As you yourself point out, the discussion has been about whether ships should carry some form of lifeboat/lifepod/etc. Manufacturers will make decisions based on the needs of the buyer: a "standard" design is going to reflect "standard" needs. One would not put features in the "standard" design that serve only the occasional adventurer while imposing unwanted burdens on the larger majority of users. If some patron needs a ship with lifeboats, the manufacturer will be only too happy to design a ship with lifeboats, but that doesn't mean the manufacturer builds merchant ships in general around the idea that some adventurer's going to decide to take the ship off the usual trade routes. Car manufacturers don't design all cars to be capable of off-roading; if you want to take a car off-road, you buy one specifically designed for off-road travel or you take your chances with the one you own.
As I pointed out, there's considerable room in the game for individual preference. If you want standard merchant designs to need lifepods or even lifeboats - dedicated or multirole - then you as gamemaster can invent IMTU rationales to support the need for lifepods and lifeboats on merchant designs. However, the behavior of the occasional adventurer or patron does not serve as adequate pretext for imposing something in a standard design that reduces the profits of everyone else.
Note that the CT standard-design yacht and and standard-design free trader are of the same size; the yacht is unstreamlined and carries a boat, the free trader is streamlined and does not. The standard-design safari ship is streamlined but includes "a lifeboat and air/raft ... for use in emergencies, and for expeditions." Different markets, different standard designs. Nothing stops a merchant corporation from ordering up a free trader with a boat - he can even use the standard hull; he just has to pay the naval architect to make a free trader design that incorporates a boat. Or maybe buy himself a boat that can fit through the cargo bay doors and have part of the bay retrofitted to serve as a boat dock; the subsidized liner is well-suited to that kind of after-construction modification.
Hi,
That's pretty much what my thoughts have been all along. I think the main difference is in who/which ships might need some sort of lifeboat/lifepod etc.
To me, I would think that any ship that may regularly try and skim fuel from a Gas Giant may find itself in a risky situation where either the turbulence from operating in the upper atmosphere of such a world, the possibility of encountering strong wind shears and/or other "storm' related weather, he possibility of impacting some other object in the "clouds" and other such issues would probably leave me wanting to have some form of emergency escape mechanism so that if for instance the fuel processor, power plant, maneuver drives, windscreens, major air locks/hull openings, and/or some component of the above fails you aren't necessarily left without power or control will in the "relatively denser than space' atmosphere subject to the resistance and drag of the atmosphere and the pull of the gravity, potentially being pulled further and further into the planet's atmosphere.
In addition to that, I'd think if I were on a ship in the TNE era, some form of emergency escape from the main ship (in terms of a lifeboat or lifepod etc) would be highly desirable, not just because of the risk that some form of "super computer hacker" (in the guise of a sentient computer virus, or whatever it was) may try and take over the main ship, but also because from what I have read about the period it appears to have been a period of possible economic and technological contraction where the remaining 'safe' areas sometimes operated ships where the technological base to support the ships either had or was in the process of eroding away leaving you potentially with systems that were hard, if not near impossible, to fully maintain.
Based on the above, it would also seem to me that operations at any point in time where there may have been a bit of "contraction' on the part of the major powers )either economically or in some other form) would likely also be a period in time where I would want some for of backup on my ship. this could include periods during/between many of the Interstellar Wars between Terra and the 1st Imperium, the period leading up to and after the fall of the 2nd Imperium, a couple different times during the 3rd Imperium and definitely during the Civil War period of the 3rd Imperium.
Based on the above, to be honest I guess I would also probably add any major period of war during these times as well as possibly even the periods immediately after such wars where economic contraction may occur as the major players recover from the impact of the wars and some services etc get cut and/or other cutbacks may get made.
In addition to all the above, I'd also think that any ship that may spend a fair bit of time away from heavily populated space, especially research ships and the like may also be good candidates for including some form of backup (like a lifeboat or lifepod - or a ship's boat acting as a lifeboat/lifepod etc) that wouldn't require waiting for help from someone else.
To this I'd also include ships which carry a large number of passengers such a long liners (which other have alluded to previously) plus possibly Naval Hospital Ships and Depot/Repair ship and possibly even troop transports (just because the possibility of loss of life can be so high in the event of something going wrong).
Other possible candidate for some sort of backup rescue ability (such as lifeboats/lifepods could also include Colony Ships (which, if transporting a lot of people in low berths, could potentially be constructed so that its actually made up of a lot of smaller separated an self contained subsections - similar to Battle Riders on a Transport - which could function as separate large lifeboats/lifepods in the event that something happens to the main vessel.
Livestock transports, and in fact any vessel that may carry a lot of animals (domesticated or not) may also be a good candidate especially since having a lot of animals confined in one place often makes for a fertile setting for the spread of diseases, and there are well documented cases that even for diseases not normally known to affect mankind there is a possibility of them 'jumping species' especially if given a strong foothold to incubate and potentially mutate (see for instance this link on Zoonosis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoonosis ).
In addition to those type cases I think the addition of a small craft to the already streamlined Safari Ship also makes sense to me since the small boat can also be used as a lifeboat in the event that either a "trophy" escapes or is found to have been infected with something that has since potentially spread throughout the main ship's life support system.
...Nope, the only place you'll find reference to hull segregation is in the deckplans, and it is for you as gamemaster to reconcile the discrepancy between different canon sources in ways that serve your game and your players. Canon is, after all, infamous for throwing such conflicts at us. As to redundant life support systems - well, if you as gamemaster are really, really eager to take out the entire life support system and force everyone to lifeboats despite having bulkheads that establish multiple distinct sections, then you have fun with that. Me, I wouldn't be surprised to see a player whip out a deckplan and point out the lack of logic in such a decision....
As I've noted before I think for different ship types and/or different situations different solutions may work best and in some cases a "safe" area may be that solution. However, my two main concerns are that a) from what I've seen most deckplans really don't show such a design philosophy and b) not all areas of known space may be quite as developed as the Core or other areas, and as such it may in fact be that (at least in some milieus etc) that being reliant on outside assistance in the event of an emergency (in the form of waiting onboard your stricken ship for someone to come to your rescue may in fact not be the best solution in non-Core related areas and/or areas away from major hubs etc. As such, it may well be that in an Imperium of 11,000 system several hundred or even several thousand may be highly developed and such but for travel to and from the remaining majority of the systems may not be so, especially at different periods in history.
...And you as a passenger or crewman may find yourself in a section suffering explosive decompression, or may find a chunk of hall corridor in which the grav plates have failed. However, the ship as a whole will continue to function....
Not necessarily. History is replete with examples of how a failure of one system or localized damage in one location can have an impact on other systems through out your vessel, aircraft, or whatever, and as such I would not at all be surprised if starships would be the same. for example I believe that there have been a couple incidents with the DC-10 aircraft where damage to one of the engines resulted in the loss of all hydraulic systems throughout the aircraft, even though it had been the design intent of the aircraft that the hydraulics be fairly separated to try and prevent such an incident fro happening (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-10 ).
