Good luck in your future endeavors. It was good while it lasted.
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I'm still here.
No worries there. Though two of them are not likely to occur all that often and may get traded out. I also have three undeclared. As I work into the persona of Aster I'll fill them out. For instance, he might start getting a mild xenophobia/intolerance at a quirk level, or xenophilia! I might start playing pranks on the others while camouflaged, quirk level practical joker. Even though the game started a year and a half ago (WOW!), it's only been the equivalent of like 3 or 4 table top sessions.
In that case I have another 5 CP to spend!
:-) Well that's the platinum edition. Other models wouldn't have a computer as robust. But thanks!
Aster is at 167 CP (159 with 8 saved). Are we getting any CP after the last scene?
I need to come up with a better name for it. Hmm, maybe Aster should have some stock in the company too.
I specked to C cells to have a common baseline. The regular systems will run off a C for a bit over 30 hours. A common safety margin for hostile environments is 30% to get there, 30% to return, 10% margin, leaving 30% for activity on site. If you need more time on site, you need to increase the resources, or get closer to where you are going. So with 30 hours, that means I could travel out for 9 hours, work for roughly 9 hours, then have 10 hours of time remaining to return (with the safety margin). A D-cell increases that to about 12 days. Which for exploring unknown planets would give a solid safety margin. This gets reduced quickly if the jammers are in operation as they each take 10% of a C-cell per hour to operate. If you don't like the duration of a D cell, two C cells gives two days of regular operations. The "companion" part is the AI, either volitional or non-volitional. It needs a computer to sit in. The AI is there to operate the electronic operations (sensors, ew). You can think of this as the deluxe version, it has a supped up computer. (Aster already has a computer, I'd be dumping it on the trade in). An AI would need to be purchased as an AI, the basic version noted would cost 2 or 3 CP. From recollection, there are actually a couple of components that are listed as having small dedicated computers, however these are just for operating that specific system. For Aster, instead of having a small encyclopedia on his wrist, it's now in his backpack. I like what I built and plan on keeping it for other games too. Sales page of the Explorer's Companion, Mark VI:
Here's a mental image. Think of a typical back-country backpack. Instead of cordura, it's wrapped in bio-material that is able to repair small tears and scratches, and molds to the wearer. It has an internal frame to support materials. In the smallest configuration, the top and bottom thirds are rolled away. Sticking up over the left shoulder strap is a rod that can be extended up, or bent forward, with a sensor pod on the end. The bio-material of the pack provides many options that can either enhance the visibility of the pack, great for search and rescue, or minimize and reduce the visibility of the pack, great for VIP protection, security, and just for discretion. While many people will house their personal AI's in the pack, the base model does not come standard with an AI and requires the user to actively operate the many functions of the suit. This is accomplished with a HUD or through a flexible control panel that can be attached to either forearm. However, those individuals that do upgrade their software with an AI find much greater versatility. A standard nvAI can be set to provide alerts and is often voice controlled. Top of the line models often incorporate a full AI that cna proactively monitor the environment for the user. The base model, sans the jammer and some of the other defensive gear, saw great success with early Mars explorers. Obviously, this is a security model. (The military generally just uses a powersuit). Many private security firms appreciate the EP's ability to provide enhanced sensory capabilities with a discreet footprint due to the adaptive coating of the bio-material. Security teams have reported that when having multiple jamming modules in operation while escorting a VIP, they have been able to successfully impede assassination attempts. Another popular version from REI-Space includes a blow-up tent with airlock, good for one use. Asteroid miners liked the C-5 version that came with an additional air tank and positioning jets built into the frame above and below the primary sensor package. This was generally cheaper than a full up EVA suit and worked well in many environments. One of the selling points of the EP pack is that multiple units can set up communication networks that will work relatively well within the communication ranges. REI-Space found that a lot of search and rescue groups on Earth were interested in this function as the packs still allowed for considerable rescue gear to be carried in the pack while providing an enhanced sensor package and communications for groups of first responders in disaster areas. Many space-based S&R units have also adopted the EP as the self-healing covering extends the life of the product when conducting operations in damaged spaceships. Being able to create bright distinctive patterns on the bio-material also aids in rescue operations.
REI-Space has identified several demographic groups that it targets for sales: Overwatch XL - Security firms appreciate the many features with a full AI.
Cause I'm a pack rat? :) Equipment has weight, which is encumbrance. A powersuit provides a boost to the weight and encumbrance that can be carried. Each of the components that is part of a power suit generally weighs a half pound to several pounds by itself. At STR 10, it doesn't take long to be loaded down with no mechanical support. There's a balance between realistic hard science and space opera. Take our spaceship engines, we dropped hard science and went with a higher tech because we wanted to skip dealing with delta-v, refueling, etc. While there's a part of us that would love to have ironman powered armor and simply shrug off anything smaller than a tank round, that wouldn't be much fun. We can always ignore rules. (I personally try not to since it does provide a common baseline for everyone) We could all carry star trek tricorders and comms (but those are TL 11^+ in GURPS) I'll make do with whatever you ultimately decide you want to deal with. Until then, I'm quite happy to present options and alternatives. Using the rules for combination gadgets on page 16 of UT. I present The Explorer's Companion
I do agree that our basic suit should be the same, I think everyone does have the bio-spacesuit (bss). That's good enough for most "no combat expected" activities. I'm looking at the next step up which is "fighting likely". For instance, being invited to the Leeunid's capital on friendly terms would be the bss. But flying into an unknown on a mostly dead world would require gearing up a bit more. Just like we might take a side arm and leave the rifles and missile launchers on the ship when visiting a palace, but grab those big guns for rescuing damsels from pirates.
my laser pistol has a low power setting...
Sure, kinda. I'm willing to talk about it. I know we have some house ruling on damage and armor (could you see to adding a spoiler with that info to the campaign tab in your copious spare time?). From what I understand, this system just reduces the numbers on damage and armor, but doesn't change the relationship of damage to defense. So it's still a matter of the average weapon and the defense we have. Well, our first couple of battles have really wanted some heavy armor. Especially when one shot has the potential to be permanent. Our spacesuits aren't armor. They're everyday spacesuits, with some protection against punctures and sharp edges. The battlesuit is combat armor. The space biosuit, with the right addons, can function in most any environment, and can be worn pretty much all the time. The battlesuit would be more limited (like driving a battle tank to the grocery store). I'd actually be happier with stealthier armor than high DR. which I have with the space biosuit. What I don't have that the battlesuit offers is: sensors, some more defense and carrying capacity. At TL 10, basic armor provides 18/6 DR for nanoweave. The tacsuit increases this to 30/15. The biospacesuit gives a tradeoff in other functions and endurance but reduces protection to 15/3. Then we get to sealed combat armor, the basic provides 75/45, but is no longer flexible. And then we get to powered armor. The scout heavy battlesuit (my personal favorite for the TL) unfortunately? bumps the DR up to 150/100. I can see where you wouldn't like this option, that is a significant difference that would effectively allow the individual to shrug off almost all small arms fire that didn't have serious armor penetration modifiers. In the name of space opera, if you're willing to be a little loose with TL, I'd be really, really happy with a TL 11 military cybersuit, it's got the flexible nature I like, can mold to look like clothing, has endurance, carrying capacity, and the auxillary sensor systems I'm wanting, and only has 80 DR, I'd even be okay with the armor of the civillian model (DR 40), it's mostly the looks and other capabilities that aren't as combat related that I'm drooling over. And its a lot cheaper than the battlesuit, $50k instead of $200k. Would that be acceptable?
I'm not personally comfortable with "hey you, alien creature, you seem trustworthy, join our band of brothers. Oh, and here's the keys to the city, the password for our ship, and all our latest secrets." No reason the catfolk shouldn't have been outfitted with the best gear available to their world anyway. That's an awful lot of trust. Maybe down the road after the character earns trust of the crew?
If you want to do a martial artist, I'll do a hacker/lock breaker.
Sure. Aster is supposed to be primarily a mechanic type, for various reasons he seconds in gunnery, piloting, and face. Are you wanting the second characters to be in the same scenes or carrying out vastly different functions? I'd be happy to do a primary face, pilot, or computer tech. Secondary options would be gunnery for all of them, and then as needed, medic, piloting, or computer tech. Since this'll be a secondary character I'm willing to have the PC fill any holes. What were you thinking of Clebsch73?
I'm okay with having a crew member that just wasn't worthy of mention earlier, but is now showing up for away missions... I'm not sure how I feel about allowing an alien to join. That kinda changes our dynamic a lot.
Aster shrugs and follows the priest.
We have the database that needs translating. But I think our resident computer character went MIA.
So at an increased factor of 100, instead of $100k/hour it's $1k/hour. That works. Smaller stuff can still be done in a reasonable time frame.
I agree, a couple of hours for a battlesuit is probably a little too space opera. Maybe a scale factor? Larger, more expensive systems are more likely to be closer to the book listed time factor? I wouldn't want to just add a multiplier houserule. Saying it takes twice as long is four hours instead of 2. Saying it takes 10 times as long is still less than one day, but then starts to become untenable for larger components. Maybe we acknowledge that if a ship system is damaged, instead of full replacement, it can be jury-rigged in segments that run shorter duration's? Maybe the margin of success needs to be greater than 5 for the book listed speed, a regular success is multipled by a d6? So succees by 1 would mean that the completion time would be d6 hours per 100k?
Aster is wondering: How long since this planet was seeded? How long did it take to spread globally? What happened to all the plant material, and animal carcasses?
I figure with a cargo hold of "supplies" you can decide whenever we want to build something if we have the raw materials needed. The more exotic, the less likely. For instance, we probably don't have weapons grade plutonium in stock, so building any more nuke missiles probably can't happen unless we find some raw ore. On the other hand, building a bunch of archaic ak-47's to outfit a local insurgency wouldn't be a problem. By including a couple of superscience systems, we're able to avoid a lot of the hard sci-fi that would impede a space opera game. Our power plant has fuel for years, antigrav means we can walk around the ship in 0-g, contragrav and reactionless thrusters means we can take off/land on planets and not worry about delta-v and fuel. Instead we can worry about an interstellar bio-weapon.
The robofac is 5% of the ship volume and only takes up one of twenty spaces on the ship. Both the factory and a minifac have robofac options that have an assembly skill provided. The minifac is like a desktop 3D printer. The factory is like my garage. I have a workbench, drill press, table saw, miter saw, band saw, lathe, sander, grinder, welder, toolbox full of hand tools, numerous jigs and draw box of odds and ends. Against the wall is a rack of materials. Sure, the 3D printer only costs a few hundred bucks, whereas I have about 10k in tools in the garage. But with the materials, I can rebuild my house from my garage, It would take a lifetime to do it on that one 3D printer.
Paizo went down over the weekend as I was posting my response. The 1000 ton Explorer is the correct tab for the main ship. Ship systems:
On page 8 it discusses how spaces are considered to be roughly 5% of ship volume. Hence 20 spaces. This is also why bigger ships have cargo/fuel spaces that hold more, and that habitat spaces have more cabins, etc. Somewhere in the background someone made a determination that a cabin (plus corridor, plumbing, portion of common kitchen, etc was X in size. And thus when the ship gets bigger 5% equals more than one X. So when the cabins take double space for total life support, that doesn't mean the cabin itself got larger, it means that there is additional space taken up for growing food. This is likely a combination of hydroponics, vat grown algae, aquafarming, etc. It also means that a factory for a size +6 ship is smaller than one for a size +13 ship. Each is roughly 5% of the ship volume. The minifac is rated at a much lower manufacturing capacity, $500 an hour compared to the full size version at $50k an hour. It means that if one of our main engines needed replacing we could do it in about 20 hours with a factory, or 80+ days with a minifac. Think of the minifac as having a single 3d printer shoved in a closet. On the other hand, the factory is a fully stocked machine shop. In both cases, our stock of materials is going to be the major limiting factor. Having one cargo bay (45 tons) dedicated to raw materials gives us enough to rebuild two ship systems. Assuming that we don't find (based on GM decision) that we're short 15 lbs of Rhodium and need to find a supplier. engines:
Oops, I realized I don't have enough thrust for more than a .4G world! Hmm, in order to fly in atmosphere, we need to have wings, contragrav, or streamlined, AND an accel greater than local gravity. We currently have streamlined and .5G accel. Which means we can only land/take off on planets with gravity under .5G. A jet engine provides 1G. To take off from a planet with 1G we would need to use the jet engine and the reactionless drive. On the other hand, we can add reconfigurable to a couple of systems for contragrav, propulsion, and the stardrive. The shuttle already has 1.5G's of thrust so should be fine for planet's up to 1.4G's gravity. How the ship operates now: As I have reconfigured it now, it has two power plants for redundancy. While in a gravity well, the stardrive can reconfigure to operate as a countergrav engine. This allows the reactionless thruster to provide a .5G operation and allows take off/landing on planets up to 10G's. There are two reconfigurable systems on the ship, the first can be a contragrav (CG) unit or reactionless thruster (RT). The second can be a reactionless thruster or stardrive (SD). This provides several modes of operation: In a gravity well of up to 10G's the ship has .5G acceleration from one RT and the CG.
The two power plants provide 4 units of power. The two propulsion units each require one power point. The Factory requires a power point, and the weapon system requires a power point. The ship can still operate, though at a reduced capacity with one power plant functioning.
Aster wants to program the shipfactory to start building the components for him to have a battlesuit, like Boomer's. Once that's programmed, he'll start working on the data he and Olivia downloaded. Hopefully they can figure out a translation program.
You're right, since the government paid for it, the cost of the shuttle and the ship should not be a considerable factor. Let's back up and talk about mission purpose and scale. Wall of text: Our mission was an interstellar voyage to perform a first contact with an unknown alien species in an unknown environment. Those signals crossed a long distance, we won't know what we find when we get there. We have an interstellar spaceship. This is a mobile base of operations, our home, garage, suitcase, repair-shop, doctor's office, kitchen, etc. We need to be completely self-sufficient to be able to make the round trip voyage. That means a full scale medical bay. Sufficient space for cargo and spare parts, a fabrication shop to build the spare parts needed. Think of an RV on a camping trip. You drive to the camp ground and park the RV. You setup your campsite. On foot you'll walk how far from the RV? A few hundred feet? An hour? Now imagine your RV is on a planet and you're it. No rescue that you don't do for yourself. Are you going to have a wheeled vehicle that extends you're range from an hour to a couple of hours, assuming you have flat ground? Are you going to pack up the RV when you need to go six hours away? What about a quick scan 500 miles away? Let's change our analogy from an RV to an ocean crossing ship. Your ship can raise it's keel allowing you to basically beach yourself to load and unload. But you need to check out the next cove over. Do you pull out a kayak? Walk inland (this'll take a day). Or would you rather have a motorboat launch that can zip over there in a few minutes? Keep in mind, this is an unchartered island. Sure the big ship can pull up the gangway and work itself off the beach and move over, but that's like packing up that RV to check out the camp site on the other side of the lake. It'd be easier to have a jeep to zip over there and see if you did want to move the RV. The millenium falcon, and much of star wars, wasn't designed around rural environments. The MF was designed to go from space port to space port and load/unload to the dock. Just look at the size of the boarding ramp! The firefly universe does allow for a much more dispersed environment. They had quads for zipping around short ranges, an air car for mid range, and shuttles for longer planetary ranges and space-ground when landing the whole ship wasn't feasible. So what makes sense for us? Like I stated above, we need a self-sufficient ship for our mission to make any type of sense. Columbus didn't set sail with half the food he needed to get across the Atlantic. Nor did he tell his carpenters to leave their tools home because they'd trust in the one spare set of sails they brought. A space-capable shuttle means that we would be able to: Not use the RV to close inspect the wreck floating in space. Be able to send a shuttle to the space station that did not have docking ports or a bay large enough for the RV. Use the aerodynamic shuttle to check out possible landing sites before bringing in the flying brick.
So let's back up to when the government is planing this mission. What are the mission parameters? What do they want us to be able to accomplish? The aforementioned spaceship components are pretty much a given. I doubt any of us would have agreed to be the first Earth ship to travel interstellar without a ship that had the best possible medical bay, sufficient supplies, a shop to repair things that broke, etc. Do they want us to be able to make astronomical scans of the solar system we arrive at? That requires an upgraded sensor suite. Do they want us to be able to make detailed survey scans of the planets? That requires an upgraded sensor suite. Would they want us to be able to hide from hostile aliens? I would hope so! That requires beefed up defensive systems. Would they want us to be able to defend ourselves? Well, there are often pretty stupid people in government bureaucracies. I can see this being minimized, and considerably less than we as the crew would like. This would depend on if the government was restrictive and/or liberal. How well do they want us to be able to explore? For instance, they can't assume we'd land on planets that had an atmosphere perfectly suited to us. So the endurance of our spacesuits is a limiting factor. Assume that we can travel 25% of our endurance. That leaves 25% to get back, and 25-40% at the end, with a margin of 10-25%. What if there is no atmosphere? Or a thin one? The aircar won't work. A shuttle will. Jet engines won't work. The shuttle will. Olivia has the shortest endurance as she doesn't appear to have anything that is sealed. Dr. Rix is next at 18 hours with her suit. The air car does not have any life support. The shuttle provides 24 hours of life support. Based on the quarter increment schedule, And assuming Olivia at least had the ability of Dr. Rix, they could walk about 4 hours out from the ship, spend around 6 hours, and walk back with a 4 hour margin. Without a breathable atmosphere, the air car wouldn't operate (it's engines are air breathing), a shuttle would. Now, if you're hand waving that every planet we land on is going to have an earth like atmosphere... I'd ask if that included Mars and Venus. GURPS doesn't price break things for lowering the TL. Consider. It costs about a thousand bucks for a PC today. Twenty years ago it cost about a thousand bucks. And my dad bought our first home PC for a thousand bucks. Now the capabilities can change, but the price really doesn't. Take a look at many of the objects in UT. Generally the price stays the same but range might increase, or some other performance standard. Just because I buy a TL9 laser pistol and I am TL 10 doesn't mean I get the gun for a reduced price.
Piracy has pretty much always carried a death penalty. So long as it's quick and clean, I've got no problem with the people of this planet following their own laws. Was there anything else on the ship? Aster had searched the crew cabins as well as the other areas. Figure he'll spend an hour or two on this. Not like anyone is going anywhere quickly.
Sure, I can tone that down. But our ship had better cost way more than 3 million bucks. That would be the equivalent of sending us out in a ford pinto. 30 tons is the smallest spaceship size. I had made this to be capable of space to ground. By definition, a "shuttle" is designed for space to surface. What your asking for is a dingy. Spaceships are not the kind of equipment that most players just buy. The costs are going to be very high. If you do not want us to have that capability, then an aircar from UT is fine. But it's scary to think that the $500,000 air car is 1/6th the cost of the entire freaking interplanetary spaceship! Look at the TL 9 exploration ships on page 9 of Spaceships 5. The hard sci-fi ship is 10000 tons for six crew and costs 293 million. The super sci with a spacedrive is 3000 tons, costs 165 million and has a crew of 6. You gimmicking this to have a an interstellar spaceship that costs less than $3 million for a crew of six? There's hand-waving some details and then there's throwing the book out. At this point just make everything up, ignore any stats from any book, and call it GM fiat.
Ask and ye shall receive! Here's the spreadsheet I've previously shared. Please ignore the last 4 tabs, they're old builds that I was testing with. The 30 ton shuttle uses TL 10 with standard reactionless thrusters and a fusion powerplant. The thrusters are the only ^equipment, and nicely avoids fueling and delta-v calculations. This multi-role space-to-ground winged shuttle incorporates a variety of systems to support interstellar exploration. The control cabin has 5 crew stations, pilot, flight engineer, communications/sensors, and two weapon stations. A comprehensive sensor suite allows the shuttle to effectively scan local space and planetary features. A spacious cargo hold provides 4.5 tons of lift capacity in addition to 4 passengers. The shuttle aslo contains a fully functional automed sickbay. A robotic arm allows for manipulation of extravehicular objects. The primary defensive armament is a 10 megajoule particle cannon fixed forward. A dorsal turret incorporates two 3 megajoule particle cannon and a 16cm missile launcher for point defense. The flight engineer must coordinate between the engines and weapons as the shuttle does not have sufficient power to fire the main cannon and the turret cannons while running the engines at full power. The turret magazine holds 7 missiles. Ten missiles can be loaded per ton of cargo space dedicated to this. The price tag for this small marvel of engineering is a measly 3.71 million credits. The shuttle has a max atmospheric speed of just under mach 4. It's endurance is limited to short term trips.
Aster quietly suggests that Olivia not directly transfer the data back to our own ship, just in case there is a virus in the software.
Aster was listening in to the conversation with the natives. What is the Death Dust? How is it able to stay viable for so long?
No worries, Aster copies it all to a secure partition in his data storage. Hey Roaora, I'm gonna need your translation skills pretty soon to see what we have with this ship. After copying the computer data, Aster takes a tour of the ship, first looking for an armory then the captain's quarters, then engineering and medical, ending with the cargo hold. Anyone not dealing with the natives, I could use a hand going through this ship. After the pirates are secured!
What to look for in the database of an alien spaceship owned by pirates? First, how sophisticated is their computer system? Next, how big is the database? And where is it located on the ship? Here's a small list to get started... Ship schematics. Ship codes. Shipping manifests. Personnel records. Any knowledge databases, like encyclopedia's, farmer's almanac, spacer's almanac, sets of laws for various planets and governments, etc. Any technical schematics.
Star charts, coordinates, etc.
Keep in mind that when we made a lot of the discussions regarding the ship and the ATV it was when we were a bunch of relatively poor and had to pool resources to have a hunk of junk. However, we now have a government paid for ship. I think a lot of the technology issues comes into how much realism vs how much space opera we want. We already figured out that the realistic TL 9 propulsion was going to seriously impact the SO feel and we changed it. Let me put together a proposal, and you can look at it and see how it feels for what we're doing.
Aster heads for the bridge of the ship and starts checking their controls. It's their first time getting a close look at the alien technology. Woot, they left the ship unlocked and unattended!
Aster looks for a universal standard port that he can plug into and let his AI have a look at the ship's computer system.
ASter comms the others, Since you have this handled, I'm heading for their ship. Just to make sure we don't get any other surprises. After a quick look in the other buildings to make sure there aren't other pirates hiding around, Aster heads for the pirate's ship.
Just in case anyone was wondering, I just enjoy discussing the merits of stuff. In this case our ship. I like most of the layout of the Firefly. I did purchase the published deckplan book a few years ago and I believe I have some PDF's around. The only change I would make to it is to add a hatch into the cargo bay from the crew cabin corridor. In the TV show you see the crew using ladders from the bridge corridor to access their cabins. There is another corridor that connects all of the cabins but not any other part of the ship. I do like that the crew cabins and bridge can be secured from the common areas and passenger quarters. Engineering can also be secured. Most traveller deckplans assume that none of the passengers would have ill intent towards crew, engineering, the bridge, etc by not segregating these areas. Star Wars tends to be either short term and too small or way too big. They also tend to forget basics like a kitchen or heads. Star Trek is too high tech. If we're assuming we have a reactionless thrust system, then shuttles beat wheeled any day. Wheeled groundcraft assumes you'll only be going to places that are paved or relatively flat. Something with a VTOL capability works much better for exploration further than walking distance from the craft.
Marizela is the one that Rix linked.
Aster continues to move slowly for his stealth systems. He'll try getting a look into one of the buildings with the heat signatures. Aster com's back to his companions I see four pirates. Someone tell them to come out and lay down. I'm checking one of the buildings.
A couple of issues with the Marizela class: You have to drop to 50% propulsion to fire the only weapon.
Some of us would have to hot bunk. Increasing by one SM would allow us to reduce the number of habitat spaces and add a dedicated cargo space.
True, I personally like to try and work within the rules whenever I can. It generally avoids unanticipated consequences. :) Ideally I'd like each of us to have our own cabin, a few cabins for passengers. As an interstellar ship a gym/entertainment facility is needed, along with a decent medbay. I'd rather have great defenses than great weapons. A couple of deterrent guns is fine, but I'd rather outrun/avoid combat in our role as an exploratory/first contact ship. The ship should still be small enough to land, having a shuttle and ground vehicles would be ideal. We talked previously about trade cargo, along with consumables. IIRC we're focusing on TL 10, with supertech for artificial gravity propulsion and power to space opera fuel and time constraints.
I'll have to go play with that later! Thanks!
Cover me. I'll go take a look. Since Aster has a stealth field up, he starts moving to the side, to stay out of the line of fire of his companions and walks up to the nearest building. He moves slow enough to not kick up dust or otherwise reveal himself.
I searched through the records, and the original DM didn't post full stats, and he removed the link from his profile. I seem to be having trouble finding the stats for the current ship (the new one made by the gov).
The MF has a lot of TL11-12 technology, which generally means it gets smaller. The hyperspace engine is the size of a large coleman cooler. There are no appreciable fuel tanks on the ship, and it's endurance is designed for relatively short duration trips. It just doesn't have the space for a lot of food, water, waste, etc. Our ship is designed with TL9-10 technology that has trips measured in weeks instead of hours. That was one of the points I kept trying to bring up, the original GM wanted a little ship with early tech. It just wouldn't fit based on the rules. MF - 34 meters long, 100 tons cargo, max passengers 6, consumables 2 months. Firefly - 82 meters long, 22 meters high 82 tons cargo, max passengers 16. The firefly is a lot closer to the TL we are using for size of components, but it's fuel tanks are still on the small size. The NASA space shuttles were: 37 meters long, 17 meters high, carried 27 tons in cargo. Just to bring home a size comparison. What I saw was something like (analogy coming): we need to keep the price down to something like a honda civic. But we're traveling across the country with it and will be sleeping and eating in it. We're NOT getting a class A recreational vehicle because it's too expensive. So we compromised on a minivan. Since the players weren't paying for it, it really shouldn't have mattered unless doing the "mystery machine" was going to be a significant part of the game. I'd like to have something that is roughly the size of the firefly.
And a deck plan too. I was thinking something about the size of a firefly. Which is about twice the size of the millenium falcon.
I'd kinda hope we weren't the totally hopeles type noobs that moved completely away from the safety of the landing legs before knowing of the lack of friendliness. Which would also beg the question of, if this is a relatively devoid plain of nothing with no cover, why did we park hundreds of feet without cover from a presumed pirate ship? Next time we park right on top of the damn thing. My fellow players, please feel free to slap me upside the head if I am so lacking in basic tactics in the future.
Aster grunts into his mic, get something between you and the camp, rock, tree stump, hole in the ground...
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