Eric wrote: > > * 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. > > Reactor core is expensive. (Although I suppose you could recover it)
If you're abandoning the ship, it is probably lost, anyway. > - - biological - Robot > mutiny/Plague/nanobots/Aliens(tm)/zombies/dinosaurs (the usual) A very good reason to eject ... > - - hostile force (warship) that targets things, possibly may ignore > small targets. I wouldn't take military action into account. Without specific info on the aliens, we don't know if they consider escape pods easy target practice or noncombattants. > > * Of course it would be possible to build a TL11+ escape pod with less > > than 0.1 tons per person, but that again raises the question if the > > survivors are better off in a pod than in the wreck. > > I assume there must be some economy of scale for hull/life > support/computer/airlock for having more than one person in a pod. Yes, but at TL11 and higher you can get really lightweight. > Full compartmentalization, build the ship inside a self-sealing hull, > make the larger common rooms the Secure Rooms (say, the pool area, the > concert hall, the dining hall)... If something twists the hull, the larger compartments would be more likely to become unsealed. Kurt wrote: > The real answer is going to be based on the "world" model you use, how > interstellar travel is accomplished, Hyperdrive. > the level of government > oversight/regulation on the shipping industry, the way ships are > designed, and how the rules are interpreted. Sensible rules, moderately intrusively enforced. At least in systems which had industry for some time. True anarchy doesn't prosper. > There's a bomb on board. Not something most people would design for, I'd guess. > The ship is damaged in orbit and the orbit is decaying. A very good reason to eject. > > * Abandoning the ship can be a great roleplaying opportunity. A 'random' > > collection of characters in a life or death situation, but without the > > usual chain of command. Who will take the lead? Wo will panic? > > Whoever is part of the ship's crew would be in charge. That's the official rule. PC adventurers would probably have something to say about this. Especially if the crewmember is the second assistant barkeeper and the passengers are veteran spacer adventurers. > > * ISTR that real-world ships require lifeboats for 125% of their maximum > > capacity, in case some are blocked/disabled by the accident. > > Lifeboats don't need to be one shot/one trick devices. They can be > designed for other uses such as planetary excursions and liaison work. A mix of shuttles (for 40% of the capacity?) and escape pods to make up the rest? I'm assuming that shuttles will be much bigger per person than pods -- as the TL goes up, pods get lighter, but shuttles get faster and more comfortable. > > * But then, why not space suits with grav belts/manned maneuvering units? > > They could be used for comet sightseeing, too. > > Space suits take training and they isolate people at the time when they > need to be close to others. So do one-man pods. Mike wrote: > Don't forget evac and environmental suits and like. Kurt makes a good case why multi-person pods are better than than single-person suits. > Add space, vaccum, hostile alien environment, hostile aliens or like human > ones and ??? Just one type of suit, if any. Otherwise the safety briefing will take days. Troy wrote: > When I was thinking about the 3eTL13 Hephaestus' Forge nano-factory > ships, I decided that the *cabins* could double as lifeboats. The > ordinary two bunks(and a toilet closet), plus another 8 survival > cocoons stored, gravity ripple comm, radio comm, shapable deflector > screen(to provide "wings"), mega-thruster, 5-year mini fusion power; > but no FTL. Some of the cabins, not all, right? Another way to read this would be that some people live permanently in the escape pods. Jay wrote: > Okay - how Starships work in the game-world is important. The FTL drive > is an important factor to consider. > > Imagine a hyper drive - there are dozens of mechanisms for a hyperdrive. > > One, I imagine is an "Instant Elsewhere" device. The ship just > disappears at one point and appears at another point, light years away. > Blink! 3E Space and Vehicles has warp, hyperdrive, jumpdrive, teleport. I'm thinking about hyper, because the warp rules are a bit fishy and the jumpdrive gives complicated strategic situations. > In that case, life boats would over complicate the rescue vastly. You'd > only use them if the ship was completely untenable. Or you go into them early but don't launch. Then you launch but don't fly away. > When you think about it, most fictional and RPG starships are > metaphorical in nature. This is because hard SF is a difficult thing to > communicate with many folks. > > If the ships are metaphors for ocean going ships, then they need > metaphorical life boats. If the ships are metaphors for airplanes, then > they need metaphorical ejection seats and parachutes. Ships are mostly ocean-equivalents, because flight times are days rather than hours. If flights were faster than that, it would complicate planetary adventures. Thanks, Onno PS - Mike, please don't re-post this elsewhere. _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
