Hero Prime Directive

[John Desmarais]

What is low end when you have replicators, though?

Pretty much all it can be is the actual physical dimensions of your space.

In theory, a replicator needs to have the pattern of what it's going to make already stored in it. Better replicators would have more memory allowing for more (and more complicated) patterns stored.

High end replicator: Can make Lobster Neuberg.

Low end replicator: Can make kibble.

Also, since ST replicators seem to create their stuff inside the device, making a large thing would require a larger device.

[Outsider]

Memory seems to be nigh-unlimited in the Star Trek universe, and communications seem to be pretty darn broad-band in any case.

On a fully developed Federation planet, I would guess that there would be one (or probably several) central replicator pattern libraries that any numbskull could link to for whatever pattern he needed at the time. The only patterns that would need to be stored locally would be ones that were personal variants of the individual replicator owner.

I'd also assume that a replicator could replicate a replicator. Either in whole (if it were a smaller one) or in half a dozen 'plug em together and they work' parts, if it wanted to make one its own size or larger.

Of course, I also assume that 90-95% of the people on a fully developed Federation world are basically non-contributors on all but the most personal scales. And that's OK... if one has tools as powerful as the Federation does, 5% of the people can easily do enough work to keep everyone fabulously wealthy by the standards of previous eras.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Of course, I also assume that 90-95% of the people on a fully developed Federation world are basically non-contributors on all but the most personal scales. And that's OK... if one has tools as powerful as the Federation does, 5% of the people can easily do enough work to keep everyone fabulously wealthy by the standards of previous eras.

And tell me again how this is a good thing. It sounds to me like a plague or war could wipe out that 95% of humanity and nobody would notice or care.

And if I were one of that 5% working my fingers to the bone and knew that my labor was supporting a horde of useless, pointless drones, I'd be rather upset.

[Outsider]

I never said it was a good thing. What I did say was that the 95% werent contributing anything on anything but the most personal scales, not that they werent contributing anything at all. They're still good parents to their children, they still do little things like make wine the old fashion way (though the same or better could be replicated, and some of them probably still run RPGs that entertain no more than 5 or 6 people. They cant ALL invent the warp drive. Just like today, the great majority of people contribute nothing measurable beyond the personal scale.

I also think the 5% who work generally dont do so for the acclaim of the masses, but because they want to do the work, to protect/support the useless pointless drones in their useless, pointless lives. Kind of like the Rangers protecting the Shire & Breeland.

[SCUBA Hero]

Picard states that mankind has moved beyond material wealth, and says that money, as such, doesn't exist any more.

That is one of my biggest beefs with TNG... okay, we don't use 'money'... but the officers play POKER?!?!?!?!

Poker without meaningful stakes is *BORING*!!!!!!!!!!!

So what do they play for??? The right to spank Troi?

What does she play for??? The right to dress up Worf in baby clothes???

***********************************

Now I'm reminded of the Firefly episode where Jayne, Simon, and Book are playing poker for getting out of chores.

***********************************

Back on the original topic, I'd like to see Hero Trek. Steve Cole would like to see Hero Trek (aka Hero Prime Directive). The problem is gettting a writer.

Steve Cole has mentioned (on the Starfleet BBS) that the background text stays the same; only the system conversions need to be done. Perhaps someone can step up and do them?

[Curufea]

Another hedonistic high lifestyle society to consider for the Federation is the Culture from the books of Iain M Banks of course.

Replicators have been limited as well - they can't create an object that contains a powersource (at least not with power in it), and they can't create latinum (gold pressed or otherwise).
They can't create these things because it ruins several plot elements the writers have used.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Another hedonistic high lifestyle society to consider for the Federation is the Culture from the books of Iain M Banks of course.

Replicators have been limited as well - they can't create an object that contains a powersource (at least not with power in it), and they can't create latinum (gold pressed or otherwise).
They can't create these things because it ruins several plot elements the writers have used.

In one of the early NextGen episodes there was a vaccine that was "too complex" to be replicated, and so it had to be acquired through trade.

The problem with this is they showed the sample being beamed up to the ship, so obviously it's not too complex for the transporter to be able to completely break it down, store its pattern, and then reassemble it properly. And since replicator tech is an outgrowth of transporter tech, I have a hard time understanding how this could be the case.

[Peregrine]

In one of the early NextGen episodes there was a vaccine that was "too complex" to be replicated, and so it had to be acquired through trade.

The problem with this is they showed the sample being beamed up to the ship, so obviously it's not too complex for the transporter to be able to completely break it down, store its pattern, and then reassemble it properly. And since replicator tech is an outgrowth of transporter tech, I have a hard time understanding how this could be the case.

Your mistake is in expecting technological consistency/continuity in Star Trek. Set that expectation aside, and you'll have no problems.

[Michael Hopcroft]

One wonders (again) how you can have kind of RPG plotting in a world where GM fiat is so rampant.

Ideally in a Prime Directive adventure you would put the PCs in situations where they would find their ubertech was not enough to resolve the situation or get them out of the mess they're in -- that they'd need to use their wits. However, if you can get anything or anyone you need for the job beamed down from the ship, how is that going to happen?

It also wouldn't be a TOS campaign without opporuntities to use your training from "The James T. Kirk School of Computer Repair" and the like.

[Seenar]

One wonders (again) how you can have kind of RPG plotting in a world where GM fiat is so rampant.

Ideally in a Prime Directive adventure you would put the PCs in situations where they would find their ubertech was not enough to resolve the situation or get them out of the mess they're in -- that they'd need to use their wits. However, if you can get anything or anyone you need for the job beamed down from the ship, how is that going to happen?

It also wouldn't be a TOS campaign without opporuntities to use your training from "The James T. Kirk School of Computer Repair" and the like.

Having run several of these games, I can tell you the first thing I do in planning an adventure is how to deal with the ship and its transporters. Then I write the rest of the story. (One thing is to use the SFB transporters, not TNG. You cannot use them to beam bombs into ships, or strip a ship of crew).

Now, how does one do that?

Well, Prime Teams are meant to operate on their wits, without support. The idea is to send them in and let the ship be engaged. It is easy to send the ship away on some mission or another. Or to have political complications that keep it at bay/less than active. Or, have the ship get attacked/compromised in some way (think how often that was an issue in TOS).

The one thing my players feared was hearing me say:
"Oh, y'all will have full access to the ship this adventure".

They knew this meant their foe/problem would be so scary that having the ship was not going to help alot.

[SteelDoom]

That is one of my biggest beefs with TNG... okay, we don't use 'money'... but the officers play POKER?!?!?!?!

Poker without meaningful stakes is *BORING*!!!!!!!!!!!

So what do they play for??? The right to spank Troi?

What does she play for??? The right to dress up Worf in baby clothes???

-holodeck time
-replicator energy allotment
-staff rosters, including shore leave
-one up man ship
-A small closed coin amount. Say 1000 pieces total amongst all the players.
-They are also socially advanced enough that they may not play "to win" but for the social dynamic that poker allows...

Who knows

[Michael Hopcroft]

-holodeck time
-replicator energy allotment
-staff rosters, including shore leave

And since Will Riker, the most enthusastic poker player on the Enterprise-D, was in charge of all those things as First Officer, he could indeed deliver on all of those things. Problem being that he didn't always win -- the core gang became darn savvy over the years.

-one up man ship
-A small closed coin amount. Say 1000 pieces total amongst all the players.
-They are also socially advanced enough that they may not play "to win" but for the social dynamic that poker allows...

This is the more questionable assertion; Starfleet may have theoretically been a beacon of enlightenment, but the Enterprise crew usually didn't behave like one.

[tgrandjean]

*chuckles* Well, technically at least Prime Directive isn't linked to Trek beyond TOS so....
Anyway, just amusing myself imagining adapting the SFB Doomsday Ed. to Hero.... On the bright side; plenty of ships. On the down side; you think people are intimidated by 5th ed?

... Go Kzinti!

[David Johnston]

What is low end when you have replicators, though?

Pretty much all it can be is the actual physical dimensions of your space.

Well no. At least not the way that replicators were supposed to work originally. The idea behind the replicators is that they used transporter technology to "beam" atoms into specific molecules and macroscopic configurations.

What that means first of all, is that they couldn't use replicators to transmute elements. The resolution wasn't good enough and the energy investment involved in severing subatomic bonds was too high. Therefore what you could replicate was dependant on your available raw materials.

Additionally how faithful the replications would turn out to be would be dependant on how much computer memory and processing power the peasant has. Replicators do introduce errors, ones that can be detected with a tricorder scan as in the TNG episode where the Klingons think that the Federation is giving weapons to rebels. The differences betwen low and high resolution would be subtle, but it doesn't take much to make a noticeable difference to the taste of something, for example.

Incidentally that's why you can transport something you can't replicate. The transporter just moves the atoms of the transported item as a unit without trying to rearrange their molecular bonds.


I have to admit I've wondered about the economics and such of the Federation; there do seem to be a lot of contradictions:

Kirk to Spock: "Are you trying to get yourself killed? Do you have any idea how much Starfleet has invested in you?"
Spock starts to quote a figure, and Kirk cuts him off.

Picard states that mankind has moved beyond material wealth, and says that money, as such, doesn't exist any more.

Yet later on we have all kinds of references to and uses of gold-pressed latinum which sure as heck seems to act like money.


Well the first thing to remember is that latinum had nothing to do with mankind. That was the Ferengi currency and earth-humans were only interested in it to the degree they had to deal with Ferengi.

The second thing to remember is that Picard is a big bald headed liar.
It's like asking a Soviet military officer from the seventies about prostitution or drug addiction in the People's Paradise. You can't trust him to give a straight answer. There are in fact quite a few indicators that even the TNG Federation has money to all intents and purposes. Apparently they just pretend not to for reasons analogous to why we pretend that there's no such thing as a secretary or a typist these days. It's all "executive assistants" and "keyboarding" these days. So they don't have "money" ostensibly, but they do have "credit accounts" that any modern person would recognise as being bank accounts that people draw on to pay for things like trips on passenger spaceships, holosuite time, and computer access.

However that's not to say they are entirely the same. For one thing they aren't convertible into foreign currencies because those are "money" and the Federation "doesn't have money". Therefore any extra-Federation trade has to go through the government, and in fact the government is very possibly the only legal employer you can have on Earth. Thus you end up with people like Vash who can't (or won't) earn the price of a passage offworld, perhaps because they don't like what the government offers them for career choices, and end up swindling a Ferengi to escape.

However little of this applies to TOS which admitted that Starfleet was military and had hard currency even.

[Seenar]

*chuckles* Well, technically at least Prime Directive isn't linked to Trek beyond TOS so....
Anyway, just amusing myself imagining adapting the SFB Doomsday Ed. to Hero.... On the bright side; plenty of ships. On the down side; you think people are intimidated by 5th ed?

... Go Kzinti!

If you look at the data in my link, you will see I put a Kzinti Doctor on Board the USS Kennesaw


http://www.seenar.com/games/primedirective/prime.html

Look under Setting