On Fri, Dec 3, 2010 at 2:24 PM, Onno Meyer <[email protected]> wrote: > David replied to me: >> Unless you're in a particular historical period, just pick a name. > > Hello David, > > I'm in a science fiction setting, so I could just pick a name and > run with it, but I want it to feel right -- which is not the same > as being right. > > If a Captain's Gig has room for a coxwain and the captain, would > you react with "hey, that's just an oversized surfboard", or does > it meet the spirit of the thing, since a space shuttle needs no > rowers?
Sure, that's a captain's gig. It's designed to carry the captain around in a certain amount of luxury and speed, though I'd expect it to carry a few passengers, so it could be used to transport a guest or visiting admiral. In other settings, (or cultures in the same setting, even) the captain might be expected to show off his power and importance, by having a big, fast craft. In my hard SF setting, in the one navy we've got well fleshed out, a captain's gig would be one of the orbit-surface shuttles, same as carries assault troops. The interiors of these craft are reconfigurable, based on what they're doing. Captain's gig role would probably get fewer seats than the regular passenger roll, and would probably get the captain's favorite pilot, but which boat it was would vary based on circumstance. That's because these ships don't have space or mass to waste on a tender that can't serve as many roles as possible. It's actually never come up, though, so I don't know. What I'd do is figure out what the budgets -- not just money, but mass, volume, crew, whatever -- for auxiliary craft are. Stations in my setting are big. Beyond big. Huge. They've got mass and space for anything they need. Usually, they've got the money and people for it, too. So, they've got a whole array of specialized craft about them, and spacers will have a taxonomy to distinguish between a tender for one task, and a similar tender that does another. There might be a second taxonomy beyond the functional one, based on size, engine configuration, engine type, whatever matters, for whatever reason, to the people who work with them. Ships, particularly jumpships, have more restrictions on volume and mass (you could carry reaction mass, cargo, weapons instead) and usually have limited, small as possible, crews. So they've got fewer craft, which have to do everything. They're les likely to have as detailed a set of taxonomies. -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
