On Wed, 13 Jun 2012, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
There also is the matter of how many ships in total exist. That can change
due to ecconomic conditions. A space gypsy culture will most likely mean,
that there will be little reaction to short term market fluctuations. But
it will have to react to long term trends. And if their social model fits
well to a certain trend and the trend changes, things can get interesting.
Ships get considerably faster, say, and it becomes possible
to leave the families at home.
That would fundamentally change the space gypsy culture, most likely to
something that is no longer space gypsies.
If you have however long periods with high amounts of freight waiting to
be transported (like new colonies are founded and equipment and settlers
are transported to them) followed or interrupted by periods with much
less (the colonies have become mostly autarkic) the situation becomes
different.
During boom times, there will be new ships that need crews. During bust
times, some ships might retire without replacements. Both times in
principle support space gypsies. But a family planning sheme that works in
one of that times, might not in an other.
Sure a central authority would not be there purely for family planning. A
central authority would be one obvious answer on how the total number of
ships is regulated. If you want to use it actually in a game, you'd have
to additionally answer what they are (council of elders,priesthood), where
they are based, and what powers they actually have.
If they organize for mutual benefit, the only powers are
what the individual ships are willing to give to them.
Depends on how much they need the central authority for doing their
business. If it is unpractical to operate an unbound unconnected ship,
propably because the central authority is the best source for spare parts,
provides helpfull insurence and legal protection, is part of local culture
and religion, ect, then it might exercise more general powers.
Is there a safe job on a starship, that wouldn't be better
done by simple robots?
Depends on what robots are actually able to do in that setting. Cleaning,
cooking fetching stuff, finding loose objects and putting them where they
belong, all is stuff where we propably have to wait much longer, until
robots can do it effectivly, even if in the 50s it was supposed to be
right around the corner, just like flying cars.
On the other hand, (depending on technical details), it might be
conceivable to put failsaves in a lot of a star ships system, that work on
the principle, if certain indicators pass treshholds, shut the component
down and sound an alarm. If having the component down for a while is not
fatal, that makes sabotage more difficult for people without high relevant
skills.
_______________________________________________
GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]>
http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
