Discussion about exploration ships at the SF-UN yahoo group got me thinking about this again.<br /><br />What makes a good exploration ship? I would contend that you want something bigger HS5-6 with a lander. Mother ship is ion powered, lander is atomic powered, total crew is not very big, around 20. ship has labs, med bay, storage (packed with supplies), hydroponics, workshops, vehicles and so on.<br />It almost sounds like the merchant cruiser from the Traveller module "Leviathon" though perhaps not as large as that but certainly something big enough to handle a 1 or 2 year or perhaps longer mission.<br /><br />But then when i start thinking of a ship going away for years I start thinking about what they come back to and with a setting that includes something like the sathar that suggests a setting where the worms have had their way but now the sathar clans are fighting each other to see who will be top dog.<br /><br />Of course for a situation like that you might want the PCs ship to be a warship. and then it would make a lot of sense for the ship to be an assault carrier. then you're just playing BSG in the Star Frontiers setting.<br /><br />Another tack might be a sathar controlled Frontier post FY111 where the sathar have enslaved the core four species and employ control measures like the "caps" form the Tripods trilogy <br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tripods<br /><br />However I like the BSG storyline better than the Tripods one.<br /><br /><br />
- Log in to post comments