The other challenges of space

[Dangerious P. Cats]

For a while now I've been dreaming up a space exploration setting that can be loosely described Enterprise if it were re-invented the same way the new battlestar galactica was. Basically the setting assumes minimal technology over TL8 with a little super science. There is space travel (obviously) but guns fire bullets rather than lasers, injuries require surgery that takes considerable time to recover from, and so forth. The premise is that humanity had to evacuate earth in the wake of a viral outbreak similar to the rage virus (o.k, not as hard science but zombies are cool) and did so in huge cryogenic ships each preserving 10,000 people. An unknown time later (one of the recurring themes of the setting is that it's not known how long its been since humanity left each) one of the ships came into orbit of a life bearing planet, the people inside were reawakened and colonisation began. The colony suffered at first, with many people dying, then in the year 15 (0 being colonisation) another cryo ship arrived. Increase in people power and working technology kick started the colony and by year 30 it was thriving, the economy had begun to harvest spaced based resources, the population was steadily growing and a second city had been founded to better access natural resources. It's not the year 275 and the colony has reached a golden age. Political reforms have achieved a stable democracy, resource efficiency have prevented environmental problems and the colony was even blessed with the arrival of a fourth cryo ship 3 years before. The colony has decided that it's time to explore the universe and has assembled a fleet of space vassals to boldly go where no man (from the colony) has gone before, which is where the players come in, functioning as the crew.

Taking ideas from the new BattleStar and also a bit from Stargate Universe (which let’s face it is star gate trying to be the new battle star) many of the problems faced by the crew/party will be drawn from general problems of being in space for that long, things like running out of water or fuel, or people going space crazy and psychotic, I'm trying to think of what other problems like that would be.

Also I am trying to flesh out the setting a little more, I've decide that when the players encounter new species they will be evolved humans rather than life evolved among the furthest stars. This plays into a possible subplot about the "seeders" since all the planet the colony is on shows obvious signs of being terraformed from earth life a very long time ago, and also there is the strange problem of why four cryo ships have found their way to a planet given the exceedingly small odds of a second finding its way there. At the onset of the campaign the colony knows of humans living out in space called Skellions who often raid colonial mining ships and even the colony itself early on. Skellions typically live in giant space stations made of stolen ships, they are very distrustful of people who colonise worlds (some theorise that the Skellions were colonists of other worlds forced to flee for some reason). Outside of raiding they do mine spaced based resources and grow food in artificial green houses, though they are closer to space rednecks than a functional space civilisation.