Ensign Kane: This is the food replicator, and your computer terminal.
Scotty: Good Lord, man, where have you put me?
Scotty: Bigger? In my day, even an Admiral wouldn't have had such quarters on a starship. You know, I remember a time we had to transport the Dohlman of Elaas. You never heard anyone whine and complain so much about quarters as she did.
Kane: The holodecks, Ten Forward, and the gymnasium are all at your disposal. The computer can tell you how to find them. Until we issue you a commbadge, just use one of these panels if you need anything.
Scotty: You know, these quarters remind me of a hotel room on Argelius. Oh, now there is a planet. Everything a man wants right at his fingertips. Of course, on the first visit, I got into a wee bit of trouble.
Kane: Excuse me, sir but I have to return to duty.
Scotty: Oh. Well then. Thank you.
The Empire has always gone for opulence, style and quality with no expense spared. Their capital ships are not just warships, but also serve as roving embassies or giant yachts for their wealthy and powerful owners. Internally they are luxurious, at least in those parts used for entertaining, with the internal rotating ring providing comfortable artificial gravity for ambassadorial dinner parties. Guests would have little indication they were in space, let alone aboard a powerful warship.
— The Art of Elite Dangerous
General Systems Vehicles were like encapsulated worlds. They were more than just very big spaceships; they were habitats, universities, factories, museums, dockyards, libraries, even mobile exhibition centers. They represented the Culture—they were the Culture. Almost anything that could be done anywhere in the Culture could be done on a GSV. They could make anything the Culture was capable of making, contained all the knowledge the Culture had ever accumulated, carried or could construct specialized equipment of every imaginable type for every conceivable eventuality, and continually manufactured smaller ships: General Contact Units usually, warcraft now. Their complements were measured in millions at least. They crewed their offspring ships out of the gradual increase in their own population. Self-contained, self-sufficient, productive and, in peacetime at least, continually exchanging information, they were the Culture's ambassadors, its most visible citizens and its technological and intellectual big guns. There was no need to travel from the galactic backwoods to some distant Culture home-planet to be amazed at impressed by the stunning scale and awesome power of the Culture; a GSV could bring the whole lot right up to your front door.
