How would the gear be cached?

[Arthur Denger]

In the OTU, the Solomani had their notorious Phoenix Project. In your campaign, are weapons or other valuable equipment/technologies secreted away for later use? IYTU, how is the gear cached?

 

[atpollard]

Given the tendency of the OTU Imperium to Crash and Burn every Millennium or so, reducing the member worlds to a low jump or pre-jump status, I think they should store technology secrets on stone tablets in caves in the the desert. That tends to be the longest lived way of preserving text on Earth.

IMTU we hollow out small moons as research labs and park them inside gas giants in uninhabited systems. Woe to the poor merchant who misjumps to that system and decides to skim the wrong gas giant.

 

[Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen]

I would imagine the weapons and vehicles would be cached similar to the way the US Army stores equipment in Korea and Saudi Arabia. Most vehicles are "cacooned" to protect them from moisture and trickle chargers are attached to keep batteries charged. Weapons are packed in cosmoline or other protective coatings. Volitile ammo is stored in sealed bunkers.

A little research on the net would find additional details. Check out how aircraft are stored at the "boneyard" near Las Vegas, NV, or how the US Navy stores ships in "mothballs".

Oh, uniforms would probably be stored with mothballs!!

 

[epicenter00]

It depends on how long the stuff is expected to stay in storage and who is supposed to use it. If it's just being stored for a few centuries I don't think you can beat just storing it in some stable orbit in the shadow of some planet after removing any charge from batteries and such. Intense, unchanging cold is the way to go to let stuff keep for long periods of time.

It's easier to access than putting in the Oort Could and can be monitored against theft much easier.

Failing that, store it at the bottom of the ocean. Again, it's very cold down there, the conditions don't change and covered with the proper sediments and such the environment will be quite oxygen-free.

At the other extreme, I had a group of PCs who were going to swindle the Beedling Society (mentioned in "Survival Margin") in an MT game. However, in the process of getting the funds, they came to believe in the Society's cause and instead started using their own money to set up their own caches. They had some pretty creative ideas for storing devices and methods to recivilize humanty after a Long Night - though the most successful of the caches turned out to be the one that created "Batman" on a TED controlled world.

 

[Arthur Denger]

Originally posted by Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen:

I would imagine the weapons and vehicles would be cached similar to the way the US Army stores equipment in Korea and Saudi Arabia. Most vehicles are "cacooned" to protect them from moisture and trickle chargers are attached to keep batteries charged.

I must assume that cocooning involves more than throwing a tarpaulin over them... how is that achieved, some kind of a shrink-wrap?