FederalSpace:Technology
Because the technology is the first thing everybody asks about.
Contents
Recent Updates, and Unresolved Issues
- The nature of FTL communications.
- Lifespans and general medical technology. Nanotech can't reconstruct you, and we can't upload your personality to a computer, but what can be done?
- Power and extent of advanced psychology, memetics, and social engineering.
- Social role of AI.
- Neural interface, level of development of.
- Exotic Talents—details.
- Obvious gaping holes in the functioning of transporters. Big question: Can they be jammed?
- Time scale for terraforming.
Introduction
In GURPS (4th edition) rules terms, for those of you familiar with that game, Trek-as-written tends to be a TL12^ Safetech setting: that's about as advanced as possible, with lots of superscience gadgetry, yet the most transformative effects of the technology are avoided or suppressed by society. Federal Space, on the other hand, is largely a TL10 Conservative Hard SF setting, with a scant handful of superscience miracles, and emphasis upon the "High Industrial" path (with "High Biotech" running a distant second). That means mostly very, very advanced versions of stuff that we have or is experimental today, and a lot of ultra-tech hasn't transformed the human condition because it can't.
Why do this? Two reasons:
First, it shifts emphasis back to the characters and setting. Isaac Asimov has written that his Lije Baley novels were a reaction to a claim that one couldn't do a proper mystery in an SF setting, because—for example—one could present a made-up problem involving a made-up phenomenon, and then pull a made-up technology out of thin-air to solve it at the end. This describes about half of the episodes in Star Trek: Voyager. :D Asimov's answer to this problem was that one should present the possibilities and limitations of the technology up front, and then stick to them; the characters use the tools they have, with no tricks hidden to the players.
Second, it places new emphasis upon the technology! A paradox, no? By emphasizing that these are largely commonplace tools, and not Marvels of Science (or multi-purpose plot devices), you notice them again in a new context, and by extension notice your own tools in the real world. It makes them more accessible—you don't need to invoke magic phrases (technobabble) to get work done. Just use the tools.
This does nerf MacGuyver characters—or does it? Maybe it just shifts 'em down a level. The engineer is complemented not for bending the laws of physics, but for getting his people and resources together to pull off a plan on time…
There's a third reason for going "low-tech" with the ultra-tech: it gives a slightly retro, physical feel to the setting. Stuff can be heavy or break down, engineers curse and sweat, like that.
The Three Rules of Thumb
Going along with this goal, I've got three rules-of-thumb I'm trying to follow:
Rule #1: Trust the Setting's Engineers: Also known as the rule of "describe what it does, but not how." I know that our starfarers must have some fancy materials science, because a hand phaser requires some pretty impressive conductors and absorbers to unleash the necessary energy without melting in the user's hand. But I don't need to detail just what these materials are, or where they're used. Our engineers are the only ones who need to know the details; we just need to know what a phaser can be used for. (But since I'm trying to be a little more hard-science consistent, I do try to point out where the ultra-tech may be in use…)
Rule #2: Shift Scale Down One Order of Magnitude: If it's impossible now, it requires at least a building-sized installation in this setting. If it's building-sized now, it can be transported by truck in this setting. If it needs a truck now, it's semi-portable. If it's semi-portable now, it's hand-held, and probably multifunction. If it's hand-held now, it's pocket-sized or smaller, and probably integrated with a bunch of other pocket-sized gadgets. If it's already like that now, it can be sewn into your underwear.
Thus: An FTL communicator is impossible, so it occupies a building, or a whole section of a starship. There are truck (or transporter) deployable factory units. You can lug a powerful generator or radar installation as a backpack unit. A phaser rifle can put out equivalent destructive power to a modern heavy machine gun or rocket launcher, or both—and a "pocket" phaser pistol compares to both SMG and taser. A "pocket comm" combines nearly every imaginable function of PDAs, satellite and cell phones, cameras, microphones, music players, and most other modern pocket devices—with greatly increased reliability, to boot. Your shirts all have calculators or wrist-watches sewn into the cuff.
Rule #3: It's About Choices, Not Levels: I've already mentioned that there are no Alien Space Gods or magic Clarke-tech in this setting, but I also want to avoid or twist the lesser trope of the world with technology far advanced from that of the adventurers, or inventions that are limited to only one "race." This is a setting of enthusiastic engineers: anything one culture comes up with, another can duplicate—if they want to go to the trouble. They might not want to, either because their tech base is oriented differently, or they dislike it on moral grounds, or just because they don't see the problems that tech was intended to solve! So it's not that planet X has incomprehensibly advanced tech, it's that the people on planet X have come up with a unique application of known technology to solve a particular problem, and therefore they have the edge of experience over everyone else in using it that way.
General Fields of Technology
Warp-tech and high-energy miracles
There's only one major miracle: warp technology, used for the FTL drive, FTL comms, and the trademark transporter. I combine all of these because it feels satisfying to have all the obvious impossibilities in one place.
There's no gravity or "force" control. Therefore, there are no contragravity vehicles, artificial gravity control, inertial dampers, tractor or pressor beams, force fields or deflector screens, or anything else along those lines. Spacecraft must spin or thrust, or their crews must accept the problems of microgravity. And we have the full variety of conventional vehicles to draw upon, from maglev trains and all-terrain vehicles, to aerodynes and hypercavitating submarines.
Projected holograms—mere images—seem both cool and harmless to me, though, so I'll permit this minor bending of the laws of physics. Realistically, it's probably pretty easy to detect the trick except under controlled circumstances—outside of a holodeck or holotank, you'd likely see the light beam, for example—so we won't have invisibility cloaks or scare-the-natives god displays, but it's a fun detail for control rooms and R&R.
There's no matter-energy conversion. The transporter just moves stuff, nothing else. "Replicators" are physical manufacturing units requiring materials and time, not anything-out-of-thin-air devices. Holodecks just make images and sounds (and maybe scent, from little chem units)—no manipulation of physical objects.
Physical Tech
We have nano-materials and manufacturing processes now, of course, but this setting does not have "grey cloud" nanotechnology, monomolecular materials, living metal, and similar wonders. Turns out that the only effective nanobots are extremely limited in capability and only work under tightly controlled circumstances; it's just not worth the effort. There is advanced materials technology, to permit the superconductors and superabsorbers needed for energy weapons and such, and allow for some nifty-looking spaceships and skyscrapers. And to let us handwave away the heat dispersion problem—call this a minor miracle. So we can also have smart materials (like color-changing, self-cleaning fabrics), memory metals and plastics, transparent metals, and similar toys.
Also, I think nanobots and microswarms and such break the feel. Cadres of baseball-sized drones I can live with, but microbugs everywhere spoil the "physical" feel.
There is some advanced biotechnology. Most of the "alien" humanoid races are actually gengineered humans, and the setting also has uplifted animals, genetically-targeted therapies, and various other bio-tricks. And the real aliens have equivalent technology. Oddly, there's been a retreat away from some of this technology, from the days of the Terran Empire. There's no point in bioengineering a perfect slave race when it's illegal or impractical to own slaves, for example, and experience has shown that there's only so far you can push genomes before unacceptable drawbacks appear. And the interstellar ecology has gotten complex enough that biomaterials and biogadgets are vulnerable to infection from unanticipated sources—you grow yourself a beautiful living skyscraper, and then it gets sick and dies from some random bug brought by an interstellar tourist. Hardtech is more reliable for functional equipment. But biotech is known and embraced, and I'm sure there are many busy terraforming projects going on out there.
An unresolved question: Just how far have lifespans been improved? How old is old for a modern human?
Minds
Artificial intelligence is possible, but intelligence and memory cannot be duplicated or transferred. Say there's some ineffable quality to sapience, or just say that thought is a process and not a state. Thus, an A.I. has to be birthed and trained over years, is considered a unique (albeit unusual) person, and is bound to a particular brainbox (though the shell could be changed or upgraded). No personality uploads, no xoxing, no "what is real?" mind games. Conventionally-programmed drones can be smart, but not clever or wise; send people if you want attention to detail. We do have neural interfaces, for use by the handicapped, in the experimental stages now, so some sort of passive neural input seems likely—a "hands-free" way to use your computer, in a pinch. I'm hesitant on the idea of sensory-input, though since memory can't be recorded or duplicated… A good compromise might be that tricks like ecstasy machines or electronic anesthesia are possible, but must be tuned for a particular individual. So no neuronic whips.
Incidentally, no universal translator. You can have pretty smart translator programs, and linguists have computer analysis to help them, but there are still language barriers. English is one of a small number of lingua franca.
Just because the mind can't be duplicated doesn't mean it can't be analyzed. Psychology would be more advanced and effective, thanks to good brain scans and analysis tools, and presumably there's some understanding of memetics. I don't know how powerful I want this to be, because I feel that free will is important for to the Trek setting, and having other people mess with your thinking twists that. On the other hand, one must keep in mind the importance of the bell curve and edge cases—you may have used memetics to construct a peaceful utopian society, but that 10% of the population who are assholes will still be assholes…
And does that mean we have a functioning lie detector?
Exotic Talents
I was opposed to the idea of psi powers—I go to all the trouble of stripping the magic tech out, and now we want to put magic mental powers in?!—but after consideration, I do like the idea of "exotic talents." Let's say that the usual psi explanation, of manipulation of energy or information at a distance, remains impossible. A Talent is an intriguing edge case, like an idiot savant—they've got some incredible personal knacks and quirks that, in the right combination, can do some incredible things. A person who's incredibly good at reading people's emotional states; a person who's a linguistic savant, rapidly identifying languages and following the tone; a person with pronounced meditative control over their metabolism; a person who can hear and understand minute changes in active machinery; a person who can intuitively sift large amounts of intelligence data. With this setting's improved understanding of psychology and genetics, it's possible to locate these people, and train them to use their knacks more reliably and in concert with conventional skills and technology. It's even possible to try to manufacture them—nature and nurture being what they are, you'll get hundreds of normally-odd people for each success, but it may be worth the trouble for some organizations.
New Miracles
The Transporter
I wanted to keep imagery of the transporter, because it's the most distinctive piece of Trek tech—essential to the visual experience. But the Trek-as-written explanation is troubling, for various reasons I'm sure you know. So here's a possible replacement:
The transporter was first used for satellite launch, and second used for orbital bombardment. Later, it was adapted for personnel and cargo transport, and today is a commonplace—if finicky—technology. It also formed the eventual basis for the warpdrive.
It's a spacewarp device. It wraps the subject "on the pad" in a "space-time bubble", then "casts" the bubble in a straight line, somewhat like a particle accelerator. For a fraction of a second, the bubble moves faster-than-light, and can pass through ("ghosts") through limited quantities of normal matter. And then the bubble "bursts", and its contents are deposited, hopefully at the target location. Because this is a space-warp, the subject doesn't experience any movement—in fact, they even arrive "at rest" relative to the largest mass at the landing site. (Thus explaining why you don't smack into the planet as it moves through its orbit—you arrive at rest relative to it!)
Because mass bends space-time, the more mass there is in the path of travel, the less accurate the casting is. The bubble can't burst where there is already significant mass, but "bounces" in an essentially random direction, until it finds an open location. So you can't beam into a solid object, and beaming through more then a couple of walls kills accuracy. On the other hand, it's a standard trick to aim your casting below ground level, so the bubble bounces and precipitates to the surface—off target, but safer than having the bubble burst prematurely, dropping the subjects at altitude…
You can, of course, simply aim for empty space.
Presumably, there should be a hell of a lot of noise and stray energy when this occurs, because of displaced atmosphere, the neutralizing of inertia when matching reference frames, and similar concerns. But you know what? Since it's already impossible, I don't care. Assume there's noise, a breeze, and a bunch of static discharges, similar to but not as pronounced as the time travel effects in the Terminator movies, but somehow the rest is compensated for. There's a shimmer of a lights, a blurring of space, and then the subject is there!
You can perform a transport on the spur of the moment if you don't care much about where your subject ends up, but a safe transfer requires detailed spatial and gravitational observations for the entire zone of operations, from the transporter pad, through the intervening space, and to the target site. The ideal situation is between two well-surveyed locations, e.g. from one permanent installation to another. Field-expedient transports, as under combat conditions, are comparable to aerial insertion via parachute—not terribly accurate, but quick, and hard to detect or intercept. (Note that there's no reason why you couldn't beam out with a parachute… special ops troops probably train to beam down, paraglide to a good body of water, then swim underwater to the assembly area.)
You can't retrieve a subject, because they're out of range of the transporter unit. On the other hand, you could beam down another transport unit, and use it to send them back. There are single-use units for away parties, that must be assembled at the other end, and linked back to the mothership to use its sensors and computational equipment for a safe exit. For a more permanent base camp or beachhead, you actually construct a full transport facility, with power supply, sensors, etc.
Sadly, this means the loss (or alteration) of the immortal line, "Beam me up!"
Because of the need for careful surveying, limitations of retrieval, and so forth, use of aerospace vehicles is actually better in situations where you need flexibility. Transport in the field is used when you need speed, or don't want to be intercepted; otherwise, transport is exclusively for use in civilized areas.
Developed worlds will have extensive transport networks, well-surveyed and centrally-coordinated. Public transport pads, for cargo or people, will link cities—with light rail and light aircraft to fill in between. Emergency personnel can be deployed very rapidly from orbital transport facilities. Personal delivery is expensive as hell—an entire pad, just to send you a package immediately?—but it happens. Satellites and shuttles are launched to orbit via transporter, reserving laser-launch facilities for the largest of vessels that must be launched in one piece; ships can deploy their drones and probes via transporter, as well. Colonies see more use of conventional vehicles, because they haven't built their teleport network yet—cars and trucks overland, ships and subs in the oceans, aircraft.
In war, transport can be used to beam troops aboard a spacecraft or habitat that must be taken intact, but it's risky, of course—you probably don't have accurate surveys of the interior, and they'll be shooting back at you the moment you're down. A well-coordinated transport assault can work wonders, however. Transport can also be used to deploy uninterceptable bombs with fair precision, which explains why military bases are still placed far underground.
It'd be a good idea to work out just how long it takes to arrange a transport. For now, assume it takes hours to set up a good transport, and there can be days of downtime while the equipment is being reset and tested. Public pads will carry heavy loads, multiple times per day (or even per hour), for days or weeks at a time, and then be taken offline for extensive maintenance.
What can go wrong? Generally, the worst that happens is the subject scatters farther than is convenient, or the bubble fails to establish at all and nothing happens. It can happen that a subject appears at altitude mistakenly, or trapped in an underground pocket, or some similar disaster; all the more reason to set up the transition carefully. Worst case scenario, there's a catastrophic failure, destroying the transporter, the subject, and possibly all around them. This is incredibly rare and unlikely, though.
It occurs to me that this is a practical reason, among ships of hostile nations, for the tradition of having your senior officers waiting to greet the other ships' senior officers when they are transported over. You had to link systems to perform a careful transport, but one party or the other could easily sabotage the job… so by putting your people in harm's way, you make each party hostage to the other.
An important question: Is it possible to jam transport, or is the only defense jamming the sensors? (A thought: if the FTL comm is a spin-off of warp tech, then the answer is probably "yes", but you block all transport and comm to that region, too… and it's a planet-scale effect.)
Stardrives
Transport was the origin of the warpdrive in this setting. The early "stutterwarp" (inspired by the one in 2300), developed during the Terran Empire, is essentially a transporter that transports itself. Because the range-per-cast is short, the drive has to be cycled rapidly to get anywhere; breakdowns are frequent.
The later "transwarp", developed independently by a number of people (but first by what would become the Federated Worlds), is a variation that, in layman's terms, lets the bubble be maintained indefinitely. Thus, your starship can rampage all over the place at fantastic pseudovelocity—until you hit something that disrupts the bubble, and then you're back in normal space again, at a dead stop. Long-distance travel is a continual start-and-stop affair, carefully jockeying the drive across gravity gradients and around the higher-concentrations of spacedust, and recalculating your location after the last inadvertant bounce-and-scatter.
I have a glimmering of an idea that the classic layout of Trek ships is actually a requirement of the warp drive—that they've placed the habitat module in the safest part of the bubble, and that the warp nacelles have to be cantilevered away from the center of mass like that. Efficiency trade-offs should also play a role: you've got your powerful but slow tugs, swifter cruisers, and slow but stealthy (i.e. low warp signature) craft like the old Romulan Warbird.
Though no one in the core setting uses them as far as I know, stargates are theoretically possible, if you could build a transporter with range and accuracy sufficient to cross interstellar distances. (Most transporters have ranges of no more 1.0 light-second.) The catch is that there's no way to get your ship back without another stargate—and if you could carry one on your ship, why not just fit it with a warpdrive? Still, it's probably do-able if you took the time—perhaps some Borg hives have gate networks, and myriads of small ships to fling between their worlds. It'd be easier to do within a system, Cowboy Bebop style, then for interstellar travel—at that scale, I imagine you'd consider yourself fortunate to hit the right part of the target solar system. A stargate accurate enough to take a single person from one world to a specific location on another world would be far beyond the capabilities of anyone in this setting. (Alien Space Gods could do it, but there aren't any, remember? :) )
The warp bubble itself is very finicky, and "collapses" at the slightest notice: not only impact with too much mass (causing the "bounce" effect), but too much energy, or energy change, or crossing too powerful a gravity gradient, or… When the bubble drops, you have to stop and reestablish it, which is difficult to do under combat conditions.
Space Warfare in the Eight-and-Twenty
In normal space, there's nowhere to hide, unless you go FTL: if early 21st century technology can spot spaceships around other planets in the same system, and planets around other stars, 28th century technology will easily perceive every vessel in a system. In warp, ships can be dimly perceived, using the same spatial sensors used to calculate warp transitions. (Presumably, the spatial warp propagates faster-than-light, which may not be true-to-real-life-physics, but is convenient for our purposes.) It's tricky, thanks to varying gravitational gradients and ripples in space and what not. Fast or powerful ships have strong warp signatures, while slow and sneaky ships have weak signatures; you can spot a fleet coming, but a few warbirds might be able to sneak up on a system if they plot a good course. But once they drop out of warp, there's no cloaking device or jamming device that can prevent you from knowing they're in-system. (This doesn't change the plot effect, really. "Oh shit, warbirds decloaking!" is the same as "Oh shit, warbirds coming out of warp!")
If ships meet in open space between systems, and one force wants to break contact, it's a contest of maneuver. If you can bring your warp bubble into contact with the enemy's, both your bubbles "pop" and you drop into normal space, stationary next to each other. Something similar happens if you make a mistake of maneuver, and momentarily lose your bubble—your foe can pounce, or increase the distance. Conventional weapons don't do any good, but there are expensive warp-capable missiles, designed purely to pursue and intercept, and distract the target until you get there, instants later.
In-system, conventional defenses like brilliant pebbles are fine against conventional forces, but a warpship can maneuver around them, and a well-positioned phaser array has a good chance to shoot them down. (This is also why the near-c asteroid trick isn't worth much these days.) Thus, in normal space combat, you've really got no choice but to walk up and blast 'em. (Fly-by courses make sense for conventional maneuver, but a warpship breaks the rules.) There are ways to seek advantage: the right fly-by course, a barrage of nuclear torpedoes as an opener, a formation of drones that flies in with you, coordinated spoofing at the right moment… but really, the actual fight is a crap shoot.
Face-to-face with the enemy, things go down like the battle scenes from Wrath of Khan. Fuckin' fireballs and people screaming and ships torn apart. Things move so fast you have to rely on automatics, but you need human intuition to guide them—or is that just a psychological crutch for the sake of morale? Lensman-style, the beam and slugs and particles bore into the ships with no room for maneuver. There are magnetically-suspended "sand" screens, and there is hull armor, there is energy absorptive hull-plating which gamely tries to channel the energy into your own capacitors even as the plating melts and shorts out, but in short, it's fucking murder. Both ships are likely to be crippled; even if you have advantage of numbers, someone gets mauled. People blown to bits, radiation burns for the survivors, breaches and cut wiring everywhere.
Did we mention that warpships are among the most expensive and valuable pieces of equipment in the galaxy?
Because of this, no one likes to actually fight battles. It's all a chess game of bluff and counter-maneuver. You shift ships into a system, they shuffle their fleets around, you make like you could attack if you wanted to, they make like they could defend, you shift away to another direction… Occasionally things do come to brief blows. Rarely do things come to full battle—but when they do, all bets are off.
How's this play out on the strategic scale? There are interstellar warp missiles, either deployed independently, or launched by "boomer ships", in analogy to ICBMs and ABMs—or lurking like seamines—that maintain a stand-off balance of power. Warpships show the flag in outlying territories, probe "neutral space" for advantage, and there are standing forces in the core, waiting for a battle that everyone thinks will never come… and prays it won't. In-system, you see lots of normal traffic, including conventional-space patrol ships, lightly armed for customs interdiction, or toting heavier weapons for forlorn hope defense against invasion… and screens of monitor stations and orbital cannon around the worlds, dispersed and ready for warp attack. Plus hidden ground-based weapons and jammers, forming the final line of defense.
Once you have space superiority, you have tremendous advantage over any ground forces, because you can see everywhere, fly everywhere, and transport everywhere—except deep underground. But you still need infantry to take and hold ground, and transports for them, and armor to support assaults. Thus, teledropped troops, a few landmate power armor suits, and plenty of teledroppable air or surface transport vehicles. Infantry operate more dispersed than we're familiar with, thanks to modern communications, and have the advantage of drones and lots of clever portable kit, but they're still limited to running on foot—and, what with electronic warfare, often reduced to shouting out targets spotted visually. The presence of stunners and modern medicine make hostage-taking a viable tactic in conflict between nations—you can trade their troops for yours.
Honestly, most of this tech never gets used. The last big wars were the General War over fifty years ago, which was mostly a series of vicious border skirmishes, and an incursion by an aggressive Borg Hive twenty years ago, which was terrifying because the Borg apparently didn't care about their losses—which were considerable. They lost. Most combat we're likely to see are border incidents, anti-piracy patrols in out-systems, and police actions.
General-Issue Kit
Items
At the moment, this is just skimming the GURPS 4e Ultra-Tech book for ideas. This is in no way an recommendation of GURPS as a system for this setting, but rather an endorsement of it as an idea source…
As mentioned, this is generally a TL10 Conservative Hard SF setting, so anything listed TL9 or below is available. It's the higher-tech stuff which is questionable.
Power
Both fusion and antimatter power are used in setting. I don't mind the possibility of "semi-portable" fusion reactors—the Starfleet Seebees need them for their field transport pads—but letting every vehicle have a fusion plant (as in some versions of Traveller) seems pushing it.
Microwave beamed power: sure, why not?
Summing up: Basically GURPS TL10.
Computers and Robots
As mentioned, sapience is restricted—volitional AI requires a dedicated neural net—but a sapient computer can be as smart as any mortal, and probably can access its databases far more quickly and more reliably than human memory.
A quick rules check: a tiny computer can run a single high-quality translator program, which is nicely convenient. The ability to run several languages at once requires a bigger unit, though.
I won't be using microbot swarms, and definitely not nanobots… but note that many functions could be handled with larger robots. I don't mind bigger, visible drones roaming around; it's nice color.
Personal Items
Minor TL10 nanotech or chemical tricks, like depilatory cream, smart hairspray, "buzz fabric", and the like hardly threaten setting consistency, and are a good way to promote a "friendly technology" feel. Battledress uniforms incorporate programmable fabric, so they can flip between parade colors and appropriate camouflage in an instant. I don't mind video cloth, but let's not have spray-on video—that's a little too cyberpunk.
The holographic "clothing belt" is completely ostentatious and unlikely, but… you know, why not? Make it expensive, and you have a "must have" item for those fancy dress balls. Approved.
Ecstasy machines: Approved. And probably illegal.
Sleep machines: Approved. Though possibly doctors' prescription required.
Communications
Physical jacks, lasers, radio, and sonar. The FTL comm, as according to the scale rule (above), is building-sized only.
Translator programs are quite good, but each program only handles one language combination; the more you run at once, the slower the results. Imagine diplomatic gatherings, with each attendee carrying or wearing a translator computer—pausing every few moments to listen to the translation. Human translators can greatly speed up the process, and of course the best answer is always to learn the language yourself.
As I said, I'm cool with passive neural input devices—akin to those being experimented with so paraplegics can use computers, and amputees can maneuver their bionic limbs more effectively. But computer-to-brain input makes me hesitate—it breaks the flavor.
Presumably, any inhabited world has a computer net. The core worlds have ubiquitous coverage; colonies might have, or might have only a few core computers and limited terminal access.
Physical mail can be sent very rapidly, thanks to transport, though transport direct-to-person is reserved for items of the utmost importance.
Media
Video walls, and holodisplays, are a great way to combat claustrophobia. I bet the off-duty areas of starships will run scenic environments on a rotating schedule—this week, it's the desert; next week, the forest. Advanced sound tech can provide all-around sound, and chemical synthesizers for scent could complete the illusion. Do this in a holotank, and you get your holodeck—you can't touch the illusions, so you still need physical props. Entertainment centers make use of actors. Training simulations will go to a lot of effort to set up good physical props and sets, before overlaying the holographic imagery.
Although memory can't be recorded, it might be possible to have live sensory-input. But again, this might be too cyberpunky… on the other hand, it could be useful both for doctors and for entertainers.
"Sleep teaching" is an amusing concept, and I might permit it with some drawbacks… like, it only works for certain things (like language skills), and the sleep doesn't count as sleep (so you need to take a walk and real nap after your session…).
Sensors
We're going real-world here: optics, thermal imaging, radar, lidar, sonar, magnetic anomaly detectors, x-ray, MRI…
A stock tricorder has a handset and a shoulder pack computer, and incorporates a number of sensors, low-powered. For specific purposes, you should bring specific gear, but a tricorder is a great start, and you can of course link up your additional peripherals. Presumably, different specialties have different tricorders. A generic "science" unit would pack in chemical analysis units; an engineering unit would have interface cables and chip scanners; a medical unit would have biomonitor leads, that you attach to the patient; a "tactical" unit—mounted like a weapon scope—would combine target data, IFF, and so on.
Construction, Manufacturing, Agriculture
"Smart buildings" are a given. And I want to see O'Neill Cylinders and Stanfard Toruses a plenty—easy enough to do, when you can beam your parts into orbit.
Economy of scale and specialization still apply, so there are still factories—mostly automated, and incorporating whatever assistance this setting's limited nanotech can provide. "Fabricators" are general-purpose manufacturing units, used by starships and start-up colonies—the equivalent of modern "rapid-prototyping" systems. You still need parts and materials, but a full fabrication complex includes the necessary recycling and refining equipment to make use of raw materials, and parts can be manufactured like anything else. Fabricators do have some specialization, i.e. heavy manufacturing unit, fabrics-and-soft-goods unit, organic recycling and food processing, pharmaceutical synthesis, etc. You can't use the chemical synthesis unit to make a phaser, and you can't use the heavy manufacturing unit to make food. "Replicators" are hobbyist-grade fabricators, even more specialized, designed for small lots—plans and recipes circulate widely on the web. This doesn't kill commerce, because, most people don't have the time, knowledge, or interest in finding plans, replicating a device, testing it, maintaining it, etc., when they could just pay the company to do it all for them.
I envision some truly massive and high-efficiency agricultural layouts, with food fabricators and small, "tradition" organic lots supplementing.
Given the materials technology, there would be some powerful adhesives, solvents, and lubricants, and I see the use of "construction foam" and "fusion-formed concrete."
Terraforming seems likely but it's slow. This requires some thought: if people have been among the stars for about six centuries, I do want some nice "M-class" planets, but not a wealth of them—they should be valuable! Though terraforming may be most useful for making "almost-but-not-quite" worlds into "good enough" worlds; a Mars or LV-426 may still be uninhabitable after 500 years of work, but a more Earth-like world may be a paradise after 200…
Covert Ops and Security
I don't mind the idea of sonic privacy fields. Memory-metal or -plastic concealed gadgets—sure, why not?
I don't want invisibility cloaks, because this isn't Ghost in the Shell—although that was one inspiration for this setting. On the other hand, it seems possible to set up a holographic "duckblind." (Though it'd glow in the dark, wouldn't it?) Programmable camouflage seems simplest.
Since we've got ecstasy machines and electronic anesthesia, similar devices for restraints seem likely—though again, I like that they should be tuned for a particular subject, rather than general-purpose.
Can we erase memories? Can we brainwash? I don't know.
Weapons
"Phasers" are multi-function lasers—with the tricorder scope, the laser can be tuned on the fly to the most effective wavelength for a particular atmosphere and target type. The power output is variable, too, from a harmless marker or dazzle beam, up to a high power burst. (Instant disintegration mode, as in the TV shows, seems unrealistic. Lasers blast and scorch.) In the default "stun" mode, it's an electrolaser. (A sad problem: electrolasers don't work in all environments. Sometimes, you can't just stun them!)
"Blasters" are particle beams. Right now, I'm tending toward banning these as portable weapons, but ships definitely have them. Indeed, a starship's "phaser banks" may be very multifunction weapons, capable of switching between different laser or particle modes as necessary.
There are also microwavers and sonic nauseators, though no "sonic stunners" or the like.
No plasma, force, or neural weapons.
Also, people still use GUNS. You can't "stun", and you need to manufacture and bring ammo, but bullets can penetrate through walls, are hard to resist or thwart, and the weapons themselves are inexpensive and durable. Presumably, modern guns are electrothermal caseless or liquid-propellant weapons, but there are undoubtedly lots of old models floating around, with hobbyist replicators still churning out ammunitions… and some old classics will still be in use, like the venerable Colt .45 autoloading pistol.
One compromise is the airgun—it's easy enough to make 'em almost as powerful as chemical firearms (some exist today), and the ammo supply train is simpler. I envision the Federal Starfleet making wide use of airguns when it needs to deploy special ammo types (darts, grenades, etc.). The Alliance and the Empire prefer firearms, both from tradition, and also because they consider the need for a full ammo train an acceptable exchange for the increase in punch.
I don't know about gauss guns—I may do with them as with blasters, limit them to large vehicles.
Missiles and hand grenades, oh my. One trick I think would be fun: hand grenades that function as a LAW or similar weapon. You can throw them around a corner, and their rocket motor activates, and they guide themselves toward the target.
I'm sure there are mininukes, and I'm sure people are hesitant to deploy them.
All sorts of fun munitions are possible with smart materials and biotech, though I'm not sure that knockout gas would be as useful as all that in a society where multiple similar-but-different biochemistries live together, and air masks are over-the-counter equipment for space travellers.
Cops will still have riot batons, just in case—probably electrically-charged.
Armor and Defenses
I imagine that even a single infantryman has a lot of electronic defenses, built into his helmet or carried with his kit, but we can handwave all that. Say that his automatic systems cancel out the enemy's automatic systems, and boil things down to a contest between each squad's EW man to get momentary advantage.
Your basic ship uniform can seal for use as a light, limited-duty spacesuit; pull up a hood and pocket airmask, and hurry to a spacesuit locker. Battledress and protective suits can be sealed against NBC, and ablates when struck by high-energy blasts.
There probably are powered battlesuits, but they seem to be a special-purpose, given how powerful hand weapons are. Say that they're like Appleseed's landmates, essentially very expensive and delicate armored infantry, used for close assault. Any star cruisers probably has a couple of them in storage, just in case. The rest of the time, just use normal troops. I'm tending towards a setting where armor is only helpful against casual violence—when the shit hits the fan, no one is safe.
Medical Tech
Cold sleep and fancy high-tech treatments (purging the body of all foreign materials, etc.) are cool, but they should take time, so you don't do them as spur of the moment things—inject a drug and done. No, they should be proper operations, requiring a trained doctor and equipment.
Neural inhibitators to serve as electronic anesthesia: cool.
Since I've put the kibosh on hyperactive nanotech, that means no nanotech stasis, regeneration, or rejuvenation. And definitely no "healing rays." And growing biotech body parts is iffy—maybe it works, maybe bionics are faster or more reliable, I gotta think about it. On the other hand, sonotherapy sounds fun—so maybe we have healing rays after all, they just take a while! And we do have some pretty spiffy nanotech therapeutics and tailored drugs already; I bet the Federated Worlds CDC works overtime, tracking the latest flu strains and ginning up new vaccines.
I guess in general we won't do any resurrections or mass reconstruction here, but if you reach the operating table in close to one piece, they can save you.
Commentary and Ideas
LordDraqo on tricorders and interfaces
Idea - Shadowjack didn't know what he was planning to do about tricorders. A couple of years back I was enjoying an article about soft-ware configurable circuits, for use in cell-phones, and the potential versatility that this would provide. Combine that with what we have at this time, with OnStar, and 3G, and a "realistic" tricorder becomes attainable.
Idea - I've felt that in a society with ubiquitous information access, everyone would wear a hat, that would also contain a Monocle and earpiece for receiving data from a personal computing device. Perhaps too Transhuman Space for Federal Space, but certainly an idea that I would use.
Commentary: Good thinking. Normal electronics today are already highly configurable, so extending this seems reasonable. Earpieces are a given; it was already Trek canon that the translator was worn like a hearing aid. Another idea: VR contact lenses! Invisible to an outsider, so it doesn't spoil the look, and it's a non-invasive technology…
s/LaSH on defense
I can contribute a little to the concepts of shield and fields, however. Consider that modern technology has already produced the plasma window and electrically charged armour. Neither will look exactly like original Trek, however: plasma windows are likely only useful for high-energy applications like starship engines (they are extremely power-hungry), and ECA is most effective against physical penetrators, although a variation that squirts a cloud of beam-dissipative plasma would have its uses in reducing the impact of an energy weapon, and magnetic fields of all kinds are useful against charged particle beams if such weapons are ever used.
Commentary: I suppose this means that a starship's "shields" are actually several devices, working in concert. Magnetic fields for anti-particle defense, sandscreens for anti-laser, the phasers themselves for anti-missile defense and sensor jamming, armor and energy absorbers as the final line of defense.
…can you charge one's perimeter with ionised plasma or some such in order to make it harder to collapse, or just cause diffraction in beams passing through it, such that the energy is distributed over a larger portion of the ship's armour? This is very important: a beam weapon works by destructive heating of a small area. The same energy spread out over a ship's entire hull will be much milder, and the heat sinks can deal with it at their leisure. Heat sinks are another kettle of fish, however, and if you want to go that far I'd advise you to just go to Atomic Rocket and weep silently as you learn about Hohmann transfer orbits and brehmstrauling radiation and other things I can't even spell, let alone see as relevant to Star Trek.
Commentary: I agree; heat sinks are as frustrating to space adventure as relativity, and just as quick to be jettisoned. :)
The warp bubble itself collapses under attack, but the dispersal idea is worth considering… if only there was a decent physical way to achieve it.
Kaiu Keiichi
This sounds great! Now, what role do Giant Robots play in all of this?
Commentary: GIANT giant robots are exceedingly impractical, but there was an awesome thread in RPOpen that combined Gundam and Star Trek, so the two concepts are not wholly incompatible.
I've already mentioned landmates for special assaults, and I think that Aliens-style powerloaders would be useful in many functions, from cargo handling and construction to firefighting and salvage.
