Roger replied to me: > >* A starship can't sink, so why abandon ship? If required, find a way to > > eject the reactor core, not the passengers. The damaged ship is easier > > to find than a bunch of little pods. > > Life support failure.
So take redundant life support systems in "panic rooms". > Multiple punctures of multiple > compartments. Take even more compartments. If the ship is literally riddled with holes, why would the escape pod survive? > Structural failure. A good reason to eject. > A reactor that's spilled enough > radiation that the ship will be unlivable. Eject the reactor instead. > >* Default assumption that survivors stay in/with the ship, but escape > > capsules only for the specific case that the ship is going to crash > > really soon. No long endurance, just a safe reentry and soft landing. > > I think that if you abandon ship in deep space you probably stay close > to the remains of the ship, for reasons of being found. Canonical > escape capsules don't seem to have FTL drives, if only because if they > do you also have FTL missiles, so there's no point in trying to go > anywhere. I would expect that a lifeboat is more mobile than an escape pod, just from the "boat" in the name. Also compare lifeboats and inflatable rafts in the real world. These days lifeboats are expected to be motorized, just like the ships which carry them, but with much less speed and range. I'd assume the same for science fictional space lifeboats. With the 3E rules, it is relatively easy to make a small craft FTL-capable. Re the missile comparison, I was thinking of escape pods for 10-50 people, 500 to 1,500 cf. Did you think of individual escape pods? Single pods might be a neat way to make sure that only the PCs crash-land on Dinosaur Island or whereever, without NPCs to complicate the picture. These coincidences happen ... Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
