Energy-Scarce Sci Fi

homebrew

#1

So, I just started up a sci-fi game, and each player got to declare something, and one of them declared that energy was expensive and scarce, so we came up with a really simple outline for how to track how much energy your spaceship has, and how much energy things cost. So as not to confuse spaceship energy with ENERGY effort, we call it YU for “yog units” (thank you skuk). Here’s the basics:

A basic small ship starts with one :heart: of YU. An FTL hop from one destination to the next uses 1d6 energy.

Recharging small devices/light weapons is 1 YU. Large devices, light vehicles, and heavy weapons is 2 YU.

Escaping the gravity well (leaving a planet’s surface, or moving away from the center of a solar system uses 2 YT; traveling from the outer part of a system to the inner goldilocks zone costs 1 YT.

Stargates can save energy on interstellar travel, and space elevators and skyhooks can save energy leaving planets and traveling to the outer end of a system respectively.

From there you can apply this simple economy to all sorts of things pretty easily.


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#2

How do you regain energy? Is it just a straight-up purchase, or does it replenish with a long rest (like ordinary HP)?

Also, out of curiosity, how do you explain (in game) the energy is scarce? Is it just space-fuel that’s scarce (like: there’s light and organic matter and regular sources of energy, but space things needs to be powered by something else), or are all energy sources dwindling (like: the sun has faded)? If it’s the latter, it seems that YU might be hp and barter too.


#3

Great questions!

So, it’s fuel. It gets burned up, and you have to get more of it. Now, at the risk of giving my players ideas, you could say that with some kind of ram-scoop on your ship, you could regain some amount of yog through travel.

The fiction we came up with was that yog production was both expensive, coming from the refinement of exotic matter and large amounts of energy (usually solar), and highly regulated, making it expensive. There’s no subspace for FTL communications, so the speed of information is the speed of the ships carrying it, therefore even though colonies and stations can be powered by other means, ships need a stable and energy dense fuel - so yeah, I imagine yog would be among the most valuable things anyone has in their possession, and that would make it both good for trade, and tempting to steal.


#4

Reminds of the old anime Robotech, they had this fuel called protoculture. An alien ship crash landed on earth and it was the last refining ship to make it. It sent trying to escape a war like race of 50 foot humans. In the second series of the show on a Devastated earth everyone was trying to get it.


#5

Compounded by: my character is an Echo type (picked before that truth got told). So DMtron had to have rules for translating the energy they harvest (in YUs) to energy effort. Plus noted that my character would be unpopular with the authorities and anyone I harvest from.