comm system question

[Greylock]

I am not shure this question is going to make any sense so I will give a bit of background as to why the question is being asked first off and then the question itself. and I apologies upfront if this is in the wrong fourm.

I am a amateur 3d modeler and I have some of my work up in the galleries at renderosity. My newest project is working on a form of sci fi military / civilian installation , and I have to admit its fairly raw right now and mostly its just concept sketches I have on my pad next to my work station here at home.

The basis of the installation is part of a roleplaying game I am currently in (yes I admit I am a rpg geek) and the reason why I say a military / civilian population is because a cataclysm has happened on the planet it is located in and many civilian have had to be shepherd into it for there own safety sense most of the world itself is unsafe to inhabit due to hostiles.

Anyways onto the point now that some background has been said. right now I am working on the comminations tower, and through windows and such some of the interior at diffent levels of the tower can be seen or is planed to be seen during the final renders, and I would like to have some of the guts of the mechanism of the ftl communication systems to be seen in the diffent levels of the tower itself.

The plan for it so far is somewhat along the lines of this :

1. On the top of course is going to be the dish . and antenna of the system.

2 just below the dish and such is going to be the terminals and where some of the communication officers would be position. Incase the command and control (located in the main section of the complex) is compromised for reduncincy

but below this there is planed to have some areas which have interiors and I plan them to sort of be areas that are exposed at least to the interior for maintence.

But I would like to have some idea what parts should be there other then just funky looking machine that are some how relevant to the systems. what other relevant systems would you people guess would be apart of this kind of communication systems , you have your obvious dish which is the part that sends and receives the messages. of course lines powering the unit , and most likely I am figuring some kind of coolant for some of the systems would be nessicary (I am guessing something so high tech would need to be maintained at a even temp ) but what else would one guess would be in there ... I just want some ideas so when I am filling in the areas I have some ideas to bounce off with in my head. so I have some concept of what I am filling in the various levels and stages of operation.

Though I am guessing this question may not make sense at all , but if clarification Is needed I can do so to the best of my ability. oh on a side note the FTL commutation side of the tower is supposed to be damage internally beyond what they can repair and they are currantally stuck with using just the communication systems used on planet to talk to close by units (a plot device by the current gm)