Rim world story clarification

[Nocebo]

I think that destroyed prison ship idea works really well too. Perhaps this back story should become part of modular AI story teller system. Where you pick things like your background. Being a crashed colony ship, or a crashed prison transport should have different effects on your story as well. Then you can add in certain higher priorities for the AI story teller to focus on. If you're a crashed prison ship. Once word get's out the number of bounty hunters/raiders should increase for the price that's on your heads. Where as if you are a crashed colony ship. They might choose to steal your supplies instead. And when word get's out of a new colony, you might just get more random colonists that wish to join freely.

[EarthyTurtle]

The trader thing isn't weird at all if you just realize how big space is.

To have a trade ship, it has to pass between different parts of the planet at least, or maybe different plants in the system. That's a journey of less than a day to perhaps a few months.

To travel to another star, you have to travel for decades. The distances are thousands of times greater. It's a totally different kind of space travel.

So basically, asking why you can't hitch a ride with a traders is like saying: Hey, you're trapped in Bangkok, why don't you just hitch a ride home with a passing food vendor? Even if he was willing to take you, he's not nearly equipped for the kind of travel you need.

To us on Earth it seems like space is just space. And fictions like Star Trek and Star Wars make it seem like that. But when you understand the proportions of space, you realize that there is space, and then there is interstellar space, and they're as different as a park pond and the Pacific ocean.

I was just thinking this, sure you could travel up to the traders and you could settle on their ship to travel home. But who's to say their going 'home'? Your stuck on an unknown rimworld, previously unexplored to knowledge with no major colonies. The trader was probably just passing through the system when they got your call.

Additionally even if they were willing to take you on-board to their destination, you're among the outer planets. In order to travel between the outer-rim worlds (which would likely take decades to century's at light speed) you'd need a sarcophagus. Perhaps those traders simply don't have enough onboard. No doubt they might not even have a life support system capable of operating for that long, food supplies, or even oxygen. Besides slavers I doubt many of these traders are equip to take on travelers. You wouldn't wanna jump on a slavers vessel, think about it, you'd have to jump in their sarcophagus' and who knows what they could do to you then...

So essentially that is a good explanation of why you can't just simply hitch a ride on passing traders. It's not that their not willing, it's simply that their ships were never designed to handle additional people for long voyages. Your ship was a colony transport, built for this kind of thing. It stands to reason in-order to escape you'd need to build a ship capable of lightspeed and housing sarcophagus technology from scratch.

[Galileus]

That's a very solid argumentation there. Add to it the fact that they have no "home" anymore - god only knows how long they've travelled by now and trip back will only double that number (or even quadruple it, if traders would first need to drop them down in a hub). The money they gathered in colony may barely cover the transport price, and they would be dropped off as beggars and simple workers under someone else's word. Being the low-lifes, they would be the ones to face any raids as well - they are simply better off on their own, when they can make the decisions and look for each other.

This could be added to starting text and clarification is there. Mention, that even to have hopes of getting a transport they would need to get something to trade in return and even then by the time they reach their destination they would be left with nothing.

[Matty]

What i'd like to see, personally, is either a random story-line beginning written for many scenarios or stories to go with each storyteller i.e. "Robbed an interstellar bank" - start with $$$ but more raiders. "Escaped prison" - dangerous traits, in chains for first day.