Johannes replied to me: > Self built ships and gates built by mysterious high tech aliens is more > common, but you can have it the other way round as well.
You go THROUGH a gate, but you live IN a ship. The ship is more important to the daily life of the party, so they want a higher degree of control about it -- by coming from a culture which understands and builds the ships. > Star Gate gates do not seem to be designed to be used by vehicles, but > other gate builders could have different design goals. They're used by the Puddle Jumpers from Atlantis. But the shape is probably a technical requirement, not a design choice. Round wormhole, round gate. > SG gates can be > moved easily however, so they are a potential vehicle component. They were used in various large vehicles. It seems that raises a plot hole re gate addresses, but the technobabble seems to have coped somehow. > A vehicle > that can transport a gate and move through it after some reconfiguration > would be in principle possible. If there is the technology to build new gates, this would be the basic way new gates are emplaced. A gate-carrier starship arrives and drops the gate, then it goes home the direct way. > Not particulary nice, because it means > that if you arrive somewhere you take away the local gate on your > expedition and leave it lying around whereever you decided to come back, > but you can prevent being cut off from the gate that way. If nobody is using the local gate, why is it a problem? There was an episode where some bad guys went around and stole gates, which caused more of a stir. > If the gates are not round, you propably could send gates through each > other. Or send disassembled gates. > It is possible that mass or volume or a length speed ratio become design > considerations. More mass, volume or a longer operation might mean more > energy use or more wear and tear on the gate. > > If you don't stick to SG, gates that do not function on planets are a > possiblity too. > > There are a couple of reasons to put installations on not habitable > planets, even if you have habitable ones. They might have a resource you > need (even if the resource is just "it's really hot there"). You want to > avoid or reduce contamination by biological influences. Security reasons, > if anything living on that planet is automatically suspicious, it's harder > to creep up on your installation and this makes a good place for a high > security prison. Any world without a gate would make such a prison. Or, for that matter, any world where the gate is in a highly defensible position. The Stargate series didn't do enough with the concept of a "gate fortress", but then it would have ended many adventures at an early stage. Put the gate into a position so you can contain whoever comes through. Details depend on your TL, from portcullis and murder holes to yard-thick concrete and remote weapons. The SG team did a bit on Earth, but they still relied on troops in the gate room, and they had that silly window directly to the control room. Surround that by defenses against people from the world, from curtain walls to minefields. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
