Right. I have posted my standard rules of play to the first reserved post in this thread.<br/><br/>Please read them and PM me if there is anything there you think is not acceptable?<br/><br/>There are only two rules that I will not negotiate on, and they are rules two and ten.<br/><br/>Getting back to the topic in hand, I'm sure we're all itching to get on with it, so I'm going to make a ruling on the subject of the society.<br/><br/>I think that thousands are too many.<br/><br/>This is a last resort punishment for the worst offenders - or at least that is how it was designed. The reason innocent people and minor offenders get sent here is because the miscarriage of justice is so huge that to admit it would be a crime against the Empire!<br/><br/>The entire population of the world could be measured in thousands, so I think the population of each settlement should be measured in hundreds<br/><br/>Remember that these are frontier mining towns, not metropolises. If we go with the "everyone must dig there quota or starve, and we have a thousand people in town, a lot of them are going to starve because the most people who can work a mine face at any one time is one! The test would be disposing of the spoil, shoring up the shaft, sorting out the ore, getting it to the surface, etc... but for that we are looking at about fifty people at most.<br/><br/>Say there are four shifts of seven hours each in the 21 hour day, that means that each mine needs 200 people to operate it. Put three mines per settlement and that is six hundred.<br/><br/>If you have four thousand, that requires twenty mines to keep everyone busy. That is a lot, even for an area rich in ores. With that number of faces, the area would very quickly become unstable. Remember this is ice and not rock, too!<br/><br/>Plus, there are no mothers, no school teachers, no police, no fire brigade, no shop keepers, no bankers, no accountants, no lawyers, etc... Everyone goes down the mine!<br/><br/><strong>However:</strong><br/><br/>Not everyone digs!<br/><br/>As I said, there can only be one person at the face, lying on her back on the ice, swinging a pick to cut the mineral out of the seam. A mine can have more than one seam following tunnel, of course, but that counts (for the purposes of this post) as a separate mine.<br/><br/>Digging is the lowest job.<br/>The next lowest job is sorting and packing. This inmate is right behind the digger, and pulls the ore and ice out from where she has dug it, sorts it and puts it into two different trucks. When a truck is full it is taken away by the "pit pony" and transported up to the surface. There will be several "ponies" per shaft. *giggles as Haibane's eyes light up*<br/><br/>Behind those digging out the minerals will be those who widen the shaft and shore it up.<br/><br/>On the surface, the best jobs of the lot will be those who dispose of the spoil (favoured subs) and those who sort and grade the ore (The bosses)<br/><br/>The ore is graded and sorted and then transported to the shuttle bins. The bin registers the amount of each grade of ore placed in and transmits this to the orbital control centre (which is an AI). The AI knows who is on which shift at each mine and allocates food privilidges according to shifts meeting their quotas rather than individuals.<br/><br/>The suit knows which shift it is on and is informed whether its occupant is on a shift that has met, exceeded or fallen short of quota. Meals provided automatically by the kitchen are graded by taste and quantity. Fall short and your shift gets less food. Exceed and you get food that actually tastes of something!<br/><br/>This gives us the hierarchical structure, as well as the "all hands to the plough" ethos.<br/><br/>Oh by the way, if food is pilfered on the way from the shuttle to the kitchen, the system will know and will shut down all food withdrawals until the guilty party is identified and deprived of whatever food was pilfered!<br/><br/>The suits cannot be removed. They are not like a second skin, but more like being coated in a layer of plastic.<br/><br/>At Haibane's request, I will renege on the boots and gloves. The suit is smart and will harden and thicken under the soles of the feet and on the palms of the hands when necessary.<br/><br/>How does that grab everyone? Any serious objections?