Starship genrator... of sorts

P

Paladyn

Mongoose
Hi Guys!

I going to run s-f game. It will be one in a sandbox style for unspecified number of players (whoever will show up, plays). There are going to be two themes: exploring universe and exploring ship on which heroes are trapped/travel.

There are many nice generatos for star systems and planets, I need another one. While I a have a big picture in my mind, how the ship looks, what is it's purpose etc, I need details. And here is my l question, do you know generator that allows me randomly determine details (corridors, rooms, walkwayes etc.), like in fantasy dungeons gnerators?
 
Paladyn said:
And here is my l question, do you know generator that allows me randomly determine details (corridors, rooms, walkwayes etc.), like in fantasy dungeons gnerators?
Click to expand...
I doubt that something of that kind exists, mainly because
the interior of a starship is only rarely determined random-
ly, it is usually planned and designed with a specific purpo-
se in mind.

That said, you could use an architectural design tool from
the internet, or perhaps even a dungeon generator, to fill
the outline of your ship semi-randomly.

This is an example of the free design systems available:
http://www.myfloorplandesign.com/
 
I think its quite a good idea and kind of fits into the germ of an idea I had...

I wanted to build a BIG ship something like a generation - cold sleep - star ship.. but not draw all of it, just bits... perhaps have random bits... but split it into sections, so in the engineering section you'd have map bits that are engineering related...etc

Fitting in a 'dungeon' theme meets horror, the players would explore this huge lost ship (perhaps from the time of the Interstellar War.... the sleepers start waking but 'something' is wrong with them.. they've gone 'BAD', think Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days later flavour of 'BAD'... A nice Halloween Traveller game for all the family.
 
zero said:
^ I like that, and I shall maybe yoink it for my Cstars games! :wink:
Click to expand...

Yoink away! If I ever get time I might just do something with it...

I think there was a text adventure game in the 80s with a massive generation starship with a huge ice block in front or behind... (IIRC - I have had a few knocks to the head since then..)
So you could in theory have 'tunnels' - unless you use a planetoid..
 
"Huge" starships might not be the norm...especially if your own games run to where a 2000 Dton starship is considered "huge".

Instead think about having the PC's investigate a base, or station. You really don't have to worry about size limitations with those to keep within your technology base, and you don't have to resort to the alien spaceship from beyond the stars sort of thing.

Your bases could be on a moon, planetoid or free-floating. And you could have them also built into asteroids that have been fitted out as generational ships. But I think its easier to stick with a base or station concept. And makes it less work on you as the ref. The same general concepts that applied to ships can be applied to your base - rec areas, living quarters, life support, engineering, hydroponics, hangar, etc. Except now you dont' have to try and squeeze it all down to a small footprint. You corridors can be large, the rooms large, 'escaped' animals in the large park/dome, etc. Whatever you can think of you can stuff into the base.
 
A similar project idea to handle large orbital stations comes up occasionally. Do up a residential blok once and you can plug it into any number of stations later. Truly large ships are potentially the same. The Lightning class Cruisers (the largest ship in Traveller to get plans that don't need a microscope to read) are a perpendicular deck design that uses several standard decks repeatedly, for example.

But the default in Traveller does not produce true giants. Rama, the Dragonstar, Lexx, Zentraedi ships, the Exelion, and others are all well beyond the million dton cieling of Traveller's ship design system. The couple of times station design has been tried have been exercises in stupidly large numbers with no structure, making the results particularly soulless.
 
That plot is very similar to the one in Star Gate Universe serie.

I don't like SG at all, ve never been able to see more than a few episodes, but SG: Universe is much different from the others. It's about that, a crew trapped in a millenium ancient ship travelling around the galaxy, exploring the misterious ship and the planets they meet. If you gonna run that i highly recommend you to take a look at that serie.
 
Have you watched Pandorum :lol:

Sketch out a rough idea of the layout. I.E. Engines here 10 decks, power plants here 5 decks, fuel here, sleeper holds here and here etc. Through in some rough outlines of what of what a basic deck looks like so all the power decks or sleeper holds have the same base design. In this way you only need 10 or so actual deck plans.

Then look at the ship and think how it has changed. Say aft hydroponics have overgrown and turned into a jungle that spreads through sleeper holds 5 and 6, power deck 1 and the aft bridge deck. The ships nose took a hit and so the forward bridge, fuel decks 1 - 5 and cargo 1 and 2 are open to space. Cargo 3,4,5 and sleeper holds 1 and 2 are then trapped behind wreckage and partially destroyed.

Sleeper hold 3 was awakened when power 1 died and now the survivors have spread through sleeper 4, cargo 6 and forward hydroponics.

In this way you can have decks that are the same basic plan but big enough to take time to explore and different from each other. The crew know how to work on the bridge deck but if one is open to space and the other is a jungle they become very different areas.

Rather than have purely random areas the characters will have an idea of what should be where. Walking along the main access tunnels that once held the intra ship trains and climbing out to find something new in areas where they think they know what to expect.

With the ship on lockdown due to power failures, computer errors, space impacts etc you can drive them in all sorts of odd directions. “Ok we need to get to cargo 6 where the food is because the food on the crew deck spoilt centuries ago with no power. So we can follow the train down but the access is blocked by wreckage so we go past, into hydro 2, climb up to the power tunnels, follow that back past the hydro environmental sub deck, then through cargo handling and past the cargo lock and finally reach the cargo deck from below and way off to the other side of the ship”
 
Captain Jonah said:
.
In this way you can have decks that are the same basic plan but big enough to take time to explore and different from each other. The crew know how to work on the bridge deck but if one is open to space and the other is a jungle they become very different areas.
Click to expand...

I reminded of Metamorphis Alpha.. a bit..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metamorphosis_Alpha
 
Captain Jonah said:
Thats the game. I was trying to think of the name as well.
Click to expand...

Starship Warden, if I remember rightly they ended up tying the ship into the Gamma World history..


Theres also Earthsearch By James Follet. It was a radio play and a book.
Challenger is a 10 mile long ship, hit by an asteroid. 4 survivors of the 3rd generation crew and the 'devious' unboard control system the 'Angels' Left earth 1 million years ago..
 
Very old tv series Starlost.

Several episodes of modern sci fi have done this as well with the crew arriving and showing the locals that they are on a ship not a world by accessing the corridors via those handy mainenance panels :roll:

Or as Pandorum did, throw this one completely on a loop. Once they finally finish exploring the ship they find that all those jungles are not from the hydroponics bays but grew in from outside, the ship landed a few hundred years ago and some of the survivors and stored wildlife escaped and are outside now in tribes that don't like strangers :twisted:
 
Or... that the spaceship they thought was a world is not only actually a spaceship, but what they thought was the space they are traveling though is actually... the inside of a larger spaceship :shock:

(Filled with other colonizing ships of numerous species all captured within the larger vessel, maybe along with a planet and false solar system, which mimics outside space, of course.)
 
:lol:

No (well, maybe, been reading ~3 entertainment books weekly for over 30 years ;) )... was thinking of them little wooden dolls that nest one inside another! :mrgreen:

I'm sure its been written by someone - its not like most things haven't, regardless of how bizarre!
 
Marrow, by Robert Reed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrow_(novel)

I'm not sure that spoiler/reviewer read quite the same book I did, but it's been a while...
 
middenface said:
I think its quite a good idea and kind of fits into the germ of an idea I had...

I wanted to build a BIG ship something like a generation - cold sleep - star ship.. but not draw all of it, just bits... perhaps have random bits... but split it into sections, so in the engineering section you'd have map bits that are engineering related...etc

Fitting in a 'dungeon' theme meets horror, the players would explore this huge lost ship (perhaps from the time of the Interstellar War.... the sleepers start waking but 'something' is wrong with them.. they've gone 'BAD', think Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days later flavour of 'BAD'... A nice Halloween Traveller game for all the family.
Click to expand...

This is such a cool idea - in fact it's so cool I'm going to have to rip it off for a game. Thank you for the inspiration
 
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