 March 2, 2020 - 7:35am |
This is going to get complicated real fast so if you want to check my math, here is the source material. http://www.gardensofeden.org/04%20Crop%20Yield%20Verification.htm OK, doing the math using the average yield per acre (10.621). One acre can feed four people per year (10,621/2660=3.99) using 1992 figures. Since most game designs for starships use meters I figured the smallest agro dome would be one Hectare (2.47 acres) That means in todays standards you could feed eight people per dome. Technobabble time: For one of these ships to work, you would either have to make it HUGE or increase the yield by 'x' and Reduce the growing season as well, so they can export more food than they use. Of course, you can do this in many ways, Bioengineering of the crops, and reducing the growing season to three months. This would quadruple the output of the dome (32). This would allow a single ship to support a small colony until they are able to get their own food production up and running. So four domes would equal 128 people minus 8 people to run the ship (plus robots). Using these figures for an Agricultural Dome, you kinda see the problem emerging. In order to make an impact on a world with a million plus people, the dang thing would have to be enormous. Unless you increase the crop yield by a 100 or even a 1,000 percent. Would Star Frontiers be able to support such technology is the real question here? <!--[if gte mso 9]> |
 March 2, 2020 - 9:20pm | I see the domed versions of agri ships as being pretty much the 'seed packet' for some new colony somewhere. The way the different Agri ships are described in Star Frontiers, one could be lead to believe that colonisation is pretty much going on all the time and thus warrants enough of these ships. But at the same time, swathes of colony building doesn't seem to be a thing on the Frontier. At least, that's not how it appears to me. Agri space stations aren't listed anywhere, and I'm not sure which planets would need an Agri system ship, as none are named IIRC. Then we have to try and figure out how all that food gets to the surface and what the infrastructure is to cover those bases. So if we instead just go for the 'seed packet' idea, the ship only needs to have perhaps X amount of things to be actually growing. The rest could be in the form of seedbanks etc. You don't need to have X amount 'ready to eat', unless the agri ship also is a food processing facility. That in itself is more interesting. But at the same time, a basic freighter could carry food supplies to a new colony and the 'seed packet' just needs to bring the raw materials to get the planetary agriculture up and running. Interestingly, 'food supplies' is not listed as a possible cargo anywhere in KH, despite the fact that it seems that food is needed is various parts of the Frontier. |
March 3, 2020 - 2:39am | Ships like this can be used for mining operations in asteriod fields and belts. They could also be setup on planets to provide food without growing it in native or hostile environments. Colonies would need one to hang around until their crops start producing their own food, insuring the colonies survivablity. Size is what gets me. From the drawing alone, you know they are these huge ships intend to grow food. I remember reading some where they are used to help support planet production (Not sure if it was in one of the books or on the forum). If that were the case, they would have to be huge no matter if you use the figures from the website or even if you handwavium the numbers, the ship would have to produce thousands of tons of food per acre? I haven't a clue why they were included in the game? Unless they were apart of the original colonization effort and they are relics of that bygone era? |
March 3, 2020 - 5:18am | I don't know why they're in the game, unless the original game was at some point going to have more details on colonisation efforts. I think they have little use outside of being 'seed packets' - but even then, you could do the same thing with a freighter. The domes aren't needed either - I don't think you actually need to have plants growing in a dome using direct sunlight. Knight Hawks gives details about how many people can be supported for a given Hull Size of agri ship, so at best I'd say the only real use for an agri ship might be as a orbital food resource for a newly founded colony. But it would need to be big and have a lot of shuttles of maybe HS: 4 or 5. Also, there is the problem of gravity WRT the domes. Until you're
accelerating at 1G, everything in the dome is going to be floating
round. Even if things are fixed down, a certain amount of stuff will
still be floating around. This all falls to the floor once you start
approaching anything like 1G. It all just seems to be a lot of work for a
not very good way of transporting growing cargo. If the ship is in orbit, everything will be floating around and growing anything in zero-G would a problem in itself, especially if plants then have to be taken down to the planet and then experience gravity. Everything could be taken to a colony, mining operation, etc by freighter. That way you'd be shipping in prepared and ready to eat food. I mean, in an asteroid field that's being mined, the freighter could arrive full of food supplies and take the ore away once the supplies had been unloaded. TBH, I think they looked cool in 'SIlent Running' but their use wasn't really thought out aside from what their Hull Size was a few other scant details  |
March 3, 2020 - 8:52am | I went and looked at Knight Hawks and what is written there makes no sense. Hull sizes 10-20: Produce 200 times there hull size. This is for agricultural ships. Hull sizes 4-6: Produce 2000 times the hull size. This is for agricultural space stations. (Blink, Blink...) They go on to say they are used by planet for addition food supplies. They also said, for on worlds where edible plants can't be grown. Make sense to me. Systems use this system would have a massive infrastructure just around Space Agriculture. Heck you might be a frieghter pilot in one of these systems before your a starship pilot travelling the frontier. I don't know what to think? Information is on page 29 of the Knight Hawk's PDF. |
March 3, 2020 - 3:10pm | Yep, I've ever understood the hull size thing. I'm guessing it's the wrong way around. I'm also not convinced that they'd be a good solutions on worlds where edible plants can't be grown. I mean, why not just put the pod technology on the planet's surface? Putting it in space doesn't really seem the better option. And, again, I think they were forgetting about zero-G in orbit. |
 March 3, 2020 - 7:30pm | And, again, I think they were forgetting about zero-G in orbit. I just assumed that they were ion drive and stayed close to the sun for light energy and kept a 1g burn going and the ship flips once per day and does the 1g burn in the other direction to prevent wracking up a high speed. You are right though they dont make a lot of sense except in very specialized situations. wouldn't surprise me if a University had ended up with one and used it as a lab for research. They would be used deliver emergency food to disaster locations and for new colony start ups but I dont see there being more than 4 AG ships in the whole Frontier. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 3, 2020 - 11:48pm | I don't think they do anything that a freighter couldn't. It just seems easier to transport food where it's needed. Having to actually grow food aboard a ship would take a huge amount of space to make a useful amount, even if you use hydroponics and similar things. But it wouldn't feed very many people. I think a lot of the time with the KH stuff, they were into the various scifi tropes but forgot that there is no artificial gravity in the rpg, so various things don't really work. I still think that there's a need for food as cargo in KH. Maybe break it down into fresh food (kept under refridgeration etc that's included in the cargo unit), prepared food (at different levels of quality), and exotics. |
March 4, 2020 - 4:02am | The problem with ships is they produce a hundred times less than stations according to KH. Stations are hull size 4-6 (which blew my mind) and they go on to say they are in close orbit to the sun than ships. As far as food; You have to think of it as paste (Pink slime anyone?) which is molded into patties like a hamburger. Even the veggies would be some sort of press patty for easy of production and storage, unless you want to go the canned route which would make your station or ship get larger and larger as different process are added. I see the use of 'land based' domes but agree with Kringway. The infrastructure require for Argicultural Stations would exceed that of trade between planets. There would be some space based aplications that would make sense (such mining colonies in asteriod fields and belt), but they are really few. |
March 4, 2020 - 4:29am | The food wouldn't necessarily have to be processed to be transportable. Maybe there's a finite limit to the distance you can go before fresh produce persishes, but if the cargo unit includes the means to help preservation (i.e. cold, freezing, etc), it's not an impossibility. It's a bit like how things are shipped around the world today - and in some cases with fruit and veg', you don't ship things ripe but in a form in which they will ripen soon after arrival. The ripening process can be offset by cold storage, etc. This is why I think there could be various levels of food quality as cargo. Maybe the paste/over-processed stuff is the lowest level, but lasts the longest and perhaps all of it isn't high-quality. Maybe it's just junk food, but all cultures like them in their own way. Maybe you can also specialise in food for just one of the races. |
March 4, 2020 - 6:44am | Also we have a item in KHs called a stasis field- its not specified what it is exactly but I suspect that we can just use what the words mean to infer what is does. So storage contianers for food might include this tech to ensure food delivered fresh. I also tend to think that if you have the available energy then military equipment can be stored for decades without deterioration in such a field. Would even allow for a character(s) to use a stasis field to save their lives in suspended animation for an unspecified amount of time ala Montgomery Scott showing up in TNG episode with the dyson sphere. They only reason its not done regularly is that it will tend to kill you unless a medic is on hand when you are brought out and he performs heroically on his skill checks. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 4, 2020 - 6:51am | Back to ag ships- they exist but are not really financially viable. More likely to find they have been repurposed to other missions. One university has an ag ship as a research lab- the bio domes have air locks and decon station and this allows for controlled research of potentially dangerous biological specimens. One ag ship, The Xanadu is a travelling sin city- a dome is used to grow commonly illegal drugs, others are party and pleasure palaces. One is a bazarre of the bizarre and morally questionable. The captain dresses in a slightly outrageous uniform that looks liek "Captain Obvious" from the recent TV commercials one is in moth balls but owned by the UPF and can usually be up and running in 1d5 days for mission or relief or mercy. It was last used by the MSO as a emergency hospital during a disaster on X colony. its reported that there are 1-2 more in private hands I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 4, 2020 - 11:55am | I did consider the stasis field but assumed it only worked on smallish objects, not on a big consignment of something. Aside from that any time I think of what an ag ship could do, I then think that you could do the same thing on a freighter. You don't even have to need a star for light, as that could be easily reproduced artificially with a cargo bay/pod. |
March 4, 2020 - 1:26pm | I did consider the stasis field but assumed it only worked on smallish objects, not on a big consignment of something. Aside from that any time I think of what an ag ship could do, I then think that you could do the same thing on a freighter. You don't even have to need a star for light, as that could be easily reproduced artificially with a cargo bay/pod. stasis field is a KHs defensive system, not sure what the minimum hull size is but I think this tech is for big objects. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 4, 2020 - 2:20pm | And just a note on hull sizes, remember that the station hulls are a different scale than the ship hulls. One station hull size is equal to 10 ship hull sizes, hence the factor of 10 in production. So a HS 4 station is the equivalent of a HS 40 ship (which of course don't exist). Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
March 4, 2020 - 3:22pm | FYI: I just checked the Zebs astroguide and there are no ag stations in the Frontier at all. Just Space Fortress, Fortified Station, Armed Station, Docking station, Trade station, and Rest and Relaxation station. Although I could see a science station maybe? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 4, 2020 - 10:22pm | An Ag station might be viable if it's essentially an orbital factory that makes food. The utility to this might be that you could export food from it via freighters. WRT the stasis field, I think I was mixing it up with the freeze field  |
March 5, 2020 - 6:08am | An Ag station might be viable if it's essentially an orbital factory that makes food. The utility to this might be that you could export food from it via freighters. WRT the stasis field, I think I was mixing it up with the freeze field different words but largely ill defined technology I view freeze field and stasis field as different application of the same technology. We see this in the real world all the time new tech involving radar leads to early warning systms and microwave ovens- hence their original name: radar range. Freeze field is finely tuned to preserve life where as stasis field not so finely tuned and in all likelihood stasis field is really a phasing technology that tries to halt time within the field for micro seconds such that if its timed right it prevents damage to the ship. but the occupants of the ship dont really notice anything. stasis field that stopped time for a KHs ship for anything longer than micro seconds would be deadly in that those in the field would not see nor be able to react to threats and an enemy would easily manuever to destroy them. A storage stasis field would not be rated for perserving live organism but could perserve in stasis perishable items anything from food to equipment. I can see collectors having stasis vaults to keep their mint and near mint collectables preserved until the day they are willing to sell them. EDIT: I agree about the ag station as a factory in space BTW. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
