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Old 08-14-2013, 01:23 AM   #21
Agemegos
 
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Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
Default Re: [Spaceships] Crews for exploration

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Note that the exploration of the Americas had special bait for independent explorers: the opportunity to claim new territories for king and country, and to exploit your advantages over the natives. If your goal is 'first to exploit planet X', the ship design is different from simple exploration.
Indeed. But James Cook's wasn't and this mission's doesn't have to be.
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Old 08-14-2013, 09:58 AM   #22
Fred Brackin
 
Join Date: Aug 2007
Default Re: [Spaceships] Crews for exploration

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
A mission that flits in, takes some photos, and flits out without talking to anybody can tell whether there are still people in the system, whether they have radio, whether they have TV, whether they have spaceflight, and whether they have a honking great orbital laser to defend themselves against pirates. .
It can also tell many, many of the things you're interested in by listening to their com traffic. The recoding of this com traffic can also be largely automated. Then you analyze it all abck at base.

If there is no com traffic that tells you the palce is low tech and you can get a lot of information from using the Scientific part f the enhanced Sensor package I recommended. If there's nobody to talk to on the radio you do 48 hours of a ball of string/circumpolar orbit and map the whole planet as it stands now and not 800 years ago.

A good orbital map will tell you how much land is under cultivation and give you a very good idea of population, both in total and how it's distributed.

As a simple first step you sort of need to find out if any of the colonists are still alive.

I wouldn't think I was well-equipped to plan a contact mission to modern England if all I had was the Domesday Book. My first mission would be about nothing but gathering basic data.

<shrug> If what you're planning is actually a sort of military soap opera like M*A*S*H then none of this matters anyway but the actual ship that your players are on could easily enough be the follow-up mission after a scout ship does a first pass to see if the lights are still on 800 years later.
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Old 08-14-2013, 10:22 AM   #23
cosmicfish
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Default Re: [Spaceships] Crews for exploration

Agemegos, I think it may be valuable to work up a mission profile as you see it, that addresses come of the variables and indicates what criteria cause the mission to advance and what criteria call for leaving. That way you/we can see more clearly what needs to be done and by whom. For example, what kind of baddies are too big to fight, meaning you need to run?
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