 September 13, 2017 - 6:48am | Stuff like this happens in real world cities; would you use it or something different in your future setting? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 13, 2017 - 7:00am | I wonder if this is a problem everywhere or endemic of building on ancient infrastructure? I know a few civil engineers in the water resource management field. I'll ask around. -iggy |
September 13, 2017 - 7:05am | During heavy rain and storm surge the city of Portland, Me discharges sewage into the back cove. At low tide on a hot summer day the aroma is quite the thing along the walking path circling Back Cove. This is less "problem" and more a "color" accent to the setting. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 September 13, 2017 - 3:56pm | Sewage is not the term used in the field anymore. The proper term is Waste Water. First you have to identify what is in your waste water. In residential areas, most people think it is just flushed toilets but it is everything that goes down the drains. This can be made much worse by garbage disposal units which grind up food remains but not totally. The most common things which cause blockages to build up are coffee grinds, egg shells and sand which can get trapped in bends in pipes or at valve locations. BTW in most places waste water and storm drain runoff are two different systems. This is because waste water most be treated before it can be returned to the environment while storm runoff is just directed to places where it will not cause any problems. Oh and if industry is involved many of them have to treat their waste water before they can release it into the waste water system. Hope this is helpful. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
September 17, 2017 - 8:17pm | Ok, one of my friends replied back. Here's what he said and he manages a city that is mostly new systems, last 50 years. "The problem they have in London is flat slopes and the system was built
without the concept of manholes and hydraulic cleaning. Some of the big
cities have some similar old systems, but with most of the outfalls
(discharges) being required to go to Wastewater Treatment Plants, there
is also a push to clean lines more frequently. Most cities try to clean
their sewers annually and problem areas (hot spots) much more
frequently. But yes, grease is a huge problem. I have seen grease
balls come into treatment plants as large as 2 feet in diameter. I have
also seen it plug lines and take a couple of hours to hydrojet it
clear." So, I would think that SF cities will have the perpetual problem of grease. Likely they have robots that travel the water lines to constantly monitor and clean. -iggy |
September 18, 2017 - 1:04am | I was thinking that the SF setting answer would include robots going into the tunnels/sewer lines as standard operating procedure. However, when a problem arrises someone is going to have to go down there. Lets say an alien organism is feeding off of grease and waste and contributing to the problem? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 18, 2017 - 8:53am | Likely standard maintenance bots are small and not designed to deal with an attack. When some start coming back damaged and some go missing. The maintenance team correlates it with a location and goes to investigate. When one of the team members gets eaten then the "Ghostbusters" get called in and its adventure time for our PCs. First the police are called and they respond that it is not their job and tell the maintenance team to call an exterminator. When an exterminator is found that agrees to work the sewer for an extra fee, they go down again and the exterminator meets his end. Now the problem is news and the police are forced to act. They send some officers who beat a hasty retreat in front of the news cameras and this escalates it to the tactical response team. PCs could be this team or a private team that is needed to clean up the mess quietly over night while the media is distracted by the police preparing for their next big attempt. -iggy |
September 18, 2017 - 9:13am | Would PGC have built down town Port Loren? Perhaps PGC has the city services contract and they provide the team? Or better yet, Galactic Taskforce might have the city services contract. What we could use is a city service tunnel map that overlays the port Loren map. Maybe this could be done with Port Loren as background and at 20% tunnels are foreground and 100% I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
