mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
That artificial hab is what I'm trying to design. They are obseenly expensive. A hab with 600k biospheres of 1 million tons will feed 1.2 million people, but it costs 280 billion credits to build.
Feeding a High Population, Non-Agricultural world
- Thread starter mavikfelna
- Start date
Yaskodray did... just not here.
A million times any number is a big number unfortunately. Even the half million tons of excavation to put biospheres in is going to cost you 2 billion.
But that is a retail price. If you instead spend 1 billion on construction robots, nano hive queens and nano feedstock then it will cost you nothing else (other than time).
For instance:
A single Construction Nano Queen costs MCr.52 with years supply of nano raw materials. With these it can construct and sustain 8 sets of bots (50:50 Construction, Excavation). These can excavate and construct 260 Dtons of biosphere per year at no additional cost. It would take 2000 years to complete the 1/2 million required, but you can buy 1000 of them plus extra nano raw materials and several portable fusion generators for less than 1 billion credits and get it all done in 2 years.
If that is too expensive then scrape together MCr43 and maybe another MCr1 in starter raw materials and drop in a Hive Queen. Wait a few weeks and it will have constructed as small army of miners to provide it with endless supply of replacement raw materials and allow it to build a robot factory. In a few months there will be thousands of mining and constructions bots. They can build your biospheres, and agribots and probably be finished in months. Once that is out of the way they can build archologies or other infrastucture.
This assumes that all 14 cubic metres of a biosphere will need to be constructed. In all likelihood the majority of that space just needs to be excavated and then filled with plants. You could probably half the timeline without stretching credibility. It also assumes you have a million settlers sitting around waiting for someone to feed them. You would be more likely incrementing you population as the infrastructure allows and all of this activity was likely to be long in the past.
mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
Ok. Where is the info on nano and hive queens and their builders? I haven't seen that anywhere I've been looking but I don't have a lot of books.
Robot Handbook. It was a game changer for me. I went from a no-robot universe to a robot heavy one in a few months of reading it (fortunately with Traveller you just have to move to another planet and you can make a flip like that without creating inconsistency).
The driver is really the fabricators that these robots have built in. So you could read that across from the CSC if you have it. If not the default rule is that a Fabricated object costs D6*10% in raw materials to build (or 2d6*10% if it is high tech). I am comfortable with a biosphere being fairly low tech as it is just plumbing, lights and nature. That brings the price to 30% without really trying.
The other aspect is getting the free raw materials. You can read this across from mining drones in high guard. The cost of a mining drone is high and they have low duration before needing a recharge as they are thruster based. Ground based ones can use tracks and that makes them far cheaper and they can work for around a week before needing an 8 hour recharge (so they get Sundays off). The rule of thumb is 8 cubic metres excavated per hour in normal rock. 20 hours productive work per day and 6 days will give a single large robot around 70 DTons per week. A robot of that size shouldn't cost more than MCr0.5. The 1d6 Dtons of Common Ore per day that produces (from the standard mining drone) is converted into the metals needed by nano bots (or you could use the manufactories in high guard and do it old school). The rock can be used to make concrete with simple chemistry and the dirt salvaged for use in the biosphere.
Nano bots just make everything easier to calculate as you don't need to smelt, you can just pick it apart atom by atom.
Of course it doesn't have to be robots. You have a high population world with a million potential wage slaves, they only have to construct on average 7 cubic metres each once in their lives. If you subscribe to the trope of hive worlds then maybe 80% of your population will be underclass, 19% corporate stiffs and a lucky 10,000 will be living off the others. You can build a lot with 800,000 manual workers and 190,000 managers and police to wrangle them.
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The "habitable zone" is defined by average temperature, but a greenhouse allows weaker sunlight to warm things up, at least out to the fringes of that (i.e. Mars). Plants can be bred or designed to thrive under different light conditions - even in the habitable zone you'd probably need to do that a bit, since peak wavelengths vary from star to star.
Some Non-Agricultural worlds would be on the verge of or just at self-sufficiency through conventional means, too. Pop 6, Atmo 3, Hydro 3 still qualifies as Non-Agricultural, but only has millions on a planet with up to 42% of Earth's atmospheric pressure and 26-35% surface water. So you need to judge things a bit on the actual numbers, not just the Trade Codes. Non-Agricultural mostly means there's no surplus food to be found there for sale, after all.
The fallback of fusion powered hydroponics would be common on most Non-Agricultural worlds. But also provide a collapse vulnerability. Hard Times (MegaTraveller) is the best treatment of how that can go.
(Bold added for clarity)
Uh, no. In order to be Non-Agricultural a world needs to be Atmosphere 0-3, Hydrographics 0-3 and Population 6+.
High-Pop worlds are Population 9+; the VAST majority of Non-Agricultural worlds are not High-Pop, and very many High-Pop worlds are not Non-Agricultural.
Though some are both, for sure.
Further, Earth is currently Pop 9, expected to reach Pop 10 before 2060. Most planets large enough to have biospheres would be able to accommodate billions of inhabitants.
And a side note... rice is particularly good at supporting the large populations whose labour is required to grow it intensively. It's a bit of a positive feedback loop, mostly limited by water supply.
TLDR: If it has a reasonable biosphere (defined in the trade codes by Atmo and Hydro), any amount of Population that can be generated by the usual means should be able to at least feed itself.
And a side note... rice is particularly good at supporting the large populations whose labour is required to grow it intensively. It's a bit of a positive feedback loop, mostly limited by water supply.
TLDR: If it has a reasonable biosphere (defined in the trade codes by Atmo and Hydro), any amount of Population that can be generated by the usual means should be able to at least feed itself.
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99.9% of all species have always been extinct, in every ecology. That's basically how speciation goes.
I take the point about designed ecologies having advantages, but they're also prone to oversights. And just because an ecology is designed does not stop speciation happening, or intruders arriving.
Good plot threads there.
A couple of things to think about. LED lighting can be full spectrum lighting this would allow you to literally build a food factory in an enclosure environment with separate areas for different growing conditions and seasons. The only reason none have been built today is there is no need and the onset cost are prohibited ( there’s actually a surplus of food being produced today the issue is one of distribution) You don’t need tech level higher than 7 to do this. Another thing is such systems benefit from economies of scale (the larger the facility the less it cost per square foot).
Now if a system doesn’t have a main world and instead the people inhabit a Astroid belt or a airless/waterless small body and is only TL 8 than that system has got to be supported and maintained from a outside source which means things like food and other necessities are shipped in. Remember TL refers to the local infrastructure and what can be built and maintained out of local facilities. You can easily have a TL 8 civilization based in a Astroid belt that can only locally support a small TL8 cottage industry but has to have shipped in many of the things needed to support life, in fact this is a very easy way to control a local population you don’t mine the belt and sale to your supplier than you don’t eat and can’t maintain your life support. If I remember correctly one of the systems in district 268 in the Spinward marches has a low tech asteroid mining facility as its main population center that is controlled and supported by one of the megacorp’s. The belt was found to have a rare material which is the only reason there’s a population there.
Now if a system doesn’t have a main world and instead the people inhabit a Astroid belt or a airless/waterless small body and is only TL 8 than that system has got to be supported and maintained from a outside source which means things like food and other necessities are shipped in. Remember TL refers to the local infrastructure and what can be built and maintained out of local facilities. You can easily have a TL 8 civilization based in a Astroid belt that can only locally support a small TL8 cottage industry but has to have shipped in many of the things needed to support life, in fact this is a very easy way to control a local population you don’t mine the belt and sale to your supplier than you don’t eat and can’t maintain your life support. If I remember correctly one of the systems in district 268 in the Spinward marches has a low tech asteroid mining facility as its main population center that is controlled and supported by one of the megacorp’s. The belt was found to have a rare material which is the only reason there’s a population there.
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Hydroponics are solidly available at TL8, as is solar power, even if Fusion is not around. Asteroid belts will usually be well supplied with Carbon compounds and Water, from which you can manufacture the essentials to refresh losses from a mostly closed cycle. External dependency may happen, but is not inevitable.
mavikfelna
Cosmic Mongoose
Can a swarm or hive queen build more queens? Or build a fabricator at least? Or do they just mine and do basic construction? Cause if it's a full fabber, it should be able to recreate itself. So for a minor, relatively, investment you can bootstrap a world into whatever you want. And feeding your people means just finding organic compounds to fab into edibles.
Seems like a great way to start upgrading the local tech level too.
Seems like a great way to start upgrading the local tech level too.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
I don't believe it can recreate itself. It is TL13, and the TL13 enhanced fabrication chamber it sports can only produce TL11 items and robots. Remember that the enhanced version is TL-2 on the output side. A TL15 version could make daughter queens at TL13, though. Piece by piece.
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The rule is that below TL17 the fabricators are limited to making things of -2 TL or less (-3 TL for external fabs), but there are other, stated limits on each of the models. A TL8 fabricator can't do TL6 electronics because (up to TL8) electronics capability come in with the TL10 model.
There's also the size limit - a given size (non-external) fabricator is limited to making stuff that fits in - and a supply of materials appropriate to the job. You can't just grind up rocks to make robots - they have to be the right kinds of rocks, with enough of the right elements and compounds.
A lot of the time there will at least need to be a supply of critical elements that are not easily available locally, or at least not easily available early on. As a self building project progresses, there may be scope to gather or synthesize those later.
There's also the size limit - a given size (non-external) fabricator is limited to making stuff that fits in - and a supply of materials appropriate to the job. You can't just grind up rocks to make robots - they have to be the right kinds of rocks, with enough of the right elements and compounds.
A lot of the time there will at least need to be a supply of critical elements that are not easily available locally, or at least not easily available early on. As a self building project progresses, there may be scope to gather or synthesize those later.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
An internal fabricator could make something larger in pieces to be assembled later.
From the CSC Update:
"Items with many parts can be created in smaller chambers and assembled later."
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boggo2300
Cosmic Mongoose
then he went away, got bored with his toys
Of course. But the fab itself may not be capable of doing the assembly, so that's a possible case of not being able to fully fabricate a fabricator without an operator who can assemble new ones.
Although if it can fabricate a robot that CAN do the assembly (likely) it becomes less of an issue.
The limiting factor with high tech is usually going to be materials and access to design templates.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
He mentioned the Hive Queen, which has arms. With an TL15 enhanced fabricator or better, it could do it.
The original TL15 fabricator would still need to remain operational in order to produce TL13 ones, though, and would likely need a supply of TL15 parts eventually. It would also need to remain in operation to produce the TL13 repair parts the daughter fabs would need.
I know that our TL8 ones are prone to component wear and tear, including parts that have limited usage. You'd need TL17 technology to be able to print all of your own fab spares (although there would be many components - like casings - that don't need the rated TL).
I know that our TL8 ones are prone to component wear and tear, including parts that have limited usage. You'd need TL17 technology to be able to print all of your own fab spares (although there would be many components - like casings - that don't need the rated TL).
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
The hive queen comes with the 60 year maintenance period. If the one for no maintenance was purchased, pricy as that is, it would run forever. For our purposes anyway.
If it was a TL16 prototype fabricator, it could recreate itself many times over.
I have avoided going into too much detail as there is quite a lot of "fuzzy" in the Robot Handbook and panaceas like nanotech and fabricators produce problems of their own. The description of the Hive Queen however is that it starts off building robots (a human sized one every hour) and they then build a factory. That factory can be built at whatever TL the queen has plans for.
You don't need TL17 tools to build a TL17 tool (if this wasn't true you wouldn't ever be able to climb the TL ladder). A fabricator according to the rules cannot make anything above a certain level (that is below the TL of the fabricator itself). That doesn't mean that it cannot produce a tool that can make the higher TL item. A fabricator cannot "fully manufacture any non-animate item available two TLs or more prior to their own TL". It talks in terms of complete items live value and transistor radios, not about valves and transistors. It depends if you think a TL15 item is made of TL15 components vs TL15 sub assemblies. Part of the TL is how basic components are assembled into sophisticated devices that are more than the sum of their parts.
My take is that TL8 societies can operate most efficiently at TL8. It does not mean there cannot be TL9+ or TL7- things there, it just means they are not commonly required and so it is not cost effective to manufacture locally in quantity. The limit is knowledge (which only needs to be imported once) and raw materials. None of the information we have on worlds in Traveller specifies what raw materials any world has. Every world can produce common raw materials, common ore, common electronics etc. in sufficient quantity to export.
As always you can buy higher TL stuff at the starport (and there is generally a starport). If the choice is importing millions of tons of food vs importing a few tons of high tech parts, shipping the high tech is going to be more cost effective in the long run.
Those nasty non-agricultural worlds are more likely to be industrial and be able to make all the toys. The reason they are not agricultural may be because their industry has poisoned the planet or because it had a poor atmosphere no one was worried about polluting it - chicken and egg, your choice.
In reality of course it is all the result of random dice rolls way back when and you can reverse justify it however you want. If you believe Travellermap is canon then just take the UPP (and descriptions if you like) and how you make it fit is your problem. Some of the very early justifications can be pretty weak but you can chalk that up to myths and legends. Just because a supplement written in the 80's says the world works by mind control lasers, doesn't mean that you have to hold on to that in your game. You can come up with your own reasons, it is part of the fun of being the referee. You are not just there to serve your players.
You don't need TL17 tools to build a TL17 tool (if this wasn't true you wouldn't ever be able to climb the TL ladder). A fabricator according to the rules cannot make anything above a certain level (that is below the TL of the fabricator itself). That doesn't mean that it cannot produce a tool that can make the higher TL item. A fabricator cannot "fully manufacture any non-animate item available two TLs or more prior to their own TL". It talks in terms of complete items live value and transistor radios, not about valves and transistors. It depends if you think a TL15 item is made of TL15 components vs TL15 sub assemblies. Part of the TL is how basic components are assembled into sophisticated devices that are more than the sum of their parts.
My take is that TL8 societies can operate most efficiently at TL8. It does not mean there cannot be TL9+ or TL7- things there, it just means they are not commonly required and so it is not cost effective to manufacture locally in quantity. The limit is knowledge (which only needs to be imported once) and raw materials. None of the information we have on worlds in Traveller specifies what raw materials any world has. Every world can produce common raw materials, common ore, common electronics etc. in sufficient quantity to export.
As always you can buy higher TL stuff at the starport (and there is generally a starport). If the choice is importing millions of tons of food vs importing a few tons of high tech parts, shipping the high tech is going to be more cost effective in the long run.
Those nasty non-agricultural worlds are more likely to be industrial and be able to make all the toys. The reason they are not agricultural may be because their industry has poisoned the planet or because it had a poor atmosphere no one was worried about polluting it - chicken and egg, your choice.
In reality of course it is all the result of random dice rolls way back when and you can reverse justify it however you want. If you believe Travellermap is canon then just take the UPP (and descriptions if you like) and how you make it fit is your problem. Some of the very early justifications can be pretty weak but you can chalk that up to myths and legends. Just because a supplement written in the 80's says the world works by mind control lasers, doesn't mean that you have to hold on to that in your game. You can come up with your own reasons, it is part of the fun of being the referee. You are not just there to serve your players.
