Starports & Sword Worlds

mav sez:

>The first and major consideration is "wholeness" (for lack of better term).
>Is the Starport located wholy on the plant's surface or does it have an
>orbital component and, if so, of what size.

>The orbital component will, of course, be the docking/unloading station for
>planetoid and dispersed configuration ships, as well as for ships without
>M-drives and very, very big ships (Atlantis class comes to mind).

 ...and shipyards.  Building large ships on the ground and then figuring out
how to lift them to orbit is silly.  They will be built in orbit -- I seem
to recall that A starports (which have shipyards by definition) have an
orbital component by definition.  And, you probably need to be out of the
gravitiy-well to calibrate jump drives.
    As for defining starports, I still think GURPS Space did a better job
with their thumbnail sketches of what a starport Class 0-V (Traveller X-A)
consists of than the Traveller books did.  For campaign use, you would
flesh them out, but I find them a good guideline.  They also used the idea
of a minimum population for the larger starport types, and a population
based dieroll -- the higher the pop, the more likely you were to have a
large starport.  I've included these descriptions below, with Traveller
equivalents in brackets.  GURPS Space uses the same log 10 population digit
Traveller does (called PR below), but the standard die roll is on 3d6,
not 2d6.  Random generation of starport type would mean rolling for
each type, starting with the best and falling back towards the worst
on failure to qualify or blown dierolls.

"Class V [A] -- Full facilities.  Full repair and ship construction
facilities, along with associated Patrol [Patrol/Reserve], Naval, and/or
Survey [Scout] bases. Port has berths for hundreds of vessels, multiple
landing fields, and every facility imaginable -- from crew union halls to
high-tech training facilities.  A Class V port is present only on worlds
of PR 6 or better, on a roll of less than (PR+3).
"Class IV [B] -- Standard facilities.  Full repair and *light* ship
construction facilities[*].  A Patrol or Survey base is attached.  Any
world engaged in regular, substantial trade has *at least* standard
facilities.  A Class IV port is present only on worlds of PR 6 or better,
on a roll of less than (PR+6).
"Class III [C] -- Local facilities.  Repair facilities for common
needs; special parts or complex repairs will require off-planet parts,
technicians, or facilities.  Patrol or Survey may have a base; if not,
there will be at least an office.  Worlds with limited interstellar
commerce have local facilities.   A Class III port is present on a roll
of less than (PR+9).  (If a world does not have at least a Class III
starport, there must be a reason why it gets no regular star traffic.)
"Class II [D] -- Sub-C facilities.  These are intended for inter-
planetary or shuttle craft rather than FTL ships.  Only emergency repairs
are available for starships, but common fuel types are available.  A Patrol
office may be found here, perhaps accompanied by a Survey office if the
world is isolated.  A Class II port is present on a roll of less
than (PR+8).
"Class I [E] -- Emergency facilities.  No real starport -- only a
landing area.  Marked by automatic buoys, it might be a cleared-off,
flattened space or a small orbital station. [reference to potential FTL
message beacons deleted].  A Class I port may be unmanned, or it may have
local customs and security offices [Cynthia mumbles, "Muskoka airport *is*
a Port of Entry for Canada, and *does* have a customs officer, even if
he has to drive out from town while you wait on the pad..."]  Emergency
parts and fuel are stored nearby.  If qualified technicians are available,
the buoys will have contact information.  Class I facilities are present
on a roll of 14 or less.
"Class 0 [X] -- No facilities.  There isn't even a designated landing
site -- ships planning to land must look for suitable terrain.  If the
world has a high enough tech level, there will be an airport, parking lot,
or wide roadway.

"Orbital vs. Ground ports. Depending on the campaign's FTL technology,
starports may be in orbit or on the ground.  Ground ports service shuttles
and landing-capable starships; an orbital port allows non-landing starships
to dock, and provides shuttles to the surface.  If a world has two ports,
the older often has poorer facilities, lower rates, and a less
selective clientele.  A well-developed world will have at least one
shuttleport or ground starport on every continent.
 "Special starports.  Other starports, not specifically included in
a world's rating, include: company ports (servicing only one company and
its clients), military or Patrol, and government.  These can usually be
used by any ship in an emergency, if the facility isn't secret."
-- GURPS Space, 1st ed, p.122

[*] light construction -- for the purposes of my Traveller campaigns,
I interpret that to mean that B starport yards can build jump ships of up
to 5000 tons in size -- coincidentally increasing the absolute and
relative numbers of Classic Traveller starships flying around space...
Note that worlds with more than a million inhabitants rate to have
at least a C starport; note that worlds with less than a million inhabitants
can have no better than a C starport.  Worlds with 3 guys and a major
shipyard are impossible under this system.

Sulaiman in reference to the Sworld Worlders:

>One theory that fits some facts is that they sought political asylum but
>were refused. Still doesn't explain why they did not drop anchor somewhere
>in Deneb. Instead they marched into the Marches ....

For some reason I always thought they went by way of the Reft; this leaves the
question of "Why didn't they settle in the Trojan Reaches?"  Well, if you look
at the
T.R. map, you notice a lot of worlds with classically Terran names (not Vilani,
not
Sylean, not Imperial, but Earth-flavored).  I suspect that either (a) other
Terran
groups beat them there (possibly during the Rule of Man), or (b) the Sword
Worlds are a spin-off of the Trojan Reaches worlds -- maybe they couldn't get
  along with them.

>>Piper's original explanation makes as much sense as anything: They were
>>the loosers of a war and fled to somewhere far away from their successful
>>enemies.

>Hmmm....There is hardly any reference to Old Earth Union and its activities
>between -1100 and 588. There *could* have been a civil war lead by a core
>of worlds settled by a specific culture. There is also the "Gene War"
>which strangely has no date attached to it. The reference to Confederation
<stuff deleted >
>The asylum could have been denied because in those early days neither the
>Syleans nor the Vilani may have wanted or needed to deal with more
>troublemakers. Additionally if they were super-beings they could have been
>used as mercenary units for a period of time, which would explain the
>length of time it took them to get to the Marches.
>Eventually they had no asylum and decided to get far away from the Terrans
>who would know their source and would hunt them down. And since all human
exploration
>rimwards has been done by the Solomani that would also be a reason to head
>towards the core.

    The "losers of a war" scenario was the first thing I thought of when I read
the
questions raised in the original post.  It need not have been the "Gene War".
If they
had been sufficiently obnoxious in the course of whatever war they lost, they
and their
kin might be persona non grata anywhere in Terran space -- kind of like known
members of
the SS & Gestapo after WWII.  Or if they were the targets of genocidal pogroms
by the
victors for reasons other than being "supermen" they might have had to run far
and fast
in a direction they didn't expect the victorious Terrans to expand in --
preferably with
lots of other people between them and the Terrans.  All of the questions about
why the Sword
Worlds are "way, way out here" are explained if the Sword Worlders were
desperately
*afraid* of the Terrans they left behind.
Hmmm, this could be useful.  Right now, I have some players in the "Sword"
Worlds, and have been working some stuff out about current (as of 1112, anyway)
Sword
World/Border World politics.  It was 1500 years ago that they fled Terra -- but,
 hey,
the Assyrians still have a bad reputation after 3-4000 years.

wildstart said some time ago:
>What about the issue of "all sentient life-forms are protected citizens of the
Imperium"?

My first reaction to reading about the DEYO chips was, "The Imperium has been
doing
forced eugenics/breeding, lobotomizing, and enslavement of a sentient species.
Does
someone see something wrong here?"  My second reaction was very much akin to
Scott Kellogg's.
If I were a sentient being in these circumstances, I just might accumulate a
little
outright hatred of humanity.  Sounds like the old "major race/minor race"
prejudice and
second-class species system found fertile ground to bloom in...
    Since I haven't gotten *to* the Rebellion period yet, I am more than
interested in
seeing your "reams of stuff", Wildstar.

  ---- Cynthia