Staterooms and suffocation?

W

walkir

Mongoose
I just found something in the corebook and nearly fell of my chair as I read it:

Ship atmospheres have to be refreshed monthly / 2 times a year on a stretch? (page 142)
How do you combine this with long-term trips, space stations, settlements on airless worlds and the zhodani core expeditions? I mean, refreshing the atmospheres of an atmo-0 world with pop 4+ is a bit ridiculous, isn't it?
You can practically siege such a world to suffocation, and a freighter full of air isn't exactly a hard target to get it to explode, too...
 
I am unable to find any sentence about a need to refresh a ship's atmo-
sphere in my German version of the core rulebook, and in my book page
142 is the description of the Yacht.

Anyhow, ships built for long-term trips, space stations and especially sett-
lements could have different (more expensive, require more volume ...)
life support systems and therefore do not have the same needs as normal
ships.
 
Ships I can understand. Personally I'm going to assume Asteroid bases to have some form of Algae vats that will produce the air.

And Yummy yummy Food-paste.
 
walkir said:
It's page 160 of the German version. I use that book only to catch dust... ;)
Click to expand...
Thank you, I have found it. :D

I have to use the German version because some of the players do not
like English ... :(

This life support rule is one of the rules that I will ignore for my setting,
where some ships travel between asteroid belts and hostile planets
with toxic atmospheres only.
 
I've been "socialized" with GURPS Traveller, so "Sprungantrieb (while correct...)" only sounds silly to me. Add a "German" title like "Spinwärts-Marken" and things right of the vocabulary of the society for the preservation of the German language like "erweitertes Gefechtsgewehr" or "sehr erweiterte Sensoren" make this translation unbearable.
 
walkir said:
Ship atmospheres have to be refreshed monthly / 2 times a year on a stretch? (page 142)
How do you combine this with long-term trips, space stations, settlements on airless worlds and the zhodani core expeditions?
Click to expand...

I'd say that's when you have to replace the air scrubbers, etc. (After the 1 month is when you start to get the "old socks" smell.) This is incorporated in the life support costs for the ship and can be done just about anywhere.

If you really want to go on a long-term trip, you take the spare parts/filters/chemicals/whatever with you - we have the cost, you would just need to decide on dtons and the skill roll to replace them (Engineer: Life Support).
 
My Hydroponics House Rules:

Due to the long interstellar travel times on the frontier, many ships carry hydroponic gardens or farms to help shoulder the life-support load. Other ships also carry decorative or recreational hydroponic gardens to create a welcome break from their monotonous metallic and plastic interiors. There are two types of shipboard hydroponic facilities:

Partial Hydroponics displaces 2 tons and costs MCr0.25 per person it supports. This kind of hydroponic garden includes a limited variety of plant life and usually serves as both a decorative-recreational facility and a source for fresh fruit, vegetables and spices. It also assists the life support system by producing some foodstuffs as well as helping recycle air and water; the monthly life support costs of any person supported by Partial Hydroponics is reduced by 20%. Partial Hydroponics requires 2kg of additional nutrients, seeds and spare parts (costing Cr300) per month per person it supports.

Full Hydroponics, a full-scale closed-circuit shipboard biosphere, displaces 4 tons and costs MCr1 per person it supports. It includes a diverse selection of organisms ranging from bacteria and yeast to higher plants and animals, and is capable of providing all the life support and food requirements of any person supported by them; such persons do not have to pay any monthly life-support costs at all. Full Hydroponics requires 1kg of nutrient replacements and spare parts (costing Cr200) per month per person it supports.
 
The way I handle life support is through things similar to algae save they are geneered bacteria small but effective. When a ship berths at a Class C or better Starport, it is part of the berthing process that would remove waste and refresh supplies (such as these efficient bacteria). The twice yearly maintance therefore would be retrofitting the scrubbers and flushing the entire system that a regular berthing does not do.
 
I'll handle it as in GURPS: every stateroom includes total life support for two persons and that paragraph in MGT doesn't exist in my TU. I mean, the OTU doesn't include the megafreighters full of air or liquid oxygen resulting from this paragraph...
 
This reflects a trend I'm detecting in MGT of reining in the effects of very high TL to the point that it no longer feels like high TL.

Not sure I like it.

While many things around TL10 or even TL11 can feel "advanced but not yet trivial", the way MGT casts them, the reality of the OTU is that this level of technology is thousands of years old. Thousands. Even without another TL increase, the ergonomics of a technology will have been pounded out quite thoroughly centuries ago. If TL has increased, then some of the issues that were being dealt with only with difficulty will have become simpler.

Extended life support is one of these. With SDBs that remain on remote station for weeks at a time, then have to return to base the slow way, or orbital stations far too large to do air swaps, the unspoken implication is that extended life support has in fact become simpler than the rulebook statement indicates. The implication is that this has been the case for a very long time, with extensive colonies on inhospitable worlds and the fact that those big orbitals take a lot of time and effort to build being just two of the more obvious pieces of evidence. Another piece of evidence is the fuel purification plant in starships. If that many starships carry around a chemical processor capable of handling and distilling cryogenic gasses, atmosphere purification is frankly trivial.
 
GypsyComet said:
This reflects a trend I'm detecting in MGT of reining in the effects of very high TL to the point that it no longer feels like high TL.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm used to ships with power for 200 years without refueling. MGT feels like using the rocket equation...
That was okay, I can live with that, but life support for such a short time? That's as crippling space opera as saying there is no FTL...
 
I don't see anything really wrong with this... maybe allow longer periods of time as tech goes up.

One of my friends while I was in the Navy was once a submariner on a ballistic missile submarine. They stay submerged for months at a time ( long enough to base the refresh every 6 months rule on ). He told me that after a cruise on a missile sub, he said you could practically see the fumes when they first crack the hatch at the pier. He and his wife would make it something of a ritual to burn his uniforms after such a cruise because the smell would never come out, and he wouldn't get 'any' from his loving wife for a week or more of scrubbing with soap and water until the smell came off his skin. Filters are good, but not good enough to scrub ALL stinky-ness, farts and body odor/feet that humans make out of the air. The sailors never noticed it because for them, it built up slowly over time and they became accustomed to it without noticing.
 
GypsyComet said:
This reflects a trend I'm detecting in MGT of reining in the effects of very high TL to the point that it no longer feels like high TL.

Not sure I like it.
Click to expand...

A lot of the ship material (both for MGT and before) tend to treat standard ship designs as being very dependent upon regular supply and maintenance. At one time this used to bug me, and stood at odds with some OTU history that mentioned ships that traveled a long ways from civilization.

Then it occurred to me: most ships that operate in the Imperium WOULD have access to regular resupply; expensive (in terms of money and cargo spaced) miniaturized manufacturing and life support systems that would allow for things like far-run colony ships wouldn't be regular parts of most ships that expect to be able to resupply every few jumps.
 
Ishmael said:
I don't see anything really wrong with this... maybe allow longer periods of time as tech goes up.

One of my friends while I was in the Navy was once a submariner on a ballistic missile submarine. They stay submerged for months at a time ( long enough to base the refresh every 6 months rule on ). He told me that after a cruise on a missile sub, he said you could practically see the fumes when they first crack the hatch at the pier. He and his wife would make it something of a ritual to burn his uniforms after such a cruise because the smell would never come out, and he wouldn't get 'any' from his loving wife for a week or more of scrubbing with soap and water until the smell came off his skin. Filters are good, but not good enough to scrub ALL stinky-ness, farts and body odor/feet that humans make out of the air. The sailors never noticed it because for them, it built up slowly over time and they became accustomed to it without noticing.
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Yes, indeed, technology can do only so much. Add to that each world will have their own unique smell. If anyone has travelled extensively, they will know what I am talking about. This all gets mixed in for the scrubers to deal with. In most cases, it is an easy adaptation. Traveller ain't Star Trek folks. The future is just as messy and grimely as the present. The technology may sometimes hide it but it is still there. You cannot live on a passenger liner and call it Traveller rather it involves going out amongst the venerable hives of scum and villainry...and that is just the Startown...wait until until you get further afield.
 
Ishmael said:
I don't see anything really wrong with this... maybe allow longer periods of time as tech goes up.
Click to expand...

You're talking TL 7.5, I'm talking TL12. The air might smell or have other not life-threatening problems after a year without refreshing, no problem with that. But a ship that needs venting every other week for pure survival? Seriously? I would call that a very bad Idea in hard SF, and we're talking space opera...
 
walkir said:
Ishmael said:
I don't see anything really wrong with this... maybe allow longer periods of time as tech goes up.
Click to expand...

You're talking TL 7.5, I'm talking TL12. The air might smell or have other not life-threatening problems after a year without refreshing, no problem with that. But a ship that needs venting every other week for pure survival? Seriously? I would call that a very bad Idea in hard SF, and we're talking space opera...
Click to expand...

I still disagree
It seems to me that toxics and fungi,mold and bacteria gets into nooks and crannies regardless of air. Toxics can affect health in the long term and the other stuff can, even in the short term. Heck, stuff to kill fungi,mold and bacteria is most often toxic and harmful to humans too. Higher tech might make things last longer without getting nasty, but it won't keep it from getting nasty.

twice a year seems okay by me....
just say its part of a maintainence and forget it then. Keep it in your bag of tricks for a plot device someday.
 
Sangrolu said:
Then it occurred to me: most ships that operate in the Imperium WOULD have access to regular resupply; expensive (in terms of money and cargo spaced) miniaturized manufacturing and life support systems that would allow for things like far-run colony ships wouldn't be regular parts of most ships that expect to be able to resupply every few jumps.
Click to expand...

But even your statement implies *options*. If I want to build a ship that assumes and depends on regular air swaps and getting down-and-soapy once a month, that's fine. If there is no other way presented, then there is a problem, particularly when making claims of being setting generic.

Absolute statements are for settings, maybe. A rule set that is intended for multiple settings can't make those same sorts of absolute statements, particularly about technology.
 
I don't think it's anything to get hung up on. I think it's just trying to answer the question "how long can we live without stopping"? The only thing that I find odd is the "refresh" statement. That sounds like it would satisfy the "two week" requirement, not the "6 month" one.


Ishmael said:
just say its part of a maintainence and forget it then.
Click to expand...

I'd say that consumables (food and consumables for air and water recycling hardware) are part of the life support cost on page 138.
 
Golan2072 said:
My Hydroponics House Rules:

Due to the long interstellar travel times on the frontier, many ships carry hydroponic gardens or farms to help shoulder the life-support load. Other ships also carry decorative or recreational hydroponic gardens to create a welcome break from their monotonous metallic and plastic interiors. There are two types of shipboard hydroponic facilities:

Partial Hydroponics displaces 2 tons and costs MCr0.25 per person it supports. This kind of hydroponic garden includes a limited variety of plant life and usually serves as both a decorative-recreational facility and a source for fresh fruit, vegetables and spices. It also assists the life support system by producing some foodstuffs as well as helping recycle air and water; the monthly life support costs of any person supported by Partial Hydroponics is reduced by 20%. Partial Hydroponics requires 2kg of additional nutrients, seeds and spare parts (costing Cr300) per month per person it supports.

Full Hydroponics, a full-scale closed-circuit shipboard biosphere, displaces 4 tons and costs MCr1 per person it supports. It includes a diverse selection of organisms ranging from bacteria and yeast to higher plants and animals, and is capable of providing all the life support and food requirements of any person supported by them; such persons do not have to pay any monthly life-support costs at all. Full Hydroponics requires 1kg of nutrient replacements and spare parts (costing Cr200) per month per person it supports.
Click to expand...

I'm gonna steal this kinda.... It has potential...
 
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