Away mission tech

Until the game features a means for the players to interact with a planet the canon won't include the ability for player ships to land on a planet.

Currently the game does not include shuttles but it should. Assume that they will exist.

I think there is no way to avoid some sort of teleportation system.

Cool. I didn't think the Artemis ships could land on planets, just due to their "built in space" shapes, but I figured I'd ask. I kind of assumed shuttles, since it seems fairly straightforward. I don't know if teleportation is strictly necessary, although it would explain the restocking from spacedock without visible transfer methods in game.

You could always simply say the game isn't showing a fine enough resolution to see the shuttles.

The thing to my mind is that teleportation should be at least as energy expensive as FTL (which is what it essentially is). This article suggests a transporter is very energy intensive.

Turning the amount of matter in a typical human being into pure energy creates about 10^18 J; doing that in 2 seconds produces more than 10,000 times the current total global energy production rate.

That level of energy use is only feasible in a non-energy scarce world. The necessity for energy management aboard TSN ships suggests the technology level isn't to that point yet.

In terms of mental aesthetics, I'm a big fan of there being a large group of uncelebrated shuttle pilots rushing to make those last second deliveries of nukes before the enemies get too close to the station.

They could also change the animation so it's a docking arm reaching to the ship instead of energy. Or at least the energy is the initial tractor beam (perhaps continually used to maintain ship/station orientation).

So basically, it can be rationalized that the art we see on screen is not the energy/supply transfer in effect.

In a RPG/LARP system , the game could be paused and everyone "teleports" to the planet (ie outside) where you have to complete an away mission (capture the flag, finding nemo, drink some beer, etc) and then come back and finish the mission.