my stuff...

[Norgarth]

Or it will be once I finish working ideas out. Figured I could just make a thread to set down my vehicals/characters/history/ect, and hopefully have someone catch problems before I get too deep into them.
comments welcome
2nd edit (count is solely for my own curiosity)
***********************
Ship Name: SS Starhawk
Created by Tim Brazeau (Timote)
Registry Number: SS-
Base Hull: Douglas C-133B Cargomaster
Drive Type: Speed (max velocity 0.0075C)
Owner of Record: Wing and a Prayer Enterprises
Flag of Record: Canada
Purpose: Mobile Home, Cargo/Passenger Transport, Asteroid mining/prospecting,
Launched: Nov 13 2009
Crew:
* Tim Brazeau (captain/pilot)
* John 'J.T.' Carlson (Engineer)
* Rob Holmes (Navigator/co-pilot/Computer specialist)
* Amanda Elliston (cargomaster/gunner)
* George ___ (medic/cook/gunner)
Supplementary Crew:
* Thumper (ship's cat/mascot)
* Bob Mackenzie (AI)
* Doug Mackenzie (AI)
Supplementary vehicals:
* APE unit 1 (large exoframe for construction, maintenance and also used for loading large/heavy cargo.)
Known Vehicle Quirks:
* Lactose intolerant - The starhawk does not like milk. Bringing milk aboard causes a loss of roughly half the ship's power and lowered efficency of most systems. Oddly this is not triggered by other dairy products such as cheese, butter, or even dehydrated milk (as long as it remains in powdered form). The effects last for one or more hours after the milk is disposed of (1 hr if removed from the ship, drinking it doesn't help as the effect doesn't start to wear off until the milk is digested by the drinker's body.
* Great White North, eh? - The ship's AIs are based off of Bob and Doug Mackenzie (after a DVD of Strange Brew was left in the entertainment center overnight). Might be better described as Artificial Stupidities.
Known Crew Quirks:
* You want what? - Due to the ship's problem with milk, the crew tend to order it quite a bit when they are off the the ship. This gets them some rather odd looks when they order a glass of milk at a bar.
* Not telling - J.T. refuses to admit what his middle initial (T) stands for. Just that his mother named after an actor she was a fan of.
Faction: Generalist
Home Port: Babylon.5
Current Location:
Status:
Trivia:
* While Bob and Doug aren't the most efficient of AIs, Tim knows it could have been worse. A few days prior he'd left 'Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail' in the entertainment center. The thought of AIs based on _that_ film is disturbing to say the least.
* The base hull was purchased from Davis-Monthan AFB with assistance from Mr Morden/Johnson.
Description: Based on a military cargoplane, so the body is long and (relatively) narrow, split into Upper and Lower decks for the most part (it's a little less than 50ft tall). The wings are cut off roughly a meter/yard from the hull, with a pair of jury-rigged (and then 'waved) engines nestled underneath next to the hull.
The ship's weapon systems consist of a pair of quad turrets (one of the top and a retractable one below) whose designs are based on a mix of the millenium Falcon and WW2 bombers. As of SOS-con they are mostly bluff, as the crew still haven't gotten the power feeds to work properly. The guns are currently little more than really impressive looking laser pointers.
Power systems consist of a large Solid cube, with a hardtech backup system for lifesupport and communications.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Norgarth]

Ship Name: Babylon .5 Station
Created by Tim Brazeau (Timote)
Registry Number: SP-B.5
Base Hull: Asteroid
Drive Type: Speed
Owner of Record: Wing and a Prayer Enterprises
Flag of Record: Canada
Purpose: residential, some agriculture and manufacturing, radio station (Call letters undecided)
Launched: n/a (Refit completion and christening date, Aug 15 2009)
Crew:
*
Supplementary Crew:
*
Known Station Quirks:
* This is NOT Fenspace Idol! - Whenever anyone on the station sings in the shower, it is broadcast live to every speaker on the asteroid. This occurs despite the fact that there isn't any pickups in any of the bathrooms to pick up thesinging. The effect also extends to any craft parked/docked on the station (both their speakers and their shower stalls).
* It's the chipmunks! - a quirk of the large 'Waved transmitter used by the radio station is that the DJs/hosts all sound like they are breathing helium. The songs are unaffected.
Known Crew Quirks:
*
Faction: Generalist
Home Port: itself
Current Location: Earth-Luna Legrange point 2 (kept on station with manuvering thrusters)
Status:
Trivia:
* Home to Fenspace's first Radio station. The station plays a variety of music, news, even traffic and weather segments.
* The administration is considering getting a another space rock (or maybe two) and connecting them to form a larger station.
* While technically capable of independant movement the Station is _very_ slow. The Apollo rockets took less time to go from the Earth to Luna than this rock would. It's engines are quite adaquate for station keeping however. __________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[M Fnord]

---

Drive Type: Speed (max velocity 0.75C)

---

This is the one thing that jumped out in my mind as an immediate "wtf" moment. I don't know if you dropped a zero there & meant that to be 0.075C, but 75% the speed of light is seriously goddamn fast for a Cargomaster. It's actually faster than... pretty much all the other speed drive ships listed so far. (I think, anyway. Not everybody's listed a top speed yet, grr.)
Other than that, it looks pretty good. I like the idea of a lactose-intolerant ship. It amuses me.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[drakensis]

Um, yeah. Speed wise 10% of lightspeed is pretty fast inside The Limit, it's usually considered the highest attainable speed for a mere spacecraft (and spaceships are slower).
Outside The Limit (aka the Cochrane Limit or The Outer Limit), there's no particular problem breaking lightspeed so 0.75c becomes very slow. I really would suggest adjusting your numbers here.
0.075c would make you extremely fast for a ship - about five times as fast as the Saint Bernard which is probably the closest match in size to yours of the posted spaceships.
Other than that, the Starhawk looks good. If you need an origin story for acquiring it, then one of my avatar's little sidelines is selling decommissioned US military aircraft to Fen for modification.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

[robkelk]

About speeds...
The Starhawk's 0.75c is far too fast for Fenspace, as others have already discussed. A 0.075c cargo ship is pretty fast for its class (and faster than my smaller "delta flyer"-sized yacht); you'll have to come up with some really good technobabble to go with your handwavium, but it's doable. It would also be your breaks-the-rules "special" for the setting... A 0.0075c cargo hauler would be about average in its class.
(I have an idea for "the fastest ship in Fenspace" - basically using the "smaller is faster" axiom on something that's 80% drive unit and 20% form-fitting presure suit, with a thin layer of armour holding it together. I doubt I could get away with it having a top speed above 0.15c.)

Babylon .5's speed isn't listed yet, and probably doesn't need to be. But if you really want to list it, there's only one other specced-out station on the registry (mine), and it has a top speed of 0.000001c...

(Edit for spelling)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Norgarth]

yeah, I missed a zero or 2 in Starhawk's speed.
See what I mean about catching problems?
As for aquiring the cargomaster, I already have it jotted down somewhere (on paper at least) that we/they worked with Mr Morden to get it.
I need to add a description of the Starhawk as well. for one thing, most of the wings are goneand there are a pair of juryrigged and waved engines fitted in under the wingstumps.
-------
some of the history I've worked out:
'Wing and a Prayer' Enterprises started out as asteroid miners with a suitably juryrigged kludge of an initial craft and a dozen or so others besides Starhawks crew. Being from Canada, we had several months after the US banned Wavium before the Canadian governmet followed suit.
After selling off their 2nd mined out spacerock they decided to keep the third for a base of operations and have started to diversify (read, many of them were getting bored with just asteroid mining)
Some became the Administrators of B.5, one started the Radio station I mentioned, some are still running the mining biz.
some of the recent posts had me thinking of there being a trading ship named 'The Solar Queen'.
*******************
okay, edited The Starhawk's entry and added a bunch of details and such.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Norgarth]

All Purpose Exoskeleton (APE)
Apes are exoframes which have been/are being developed by Wing and a Prayer Enterprises. They are designed for EVA repair and construction work and would probably be quite useful to asteroid miners as well.
Each unit has a 'power claws'/large arms for heavy lifting, a retractable pair of smaller and more agile arms/waldos for detail work, a heavy duty drll and a cutting/welding torch (each of the 3 prototypes toarch is (so far) unique and has limited range (3ft or less)). They have short range communications gear, an air recycling system and manuvering thrusters (not fast, the thrusters started out as hairdryers before being waved).
quirks common to all 3 APEs:
- You'd think Fen would know better than to refer to these things as APEs before they were completed. All the APes outer forms tends more towards curves than straight lines, more organic in shape
- Each APE has vividly coloured fur growing out of it's metallic hide. If the fur is shaved off, it grows back within a few hours
Specific quirks:
The first prototype is equipped with a laser cutter/welding torch. It's fur is banana yellow and at 7 and a half ft tall is the smallest of the 3 and the only one not to display any signs of sentience. This one is assigned to The starhawk
The second is coulored a bright purple color is the largest at 15ft tall. It is equipped with a plasma cutter/welder. It has also demonstrated an at least animal level of intelligence, friendly and obedient somewhat doglike. It also gets depressed if it's not used on a regular basis (testing works). This one has been nicknamed 'Grape Ape'.
The third is a rich orange hue. It is 10 ft tall It's cutter device currently baffles the researchers, as it seems to be able to simply sever or create molecular bonds of nonliving matter. Living material is completely uneffected. Though not capable of speech it does demonstrate intelligence. This APE has also developed a strong interest in reading which, combined with it's colour has resulted in it being named 'The Librarian'. (As one Fen put it, 'What else are you gonna call an orange APE that likes books?')
The latter two are kept in the research 'wing' of Babylon.5 station.
****************
this is an idea that occured to me and wouldn't leave until I wrote it down.
anyways, any comments on the updated write ups for the Starhawk or B.5?__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Sirrocco]

Looks good to me. Actually, you might want to think about adding a few bits of Cool Stuff to each. Love the APEs.
"one banana two banana three banana four..."
"...and remember, he's an APE. Don't nobody call him a monkey."
For that matter, do you have a piano/pipe organ available for him? I could actually see him reading the right books and getting inspired to build his own.

[Norgarth]

yeah, still trying to come up with ideas for more neat stuff for the APEs.
What do you think of the station's quirks (I'll probably add more as I think of them)
__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bob Schroeck]

---

yeah, still trying to come up with ideas for more neat stuff for the APEs.

---

If not overriden, they automatically exercise a tropism for the tops of towers or other tall structures, possibly with a doll in hand?
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[Sirrocco]

They're quirks. They give the possibility for interesting writing (The intersection of "singing in the shower" with "radio station", and the fact that signing in the shower only really sounds good to the guy in the shower jumped out at me in particular.) I do like the image of the grizzled starship crew stmbling offship for the first time in Way Too Long, heading to the bar, and all ordering milk. It's a bit heavy on the quirk and low on the Cool stuff, but that's certainly not a *problem*, and it gives you space to come up with more Cool Stuff later, if you want to. Really, it's all good.

[Norgarth]

well, the Radio station (any suggestions for call letters/name?) has a large, over-powered transmitter on a different frequency from the station's main com-system. And the people living on the Station have learned to resist any urges to sing (although it still happens occassionally) and visitors still run afoul of it.
The radio station's morning show has a standing prize offer, if a showersong comes up durring theshow, the tenth caller wins a prize.
***********
still trying to come up with ideas for cool stuff. Both the Starhawk and B.5 have artificial gravity, but that seems fairly common.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[M Fnord]

---

(any suggestions for call letters/name?)

---

KFAN. Or WFAN, depending on which side of the great callsign divide you live on.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Norgarth]

*blinks* you know, the last 3 letters are pretty obvious, but somehow never occured to me.
As for the first letter, I'm from Canada and we use C. But as this station isn't in the US or canada, maybe I'll use SFAN (S for Space or Star) or AFAN.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bob Schroeck]

---

KFAN. Or WFAN, depending on which side of the great callsign divide you live on.

---

I should note for the sake of reference that WFAN is AM 660 in New York. It's a sports-talk station.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...

[Kokuten]

uhm, KWAV, or WAVE, or, given that it's an orbital station, and the American call letter conventions don't really apply..

SWAV, the Wave from Spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaacee!Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[robkelk]

---

(any suggestions for call letters/name?)

---

SMOF
("Special Music of Fandom", of course. Why, what did you think it stood for? )

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Norgarth]

I think I'm going to go with SFAN for the radio station (to riff on the old Muppet show line: 'Fans is SPAAAAAAACE!')
came up with a few bits of Cool for the Starhawk:
Advanced sensors - by focusing the sensors on an object (within 5mi/8km) the Starhawk can get a fairly accurate readout on the object's makeup. Quite useful for picking out ore rich asteroids for example. The sensors can (at closer ranges) detect internal chambers and lifeforms (though not well enough to identify them beyond plant or animal). These sensors do not help in locating objects, just in analysing things that have already been detected.
L-Space - in the ship's rec-room is a large cabinet which houses the crew's library of books, movies, CDs and video games. It's storage capacity is far larger than it should be. If you want a movie when you open it you will see nothing but movies on the shelves inside. if you want a book, you will find a selection of those, and so on (and often tailored to the genre you were thinking of at the time)
and one bit for a crewmember:
Impressed - Amanda accidentally dropped an old, much loved copy of the Pern novel, Dragonsong into a container of 'Wavium. The book was consumed but did result in a firelizard egg, which has hatched and Amanda impressed the Bronze that came out. It's unknown if Lockheed, the firelizard, is fertile (no females to breed with) and what it's life expectancy will be. While flight capable, and appearing to have an empathic link to Amanda, Lockheed has not as yet demonstrated the ability to go Between(teleport) or breath fire (requires a certain kind of ore and none of the crew really want a flying flamethrower aboard the ship anyways)
Amanda still has that batch of Wavium and is willing to let other fen try for an egg, but she refuses to sacrifice one of her books to do so, they'd have to provide their own (she had a hard enough time replacing the first book).__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Kokuten]

I has Quirk suggestions!
Advanced Sensors: When the sensors are focussed on an item, the Starhawk is effectively blind to everything else less obvious than say, a nova.
L-Space: The cabinet is developing additional settings. Some of them are deeper genre-based categorization, but the last person that thought 'something with aliens' got an autopsy table with a Grey on it, and swiftly closed the door.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Sirrocco]

I had a few questions with respect to the Fire Lizard.
- First, it seems awfully close to an unintentional biological version of "Show the handwavium a picture and have it make you your genre vehicle." It's pretty much being presented as a Really Cool Thing (we got one, we *might* be able to get another) and it's not all that universe-breaky unless you sprout a breeding pair, but....
- Second, are you intending to give this thing the teleport powers? What about the empathic powers? (Both are relatively nontrivial to justify.) If it's built anything like a normal fire lizard and wants to be able to fly in 1G, it's already going to need some grav-effect to keep it up. (This is much easier to justify, but is still special.) How many special effects does the little critter have?
- Third, by current description, you basically build a critter entirely out of handwavium. What kind of quirks does this thing have?

[Acyl]

The little dragon is cool...but it's somewhat tricky to explain if it only came from a book and a container of 'wavium. How does that result in a dragon egg? It's a bit of a stretch, even for our extremely wonky universe logic. =)
It might be more reasonable if, I dunno, at least some other organic material was involved...maybe she was snacking on a hard-boiled egg or something, while reading her book. Eating, reading, walking along, not looking where she's going, oops, splash...
Or maybe a really improbable incident in the galley? Maybe with a whole carton of eggs, some chilli sauce...er, I dunno. But certainly more "seed" substances for the dragon egg to form, yeah?
About the radio station...I think that's really awesome. I'm somewhat cynical about radio, having worked in it, but...that's actually damn neat. SFAN. Hah.
Question, though. How does the radio station earn revenue? The usual way - advertising? If so, I'm assuming 's mostly ads for other Fenspace businesses and recruitment trailers ("NEO-QUEEN SERENITY WANTS YOU!") ... possibly sponsorship of segments ("Space Rock Hour, brought to you by Rockhounds Inc!") ... and so on?
-- Acyl

[Norgarth]

well, it appears I didn't really think the firelizard idea through all too well. definately will require more thought before making it official (or dropping it as the case may be).
I was thinking that it would at least require a often read/appreciated copy. A new printing of the book right off the shelf would have no result except to produce more 'Wavium.
As for the Radio station, the guy running it is one of the original owners/stockholders in 'Wing and A Prayer Inc', so he's got a fair bit of money left over/coming in from the company's asteroid mining and other operations.
Mostly I was thinking that if he doesn't get paid for this, then he can tell the RIAA to go to hell. How can it be piracy if he's not making money off it? He's just blasting the tunes out the window, so to speak.
On the other hand, he's also pretty much out of their reach, so I guess advertisers and sponsors would work.
RE: Kokuten's quirk suggestions, well, I was thinking that focusing the sensors would degrade the ability to get other readings, I wasn't planning to reduce it that much. The sensors would still be able to detect objects of sufficient mass (like asteroids), ones that are very radar reflective, or ones using active sensors.
I wasn't really thinking about adding additional quirks to the L-Space cabinet. As Sirrocco pointed out, I've got more quirkyness than 'Cool Stuff'-ness as it is.
based on Fnord's 'Know Your Factions' post in the Gazetter thread, I'm thinking of altering the Faction listing for Starhawk and Babylon.5 to read 'Neutral, with links to the Galactic Republic and Interstellar Alliance'.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Norgarth]

Well, I've decided to drop my original idea for the Starhawk's AIs. I realized I don't really know the characters well enough to write them.
So now I'm back to trying to come up with an AI. __________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Kokuten]

you could always punt and make Starhawk's AI be a flaky neopagan hippy, like www.starhawk.org
but I'm an evil person, so I wouldn't listen to me. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Norgarth]

*checks website* o_O
ooookaaaay....
Starhawk was an old login name I used to use. I figured it'd make for a better starship name than, say, "The Enchanter Tim". __________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin