Message Systems on Ship

The first thing you need to know when planning out the uses and rooms needed for the Communications Department is how your species relays messages. Modern ships use variations of email for both personal correspondences and official messages. Many science fiction tv shows or movies show audio and video messages sent through space. Often those messages are viewed only in people’s private quarters, according to science fiction shows, but can be routed to any console if it’s an official or live message. In modern times the only way to get a live message on ship is to call someone over the telephone. Otherwise email works and can be accessed at almost any computer consol through individual logins. I say almost any consol because there are two networks onboard. The first system is for anyone to use and is internet as everyone knows it, with access to Google, online banking, Wikipedia, and some email sites. Each ship has different restrictions on sites like Facebook, blogging sites, porn, known bad sites, and chat rooms that it could be hurtful to the ship or illegal to access but each ship has occasional access to this network. The other network is for official military business and basically has its own version of Wikipedia that tells things like ship capabilities and locations of ships as well as official email for things like ship’s orders. It is the job of people in the Comms Department to maintain the network’s connection, restrictions, and people’s profiles so everyone with permission can access the network safely.