Hard sci-fi space crew sourcebook

[Pmandrekar]

Originally Posted by z0boson

Hello,

I was wondering in which book I could find some information about space crews. Like, what equipment to use, more details about different spacesuits, day to day life, what to do in case of a leak, etc. I was thinking of a T9 to T10 hard sci-fi scenario.

I did not find much in neither Space nor Spaceships. UT has some equipment but it is not very detailed. THS would fit quite nicely, is there any sourcebbok that deals in detail with the life in space? Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance!

I think that GURPS Traveller (3rd Ed) are likely to have a lot of that. What sort of ship? Military? Scout? Noble? Trader? There are books covering all of those 'day to day' scenarios across a broad panel of character types.

I recommend G:Traveller stuff for what you're looking for. Some is Traveller specific, but a lot of it can be a good baseline. Strap some lasers from GURPS Ultra-Tech onto those space traders, and you're good to go!

[Tzeentch]

I'm really hard pressed to recommend Traveller for a hard sci-fi anything. At a bare minimum the setting is knee deep in assumptions about ubiquitous contragravity, artificial gravity, and reactionless drives.

GURPS Space is absolutely abysmal at providing game mechanics or advice that would be useful for the topic BTW.

[DangerousThing]

There are some interesting 3rd party Traveller supplements that use a low tech, probably GURPS TL 9, by Zozar. The main setting book is called Orbital and is available through rpg.drivethru.com. Actually, they're selling all their Traveller stuff as a bundle of pdf's.

It's supposed to be hard SF according to what I've heard: no FTL, that sort of thing. However, I only have one free adventure in the series, but that was well written.

[z0boson]

Originally Posted by Tzeentch

I'm really hard pressed to recommend Traveller for a hard sci-fi anything. At a bare minimum the setting is knee deep in assumptions about ubiquitous contragravity, artificial gravity, and reactionless drives.

GURPS Space is absolutely abysmal at providing game mechanics or advice that would be useful for the topic BTW.

Well, artificial gravity would be kind of a deal breaker... It takes out one of things that would be quite important for a hard sci-fi crew.

GURPS space is mainly focussing on world creation, which is kind of useless in a campaign without FTL drives. I guess the life of the crews is too setting dependent to have a general sourcebook about it. It would have been cool to have a compendium similar to the low tech compendia (UT compendium I: Space technologies).

[z0boson]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

There are some interesting 3rd party Traveller supplements that use a low tech, probably GURPS TL 9, by Zozar. The main setting book is called Orbital and is available through rpg.drivethru.com. Actually, they're selling all their Traveller stuff as a bundle of pdf's.

It's supposed to be hard SF according to what I've heard: no FTL, that sort of thing. However, I only have one free adventure in the series, but that was well written.

Thanks for the info. I will have a look at it!

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by z0boson

Well, artificial gravity would be kind of a deal breaker... It takes out one of things that would be quite important for a hard sci-fi crew.

GURPS space is mainly focussing on world creation, which is kind of useless in a campaign without FTL drives. I guess the life of the crews is too setting dependent to have a general sourcebook about it. It would have been cool to have a compendium similar to the low tech compendia (UT compendium I: Space technologies).

Just because the main setting has gravity control, it doesn't mean that all the supplements use it, or that all GMs use it. Just as there are rules in GURPS that I tweak a bit, there are GMs that use a more realistic technology base (getting rid of anti-gravity and such).

Me, I tend to mix my SF with magic, so I don't mind somewhat magical technology. However, when I was on the Traveller forums, I saw that many Traveller GMs played a hard SF games without portable beam weapons or antigravity or (some) without FTL.

However, there are a lot of good settings from third party venders.

And don't forget that many of the GURPS space settings had antigravity.

Speaking of which, you might want to look at GURPS Transhuman Space. I think you'd have to get them in PDF form from e23, but that's all I buy nowadays.

[Phil Masters]

In the Transhuman Space line -- Spacecraft of the Solar System has a bit on space operations; High Frontier has a fair bit on Earth-orbital ops; Deep Beyond has a bit, but is largely about the communities of the setting's outer Solar System; Personnel Files has a small sample orbital spacecraft crew.

[Flyndaran]

Hard sci-fi is by nature opinion and aesthetics, unless it is science that exists right now.
That means the only "truly" appropriate material would be from N.A.S.A.

[z0boson]

Originally Posted by Phil Masters

In the Transhuman Space line -- Spacecraft of the Solar System has a bit on space operations; High Frontier has a fair bit on Earth-orbital ops; Deep Beyond has a bit, but is largely about the communities of the setting's outer Solar System; Personnel Files has a small sample orbital spacecraft crew.

Thanks for the info, I will have a look!

[cosmicfish]

Originally Posted by z0boson

I was wondering in which book I could find some information about space crews. Like, what equipment to use, more details about different spacesuits, day to day life, what to do in case of a leak, etc. I was thinking of a T9 to T10 hard sci-fi scenario.

This is an extremely broad request - going backwards instead of forwards, this is like asking for a book that would tell you everything about sailing from the stone age through today, with details on managing propulsion, day-to-day life, what to do if you get a hole in your sealhide/wood/metal/fiberglass hull. There is no one book that would or could have everything in it. You need to narrow it down in some way to get real answers.

"what equipment to use, more details about different spacesuits" - for what? This is mostly divided up by TL already, so look for the latest-TL item in any given category, and that is what will be used!

"day to day life" - again, look at the technologies at that TL and make some assumptions.

"what to do in case of a leak" - the usual reaction is to first seal off the area (i.e. save everyone ELSE on the ship), then get into spacesuits (i.e. save those in the area whom you still CAN), and then patch the hull in 2-3 stages (Quick/Save Lives, Portable/Get To Port, Permanent/Good As New). The details will depend on the ship.

As far as crew requirements, the easy way is to divide the work into two categories: Operations and Maintenance.

For Operations, simply figure out what systems you have and how many people it takes to run them according to your work schedule - for a civilian ship this might mean a single "day" shift and a lighter "night" shift, for a military ship it might mean 2-4 more-or-less equivalent shifts.

For Maintenance, estimate how many people are needed to keep everything running, then guess how much of this can be done by the Operational crew, and then add however much manpower you still need. Perhaps the Ops crew can do everything (common in a smaller ship), perhaps you need a lot of dedicated support crew (common in a larger ship). Regardless, you are going to have repair issues that will require more maintenance crew than you can carry! And much of this is subsumed at higher TL's by automation.