It doesn't matter how much time the Green Lantern themselves experience. However, the nature of crisis is that if you don't get there fast enough from the objective time of whoever is experiencing the crisis, it's not going to help. If some evil invader is about to destroy all the major cities of another planet ID4 style, then if the GL can't get there in good time from the frame of reference of the planet in distress, they're not going to do any good as a space cop corps. The GL Corps needs to be able to cover sector wide distances quickly, or at least with very little delay in objective, such that if there is any time dilation, it should be minimal at those distances.
With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Twelve)
- Thread starter Mr Zoat
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- Status
- Location
- United states
Pretty sure that there in fact several magic users in DC who are in fact ancient.
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
This just works out to "they need to be able to travel fast". Time dilation has nothing to do with it. It doesn't affect the GLC's ability to do its job at all if they experience no time while in transit or if they experience the whole trip.
- Location
- Hampden Park
The standard method of jetting about does involve some time loss. It isn't simply a matter of 'alert goes out and they're there immediately'. It isn't usually anything as much the the Renegade was going to get, however. Zamaron is a very long way away from Earth, and the Renegade is very under the weather.
No, still positive 16.
Thank you, corrected.
- Location
- Caladan
I always thought that a Green Lantern's FTL travel method worked at the speed of plot, anyway.
- Location
- Hampden Park
That is a convention is dislike.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Mr Zoat's description is "speed of plot." There are various constraints on how fast it can go, and some of those constraints (ringslinging skill, where the Lantern already is when the alert goes out) can be influenced by the narrative.
spencer1519
(Verified Heretic)
- Location
- Oregon, USA
So speaking of the scaled down nature of the GLC to a galactic power rather than a universal one, is Oa at the center of the milky way galaxy? Or is it at the "Center of the universe"?
Or does the center of the universe just happen to be in the milky way?
- Location
- Hampden Park
I'm.. probably.. going to have it be the latter, though I'll avoid mentioning it if at all possible. Oh, and I should probably say that Green Lantern Corps 16's coverage of the rest of the universe is about as deep at the comic version's coverage. That is to say, practically non-existent due to the small size of the Corps and the distances involved. The difference is that they manage to get a bit of actual depth in this galaxy.
But the Malthusians are still the first species to develop in the universe? Do they all still congregate in the Milky Way because of it's central location in the universe? You'd think when they split, the Zamorans, Controllers, etc. would all get away from each other and end up living in separate galaxies.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Saying that the Milky Way is at the center of the universe is factually true if you consider the center of the observable universe. That's a somewhat vacuous truth, since it's effectively being defined to be true, but it's still true. If you consider our local supercluster as being the only part of the universe that we could reasonably get in contact with, then there could be life elsewhere but it wouldn't matter to ANYONE we'd ever encounter, and as such, we're close enough to the center for anyone that matters.
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
Doing otherwise would mean that the writers have to set down a consistent set of rules and then follow them even when it becomes inconvenient.
This somewhat falls apart when there are literal walls defining the edges of the universe.
Similar to GL:TAS? There's space that the Guardians nominally claim, and Lanterns outside of that are taught by their rings and have never been to Oa or met another Lantern.
- Location
- Alabama
Are you planning to actually sit down and calculate time dilation every time that someone FTL transitions? Because that's what it sounds like.
What's easier on you is to assume, as you've been doing so far, that the dilation is minimal until moments like this, where someone is traveling vast distances. And I have a feeling that you're still going to go for convenience of plot, simply because you probably are making up how long the objective time difference is every time it becomes relevant.
Unless you are calculating, in which case, good for you but you're crazy, man. Lol
- Location
- Somewhere out there
Somewhat, but not entirely; it turns out the Milky Way is relatively close to the center of the Virgo Supercluster, and the Virgo Supercluster is relatively close to the center of the Laniakea Supercluster. It's not PRECISELY centered (which is probably a good thing because there's a massive gravitational anomaly there), but it's definitely center-ish.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Not terribly. You draw a circle, split it into 3-5k sectors on a grid, and number them appropriately. (The grid's about a sqrt(sectors * 4 / pi) square -- for 4k sectors, call it 72. Things get a little ugly at the edge of the galaxy.) You decide on an FTL speed (internal and external perspectives) to get from one end of a sector to the other.
Now you can estimate the time it would take to travel between two locations pretty easily. If they're close, plot the route out roughly with a finger. Moving in cardinal directions between two sectors costs 1; ordinal directions costs 1.5. Multiply that number by the number you decided on in the first step.
For longer distances, estimate with a percentage efficiency. Let's say you get 10% wasted movement because of routing. Pythagorean theorem the distance traveled and multiply by 1.1. That's the number of sector widths you traveled. Now multiply by the times you got previously. That's the amount of time.
You do need to assign sectors to every place you intend to visit, though.
- Location
- Somewhere out there
No, you draw a sphere and split it into sectors radially and concentrically, then you merge together the tiny sectors near the middle and split up the big ones near the outside. Crossing through faces costs 1, through edges costs 1.4, through corners costs 1.7.
But otherwise, yes.
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- Location
- Hampden Park
No, I'm going to do it very approximately, with very long distances requiring more time and shorter ones requiring less.
Pizza
Everybody's just people.
- Location
- My house
Wait, why doesn't the GLC just use Boom/Hush tubes? Point-to-point instant transmission seems way more efficient than traveling through all that pesky space in between. I mean, I can see flying around as necessary for patrolling, but otherwise, just why? Can't they ask New Genesis for box blueprints? Or am I misreading the relationship between Oans and New Gods? Or am I misremembering how Boom/Hush tubes work?
That's not really how mother boxes work. They're artisanal soul computers, not mass produced ones.
Hestia&theCourt
Turns out we're plural too.
- Location
- In transition
- Pronouns
- She/Her
New solution: "Mother Box of New Genesis. You have the ability to overcome great fear. Welcome to the Green Lantern Corps."
I mean, if they can have a virus, a planet, and a freaking math equation in their Corps, a Mother Box wouldn't be terribly out of place.
- Location
- texas
True, but then again the Green Lantern Corps getting their own mother boxes isn't out of the question, considering they have a New God corps member- Kraken of Apokalips.
If she doesn't have the capacity to make them herself, she might know a guy who knows a guy.
Or if she becomes an alpha lantern in this story maybe she could merge with a motherbox.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
For an Oan, the appropriate way to assign sectors is by the expected amount of work, which is roughly proportional to the number of technological civilizations. This method does not let you judge distances by the number of sectors you pass through.
For a writer being unusually rigorous, your solution is absurdly difficult to implement, and a grid is better than necessary.
It is possible that sector sizes are determined by raw space to give clear boundaries and a sense of scale, but how many Lanterns are assigned to a sector is determined by the expected problems.
(Earth causes more problems than Mars, for example, disproportionate to their tech.)
- Location
- Somewhere out there
At the very least, the grid needs to be cubic instead of square.
A grid is fine if your goal is to measure distances. Spherical coordinates work better for pretty much everything else in terms of stellar navigation, especially when you have such fine reference points as Oa (positioned at the center of the universe, providing an origin point for the coordinate system) and the Source Wall (positioned at the boundary of the universe, through which all rays must pass).
Empiricist2
Let's play doctor!
- Location
- Baton Rouge
To a Guardian, wanting boom tubes when you can get anywhere in the galaxy in a matter of days probably seems like small children asking for you to drive them to the other side of the block when they could just walk.
A relatively simple way to do it is to assign coordinates to various points of interest, with either the center of the Milky Way or Oa at (0, 0, 0), and then have an excel spreadsheet to calculate the distance between two points. You could have a fudge factor for either having to route around something, non-constant travel speeds, or based on the avarice used in the transition.
A map of the Milky way could be used to approximately assign coordinates. Wouldn't work for places very far from the Milky Way, but I doubt there will be many of those. For simplicity, one coordinate unit could be one light year.
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