 February 1, 2014 - 8:43pm | This is heavy but it made me think: happened to witness a dog getting hit by a car tonight. Not cool since it was a hit an run and the jerk had to know that he hit something but it's what it was. Anyway I was thinking that if this had been the Frontier where hover vehicles are more prevalent then the little dog would not have been hurt. So my reason the Frontier might be a cool place to live is that fewer animals would be hurt because while being run over my a vehicle with a hover fan might scare the piss out of them they should be relatively unharmed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 2, 2014 - 7:39am | The force from hoverfans would still be enough to inflict serious injury. Think about it, there's enough thrust applied to lift that thing up into the air and keep it there, that's more than enough to throw a small animal to the ground. And it's still only 30cm off the ground (a foot), low enough that the bumper will strike all but the smallest of animals. |
 February 2, 2014 - 9:17am | People suck, hell I have had to put my dodge ball skills to use, and those bastards upon realizing that they almost killed me sped up! I tried to nail them with my hand held sign but they where going to fast. Seems stopping for other traffic, stop signs and red lights or the school bus unloading or loading kids is to hard of a concept for all the other motorists. Poor puppy. :( The guy should have least stopped and seen if he could nave helped it, there is a law that says you need to try and find the owner for dogs (not cats, just dogs) in my state. But actually the Frontier could be very cool: culture wise what a wonderful mix of people, music, drama, etc... domestic animals (see Starmist) are fantastic and fun, Tick Tock trees, and cool future medicine. Wonderful architecture and FTL travel. Yep sounds great to me. I have been working on cool future medical list from MA/GW and then I am working on SFing it up. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 February 2, 2014 - 11:45am | Don't forget that vehicles in SF are electric. So, unless they have some sort of sound generator to warn people of an incoming car, animals and anyone who is blind or inattentive people (like young children) are likely going to get hit. IRL, blind and public safety advocates are trying to get electric cars to become noisier for these reasons. |
 February 2, 2014 - 3:56pm | Don't forget that vehicles in SF are electric. So, unless they have some sort of sound generator to warn people of an incoming car, animals and anyone who is blind or inattentive people (like young children) are likely going to get hit. IRL, blind and public safety advocates are trying to get electric cars to become noisier for these reasons.
Loud pipes save lives |
 February 2, 2014 - 5:15pm | So we need some sort of device to make noise on an electric car. The other big problem is range. It would be cool if we could make one device that made noise and could generate electricity? Something like this? In other news, I have developed a 98% efficient spaceheater that fits in sockets most Americans already have in their homes. It has the cool side effect of producing enough light to read by. It could revolutionize the way we live. |
 February 2, 2014 - 5:28pm | In other news, I have developed a 98% efficient spaceheater that fits in sockets most Americans already have in their homes. It has the cool side effect of producing enough light to read by. It could revolutionize the way we live. This reminds me of when they started putting the LED lights into traffic lights instead of incandecent ones in Minnisota (or maybe Michigan). It looked great on paper: brighter lights, lower power consumption, etc. Then it snowed. And the traffic lights couldn't be seen since they were caked with snow. The regular bulbs had melted the snow with the "waste heat" generated while the LEDs were so cold that the snow just piled up. 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 |
February 2, 2014 - 8:07pm | In Maine, people occassionally mount a pair of ultra sonic whistles on their hoods that the deer can hear but not humans. Basically powered by airflow. They're designed to scare off deer and save a collision. I haven't seen, or thought about them in 20 years since moving to MA. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 2, 2014 - 8:08pm | Electric vehicles do not produce pollution that gets trapped in the inversions like I have lived through here on the Wasatch front all winter. And when it snows you don't have to plow the roads with a hover car. That would make the frontier a good place to live. -iggy |
February 2, 2014 - 8:47pm | Loud pipes save lives That is the biggest fallacy ever. But it was funny with relation to the topic.  In Maine, people occassionally mount a pair of ultra sonic whistles on their hoods that the deer can hear but not humans. Basically powered by airflow. They're designed to scare off deer and save a collision. I haven't seen, or thought about them in 20 years since moving to MA. More snake oil. The deer never thought about them either.  |
February 2, 2014 - 8:59pm | Loud pipes save lives That is the biggest fallacy ever. But it was funny with relation to the topic. In Maine, people occassionally mount a pair of ultra sonic whistles on their hoods that the deer can hear but not humans. Basically powered by airflow. They're designed to scare off deer and save a collision. I haven't seen, or thought about them in 20 years since moving to MA. More snake oil. The deer never thought about them either. I'm not endorsing them, i just remember seeing them. The basic idea could be applied to the issue but with the whistle opporating in the audible range for the core four species. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 3, 2014 - 2:09am |
The benefits of more options for how to live. Maybe a farmer on a newly settled world or an adventurer, or a linguist with a survey team. So many options for living. |
February 3, 2014 - 6:14am | Well. there are several quiet cars already on the road... my observation about people getting run over: The car's engine sound is not a warning, that is flawed logic when human behavior is observed. Most people I have seen get run over it is either because they either have bad habits like standing in the suicide lane and running across major traffic arteries, or mindlessly (not looking, playing with their smart phone, etc) walk directly out in front of a car Or the driver of the car did not look around them (stops at the 4-way but did not look left or right and guns the car). In all the cases of the pedestrians hit around my area that I have seen the cars have been normal cars... so engine sound is not a factor from what I can tell... just bad habits of either the pedestrian or the motorist. I honestly have never seen a blind person run over, just sighted people. Also for the record even the sound of a siren may not be heard in time if the police car is doing 100+... My personal opinion is the making of electric cars loud is stupid as engine noise has zip to do with people being stupid. Yes it seems like jobs might be good & Hover cars in snow is a really good point. Art might be different imagine the weird mediums that could exist. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
February 3, 2014 - 2:10pm | I honestly have never seen a blind person run over, just sighted people. Yeah, but how many blind people do you see compared to sighted people. Depending on how you define blind, their prevalance is somewhere between 1/50 and 1/1000 of the population. Unless you've see a lot of people get hit by cars, I wouldn't expect that you would have seen a blind person get hit. You've probably never seen a Sikh get hit by a car either. :) And of course, many/most people who are recognizably blind or visually disabled are living in more controlled environments. Also for the record even the sound of a siren may not be heard in time if the police car is doing 100+... My personal opinion is the making of electric cars loud is stupid as engine noise has zip to do with people being stupid. The thing is it's a lot easier and cheaper to make safer cars than to make smarter people. I think that electric cars aren't likely to be a major danger to pedestrians although someone will get hit and we'll end up with another stupid law named after some poor unfortunate soul. For some time, we've been making cars that had softer materials at the front and were in general designed so that pedestrians are knocked down or on to the car instead of going under or being broken by the impact. I've seen a car with an external pedestrian airbag that covers the windshield and part of the hood. This sort of thing will save more lives than any kind of sound emitted by any vehicle. We have currently automatic braking systems and at least some of them can detect people. Backup cameras are starting to appear in normal cars (as opposed to Baron Von Moneybag's S-class) and again, they have the capability to help automatically brake when something or someone is in the way. Implimenting these systems is not expensive. What is expensive is getting them certified. We really need to reexamine the safety devices on our cars and determine which of them are ineffective (hello, american style bumpers) and waste money. The ones that are effective need to be the ones that get mandated. Automated braking systems should be certified once and then the same system used as long as the detection range and command of the brakes is maintained. Yes it seems like jobs might be good & Hover cars in snow is a really good point. Art might be different imagine the weird mediums that could exist. You know, I recall the Avro aircar had problems where the hot exhaust would curl back up into the intakes and make it unstable. Helicopters and planes in ground effect have a similar problem with vortexes. I wonder if a hovercraft stopped in snow would blow snow back up onto itself. Not really a problem, just potentially annoying. With a 200 year lifespan for humans and interstellar travel without the kinder gentler fascism of Trek, the Frontier is one of the few sci-fi settings that sounds like it would be a really good place for normal humans to live. |
 February 3, 2014 - 2:18pm | If all vehicles all relatively quiet you'd still hear them, especially if there's busy traffic. They do still make some noise - their tyres, for instance. Even if the general decibel level was less, your ears would attune to the new sound level. As for hover cars, they could use ground effect instead of sheer engine power to move along at surface level. The real noise would come from their going upwards or downwards as both would require higher engine output. |
February 3, 2014 - 3:00pm | We do have an amazing ability to not be aware of things we're used to or not looking for. That's why the stereotypical little kid chasing a ball is so dangerous. They get focused on the ball and never see the semi. And then you have Pet Cemetary and no one wants that. I was going to post something about a hybrid airship/ground car but then I looked at the actual lifting capacity and it's pretty darn low. It would be neat to assume some sort of Iron Man style repulsor or electromagnetic propulsion. Not realistic but still, it would be cool. The helijet thing from oblivion would be a really neat craft to tool around in on planets where you were fairly certain you weren't going to deal with Sathar ground lasers. |
 February 4, 2014 - 2:48am | Hey, I'd live in the Frontier. Monorails are pretty safe around kids & animals. It's those darn Sathar that would mess up your day. |
February 4, 2014 - 4:51am | Hey, I'd live in the Frontier. Monorails are pretty safe around kids & animals. And their agents, dont forget their agents, there are 1000's of them and they're everywhere.It's those darn Sathar that would mess up your day. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 4, 2014 - 12:36pm | The SF setting is OK, but I would rather hangout in one of those '60s-styled sci-fi settings were everyone is sexy, outfits are tight if not scant, conflicts few (save for some easily defeated jackass warlord with some lame-ass plans to be the "Ruler of Everything") and people make mad-monkey-love at the drop of the hat with no judgement or negative consequences. I'll explore strange new world and new civilizations... just to make love with their women. And I would kick the bad guy's ass while making love to his sexy, traitorous daughter. Set sex-rays to stunning; this rocket is hitting terminal velocity! Ooh-yeah!  |
February 4, 2014 - 6:59pm | Monorails are pretty safe around kids & animals.
We have a monorail here. It went bankrupt within its first year, now it's taxpayer supported. Lucky us. |
February 4, 2014 - 7:05pm | Monorails are pretty safe around kids & animals.
We have a monorail here. It went bankrupt within its first year, now it's taxpayer supported. Lucky us. Not that suprising, aren't most subways tax payer supported? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 5, 2014 - 1:29am | Yeah, but that's HERE. In the Frontier, monorails are COOLER, and everybody uses them!  Not to mention that the one on Kraatar looks like a huge caterpillar... |
February 5, 2014 - 1:38am | I swear it's the Frontier's only choice! Throw up your hands and raise your voice! MONORAIL! |
February 5, 2014 - 6:55am | "Mono- D'oh!" I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 5, 2014 - 9:44am | Port Loren should be the New York of the setting, in that you could spend your whole life living there without ever owning a car. After all, cheap cab rides and monorail services, and everything is in walking distance of each other. Don't forget that racialism is not that common, and that people live at the peek of good health. Average height for humans is almost two meters (about 6'2", which means that 7' would be considered an attractive height for most men), they stay young longer (the characters on Crash on Volturnus looked in their 20s to 30s, despite the notes saying that they are all over 40) and they have a lifespan of around 200 GST years (or 182 Earth years, which is impressive considering that in 1982 the average was almost 75 years, with people pushing their 90s, so 250 or even 300 GST years would not be unheard of). On the flip-side, they have to deal with overly-powerful corporations (who can easily hold monopolies, hold complete control over the lives of their employees, and often engage in corporate wars), space pirates, terrorists, the Blue Plague, hostile invaders (usually by the Sathar or their allies) and so on. They seem highly advanced with medical technology, but was it ever addressed if they could re-grow lost limbs and organs (as opposed to organ donation)? And cybernetic technology is seldom touched upon in the older books (it was the intent with Alien Worlds that the PCs should not be reliant on devices to define them or to always save the day, so bionics - even simple replacement limbs - would have been seen as too powerful). So yeah, what comes of a person with an injury that crippled or paralyzed them? Do they live with it, or are their technology to fix them? |
February 5, 2014 - 11:48am |
I would imagine, on the topic of bionics, that they would be at an insignificant level of funding. Sathar delve into genetic manipulation, other races may look to genetics as more viable than bionics as well. Humanity has always sought machines to assist us. In the Frontier I would imagine a human with an handicap such as lost limbs would be more dependent on a nanny-bot or nurse-bot to support them, but otherwise bionics, cybernetics, cyborg-esqure technologies must be limited to criminal sectors or impoverish regions such as the Rim. I recall a Humma character sheet from years ago that had the arm of the Humma replaced with a robotic arm, it was given a penalty instead of a boost. I also recall when I asked my GM about a bionic eye, laser range finding and such, he said he would see it as a penalty to depth perception, peripherals, such as that. I would imagine UPF would have cloning abilities or some level of organic medical technology. Star Wars has Bacta, the magic good that makes you all better. As for living under a mega-corp...look at it like this. Governments are like corporations, seeking to please the customers so the customers keep giving up their earned cash to keep the business going. Really they are demons of the same machine, one has earned their rank by promotions, money, influence and other means...the other has...earned their rank by coercion, oppression, politics, contracts, influence....they are about the same. One gives you laws you have to follow, the other gives you policies you have to follow. One give syou welfare, the other a paycheck. One makes you pay taxes, the other provides residence and such to you at a drop on your income. Both are equally demanding of their citizens/employees, but a corp may be more in line with culture wise at the individual or small group level. Governments can be fanatical, ie: Church of the One/Hentz, corps can be oppressive, ie: Streel Corporation. |
February 5, 2014 - 10:02pm | Much of my mentality of the setting runs though AD and KH. Zeb did address the issue of cybernetics, and an obscure article form Dragon Mag did note the cost and procedures with cloning and neural-transference (which would really open a can of worms in the setting, including virtual immortality!). They did a lot to expand on the equipment and level of technology over the years (were the original intent was to make the game more reliant on characters thinking things though then using James Bond gadgets to save the day), but it would be safe to assume that their would be the technology available from the get-go to keep characters form becoming permanently maimed and/or crippled (after all, a laser beam or Needler spry to the eyes would be more then a little distracting  AAAHH!!!), which would really sour an on-going campaign. |
February 6, 2014 - 12:47am | Expensive cloning and virtual immortality is not for the adventurer but for rich corporate executives. Adventurers haring off to star systems unknown may never get to take advantage of their clone but a corporate exec will. Which means a CEO can hold his company for ever. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 6, 2014 - 12:57am |
Hinting at an EVE-esque like world? |
February 6, 2014 - 4:46am |
Hinting at an EVE-esque like world? dont know EVE but do know rich bastards, yu know the type, my money is my money and you can suck eggs before I tip you for you service but you damn well better hop to that service or I will complain because do you know who I am? Someone like that at the top of a major corporation where its a game of who has the most money wins will see cloning as a way of keeping the game going. One interesting effect is that no one will inherit anymore. Those that have money will keep it. This of course sets you up for murders of the guy at the top in hopes of recieving an inheritance. Not really a new story just refreshed with the motive being that the guy at the top just wont die. Of course if you kill someone and they get their clone animated did you really kill them? or have you simply destroyed their property and cost them X ammount of money? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 6, 2014 - 1:20pm | As I said with that "can of worms" part, cloning and neural-transference technology has a wide range of issues and implications that comes with it that few people would consider. There are a number of good stories about that, from that Twilight Zone (or was it Outer Limits) episode where that teenage girl has to select a cybernetic body so she could live a long life but in the end, without burdening people by becoming sick or old, but it would mean that she would be striped of her personality and individuality, to how accumulated experience is valued by Artificial Intelligence (who backup their minds and transfer to new, more human-like bodies as they develop into people) in the adult webcomic Never Mind the Gap, to the Transhumanist and Post-scarcity world of Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. And there is the whole implication of being able hire a single skilled and/or talented person to be the template for an army or labor force of expendable duplicates, if the possess was cheap and easy to make that a viable option. |
