Sigma Draco Station - interest check and recruitment

[Chrystal]

Space Station Sigma Draco

It is the 25th century. Mankind has made it to the stars, following the discovery of "Jump space", a parallel dimension where things are a lot closer together. Travel between star systems that would previously have taken centuries now takes a matter of weeks. And of course there is profit to be made beyond our own solar system.

Different worlds have different resources to be tapped. Getting people to those resources and getting those resources back home is a complex task. Ships suited to atmospheres are not the most practical design for strapping jump engines on, and ships with jump engines tend to crash on entering an atmosphere - or getting too deep into a gravity well.

And so a means of transfer is needed.

This is where the space station comes in. It is a transshipping point. A port, in orbit around a planet, where containers of goods can be transferred from the space-ship equivalent of the local road haulier and loaded onto the equivalent of the long-distance freight train. Where passengers get off the bus and get on the over-night express. Or perhaps a more appropriate analogy might be the loading of freight and passengers from trains, trucks, buses and taxis onto bulk cargo vessels and passenger liners.

To provide a facsimile of gravity, the station spins about it's axis. Up is in, down is out. The Coriolis effect can have an unsettling effect on the inner ear of anyone not used to it, as can the up-curving "horizon".

The principle business of the station is transfer of cargo and passengers from shuttles to star ships. But obviously, passengers need somewhere to stay while waiting for their voyage. Hence there are hotels and restaurants. Cargo needs to be stored, hence there are warehouses. Cargo transfers need to be supervised, hence there are offices. Cargo will be bought and sold, hence there are marts. Ships need supplies, hence there are outfitters and fuel depots.

All of the above need staff to run them, hence there are homes. There are shops selling all manner of goods. There are bars and brothels to entertain the crews of the long-haul freighters. There are administrators keeping an eye on everything. There are humble maintenance people keeping the whole thing working, making sure the air is fresh, the water is drinkable, the lights are on, the communications work, the gravity doesn't fail and most important that the place doesn't drop out of orbit! Because all of these people will have children there will be schools and school teachers. There will be religions and preachers.

And there are the merchants. On the edge of the new frontier, anything can be bought and sold and there will always be someone willing to buy it and someone to sell it to them. Most things are legal, of course, but even those few things that are illegal can usually be bought at a price.

And if some things are illegal, of course there will be a police force. There may even, from time to time, be some sort of military presence on the station, but the police are pretty paramilitary.

Side-arms are commonplace out on the frontier. The station's inner and outer hulls are separated by a micrometeorite proof layer of halogen foam three meters thick that expands and hardens when exposed to vacuum. Most weapons on a space station or space ship will fire Low Velocity Fletchette rounds (LVFs) that will make a nasty mess of living tissue but will leave a small dent in the 25mm thick plates that form the inner hull.

There are two principal docking areas on the station. The hub is at zero gravity, and local in-system cargo pushers that bring minerals from the asteroid mines will usually dock there as they generally lack the rotation cylinder to give their crews gravity, son the crews will spend their "heavy time" on the higher decks of the station where the gravity is lower.

The rim is the main dock, where the bigger ships will connect to the station, along with shuttles from planetside, and also shuttles from the even bigger ships.

The biggest ships of all - the megafreighters - will glide through the system on parabolic inertial orbits while shuttles ferry crew, passengers and cargo containers back and forth.

In summary, the station is a small, self-contained port city with everything in it you might find in any port city anywhere, just in a rather different setting. In stead of streets and houses, you have corridors and apartments, basically the accommodation areas resemble one huge apartment building.

The city imports 90% of its consumables, but exports a service that is essential to the survival of the world below.



Into this circular sandbox, let us drop some characters.

Characters can have just about any job you care to name. Want to be a cow hand? Sure. You're visiting the station from planetside. Want to be an accountant, you can work for one of the trading companies. Want to be a burglar? Why not... just make sure you know how future locking mechanisms work. House wife and mother? Prostitute? Plumber? Space traffic controller? Go for it.

The only two occupations I think I shall reserve are the police and the military, simply to deny the players access to the heavier weaponry.

One other thing that I think needs to be mutually agreed by all players, because there are some that might be put off by it, but others that would be put off by the lack of it.

Extra-Terrestrials.

It is totally within my idea for this game to have characters of whatever species your imagination can come up with. I would prefer at least a few human players, but I am quite interested to see how original people can be when it comes to creating alien species.

HOWEVER: if more people would prefer it to be an all human affair, I'm quite happy to go along with that too.

I will put up a character sheet to fill in once I see how much interest I have.

[Kaiten]

Sounds good. Interesting idea to be continued on.

[Chaosfox]

Oh this sounds like fun  :D I hope this gains some more interest.

[BenedictWolfe]

Certainly sounds interesting: I'll be keeping a lookout for this.