I'm fleshing out the one of settings for a game, and need some suggestions about it. The overarching setting is a TL10 hard (except for ftl travel) science setting. The particular location is a set of space habitats, a fair distance from a dim star, which has no planets and little in the way resources (some comets, a bit of asteroid), except a perverse richness in the wormholes that are used for FTL travel. The setting contains a bunch of reasons that make the shipping of goods cheap: ignoring costs of getting off of, and back down to, a planet, the cost of shipping a container of cargo a few systems is about the same as shipping a container from China to the US today. Given the number neighbors Junction has, it's got a huge amount of traffic flowing through it, and over the thousand years or so Junction has been around, the habitats have grown to hold about 100 million people. They're mostly (90 or 95 million of them) in the main complex, which is amazingly big, and mostly non-rotating, and which is actually several thousand different habitats.
It's a corporate state. The corporation has a monopoly on cargo handling, on the supply of reaction mass, and collects a nominal (less than 0.01% of the declared value (but remember, there are huge freight volumes, over a 1000 ships/day)) tariff on goods transhipped. They have substantial interests in shipping line, and a bunch of other things. Owning a share entitles the owner to access to life-support, medical care, and education for children, and a share of the company's profits (the declared dividend is about $50K/yr). Citizenship is by owning a share, plus completion of 8 years of national service (some people who go into certain fields (star ship pilots, for instance) do 12.) starting at 17 to 19. The first two and half years of that service are education and screening to get people into suitable tracks. (Which are largely technical, but not entirely. The Junction Service schools turn out poets, painters, and politicians, as well as engineers, pilots, doctors, techs of all sorts, and business admin types.) Selection for, and completion of, certain programs (basically things that would get you a college degree) entitles the selectee to a half-share bonus; those with an extended service requirement can get a full-share bonus. the shares are transferable, so someone can buy residence rights (but not citizenship, unless they do service). Children of citizens receive a share at birth, which is held in trust until completion of national service. At death, one of the owner's shares is destroyed. So, I'm thinking what sort civil institutions a place like this is going to have. Some are obvious (and i know something about some of them). There's a military, which has limited ability to project force much beyond their borders; a customs service (Junction Starship Inspection) that also does coast guard sort of inspections of ships, search and rescue. How are police, fire, health, and other public safety likely to be arranged? -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
