Author Topic: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?  (Read 7320 times)

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Offline markc

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #20 on: August 01, 2013, 02:40:50 PM »
Yes welcome to the gold star club.
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Offline Wolfhound

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #21 on: August 01, 2013, 03:19:13 PM »
hey Wolfhound , i WAS BEING SARCASTIC, I Know it was Fire Fly that why I have a quote from the series on my post-LOL! all is well .

Yeah, I wasn't paying attention, until after I posted my response and then noticed your quote (but too late to pull my foot out of the mouth), which made me feel like kind of an idiot. 
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Offline area51games

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #22 on: August 01, 2013, 03:46:46 PM »
good job, I like your work, this could be a universal article for both RM/SP/HARP
BECAUSE this is need information weather you are a pirate in space or on the water or a merchant in space or on the ground or in the water as it where. but I think you are doing a fine job of conversion verse real world.
You have taken a  complex issue and heading to play ability. some body should give this man a gold star.
Mal: "Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?"
Zoe: "Big damn heroes, sir."
Mal: "Ain't we just!"

Offline area51games

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #23 on: August 01, 2013, 03:49:54 PM »
no! all is well, we all play the that role from time to time depending on our Coffee intake, so go have a cup on me, humm only if it free or bill me-LOL

I owe ONE CUP OF Coffee for WolfHound, GET THAT NASTY foot taste out any way.:!

Mal: "Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?"
Zoe: "Big damn heroes, sir."
Mal: "Ain't we just!"

Offline pyrotech

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #24 on: August 02, 2013, 05:15:20 PM »
I've been populating a rough table for duty rates based on the predominate culture of the destination and figured I would check what people thought of a basic set of assumptions I am currently running with.

I am assuming the US economy closely matches a "Cosmopolitan" cultures economy.  It does produce some "raw" goods (food mostly), but exports a lot of worked items, and is a major consumer of goods.  So if I used the US average tariffs as a starting point for the Cosmopolitan culture, how realistic would that seem?

I'm thinking most corporation cultures would be close to cosmopolitan but would be even more protective of worked goods, and encourage the import or raw goods.

Frontiers will mostly be exporting raw goods and importing worked goods and have a balance to match.

Aristocratic may be a balance between corporate and cosmopolitan, but may have higher duties on arms.

Belters export worked goods and minerals, but import food and organic goods.

Militaristic cultures will probably have low duties on arms, armor, and vehicles.  Their duties on luxury items will probably be higher though.

Exotic cultures may be a hard one.  I might have to think on that one.  I could just run with my "typical" levels of 25% for raw goods and 50% for worked goods.  This one might be challenging.

Religious cultures...... hmmmm.  Another harder one.  They could go a few ways.  I am leaning on high tariffs on weapons and luxury items, but low on most others.

Any comments or concerns?

-Pyrotech
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Offline naphta23

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #25 on: August 03, 2013, 12:48:22 AM »
Yes welcome to the gold star club.

Gold Star Club - does that mean we get Blackjack & Bloopers?!  :o
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Offline area51games

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ? to pyrotech
« Reply #26 on: August 03, 2013, 02:44:12 AM »
i like where you are going , use what we have in the system , before inventing something new, go with the Cultures its keeps it simple and easy. with out having to having to come up with a lot of different other statistics like law and  government type and such.
Mal: "Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?"
Zoe: "Big damn heroes, sir."
Mal: "Ain't we just!"

Offline area51games

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #27 on: August 03, 2013, 02:46:29 AM »
by the way I still think space ships are way too high in the cost are , I like the cost in spacemaster better. more encouragement for commerce. Like our prices today. I just looked up a used light freighter and its only a Million $
not 280 m!
Mal: "Well, look at this! Appears we got here just in the nick of time. Whaddya suppose that makes us?"
Zoe: "Big damn heroes, sir."
Mal: "Ain't we just!"

Offline markc

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #28 on: August 03, 2013, 09:35:34 AM »
Pyrotec,
 I too love what you are doing and using the USA can be a good start. If you can see any areas where we the USA load extra tariff's onto products and services do to politics and try and cut those out that would be great. But IMHO it can/would also be very hard to see just where they are and why they are there.


 I can see the Militaristic culture go either way as on one hand they need to keep the troops happy but on the other discipline is key and "their" "good times" if they happen more frequently actually cut down on discipline.
 The same goes for religious cultures as it can greatly depend on the religion.
  What I might do is have some sort of scale (maybe a sliding scale) that you can adjust for the type of religious, scientific or  militaristic culture's you have. 


Naptha23,
 Are Blackjacks and Bloopers like Cracker Jacks here in the USA? 
[size=78%] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack[/size]


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Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
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Use a System to tell the story do not let the system play you.

Offline Thom @ ICE

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #29 on: August 03, 2013, 10:33:07 AM »
Militaristic would definitely be a high tariff environment.

Also keep in mind that tariff's can also go to the furthest degree and become an importation ban.
This then forces smuggling of these goods and even higher price tags for transport.
As for Weapons - most societies will restrict importation of weapons without proper licenses, and in those cases the government is aware of the buyer and seller.  If the weapons include cutting edge technology you can also expect that the country will limit export of those weapons to ensure the high tech weapons remain in their hands - and in order to support that the government assists with funding those high tech projects (not just weapons, but pretty much any high tech projects that they can restrict exportation of).
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Offline naphta23

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #30 on: August 03, 2013, 03:19:57 PM »
Naptha23,
Are Blackjacks and Bloopers like Cracker Jacks here in the USA? 
[size=78%] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_Jack[/size]
MDC

Unfortunatley no.  :-[
This was meant to be a small reference to the robot Bender (Futurama; "Blackjack and hookers!"). To keep my post relatively clean, I wrote "Bloopers" to avoid the derogative term "hookers."   :-X
But since this little pun failed exceptionally, I guess there I have my little blooper.

Back to topic.
Concerning the discussion about wages and starship costs I would like to point out the audiobook series The Trader Tales by Nathan Lowell. These audiobooks are licensed under the Creative Commons and you can download them for free on podiobooks.com. The Trader Tales tell the story of Ishmael Wang, who is forced to join a interstellar trader ship as a lowly Quartershare and his carreer; the series lacks battles, wars and most of the time violent encounters and is rather a space opera than an adventure.
If you do not have a problem with that, then the series are quite amusing and interesting; anyway, during the series you can learn quite a bit about naval and starship operations, wages, earnings and starship values. Oh yes, and coffee!  ;D

I may very well be mistaken, since I have no knowledge about modern ships, but I assume that spaceships should be a lot more expensive than naval ships, since they are much more sophisticated. If looking at prices, I would rather compare spaceships to submarines, since normal ships are operated twodimensional and have no problems with 3d-orientation in zero gravity and astrogation.  ???
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Offline naphta23

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #31 on: August 03, 2013, 03:23:06 PM »
*edit*
Just wanted to add that even Stark Trek is much more violent than the Trader Tales.

(I apologize for the second post, I wanted to edit the first and clicked the wrong button.  ::))
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Offline markc

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #32 on: August 03, 2013, 03:57:27 PM »
No problem I did not get into Futurama as I got burned out on the Simpsions when it first came out.


MDC
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Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
Role Play not Roll Play.
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Offline markc

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #33 on: August 04, 2013, 06:43:28 AM »

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/japan-cargo-launch-sends-talking-robot-space-station-6C10840002


Here is a quote from the above article about today's cargo craft,


"This is the fourth mission for JAXA's HTV program (the name is short for H-2 Transfer Vehicle) since 2009. The cylindrical disposable spacecraft are built to haul up to 6 tons of cargo to the International Space Station and then be discarded at the mission's end.
HTV craft are called Kounotori (Japanese for "White Stork") and are about 33 feet long by 14.4 feet wide (10 by 4.4 meters). They carry supplies and equipment inside a pressurized section, which astronauts can access after the vehicle links up with the station. They also have an unpressurized section that can be accessed via the station's robotic arm to retrieve spare parts and other larger gear that can be stored on the orbiting lab's exterior."


MDC
Bacon Law: A book so good all PC's need to be recreated.
Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
Role Play not Roll Play.
Use a System to tell the story do not let the system play you.

Offline naphta23

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #34 on: August 04, 2013, 11:10:42 AM »
The cylindrical disposable spacecraft are built to haul up to 6 tons of cargo to the International Space Station and then be discarded at the mission's end.

So it is cheaper to discard a whole spaceship after its mission than to recycle it? Wow. In my opinion, that is a whole new level of decadence and single-serving-anything (reference to Fight Club (both the film and the novel): single-serving toothbrush, single-serving soap, single-serving friendships, etc.).  :o
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Offline markc

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #35 on: August 04, 2013, 11:45:23 AM »
Yes I guess we "The Human Race" are just not there yet for recycling of spaceship parts.  In the future if and when mining in space takes off then I think it will all be about recycling.


MDC
Bacon Law: A book so good all PC's need to be recreated.
Rule #0: A GM has the right to change any rule in a book to fit their game.
Role Play not Roll Play.
Use a System to tell the story do not let the system play you.

Offline Wolfhound

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #36 on: August 04, 2013, 11:58:32 AM »
pyrotech, sounds like an excellent start and that your assumptions sound pretty sound.  I agree that the religion and exotic cultures would be the most problematic as they will greatly depend on the values and principles behind them (since they will likely have differences between each one).  Might be worth leaving that up to each specific GM and recommend that they use the others as a basis from which to build or customize them (or have future authors use the details that you develop as a rough starting point for detailing such religion and/or exotic cultures relative to such tariffs and such.

Also, forgot to mention, but disposable parts and vessels are not that uncommon for space flight as this point in time, but I could see in the future this changing.  In fact the U.S.'s space shuttle program was the first real attempt at re-useable space vehicles (at least as far as I am aware, although I could be wrong there). 

Also, I agree with naphta23 on the issues of ship costs.  Submarines would be a closer proximity (but still probably too cheap on a relative basis) than surface ships when it comes to costs relative to space based vehicles (as submarines still don't have to worry too much about radiation (at least not in the same way that space based vehicles do) and while they are usually very technologically advanced they probably are still not as much so as a spacecraft would need to be (although freighter based spacecraft would tend to be on the lower end of the technology reference point, but would probably still be at least comparable to modern-day subs).
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Offline GrumpyOldFart

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #37 on: August 04, 2013, 02:43:01 PM »
We definitely need an orbital trash compactor. I mean, once you're spent the fuel to send anything into space, there certainly isn't any reason to send it back down again, is there? Ideally, recycling orbital junk should be how space stations get bigger.
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Offline pyrotech

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #38 on: August 05, 2013, 12:25:46 PM »
Speaking of orbital recycling,  I always liked the anime "Planets".  Hard enough science to believe what is happening, enough comedy to keep it fun, but its really about a nice relationship.

An on to another question for those still interested:

Do you think a Scientific Culture is going to manufacture it own high tech goods, or is it going to import them?  I guess the question is if the primary product of a Scientific culture is information and research, or if they are going to make high tech items too.

I'm currently leaning that the society is going to need jobs to support all the thinkers, plus jobs to give the thinkers families something to do.  That means lots of service industry, plus lots of high tech automated manufacturing.  So right now I'm thinking that Scientific cultures would have high tariffs on high tech goods.  But I can also see the opposite argument - so I'm going back and forth on it now. 

So what is your take on this idea?

Thanks

-Pyrotech
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Offline Wolfhound

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Re: HARP SF EXTREME QUESTIONS ?
« Reply #39 on: August 05, 2013, 01:46:46 PM »
I would tend to think that they would have some high-tech and automated manufacturing on-planet, but that could vary from one such planet/society to another. 
Wolfhound (aka Aaron Smalley)
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City of Archendurn & Dun Cru author (for RM/HARP)
Cur. projects: RMU Creature Law 1 & 2, No Quarter Under the Crown (campaign module for RMU)