Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
(Although the term 'grav-pong' had to wait for TNE over a decade in the future.)
Actually, Bill, we were using the term "grav-pong", I believe well before TNE, also.
Yes, it was a standard anti-hijack technique.
We also came up with two other bits:
1) Ceiling grav-plates. Not to build a prison, but to actually accelerate the poor shmuck when you went switcheroo on the grav. Throw the ceiling plates on at +3, then switch the floor plates to -3 for a cumulative 6G accel into the overhead! If you set it to randomly switch, you could have everything from pulled apart, to smashed into floor/ceiling, to squished in the middle. And, they switched once per turn or so.
Edit: Oh yeah, we also figured it was a good way to have 0G when you were planetside. It wouldn't be complete, but it might allow you to float a heavy suitcase down the passageway.
end edit
2) Mono-molecular wires. Tracks in the walls allowed for mono-molec wire to be run up at varying heights if you went to battle conditions. Since everyone on a small ship
should be accounted for, anyone running up and down the corridors was going to encounter difficulty. It also made for teleportation problems for Zho troopers (we were worried about that for some reason), as they might pop into the same space as the wire....
We actually never installed that last one (could have been really ugly with even one panicky passenger), but we talked alot about how to refine the idea....
