Picking through the pieces

Or, What remains useful in that busted old ship?

Put your thinking caps on, please, and suggest a few things that would be able to be scavenged from a derelict ship and would be universally useful. Imagine that you are on the space-borned equivalent of a tramp steamer and you have serious need of either credits or repair materials. You have a connection at the local stellar's pawn shop who will buy anything useful, even scrap titanium for recycling. So, what do you imagine that you would try to take from the frozen hulk of a hundred-year old freighter found dead in deep space?

To get you started, here's some of the things I've come up with. This is more that just a thought-experiment; I'm actually trying to do something with this, but I need a list of raw materials first. To keep the list reasonable and clever, I'm saying that you can't just pry a functional railgun from a ship, for example, or simply pop out a working shield generator since the ship is so old or destroyed that hardly anything complex is intact.

Titanium stock
High-strength ducting
EVA suit
Food/water/oxygen stores
Various electronics of questionable role or quality or state of repair
Wiring
Unspent ammunition
Spent batteries
Reactor components
Monomolecular sheeting (found on a sailcraft, perhaps?)
Damage turret motors
IR sensing arrays

Obviously, there are a huge number of things that would make sense. I'm looking for things, however, that would be useful to the rest of the galaxy, and that would make sense for the player to try looking for.

Thanks for any help.

Werhner

I was actually doing something like this for Retribution before. I'll pull out my old dev documents and see if I can find the list I made.

Hmm...

Fuel cannisters
Air/water recyclers
Small arms
Smuggler's cache (drugs, illegal weapons, etc.)
First aid/medical supplies

Captain's Logs.
Non-perishable cargo.
Maps.

wink wink

You could use a spob with onlands that G some outfits as a derelict ship. Shows up in alternate system after a battle. I've done so at least.

But, using pers resources, isn't it possible to offer missions to the player when boarding the ship? These missions wouldn't have to appear to the player, and could easily grant the player outfits and/or offer some dialog to boarding the ship.

@jacabyte, on Jan 26 2008, 06:42 PM, said in Picking through the pieces:

Captain's Logs.
Non-perishable cargo.
Maps.

wink wink

Jaca, you've inspired me. I can't believe I didn't think about ship logs. I am bit disappointed in myself for not thinking of it, but I do appreciate the idea. They have a lot of plot-development potential and/or optional mission information. Thanks.

Also, it is possible to use pers for granting outfits and kickstarting missions. I'm trying to avoid it though. I need ships to be certain of appearing at a given time, and I don't believe pers resources are that reliable. Yes, I know that I could use dudes as the special ship of an invisible mission, but I feel like I have a less complex method. On that note, does anyone know what the chances of a pers appearing in a system are?

This post has been edited by Werhner : 26 January 2008 - 06:14 PM

@werhner, on Jan 26 2008, 03:07 PM, said in Picking through the pieces:

Also, it is possible to use pers for granting outfits and kickstarting missions. I'm trying to avoid it though. I need ships to be certain of appearing at a given time, and I don't believe pers resources are that reliable. Yes, I know that I could use dudes as the special ship of an invisible mission, but I feel like I have a less complex method. On that note, does anyone know what the chances of a pers appearing in a system are?

Well, it is possible in MC to tell a pers to be in a certain system, though what chances that they will be in there, I don't know.

You're welcome, Werhner.

Where a pers ship appears is determined in the syst resource, along with the chances of that ship appearing. At least, that's how it works in EVNEW.

This post has been edited by JacaByte : 26 January 2008 - 11:13 PM

The Jump Computer. There must be many systems that we don't jump to along the way (hence the reason why a new system can be added along a normally vacant jump line.)

I once read on a Trek board (or was it Star Wars?) that there were no windows because the speeds traveled, windows would be crushed. Therefore, anything that looks like a Window is a forcefield. So how ever you want to name them Window Force Field generators as backups for your Tramp Ship

Cushions. Who knows, if the ship that I take out or find has leather lined seats, I might want to take them so I can ride in comfort!

Sublight & Jump Drives seem to be all the same. You don't see different ones in the outfitters. Therefore, there must be certain parts universal to all ships. Take those.

If windows are made of a transparent material with less strength than a ship's hull, but still endowed with a high degree of strength, why would they be crushed? Are we just assuming that windows in all forms are extremely brittle? Enlighten me.

@aether, on Jan 27 2008, 05:24 AM, said in Picking through the pieces:

If windows are made of a transparent material with less strength than a ship's hull, but still endowed with a high degree of strength, why would they be crushed? Are we just assuming that windows in all forms are extremely brittle? Enlighten me.

As I said, there was a discussion about the Starships big windows at warp speed and what they were made of. Someone suggested Plasic Aluminum, as they used in STTVH for the Whale tanks, but there was an issue of Thickness. It might be simple to have forcefields instead. On the other hand one might just say that the windows can withstand anything and that is that.

A far as I know, there is no known material that can actually withstand taking any ship or compartment to carry humans past some given velocity well below the speed of light. That is to say, a "force field" is inherently needed as any known metal, ceramic, polymer, or composite is too weak to take the relative velocity of particles in space. Thus if you are traveling at the 1/10th the speed of light, relative to your ship or compartment all the space dust (there are around 10000 particles per square foot of space) is traveling at 1/10th the speed of light at your ship. Thus any attempt to go in excess of certain speeds (of course we haven't gone that fast yet so we don't know what they are) would tear your ship apart.

Thus I think the point is moot. If you have armor on a ship, you might as well have windows.

What about personal effects? (Imagine how valuable 100 year old pez dispenser or cigarette case would be!)
clothing,
communication devices,
techinical components like keyboards and monitors and such,
what about energy/fuel? There might be some left depending on the reason its drifting.
What about data on the ships memory banks? If the bulk freightor was destroyed in battle, there might not be anything in the captains log... but the scans will show what hapened.
door switches
light bulbs/LED's
flashlights
holovids
credit chips?

@vast-deathmaster, on Jan 28 2008, 05:53 AM, said in Picking through the pieces:

As I said, there was a discussion about the Starships big windows at warp speed and what they were made of. Someone suggested Plasic Aluminum, as they used in STTVH for the Whale tanks, but there was an issue of Thickness. It might be simple to have forcefields instead. On the other hand one might just say that the windows can withstand anything and that is that.

It's not really worth discussing. No material could withstand Impulse velocities over an extended period of time. That's what the navigational deflector is for.

This reminds me that I once had an idea for abandoned planets having outfitters where you could salvage broken weapons and such. I actually created one on my internetless Performa back in the EVC days, which had a busted Laser Cannon with wild inaccuracy. With Nova's more advancedness (I know that's not a word), you could actually limit the appearance of said items in the outfitters.

As for salvaging ships and windows, in my novel's universe most windows have been replaced by screens that, using a small camera(s), display what's on the other side, serving the same purpose and function without compromising security or structural integrity. Hence, if you use such windows, you might could salvage the screens and/or cameras.

@joshtigerheart, on Jan 28 2008, 02:06 PM, said in Picking through the pieces:

This reminds me that I once had an idea for abandoned planets having outfitters where you could salvage broken weapons and such. I actually created one on my internetless Performa back in the EVC days, which had a busted Laser Cannon with wild inaccuracy. With Nova's more advancedness (I know that's not a word), you could actually limit the appearance of said items in the outfitters.

As for salvaging ships and windows, in my novel's universe most windows have been replaced by screens that, using a small camera(s), display what's on the other side, serving the same purpose and function without compromising security or structural integrity. Hence, if you use such windows, you might could salvage the screens and/or cameras.

Bingo. Sometimes I wonder how many ideas I have that I think are so original and clever but have already been conceived or even implemented by others. Anyway, my goal from all of this is to create a usable system of parts salvaging. It is working, but I would like to have some spob's give different prices for items to reflect increased need. One of the neat things about the system is the way I've been able to have different quality of parts get used to make devices that are similar in function but vary in terms of their quality. One example is just like what you described, with busted parts leading to a railgun with terrible accuracy, while a skilled engineer working with high-quality parts can make something nearly good-as-new.

How about a throwback to EV:Classic, like Starship Subassemblies?

Few more thoughts:

• just some Metal as a trade good (ship materials will be quite pure)
• trace rare metals from the electronics (e.g. small amounts of gold, possibly platinum as a catalyst in the enviro hardware)
• As mentioned before, things that are valuable simply because they are old. Holovid posters, old-fashioned clothing, retro electronics, preserved food and old videogames (imagine what a used Pong console or a piece of 1900's candy sells for today). Recreational materials should survive fairly well, too - maybe the ship has a ping-pong table or the like. Books, of course, may not be very useful as a trade good but would still be interesting to your crew.
• Depending on the state of repair of your tramp ship, some of the components might actually be useful for jury-rigging repairs. Mark that down as Equipment tonnage, though only a little. Hull plating would probably still be good, if nothing else.
• Personal effects should be retrieved and a token effort made to track down next-of-kin. They might just reward you (or merely provide more flavor).
• Depending on the level of technological advancement of the universe and the power source for the ship, the computers might still be functioning. Check for lonely AIs.

@-visitor-, on Jan 28 2008, 05:55 PM, said in Picking through the pieces:

How about a throwback to EV:Classic, like Starship Subassemblies?

That might be a nice piece of work, taking some some subassemblies, throwing in a few odd bits and pieces, and coming out of dock with a Kestrel. I'm trying to piece together a convincing "degenerating universe" and I'm not sure if there'd be enough working parts in the region to even make a brand-new Argosy.