Craig replied to me: > When I built my bioship in 3E, I just built the ship based on the TL the > biotech emulated. Whether it's a vat-grown, "born" ship, a ship with > nanotech repair systems, or (in the case of mine) a balanced ecosystem > running under a communal intelligence, the result is the same: the game > effect is built in the rules, what it looks like and where it comes from > is > just color text.
Hello Craig and Nigel, looking at Robots, it seems that is just how bioships in 3E are supposed to work, cf the Grendel on p. RO122, but it feels just a bit unsatisfactory. (Side note: Robots also has biological computers.) The drawback is that only the color text can tell bioships from metal and composite ones. The hull is a bit heavier, the armor is a bit lighter (but non-rigid), and it regenerates slowly (but too slow to matter in space combat). Perhaps the bioship lacks conventional controls, so the crew are truly passengers without control of their fate, but you could just as easily write a metal ship that way. And Nigel wrote: > I would assume the technology of the powersource would be that off the > biotech tech level, not the base tech level, if this is a synthetic ship. > Alternatively, I would allow that the base creature develops the necessary > power from its diet. [Peter Hamilton suggested that superconducting cables > run thru a gas giant's strong magnetic field supplied enough power for > organic space stations. Perhaps that's the approach?] A broadcast power receiver doesn't quite match it, since there is no transmitter. Use the rules for solar cells, except that it has to be very close to the source? Or try to reverse- engineer the magsail rules. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
