The Exodus Project and Full Thrust

Why play in a "hard" science fiction background? Why read stories written in this background? My answer to both these questions is essentially the same: good fiction is about people and their conflicts and interactions. War, peace, politics, love, hate, revenge, the struggle against the unknown, all these are elements of good stories. But it is also essential that the reader can identify with these stories. The reader must, in some ways, believe that it could be him- or herself in the story. This feeling of "involvement" is significantly enhanced when the reader can believe that everything that takes place in the story (or game) could actually have happened. This, in my opinion, was one of the great failures of some of the more popular science fiction shows on televsion: while an episode might have been an entertaining story, there is no doubt in the viewer's mind that it is only a story. Realistic fiction strikes a much deeper and more memorable chord.

The question has often been asked, "what is the scale of Full Thrust"? The correct answer, of course, is that it is whatever the players wish it to be, and they can then invent any PSB (if desired) to explain this scale. Being an astrophysicist, and for the reasons outlined in the previous paragraph, when developing Exodus Project my goal was to violate no known laws of physics and furthermore restrict the technology to that which could reasonably be posited to exist 65 years in the future. As a result, rocket engines do not carry a limitless supply of fuel and reaction mass. Also as a result, Exodus Project takes place entirely within the Solar System. This does not really change game play: instead of spending weeks or months travelling between star systems, ships spend weeks or months travelling between planets. I wanted the game to be compatible with the Full Thrust rules (with the exception of the optional fuel rules) for those who wanted to use Full Thrust as the tactical module for the game, hence one must assume that the STL drive masses listed in the Fleet Book include the fuel needed to run the drive at full power for an entire game (somewhat arbitrarily defined as 10 turns). This is of course possible; it simply has the effect of restricting the time and/or distance scales of the game. Since we would like to keep the time scale at 1 turn = 15 minutes (in order to interface with Dirtside II), this essentially means that the distance scale is the only free parameter which can be adjusted. The distance scale in turn determines the acceleration produced by one thrust point. After performing the calculations for over a dozen different near-future engines, it was found that the DT-fusion engine gave the largest scale of 1 MU = 80 km and an acceleration of 1 thrust point = 0.01g (for the curious, the best engine we can build today, is the Orion fusion pulse drive - essentially detonating hydrogen bombs behind the ship - which gives a scale of 1 MU = 50 km). If one does not wish to keep track of fuel (by definition, the calculations assume you have sufficient fuel for one game), the only modification to Full Thrust needed in order to make the claim of using realistic engines is to set the distance scale to 1 MU = 80 km which, incidentally, has no effect on game play whatsoever! Note also that this scale solves a lot of problems regarding sensors and "black globes": if the ship is on the table, you can probably see it quite clearly from your "bridge"!

Several Full Thrust optional weapons violate physical laws (wave guns, needle beams, and pulse torpedos come to mind), hence they won't be used in Exodus Project. Essentially, Exodus Project ships are restricted to:

Beam Weapons (particle beams and lasers, depending upon range)
Salvo-Launched Missiles
Large "More Thrust" Missiles (standard and EMP missiles only)
Point Defense Systems
Fire Controls
Area Defense Fire Controls
Submunitions Packs
Fighters (of various types)
Armor
All hull strengths

Note the lack of screens and FTL drives. Instead of FTL drives, however, ships must carry additional fuel to use for travelling between planets. The more fuel carried, the longer the drive can burn (and still keep its "tactical reserve") and hence the faster its "strategic speed" (the equivalent of FTL speed). Extra fuel is purchased at a cost of MASS of fuel x 2, rounded down, where the MASS is determined by (0.004 x MASS of ship x maximum thrust rating) MASS per fuel block. This arcane formula will be explained in a forthcoming derivation, but a good rule of thumb is to simply use the mass and cost normally allocated to the FTL drive for "strategic movement fuel". This allows Fleet Book ships to be used unmodified, except for posible illegal weapons (namely pulse torpedos). I will post a formula for fuel burned vs strategic travel times at a later date.

The final modification is that thruster "pushes" of the vector movement system are not allowed. Huge systems of engines are required to generate even 0.01g; it's unreasonable to think that a simple thruster could generate an almost equivalent thrust. Thrusters, therefore, do nothing but rotate the ship, as described in the vector movement rules.

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Full Thrust is a copyright of Ground Zero Games, no challenge to their copyright is intended.