Wanted: Homes of the Far Future

[plop101]

I am looking for ideas/detailing on domestic abodes in Traveller. What would a house or an apartment be like at TL13, or TL15? Obviously, the size and makeup of the dwelling would be dependant on price. Thus, I would be interested generally in details of dwellings from TL10 thru TL15, and from residents from the lower class, middle class, and upper class.

I'm also interested in specific detailing for a dwelling for a npc I have on Regina(CT era: TL10). The NPC is Soc 9, the daughter of a LSP high mucky-muck manager type, and has about 2-3 MCR worth of dwelling (whatever it is). The dwelling will be on planet, out in one of the few desert areas that Regina has.

Any ideas? GIVE ME YOUR BRAIN.

 

[plop101]

Some other points I forgot to mention:

Land values? How much does land cost? Land on a clear terrain rich world hex obviously will cost more than a piece of rocky terrain on a small vacuum world.

Some detailing is available in T4, in a section entitled, IIRC, "What is poverty at TL12?" It goes into what a lower class TL12 apartment might be like.

 

[far-trader]

Well, possibly useful to you and slightly related I'll offer the simple system I've stolen from Shadowrun for every other game system. To determine the cost/value of a PC/NPC 'home' property multiply the desired monthly maintenance level by 100. For T20 (p. 21, Cost of Living) that's Cr100 xSOC minimum. Your situation as described (a single female, SOC 9) would require a minimum 'home' of Cr90,000. Much less than the Mcr2-3 you were ballparking.

That reminds me, istr being not happy with the flat Cr100 xSOC in earlier Traveller versions and instead used Cr100 x(SOCxSOC). This in your example would bump her home to a much more opulent Cr810,000 and getting closer to your neighbourhood.

I guess it depends on what version of Traveller this is for. Checking the Social Standing Scores table for T20 your NPC should be more like SOC12 to SOC14 which would (with my inflated system) give her a home of some Mcr1.44 to Mcr1.96. If however its a 2d6 stat version then SOC9 is probably about right. Of course it could be a corporate 'home' maintained and provided by the employer and your NPC is responsible for any upkeep while living there but doesn't actually own it.

That's about all my brain can come up with at the moment, hmmm, got longer than I anticipated so maybe there's some value in there for you.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Home of the future as I see it:

Computer systems throughout the walls and ceilings. Track you through the house for things like lights, entertainment systems, etc... Food processor to create any kind of food if the recipie is on hand. Closets clean the clothes when you shut the door. All personal quirks and tastes accomodated to. I see this at Tech 10 or 11. Tech 15 would probably be some kind of dynamically configurable house (i.e. you press a button, and before you open the door, the room has been rearranged/changed to a rec room, push the button again, and it's a bedroom, etc...) or hologram features. The higher the Tech level goes, the cheaper it's going to be to do something like this.

Thanks for listening...

Scout

 

[flykiller]

auto-delivery systems. especially in large apartment structures, just like there are water, air-conditioning, and and electrical systems, there will likely be internal rail tracks that allow direct physical delivery of small- to medium-sized packages by elevator robots. sort of like the old pneumatic mail tubes, only on a larger scale.

 

[Shadowdancer]

A landing pad for grav vehicles will probably be standard at TL 10 and above. Plus some sort of beacon/transponder so you can quickly find an address you've never been to before.

 

[mad13142000]

I don't know about a house...I live in a unit in the arcology. My gravcar plugs into where a balcony would be (can't breathe theat sludge outside anyway, why would I need a balcony..) All the living units are on the 'outside' while the inner reaches of the arc have all the shops, offices, and businesses. The 'roof' is where the air/spaceport is located. I'm on the 137th floor..never been to the 'ground level'.
-MADDog

 

[alanb]

The following represents one, and only one, possible viewpoint.

Technology is vulgar, and should be concealed. Only insufficiently advanced technology is distinguishable from magic.

A high tech dwelling is visually a lot more like a low tech one than a mid tech one. They tend not to have junk like TV sets cluttering up the place. The decor is often deliberately archaic, looking vaguely oriental (Japanese or Chinese). The decorations on the walls double as entertainment/communications screens, of course, but are not "obviously" such when they are not in use. That's not obvious to the untrained observer - any member of this society knows what they are.

Control systems are voice activated and/or virtual - again, the emphasis is on keeping all the junk out of the way.

While kitchens typically feature systems capable of pretty much fully automated food preparation, they are supplemented by "traditional" systems, to permit the practice of traditional culinary arts. Given the shortness of working hours in this society, manual cooking is a popular hobby, as are many other "low-tech" creative pastimes.

Many people probably spend as much or more time on their "hobbies" than they do at "work". The result is a society that in some ways is a bit like a dream version of the Society for Creative Anachronism: all the "nasty" stuff is crammed into a few hours a day, leaving the rest of your time to do the cool and creative stuff you really like doing, like watching football, drinking beer, and so on.

In fact, the sheer magnitude of the output of citizens' hobbies actually constitutes a major league low-mid tech economy in its own right. This almost reaches the level where the high-tech society begins to resemble a low-tech society with a bit of high-tech stuff tucked away in the background...

OK, that was all a bit odd, but it's one possibility.

I rave on about whether or not citizens would own grav cars, and so on, but it's late.

A thought: several of the houses I have lived in throughout my life were built many decades before I was born. That's in Australia, where houses that were built centuries before don't really exist. In a lot of ways I still live a lot like someone would have lived back in the 60s, 50s, 40s... OK, inside plumbing is a big change, and electricity before that, but still... the difference between TL5 and TL8 isn't _all_ that vast on a day to day basis.

That's one reason why I tend to go with fairly conservative models of change in daily lifestyles. On the other hand, the degree of variation between worlds should actually be quite high, to get the feel of a huge and varied Imperium.

Anything you feel like doing is right! And sitting down thinking about these kind of things can keep you daydreaming for hours...

Alan

 

[Elliot]

I have a far more dystopian view of future homes - I sometimes travel through pretty trashy parts of London and often find myself making out a chink of skylight under the crumbling concrete of each successive age of architecture. I often think that this is the future for many homes in advanced societies and not the cool condo on the river that only bankers can afford.

In my view the future home is more like the Mr Sebastian's house in the Bradbury block in the Blade Runner movie = crumbling, not fully protected from the extremes but full of gadgets that makes things bearable.

But then again perhaps i'm just going through a dark phase...

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

The capital city of my favorite world (Bern) has the 'look and feel' of rural Switzerland. With everybody either using gravcars, walking, bicycling, or using draft animals to get to where they want to go. Internal combustion engines are forbidden.

Most homes enjoy TL8-TLA appliances, but are constructed of local materials. They resemble alpine architecture of Earth's pre-WWII era.

Taxation is at an all-time low of 70.71068%, allowing the government to provide free education, housing and health care to all the registered citizens of this primarily agricultural world.

It's the unregistered residents that cause the most trouble. It seems that there are some fissionable materials that can be mined from the mountains that cover most of the planet's land area. There has been an increase in the amount of unauthorized mining. Since the people who do the minning are looking for a quick credit, they take shortcuts with or completely ignore safety measures. Some watersheds have become poisoned with radioactive mine tailings, especially from those mines where 'hydraulickers' use high-pressure jets of water to reveal the mineral wealth. Then they pack up their stake and jump outsystem.

The local government is appealing to Imperial authorities to provide military intervention, but the IIN wants to construct a downport right in the middle of some of the best farmland, and the Berner government does not want that at all.

The Berners could use a few honest mercs (

) to patrol the planet and eliminate the offworlder threat...

 

[TKalbfus]

Has anyone ever considered a grav-home. This is basically a large grav-vehicle that is also designed to be a home, it is the Traveller equivalent of the Motor home. This is a convienince for people who travel alot.

 

[Tobias]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Has anyone ever considered a grav-home. This is basically a large grav-vehicle that is also designed to be a home, it is the Traveller equivalent of the Motor home. This is a convienince for people who travel alot.

There is a "Grav Houseboat" in 101 Vehicles that matches this description fairly well.

Regards,

Tobias

 

[PVernon]

And Tanuki has his RV version of a Cutter Module.

 

[PVernon]

Keep talking, keep talking all of these ideas are important. I am thinking of doing a plan of part of an Arcology at some point. Soon?

 

[TKalbfus]

Gravhouse are different from motor homes in a number of respects. Unlike motor homes they don't have to travel on highways. A Grav home can be as large and as varied in appearance as a conventional grounded house. If as grav home is equipped with a fusion reactor, upward facing fuel scoops and and atmospheric condenser, it can fuel itself and condence drinking water out of the air in most climates except extemely dry or cold ones. A fuel processor splits the water it collects into hydrogen and oxygen, feeding the hydrogen into the reactor to power the grav units and other household appliances. The gravhome would have a backup powersource and grav units in case the primaries go offline and need repair. The grav home can in essence hover in one spot indefinitely as well as travel around and the views are great! To get down from the grav home, you either lower the grav home so you can step down, or you wear a grav belt or drive a smaller grav vehicle out of the garage. One of the great things about these sorts of homes is that you don't need to buy real estate, and this leads to some interesting questions.

Imagine that you are a resident of a ground home community and suddenly a new neighbor floats in over the horison in his grav home. The grav home comes to a stop and hovers 100 meters directly over your back yard. Your neighbor sends his children to your public school a week later, but he doesn't have to pay for it since he doesn't own any real estate in the area, he doesn't pay real estate taxes while you do.

 

[plop101]

voice of Emperor Palpatine: Good, Goooood.

Some other notions flitting through my neurons...

I spent some time last night looking at D20 Moderns' use of dwellings. Without going into detail, I think the price for what they call a "Estate" is a little too low... that may be for a "estate" in Southeast Arkansas or Mississippi, but you couldn't buy a "Estate" in Palm Springs, CA or Scotsdale, AZ for the price that D20mod quotes. Hell, when I lived at Luke AFB, AZ, middle class
3 bedroom homes in Glendale where STARTING at the price that D20mod quotes. So, I'm not so sure about trying to straight port D20mod housing over to my Trav campaign.

Where do you think the Jetson's home fits in all this. Or the home that the professor and his daughter lived at in "Forbidden Planet". Would the armored shutters shown in the film ever catch on in home design, and if so, what tech level would they arrive at. Hmmm....This home built by the KRELL Construction Company, Robby Robot, chief architect. Any other notions from science fiction that you can think of? Seems like alot of folks in Sci-Fi land are crammed into little tiny apartments [Ripley's dwelling in Aliens, Dallas' dwelling in The Fifth Element, even Kirks San Francisco apartment in Star Trek 2 seems small(you would think on an Admirals salery that he could afford better; oh well)]. There is the middle class abode in A.I., but it looked like a ordinary real world home of today; no bells and whistles, except for the childbot. IIRC, I think the apartment that Harrison Fords' character lived at in Blade Runner was about the same way, a fairly ordinary apartment. Just off the top of my brain damaged head, I don't seem to recall much on the dwellings of the wealthy or near-wealthy in sci-fi land look like.

What about taking something we have today, say, something in the .5 Mdollar to 1.5 Mdollar price range, and porting it over to the traveller universe? Add some bells and whistles tech stuff, convert the dollars to credits, etc?

I think what I've read the discussion so far that materials cost for the main structure would be cheap but the plumbing and bells/whistles bits would drive the cost up. Sounds like we're still working with wood, brick, stone, with some of the more enterprising using prefab plascrete, especially in apartments and condos. I've been watching that home and garden cable channel of late, but it does not seem [at least from the amount of coverage I saw] like an awfull lot of people are going with the prefab concrete home. Did see one example though...interesting.

Please, share your ideas with the group...
....GIVE US YOUR BRAINS.

 

[Zutroi]

Invoking Niven:

Architectural Coral - you don't build a house, you grow it!

Indoor lawns instead of carpeting, helps offset your CO2 output at the same time.

How about those Tokyo "Coffin Hotels?"

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by Tom Kalbfus:
Gravhouse are different from motor homes in a number of respects. Unlike motor homes they don't have to travel on highways. A Grav home can be as large and as varied in appearance as a conventional grounded house.

Indeed. They can even have jump drives.

The Beowulf model is particularly popular.

And briefly on materials: a lot will depend on the kind of world the home will be on. If organic materials are cheap and abundant, and you can breathe the air without getting poisoned, frozen, irradiated or cooked, it makes sense to use cheap, low tech materials.

If you are building an arcology on a frozen rockball, you will use other materials.

So: "Wood on Tahiti, Superdense on Tartarus".

Alan

 

[TKalbfus]

Yeah, the Jetson's home would fit in Traveller, they have the family "bubble top" air/raft. A talking dog though genetic engineering. Lots of moving sidewalks and food preparation machines, A robot maid named Rosie. Why not?

 

[PVernon]

I have an interesting question; If you were in a housing area of an Archology (say a middle class area) what would it look like to you?

Like a modern appartment block?
An open area that imitates an open area?
One story high?
More than one story?
Moving side walks, enclosed people mover, just a hall?

What do you see in your minds eye?