Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through August 01, 2007	25		08/01 04:08pm
	Archive through August 30, 2014	25		08/30 10:58pm

Mike - try GURPS Federation pp. 113-4

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Sunday, August 31, 2014 - 09:31 pm: Edit

D20 and D20M also have the same info.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Sunday, August 31, 2014 - 09:36 pm: Edit

Sorry, I didn't mean the original PD version. Meant the modern version.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, September 01, 2014 - 01:33 am: Edit

Mike, yeah I agree with that. Pirates wouldn't be above using slave labor. But mostly, they would use volunteers. Ever see the Hornblower movies on A&E (they're available on DVD)? There was a sceen where they are signing up crew, and they already had enough with the skill of the one guy, so he lied and said he could cook. I think the Orion crew would be something like that ... few with formal training(e.g., those kicked out of Star Fleet), but most of the crew just being a Jack-of-all-trades.

As to the Police question, let's move it to another topic.


Garth L. Getgen

By Randy O. Green (Hollywood750) on Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 03:05 pm: Edit

I seem to remember a map of the Star Fleet Universe showing all the Cartel-controlled areas.. can anyone tell me off the top of their head which product that is?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Wednesday, April 15, 2015 - 03:06 pm: Edit

It's been posted as a PDF here.

By Randy O. Green (Hollywood750) on Thursday, April 16, 2015 - 10:09 am: Edit

Awesome Gary, thanks!

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Monday, June 18, 2018 - 05:18 pm: Edit

Just finished reading the entire thread. I have a couple of suggestions.

1) Slave crew on ship are rare. Too dangerous to the ship.
2) Most crew will need to be highly skilled. Running a starship, no matter how small, isn’t something an unschooled crew member can do. On the job training will exist, but Ensigns will be a small part of the crew.
3) Cartels would have better intelligence than independents, so most of the battles in SFB would probably be indies against the cops.
4) Why planets? Most mining will take place in the asteroid belts/Oort clouds/planetary rings. The stuff is way easier to get at in space. I remember in one none SFB or Star Trek book where a space colony used mirrors to smelt an entire asteroid, and ended up with millions of tons of lighter metals (a lot of it iron) and a hundred tons of gold...
5) Crews can’t be kept totally in the dark, and prevented from shore leave. If the captain tries, he’ll die of an iron overdose. A couple dozen knives in his back.
6) It’s all about the money. I can only see slaving make sense if the slaves are something special, like the ones in the Honor Harrington universe. Or if a colony suffered a natural disaster, and they hired a pirate to get them more people so they’d have enough genetic diversity to survive.

Last, but most important, I think that Orion men and women would have to be at least as similar as Terran men and women, and Vulcan men and women. Extreme differences between the sexes, like Larry Niven’s later Kzin who have non-sentient women would be extremely unlikely. It doesn’t make biological sense. If we look at most mammals on Earth, the males and females have similar habits and actions. The differences are physiological, a woman has to deal with a female reproductive tract, and a man has to deal with a male reproductive tract. Forty years ago I would have said women were wildly different. But as women have become free to do things they were long denied, it has become clear that most of the differences were cultural.

FYI. Those comments are aimed at the thread all the way back to when it started. It was some really good reading. I’m glad ADB has kept it all.

By Randy O. Green (Hollywood750) on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - 05:17 pm: Edit

Good to see someone interested here Wayne.. think I'll go back and read the whole thread also!

By Wayne Borean (Wayne9999) on Tuesday, June 19, 2018 - 07:11 pm: Edit

Lots of interesting stuff Randy. I’m working on some fiction and a scenario that I’ll be submitting, and I’ve been deep diving the site to make sure I don’t introduce any clangers.