02-23-2016, 11:52 PM | #51 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
The main reason is the effect on the setting, keep the ships diverse.
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Waiting for inspiration to strike...... And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn |
02-24-2016, 06:13 AM | #52 | |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
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Question 35: What do people do for fun in the 32nd century? |
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02-24-2016, 07:25 AM | #53 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
Smartass Answer: Drink some beer! XD
Actual Answer: Earth-grav places still play the usual sports: Football, Rugby, Lacrosse, American Football, Baseball, Basketball, etc. There's also the usual card games, though the rules have changed over time. One game derived from a cross between Blackjack and Poker uses cards that are basically LED displays with a small computer chip and wireless receiver with a value that can change based on signals sent to it from the "deck", with three cards in the hand. Values of the cards range from -10 to 10, with two cards in the deck numbered 0. Low-Grav and Zero-G environments have three-dimensional sports supported by strap-on wings. Some planets have even gone so far as to become essentially non-stop retro-faires based on various time periods, from Classical Greece to the Golden Age of Space Piracy, back before the jump drive was invented. Question: What's the common trade language? Auxiliary Question: How many alien races still need to be named/fleshed out?
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"Life ... is an Oreo cookie." - J'onn J'onzz, 1991 "But mom, I don't wanna go back in the dungeon!" The GURPS Marvel Universe Reboot Project A-G, H-R, and S-Z, and its not-a-wiki-really web adaptation. Ranoc, a Muskets-and-Magery Renaissance Fantasy Setting |
02-24-2016, 08:02 AM | #54 | |
Join Date: Jan 2014
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
If you're trading where humans dominate, you can generally get pretty far with Afrikaans, English, German, and Vietnamese. In any major human spaceport, there is at least 100 interpreters who know all four. With Divergers, Mandarin Chinese, French, Spanish, and Turkish are popular, though some smaller languages fall into small niches. Between humans and other species, constructed languages are the norm, the most popular being Tenwyn-Omnilang. Most only use these only to trade, because it is hard to express anything deep in them.
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Question: Aside from FTL, what forms of superscience are available (if any)? |
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02-24-2016, 10:34 AM | #55 | |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
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But outside of spam email, the only straight superscience is a practical spin-off of research into the higgs, a short-range force field used as energy shields and to get the most out of conventional engines. As a ship system, it's a standard energy shield. It's too large to be man-portable, although a tank might have one. These basically allow us to presume that low-superscience thrusters are in, and give ships a little bit more resiliency. There may be a few experiments on the fringes, but it's hard to say what else exists. Certainly there are rather more substantial rumors of gravity manipulation in secret labs. The precursors, however... well, several artifacts are bewildering. One record notes that an artifact resembling a cup found at 524 Solov somehow switched the minds of two explorers without moving the brains. The artifact disappeared into the criminal underground shortly therafter. A different artifact, this one a kind of coffer or crate, was found in the center of a kilometer-wide dead zone on an otherwise lush planet. No hazardous radiation was detected, and eventually scouts collected the crate and brought it in for study. Attempts to x-ray or examine the interior of the object were stymied by persistent equipment failures, and an attempt to use a robot to open the crate in a sealed environment resulted in everything -- down to single-celled life -- within about 500 meters dying instantly. This despite the fact that a nuclear bomb could have gone off in the containment chamber safely. The local space forces swooped in and secured the artifact. All that's known now is that top men are looking into it. Top. Men. In short, Artifacts can do anything the GM wants, but anything with superscience is going to be one of a kind. Though uncommon, events like these put heavy restrictions on trade in precursor artifacts, and encourage huge prices even on simple alien statuettes, on the off chance they turn lead into gold or gold into useful hydrogen. Finding or acquiring a precursor artifact is a shortcut to wealth and danger for the average venture trader. Question: What do starships actually look like? Last edited by PTTG; 02-24-2016 at 03:37 PM. |
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02-24-2016, 11:17 AM | #56 |
Hero of Democracy
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
Yeah, that's a huge and intimidating question. Feel free to only answer part of it.
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Be helpful, not pedantic Worlds Beyond Earth -- my blog Check out the PbP forum! If you don't see a game you'd like, ask me about making one! |
02-24-2016, 12:51 PM | #57 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
Location: Shropshire, uk
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
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Sorry about that my spelling is quite poor without computer assistance. That is exactly what it was meant to be, I was supposed to add a link but my youngest son decided to wake up and took pretty much the rest of the evening to settle again. |
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02-24-2016, 02:02 PM | #58 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
Early human jump capable ships worked most effectively with a largely spherical lay out until the development of the feild manipulation formulas for the Titleist generator. (Magnetic field generator).
The next wave of designs tended towards a teardrop shape to reduce drag when "Skimming" that is to say when you take a ship very close to a gas giant to collect raw gas to process into jump fuel. Exploration vessels these days typically carry smaller scoop drones to extract the raw material for fuel. Time consuming but safer. The current level of shielding technology allows for a wider range a ship designs though. Cylindrical sections are common on long haul vessels for spin gravity. Though very small vessels as well as cheap ones usually make do with Bola sleeping quarters Some of the very latest ships are looking more streamlined as newer "structural reinforcement generators" replace older inefficient "projected" shields. You have seen the demo's haven't you. They wire up a piece of tinfoil to that huge machine and you try to put a hole in it with a hammer. Question What did the trader William Swift do with fortune he got when he sold that planetary fragment. The one containing organic material from the Xylysus home world. Followup superscience question. Artifical gravity exists (Kim Sun-Rok) how good is it? What are the limitations? Edit trying to keep the tech in line with PTTGs shield level.
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Waiting for inspiration to strike...... And spending too much time thinking about farming for RPGs Contributor to Citadel at Nordvörn Last edited by (E); 02-24-2016 at 05:58 PM. |
02-24-2016, 03:39 PM | #59 |
Join Date: Feb 2011
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
Yeah, I realized that after. I've tweaked it to leave it an open question for now - it might be that Sun-Rok found an Artifact and is trying to reverse-engineer it, might be that his scientists are actually playing with gravatons, and it might be that it's just annother rumor.
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02-24-2016, 06:12 PM | #60 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: [Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting
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Question: What was the name and class of Swift's ship, and what significance does the name have to him, personally?
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"Life ... is an Oreo cookie." - J'onn J'onzz, 1991 "But mom, I don't wanna go back in the dungeon!" The GURPS Marvel Universe Reboot Project A-G, H-R, and S-Z, and its not-a-wiki-really web adaptation. Ranoc, a Muskets-and-Magery Renaissance Fantasy Setting |
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game, setting, setting building, space opera, trader |
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