns out to be 2 days for some reason? Which would also probably totally mess with the radio reception, though.



--
Michael B.

[kato13]

They did not wait, they shut the power off and yet the bubble stayed (due to temporal inertia).

Perhaps 5 days in (when panic starts to set in), they get the following coded messages.


ADK = Major Malfunction
LON = Situation Temporary
JTN = Wait for Further Communication

This is perhaps the result of a single Bolthole which "woke up" after only 15 years due to an unexpected power generation issue. While their bubble did not "coast" as long as the rest of the teams, they did see bubble fail to collapse in a timely manner. If you make it a science team perhaps they figured out what happened as an explanation for why no other teams have woken.

The Prime/Bolthole communication system while limited would still be generally functional after a couple of decades. Prime while not fully understanding what happened, realized it was probably temporary.

The basic message listed above, was the last word most teams received.

The random nature of the "coast" allows the GM total flexibility on who wakes up when. One difficulty in storytelling is the canon element of the KFS murdering the sleeping teams in the boltholes they find. As I consider the fields to be impenetrable to matter, simply murdering them is problematic.

Perhaps they booby trap and monitor the exits. It removes the Morrow threat to the KFS, but reduces the amount of captured equipment.

Thoughts?

[mikeo80]

Well, ok, the system shuts down, but the bubble continues....Well that is one kind of a "hand wave". A temporal displacement if you will. Not just in elapsed time but also in future time....

I, for one, do like the idea of KFS finding and killing as many Morrow as they can. The set up to "Bullets and Bluegrass", if run correctly, is a great, scary world for our intrepid hero's to wake up in.

BTW, I HATE!!!! The Sk5. HATE HATE HATE!!!!!!

Whew glad I got that out.....

Maybe a compromise.....

Suspended animation for the team, time bubbles for the gear?? I think this can work. After all, if you are using radioactive waste to power the generators, (Source, American Outback) and the half life of some of that stuff is several hundred years.... There is you power source, and enough time to get to the 150 year problem. Maybe the drain of BOTH systems causes the radioactivity to not be enough for the really long term, but 150 could do....(Optimistic Hand Wave)

My $0.02

Mike