This is part of an ongoing series about the preparations I've made to
run Mongoose's revised edition of the Bayern campaign for 2300AD.
Spoilers for Interlude 4.
MET 594 days and we've had five (!) more advances since
Disaster. Obviously we're eliding a lot of unremarkable time here,
but we've jumped from 11 months (Disaster) to a year and 8 months on
the mission timer. While there's no specific "just stuff happening
aboard ship" section. this seems like a good time to explore any
personal relationships that may have got started (including
interactions with Archimedes), and perhaps to talk about daily life on
board in general.
Crew aboard Entdecker probably aren't being rotated through the
suspended animation berths, though scientists may be (particularly
planetary scientists; astronomers are probably conducting Extremely
Long Baseline studies). But anyone awake is definitely being
encouraged to spend time on Bayern or the other ships to get their
dose of gravity conditioning, Zero-G DNAMs or not, which means that
there's plenty of opportunity for face-to-face socialising outside the
immediate 20-odd person complement. (Also as a larger ship Bayern
simply has space for better recreational facilities, like the zero-G
athletics area in Cargo Bay 4, just forward of fuel storage and the
"A" spin coupler.)
As for the base itself: hard numbers always seem to be a bit lacking.
Mean surface temperature on the planet is 60 K, but the base is down
around 20 K at the entrance (is near-permanent shadow), rising to
about 23 K at the power plant. The full warming cycle will bring the
base up to 80 K, but the PCs should be gone well before that happens.
One note on suit selection: while the adventure mentions the Svalinn
and the Erkunder as options, the Erkunder requires the Drive (Walker)
skill to operate — which my PCs have tended not to have, whereas
everyone on the mission should have the basics of Vacc Suit.
The mission doesn't have any surface drones capable of activity at
these temperatures (the microdrones that my players tend to favour
will freeze solid in minutes), but they can still be carried and
dropped off as radio relays. The usual 24 hour endurance will be
halved or worse, but that should be no problem given the ten hour time
limit on site.
If PCs are hesitant to restart the base, their superiors may
reasonably encourage them: the amount of information available without
feeding in power is very limited, and the xenologists will be Most
Unhappy not to learn more. At a game level, it's more fun if this
happens, though of course it won't break anything if not.