One more idea: how big is a worldship? Imagine a 200m ball placed among the skyline of Manhattan. It would be wider than the sykscrapers, sure, but also less high. Not all that mind-shattering. But at a sufficiently high TL, it could transport 1.25 megatons of cargo or 1 megapassenger.
Now imagine a 2,000m ball. That would dwarf the skyscrapers of any metropolis impressively. It could carry 1 gigapassenger if there was a plausible scenario how to get it loaded before the first die of old age. A modest increase in diameter, 2,500m, gives enough space to carry roughly a gigaton of cargo in addition to the gigapeople. A ton could keep a light infantry trooper for quite some time. That still assumes bunks. Double the diameter to 5 km, and it can take a billion people in single cabins. So, is a 5 km / 3 mile sphere insanely large for a ship, or is it insanely small for the population of most continents? _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
