Stocking your Life Pod

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Fire your lifepod designer.

<shrug>It's a design adapted from one optimized to evacuate space stations in Earth orbit and after that L4 and 5. It's not so common an event that there is a bespoke design. The survival gear is also not unique tot eh mission but adapted from other sources.

It's also only 1 ton of mass/SM+2/$100,000 for the whole life pod and 50% of that is payload (80% people/20% gear) which I think is pretty good. To go up to your tons of gear would probably require an increase to 10 tons/SM+4/1 M.

Looking through Spaceships it appears that you actually do have to include a Hangar Bay for the pods and the message drone, though you might be able to get by with a smaller system. Increasing the size of that Hangar Bay greatly increases cost.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Don't discount the "personal effects" the characters bring with them. s).

The commnuicators built in to most TL9 consumer electronics are probaly Tiny or Micro. The Small-size hand units included out-range the Tiny units by a factor of 10. Using the Medium radio in the pod as a base station triples that.

Passenger personal eectronics probably fill the "Entertainment" role suggested earlier. A wristwatch (Timy) computer stores 1 TB and every 1/4 inch square Datachip adds another TB.. It would be entirely possible for a regular guy to walk around with his personal library of books, music and video entertainment in just one of his pockets.

Useful software could be loaded into the pod's Personal-sized computer and downloaded from that as needed.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

<shrug>

The problem here is that any one stranded on an unfamiliar planet will not survive more than a month once the packed in food runs out unless they have very good Survival skills.

So knowing that, either everyone who gets on one of these ships is either a stalwart survivor type, or has excepted that every trip may bring death.

I suspect that the premise of the game will involve having to survive on some alien rock at some point?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

The problem here is that any one stranded on an unfamiliar planet will not survive more than a month once the packed in food runs out unless they have very good Survival skills.

So knowing that, either everyone who gets on one of these ships is either a stalwart survivor type, or has excepted that every trip may bring death.

I suspect that the premise of the game will involve having to survive on some alien rock at some point?

The "rock" does not necessarily have to be that "alien". There is an unknown Elder Race involved. They may have been terraforming for a very long time. The critical PC activity could end up being "dodge dinosaurs" rather than "find edible insects".

As for that month and Survival skills Basic p.293 suggests that up to 16 hours a day in a strange environment could count as training in Survival (Local Environment). You'd have your 2nd pt at the end of Day 25.

For the moment though this mostly a thought exercise in whether or not the life pod from UT is a usable tool for storytelling and how to use it if so.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

For the moment though this mostly a thought exercise in whether or not the life pod from UT is a usable tool for storytelling and how to use it if so.

Oh it can be. I was just reinforcing that without proper skills or a better prepared life pod, most travelers aren't going to make it if they run into this scenario. However if the odds of this happening are about the odds of getting into a fatal car accident, then most people likely won't mind.


Also, I need to revise my above "one month past when food runs out". One survivor could survive up to 4 months past the food running out, if they had the gristly will...


Going back to this line:

How long will this take? You'd be extremely lucky if SpaceForce could get to you in less than 30 days. Planning on a year or two is more prudent.

Then you need to carry 2 years worth of food pills.


Or just hand wave it and accept that the journeys the PCs take are the exceptions that keep people stranded for more than one month. Or talk the GM into easing up on that 1 ton hard limit for more food pills.

[jason taylor]

Some kind of heating device. You need it to warm yourself and cook, and might latter want to build a forge. Presumably by this time they can be built as small as a blaster. Might even be an alternative use of a blaster.

[(E)]

It is possible for the life support system to produce a portion of the inhabitants diet. The costs would probably be higher power consumption, space and maintenance. The benefits may include improved reliability, reduced price and reduced weight.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Some kind of heating device. You need it to warm yourself and cook, and might latter want to build a forge. Presumably by this time they can be built as small as a blaster. Might even be an alternative use of a blaster.

No blasters at TL9. Those are TL11.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Then you need to carry 2 years worth of food pills.

On the one hand that's not possible. On the other the world isn't some random piece of rock. It's a place where a Precursor race put a spacegate. Earth is such a place too. Biological compatibility may be assumed and this would have been the case with every other world previously discovered in the network.

[cptbutton]

One thing I have seen is some science fiction is the assumption that there will be a beacon on uninhabited but somewhat habitable planets, with more emergency supplies and a means of calling for help (ansible or message drone). So you pilot your lifepod to land by the beacon and Bob's your uncle. Of course, for story reasons you always crash a few dozen or hundred miles away and must trek through alien terrain.

What this correlates to historically, if anything, I don't know. Maybe the habit of loosing pigs and goats on remote isles, though that was more for future provisioning i think.