- | ## Deep Space Mine(s)!

Here is a short lived but interesting thread I started on the TML about the possibility of using an asteroid belt as a sort of fortified space archipelago.

    I'm currently playing a quasi-CT campaign in a homebrew sector located
    "somewhere near the Spinward Marches". The Sector is a sort of buffer zone
    between Zhodani and Imperial borders, and the two powers are currently
    trying to regain influence on the sector's worlds, mostly by covert
    actions and political or economical support to local factions (a lot like
    USSR and USA efforts in third world countries during the seventies).
    Most of the local planets were originally controlled by the Imperium, but
    became indipendent after the third frontier war (current year should be
    around 1073).

    Anyway, here is the question.

    So far the PCs didn't have access to a ship, and their adventures were
    always located on some planet's surface. Now I'd like to change that: one
    of their next adventures will be a mines-clearing job.
    I know that mines in deep space don't do a lot of sense: I was thinking of
    a mined asteroid belt. I.e, mines (or perhaps missile racks) built just under
    the asteroids surface, which will release payload when a ship comes near
    enough to the battery.

    This would allow for placing some interesting surprises beyond the mine
    fields: a small belters group which remained insulated after the war,
    and/or an hidden space pirates base.
    As I said, the sector is mostly free from direct Imperial control, so
    Space Pirates may exist in the area, and they could have access to an
    hidden cache of weapons/stuff which Navy thought to be lost during the
    war.

    Here is a list of idea I'd like to see discussed/dissected/flamed over by
    the TMLers:

    Mapping:   How would you map a group of asteroids to allow for continued
               campaigning inside? The obvious choice is no map, and just
               detailing some of the more interesting rocks. Any other option?
               Also, not being an expert on Astonomy/Astrophysics, would someone
               please give me more details on "realistic" asteroid belts... all
               I know about asteroids comes from the _Empire Strikes Back!_ scenes.
               The most important question would probably be "how near is near?" i.e., in
               an asteroid group, which will be the typical distance among the asteroids?
    Mechanics: I would like to use the Roleplaying System for ship actions.
               Any other stuff you would care to suggest?
    PCs:       I'll probably have a couple new players for this.
               Suggestions on career/specific skills choice/party composition?
    The Mines: Which kind of devices would you use to defend an asteroid belt?
               How would they work? How can they be disabled? Consider that
               they should still work (at least some of them) after decades.
    Economics: How many ships besides the PC's Scout? How much should the Patron
               (probably a Megacorporation) offer for the job?
    Equipment: Any special stuff for this mission? Would Air Rafts work in this
               environment? (i.e. can you use the air-raft to move from the
               ship to the asteroids and vice-versa or would you need another
               type of vehicle?)
    Other
    references: Any other source on this? Novels, movies, old adventures,
                other games (i.e.  Star Wars RPG)...

    Thanks for your input. As usual, I'll be a little slow to answer mostly
    because I prefer the digest.

    ------------------------------
    Date: Tue, 1 Jul 1997 13:39:08 -0700
    From: bmac@astro.ucla.edu (Bruce Alan Macintosh)
    Subject: re: Deep Space Mine(s!)

    One useful class of mine is the detonation laser (missiles in T4 are mostly
    laser type anyway): nuclear warhead with x-ray laser rods. Effective range
    of the lasers when it detonates are around 10000km, damage (in T4 terms)
    is 1d6 hits by a rating 2 laser. The mines could be free-floating,
    camoflaged to look like rock, with a tiny passive sensor. PCs would have to
    approach in something small enough not to set off the passive sensor - maybe
    a suit with a thruster pack. To power the sensor and computer for decades
    the mines would need a small solar panel, which would probably be how the
    PCs could detect them - after 10 years the camoflage on the solar panel
    might have worn off. The nukes might not be fully reliable after all those
    years too...

    >Would Air Rafts work in this environment?

    Grav plates need a source of gravity to push against - so they'd be of
    little use in an asteroid belt (perhaps a milligee of acceleration.) You'd
    want a air/raft modified with thruster plates, or (for the cheapskate)
    chemical rockets. (In fact, the mines might have grav sensors to detect
    thruster plates - PCs would have to approach using chemical rockets, which
    is *very* slow. The mines might also have neutrino sensors, so they'd have
    to shut down their fusion plants...the PCs would have to move their ship to
    10000km or so, deccelerate with chemical rockets (strap-on solids mounted
    on the hull), go accross in spacesuits...and then if they set off a mine
    they'd have a minute or so (as it deploys its targeting sensors and rotates
    to aim the lasers at the ship) to desperately slip away on their suit jets,
    bring up the power on the ship so they can evade or fire back...the mines
    would also have sensors to detect weapons fire and fire back; and would
    probably be indistinguishable from rocks at ranges greater than 10000km or so.
    (Feel free to twiddle the ranges to make things exciting - the goal is to make
    sure the players just don't laser the mines from well outside the mines
    weapon range.) Some mines might be full-fledged missiles with working
    drives that would lunge towards the PC spaceship when a first mine detects
    it or detonates...

    Bruce

    ------------------------------
    Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 15:42:47 -0400 (EDT)
    From: Brett Fishburne {bfish@atlantech.net}
    Subject: Re: Deep Space Mine(s!)

    Your campaign sounds like fun...wish I could participate!

    At 09:12 PM 6/30/97, Paolo Marino wrote:

    >PCs:       I'll probably have a couple new players for this.
    >           Suggestions on career/specific skills choice/party composition?

    Vacsuit skill is obvious.  Strong Navy experience would be real good as well
    as they would have exposure to the type of weaponry you are talking about.
    Strong gambling skills might be good to help choose one asteroid over
    another or when/how to disarm an unfamiliar weapon.  I've always held that
    gamblers have an inate ability to "sense" the odds on performing almost any
    act....  Demolitions skills would be good for getting rid of old equipment
    too dangerous to get close to.  Survey and Technical would also be valuable
    in the environment you've described.  Finally, I would throw in computer as
    these things have got to have some sort of computer control if they are
    going to go after decades of non-use.

    To handle the pirates, Infiltration and/or Intimidation would be really
    valuable I think.

    >The Mines: Which kind of devices would you use to defend an asteroid belt?
    >           How would they work? How can they be disabled? Consider that
    >           they should still work (at least some of them) after decades.

    If you are going to live and work in an asteroid field it is guaranteed to
    be underground with a fair amount of crust between you and the outside.
    This would be true for several reasons...micrometeorites would be a serious
    problem and proximity to a star would bathe the asteroids in all kinds of
    stuff you don't want to have to face on a daily basis.  Given this, I would
    set charges in small asteroids spread throughout the portion of the belt you
    wanted to protect.  The charges would blow the small asteroid to bits
    sending small kinetic weapons all over the place whenever they blow.  I
    would then treat the asteroid belt as a mine field with a known in/out path
    which would prevent you from getting blown up.  Stray from the path and your
    gone.  The small asteroids would, ideally, be too small to land a craft on,
    requiring an individual to jet over as opposed to a whole space craft.  This
    would also make removing the mines really hard as they would be buried in
    these small asteroids and there would be lots of small asteroids to look at.

    I would set up dummy mine shafts on some asteroids, or abandoned asteroids
    which have been mined out.  This would make it really hard for an attacker
    to guage whether or not he has hit the home base.  Last, I would do my best
    to most heavily fortify one of the dummies.  Let's face it, if a big gun has
    found your home base you are dead regardless of the precautions.  On the
    other hand, if he goes after a dummy which explodes at him before he is
    ready you have a chance.  Thus your defenses are better used as a ploy then
    as straight defenses.  This would be fun as a GM too, because your players
    would be busy tracking down dummies for a while.

    >Economics: How many ships besides the PC's Scout? How much should the Patron
    >           (probably a Megacorporation) offer for the job?

    Depends on whether or not the PCs need to figure out where the big hauls
    are.  Were the asteroid miners paranoid who told no one where their stuff
    was...maybe they only met freighters at lagrange points and had some
    excellent radar jamming so that no one could track them...If the PCs have to
    find the big haul, the Megacorp should offer to pay very well and then do
    its best to weasle once the big mine has been found.

    ------------------------------
    Date: Thu, 3 Jul 1997 03:23:41 +0000 ()
    From: kraehe@bakunin.north.de (Michael Koehne)
    Subject: Re: Deep Space Mine(s!)

    Moin Brett Fishburne,

    > >The Mines: Which kind of devices would you use to defend an asteroid belt?
    > >           How would they work? How can they be disabled? Consider that
    > >           they should still work (at least some of them) after decades.

    > If you are going to live and work in an asteroid field it is guaranteed to
    > be underground with a fair amount of crust between you and the outside.

        Perfect ! Hiden mines. Why not thinking straight: Mines are
        lost when they detornate, and the need dedicated sensor equipment
        to decide "if this is a ship or an other fucking asteroid"

        If money and TL-13 (or above) is not the problem, I would prefer
        dedicated small sensors, interconected around the belt, and
        deep core meson guns in OTHER asteroids. Some dummy's (ladar, and
        old laser, a hot reaktor ;-) and anything attacking them will
        become blasted by meson rays.

        BTW: 2 yeas ago in my campain, the group decidet to invade into
        a large virus controlled system, where a doomslayer/battletender
        was stranded. Their idea was to start an geruilla war in the
        asteroid belt, with 12 roaches (virus controlled jump torpedos)
        40 people in stealth vac suits, and 5 automatic factories.

        As a special gag the roaches where equiped with emm masking,
        grapples and a short range meson gun. Hook on a ship destroy
        the mainframe inside, let the humans board. The main invasion
        on the orbital station was suported by about 1000 asteroids
        slowly changing course towards the moon oround the gas giant.
        Aim of these operation was to get a save smugling route to
        the regency (using a long bow calibration point in the riffs)
        for analgetics B which was developed by the gushmege vampire
        to control local TEDs. It was one of those "see you next life"
        campains, no player had the same character afterwards.

    By Michael

    ------------------------------
    Date: Sat, 5 Jul 1997 02:27:56 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Mark Clark {clarkm@OIT.EDU}
    Subject: Re: Asteroids & Mines

      There was a discussion about asteroid densities on the list some months
    ago, with the primary reference to our own belt.  The conclusion was that
    asteroids were rather far apart, farther than I had realized.  The image
    most of us have is from the Star Wars movies - that is pretty much
    impossible for a long term stable belt, if I remember what more
    knowledgeable list members were saying - collisions between the rocks
    would have limited their numbers.

      In my own PBEM Beltwatch, I got around this by making the creation of
    the belt a very recent event, so that densities are still high and
    navigation very dangerous.

      Anyway, I hope some of the other list members will fill in the details
    of what I've described.

    ------------------------------
    Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 22:57:52 PST
    From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
    Subject: Re: Asteroids & Mines (was:Deep Space Mine(s!))

    In mail you write:

    > I'd like to know more about asteroids size, placement and assorted info.
    > How big can an asteroid be?

    Ceres in our asteroid belt is 1000 km in diameter. Anything much bigger
    is likely to either scatter the rest of the belt or attract it forming
    a normal planet instead of a belt.

    > How small?

    Grains of dust. :-)

    > How distant may an asteroid be from its closer neighbors?

    Very. By the nature of the laws of orbital mechanics and other things,
    asteroids tens to be *very* far apart. Like thousands of km.

    > How many asteroids in a belt?

    Say a million or so that are big enough to be worthwhile (most of a km
    across). Divide that by the area of the belt and you'll see why they
    are so far apart.

    > I keep thinking of the PCs ship slowly maneuvering among smaller
    > (mined) asteroids and approaching a larger rock, dotted with pirate
    > installations and placed deeply inside the asteroids belt, but
    > perhaps this is just my fantasy.

    Pretty much. Except in very special circumstances, you'll be lucky to
    be able to see one asteroid from another.

    ------------------------------

    Date: Tue, 8 Jul 1997 22:55:59 +2
    From: "RFXn" {mlaakso@utu.fi}
    Subject: Re: Asteroids & Mines (was:Deep Space Mine(s!))

    On  7 Jul 97 at 22:57, Leonard Erickson wrote:

    > > I keep thinking of the PCs ship slowly maneuvering among smaller
    > > (mined) asteroids and approaching a larger rock, dotted with pirate
    > > installations and placed deeply inside the asteroids belt, but
    > > perhaps this is just my fantasy.
    >
    > Pretty much. Except in very special circumstances, you'll be lucky
    > to be able to see one asteroid from another.

        About mines: Remember that detonation laser warheads are _deadly_
    out to 10Kkm or more, and that's just for the smaller ones: Take a
    1Mt detonation laser, add a 3Kkm PEMS array and a simple computer
    and you have a cute little mine that'll kill or cripple just about
    anything but a capital ship. Shouldn't be too expensive, even;
    pirates might be able to jury-rig some from looted warheads.

        As for seeing asteroids from another... IMO, starships have windows
    because of tradition. TL 12+ sensors might be a wee bit more accurate
    than human eyes.

    ------------------------------
    Date: Tue, 08 Jul 1997 18:22:31 -0400
    From: Thomas Walter Trelenberg {tomt@scri.fsu.edu}
    Subject: Re: Asteroids & Mines (was:Deep Space Mine(s!))

    >>How distant may an asteroid be from its closer neighbors?
    >
    >Very. By the nature of the laws of orbital mechanics and other things,
    >asteroids tens to be *very* far apart. Like thousands of km.

    (snip)

    >>I keep thinking of the PCs ship slowly maneuvering among smaller
    >>(mined) asteroids and approaching a larger rock, dotted with pirate
    >>installations and placed deeply inside the asteroids belt, but
    >>perhaps this is just my fantasy.
    >
    >Pretty much. Except in very special circumstances, you'll be lucky to
    >be able to see one asteroid from another.

    If you were looking for the more "Empire Strikes Back" feel to your belt
    perhaps your mined "rocks" could be in the planetary ring of a large gas
    giant.  I'm no expert on this but IIRC the material is much denser nin a
    ring (however also quite a bit smaller).  So to the experts out there
    are ring materials baseball sized? smaller?  Can chunks of rock (or ice)
    be of the order of tens of meters?  If tens of meters is possible some
    of the "mining" methods mentioned might work.  Is ring material so
    densly packed that maneuver though it is impossible?  Are rocks of
    hundreds of meters possible?  IF tens to hundreds are possible and
    manuever is possible, your base could be on one of the larger rocks.

    Again, I am speaking about an area of which I am ignorant--but I thought
    I would put out the ideas anyway for what they are worth (most likely
    nothing).

    If any of this is possible it might however be closer to the
    navigational mayhem effect that (at least as I understood it) you were
    originally looking for.  Of coarse the idea of having to cover vast
    distances to get to the next mine to disable it while its shooting at
    you has its merits...especially if you make the wholesale destruction of
    the mine more damaging on average than taking a few hits and disabling
    it (perhaps blowing up a particularly nasty power source from long range
    is not the BEST idea)

    anyway, I think I'm just rambling now....Tom be shutting up now.

    Tom T.

    ------------------------------
    Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 00:20:39 PST
    From: shadow@krypton.rain.com (Leonard Erickson)
    Subject: Re: Asteroids & Mines (was:Deep Space Mine(s!))

    In mail you write:

    > On  7 Jul 97 at 22:57, Leonard Erickson wrote:
    >
    >> > I keep thinking of the PCs ship slowly maneuvering among smaller
    >> > (mined) asteroids and approaching a larger rock, dotted with pirate
    >> > installations and placed deeply inside the asteroids belt, but
    >> > perhaps this is just my fantasy.
    >>
    >> Pretty much. Except in very special circumstances, you'll be lucky
    >> to be able to see one asteroid from another.
    >
    >         About mines: Remember that detonation laser warheads are _deadly_
    > out to 10Kkm or more, and that's just for the smaller ones: Take a
    > 1Mt detonation laser, add a 3Kkm PEMS array and a simple computer
    > and you have a cute little mine that'll kill or cripple just about
    > anything but a capital ship. Shouldn't be too expensive, even;
    > pirates might be able to jury-rig some from looted warheads.
    >
    >         As for seeing asteroids from another... IMO, starships have windows
    > because of tradition. TL 12+ sensors might be a wee bit more accurate
    > than human eyes.

    Sure, but consider a belt 5 AU in radius with a million "large" bodies.
    This is much like our asteroid belt.

    5 AU means that it is 15.7 AU in circumference. or about 2.4 *billion* km.
    Divide that by a million and you get a seperation of 2400 km. And
    that's ignoring the fact that the asteroids will be varying distances
    from that 5 AU radius circle!

    So 10k km is an average seperation....

    ------------------------------
    Private e-mail from nahnah@gateway.net
    Received on July 15th 1998

    Mr. Marino,

        Getting in a little surfing while tuning up a relative's new
        computer and ran across your site.  I must say I enjoyed it very
        much.  Your discussion on space mines made me slow down and read
        each message.

        Everyone seems hooked on missile warheads for obvious reasons, but
        how about a nasty surprise when your PCs get to where they're going?
        They are sweeping these mines for some reason, perhaps so a patron
        can visit a research or industrial site believed to be long
        abandoned.  FF&S has a nifty explosive power generator design
        sequence, so how about coupling up one with a particle accelerator?
        Add a passive EMS array for targetting and you've got a nasty
        mousetrap.  Without a fusion bottle spewing neutrinos as it's power
        source, the first indication they'll have is when the targetting
        beam lights them up.  Any group that set up one of these must be
        serious about being left alone.

        Hope this adds a little more for you to digest, even if it is a year
        late.

    Bill Cameron

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