Discussions About the TSN

xavierwise asked:

Question 1. How does the TSN travel from system to system?

The TSN travels the galaxy using warp drive. If you imagine that every sector of space has a few anomalies then even the current TSN ships could be used for exploration. But in the future you can expect to see some TSN ship classes that are less reliant on bases for energy.

xavierwise asked:

Question 2. Do vessels outside of the TSN have the same ability to travel long distance e.g. merchant/ trade vessels travelling from sector to sector, private ships, commercial cruise/transport/cargo vessels?

The TSN doesn't have a monopoly on warp drive any more than the USAF has a monopoly on jet engines. But the TSN ships are probably the fastest.

The other alien races must be capable of interstellat travel, otherwise they would not all be together in one battle. You have already encountered Skaraans with warp drive and jump drive. Expect to see more faster-then-light aliens in the future.

xavierwise asked:

Question 3. Where are new recruits drawn from? How do systems and planets populated by mankind contribute to the recruitment?

The TSN recruits from Earth, various human colonies, and a collection of alien races who have joined the United Space Faring Planets. Within the USFP only the humans have constructed a fleet of warships, which has the following consequences:

1) Most TSN officers are human.
2) All TSN control consoles are labeled in Earth languages.
3) All TSN ships have names from various Earth languages.
4) All TSN crews speak to each other using Earth languages.

Players should feel free to create your own alien races to become a part of your crew.

xavierwise asked:

Question 4. How do human controlled systems interact with one another? Are they all at peace, or are there wars between systems (like our own world, just on an interstellar scale)?

The systems of the USFP communicate using the standard science fiction techno-babble, variously called Untrawave or Ansible by countless science fiction writers. They conduct travel and trade using starships, mostly with warp drive but occasionally with jump drive.

The Artemis timeline includes one siginificant period of USFP civil war, The Unakalhai Uprising. During that time TSN ships fought against other TSN ships.

xavierwise asked:

Question 5. Are the TSN still expanding their borders, or are they consolidating their hold and focusing on defence?

In the grand scheme of things there is no answer to this. The Artemis timeline is written on an epic scale, allowing players to create missions during eras of expansion, consolidation, stagnant negotiation, or anything else.

To me, TSN should definitely stand for Terran Stellar Navy. No question there.

Here are a few more questions for you:

1) What is the current maximum speed of long-range travel ships?
2) Can we consider that long-range ships are poorly-armed and used for inter-stellar travel only?
3) Does the TSN use any life-expanding / reviving technologies (such as Hamilton's rejuvenating and re-lifing)?
4) Where is the TSN's headquarters?
5) Where is the TSN's academy seated, and is this where all training is done?

Thank you!

1) What is the current maximum speed of long-range travel ships?

In the Artemis universe there is no meaningful answer to this question because the Artemis warp factors do not equate to real motion. If Helm sets warp factor 1 and Engineering sets 300% power your ship moves faster than if Helm sets warp factor 4 and Engineering cuts power to the bone.

But the plan for the Artemis epic timeline is for all systems to become more energy efficient as time progresses. So players selecting later eras should be able to sustain much faster speeds for much longer times than players selecting earlier eras.

I hope this makes sense.

2) Can we consider that long-range ships are poorly-armed and used for inter-stellar travel only?

That's a generalization, since the heavily-armed ships must get to the front lines somehow.

You should assume that there are support systems (perhaps ships you haven't seen) that can get any ship to any location where it is needed, but moving a dreadnought a long distance comes at a steep cost.

3) Does the TSN use any life-expanding / reviving technologies (such as Hamilton's rejuvenating and re-lifing)?

At first this confused me. To me Hamilton is Edmund Hamilton, author of The Star Kings, a very Artemis-like space opera in 1947. But you must be referring to that young whipper-snapper Peter F. Hamilton.

The short answer is "yes and no." The Artemis universe, like most sci-fi media universes, is a projection of current society into the future. So strange science fiction technologies like revivification will exist but be rare and experimental, available only to extraordinary characters in special stories. A popular example would be Spock and the Genesis Device.

Does that help?

4) Where is the TSN's headquarters?
5) Where is the TSN's academy seated, and is this where all training is done?

These are questions I had not considered. Obviously I don't want it to be in San Francisco. What do you think of of the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan? Today that may be Earth's busiest space port. There is some logic to placing TSN headquarters there.

I would think the moon. The logical reasoning is that launching ships for the moon takes less energy because there is less of a gravitational field to break. Making it a more effective port than earth. Unless of course it's on a station or a planet with less mass.

Heinlien novels used the moon as the seat of human government, and also a rebelling colony. There is a great tradition for putting the academy there. Of course the moon may be a harsh mistress, but she's a lousy place to bulk up the muscles of young space cadets.

Orson Scott Card trained kids to fight interstellar battles in zero gee. That makes pedagogical sense, in the real world, but such training would be useless in the Artemis universe. I think a TSN cadet must go for morning a run carrying a 20 pound pack, then run through a muddy obstacle course and climb a greased rope. Say the wrong thing and you'll drop and do fifty push-ups.

So your point about launching vessels is valid: perhaps the moon should house the TSN's main shipyard. But I'm still inclined to put the TSN Academy on Earth where it is easy to imagine the tortures of boot camp.

Would they need to learn drill stuff if they are aboard ships with less gravity than earth. So they wouldn't need the same level of physical training.

I like the idea of our space heroes being a hearty bunch in great physical shape. This makes sense, since a moving spacecraft is going to occasionally experience some kind of gee forces, especially during combat maneuvering.

TSN officers probably undergo their first course in survival training in the Sahara desert. Then they get trained in Antarctica. After that they get survival training on Mars. Then it's off to Ganymede or Europa. The final survival training course would be on Earth's moon.

Nice. So training is all over the place. Is there an official academy like the navel academy. Because in the future I would argue there would be several academies. With pop size etc.