When Worlds Collide

Summary of the Great Lighthouse
The Western hemisphere is mostly the Fleet docks. While Fleets are capable of self-producing replacement equipment, these are usually of relatively lower quality since they're produced on demand (hand-made, so to speak) rather than through specialized assembly lines. So, once every 1-10 years a Fleet must return to the homeworld to stock up on fresh parts, lest their ships fall apart from constant jury rigging. Thus there are so many docking ports, so the shipyards can handle the big 'rush' of repairing and rebuilding hundreds of ships within a short period. The pyramids scattered around are a combination of sensor domes, AI-based traffic controllers, and receiving terminals for visiting ship crew. They are connected to other aspects of the planet through underground tunnel networks that run throughout the planetoid itself.

Above you see the Hanging Gardens, which can be moved to follow the sun. They are used to farm raw solar energy itself via solar panels, and produce food (either fresh or preserved in ration form) for incoming fleets. Large plants such as trees are usually too bulky too grow en masse on Freespacer ships, which makes fruit is somewhat of a delicacy. The large surface area of each of these satellites allows them to be grown in abundance, providing visiting Fleets with a welcome relieve from their algae and vegetable diet. Fruit grown between Fleet visits are often used to produce preserved rations, which will last for years without expiring due to the highly sterile atmosphere the Freespacers live and grow their food in.

The Eastern hemisphere is the industrial district and SI city. Since the intelligent machines themselves have no need to go out and look for ice deposits, they can actually afford to urbanize and settle onto a barren planet without endangering their own well-being. Thus the overwhelming majority of the planet's population is machine-based. The "cities" are primarily composed of computers and servers used as the core of the Free State's massive information networks and its Synthetic Intelligence. There is also a large workforce of Automata to operate the shipyards themselves, as using organic workers would still consume water in the idle times between Fleet visits, even if they weren't actually working.

Finally, you see the Great Lighthouse itself, the monument after which the system was named. Its a sort of beacon that acts as a communication hub. As the planetoid is the only non-nomadic aspect of the Free State, its orbit and location are predictable. This allows Fleets to calculate and aim sub-luminous communication signals over many light years, without the worry of their target moving away from the signal path. The Lighthouse, however, can transmit without such problems. Since the Lighthouse is the core of Free State information networks, it constantly receives updated vessel courses from all operational Fleets.

Scattered sensors on the planetoid absorb the incoming signals, and the Lighthouse retransmits them on various bands of the EM spectrum. This ability to vary the wavelength of signals allows it to more easily penetrate through various stellar obstacles, such as gas clouds or asteroids. Alternatively, the high powered communications and sensor equipment also allows to double as a electromagnetic telescope, allowing it to scan for ice deposits and then direct the movement of Fleets accordingly.

Click to expand...