Questions about the ST world

[Deleted]

Hi everyone. I am new to the forum and have only been playing star traders on and off for about a year. It has easily become my favorite game.
But I have a few questions about the star traders universe, that I was hoping someone could help answer.
1. How is time regulated?
2. Are credits the standard form of currency, equivalent to, say a dollar?
3. What would spacer crews do in a spice hall? What or who are the entertainers? What else is there to do, other than spice and vudka? I mean, if you go to a bar in the real world, there are pool tables, maybe cards, karaoke or a band. Is it the same therem
4. What kind of arms and armor would spacer crews use in a fight? They would have to be armed with something, whether to repell boarders or board a pirate vessel, or even in a spice hall brawl.

Any information would be helpful!

[beuns]

Hi Chance !

Take a look at this : startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/5599/star-traders-shadow-shalun

It would probably be useful to answer your 3 and 4.

[Deleted]

Thanks beuns

[beuns]

You have to thank dayan for his work, I only pointed it out

You should read some of the "captain's log" fiction, a lot of good work there could help you getting a nice sense of how ST universe feels.

[Deleted]

Aug 18, 2014 18:54:59 GMT -5 beuns said:

You have to thank dayan for his work, I only pointed it out

You should read some of the "captain's log" fiction, a lot of good work there could help you getting a nice sense of how ST universe feels.

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll do that. And thanks dayan. Pretty cool work.

[Deleted]

Thanks, just bear in mind that none of that is canon. I would imagine entertainers would run the gamut from comedians and magicians to strippers and other things you likely find to keep transient workers occupied. Legal and otherwise. In fact, I'm willing to bet dollars to pesos that some of the more urbanized sprawls on built up planets have a very Cyberknights feel to it. I showed that with some of the main and peripheral characters having cyberware. The fourth chapter, whenever I get back to working on it, mainly takes place in one of these urbanized sprawls, even though IIRC the world is indie.

[Deleted]

I can imagine parts of large urban worlds operating much like the NBZ. Is there any connection between ST and CK?
Do you know if there is any canon lore regarding life in the ST universe?

[fallen]

Chance - there is no connection between the worlds of Cyber Knights and that of Star Traders. Cyber Knights is based on Earth (our planet) in 2217. Star Traders do not feature our Earth or any of existing human history, it is a completely different creation.

[Cory Trese]

Aug 18, 2014 10:31:13 GMT -5 Chance said:

Hi everyone. I am new to the forum and have only been playing star traders on and off for about a year. It has easily become my favorite game.
But I have a few questions about the star traders universe, that I was hoping someone could help answer.
1. How is time regulated?
2. Are credits the standard form of currency, equivalent to, say a dollar?
3. What would spacer crews do in a spice hall? What or who are the entertainers? What else is there to do, other than spice and vudka? I mean, if you go to a bar in the real world, there are pool tables, maybe cards, karaoke or a band. Is it the same therem
4. What kind of arms and armor would spacer crews use in a fight? They would have to be armed with something, whether to repell boarders or board a pirate vessel, or even in a spice hall brawl.

Any information would be helpful!

1. Time passes normally, however exposure to deep space travel and Void Engines, as well as several Zendu genetic modifications, greatly extended human lifespans.

2. Credits are the standard currency. A Credit, as spent and traded by your Captain, is a great deal of money. There have been some other threads that talked in depth about this, but a single Credit could be a month's salary for an average citizen. The only reason your Captain isn't running amok with all his or her wealth is the caste divisions that keep spacers in space and planet-bound factions on planets.

3. Entertainers are specially trained Faction members, men and women, who specialize in providing comforts and pleasures to the Crew of visiting ships. They're often seen serving vudka, running gambling games, displaying physical skills (particularly popular are Steel Song blade dancers) or playing music.

4. The most common weapon in boarding combat is a needle rifle. These hand held projectile weapons, many still in service from the Guild Wars, are effective against soft targets and don't damage ship systems. Other weapons carried by Crew include .. magma bombs, frag-grenades, plasma lances, plasma cutters, force hammers and plasma guns (very rare.) Heavy armor, discounting Leviathan Armor, makes the wearer particularly vulnerable to lance and plasma weapons. Most Crew in defending boarding operations tend to wear personal light body armor.

Lances and Cutters use light beam to create an open circuit to the target and then fire high energy plasma particles down the beam. They take more than a second to lock and charge, so in use they look more like a lighting gun than a laser weapon. A force hammer is a weapon that generates gravity from an internal energy cell to increase striking power by a massive amount, which is very dangerous to everyone involved (attacker included.)

[Bohrson]

Cory Trese I always wondered how time was calculated in game. By this I mean "What the hell means 'XXX.XXAE' ?". I'd like to understands what the date means ; years ? months ? days ?

[Deleted]

Aug 19, 2014 23:33:20 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Aug 18, 2014 10:31:13 GMT -5 Chance said:

Hi everyone. I am new to the forum and have only been playing star traders on and off for about a year. It has easily become my favorite game.
But I have a few questions about the star traders universe, that I was hoping someone could help answer.
1. How is time regulated?
2. Are credits the standard form of currency, equivalent to, say a dollar?
3. What would spacer crews do in a spice hall? What or who are the entertainers? What else is there to do, other than spice and vudka? I mean, if you go to a bar in the real world, there are pool tables, maybe cards, karaoke or a band. Is it the same therem
4. What kind of arms and armor would spacer crews use in a fight? They would have to be armed with something, whether to repell boarders or board a pirate vessel, or even in a spice hall brawl.

Any information would be helpful!

1. Time passes normally, however exposure to deep space travel and Void Engines, as well as several Zendu genetic modifications, greatly extended human lifespans.

2. Credits are the standard currency. A Credit, as spent and traded by your Captain, is a great deal of money. There have been some other threads that talked in depth about this, but a single Credit could be a month's salary for an average citizen. The only reason your Captain isn't running amok with all his or her wealth is the caste divisions that keep spacers in space and planet-bound factions on planets.

3. Entertainers are specially trained Faction members, men and women, who specialize in providing comforts and pleasures to the Crew of visiting ships. They're often seen serving vudka, running gambling games, displaying physical skills (particularly popular are Steel Song blade dancers) or playing music.

4. The most common weapon in boarding combat is a needle rifle. These hand held projectile weapons, many still in service from the Guild Wars, are effective against soft targets and don't damage ship systems. Other weapons carried by Crew include .. magma bombs, frag-grenades, plasma lances, plasma cutters, force hammers and plasma guns (very rare.) Heavy armor, discounting Leviathan Armor, makes the wearer particularly vulnerable to lance and plasma weapons. Most Crew in defending boarding operations tend to wear personal light body armor.

Lances and Cutters use light beam to create an open circuit to the target and then fire high energy plasma particles down the beam. They take more than a second to lock and charge, so in use they look more like a lighting gun than a laser weapon. A force hammer is a weapon that generates gravity from an internal energy cell to increase striking power by a massive amount, which is very dangerous to everyone involved (attacker included.)

Thanks Cory I appreciate the information. A couple questions:
1. You mentioned a caste system separating spacers from 'normal' faction citizenry.
Would it be correct to assume that except for the captain visiting the palace, spacers would be restricted to the stardock, exchange, and spice hall (almost like a quarantine)?
2. Would there be any interaction between spacers and gravs? I'm sure the workers in the exchange and stardock would be citizens, and come and go from their homes to their jobs. But, would gravs frequent the same places (bars, pubs, halls etc.) and mingle with spacers?
3. Your discussion of boarding weapons reminds me somewhat of when I was in the Navy, on subs, many years ago. The standing rule for the engineering department in the case of 'repel boarders' was to grab any "weapon of opportunity", large wrenches and hammers were a favorite (and of course the buck knife most of us carried). We always got a laugh out of the idea of defending ourselves against guns with a big crescent wrench :-)
4. The game mentions that spice halls are dangerous places full of criminals and bounty hunters. A spacer wouldn't go unarmed. Are the weapons you mentiond for boarding, the same that would be carried for other self defense purposes?
5. Other than searching through the forum, is there a central location, a library of sorts, to find information about the ST universe?

[Deleted]

A standard Quarantine isn't a bad idea actually, to prevent or delay of pathogens into the agricultural centers or general population. Airports and other transit hubs are massive hotspots for spreading bugs.

[Deleted]

Aug 20, 2014 9:25:27 GMT -5 Bohrson said:

Cory Trese I always wondered how time was calculated in game. By this I mean "What the hell means 'XXX.XXAE' ?". I'd like to understands what the date means ; years ? months ? days ?

I think its weeks...

I wondered about that too, so I started a new game:

The date is 57.1AE.
The starting contract is 2 AU AWAY
114 weeks to complete.

I noticed that when I moved 2AU, the date read 57.3, and the time to complete the contract was 112 weeks.

So if that's right, it takes 1week to travel 1AU

[Bohrson]

Chance I'd like to have a dev vlidating this or even giving a full explanation by themselves but thanks, that's a good start ! ^^;

[Deleted]

That is 57 years after the exodus. I don't remember offhand if the point is decimal in nature. But a ten month standard year makes sense for a base ten math-based space faring society. Lets nix January and February, the two most dreary months in the northern hemisphere XD