Thanks for the positive feedback Kaladorn!
Actually, I had already thought of answers to a few of your questions but feared that my last post may have become a book length rant.
I will try to answer your questions one at a time.
Craig has Sollies, Cats, and concievably Hivers or others to worry about. Plus he has that nutbar Lucan and the Usurper. So, why is he busy taking available manpower and money to build stuff for caches when he could be trying to stave off the collapse itself? That's like building a time capsule while your house is on fire, rather than putting out the flames.
Two things:
1) I envision Craig's actions taking place during the earliest phases of the Rebellion, back when a collapse seemed possible but not likely. Hell, he may even have justified the expenditure by thinking that these caches would be good for the next crisis to develop, should the rebellion end.
2) The ships themseleves are fairly small and likely cheap to build in comparison with whatever else he is building at his naval yards. Further, I imagine that only a few of them, less than ten, actually got built and installed.
The pilgrimmage aspect is interesting, though I don't think I'd say 'most' virus ships. Perhaps just some of the more interesting and thoughtful ones.
I would agree with that. I think the empire builder strain that found the ship was of that variety and that these tendencies may have been increased by the gearing of the ship's computers towards activities like exploration and re-establishing contact with pockets of civilization. (I envision the ship as having had, at least before it was damaged, pretty extensive pre-final war navigational information. And as a plot hook, I think it might have the location of another cache buried deep within it)
I do question computerized ships without autonomous or remote control service bots. Simply put, things will go wrong even on a heavily computerized ship (heck, I work in systems integration, things will go *more* wrong on heavily computerized equipment!). Some of these will be of the 'can't fix it with a bit of code' type of problem. So you'll need manipulators. Bots aboard make a good choice. Now, you can say they are destroyed, but the idea that they were there originally to let the ship self-repair makes some sense to me. Thus, in essence, the ship is recruiting for a new team of bots. It might realize there have to be trade offs, but it essentially wants to be repaired. [/QB]
I had been flip-flopping on this issue. Having bots would also explain why there is no sign of a human crew aboard. I'm thinking that most of the bots were destroyed in its first and only battle. The few remaining, that may be damaged themseleves, have done what repairs they could but a few delicate touches require the fine manipulation skills of the party.
I want to tie it to the Jumpdrive somehow. In my imagination the ship managed to (mis)jump when the battle was clearly lost. Although this misjump allowed it to survive it did a number on the jump drive itself.
Oh, and couple of other hooks-
-The ship wants the players to repair several damaged computers... one of which is infected with the Lucanic Black Sphere strain.
-The second adventure is totally going to be the 'who's in charge here' session. It's all going to be in jumpspace with the ship trying to assert its control over the situation.
-Eventually, I think I'll steer them towards the pilgrammage, although chasing after other jump caches and enounters with an RC just beginning to recognize virus as a life form could be fun along the way. Heck, even just convincing the virus to hide while the party tries to barter for repairs/get repairs done at local space port could be fun.
