Re: Scavenging in the Spinward Marches

> From: "Simpson, Bart" [email removed]
<...>
> but they might have access to a Scout/Courier or Seeker for a limited amount
> of time. The idea I came up with is basically searching the empty areas in
> the sector at least Jump-2 away from a world. I figured that with a seeker,
> you could completely fill the cargo bay and ord holds with fuel and there
> would be enough fuel to make 2 jump-2's. I figured the farther away from
> a system, the better the chance of finding a misjumped starship. Considering
> the area I'm looking at (the 'Abyss' - fairly much in the center of the
> Spinward Marches Sector) there are over ten empty hexes at least a jump-2
> from the nearest world.
>
	Ever Hear of Serching for a Needle in a Haystack?
Let's assume that 1000 ships are lost in the hex...If they are evenly
distributed then the average seperation would be 1/10th of a parsec, or
about 3 x 10^12km. I don't know how far away sensors would work, as
there would be little local interferance, but the travel times would be
daunting, unless you had the fuel to do a microjump-1.
	I'm not saying that it is impossible to find, but it would be
a rare occurance. Then one has to think of what the crew would do if they
found themselves stranded in the middle of nowhere. First is the "aliens"
solution, start the ship moving towards the nearest inhabited system, and
have everyone get into low berths, hopefully you would be revivable
when you were detected going through the system.
	Acutally that's the only solution I can think of, I guess some
crews would blow themseleves up, others accelerate until they ran out of
fuel, perhaps reaching relativistic speeds, maybe some would just sit
around and hope for rescue. Most of these would have an impact on how
difficult it would be to salvage the ship.

	I agree that places jump-2 away would have probably more lost
ships, as fewer people can recover from a misjump placing them more than
jump-1 from a system. Then again, a lot of people jump their maximum
distance, (case in point, the salvagers coming back won't be able to
do anything if they misjump), and will be in the same general situation.
Also consider that at jump-2 away, those people with J-1 fuel left that
are still stranded (which are the extra ones, not found at J-1), but that
extra fuel can be used to power the thrusters for a considerable period
of time.

	Lastly, the universe is large, if you've thought of something
probably someone else has as well. Therefore if it is profitable
to run salvage into empty hexes, someone else is probably doing it as
well, and they may not be pleasant about you cutting in on their "turf".

				-Dan

Dan Corrin, Network Manager, Mechanical Engineering, UWO, London, Ontario
TML/CZ FTP site coordinator:     [email removed].        [phone removed]