07-12-2018, 10:26 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
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The UT full-sized version probably is over weight at 500 pounds for 400 square feet, but not by that much when you consider it's portable, and thus that weight includes a protective box, and a bunch of collapsible supports and such that an 'install once, never move' model doesn't need. What UT is missing is a small 1-2 m^2 portable solar array for such things as life pods. One of these with a built-in D cell would make a fine charging station and power supply for a small base camp, such as that which the survivors in a life pod might set up.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." |
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07-12-2018, 10:36 PM | #32 | |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison |
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07-13-2018, 01:50 AM | #33 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Right... it's in High-Tech, costs $100 and weighs 2 pounds at TL 8....
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07-13-2018, 04:39 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
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BTW, the 'external power' version given in HT is TL7 and weighs 1,200 lbs. UT's version at 500 lbs doesn't seem so bad in comparison.
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Rupert Boleyn "A pessimist is an optimist with a sense of history." Last edited by Rupert; 07-13-2018 at 04:42 AM. |
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07-13-2018, 07:23 AM | #35 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Just for the record that's the fold-up Solar Array which is reusable and portable. The actual "Solar Paint" is 1/5th that weight and cost but meant to be painted onto your roof or soemthing like that.
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Fred Brackin |
07-13-2018, 09:25 AM | #36 |
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: The former Chochenyo territory
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Looking over a GURPS 3e lifeboat loadout I made for a Star Frontiers game, I see a few items that don't appear to have straightforward 4e versions: the Biosampler and the Orbital Beacon. The Biosampler would seem useful if regulations mandated it, but it is expensive ($500). The beacon is arguably best built into the lifeboat, but detachability doesn't seem out of the question.
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My gaming blog: Thor's Grumblings Keep your friends close, and your enemies in Close Combat. |
07-13-2018, 11:01 AM | #37 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
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The gear you are likely to want for the boat isn't groundside survival gear, it's stuff you might need immediately while on the boat - first aid kits for people wounded before boarding, hull patches and maybe some basic repair tools in case the boat got holed by whatever disabled the ship, a spare radio capable of enough range to talk to other lifeboats, rescue vessels or air traffic control once you get close to the capital, maybe the orbital equivalent of a GPS or small telescope and sextant in case you need to navigate manually, or a fire extinguisher in case you're a little hot when you touch down and set fire to the field. Camping supplies are not worth the weight.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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07-13-2018, 12:08 PM | #38 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Let's see if what has been percolating in my brain for a few days moves this closer to a mature concept.
Interstellar travel in this setting is via a network of spacegates built by unknown aliens at least 100,000 years ago. These tend to be in far orbit of any Earth-like planets. Earth's would be out at L4. This plus its' alien (TL12^) construction help explain why it had not been discovered by the early 21st century. Ships designed to use this system need only 1 Spaceships Strardrive module and 1 Power pt to run it. Travel to and from the locations of the spacegates is by conventional/hard science drive This is the main thing that makes interstellar travel possible at TL9. No advanced forms of stardrive are known to the PC's race(s) but appear to have been known to the builders. Contemporary users are limited to what are called "sideroads" which are relatively short-ranged paths through hyperspace. Trips to relativley distant worlds have to make multiple jumps. The Builders seem to have had access to so-called "hyperbahns" which covered much greater distances. Perhaps due to the age of the system the hyperbahns are no longer accessible in any controlled manner though the primitive nature of Terran hyperdrives may be a factor as well. The Terrans also do not have a truly good map of hyperspace though every new exit discovered improves the map a little. Finding a viable "side-road" that leads to a proviously unknown destination is difficult and is nomrally limited the SpaceForce's elite Exploration Command. Whiel you cann not access the hyperbahns deliberately chnce and a not-always reliable gate system can put you onto one accidentally. This is a Bad Thing because it not only takes you a long way from home but it invariably burns out your stardrive system and usually kills your reactor too. So where are you? Usually somewhere near an Earth-like planet becuase that's where the Builders put most of their spacegates. How wil you ever get home? Not by repairing your ship unless you have a SOTA research vessel and a highly talented crew. Most ships and crews need to send an expensive message drone back to SpaceForce HQ who will come and get you. Note that though you got to wherever you are via a hyperbahn you can't send the drone back that way even if it's system were being considered expendable by you. Your trip has put another data point on the hyperspace map and for the drone to find its' way back to known space by previosuly unknown side-roads is difficult but not impossible. 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. Even if your main ship is dead with no power can't you take a landing craft to the nearby planet? Yes, if you have one. SpaceForce explorer ships and Colonial transports generally do but most commercial ships travel space station to space station and have no landing capability but for their life pods. Can't you just stay with your dead ship? Not if you don't want to run out of air and everything else. Commercial ships normally need only short-term occupancy. A few days at most. Okay so you land on the near-by planet in your life pod. Why don't you just stay with that pod? If you're goign to be rescued you need to eb near soem place a landing craft can land. This needs to be some place where the ground is firm, level, clear of obstacles and within (pick a number) meters of a hydrogen source so the landing craft can fuel its' HEDM enginses for an ascent. If it's not clear yet normal spaceships in this setting are industrial looking masses of pods and boxes and cylinders held together by scaffolding and controlled by Pilot(Low Performace Spacecraft). I do not reccommend modeling your character on Han Solo. :)
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Fred Brackin |
07-13-2018, 07:17 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Don't discount the "personal effects" the characters bring with them. Some sort of "Survivor Operating System" - naturally called SOS - you can load onto your smartphone to reduce battery drain and change it to work with lower bandwidth, combined with a miniature cell tower attached to the pod, can allow for longer range communications between survivors. Load the phone up with basic - but potentially interactive - how-to guides for survival in the wilderness, as well as possibly some sort of app that can identify dangerous vs safe plants and animals from pictures (if life on undiscovered planets tends to be highly similar to Terran). You could also have a variety of peripherals that could use the smartphone as the processor, like probes to determine water potability (based on things like pH, contaminants, etc). Plus, they already can function as flashlights and compasses, and if recent trends continue are likely to be functionally waterproof and highly resilient by TL 9 (and if not, you can always stock some ruggedized cases on the ship, and require people to switch to those before taking the lifepods down). If the risk of marooning is considered common enough, the ship may also carry GPS-style satellites for deploying in orbit, which would allow for the phones' GPS to function at least part of the day (so you can check your location relative to base camp, and possibly other survivors).
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GURPS Overhaul |
07-13-2018, 07:52 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: Stocking your Life Pod
Fire your lifepod designer. Often enough to bother to prepare for (i.e. you have life pods at all, instead of just accepting these ships as lost) your ships risk being stranded somewhere you don't know enough about to optimize the equipment list for between months and *forever*. You don't prepare for this with a couple hundred pounds of gear. Expeditions of a few tens of people, or similar size homesteader groups, can manage multiple years with a few pack animals or a wagon, so you probably should look in the same range - that's a few tons, a lot of it of the tools to make tools sort. At absolute minimum you need enough gear that you can have everybody doing something long term survival useful - or you're going to start suffering psychological casualties quite quickly.
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-- MA Lloyd |
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