[Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting

[(E)]

Two other ideas to consider regarding jumps and fuel.
The first is the ship systems "refinery" and a hanger storing a Skimming drone would be able to store fuel. Say 2 units in the former and 1 in the later. The drive itself could conceivably hold another unit as well. With double jump systems holding 2.

Regarding jump charge time, how about setting things so jump drives require a total amount of power per jump rather than a set amount of power generation per jump.

For example a super long range jump drive(or jump) requires 16 power point hours to jump and a ships reactor produces 2 power points so it takes 8 hours to charge.

Pirate ships may have short range drives and multiple reactors to jump very quickly.
Cargo haulers may have just one small reactor to maximize space

Probably skip the fuel vs distance. Imo anyway.
The long range jumps historically where for the lost colony situations. Wallowing colony carriers could do the job too.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Two other ideas to consider regarding jumps and fuel.
The first is the ship systems "refinery" and a hanger storing a Skimming drone would be able to store fuel. Say 2 units in the former and 1 in the later. The drive itself could conceivably hold another unit as well. With double jump systems holding 2.

What are our reactionless thrusters like? Is getting out of a gravity well a considerable problem? Atmospheric flight? If these are trivial, then we may not need a fuel skimmer.

Storage in the refinery is a good point, although I'd considered that unprocessed and not ready for use.

You could also have one charge loaded in the drive, but I'd think that would only be holdable for a period before it decayed- maybe twice the charging time.

I may have written differently earlier, but I think it's more logical to have the fuel go from the storage tank in a coherent quantum lattice, fed through the superscience inverter to turn it into "hypergas", and then energise that hypergas into the hyperplasma in a plasma ring. Thus storing it for too long before using it means it decays back into normal matter. The "charging" process is the combined step of inverting the matter then heating it to a plasma, so if you wanted to add further sophistication, you could invert it first and hold it as cold hypermatter- with a longer half-life- before heating it to hyperplasma, which has a shorter half-life due to more interactions with impurities and the containment field (?).

ETA:

Originally Posted by (E)

Regarding jump charge time, how about setting things so jump drives require a total amount of power per jump rather than a set amount of power generation per jump.

For example a super long range jump drive(or jump) requires 16 power point hours to jump and a ships reactor produces 2 power points so it takes 8 hours to charge.

Well, you need a power plant (or multiple) that matches the demand of the drive, and they're pretty expensive too, if I remember how they work in Spaceships. So if you only have a 1PP power plant but want to take a 4PP jump, then yeah, it would take longer to charge the drive's capacitors properly.



ETA2: Standing questions-
Question 90 by (E)
I have just retired from my career as a tectonic engineer where should I go on holiday now I have finished slinging Psuedo-nukes and asteroids at uninhabited planets?

Question 97 by (E)
Whats the most infamous port/habitat/planet when it comes to illegal activity and piracy?
- I'm almost there on this one.

Question 99 by Daigoro
Apart from the renowned navigator's college, Southbank Metrickal Lyceum on Old New Melbourne, what are some other famed educational institutions and their specialty fields of study?

Question 100 by (E)
Does it look like the Xylysus will recreate an organic branch of their species anytime soon?
Sub Question what is a good term for the Xylysus' bodies?*

[(E)]

What are our reactionless thrusters like? Is getting out of a gravity well a considerable problem? Atmospheric flight? If these are trivial, then we may not need a fuel skimmer.

Fusion drives where mentioned for planetary lift off, more advance planets had beanstalks so that would seem to imply some difficulty, reactionless thrusters exist as well. It would seem like a patch is required in the science of the drift. Reactionless thrusters only function outside of atmosphere and they can be switched to function as fusion drives in the atmosphere maybe? or a retcon of some sort?

Streamlined ships could skim directly but there was a risk factor, hangars and drones where the safe option. Having a ship skim is a last (risky) resort for ships in dire straights.

As for the size of carriers it comes down to geometry as much as anything else when determining size under the rules in spaceships a carrier could technically be the same size class as the ships it is carrying. (provided it was not carrying more than about 3 ships). On the other hand the carrier could quite easily be 2 or 3 size classes larger. I would think that a carrier for jump purposes may be more of a frame holding smaller ships than a ship that supplies and launches smaller ships (that is to say it doesn't need hangars or armour).

[Daigoro]

Question 97 by (E)
Whats the most infamous port/habitat/planet when it comes to illegal activity and piracy?

Answer
Pirate Haven- Repouso da Sinhá
The Yami system contains a jump port at its 4th world, Yamaniratha, and a population base on its first planet, the world of Repauso, which is a world of contrasts, both physical and societal. It is where pirates and privateers come for improvement to their own body or their ship's.

Mining Colony
First known as Sengupta-Bennet Survey SBR-2709-091a, this medium-sized, close-orbiting, tide-locked chthonian planet was initially developed in the 28th century by Adhikari Sector Materials for stellogenic tritium collection and harvesting crustal and magnetosphere-borne exotic matter created by coronal mass spallation. That is, the heat and energy of ions streaming off the extremely close-by star would produce useful particles in the planet's surface and fly into its magnetosphere to be collected.

The colony grew steadily and uneventfully, gained some manufacturing plants for hyperplasma inverter components, and began to be referred to as Yami Ankha by its majority Hindi and Gujarati inhabitants. The main base of Dholavira was located near the dark pole, with other blister habitats spread around the dark hemisphere. Deployment stations for the giant rolling crustal harvesters were stationed just along the terminator behind tall rock embankments, while great towering funnel-like magnetic particle traps were set up at the planet's magnetic pole. Normally, an industrial world of this nature would build a space elevator, but being tidally locked there wasn't the required centrifugal force to do so. Other in-system industrial infrastructure demands were met by a jump port and fuel refinery/depot at the gas giant 091d, Yamaniratha, and a modest orbital starship component manufacturing industry followed.

Pilgrimage Site
Being an industrial world in a harsh, dangerous, hot environment, most workers chose various levels of chromosomal tinkering, but were not seriously politically aligned with Diverger sentiments. But that all changed considerably in 2855, with the arrival of Sinhá Amelzita. Amélia Filomena Goto de Sena, aka Sinhá Amelzita, aka Sinhá de Bambu, founder of her own spiritual movement promoting "harmonic geneplexes," the Bosque de Bambu- an emerging major Diverger cult- arrived on Yami Ankha as the 10th stop on her Path of Willows quest she says was revealed to her in a hyperspace dream. On each of the previous worlds along her quest she was able to find an individual with a perfect, harmonically beautiful geneplex and declare them as immaculate Willow Trees standing in a profane forest of bamboo. However, upon arriving on Yami Ankha and meditating for three days in the main square of Dholavira, she declared that there was no Willow Tree to be found among the populace of 800,000, but that planting a real willow here would one day bring such an individual to find it. She mixed a willow seed with the DNA from her own blood and saliva, and planted it at the planet's dark pole under a small plexi-dome, exhorting it to flourish, before continuing on to the nine further worlds of her quest.

A community of Bosquenhos gathered at the site of the tree to tend to it, soon going as far as siting an orbital mirror at the overhead L2 point to provide it with continual light. This middle world in the 19-stop Caminho do Salgueiros pilgrimage, now known as Repouso da Sinhá, grew to become a major religious site over the next 30 years, into the 2890s, with more Willow Tree pilgrim ships visiting the world than ore carriers. As such, a shrine, temple complex, meditation halls, lecture halls, hotels, souvenir shops, a gallery of Sinhá Amelzita's multisensual artworks, starports, state-of-the-art "harmonic genetics" clinics and other tourist-oriented infrastructure sprang up around the now 35-metre tall willow tree.

Pirate Rule
Security in the Yami system, however, was minimal, and over the course of the 90's the stream of pilgrim ships became a favoured target for bandits and pirates, utilising their whole gamut of tactics- hit+run, scan+slam, kidnapping, camping and raiding. The planet was especially vulnerable to raiding, with bandits setting up for weeks or longer, imposing a de facto tariff for any pilgrims wishing to land, either until pilgrim numbers slowed or until the bandits were chased off by a police patrol or a larger bandit crew.

By this time Adhikari Sector Minerals had sold off their holdings to the sect, so pretty much everything on the world not privately owned was controlled by the tender of the willow tree, the Third Cuidador do Salguieros, and the world's cashflow, industrial and tourist, took a severe hit with each consecutive pirate raid. In 2898, the desperate Cuidador made a deal with one particular bandit crew- the Kompeni Guntur. This gang were ex-military, a renegade special forces unit from Sumpask (Sumatera Pasukan Khusus Squadron Pasifik Commonwealth) who had deserted from a CommPac strategic task force the previous year and who had been building a fearsome reputation in the piracy community. In exchange for protection of the pilgrims coming to Repauso, Komander Guntur Gunawan's company could take advantage of the planet's ship support facilities and genetic enhancement techniques. In 3001, Gungun and the Third Cuidador formalised their mutually profitable ruling partnership as a contracted diarchy, both in charge of roughly equal parts of the commerce and security of the whole Yami system.

Today
The intervening century saw a variety of coups and upheavals in the world's leadership, but any deviation from a balanced partnership resulted in losses of income to the world, so the political system has achieved a kind of dynamic equilibrium. In 3116, the world of Repauso is now a haven for rogues and pirates looking to trade, repair their ships or upgrade. Divergers come for high-quality genetic enhancement, particularly military style mods such as muscle grafts, squid-skin camo, manta ray stingers, or the world's specialty- Sumatran tiger claws and stripes; members of the Bosque de Bambu on their Caminho do Salguieros pilgrimage worship at their sect's most important religious site; and unemployed criminals or ex-military try to hook up with a crew that will take them.

Repauso has a steady population of around 5 million, with another 3 million in short term visitors at any time- pirates, pilgrims and genemod customers. Dholavira and Willow Tree are a combined city of 3.5 million permanent inhabitants under a single atmospheric canopy, lit by a small constellation of L2 orbital mirrors, while the remaining 1.5 million citizens reside in smaller habitats for industrial use or connected to shipyards. The culture is a blend of Gujarati, Brazilian, Malayan, Indonesian and Diverger elements from across its varied history.

Anyone causing trouble knows they'll be dealt with summarily by Gungun's Awaks, who act more like thugs than police, and whose favourite form of execution is staking someone out on the sunny side of the world. Gungun corvettes also patrol the Yami system with remarkable paramilitary precision, protecting as much from pirate attack as from pirate-pursuing law-enforcement.

And in Willow Tree, you will often see Bosquenho priests walking around in bamboo clothing- cloth spun from bamboo fibre and bamboo straw caps, with bamboo staves in hand, and they will preach the parable of the Willow in the Bamboo Forest to any who stand still too long, before trying to convince you to come and join a meditation circle where rhythmic chanting can harmonically align your geneplex into a purer form and unleash your willow seed. Failing that, a brochure shows how a course of mods can achieve the same genomic cultivation in a nearby clinic.

Question 102 by Daigoro
You've just pulled a million and a half gigayens on the last run. What can you do with it while you're saving up for a new high-rev inverter? Stash it under your g-couch? Surely there's some kind of... bank, or something, you could leave it in. But where?

[TGLS]

Question 102: Banks, Gigayen, and Money Transfers
One of the big problems that comes from the lack of interstellar radio is the difficulty of money transfers, which does make banks very impractical on the interstellar scale. True, nearly every inhabited system in the drift has a bank, but the problem is that there are almost no interstellar banking companies. The biggest ones are between two major trading partners, so they can get cheap mail between the two systems, because of all the transactions. Another roadblock is that differing currencies are all over the place and it's plain impractical to have regular exchange rates between currencies.

The only thing that does work as a banking system is the decentralized networks of credit letterers. Essentially, when making a transaction, if buying party does not have cash on hand, they can provide a letter of credit to the seller, worth a premium to them. The seller generally sells them to credit letterers, at however much they expected to make, who exploit the small-world concept to exchange the letters of credit for hard currency. Surprisingly, this system has yet to run into a collapse, despite the efforts of some econo-terrorists.

The Modern Gigayen is essentially an outgrowth of the Credit Letter concept. In 23rd century Japan, large corporations were faced with the collapsing yen and worked to implement a new currency, which was backed by their assets. The currency became very popular because Japanese banks had owned a great deal of the world's debt at the time, and would accept it as payment for these debts.

After a popular phase, the system was disrupted by the development of interstellar travel, which led to very devaluation of the currency in favor of the chemically bound Thay-D, which required much energy to create, thus giving it its value. The yen was worth a billionth of its value, but was saved when banks stepped in again, stabilizing the conversion rate between Thay-D and the Yen at about 1 billion yen to Thay-D, giving the name Gigayen. The Gigayen became a composite of a number of very important banks credit letters, thus ensuring the value of the currency, especially after breakthroughs in Thay-D synthesis were made.


Question 103: From way back here:

Originally Posted by (E)

the Mar Kan trading conglomerate "Yellow Song" is upgrading their fleet all the real space drives will be sold over the next year. Real space reactionless drives are known as Kwem drives. A drifted phonetic version of "Q.M.I" or quantum momentum inducer.

Why is Yellow song replacing all their real space drives? Is there a problem with the technology?

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Question 99 by Daigoro
Apart from the renowned navigator's college, Southbank Metrickal Lyceum on Old New Melbourne, what are some other famed educational institutions and their specialty fields of study?

Sandbridge Intercultural Ethical Seminary.

Another of the academic centres that make the New Melbourne system famous. Sandbridge is a graduate school primarily for training humanitarian missionaries for the United Ethical Societies (a Humanist religious organisation). As part of its program it offers highly regarded courses in Xeno-Anthropology, Xeno-Biology and Xeno-Medicine to both UES clergy and 'visiting scholars' recruited from a variety of other institutions across most of explored space.

[Frost]

While I would suggest that the best fix for the question 'Why don't reactionless thrusters work in atmosphere?' is probably to dump the reactionless thrusters in favour of (possibly superscience) reaction engines this question is too good to leave alone:

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 103: Why is Yellow song replacing all their real space drives? Is there a problem with the technology?

Yellow song have screwed up badly, although long accustomed to building ships in house the engineering division was persuaded to invest in a number of unproven technologies as part of the development of its last series of engines.

Initially these risks paid off in the form of small but not insignificant improvements in efficiency. As a result of these trials it was decided to roll them out on a fleet wide basis a decision facilitated by the companies use of modular construction. It was only after the majority of their fleet had been upgraded that the first problems started to manifest. The new engines do not age well, experiencing slow degradation across a number of critical components leading to spiralling maintenance costs and eventually an unacceptably high risk of catastrophic failure.

After several failed attempts at a quick fix resulting in the loss of at least one vessel it was decided to retire the engines on mass and replace them with an alternative sourced on the open market.

The really interesting part of the story is that the decommissioned engines are being offered for sale. As far as Yellow Song is concerned the units (containing a number of proprietary technologies) are being destroyed by a reputable firm of shipbreakers.

The reports that the units are available for sale appear to be current on human majority worlds where Yellow Song do not normally operate. The seller appears to be Kevorkian Sisters, a military surplus brokerage with a sketchy reputation.

103 b) Does Kevorkian Sisters actually have any engines to sell or is it just a scam?

c) If they do is this a simple case of theft or is there something else going on?

[Frost]

Originally Posted by TGLS

Question 89 by TGLS
Can somebody stat one of the alien races?

Mar Kan [26 points]

ST +2 [20]

Extra Legs (cannot kick) [3], Fur [1], Long Arms [10], Temperature Tolerance 3 [3]

Chauvinistic [1], Disturbing Voice [-5]*, Hard of Hearing [-5]*

Home Gravity 1.5 G [0]**, Low Pressure Lungs [0]**

This template refers specifically to an ‘alpha male’. Most people never interact with members of the other sexes. There are three sexes, two varieties of ‘male’ and the female, coupling with both varieties of male is required for fertilisation. Only the so called ‘alphas’ are fully sapient, ‘beta’ males and females will have IQ -3 and often other mental disadvantages particularly Clueless and Dyslexia, beta males are also significantly smaller and weaker (typically ST 10).

*Disturbing Voice and Hard of Hearing are intended to model an auditory range that only partialy overlaps the range of most other species, not to mention coming with some unpleasant subsonics to boot, hence the -50% limitation.

**While as a rule Mar Kan have a distaste for genetic augmentation several colonist groups have embraced limited pantropic changes that remove or alter these features.

History
The Mar Kan seem less concerned about their history than most species as such the deep history of the species has proved relatively hard to reconstruct. The most important things to remember are that the Mar Kan are an old species (at least by the standards of technological civilisations) and that they are not native to their supposed 'homeworld' of Arielius.

It is known for certain is that the Mar Kan evolved on a now lost planet typically referred to by scholars as Mar Kan Ti (the name is also used for the culture(s) that existed before the settlement of Arielius). While the details of Mar Kan social and technical evolution are now lost the balance of evidence is that they first attained industrial levels of technology approximately four to five thousand years ago having passed through a fairly typical developmental sequence barring perhaps comparatively low levels of species unity. Space travel followed fairly rapidly, bringing Mar Kan settlement to much of their home system.

Here the typical model of an involved species breaks down, while most species eventually look outwards the Mar Kan Ti remained inward looking becoming trapped in a seemingly unending cycle of military hegemony followed by violent collapse. Even the development of an early five dimensional jump drive proved insufficient to break the pattern, new colonies were founded only to be drawn almost immediately into the seemingly endless wars. A little over twelve hundred years ago the cycle finally reached its logical conclusion when a conflict between now unknown parties triggering mass nuclear and kinetic exchanges across most of the Mar Kan Ti's planets and major habitat clusters.

The modern history of the Mar Kan begins during the early stages of that war, with the Divine First Father Soi Than. Than was an officer with a colonising expedition tasked with opening a world close to Mar Kan Ti for settlement. Faced with the rapidly esculating war he forcefully and successfully advocated striking out for deep space rather than continuing the original mission. If one chooses to believe the conventional histories it was also Soi Than himself who first located the planet that would eventually become Arielius and it was Than that managed the first sensitive stages of the terraforming process. Whether or not you choose to believe this the fact remains that Arielius was terraformed and Mar Kan civilisation was re-established in the Arielius system.

The Mar Kan initially proved surprisingly willing to learn from their history, despite their propensity for clannishness and internal feuding the five century long terraforming era proved remarkably peaceful possibly in part due to the aggressive promotion of a unified Mar Kan culture by the Ri Yen Ti (very roughly the brotherhood of the origin) a religious order descended from the original colonial cadre. When after several centuries factional hostility began to reassert its self the Brotherhood took steps to reduce tensions ultimately supplying dissident groups with jury rigged jump engines and terraforming tools settling them in nearby systems.

By the time the Brotherhood was finally overthrown a few decades prior to first contact with another spacefaring species (humanity) the Mar Kan were securely re-established in a compact group of half a dozen systems centred upon Arielius.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Frost

103 b) Does Kevorkian Sisters actually have any engines to sell or is it just a scam?

c) If they do is this a simple case of theft or is there something else going on?

B) If it's a scam, whoever sold the Kevorkians the drives are going to be in a world of hurt. Kevorkians tend to take services rendered as payment whenever someone crosses them.

C) This isn't exactly thievery; only one QMI drive was "stolen". Nearly invisible, engineer Mikhail Sergeyevich Zhukov was working on dismantling the drive, but left his mind wandering too much, and began to reverse engineer the design. Anyway, he found their was a key substance in the drive, Phenomenon-47, that was necessary for induction of quantum momentum. He filched some after being fired for not meeting quota. The ship-breakers ended up annihilating the stuff when they found it could be broken down any more.

So Mikhail Sergeyevich busily worked away at it, and created his own substitute for the Phenomenon-47, then started to build his own QMIs. He started selling them to the Kevorkians, while trying to collect money to build a test-bed. Is his version more or less stable? I don't know, and he probably doesn't either. Of course, when Yellow Song catches wind of this there will be hell to pay.

[(E)]

More Centers of learning

The CyKoi most prestigious educational institute and the home of the largest collection of precursor artifacts is Scholars Temple of History, located on the CyKoi home world.

The Hyperspacial Explorers club on Mars is a great place to hear the fringe science of Jump technology and exploration.

The Xylysus have the "Womb" the facility where they seek to recreate their race, since the loss of the planetary fragment containing organic matter from their home planet the location is somewhat secret and very very well guarded.