Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
Really over centuries as bits are added and old ones are discarded those belter towns could be become huge sprawling masses.
Exactly - some hulks are more or less intact, and their interior spaces are bars, living quarters, brothels, general stores, assay offices (or their 57th century equivalent), and more bars. (This
is a mining camp after all.) Others are little more than skeletal frameworks that hold the rest of the town together - certainly any ship that becomes part of the belter town immediately has its jump and maneuver drives, avionics, and weaponry stripped, leaving only the power plant to run the life support and grav plates, and should the power plant fail at some point, everything else would be taken for parts by belters looking to keep their seekers and other craft working.
Originally posted by Kurega Gikur:
Imagine the fun of building one around an asteroid!
One of my belter towns was built around a played out asteroid and a disabled seeker - the belter landed his ship and couldn't get it off again, so he sold his ore to passing miners in exchange for life support and fuel. Eventually he established a trading post inside the passages of the asteroid, and later other ships began to build out on his store.
Every belter town has the story, usually (but not always) apocryphal, of the ship that carried supplies to the outpost and was converted to a couple of bars and a brothel by the time the crew finished off-loading the cargo!
