notagoodusername
SOC-13
So, to get this rolling I thought I'd lay down what we came up with last night for your comments.
The key point of this is it is to be quickly and easily used by a Referee to create a working starport.
The focus is aimed at the player character interaction level. We aren't concerned with the precise tonnage of trade that typically passes through the station beyond the criteria of Very High, High, Medium, Low, Incidental (or whatever scale we hit on), but this does affect how long it takes you to get a bay, get unloaded, how much fuel and resupply is availible.
We want to have brief, concise essays about starport operations, tariffs and charges, facilities, defenses, and laws. We also want to have advice for the GM in how to put a port together quickly and 'realistically'.
We want to cover the various components of a starport (defenses, traffic control, cargo handling, shops, services, warehousing, etc) in a modular manner. For example you might decide you want a Class B port on a waterworld that handles a high volume of trade, and be able to quickly come up with the fact you need (purely random figures) 10 warehousing units (whatever a warehouse unit is), 15 landing area units, 3 port control units, and so on. Of course, a port this busy will have criminal units too, but they depend on the above and the law level and are a different story. I have a few more ideas about this, but need to think them over for a day or so first.
The units themselves will be covered with 10 to 12 within a given type, so you might have "Small Warehouse Unit", "Medium Warehouse Unit", "Small Warehouse Unit, Pressurised", "Medium Warehouse Unit, Secure" and so on. These are then used to built the port. I'm in favour of small example maps for each type to give ideas (again to be used quickly), but what do you think?
There needs to be a chapter of advice for the GM on how to flesh the port out if he needs more details. A chapter of NPCs to use. A chapter of bars, clubs, shops and the like to drop into the entertainment and service section of the port.
I'm also in favour of a chapter of random tables for encounters, adverts, shop items, people, and the stuff GMs need quickly.
We're also considering a Universal Starport Facility Profile (USFP) to help record our modular starports.
A chapter of example starports (one big, one small, one exotic maybe) to show how this can work, maybe with a detailed creation example if we can.
Finally there needs to be a random generation system to allow the Referee to come up with a starport quickly and easily if he jiust wants to roll the dice.
All this must be usable for Imperial, Corporate or Independant ports, and if possible a little advice on non-human ones too.
So folks, what do you think? Remember that this isn't the way the project is going to be, its one set of ideas - if you think any are crap tell me and lets come up with a beter idea.
A topic this big could get unwieldy fast, so one request would be once we start to chat about individual parts of the project we take them so seperate threads to keep the size down. Obviosuly they'll interrelate some, but that is unavoidable. If anyone has a completely radically different idea of how to do this drop it in another thread and we'll run them parallel.
Note that references to modular starport creation mean modular on a metagame level, and not nessecarily physically building-block starports.
So folks - comments, ideas, criticisms? Lets hear your voices.
Shane
The key point of this is it is to be quickly and easily used by a Referee to create a working starport.
The focus is aimed at the player character interaction level. We aren't concerned with the precise tonnage of trade that typically passes through the station beyond the criteria of Very High, High, Medium, Low, Incidental (or whatever scale we hit on), but this does affect how long it takes you to get a bay, get unloaded, how much fuel and resupply is availible.
We want to have brief, concise essays about starport operations, tariffs and charges, facilities, defenses, and laws. We also want to have advice for the GM in how to put a port together quickly and 'realistically'.
We want to cover the various components of a starport (defenses, traffic control, cargo handling, shops, services, warehousing, etc) in a modular manner. For example you might decide you want a Class B port on a waterworld that handles a high volume of trade, and be able to quickly come up with the fact you need (purely random figures) 10 warehousing units (whatever a warehouse unit is), 15 landing area units, 3 port control units, and so on. Of course, a port this busy will have criminal units too, but they depend on the above and the law level and are a different story. I have a few more ideas about this, but need to think them over for a day or so first.
The units themselves will be covered with 10 to 12 within a given type, so you might have "Small Warehouse Unit", "Medium Warehouse Unit", "Small Warehouse Unit, Pressurised", "Medium Warehouse Unit, Secure" and so on. These are then used to built the port. I'm in favour of small example maps for each type to give ideas (again to be used quickly), but what do you think?
There needs to be a chapter of advice for the GM on how to flesh the port out if he needs more details. A chapter of NPCs to use. A chapter of bars, clubs, shops and the like to drop into the entertainment and service section of the port.
I'm also in favour of a chapter of random tables for encounters, adverts, shop items, people, and the stuff GMs need quickly.
We're also considering a Universal Starport Facility Profile (USFP) to help record our modular starports.
A chapter of example starports (one big, one small, one exotic maybe) to show how this can work, maybe with a detailed creation example if we can.
Finally there needs to be a random generation system to allow the Referee to come up with a starport quickly and easily if he jiust wants to roll the dice.
All this must be usable for Imperial, Corporate or Independant ports, and if possible a little advice on non-human ones too.
So folks, what do you think? Remember that this isn't the way the project is going to be, its one set of ideas - if you think any are crap tell me and lets come up with a beter idea.
A topic this big could get unwieldy fast, so one request would be once we start to chat about individual parts of the project we take them so seperate threads to keep the size down. Obviosuly they'll interrelate some, but that is unavoidable. If anyone has a completely radically different idea of how to do this drop it in another thread and we'll run them parallel.
Note that references to modular starport creation mean modular on a metagame level, and not nessecarily physically building-block starports.
So folks - comments, ideas, criticisms? Lets hear your voices.
Shane
