Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Nov 18, 2013 8:26:15 GMT -6
I'm working on a story idea that involves smuggling weapons across the border with Cardassia, and it's forced me to think through some of the small details. I thought a discussion might help me out.
1) In Star Trek's time there's obviously still need for trade and cargo shipments especially in small border colonies. But in a replicator based society, what kinds of things would be traded? For that matter what kinds of things apart from weapons would the Federation consider contraband?
2) How would you go about detecting smuggling? Do you scan every ship that comes into orbit? Wouldn't that be considered an invasion of privacy, since what the Federation considers contraband might not be in other cultures? And anyway, we've seen over and over that there are ways to circumvent a sensor scan. Would it make more sense to actually board the ship and search visually? What if you found, say, Klingon aphrodisiacs, but the captain said they weren't planning to unload them at this port, anyway? Or would it make more sense to wait for the cargo to be unloaded on the planet, THEN inspect it?
3) As background, my tentative scenario involves a distant colony, population around 50,000, that has been hit by a volcanic eruption that forced 20,000 people to evacuate their homes. Ships are bringing in food and medical supplies (we're talking about ships from various places, even some from Cardassian space across the border), and the governor is worried that some people might smuggle weapons in the confusion.
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Akira
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Post by Akira on Nov 18, 2013 12:38:45 GMT -6
My impression of TMG era trade was one of either:
- Luxury goods such as Romulan Ale (which is legal post Dominion War) Spices, scents and as you said your self aphrodisiacs.
- What are essentially fossil fuels and resources, Deuterium (which is abundant in most areas but sparse to non existent in others such as desert and arid worlds, like Vulcan.) Dilithium and generic production ores, minerals and metals.
- The third, and likely the most noteworthy for you with your story is generic supply and relief. Medical supplies, building materials, industrial goods, self sealing stem-bolts xD and for disaster relief most definitely food in way of ration packs. Also disaster appropriate would be hazard clothing, power cells and heat lamps.
Most worlds are supposed to be colonies, we can safely assume often with populations under 250,000. It is in part explained in canon how this works. Colonies are prefabbed from specialized colonization ships then the building materials are brought in via cargo ships and buildings erected, infrastructure laid. The majority but not all of the resources for this is replicated but not planet side. To replicate mass quantities of anything or anything related to manufacture on a scale such as erecting a colony is all done by "Industrial Replicators" these things are massive beasts and colonies don't warrant having them. Earth only has 2.
There for you can imagine that almost anything too big for a conventional replicator to handle or that would require mass amounts of energy to produce is done else where on developed words and not colonies. This means you can assume anything bigger than a watermelon or anything the size of a watermelon that you need 100 of is not replicated on world and is either replicated else where or actually built in a factory.
Your question about customs is a little harder to answer. The federation does have a customs department as it where that has free reign to scan ships freely and search with probable cause but other than that I have no idea what to suggest.
Also if you're doing this story post Dominion War I'd leave the Cardassian's out of it. The Klingon garrisons seized Cardassian ships and installations. All of them.
Lastly; decide what your colony type is, industrial? Agricultural? Research station? Then assume that they can only produce for them selves one type of goods. In a disaster the production would slow or even cease. It should be easy then to figure out what people would need by envisioning it in reality.
Hope any of that helps.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Nov 21, 2013 9:00:35 GMT -6
The most interesting thing in your post is what you said about Cardassians. I haven't seen DS9 since it originally aired in the early 90s and even then I lost interest pretty quickly. So the only thing I know about the Dominian War is that it happened, period.
You seem to be saying that there is no Cardassia anymore, than the Klingon Empire permanently occupied all its planets and effectively absorbed it! I find this a little hard to take because last I heard Cardassia was big enough to give the Federation problems. But you would know better than I do.
If it's true, I guess my story is sunk. I can't picture anybody wanting to smuggle arms to the Klingon Empire, and that really doesn't leave anyone else unless I want to invent a new race.
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Luke
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Post by Luke on Nov 23, 2013 8:19:06 GMT -6
I think the way it works is you'd have to beam cargo down to a customs depot. Just bringing illegal goods within orbit makes your ship subject to search and seizure. There wold be customs people on the ground to inspect the cargo. Customs ships in orbit would just be looking for ships taht act suspicious like moving to the dark side of the planet or something.
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Akira
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Post by Akira on Nov 29, 2013 18:55:53 GMT -6
I think the way it works is you'd have to beam cargo down to a customs depot. Just bringing illegal goods within orbit makes your ship subject to search and seizure. There wold be customs people on the ground to inspect the cargo. Customs ships in orbit would just be looking for ships taht act suspicious like moving to the dark side of the planet or something. A fair, logical assumption.
To respond to Atoz, post Domimion War events starts to move out of Canon but thanks to the gaming industry some of it is explained or atleast hinted at.
Cardassia, as you say doesn't really exist anymore. Cardassia her self has a Klingon garrison as do a good deal of core systems where as the Federation handle some more of the humanitarian rebuilding. The Federation it's self though, along with the Romulan Star Empire have extreme war exhaustion and are trying to rebuild them selves, tje Klingon's however suffered no such problems and that is why the majority of Cardassian territory is "occupied" by the Empire. How the Cardassian Empire was divided up amongst the major 3 powers is not known but as an independent entity, the Cardassians are finished.
Try to keep in mind that with the exceptions of their fleet remnants of which surrendered to the combined Federation / Klingon / Romulan fleet, the Cardassian shipyards and ships and bases where utterly eliminated and the Dominion attempted to completely annihilate the population of Cardassia at the end as the founder could see defeat was clear and she blamed the Cardassians for it due to an ongoing planetary rebellion. The Dominion and Breen forces where allowed to leave unmolested by the Federation (and co) after the Dominion surrender but the Cardassians barley had a homeworld left at this point, let alone an empire as billions of people where dead on Cardassia by the end.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 6, 2013 9:17:58 GMT -6
I think the way it works is you'd have to beam cargo down to a customs depot. Just bringing illegal goods within orbit makes your ship subject to search and seizure. There wold be customs people on the ground to inspect the cargo. Customs ships in orbit would just be looking for ships taht act suspicious like moving to the dark side of the planet or something. That's helpful. Countries have a three-mile limit, and bringing anything illegal inside that limit is subject to confiscation. For a planet, the equivalent would probably be transporter or shuttlecraft range. And also there would be some things, like Orion slave girls or isolitic weapons, which are banned by interstellar treaty and subject to seizure even in deep space.
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Atoz 77
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Post by Atoz 77 on Dec 6, 2013 9:21:47 GMT -6
To respond to Atoz, post Domimion War events starts to move out of Canon but thanks to the gaming industry some of it is explained or atleast hinted at.
Cardassia, as you say doesn't really exist anymore. Cardassia her self has a Klingon garrison as do a good deal of core systems where as the Federation handle some more of the humanitarian rebuilding. The Federation it's self though, along with the Romulan Star Empire have extreme war exhaustion and are trying to rebuild them selves, tje Klingon's however suffered no such problems and that is why the majority of Cardassian territory is "occupied" by the Empire. How the Cardassian Empire was divided up amongst the major 3 powers is not known but as an independent entity, the Cardassians are finished.
Try to keep in mind that with the exceptions of their fleet remnants of which surrendered to the combined Federation / Klingon / Romulan fleet, the Cardassian shipyards and ships and bases where utterly eliminated and the Dominion attempted to completely annihilate the population of Cardassia at the end as the founder could see defeat was clear and she blamed the Cardassians for it due to an ongoing planetary rebellion. The Dominion and Breen forces where allowed to leave unmolested by the Federation (and co) after the Dominion surrender but the Cardassians barley had a homeworld left at this point, let alone an empire as billions of people where dead on Cardassia by the end.I see what you're saying. I don't play any online games, and as far as I'm concerned the only thing that's canon is what we saw on television. Having said that, anyone who writes fan fiction is eventually going to go beyond canon, and my interpretation is necessarily going to be different from anyone else's. It would make sense to me that the Cardassian empire broke up into smaller units (as the Soviet Union did), some of them under Klingon influence, some of the independent, some even joining the Federation. Which would explain why we see a Cardassian Starfleet officer in "All Good Things..."
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