BY LETTER
Scout Base
Port facility for the support, maintenance, and repair of scout vessels, usually located many light years from the nearest settled system or colony, let alone the nearest wormhole terminus. Most large empires maintain a variety of scout bases scattered throughout the periphery of known space.
Scout bases tend to be very basic asteroidal or moon installations equipped with basic facilities for fuelling and for maintenance activities oriented toward ships of mass 1000 tonnes or less. They will generally be crewed by a small complement of turingrade aioids. The tremendous isolation makes psychological conditions unfavourable for most bionts, and even many vecs.
In addition to the maintenance of scout ships, some of the larger (and higher AI crewed) scout bases also have administrative and other responsibilities. In many remote regions many light years from the well-traveled Wormhole Nexus, the Scout Bases serve as a waystation for ships carrying dispatches and templates from the civilized worlds, have responsibility for cartography of the local subsector, and for contact and liaison activities with any newly discovered or rediscovered cultures, societies, and races. In a sense, a scout base is the embassy for the archailect empires in the sparser regions of the Outer Volumes and on the Periphery.
Scout bases tend to be very basic asteroidal or moon installations equipped with basic facilities for fuelling and for maintenance activities oriented toward ships of mass 1000 tonnes or less. They will generally be crewed by a small complement of turingrade aioids. The tremendous isolation makes psychological conditions unfavourable for most bionts, and even many vecs.
In addition to the maintenance of scout ships, some of the larger (and higher AI crewed) scout bases also have administrative and other responsibilities. In many remote regions many light years from the well-traveled Wormhole Nexus, the Scout Bases serve as a waystation for ships carrying dispatches and templates from the civilized worlds, have responsibility for cartography of the local subsector, and for contact and liaison activities with any newly discovered or rediscovered cultures, societies, and races. In a sense, a scout base is the embassy for the archailect empires in the sparser regions of the Outer Volumes and on the Periphery.
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev (inspired by Traveller Library)
Initially published on 31 December 2001.
Initially published on 31 December 2001.
