[gurps] Brainships in GURPs 3ed

[Classified TS/BBR]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Zan Lynx" <zlynx at acm.org>
To: <copeab at yahoo.com>; "The GURPSnet mailing list" <gurpsnet-l at sjgames.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 01, 2008 1:47 PM
Subject: Re: [gurps] Brainships in GURPs 3ed


> On Wed, 2008-04-30 at 18:28 -0700, Brandon Cope wrote:
>> --- On Wed, 4/30/08, tprist <tprist at clearwire.net> wrote:
>>
>> > I have a question for all the Gearheads out there,
>> > Especially either Onno,
>> > or Brandon.  Has anyone tried to do a Brainship similar to
>> > the ones in the
>> > Anne McCaffery universe in either GURPs Vehicle 3ed, or
>> > Space 3ed?
>>
>> Sorry, I don't read McCaffery. No idea what a Brainship is.
>
> Here's a quick summary:
>
> Human beings who are born with serious problems or have been too badly
> damaged are put into "shells".  These are full life-support systems and
> neural interface units.  These shell-people are then used to run ships,
> space stations or other things.  They are cyborg brains, sort of.
>
> In the books there's quite a bit about how some shell people are treated
> as machines and don't care for it.  There's also a romance between a
> shell-person woman and her "brawn" (the guy who does physical stuff for
> the ship).  Of course, nothing can come of it: they are forever
> separated.
>
> There's a thing invented in a later book: a remote control android body
> for shell-people, and of *course* they use it. :)

Since Shellpeople exist in a world where Brain-transplant/Full-body Cyborgs 
apparently don't, I'd probably define the "shell" istelf as an Automed 
(VE68) plus Neural Interface as a minimum. to do it properly you'd want to 
design a minimalist vehicle around it (Wheels, Robot arms, Auditory & Visual 
Sensors) & call the entire thing the "shell" (IIRC the use of the Neural 
interface should let you rule that the space occupied by the Automed is the 
Crew Quarters, Life Support (ESU functions), & Crew "position"), with 
commlinks both for communication & linking into whatever the larger vehicle 
or installation the Shellperson is in charge of.