On Wed, 12 Sep 2012, Onno Meyer wrote:
Johannes replied to me:
If there is a few jump points yes. If the entries move all over the place,
the forecasts only cover the immediate future and the entry points move at
a speed that makes stations chasing them unfeasable, but not so fast that
shuttles can't, you can have shuttles chasing expected entry points.
Hello Johannes,
the station should be able to move just as well as a shuttle.
Size doesn't matter in this regard. The dividing line between
an orbital transfer vehicle and an orbital transfer station
can get blurry.
A combination of STL shuttles to the edge of the system and
FTL ships from system to system works best if the FTL drive
takes a substantial bite out of the payload capacity of the
ship, and if the FTL ships stay far from the planet. The
latter suggests big, comfortable shuttles and stations in
the outer system -- a combination of insystem _ships_ and
interstellar ships.
A shuttle would transport only the cargo of that run, plus passangers and
crew with fairly shortterm occupancy. A station would have to haul much
more mass and volume around, which means big drives that have to be paid
and (depending in the drive) high fuel costs. A drive malefunction in a
station would have a serious impact on the trade to and from the system,
while it's easier to have enough retundancy in shuttles. There might also
be reasons to keep a station at a certain distance to the main planet, to
keep transfer between the station and the planet short.
What i really like about the setup with a visiting FTL ship, exchanging
shuttles with a system, is the opportunities as campain background. If the
PCs are such a shuttle crew, the GM can play adventures in the PCs ship
(while the shuttle is in flight), can play adventures, where the pcs
perform a mission for a captain (during FTL flights) and the GM can set
pretty arbitrary deadlines, how long the pcsw remain in a port, the GM can
send them to arbitrary ports, the GM needs little suspension of disbelief
at having NPCs apeare and disapeare ect.
You get a background for both small ship and big ship adventures and a
good excuse for "you just happen to be in a tavern in X, thoose known NPCs
are also there, you have 2 weeks time for adventuring" adventure starts,
with no suspension of disbelief challanges.
Now i search for in-world reasons, for making such a setup.
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