 May 11, 2012 - 4:47pm | This Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTi4v3HveqE A few YouTube videos are out there discussing the "dangers of high-tech civilizations", and are worth a listen for some "Sathar Plot" ideas... many of the issues that create dangers simply can not be easily regulated and policed by the same industrial base that requires the risks to keep the level of technology available... The most readily seen example in these boards of the risks being harder to manage the higher the technology develops, is the Interstellar Ship/Mass Missile conundrum... the more common fast-travel in space becomes, the more potential their is for a rouge ship to clear-a-continent with a private ship, and the harder it becomes to stop an "intentiaonal accident" slipping through the checks. The harder it becomes to physically stop such ships from intentional navigational deviations, the more strict the social pressures must be when authorizing permissive charters, and educating the potential industry-base personal on; civil-responsibility, mutual-safety, and common codes of acceptable conduct. but the risk remains... and the "safe-guards" are merely printed thin translucent sheets of polypropylene and polycarbonate... indicating only a current level of mutual-mass-agreement. How many other "Dark-tech Dangers" have you encountered in The Frontier? Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 May 14, 2012 - 6:13am | If there is a real risk or a past incident of a ship being crashed into a planet then you'll see a resurgence of harbor pilots guiding ships in. Basically a planet will require all ships to reduce speed when approaching a planet and a pilot will take a shuttle out and then navigate the ship in. Any ship caulking to halt at the proper distance, coming in fast, or approaching without the required system pilot on board will be fired upon by the militia. These procedures will of course add in time and money and be very unpopular but will a high population world that has suffered a past incident merchants won't be able to not do business here so they'll bite the bullet and put up with it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 15, 2012 - 11:45pm | @ Jedion, I read a sci-fi book once that did just that. They had systems pilots and no one was allowed through unless they wanted to be space dust. It would be a good twist to a story to have that done to a group of pc's ship going into a new system. Could create a good roleplay session in negotiations. |
May 16, 2012 - 4:00am | I'm thinking it would have more legs in a setting where the players don't know what's over the horizon, where there is no sub space radio and lots of colony ships went out and there is little knowledge of what's out there. So the PC's visit a system an the referee reports a massive space station around one planet and lots of radio emissions from that planet there natural inclination is to just fly their ship to that planet. Unbeknownst to them (can you believe that I just typed unbeknownst and auto correct didn't crap all over it?) they are violating local laws and local militia is about to light their ship up with a low power laser and order them to heave too fore boarding. There ship is impounded and searched and they have to negotiate for its release which then leads to "Sure, but we have this little job you can do for us and we'll clear this thing up right away." I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 18, 2012 - 3:55am | Office of the harbor master, tug service and system pilots. If you don't want someone else at your controls you pay the higher expense of a tug service (divide hull size by 5 and that's the number of tugs required). When they bring in the LNG tankers through Boston harbor to the terminal in Chelsea the whole operation involves 5 or 6 tugs, a Boston Police boat, state police boat, the harbor master's boat, a Coast Guard boat, state police helicopter and Boston police cars with two officers stationed at key points on shore. All this got put in place after 9/11. I use to take a cup of coffee and a book down to the harbor's edge and the first time I saw this I snapped a bunch of pictures on my cell phone and walked back to the house. Next time I was their enjoying the sunrise with coffee and a Honor Harrington book the helicopter came and hovered about 50 yards over my head and 10 yards behind me and a police cruiser pulled up and two officers got out and one came over to question me. In my head I was calling myself a dumb __________ for taking those photos the first time. Luckily the cop that questioned me was also a sci-fi fan and wrote down in his little log book David Weber and "On Basilisk" station because I told him that that series was like crack cocaine for the brain. I think he went through the motions of writing something down in the book to humor the state police bozo up in the helicopter who obviously had a hair across his butt because of me. Luckily the Boston cop was a sci-fi fan and realized I was probably just a harmless geek and so he was cool with me. Needless to say I don't go around taking pictures of LNG tankers anymore. About two years after that I was trying to take the kids to a park in Chelsea close to the LNG terminal and it was all blocked off and jammed with state police (certain parks around the area fall under their jurisdiction) apparently someone was enjoying the park and taking pictures of the Tobin bridge which passes over head and someone called the police and said a Muslim looking individual was taking pictures and the state police had a cow sideways- needless to say I had to find another playground to take the kids to that day. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 17, 2012 - 11:14pm | @sc, i watched that link. I may have to give up on tech. Scary stuff. The bio-terror aspect is what disturbed me the most. In game you could chose many options. I could see a megacorp experiment getting out of control and pc's being called in to handle it rather than the authorities. |
 May 18, 2012 - 5:38pm | In the Titan Rising Setting, space ships entering Colonial space are required to have licensed pilots and Navigators or be subject to mandatory inspection/search and escort while within Colonial space. |
May 20, 2012 - 12:04am | mandatory search and seizure of any crew not carrying the proper polypropylene and polycarbonate is a given... the larger the traffic gets the harder it gets to "automate" it with "harbor-bots", but in well established ports under light to medium traffic it could be required... tugs help large ships get to port, and dangerous ships park at safe distances, but size and weight is not relevant to the mass and inertia equation... as private one man scouts, small crewed privateers, and rouge tramp freighters get more numerous, the maintainable tech base of frontier society improves, but the ability to police it all reduces, and even small ships with, large mass & low volume type cargo, can devastate continents and play havoc to biospheres. Even with proper licensing requirments and all the proper safe-guards in place larger ships (yet less mass-ive than an over-loaded small ship) can dump into a biosphere tons of toxins and pollutions, with just a normal approach pattern gone wrong. On a smaller scale, such accidents happen yearly by the dozens around the world by land, sea, and air. The higher the traffic gets... the harder it gets to track it all in... and even at light traffic densities at system entry speeds, the time it takes a ship to become a past-tense tragedy can be less than the time required to see the ship appear and react. The First Line of Defence [imho] is the Council Administrative Department of Civil Education, Public Responsibility, and Psychological Health... the tendency of sane people to comply with safety protocols and public restrictions voluntarily... and the belief that not doing so is punishable, risky, and stupid... The Frontier does have to contend with the Spirit of it's Adventurers, Explorers, and Entrepreneurs... and can not stifle them too deeply in legal restrictions and oppressive tactics... however, individual colonies can restrict space migrations to the "worthy, meritable, and psychologically fit"... ...with settled civilized planets, it is relatively easy to get down, but much harder to get back up again without proper-paper authorizations checked, ship resource logistics legally loaded, a clearance to launch from the local traffic-control, and passing through the planetary "defensive coverage"; multiple orbits of "sure-fire" bands, near-space port authority patrols, outer system Militia and Fleet bases. ...with unsettled planets it can be hard to find enough resource to fill ship logistic requirements in a launch-friendly and timely fashion. ...with uncivilized planets it can just be hard to keep your ship. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 20, 2012 - 12:22am | @Karxan I know what you mean... the bio-stuff has gotten scary. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 20, 2012 - 10:25pm | @SC, so your saying turn someone into a dralasite.  |
 May 21, 2012 - 10:32pm | So are you rasing a flag against it? replacement windows |
May 28, 2012 - 12:35am |  turned into a Dralasite...  yeah... that is one way of looking at it...  It does bring specialized ranged energy weapons back into ship boarding tactics... in both defense and offense. but such weapons would likely be considered too gruesome to be contemplated as viable personal security devices by the average public... and therefore scarce outside of specific armories, if not outright considered "restricted-arms" in the more civilized and highly populated colonies. @PhylasLose Q: What is the difference between small missile and large missile impact products? All windows and doors to be placed in a location [...] above ground level must pass large missile impact testing. Products to be placed in a location exceeding this height must pass either large or small missile impact testing. ...umm ...eeyup ...all windows and doors above ground level should be able to withstand large and small missile impacts... from orbital city-buster hammer-cluster bombardments... and power-armor forearm micro-missile mounts... I can get behind this standard in domestic safety. although... I imagine fewer buildings actually meet these specifications than one might hope for; due to lucrative contractor counter-proposals and approximation section architectural redistribution... however... with large amounts of HMDP & CFRP in the spaceship industry, it does potentially make most any warehouse commune full of migrating space rats a veritable impenitrable bunker... so... flag those safety procedures on home construction... ?!?? !!! ?!?? because if it can survive a hurricane it can survive the use of excessive force ?!?? !!! ?!??  Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
May 23, 2012 - 7:19pm | Popular Science 100 Best Innovations of 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL9Fl6uCcvE ya know... I am all for rechargable bateries being a Popular Invention in The Frontier... but the Bomb resistant Wallpaper, The Frontier version of that likely has lots of fans. The best innovation of 2010 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8uRRj2yM50&feature=related reminds me of Sid 6.7 from Virtuosity... LEVITATING ORB UI (INTERFACE) - ZeroN http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UucI-qxPeAk Optically Controlled Bubble Microrobot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccBvZ3rPDeo That Fictional Drone From That Unreleased Video Game Sure Looks Cool http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU ...any one of these is a weekend project in an amature garage... is the future dark enough yet? have fun corrupting the purposes of these for use by the less civilized and malajusted elements of the frontier society... Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
