SF Space Monopoly

[Harlequin]

Here's a cross-reference for you: This Alien Shore by C.S. Friedman.  The existence of the monopoly, how it works, and why it works - and indeed how it starts to break down - are the core of that novel.  It is also, incidentally, extremely well-written and worth reading.  As with most of these suggestions it rests on how hyperspace works; Friedman uses (of all things) imagery from Inuit myth, together with a genetically splintered human race.

I would suggest that it all comes down to how the FTL works, and that the sociopolitical consequences of whatever you choose (a) will not be limited to the monopoly effect, they'll include things like communications/governance issues and warfare feasibility, and (b) aren't the only things you need to worry about in terms of designing an FTL model.  Technological repercussions are a big example; if you can do that, how about this, and so forth.  (Subject of course to your plausibility desires, but as semihard SF, I assume this has a high plausibility standard.)

With that in mind, I would strongly suggest that you put together a design document regarding the entire structure of FTL in your setting, with all of the design objectives enumerated.  List them all, then mark them as either Necessary or Desirable, and then rank the Desirable ones into an order of precedence.  I'll generally reorder them at this point in my word processor so that the list puts all the Necessaries at the top, then the Optionals in order from most desired to least.  Have that in your hand before you go thinking about what kind of in-setting pseudophysics you should get here.

As you point out, making the Guild not also the supreme ruler may be tricky.  I would say this features into the design document above.  Honestly the best way, I think, is to keep the Guild somehow (a) small in numbers, and (b) repugnant to the ordinary citizen and especially the ordinary soldier.  Visual repugnance as per Herbert is only one way to achieve the latter; in Friedman's book they themselves choose to be visually distinct, but it's their insanity that makes them unable to interact on normal terms and therefore be rulers.  Prejudice is, of course, just as valid a source as ugliness.  But all such sources in fiction seem to tie a serious social/societal disadvantage to the transportation monopoly, and I suspect that this is why.

- Eric

[gorckat]

as far as realism goes, i think so.  convolution gives PCs and NPCs realtionships to exploit and try to take advantage off.

consider the real world example of shippers, port authorities and teamsters-

the teamsters can strike, cutting revenue of shippers and ports

ports can choose to undergo improvements to accomodate specific types of ships, forcing shippers to go elsewhere if they are no longer 'desired', or force teamsters out of work as things automate

shippers can go to cheaper ports, cutting teamsters incomes and ports revenues

now, i'm no expert on the whole situation, but throw in 'mafia' involvement in any or all of those parts and things can very interesting and convoluted

[Jeff Powers]

Don't feel too confined by the old bugbear of "realism".  Herbert said, "damnit I want knife fights, because knife fights are t3h k3wl, but why would people have knife fights in the future when they have lasers... wait, what if there were these crazy forcefields that stop lasers but not knives?"  The Holtzmann shield is there for one reason:  so that Sting and Agent Cooper can have a badass knife duel.

If you buy into the Singularity even slightly, the notion of a traditional sci-fi future of an unchanged homo sapiens flying around the stars in spacecraft, killing each other (with lazerz!) over stuff like government, religion, and a scarcity-based economy is as much pure fantasy as anything Tolkien produced.  This is extremely liberating creatively; once you can disassociate a space/futuristic setting from anything vaguely realistic, you realize the sky's the limit, as Ben said.  Any technogibberish you toss in is pure flavor, like inventing some demonic language for a magic system.

[signoftheserpent]

the ftl model is more like star wars - ie ships just 'jump to lightspeed' and go from a to b. They need navigation data, but there are no jumpgates or space folding. I've never been a fan of jumpgates (I don't think they work in fading suns for instance at all) and foldspace is just dune dune dune! The freer model of ftl as shown in star wars i think is more liberating, even if it's not very technologically sound. Jumpgates (like B5) are limiting IMO.
So, I think it's a question of 2 entities giving what the other needs: the League have the best astrogation data and trading resources while the Imperium make the goods, including the best ships (not to mention having a strong miltary force which the League doesnt and isnt).
Here are my notes for the League (rough):

Born in the fires that raised the Imperium to the stars, the League is a trade organisation that has grown from a cabal of affiliated merchant princes and nobles into one of the most powerful groups in the universe. The League created many colonies and posts on planets across space within and without the society that would become the Imperium; this quickly cemented their powerbase that exists yet. Working with the best captains and crews they could hire, the League also explored much of space and acquired an unparalleled store of navigation and astronomical data. From this was created the 'book of the stars' a – now ancient and invaluable –navigation codex. Because no pilot could safely and reliably (or at least economically) without this data, the League were further able to create a powerful presence.

In time the League used its resources to develop a unique Astrolabe, which would be itself incorporated into interstellar vehicles. Programmed with data from the League's private codex, League Astrolabes could be updated with new data as it entered the book (all but instantaneously, allowing for time distance and technology). The League created and maintained its monopoly on travel and trade by likewise maintaining a monopoly on the book and the Astrolabe – which no other ship or faction could use without subscribing to the League's charter in every aspect (i.e. filling the seemingly endless coffers of the League). Furthermore, while other entities were welcome to create their own space fleets, they could not use League data or tools (i.e. the book and the astrolabe) to aid in navigation – and League subscribers would face extreme censure for providing this data without permission. Ships from non-League vessels and crews found with such resources could even be impounded.

This of course led to friction between the Imperium and the League, however the Imperium managed to gain one concession; the League could not in turn use information (such as it was, compared to the League's own) collected and created by those who signed to the charters of the Imperium. However, while the Imperium was powerful indeed, it could not compete with the League in these areas; in quiet corners of space League members eager to increase the League's data stores exploited those motivated by profit. Thus much of what the Imperium pioneered the League into its own monopoly, strengthening it thus. Of course the Imperium visited its own penalties on those members who broke its charters – worst of all exile from the safety and culture of the Imperium. Those houses, groups or even individuals so outcast find upon themselves a death sentence for sure; excommunicated from all society and support.

[Harlequin]

Sounds good.

Just as a thought on the Astrolabe, you might be able to pull off a "boostrapping" monopoly.  The Astrolabe is only valuable because it's effectively "networked" and can download information from the master database.  It has to network via FTL comm.  This can (readily and probably necessarily) include transmitting the astrolabe's position and identity.  What this means is that not only is it useless to steal an existing Astrolabe since it'll get a "yeah, right, the cops are on their way" response if you ask for jump data... it's also useless to reverse-engineer one since the transmit process is also dependent on the jump data.  So without having a whole lot of jump data already, you can't build a practical system because you can't send home for more data.  That's cool.

If you want some technobabble to go with it, the data is nonlocal; it depends on the Fourier transform of all known space or something.  This means that the data point you gather at your own location or via your own instruments isn't actually at all relevant to you; it's a data point which might help open up sufficient certainty for reliable jumps somewhere totally different.

- Eric

[signoftheserpent]

You have extrapolated more than I have (which is kind of frightening! ;) )

So basically without an astrolabe, knowing where you are becomes impossible because its only the data it contains that provides a context. Since the astrolabe is the most efficient navigational tool - because of the data it has access to (like google) - flying interstellar without one becaomes very risky. Risky because a) you fly with potentially unreliable data and b) you have no support network to fall back on.

It reminds me of those devices people have in their cars to tell them where they are (ie tell them they are lost) - unfortunately those devices, I cannot take seriously ('you missed your turn...you are now lost michael').

Essentially the League's captains provided their navigational data and the League itself pioneered the primary unviersal astrogation tool and now they have the means to back it up. The univers'e best air traffic control!

[Harlequin]

Yah - although I would suggest that it's not knowing where you are that's the problem.  This is something which is measurable locally and using things we know; basically, we could (given enough time) do this today.  Thus it would strain my suspension of disbelief to see this as the thing one cannot do without the Astrolabe.

It's transmitting anything through hyperspace that's impossible without it.  Imagine an Earthside instantaneous transmit mechanism which would let you jump from Tampa Bay to Paris... but the math involved requires knowing the current local temperature in Moscow, Vancouver, and Rio.  The idea in that last post was that not only that... but the only way to get that information in real-ish time is to know fairly recent temperatures in Tehran and Iceland.  And so forth.  Oh, and by the way don't forget to send in temperature readings in Tampa Bay and Paris, please.  Somebody else will need those.

It's up to you what jumping without this information does.  Fails to start, has a chance of failing to start, ruins the jump engine, throws you randomly throughout space, etc.  The latter is, honestly, kind of interesting on two fronts.  One, it meshes interestingly with the mechanism I'm suggesting above.  Following up on the above, let's say you were wrong about conditions in Rio.  This messes up your calculations... and you end up in Rio instead of Paris.  Gives all kinds of interesting "survey voyage" possibilities whose major risk is simply that you may never get back to anywhere civilized again.  Wildcatters and so forth - cool.  Putting them straight to the place where the data is inaccurate means that if a legit jump fails... it puts you straight into where the action is, whatever it was that caused the insufficient data.  The other reason why I suggest this option is by analogy to something that happened in one of my wife's games, a cross-dimension soap opera thing.

She says to her GM one day: "I'm bored.  I set the D-Hopper to random... and hit go."

Talk about scene frame.

- Eric

[Sydney Freedberg]

Harlequin's approach would create lots of efficiencies-of-scale that would work for a monopoly. Sure, the Small Start-Up Company can figure out your position well enough to start a jump -- but they probably don't have the Giant Monopoly's wealth of data on possible destinations, especially not if to get from Point A to Point B you also need data on Points X, Y, and Z.

[TonyLB]

The other thing about the efficiencies of scale is that they don't need to be anywhere near absolute, for most story purposes.

If an Astrolabe can get you from Point A to Point B in one jump, and a Calculon-3000 Astrobrain gets you from Point A to Point B in one big jump and five minor corrections, then the Astrolabe folks still have an effective monopoly amongst all the people who can't afford those minor corrections.  That includes folks interested in speed, interested in not popping up outside a spaceport's security zone, interested in comfort, interested in the appearance of power, etc., etc.

But there are legitimate reasons for using the Calculon, as well.  Probably cost, desperation, a desire to thwart monopoly, trouble with the League, etc., etc.

In short, you can create a world in which the way you get around sends a message about the type of people you are.  Yes, I'm thinking about that beautiful, ugly, reliable, broken-down ship Serenity, from Firefly, as I write this.

[signoftheserpent]

>Yah - although I would suggest that it's not knowing where you are that's the problem.  This is something which is measurable locally and using things we know; basically, we could (given enough time) do this today.  Thus it would strain my suspension of disbelief to see this as the thing one cannot do without the Astrolabe.

It may be possible to do on a planetary scale - but surely not on an intergalactic scale. Thus while the average starship can take local data with sensors and whatnot, it cannot put this information in proper context without a tool like the League Astrolabe because this device not only sends the local data to the source (updating the source - watch out for the meteroite ive just spotted or the nearby sun going nova) but receives the necessary contextual info. With both elements (local data and 'context data') the pilot can a) know exactly where he is and b) go somewhere else and c) knwo what's happening in this somewhere else (so as not to end his trip real quick like).

Is this perhaps what you are saying?

It's been a long time since I studied economics.

[Sydney Freedberg]

In short, you can create a world in which the way you get around sends a message about the type of people you are...

Which presumably is the real point, right? Using Tony's logic, you can justify your whole society being built on Absolute Conformity and mega-monopoly, but the heroes (player characters) having the option to slip through the cracks if they want to, without your whole setting falling apart because they did so. That makes for far more interesting stories.

[TonyLB]

I'd actually be quite intrigued to hear what the "real point" is, in the view of the guy designing this system.  It might be something like what I've proposed (which would, indeed, be where I myself would head in such a setting), but he might just as well have an entirely different set of priorities.

[Harlequin]

I like Tony's suggestion a lot.  Mitigating the monopoly constraint to add a high-risk workaround gets you a lot of story possibilities.  How and where the risk shows up is up to you.  (The phrase "These methods will necessarily have at least twice as many Botch dice" comes to mind.)

As for specifying position or worrying about meteorites etc., I'm afraid that if you want semihard SF then, by me, these can't be the problem.  It is easy to pinpoint your position provided you have good star charts, and it's almost impossible to stop people from building their own star charts sufficient for this.  This is because you don't need ALL the stars, just the main ones, and because the maps change very very very slowly, and because you can build them using remote observations.  So if knowing where you are is the problem, then it has to be because you need to know this to ridiculous accuracy.  (For instance, variations in the size of your ship due to temperature fluctuations in the microwave background of space could arguably be a bigger factor in being unsure where you are.  I say arguably, please do not actually argue it, that's not the point.)  Moreover (in the real world, at least) space is so incredibly empty that if you simply blipped into a completely random set of coordinates then the odds of it being occupied by anything more than (say) a hydrogen atom in the volume of your ship are infinitesimally small.

You could do it, by postulating something which makes it not random; perhaps 99.9% of possible jumps end up in the hearts of stars, and so forth.  But the question of where the meteorites are, on the far end, only matters if your space looks extremely different from real space.

To me it is much simpler for it to be some other variable than "where am I?" which is answerable only by an Astrolabe.  "What's the Sternholz Improbability Function here/now/there/inbetween?" is honestly a more plausible question, not just from the point of view of it being answerable only by the League and not by Joe Astrogator... but also, frankly (speaking as one who could actually explain General Relativity to someone), it's more plausible as the kind of information you might really need for this sort of thing.

- Eric

[signoftheserpent]

I'd actually be quite intrigued to hear what the "real point" is, in the view of the guy designing this system.  It might be something like what I've proposed (which would, indeed, be where I myself would head in such a setting), but he might just as well have an entirely different set of priorities.

The real point, or rather the idea behind the concept, is an SF setting similar to Dune in that intergalactic travel is something 'different'. While there is no drug induced psychic navigation, there is an agency that controls travel in some fashion. The League provides that. The reason for having this isn't to steal from Frank Herbert, but to create somethign interesting whch this does. With something like Star Wars its very easy for PC's to just buy or acquire a ship and go galivanting around with no real difficulty, with this there are deeper possibilities because there are more constraints and elements to consider. Unlike Dune, its not impossible to travel without dealing with the League, but it is more difficult and thus more interesting - however flying in the face of the League isn't the focus of the setting at all. This is just one aspect of the setting in how it functions.

[Sydney Freedberg]

Let me push this whole "real point" thing back a step further (which we should've done for you earlier, frankly, but darn it, we love our science fictional economics!):

In your game, what do the characters do? And what do you want the players to feel about it?

Now, you can say "anything they want," and having that flexibility is a worthy goal, but presumably you have some core idea in mind. E.g. Tony brings up Firefly, which is about low-powered romantics who keep on losing but stay true to themselves and each other (uh, mostly); you bring up Dune, which is about high-powered Machiavellis who make terrible moral compromises to accomplish great things (uh, mostly). And Star Wars is yet another model: The heroes consistently sacrifice rationality to stay true to their feelings -- "Use the force" instead of the targeting computer, or rescue your friends when you know it's a trap, or try to redeem your father when everyone else has given up on him --  and it always works out in the end. And C.J. Cherryh has a sort of clinging-on-the-edge-of-survival vibe, and Heinlein is a weird combination of hard-edged practicality and libertarian nudism, and so on and on and on. I don't think anyone can make a good game that accomodates all of these equally well. You have to choose.

So -- deep breath, clear your mind, find your Happy Space, etc. -- just imagine you and your friends playing this game, when you've made it the best that it can be: What are you doing? And why is it so damn cool?

Get a good grasp of that, and all the stuff about interstellar travel and politics and technology will start to fall into place.