Johannes replied to me: > > Think Puddle Jumper/"Needle" Death Glider/Dart vs. Al'kesh/Tel'tak vs. > > Ha'tak. > > > > * Gate Fighter, one or two seats, relatively big guns. > > * Gate Scout, seats for a dismount team, some weapons. The party ship? > > * Gate Transport, more people, unarmed and unarmored. > > * Gate VIP Transport, one or two passengers, strong defenses. > > > > If you want all the party members to have a crew position at the scout, > and assume a party of 4, why would the fighter work with 2 crew?
The fighter is optimized to destroy things, the scout is optimized to survive adventures and bring back information. The fighter might not be FTL-capable. Optimized for atmospheric ops? > Would a hoverbike work with the intended TL? At TL11? Vectored reactionless thrust. A hovercraft can be done even earlier. > A big fighting ship, being able to fight many gate ships. Protects against > an invasion through the gate. Sublight, to save the cost/weight of the FTL drive and to get even faster? As a side effect, that gives the scout a chance to disengage and try again. > A ship just large enough, to outgun and outrun any gate ships. To hunt > scouts. Coming through a gate defended by the big Gate Defender? > Actually one could argue, that if the software is a mix of ancient alien > and human software, the alien part might be better understood. The alien > software will be intensivly researched and tested and all findings will be > written down immediatly. There will be no last minute bug fixes either, > because regardless if it's a bug or a feature, the software stays as it > is. Vinge had stories with programmer/archaeologists. They're also mentioned in Transhuman Space. But I wonder if complex software CAN be decompiled/reverse-engineered. It is hard enough to understand other people's code when you have the source and some sort of project documentation. That's TL8 systems. Add the size and complexity of TL11 software, and you might need a Manhattan Project to understand it. Difficult if it is all secret. > You'd need to spend much resources on quality management to get the amount > of testing and documentation on ordinary software and the lowest bidder > propably cuts corners. Does that apply the same way to military software? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
