I'm sure there are reasons for deceleration, but key part of the Circular system is that they're appropriately named and work very much like 'space trains', they enter a system through one wormhole, and then leave it through a different wormhole, moving to the next system on their route... thus they never need to 'double back' and exit the way they came in, and in principle could just keep going at their constant speed from one wormhole to the next as they follow their circular paths across the Sphere.
Also this. And I'm not trying to say 'don't speculate' but rather saying that if someone points out a part of the setting, shooting it down with 'that isn't realistic' doesn't really... help? And creating drag with artifical gravity isn't that hard to do, creating a small well which you are constantly 'climbing' out of to create drag. Also in the manga they show the gravity getting turned off and on again during the fight between knauf and Jethro, so it clearly does exist in setting.
That's an issue, since what I'm talking about is a settled matter of international law, and has been for more than a century. Infinity is set in a world where you may need to cite the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1372 for justification for allowing RAF bombers to land in Portuguese-controlled islands in 1982 or 83. Yes. Portugal actually cited a 510-year-old treaty to justify their support of the Brits during the Falklands. Big difference between 'wanting to share' and 'having to share due to treaty obligations'.
That's always interesting, but PanOceania and Yu Jing are different entities from todays nations and clearly do not see themselves as bound by their commitments. Only Ariadna, of all the Infinity factions, seems likely to show much regard for that kind of historical tie based on what we are shown in the setting. Yeah, I don't know what was going on with this, but in the RPG they make it super clear that "artificial gravity" is voodootech.
Yes, PanO and Yu Jing are not current nations. They're still bound by the Convention on the Laws of the Sea and the Concilium Conventions. And it's the Convention of the Laws of the Sea that makes each nation responsible for navigation hazards in it's own territory. (I admit that I'm not sure what happens when a nation joins an Empire like PanO or YJ, in terms of whether the empire is bound by treaties that the smaller nations signed.) Well, spin centrifuges like Babylon 5 aren't voodootech, but Trek-style artificial gravity is voodootech.
As far as I know, only "transitioning" wormholes like the one that lets you go from YJ's home system to Earth. What you suggest is to have 2 wormholes, one that go for example from that "transitioning space" to Earth WormholeA, then a WormholeB that points to the "transitioning space"... The way that limits FTL simply makes it hardly practical at all. And means all Wormhole explorations would be one-way trips needing another wormhole connected to the starting point to get back, instead of just turning around... That has been suggested as a way to achieve FTL, by "falling" constantly to a gravity mass in front of you. I would go and read the Honor Harrington books again, however, if I wanted something like that. In the Outrage comic, while it's not stated. it doesn't seem like the Caravanseri rotates. I will need to check at home, but I would swear the docking positions were on the "side" of the "castle", so no spinning.
Outrage is really confusing since it presents as a very Trek style artificial gravity, and the station definitely doesn’t seem to spin... likewise, the Dolly Dagger has definite down=ship-belly not down=ship-engines layout, and this seems to hold true across all panels depicting the crew within it. @xagroth On the Circular routes I don’t mean the wormholes themselves are one way, but that the Circulars never leave through the same wormhole they entered from... their routes are one-way, so they never double-back. @Section9 @AdmiralJCJF The answer to navigation hazard info may come in the form of O12, Bureau Tiandi, they originate as a space weather bureau providing up-to-date catalogues of things which could affect interplanetary travel in Sol. While it’s duties now include the much more glamourous search for new wormholes, it still carries out ‘monitoring and disseminating (through Maya) information vital for interplanetary navigation’. That gives us something which may have supplanted the traditional navigation treaties, government and independent ships updated on hazards by Bureau Tiandi broadcasts rather than local authorities. Tiandi gets that data from somewhere, and while maybe they’ve got sensor networks of their own set up ( I’d say they definitely do in Sol and Concilium, and there are other candidates) there’s obvious mutual benefit to a different approach - collating national data. If PanO sets up sensors in its systems and shares the data with Bureau Tiandi, they ensure that O12 doesn’t build a sensor net in their system which could compromise covert operations or defenses, and keep some control over editing/cutting off the data. For its part, Tiandi saves a heck of a lot of money it can spend on wormhole exploration instead. When a Yu Jing frigate passes through a PanO system, it gets up-to-date navigational information originating from PanO sensors, but PanO never provides it directly, the frigate receives its updates from the Bureau.
Ok. Let's see if we reach a common ground here, since I think I was assuming either 2 or 3 wormholes. And I think your meaning is not "never leave through the same wormhole", but "never leave FOR the same wormhole" (correct me if I am wrong). Your position is that Circular1 reaches, for example, Earth (I don't have the maps at hand, but lets assume Earth is connected to YJ and Neoterra, and that Bourak is connected to Neoterra and YJ. The actual names are less important than the route association here). So Circular1 goes Earth - Neoterra - Bourak - Yu Jing - Earth, always in the same way. Circular2 goes Earth - Yu Jing - Bourak - Neoterra - Earth. None of them ever brake, and it's up the "passenger ships" to get to the CircularX, match bearing and speed, and dock. The amount of wormholes involved (not counting "transition space" like the one between YJ and Earth) is one at Earth (connected to Neoterra and YJ), another at YJ (connected to Earth and Bourak) and one in Neoterra (connected to Earth and Bourak). This works, with the wormholes being 2 way (having a cluster of one way wormholes that somehow connect in a circuit is exceedingly hard to believe as a natural phenomenon, thus leading Aleph to suspect tech able to manipulate wormhole destinations...). The problem arises with systems that are cul-de-sacs, of which some exist (I think), so those systems would be out of the circuit, using not circulars but slower options with big "motherships", I imagine.
This is exactly how the Circulars are described working. There is never any need for them to stop, or turn around. So Circular 1 enters Earth space from the Yu Jing wormhole and then travels to the Neoterra wormhole to leave through that.
The RPG has a map of the circular routes. Conveniently (perhaps narratively so), every planet seems to have several wormholes. Human Edge seems to have the least number of wormholes at 3 for the system. As to navigational sensors and data, the powers may not want to share, but even if for some reason the precedents of Earth didn't carry over into the future, it would only take one catastrophic accident, before the nations would push hard for such shared data. Even if PanO and YJ are at each other's throats, the other major powers would push for navigation data to be shared. They don't want to plow headlong into a debris field, just because PanO and YJ were having a spat. Now would some of the nations fudge the data some for some perceived advantage? Absolutely! And if they get caught, by anyone, you can bet that they would make a big political fuss about it. And suddenly we are back to small black ops teams, trying to hide such data manipulation, or expose it.
Not Honor Harrington, Path of the Fury (later re-released with additional material as In Fury Born, and I recommend the re-release). Still written by Dave Weber, but very different setting. Imperial Drop Commandos are *the* big stick. In an empire with millions of settled worlds, they cannot find 400,000 people who meet all the qualifications. And a bunch of pirates just killed the entire family of one of the most highly decorated Drop Commandos. Ever. Hell hath no fury like a woman with no-one left to live for. Hah, there we go! Is that from the RPG materials?
It is, from the section on O12 where they describe the various Bureaus... only a few lines relevant to this topic, but it’s something to build off at least!
However it is accomplished, stealth for ships in Infinity is certainly a thing. The RPG allows Stealth tests to go into the "Hidden" state (like a marker state in Infinity where you have to be detected out of "Hidden" before an opponent can even target you). This is not only permitted while piloting a spaceship, but there's a specific talent making it easier for trained starship pilots to do. So between the ability of individual ships in the setting to "run quiet" in order to evade detection, and the requirement in the setting for ships to use their own onboard sensors for detecting other ships I'm pretty comfortable with my position that any system-wide detection suites aren't being used for tracking traffic (beyond close to planets, gates and other high traffic areas anyway).
Still, the needs for that are a cluster of wormholes that lead in the precise directions needed and to make a circuit, and to give enough distance for the ships to leave and others get there (I assume it is, because of the Circular always moving at optimal speed for that. Still, that means giving the "gaps" like the one between Earth and YJ in time is not a good idea, since a military ship could cover that hour in deep space faster...). Still in the realm of "astronomical coincidence" (no pun intended -.-) or "wormholes have been manipulated" somehow :S I'll give it a try, but the competition is hard when it comes to series with self-aware onboard computers. Kitt, Andromeda, Dahak... XD Almost all RPG with any kind of spaceship interaction for the player characters allows for "stealth" attempts. The "how" is always handwaved, though... and unless the RPG gives some serious information, we are still on square 1 (just starting to walk to Square 2, however).
As I have already said I have little to no interest in arguing about how real physics makes the setting wrong. There are multiple wormholes in many systems. Ships can hide from detection. I am happy to get into a conversation about how these things can be possible, but will not be defending them further
I think you will like Megaera. I have no issue with the wormholes to different star systems idea. Probably requires someone with really damn big bulldozers to make all those wormholes, however! People write 'ships hiding in space' stories because they can basically file the serial numbers down on any number of submarine stories (same reason they write space lifeboats when it's much safer to eject the reactor and pop open the emergency solar panels in an emergency). But as for how it can happen to get stealth in space? If you're OK with a very slow ship that takes years to get from one planet to another inside the same solar system, then there's no trouble. But if you want a fast spaceship that is somehow also undetectable, well, there are an immense number of unintended consequences to breaking the laws of thermodynamics like that. It makes about as much sense as some arbitrarily-advanced-space-bats breaking the top end of the ideal gas laws and preventing gunpowder from burning, while leaving the bottom end working and letting the chemical reactions necessary for life still work. Thought-provoking books if you're talking about how to deal with the sudden lack of electricity etc, but the later events are just ... words fail me.
*shrugs* Nessium and Teseum both make a mockery of current chemistry and physics, so we're a long way away from hard sci-fi before we even really start talking about spaceship combat. I've always been a big believer in taking settings as they come, wishing that they could something that they're not seldom ends well. And in Infinity, ships capable of interstellar travel and intersystem travel in hours are also capable of stealth.
It’s the unfortunate thing with the setting, as we see in cases like artificial gravity, detection of starships, etc. Infinity likes to describe a setting with nods to hard sci fi... but when expounding, or particularly when telling stories IN the setting, it draws on a long legacy of imagery and inspiration along the lines of Star Wars/Trek/Macross/Legend of Galactic Heroes, very much softer stuff. So you have a description of current reality, it being difficult to hide in space, but then ships doing things which require hiding to be easy ( or at least commonplace). You have the assertion there is no/ limited artificial gravity tech, but then characters move through spaceships in ways which require some way of artificially generating gravity. The hope is that those contradictions CAN be resolved, either in compromise or identifying one side that, though published, is wrong. Using material internal to the setting is the starting point, but it alone may not be able to do so, which is where outside info like the laws of physics can contribute.
Yet it is worth noting that if we get certain materials, those laws can be altered in very significant ways, and the setting has neomaterials in it - materials that don't behave like physics says they should. I use that as my maguffin until more technical answers are forthcoming. To be honest, there are currently designs for extremely esoteric technology that would work great - if we had materials with properties that don't currently exist. One antimatter later, and suddenly the galaxy is a small and accessible place... but we don't currently have antimatter. Point being, there is a lot of 'if we got these new materials, what could humanity look like' in this setting, and you kind of have to take it as it is.
I still say you don't need to break thermodynamics, only cheat the sensors. Maybe infowar or a gas that bends light. I mean something (IR) has to be traveling out and touch that sensor. Make it not touch the sensor or otherwise confuse the sensor and you got stealth.
