Eric replied to me: > > The patriarch/matriarch owns the ship, his or her spouse > > is by default the XO, the heir is being groomed to take > > over in due time, and non-heirs must make up their mind > > if they want to stay in a subordinate role or strike out > > on their own. > > depends on "owns" vs "operates" to a certain extent > > If the vessels cost 1B$, then perhaps they're just operating it, and the > owner has the final say (but only intervenes in the case of negligence > or corporate synergy [or other babble])
Hello Eric, a beneficient, hands-off capitalist? Are we talking science fiction or fantasy? Seriously speaking, we would need a situation where starships make substantial profits, and where the technobabble and performance make central control problematic. Say a ship goes out with high-tech from an industrial world, visits an agricultural world to swap some of the tech for food, and then a mining world to swap the food and the remaining tech for raw materials. The circle takes ten years, and there are multiple worlds in each category -- six years into the flight, the ship must decide to which industrial world they will go, based on the data they can get at the mining world. At the end, they make a couple of hundred percent profit. Sure, a planetside owner might send a representative onto the ship, but after six years with the traders, would that representative go native? Or they give their ships non-discretionary orders, but that could cut into their profits, even risk the ship. East India Company, and the captain can decide if he wants to take his ship around Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope this year. This requires no FTL comms in the setting, messages at the speed of a ship. > This setting seems to assume computers, so some computer-directed > teaching should be available. I don't believe it that, unless we're talking AI. For things like maths, you can have a non-AI program that 'understands' what a pupil writes, but not for languages. Say there is a question where the right answer is "prison". The programmer even thought to allow "jail" as an alternate correct answer, but what if the student writes "gaol"? Mistake and no points or extra credit for appropriate idiomatic vocabulary use? > > new in the upgrades, they will have to entice an > > expert to join the crew permanently. > > on this thought -- if intra-galactic communication is in "Days", > kidnapping experts would not be feasible... unless there is no spanning > authority... Even if there is no FTL communication, a police patrol craft will be able to overhaul traders. > back to topic, ship modifications would be adding Life Support capability! You always need a reserve, but how much? If we're talking ten people, I'd want three 10-man life systems, or better three 20-man systems. For 5,000 people, ten 1,000-man systems might be enough -- two hot spares, two cold spares, one dismantled for overhaul. When the population grows to 6,000, why, there are still four spare systems left. > a reason the cost of Luxury Cabin is more than Cabin+empty space is the > LS and plant slice. In 3E, life systems and their power plants are dirt cheap at TL10+, even if you factor in reserves. > I was thinking about these huge ships -- > > If they are huge, and essentially identical size, capabilities and > schedule, would they price of the cargo service be fixed by a cartel, or > would each ship be able to charge as much as they wanted to each client? > (I'm thinking auto insurance or medical insurance fee-for-procedure > costs vs. a free market). > > If the ship is unlucky and needed several repairs in a row, their budget > could easily be compromized by a fixed cargo income, forcing ... extra > enterprises to gain funds. A cartel implies either real-time coordination or long-range plans. One of my ideas to encourage family ships was to limit the speed of communication, which would at the same time limit the opportunity to scheme. And Johannes wrote: > > 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. First construct a setting where 'family ships' are the logical outcome, then put it under stress. > 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. If we assume that ships travel for years between port calls, the opportunities for fraud become interesting. A trader would need a reputation for honesty -- either for the specific ship, or as paid-up member of a honest guild. > 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. A completely new meaning for 'galley slave' ... Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
