Businesses on Federation Starbase

In the shows, we primarily see life on a Starship. I imagine that Starfleet officers (much like contemporary military) willingly accept certain limitations on their privacy. Also “Computer, locate…” locates the combadge, not the actual person. But I see your point. You also have internal sensors where you can essentially spy on anyone.

I imagine civilian life if different. On DS9, civilians don’t wear combadges so they can’t be located (unless the plot demands it of course). And DS9 does not seem to have internal sensors where you can look into any living quarter, but I think they do record who comes and goes.

I imagine that under Cardassian management, the living quarters on Terok Nor absolutely had internal sensors to look into all the living quarters, with the possible exception of Gul Dukat’s quarters (or, anyway, THOSE sensors would have been installed separately and would transmit straight back to the Obsidian Order).

I’m quite sure that the Cardassians recorded everywhere in the station. Some twisted minds even thought about making a holo reality show of it. A father, his wife and his 3 daughters, Kyhim, Cl’Ohe, Couh’Ourtn’Hey But, the father of the family they thought about was an advocate that was able to release a murderer already declared guilty. He was executed. They thought about replacing him, they were indecisive about the cast. Luckily for the universe,the station was taken by the Bajorans before they recast his role. Some say thar recording exist, maybe completed by a mad computer, deep inside the holodeck computer

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It’s unbelievable to me that Saturday Night Live never did a “Keeping Up With the Cardassians” skit

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That’d be a niche thing to do, even for Star Trek fans. The Kardashians weren’t really a thing till the early 2000s, well after DS9’s run ended.

Heroes & Icons did a “Keeping Up with the Cardassians” commercial for DS9 to advertise DS9. It was no where as funny and good as the MeTV one that mixes Star Trek and the Andy Griffith show fotage.

My favorite is the one with Monk crossed with Star Trek.

As far as money goes, the big thing that keeps getting pushed around is the idea that Starfleet officers aren’t paid, and that nobody works for money as a motivation. So, what I expect is there is some kind of Federation Credit that is a currency, and is exchanged for good and services. But there’s also a UBI type effect where you don’t really have to pay for your house, or your food, at least on Earth. And I think that’s an important distinction, everything that a character says about money in Star Trek is a direct reference to Earth, rather than the UFP as a whole.

In generally I’d assume most core worlds of the UFP are pretty much in the same boat, Vulcans don’t need to work to pay for college, or rent, or lunch. They work because they want to. Same on Andor and Tellar Prime. There are references to the Bank of Bolias, which appears to be on a member world.

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Not entirely sure but didn’t Star Fleet personal have Replicator Rations as a form of currency? Maybe they can trade those Rations for Latinum to settle their debts.

There also an episode of DS9 Season5 Episode 25 called “In the cards” Jake and Nog spend most of the episode trying to buy a baseball card for Jakes dad.

Also found this might be helpful on Memory Alpha Money | Memory Alpha | Fandom they reference a bunch of episodes.

I only remember “replicator rations” coming up in some Voyager episodes - they were one of the very few nods the show really made to being in uncharted space with very limited material support. I don’t think they were supposed to represent any kind of routine economic activity.

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This kind of subject is a particular interest of mine, mhicwombat, and while the subject has undergone some pretty exhaustive discussion/examination already, the following is what I’d put in as discerning points for the kind of setting you’re considering:

The key point, for me, is how far this starbase is located from standard Federation trade routes. I would think that Starfleet, and the starbase commander in particular, is going to be concerned about a) how do we facilitate trade and advance the Federation’s presence/reputation in this location, and b) how much grey/black market activity are we willing to tolerate? The American colonies thrived in a condition of benign neglect, meaning that people could engage in creative smuggling that, as long as all participants agreed on the trade conditions, people made profit and conditions advanced. I would imagine the Federation/Starfleet would keep a pretty close watch and have undercover agents monitoring what comes in/goes out - and that part in itself could be a pretty neat story hook, thinking about it - and turn a nod and a wink to items that aren’t exactly harmful/illegal in and of themselves, but that haven’t had proper tariffs or duties paid on them.

As many others have already mentioned, replicator technology would, in itself, be a high-demand item. While the Federation would, I imagine, pretty much give away the specs freely to any (probably advanced industrial) culture that could handle its presence, the fact is that such equipment would, reasonably, require a hell of a lot of maintenance, and the Federation would have to be aware that certain predatory cultures, such as the Ferengi, might possess the technology, but provide its benefits to others only if they were given the opportunity for capitalist profit in doing so; and this in itself could also be a gaming hook for such a setting.

In any case, a highly interesting game setting proposition, and hoping matters turn out well for you and your crew.

This is one I’ve struggled with. So I got my wife, who is more into Trek lore than I am to help. The Federation provides good, shelter and basic entertainment. The specialty items we buy in life are not covered by the Federation. Hence, Crusher’s bolt of cloth or Dr. MCCoy’s black market Romulan Ale.
I like to think of a station like an airport. Look at the variety of businesses at an airport. See how they reflect the local culture (a Harry Caray’s bar in Midway Airport in Chicago). Adjust this to create the culture of your station. Like MCCoy’s Romulan Ale and Quark’s everything, there will be a black market. This is a healthy aspect of an economy. It means people have money to spend on things not readily available and cost effective. Work that into your station’s life.
Garrett

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Replicator rations are specific to Voyager since the replications seem to be a literally energy to matter machine. And Voyager was always worried about energy.

DS9 explicitly calls out the auction not being within Federation space as well.

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This reminds me of that same episode “In the Cards” of this exchange:

Classic.

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As for me, I ignore the whole “post-scarcity” premise since it’s contradicted throughout Star Trek media and makes zero sense on any level. But I also like a lot of FASA material better than what Paramount or CBS have come up with.

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I have actually established in my game that paradise/post-scarcity is only true on Federation core words. The more you venture into the outskirts, the more “pre-post-scarcity” it gets, with many border words being essentially futuristic old west style frontier worlds.

This gets especially highlighted post-Dominion War, where Starfleet pulls many of its forces from border patrol to secure the core worlds.

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Clearly there has to be some form of remuneration to Starfleet officers, because they talk about it. Credit=Energy Credit. Even Captain Janeway had to ration her coffee intake, until they found that famous nebula! (Yeah, I know…it is a game, so create your own!)

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FASA had some great stuff, but I could never like many of their so called star ship designs. The original hull designs actually had pretty good balance. If you take a Enterprise model and place the rear of the saucer (the impulse engine) on your finger, it will balance. The engineering hull and the warp nacelles are offset and the impulse engine is at the balancing point. There was a model rocket kit of the Enterprise that actually flew well. But a lot of the FASA ships were. for lack of a better term, lopsided. Form follows function. Every generation of seagoing ships always resembled the earlier generations as technology changed. If you have models for the last several hundred years, you can easily see than progression and where major advancements changed the rules. FASA just plopped stuff out based on the “cool factor” while most of the other trek games tried to make things look like there was an underlying reason.

I tend to say that the “non-currency” part (not necessarily post-scarcity which I consider different than not having money) is centered on Starfleet, not everyone. Even with all of your basic needs met (food/shelter/etc) and free, there will always be something that will be considered “wealth” and there will always be an exchange of services. Some way to determine who gets the items that are not unlimited and easily provided. There may only be one or two ultra powerful 200 kilometer wide sensor arrays, and you have a couple million scientists who’s work is the most important. Who gets the time? Or does everyone get 1.3 minutes a month?

Star Fleet personnel do not live in the same world as most of the “regular” people. Just because the Enterprise has all the cool stuff, doesn’t mean everyone else does. Starfleet has the elite members of the Federation and the ships they serve on are directly supported by the entire Federation. They have the best of everything. All through the various trek series (TOS, TNG, VOY, ENT, DS9) you constantly see merchants and traders. Not just non-humans, but humans as well. Thieves and smugglers as well.
We even see rebellions. It only seems like the Federation is a rainbows and unicorns because the show centers on Starfleet and everyone assumes Starfleet is how the entire Federation is.

Oh, I really only ever liked/used the Nelson-class scout, Larson-class destroyer, Anton-class cruiser, and Loknar-class frigate when it came to their “original series” designs for Star Fleet.
Nelson_class_schematic

They all seemed to me to fit the aesthetic of the TV show. Almost all the others looked hideous and/or ridiculous to me. Plus I never thought there needed to be so many different classes of starship–but I always ran a “small UFP” Star Trek based on what we saw on the series where it (to me) never seemed like the UFP had hundreds of starships gallivanting around the galaxy as was depicted in later media.

But I was referring mainly to their adventure modules and sourcebooks being more interesting and imaginative to me than the various series and movies we got post-The Undiscovered Country.

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Man that Nelson scout looks so much like the Franz Joseph destroyer. Beautiful. Yeah… a lot of the FASA stuff looks way off. Although personally I think some of the ships in TNG and after look offputting too, like I never thought the TNG klingon/romulan ships looked quite right.

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