>>Outa curiosity, is there a definition of what makes a vessel a mining
ship? (I would assume it's more than just a large cargo hold and a
weapon to break up the chunks of rock, but I could be wrong.) Or is that
something that we want to leave up to the designer? (I don't mind either
way, just want to make sure I'm not missing something.)<<
Traveller doesn't seem to offer much. The Seeker's mining aspects are
vague to non-existent. I don't own that Tarsus Beltstrike game so I
don't know what it has to offer. That's part of the reason for this
contest. :)
When I initially brought this up, I got a lot of feedback from the ml
regarding the use of mining lasers and alternative delivery systems.
That helped to flesh out what goes on. I didn't want to overspecify the
requirements as I wanted designers to have a lot of freedom with this. I
didn't know if people wanted to utilize robots to assist with the
collection of the material or have human driven systems. In the case of
armaments, would it be better to have the main ship unarmed with an off
the shelf fighter (or similarly armed small craft) provide cover? Would
a massive vessel with onboard processing be better as it could go
straight to target markets rather than relying on a distributed network
with a central processing station?
So yeah, the definition of a mining ship is going to be loosely defined
as one with a large cargo hold and something to extract useful metals
from raw chunks of rock. :)
\_/
DED