M-SPACE Starship Design

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Wow! That is great. The size might or might not be a factor, it is 4km long, however the 160k passengers are mostly in hibernation. Either way it's a small city, which would be interesting for an adventure, jumping from planet to planet (though the original is sub-light). The ship's AI, and later the Captain, they are both almost like ghosts, background NPC's are a good idea.

There is the thing here, also in Banks' Culture, ships as these, like small cities, running a circuit, which I don't think I have ever seen an adventure in a game about.

[clarence]

22 hours ago, dragoner said:

There is the thing here, also in Banks' Culture, ships as these, like small cities, running a circuit, which I don't think I have ever seen an adventure in a game about.

Yes, that would be interesting. With a 'circuit', do you mean that they visit the same worlds regularly? Like dropping a decently sized city into a star system every four years?

This is probably not at all what you had in mind, but there was a cool series of books published in the 1980s by a Norwegian author called Jon Bing. The basic idea was that a massive sublight starship (Alexandria) visited distant human colonies, working as a huge library and the crew ('librarians') working as both problem solvers and at the same time collecting knowledge. This was the only contact between worlds and the sole source of new knowledge. I have very fond memories of the books from my childhood, and they held up surprisingly well when I re-read them a couple of years ago. 

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7 hours ago, clarence said:

Yes, that would be interesting. With a 'circuit', do you mean that they visit the same worlds regularly? Like dropping a decently sized city into a star system every four years?

This is probably not at all what you had in mind, but there was a cool series of books published in the 1980s by a Norwegian author called Jon Bing. The basic idea was that a massive sublight starship (Alexandria) visited distant human colonies, working as a huge library and the crew ('librarians') working as both problem solvers and at the same time collecting knowledge. This was the only contact between worlds and the sole source of new knowledge. I have very fond memories of the books from my childhood, and they held up surprisingly well when I re-read them a couple of years ago. 

Yes, that is exactly what I mean by circuit, that it follows a regular route; trading with the locals, and even other ships getting transported by the bigger one. I will look up that author, maybe they have been translated into English, thank you for the information.

[ThornPlutonius]

"...dropping a decently sized city into a star system every four years..."

Calls James Blish's "Cities in Flight" series to mind.  Old Earth cities (e.g., Scranton, PA, New York, NY, etc.) leave Earth and travel between the stars at sublight speeds via Spindizzy propulsion, anagathic drugs extending the lives of the citizens of the cities. They visit star systems and perform contract labor for which the cities are specialized (e.g., mining, smelting, manufacturing, etc.).

Edited April 14, 2017 by ThornPlutonius