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Seasoning UWP's to taste...

F

Foxroe

SOC-12
Just to foster some friendly, fun, and creative discussion…

How would you explain a UWP of A674210-D in your CT TU? My initial take is “lawless star-town, with a large transient population, but a very small permanent population that supports the starport”

No right or wrong answers here, just creative input!

Feel free to bring up other “odd” UWP’s from CT publications or home-brewed campaigns for us to poke a stick at.

-Fox
 
See now, this is exactly what I mean.

I saw the Gov-1 code and thought, “greedy corporation-run spaceport”… a research facility didn’t even cross my mind!

Thanks Hunter!

-Fox
 
Here’s another possibility:

The world is known for it’s visually spectacular atmospheric and geological phenomena. So much so, that several high-brow resorts have sprung up around the world to take advantage of this. The starport has quickly evolved into a class-A facility to support the resorts’ typically noble clientele. Due to the world’s lower gravity, it is also an ideal location for a planet-side shipyard.

-Fox
 
Well, ignoring the canon answer...

...my first thought on such a UWP is probably coloured by the way I approach private starship weapons. You can't buy them or get them installed at just any old starport. You need a Class A Starport with a Law code 0 in MTU. Subsidized ships, mercenary ships, and of course military ships don't have this restriction.

Oh look, Law code 0 and Class A Starport! :)

So to me this is a small company specializing in arming all those private ships in the Marches that feel the need to protect themselves. It's a popular stop on the Main for Free-Traders and other small private starships with extra funds. A little annual maintenance, oh, and stick a turret on the dorsal hardpoint while you're at it, make it a double missile launcher.

(I had a longer post typed up with some fun color commentary, but my computer gremlins ate it, pity...)
 
Foxroe said:
How would you explain a UWP of A674210-D in your CT TU?
Click to expand...


Foxroe,

That not all Class A starports are precisely the same thing? Is O'Hare the same as Heathrow or Gander Green the same as Orly? All are "international" airports but they aren't carbon copies of each other.

Reread the LBB:3 descriptions again. Just what constitutes a Class A port is rather broad. People continue to assume despite continued and long term canonical evidence to the contrary that the IISS is wielding a galactic cookie-cutter here. Being able to manufacture A starship - the primary description of a Class A port - doesn't necessarily equate being able to manufacture ALL starships. Class A doesn't always boil down to numbers like "X dtons of shipyard capacity" or "Y dTons of freight service" or "Z dTons of this, that, or something else".

Different places are different and Class A status is a necessarily broad label meant to cover as many eventualities as possible. After all, the IISS is cramming every starport in Chartered Space into only six catagories!


Have fun,
Bill
 
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Whipsnade said:
People continue to assume despite continued and long term canonical evidence to the contrary that the IISS is wielding a galactic cookie-cutter here. Being able to manufacture A starship - the primary description of a Class A port - doesn't necessarily equate being able to manufacture ALL starships. Class A doesn't always boil down to numbers like "X dtons of shipyard capacity" or "Y dTons of freight service" or "Z dTons of this, that, or something else".
Click to expand...

You have got to stop in more often :devil:
 
Class A starport #1: This facility is operated by the Hyundai-Daewoo Heavy Industries Corp. It specializes in 20,000+dton bulk freighters and military vessels of Cruiser and up classification. Their output is 40+ hulls per year.

Class A starport #2: This facility is owned by Rolls-Lincoln Luxury Transport, and specializes in 400-1,000dton Luxury Yachts. If you have a personal wealth of less than 100Tcr, you probably won't be approved for a ship here. They build 10-12 ships per year.

Class A starport #3: This facility is a small, family-run business, Clampett & Son. They build 200dton Far Traders and perform low-cost 100dton Scout>Seeker conversions. Their quality is good, but eccentric design philosophy means repair & maintenance are "interesting" to perform and supply. They build 1 ship and convert 2 more per year.
 
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Foxroe said:
saw the Gov-1 code and thought, “greedy corporation-run spaceport”… a research facility didn’t even cross my mind!
Click to expand...

With that Law Level, I'd also consider it a "Speed Shop" -- specifically a facility where anyone with enough money can get any starship modification the TL will support.

Where's it located astropolitically?

If it's off by itself, it preserves its independence by being a reliable freeport (and probably has a fine planetary navy to defend it). Probably hosts a semi-annual open market, when all sorts of entrepreneurial types spend two weeks operating a bazaar that draws traders from all over the sector, and temporarily boosts its Pop Level by a few orders of magnitude.

If it's within the bounds of some interstellar polity, it's interesting that it's not a naval base; it's probably a completely-self-supporting independent research institute with a clientele that stretches far and wide. It maintains its autonomy (low LL) by being a no-cost, no-overhead R&D facility for the interstellar government whose realm it is within. Certainly Naval Intel keeps an eye on what comes and goes through its starport and shipyards, in exchange for access to the latest advancements and breakthroughs. If the Interstellar Government should get too heavy-handed, the researchers could always threaten to pack up their gear and head for greener pastures.
 
I like the research facility and Clampett & Son, but I can't see it as a freeport or bazaar (especially with a planetary navy) with under 1000 inhabitants. How would you get the infrastructure to cope with the influx of visitors or to maintain the fleet?

Personally, I'd just raise the population by a couple of clicks - as I often do with stats if I can't see a rationale in the first five seconds after generation, but that avoids the question.

I'd go for a small business operating an upmarket R & R facility requiring advance bookings - posh hotel, hunting trips, guided safaris, all while your yacht (sorry, ship) is undergoing annual maintenance. The shipyard only takes y... er, ships up to a few hundred tons and though theoretically it can (re)build them, the last time anything like that happened was way back in...
 
Foxroe said:
Just to foster some friendly, fun, and creative discussion…

How would you explain a UWP of A674210-D in your CT TU? My initial take is “lawless star-town, with a large transient population, but a very small permanent population that supports the starport”

No right or wrong answers here, just creative input!

Feel free to bring up other “odd” UWP’s from CT publications or home-brewed campaigns for us to poke a stick at.

-Fox
Click to expand...

A crashed space freighter that suffered a misjump.

Discovered by a band of Travellers, they have converted the freighter into a ship repair facility. Since the primary cargo was Jump Drive components, they have a ready supply of parts to repair and occasionally manufacture modular Jump Drives (Class A-E only).

The original company is still fighting a legal battle to reclaim their "lost property" while the Travellers have invoked Salvage law to keep their property.

Local life has a reversed helix DNA design and is totally, 100% incompatible with Terrestrial life, so colonization of the rest of the world has not occurred to date.
 
Plankowner said:
A crashed space freighter that suffered a misjump.

Discovered by a band of Travellers, they have converted the freighter into a ship repair facility. Since the primary cargo was Jump Drive components, they have a ready supply of parts to repair and occasionally manufacture modular Jump Drives (Class A-E only).
Click to expand...
You need more than the ability to repair ships to get a Class A rating. You need to be able to build an entire ship.

That's the basis for skepticism about Class A starports in systems with less than millions of people.

Mind you, it is possible to have shipyards in systems with less people. If you had a "one-crop" world whose major income was building one 100T ship at a time, you could probably justify a population as low as 10,000. But how many worlds like that do you think there would be? I think one or two would be the limit my belief suspenders would hold.

If you postulated a system that only housed the shipyard itslef and had all the workers and all the subcomponents imported from another system, you could probably justify a population down in the hundreds. But again, just how many of those can one manage to believe in?


Hans
 
rancke said:
You need more than the ability to repair ships to get a Class A rating. You need to be able to build an entire ship.
Click to expand...

Hans is right. And we don't want to bend the definition too much or else we risk diluting the data. In other words, a Class A is a Class A, and truth in advertising is important for a referee's resource.
 
rancke said:
But how many worlds like that do you think there would be? I think one or two would be the limit my belief suspenders would hold.
Click to expand...

Which is sort of the point of this thread: collecting multiple creative ideas based off of just one UWP. It doesn't always have to be the same old boring description for a "low pop, high tech, class A port". :)

-Fox
 
rancke said:
You need more than the ability to repair ships to get a Class A rating. You need to be able to build an entire ship.
Click to expand...


Hans,

Does being able to build an entire ship necessarily equate also being able to manufacture each and every component and subassembly that make up said ship?

The Real World answer to that question is a definite no.

I can safely say that because I can also safely say that I am most likely the [only former shipyard employee here (Shop 275, Nuclear Test Office, Electric Boat, Groton, CT, USA) and the only member who regularly visited shipyards worldwide while employed by companies other than EB.

Now all that being said...

... I don't like the idea of Tenalphi having a Class A shipyard either! ;)

I can however see other small worlds building jump capable ships for either their own use or for sale to others. All you really need to do is own the skills, the parts can be imported. Of course, whether importing parts is economically feasible in the long term is another question.

I can easily see a high-pop, high-tech world subsidizing Class A & B ports in the smaller systems around it in order to create greater merchant traffic and provide construction and repair capacity for clients and ships it doesn't want "clogging" up it's own yards. Subsidizing free trader construction and repair elsewhere means your yards will be able to focus on more lucrative contracts while still "supporting" a proven revenue stream.


Have fun,
Bill
 
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robject said:
Hans is right. And we don't want to bend the definition too much or else we risk diluting the data. In other words, a Class A is a Class A, and truth in advertising is important for a referee's resource.
Click to expand...
Actually, I was too lax in my definition. Not only do they have to be able to build a ship, you have to be able to go there and get them to build a ship for you. In other words, if there is a shipyard there, but for some reason they won't build for strangers (e.g. it's a military shipyard), it's not a Class A starport.

I've used that to explain a Class D starport in a high-tech, high-population system: Unprecedented strain on shipbuilding facilities (exacerbated by local labor disputes) has tied up the shipyard capacity for years to come. You can't even be certain of ship repairs in a timely manner. So the Scouts have reclassified the starport down to D until such time as conditions improve.

Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. :).


Hans
 
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