Thoughts on staterooms through the tech levels

[mavikfelna]

I'm distracting myself from my TAS research thanks to Peter Simon's excellent little blog and read about The Steward's Interview, which I really like but it's where the steward asks passengers about their preferences and stuff and one of the questions was settings for their stateroom. so it got me thinking about amenities and conditions in staterooms, both crew and passenger.

So here are some ideas about crew accommodations, passenger staterooms and the sorts of amenities you find there.

First off, TL makes a big difference. The earliest spacecraft appear around TL5. They are too primitive to have staterooms or even barracks and common areas. The bridge is the living space and you have a couple of weeks of life support if you're lucky. TL6 and 7 you get common areas and acceleration benches and seats. Life support is still not that great and journeys more than a month are just not going to happen if you are going to be away from resupply.

TL8 is where longer journeys can happen. You have primitive grav plates, Cabin Space, and basic staterooms. Prototype maneuver and jump drives appear and simple fusion is possible. Crew is probably in barracks, the size and complexity you see in today's crew staterooms aboard cruise ships. Common area is usually less than the recommended 25% of accommodations space so crew morale becomes an issue if they can't get off the ship for a week a month. Entertainment is basic, a screen with simple stereo sound that plays videos and music, maybe mobile games and a basic comm/computer unit over a desk. Otherwise, you have a pullout chair, a bed, a locker and a shared commode and shower.

Passengers aren't much better off. They get a bit more space with Cabin Space or a shared stateroom but the fittings in the room are the same as the crew spaces, just a little nicer looking. They typically get more Common Area than crew. If you're going a long ways, then it's probably getting stuffed into an early low berths with a 37% chance of death if they don't have a doctor and don't take extra time to thaw you out.
At TL9, Grav tech comes into it's own along with jump and maneuver drives. Ships are now powerful and cheap enough that you might still be able to make money while giving the passengers a stateroom to themselves. You're likely to see the first High Staterooms. now, though they are mostly just bigger rooms with extra nice fittings and a shower you can turn around in and perhaps a full wall of the suite used as a video screen. Entertainment centers are nicer with more features and larger selections of games, books and videos. Early AI personas are able to interact with guests, answer questions and provide feedback. By this point Common Area is usually between 25 and 50% of accomodation space for passengers and 25% for crews, with crews now usually getting shared staterooms to allow for more comfortable work and living enviroments and better morale over longer amounts of time.

TL10 is where automation really starts to kick in. AutoChefs and AutoBars make life easier for stewards and provide greater range of service for passenger needs. Holo technology hits its stride and you get holographic entertainment suites being included in rooms with AI assistances now handling many of the steward's tasks and providing entertainment and eduction to passengers and crew alike. Environmental controls are now good enough that each stateroom can be adjusted for comfort of the guests and different atmospheric types can be added.

Luxury Staterooms become more common as real luxuries like gravity beds start to appear. Even crew spaces start to get more high end entertainment options as costs come down and automation makes achieving constant quality at ever lower prices and faster production rates possible. The AutoLaundry starts to appear to better manage clothing care and maintenance.

TL11 and 12 is mostly refinements. Multi-Environment spaces are easier to generate and accommodate. Holography is getting extremely lifelike and smooth, capable of some interactivity such that the now competent AI can do simulation or competitive gaming. Gravity control is very good and costs are coming down such that you might find gravity beds even in High Staterooms.

The Advanced Low Berth is introduced, virtually removing the chance of death.

TL13 sees a big jump for the AutoChef, as they now have bio-reactive chambers to assemble food on the fly. Gravity control is fine enough that object can be suspended in air similar to how a gravity bed suspends the occupant between competing grav fields. The Advanced AutoDoc means healthcare is easy for most situations and even recovery from death is a small possibility.

TL14 and 15 are more refinement. AI personas are fully customizable and seem self aware. Holographic suites trickle down to even the standard rooms. Automation handles the cooking, cleaning and daily management of the rooms and allows adjusting the environment to the smallest degree.

Anyway, what sort of automation and entertainment do you all see in staterooms as they go up in TL? What do you think of the progression here? I look forward to hearing from you all.

 

[phavoc]

Something to consider is at the lower TL's your crews are considered elite's for the time period due to the very high cost of space travel. People of that type are willing to put up with things the average person will not. That certainly helps on the cramped size (and zero-G sleep needs is literally just a cocoon.

Passenger travel is a little different. Early on you will be seeing early adopters who really want to be there. Due to high costs you simply would not use unwilling colonists or passengers to go anywhere. I think there are some arguments that you MIGHT do it, considering what the UK did to dump their undesirables half a world away - but I think space travel costs would far outweigh cramming people aboard sailing ships.

As travel becomes more common, and affordable, people tend to expect more. Also the more the average person experiences as the norm the more they expect that norm to follow them around wherever they go. We can see from casual cruise line travel people have expectations - though honestly the food they serve at the buffets isn't all that high-class, and even your dinners aren't super fancy.

The more schlock you can throw at people the more accepting they get of certain limitations. But also they more demanding they seem to get. Societal, cultural and social levels can move these scales up or down obviously.

 

[shirgall]

I always like the idea of Standard/Improved/Advanced versions of items that are 2 TL apart. For staterooms I would expect improvements to be related not just to the quality of the amenities, food, and beverages, but especially the fresher. Reclamation of water and other materials. Sonic cleaning improvements over water. Flat screens and speaker panels give away to holo projection. I definitely like the idea of staterooms and common areas getting the improvements from TL idea!

 

[Condottiere]

First of all, why does it cost half a megastarbux to install four tonnes of stateroom?

Gravity tiling is covered by hull cost.

Furnishing could be bought wholesale from Ikea.

Which would assume that life support equipment costs somewhere between four, and four and a half, hundred thousand for two humans.

Cabin electronics and conveniences are likely to improve per technological level, but cost about the same.

 

[ross]

The conceits of the system being what they are, everything seems backwards and wrong to me. In every era of human society personal space has grown more. Power usage has also grown more significant as technology has evolved. Still, a TL9 stateroom is the same size as TL15? The same power requirements? The same fixtures? None of that has ever made sense to me.

That huge leaps in technology and thousands of years of innovation and nothing changes? In a cosmopolitan society all spacecraft are built like a WW2 submarine for humans only? Some things that made sense in 1977 aren’t making sense today. If I’m being honest it didn’t make sense by 1990.

This is a complex and complicated discussion and there’s a lot of people who dislike change. I hope you are okay with the heat and flack coming from this.

 

[MasterGwydion]

The conceits of the system being what they are, everything seems backwards and wrong to me. In every era of human society personal space has grown more. Power usage has also grown more significant as technology has evolved. Still, a TL9 stateroom is the same size as TL15? The same power requirements? The same fixtures? None of that has ever made sense to me.

That huge leaps in technology and thousands of years of innovation and nothing changes? In a cosmopolitan society all spacecraft are built like a WW2 submarine for humans only? Some things that made sense in 1977 aren’t making sense today. If I’m being honest it didn’t make sense by 1990.

This is a complex and complicated discussion and there’s a lot of people who dislike change. I hope you are okay with the heat and flack coming from this.

I think a lot of us have addressed this in different ways. I didn't use TL in my expanding of the staterooms, but now I wish I had. lol

 

[mavikfelna]

The conceits of the system being what they are, everything seems backwards and wrong to me. In every era of human society personal space has grown more. Power usage has also grown more significant as technology has evolved. Still, a TL9 stateroom is the same size as TL15? The same power requirements? The same fixtures? None of that has ever made sense to me.

That huge leaps in technology and thousands of years of innovation and nothing changes? In a cosmopolitan society all spacecraft are built like a WW2 submarine for humans only? Some things that made sense in 1977 aren’t making sense today. If I’m being honest it didn’t make sense by 1990.

This is a complex and complicated discussion and there’s a lot of people who dislike change. I hope you are okay with the heat and flack coming from this.

I'm fine with the heat, I can ignore those I find annoying.
Discussion is the point of these treads, I want to hear what other people think and get ideas for what to do in my own games, as well as espouse my own ideas in the hopes that others might find them interesting or useful.
As for the size of accommodations, I don't have much of a problem with them increasing in size. We're starting to get pretty good data on how much space people need to feel comfortable and it's surprisingly little, all things considered, so long as they have good communal space and community support and engagement. Culture and conditioning affect this, sometimes significantly, but on average, for a human from earth today, you can function well and be comfortable with a 2x2 meter sleeping space and about the same for personal storage and restroom/cleaning space with access to around 5x5 meters worth of communal space per person for several months. Elite or well prepared individuals can do with less for longer. So that's about 2 dtons for stateroom and 2 for common area. that's more than the base recommendation of 2 dTons of stateroom and 0.5 dTons of common area per passenger recommended by the build rules but should be good enough for a typical 2 week trip most passengers are going to taking. I think once you reach that point of availability, then increasing TL isn't going to change it much.
What the increasing TL does do is provide more amenities and entertainment options for that same space. So people will enjoy flying in higher TL ships more and costs for those higher TL ships won't be significantly higher because the better tech doesn't really increase cost or space requirements much, it simply replaces the older tech. The older tech becomes smaller and less expensive so if someone wants to save money and space, use lower tech items built at the higher TL. I doubt the savings will be great enough to sway the travellers to use the lower cost options for all but the most budget conscious ones though.
Power is abstracted enough that the base cost for power going to the hull greatly out paces that required by the staterooms, but if you want to track it, perhaps 0.005 power points per TL per stateroom would cover it. You would need 15, TL15 staterooms to equal a power point. Double it for High and x4 for Luxury. But they are still covered by the power points required for the hull so it wouldn't affect power plant size unless rooms were excessive as a % of the hull.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Power is abstracted enough that the base cost for power going to the hull greatly out paces that required by the staterooms, but if you want to track it, perhaps 0.005 power points per TL per stateroom would cover it. You would need 15, TL15 staterooms to equal a power point. Double it for High and x4 for Luxury. But they are still covered by the power points required for the hull so it wouldn't affect power plant size unless rooms were excessive as a % of the hull.

If you want a power number, use the power requirements for Residential Zones on page 66 of High Guard.

 

[MarcusIII]

I'm distracting myself from my TAS research thanks to Peter Simon's excellent little blog and read about The Steward's Interview, which I really like but it's where the steward asks passengers about their preferences and stuff and one of the questions was settings for their stateroom. so it got me thinking about amenities and conditions in staterooms, both crew and passenger.

So here are some ideas about crew accommodations, passenger staterooms and the sorts of amenities you find there.

First off, TL makes a big difference. The earliest spacecraft appear around TL5. They are too primitive to have staterooms or even barracks and common areas. The bridge is the living space and you have a couple of weeks of life support if you're lucky. TL6 and 7 you get common areas and acceleration benches and seats. Life support is still not that great and journeys more than a month are just not going to happen if you are going to be away from resupply.

TL8 is where longer journeys can happen. You have primitive grav plates, Cabin Space, and basic staterooms. Prototype maneuver and jump drives appear and simple fusion is possible. Crew is probably in barracks, the size and complexity you see in today's crew staterooms aboard cruise ships. Common area is usually less than the recommended 25% of accommodations space so crew morale becomes an issue if they can't get off the ship for a week a month. Entertainment is basic, a screen with simple stereo sound that plays videos and music, maybe mobile games and a basic comm/computer unit over a desk. Otherwise, you have a pullout chair, a bed, a locker and a shared commode and shower.

Passengers aren't much better off. They get a bit more space with Cabin Space or a shared stateroom but the fittings in the room are the same as the crew spaces, just a little nicer looking. They typically get more Common Area than crew. If you're going a long ways, then it's probably getting stuffed into an early low berths with a 37% chance of death if they don't have a doctor and don't take extra time to thaw you out.
At TL9, Grav tech comes into it's own along with jump and maneuver drives. Ships are now powerful and cheap enough that you might still be able to make money while giving the passengers a stateroom to themselves. You're likely to see the first High Staterooms. now, though they are mostly just bigger rooms with extra nice fittings and a shower you can turn around in and perhaps a full wall of the suite used as a video screen. Entertainment centers are nicer with more features and larger selections of games, books and videos. Early AI personas are able to interact with guests, answer questions and provide feedback. By this point Common Area is usually between 25 and 50% of accomodation space for passengers and 25% for crews, with crews now usually getting shared staterooms to allow for more comfortable work and living enviroments and better morale over longer amounts of time.

TL10 is where automation really starts to kick in. AutoChefs and AutoBars make life easier for stewards and provide greater range of service for passenger needs. Holo technology hits its stride and you get holographic entertainment suites being included in rooms with AI assistances now handling many of the steward's tasks and providing entertainment and eduction to passengers and crew alike. Environmental controls are now good enough that each stateroom can be adjusted for comfort of the guests and different atmospheric types can be added.

Luxury Staterooms become more common as real luxuries like gravity beds start to appear. Even crew spaces start to get more high end entertainment options as costs come down and automation makes achieving constant quality at ever lower prices and faster production rates possible. The AutoLaundry starts to appear to better manage clothing care and maintenance.

TL11 and 12 is mostly refinements. Multi-Environment spaces are easier to generate and accommodate. Holography is getting extremely lifelike and smooth, capable of some interactivity such that the now competent AI can do simulation or competitive gaming. Gravity control is very good and costs are coming down such that you might find gravity beds even in High Staterooms.

The Advanced Low Berth is introduced, virtually removing the chance of death.

TL13 sees a big jump for the AutoChef, as they now have bio-reactive chambers to assemble food on the fly. Gravity control is fine enough that object can be suspended in air similar to how a gravity bed suspends the occupant between competing grav fields. The Advanced AutoDoc means healthcare is easy for most situations and even recovery from death is a small possibility.

TL14 and 15 are more refinement. AI personas are fully customizable and seem self aware. Holographic suites trickle down to even the standard rooms. Automation handles the cooking, cleaning and daily management of the rooms and allows adjusting the environment to the smallest degree.

Anyway, what sort of automation and entertainment do you all see in staterooms as they go up in TL? What do you think of the progression here? I look forward to hearing from you all.

I have cleaning Robots come in at TL 9. With the caveat that we are currently at TL 7. Nice write up. I have often lamented the lack of TL feature differentiation in ship accomo's.

 

[MarcusIII]

The conceits of the system being what they are, everything seems backwards and wrong to me. In every era of human society personal space has grown more.

That actually depends. Accommodations on the 1930's Zeppelins were much larger than on the Concorde SST. Even not counting the sleeping space on the Zepp. The econ paradigm is different is the reason. Volume for J capable ships is MUCH more cost sensitive than for a TL 7 ocean cruise ship for example.

 

[MarcusIII]

IMTU at TL 15 food synthesizers become available for ships. This allows any type of food/beverage to be created from basic elements plus a few compounds like salt. This cuts Life support cost by 40% per person.
https://forum.mongoosepublishing.co...eates-real-post-scarcity.126051/#post-1019815

 

[mavikfelna]

IMTU at TL 15 food synthesizers become available for ships. This allows any type of food/beverage to be created from basic elements plus a few compounds like salt. This cuts Life support cost by 40% per person.
https://forum.mongoosepublishing.co...eates-real-post-scarcity.126051/#post-1019815

The AutoChef with bio chamber is possible at TL13 so that is where I introduce it. At that level it's pretty basic but it can manage edible food for most sophonts. You wouldn't use it for High passengers but everyone else gets it. These are probably expensive enough that you only have 1 aboard ship, for small ships, but by TL15 you start to see them in most staterooms and the food is much more varied and tasty.

 

[MarcusIII]

The AutoChef with bio chamber is possible at TL13 so that is where I introduce it. At that level it's pretty basic but it can manage edible food for most sophonts. You wouldn't use it for High passengers but everyone else gets it. These are probably expensive enough that you only have 1 aboard ship, for small ships, but by TL15 you start to see them in most staterooms and the food is much more varied and tasty.

Yes, High passengers get gourmet "real food" in my game. Same with planet side. High end restaurants don't use synthesized food. But it is super expensive

 

[actionman]

Just some thoughts.

Entertainment is basic, a screen with simple stereo sound that plays videos and music, maybe mobile games and a basic comm/computer unit over a desk. Otherwise, you have a pullout chair, a bed, a locker and a shared commode and shower.

At TL 8 and above, travellers would probably know to bring their own gear, like a tablet device with mobile games and a thousand books on it, or a laptop computer with a vr headset, games, and thousands of songs and maybe 100 movies, and maybe an advanced chatbot to keep them company. All they'd need in their staterooms would be a power outlet. This is assuming they don't sleep as much as possible with chemical assistance.

Having entertainment electronics in passenger staterooms would be a hassle for the ship. They'd have to check them frequently to make sure some knucklehead didn't load his own software, or hack it because he was bored, open it and steal components, or simply ruin it by smearing his grubby fingers on the touchscreen or eating over the keyboard. It would be one more thing for the crew to clean, maintain, and sanitize. The ship could carry a limited supply of entertainment-focused personal computers for high passengers who need them, and load them with software and media from the ship's digital library, and then do a hard wipe after the passenger departs. Middle passengers, those plebs can bring their own. I'm sure there are plenty of vendors in the starport duty free zone. If the ship wants to, they could have the capability for a passenger cabin only intranet, so passengers could play games against each other. Of course it would be isolated from all ship systems.

Passengers from Pysadi discover the stateroom entertainment system:

On the other hand, middle and high passage staterooms could have wraparound vr monitors at higher tech levels, possibly at TL 9, definitely at TL10. They could have super fidelity surround sound speakers to mimic natural environments like Mountaintop Sylean Meditation Temple, Tea & Spice Shop, Misty Forest, or Tarsus Beach. These could be complemented by small refillable scent devices.

A good amenity for cabin electronics would be recorded news of current events on the worlds the ship has recently visited, especially if the ship's destination is one of those worlds.

Amenities could include high TL ergonomic mattresses and beds which would increase the comfort of people sleeping or lying down for extended periods of time. Higher TL blankets and bedding that are supremely comfortable would be another item. Full water super freshers with 360 degree shower heads (it would be a self contained unit capable of 10 minute hot showers then purifying and recycling the water). Microfiber super-fluff towels. Complimentary soaps and shampoos deliberately selected by the Steward so everyone smells amazing instead of like the rotten side of beef they usually smell like.

Amenities could also take the form of activities. Traveling on a ship could be an "experience", with stewards and other crewmen trained as bartender-mixologists, conversationalists, gamblers, masseuses, musicians, dancers, actors, storytellers, and chefs. You know how in Titanic everybody in steerage class was an expert folkdancer and/or musician? Poors are like that. Themed multisensory passenger common areas that are luxuriously appointed like a classy bar or upscale intimate dining room could be part of it. VR and/or AR could be a big part of it. Every night the passenger common area is different. One night it's a tropical resort, the next it's a bar looking out over a nighttime city. Anything to trick people's senses into forgetting they're stuck on a ship. Anything to break up the succession of boring drab crappy miserable common areas that seem to be the rule. Crews could treat jump like being in a winter lodge during a snowstorm. No one's going anywhere, so they're going to figure out how to have fun. Crews could organize fun things like knife fighting training, zero gravity twister, dance classes, zero g drunk dodgeball, or other athletic games. There are always meals and the nightly movie with cocktails spiked with drugs that make people want to go to bed. People who want to be duds can drink in their rooms.

Adventure seed: Everyone's drunk, baked, and having a great time when the alarms go off and the ship unexpectedly drops out of jump. Subsequent events are determined by the referee.

Another thing a crew could do is spike the food with a neurochemical which tells the body it's full, so people will eat less, extending ship's stores.

Also, the economics of passenger space travel need to be relooked. What is the role of passengers in the ship's economy? Are they just a burden that brings in some extra credits, or are they profitable enough to be worth making an effort for? Is nutrient paste and survival crackers the only way to make a trip profitable, or can worlds on the route supply fresh foods? Even rl u-boats carried real food for a 12 week voyage. https://uboat.net/men/foodstuffs.htm and if u-boats can do it at tech level retro, then interstellar TL's can do it. Crews would probably buy their own food and shove it everywhere they could if it meant not eating nutrient paste or algae slop for weeks on end. Even then there's protein shake mix, whatever. It doesn't have to be miserable. When things are miserable, people work diligently to find ways to make them not miserable. If somebody can set up a solar camp shower in a forest to have a warm shower, I'm sure a TL13+ civilization could figure out how to cram some kind of water shower system into a stateroom, even if it's a waterproof bag with mist nozzles.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Standard passenger comfort demands a certain level of amenity in the stateroom.
In order to meet this standard, staterooms are self-contained living areas which need never be left during a voyage. The stateroom contains a bed, a fresher, entertainment consoles, and miscellaneous furniture. All basic items in the stateroom collapse into the floor, wall, or ceiling, when not in use.

Functions supported by the stateroom can be divided into four basic categories:
eating, sleeping, sanitary necessities, leisure, and possession storage.

Sleeping is supported by the standard size bed which folds from the wall at command.
Grav plates can be adjusted to provide a range from 0.0 to 1.5 G for personal comfort.
Meals may be taken on a collapsible table and storable chair. The stateroom is large enough for four persons to eat around the table comfortably. Meals themselves must be delivered from the passenger lounge; there is no automated delivery system.
A small refrigerator stores snacks and small quantities of food for immediate availability.
Sanitary necessities are handled by the fresher, which includes a multi-function shower, a toilet, a sink, and a small washer/dryer (for the benefit of middle passengers). All components fold unobtrusively out of the way when not in use.

Leisure activities are a necessary part of stateroom life. They relieve the boredom of the long jump voyage by providing entertainment, research facilities, and computer access. The wide range of entertainment activities includes holographic theatrical productions, video shows, interactive drama, and audio programming.
There are also games (played against the main computer, or against other passengers). The computer terminal also allows access (on a restricted basis) to the main computer for data processing, word processing, and library data inquiries.

Storage of personal necessities is handled by several collapsible compartments and cabinets. Passengers can store up to 100 kilograms of baggage in their staterooms; high passengers may store an additional 900 kilograms in the cargo compartment (access to any needed items requires the assistance of the crew).

Taken from CT Adventure Signal GK

 

[MarcusIII]

They'd have to check them frequently to make sure some knucklehead didn't load his own software,

No. There would be no write capability for a passenger.

 

[Anstett]

Need to allow people to write/save things for most systems/programs to work. I expect even more so on what is effectively an extremely dispersed network between the various systems and ships in and out of jump space.

It is an easy fix. We do it in the library on all of our public computers. Totally wipe any changes upon restarting. We have one of two images that a machine can have, depending on where in the building they are (youth or adult).

For higher end passengers who expect to call up the steward and get a replacement dongle for the one they left at home, they will expect duplicates of every available tech. Use their own for secure work, the ship's one for generic access.

And the steward had better have all 32 seasons of their show available, with all of the alternate endings.

 

[MarcusIII]

Need to allow people to write/save things for most systems/programs to work.

Not for an entertainment system. No need to allow writing any programs into the system to be run, None at all

 

[Anstett]

My real world experience says otherwise.

Even at the most basic level it needs to remember where the viewer last left off. It has to save that. Then it has to erase that for the next person to use the system.

 

[MarcusIII]

My real world experience says otherwise.

Even at the most basic level it needs to remember where the viewer last left off. It has to save that. Then it has to erase that for the next person to use the system.

And how does that equal loading your own s/w? It doesn't unless the system designer has an IQ of <50 and almost no IT Sec experience.