Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

I have nothing against drifts (in fact I like some of them), but this one doesn't seem to be a very promising one. Now, choosing a society type for the fleet drifting into a generic discussion of society types (if lucky) or into a generic political flamewar (if unlucky) - that would be more promising. Of course, now that I mentioned it, it is no longer fair game. :)

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

Cathedrals are a good example: you had a long-lived institution that had the motive and ability to push its agenda. As people's lifespans increase they might take such a long view themselves, or you might have a soft dictatorship of AIs looking out for everyone's long-term interests.

TeV

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

I really have trouble seeing, "Lets color these plants in such a way that these snowballs tend to move toward each other, so that we'll have something to live on in a few hundred years" as especially radical long term thinking.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

He3, frex, is vanishingly rare on earth. It's not exactly common anywhere else, but it does occur with greater frequency elsewhere.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

That is precisely what I was thinking of when I wrote that.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

Actually a space-nomad society would probably be very draconian. Resource controls alone would dictate much of everyday life, including population control (the one child policy of a certain Earth government comes to mind), education (a caste society with rigid training in expected job roles would probably be the result), even death (think "Logan's Run"). At the very least, I wouldn't expect any form of Democracy to survive for long in such a setting. Of course, once you remove the concept of limited resources (like Star Trek), then societal controls would be able to ease up considerably.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

The Culture doesn't generally live on planets, FREX.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

Access to resources does not equate to living on planets. Even if there are some resources that can only (or more readily) be found on the surface of a planet (probably an inhospitable one at that), that means you set up a mining outpost; it doesn't mean you live there.

TeV

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

I could imagine democracy operating, but it would be a very different sort than what Western liberal democracies are used to using. One might end up with a sort of elective dictatorship, but other possibilities exist.

One SFnal source that has some relevance to this thread is James Blish's famous Cities In Flight series. In it, Blish hints at the sort of political and economic system that operates on the flying cities (literal flying cities, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, etc, travelling from star to star). The hints are sometimes contradictory, but interesting.

It's implied that the 'Okie' nomad cities are socialist in their internal operation, or corporatist, depending on how you look at it. They don't really have free market economies as such, though there are hints that some such things go on as a side matter. Each citizen has a job, like the crew of a ship, food and other personal needs are provided by the City and hoarding is punishable.

The story focuses on New York City. When the City is flush, after doing a job for a planetary state, or fresh from some other source of money and resources, life is pretty good aboard. Things can get tighter as the supplies get thinner.

NYC elects its captain/mayor, but there are heavy restrictions on who can be chosen.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

The thing that bothers me about a lot of Sci Fi with poeple being in space for long periods is that atmosphear is happily vented here and there. If you think about atmosphear is a valueble resource to a space based society and losing it would be very troublesome if it's not easy to replace.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

Which is another reason to have the mining and refinery systems.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

When is it vented? Every airlock I've seen cycles the air back into the ship, it doesn't vent it. The only "venting" I know of is maneuvering thrusters, and well, that's what water ice is for. Crack it for Hydrogen and O2. If you have completely closed systems, you never need new resources at all.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

In skiffy movies. Yeah, that's kind of why they are called "airlocks". :)

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

OK, it's hard to believe, but I'll actually try to use this idea as the main campaign for the time being (with COC frozen again). The setting I picked is based heavily on Star Control (set after the events of SC2, with the campaign resembling the SC3 setup in many ways) - I'm modifying it for playability. Ship TLs are bumped to 10 (to get most of the neat systems), but personal-scale items will be kept closer to TL9.

Information for those who have no idea what SC is like (synopsis):


Races that will be involved in the campaign (with spoilers for those who don't know SC):
Earthling/Human (meh)
Chmmr

Yehat

Ur-Quan Kzer-Za (Green) and Ur-Quan Kohr-Ah (Black); size downplayed for purposes of playability to SM+0 to SM+2.

Syreen

Arilou exiles

Androsynth (yes, Androsynth)

The campaign is set during the events of SC3's introduction, specifically:

The war is over, the Ur-Quan are defeated, and are in a situation somewhat resembling that of the Germans between WWII and now. All would be well, but in some sort of galaxy-spanning phenomenon, Hyperspace becomes inaccessible. Communication between the various homeworlds and colonies is broken.
(This is where the exact events of SC3 are interrupted, but the theme/storyline stays pretty much the same.)

Turns out that he Androsynth weren't destroyed, but rather were displaced into another dimensional 'pocket'; the 'collapse' of Hyperspace had the side effect of letting them escape their 'prison'. And time spent there was not wasted. They discovered no less than three other forms of hyperspace-like phenomena: subspatial wormholes, pockets, and a Hyperspace-like dimension they called W-Space (no relation to Quasi Space of SC2, but something different).

This whole set of discoveries were not without exactly new - much of this was gained through the research of a giant precursor vessel found in the pocket dimension. Upon return to their devastated colony world, and realizing that rebuilding it, given their reduced population and limited resources, would a problematic and slow process, the Androsynth decided to contact the other races of their faction. Their first contact, to the big surprise of everyone involved, was a mixed fleet of Arilou and stranded Ur-Quan in an uninhabited system. It took quite a while for them to fill each other in on all the news. In fact, the Arilou captains decided that the situation was such that they decided to reveal some of their hidden knowledge about the nature of space in the hopes of overcoming the current hyperspace crisis.

Together, they travel to the only naturally occurring portal to Quasi Space, where, in a spatial pocket the Arilou homeworld is located. The Arilou captains were the only ones allowed to approach the planet. As they later explained, the council decided that the captains in question created a risk for the Arilou, and thus they were exiled - allowed interact with other races with no limits, but deprived of hidden knowledge and technologies.

The Androsynth proceed to fly through several more races' systems in the hopes of strengthening the fleet before its journey in search for the source of the hyperspatial anomalies. They attempt to gather as many ships as they can carry with them with crews that are reasonably capable in diplomacy, research, unusual situation, and tend to ask questions before shooting.

Thus, the flagship, along with one typical ship from each of the eight races, jumps through a seasonal wormhole that the scientists believed leads to the source of the anomaly.

Re: [Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?
 

I'm intending to adjust production speeds so that new ships aren't made trivially fast, yet their construction and repair is reasonable on the campaign scale (say, couple months). I'm currently trying to construct SC2 ships using SS rules as close to the spirit of the original as possible, and expecting to put them between SM+6 and SM+10 or 12. Flagship probably larger, and fighters SM+4.

I'm intending the PCs to take positions of moderate to high rank. Some prime roles I'm thinking of (with a hope to make different players take different roles):

CAG (for the Ur-Quan fighter squadron, preferably an Ur-Quan too)
Chief of scientific research and/or engineering (may or may not be a single person)
Diplomatic representatives (no more than one per race)
Flagship XO and/or other ship captain.
Landing party and/or infantry commander of some sort.

Comments? Suggestions?