 February 24, 2014 - 6:53pm | I keep finding myself thinking about Silent Running after it got brought up in this forum in a thread about sci fi movies. I had seen it as a kid but had also forgotten it. I'm going to have to get a copy of the DVD or locate it on the net as I still cant really remember it in detail. Pictures of models of the Valley Forge on the net really intrigue me. At anyrate it seems to me that an ag ship that did not have the explicit purpose of growing crops commercially but rather was a "Island of Dr. Moreau" sort of thing but perhaps more with plant experiments (maybe some animals). Something not originating in the Frontier but alien. Domes with alien environments and dangerous plants and animals. Perhaps the inmates are running wild through the asylum. This could be pretty cool adventrue idea bordering on a dungeon crawl in space. On a side note what would a sathar ag ship look like? the above idea would seem to be tailor made for the sathar but I'm not actually feeling the sathar on this one but that could change and I think there is a lot of creature material that could be ported over to the ag ship raiding all the sathar creatures from every source and that might be a good idea as it saves work. You also get the added benefit of a tubed sathar brain that might decide to activate the self destruct sequence giving the PCs limited time to get off the ship. (I suppose an alien ship not of sathar origin could also have this self destruct end game waiting in the wings too.) The ship should be big, cruiser sized or larger. Minimum of 8 domes and multiple paths of moving up and down the ship (no linear one way to go.) Working title is either Silent Running from the Void Or Silent Running in the Void I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 24, 2014 - 7:03pm | What would make an alien ag ship truly alien in design? Frontier ag ships are, so far as we've seen to date, very linear and laid out on a centeral spine. the Valley Forge from the movie is similar but the domes hint at the presence of artificial gravity:  I'm not thinking a starship Warden like in Metamorphisis Alpha but something big and strangely different from what people have seen before. Oh yeah and as a side note I'm still rifting on what a sathar ag ship might look like. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 24, 2014 - 7:23pm | RE: A sathar ag ship: as I think on this the classic sathar "boom" seen on the sathar destroyer/frigate minitature with a central spine like the UPF styled ag ship. Just back from the boom is a series of 4 small domes. Just behind them is a bit of bulbous ship body and just that is four oval shaped big domes that fan out like petals. the spine extends further and the four engine nacelles radiate out and line up in the spaces between the petals of the rearmost domes. this seems like a logical adaption of sathar building styles but it has the linear line of advance if you board and dungeon crawl it it kind of beomes a rail road up the central spine unless you depart from the typical sathar design format. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 24, 2014 - 8:03pm | So... and alien design. To make it big I seems that it should be more than one layer of domes but domes should not over lap each other lest they eclipse sunlight os its hard to not have the central spine and radiate multiple levels of domes that are offset to not eclipse sunlight too badly. so I'm rifting on a central structure that the first layer of four domes will radiate out from. In the center of each dome is a shaft coming down ends in branches that connect to two of the offset domes, thus the lower offset domes connect to two shafts headed up ship. Perhaps these shafts coming down from the first four domes actually end in propulsion units. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 25, 2014 - 2:18am | Alien ag' ships may not need sunlight, but might be growing food that dervies it's energy from other sources. Even non-alien ag' ships might be growing similar food. The domes on the Silent Running ship would work if the domes themselves were turned 90 degress, i.e. so that the top of each one was pointing away from the end of the ship. |
February 25, 2014 - 5:21am | @KRingway: Alright scrap domes and make them a polyhedron like glob there is a deck bisecting the globe with plants above and machinery, water supplies and service tunnels beneath. each globe is lighted internally according to the needs of the ecosystem created within. Now we just scrap the need for the standard ag ship layout and can create any sort of ship layout involving a number of these globes. Add in this technology that is about to debut in a new private jet: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/02/supersonic-jet-video-windows/ where the walls are one big projection screen and with each globe being one alien ecosystem the walls project recording from that ecosystem's planet. For the adenture you would need to develop distinct ecosystems that would be easily described to the players. desert planet with 2 suns, gloomy jungle, alien like hive, etc the ship would have labs, samples storage (both genetic samples and full grown samples in cryo tubes or stasis fields) let alone all the the other systems associated with a ship. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 25, 2014 - 10:44am | The decks would need the same orientation, despite being within blobs or domes, unless the deck is the inner surface of a revolving cylinder. My point about alien stuff was that they might have weird ways of getting their energy without recourse to 'normal' things. Various ecosystems on Earth work this way. You also might need projections for the same reasons. A globe/dome could contain an environment that the players can't live in unless suited up, etc.. UPF races and the Sathars would perhaps need more 'normal' globes/domes but it depends on what they're growing. |
 February 25, 2014 - 3:03pm | How about a giant rotating cylinder. There are engine nacelles attached to the center axis and a command bulb on the other end. The giant ship accelerates at much less than 1 G. Thus the cylinder can rotate to 1 G while the ship is accelerating to jump speed over a time of weeks or months. The cylinder could even be broken into sections like the ribs of a barrel. Some ribs could be missing to allow sun light in. -iggy |
February 25, 2014 - 4:43pm | Being reliant on a sun is the downside. Not all stars are the same, especially in the way plant and other life reacts to them. Light would have to artifical and function in a particular way, or you'd have to grow things that don't need sunlight. Gene-tailoring things might help for some situations, mind you. |
 February 25, 2014 - 5:51pm | I keep reading this thread as "Cool Runnings from the Void" San'Chika you dead? ----------------------------------------------- |
 February 27, 2014 - 1:12am | In the novel Footfall, the aliens used the rotating, cylindrical center of their ship to grow food - basically an ag ship. It did not have access to sunlight, and used artificial light, if I recall. |
February 24, 2019 - 12:26pm | Escape the Valley in the Void- sathar built ag station with specimens and stuff where experiments go on and new bio engineered creatures are worked on. tucked away and hidden somewhere- dungeon crawl for the PCs Not a lot of sathar here more of a Ravenloft sort of feel to it. where to place this? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
