Hi Pop Worlds

[Mithras]

How do I make these unique, interesting and alien?

I've done the hyper-polluted Bladerunner style world, the 'world-city' Corsuscant type world and the Megacity One surrounded by irradiated wilderness type world.

What else?

And when the UPP suggests a garden world, how do you stop these looking like Earth or like a Star Trek set?

Low pop worlds, I have no problem, my worlds are alien, challenging and different....

 

[Golan2072]

The population digit might include the residents of orbital habitats. With large enough habitats and/or an artificial ring around the planet, that Pop A world might actually have a billion or so inhabitants on the ground and more than ten billion inhabitants in a huge number of orbital cities, habitats, "islands" or artificial ring(s). In such a case the world itself might not be polluted at all - it might serve as a giant nature reserve, with the population living in orbit.

 

[alex_greene]

The higher the tech level, the more futuristic it is going to be.

Azun in the Solomani Rim had a wonderful example of a high population world. Virtually all of the planet was devoted to some form of agriculture, so it was all green - and the population lived in these gigantic arcologies, vertical cities kilometres high.

At TL 13, buildings can be built kilometres high thanks to grav assistance; at TL 14+, flying cities become feasible. So a high population watery world like Bellerophon (the world featured in Firefly, not in Nomads of the World Ocean - yes, I know Traveller's influenced Joss Whedon more than you can know, now let's get back to my musings) with floating estates becomes feasible.

If you have a world with a dense atmosphere and high population, perhaps you could have the inhabited areas of the planet based on tall mountain peaks, the cantilevered, tiered, terraced shelves of the cities projecting from the steep sides of the mountains like the ears of oyster fungi sticking out of a tree in a forest.

Your garden world might be like Alan Dean Foster's Midworld from Midflinx, with a stratified ecosystem a kilometre deep, one world forest of mile-high trees where the base is so dark that the inhabitants call it The Abyss, and fear to venture down there for fear of what lurks in its depths on the forest floor.

One high population world could be almost entirely orbital, comprising a ring surrounding the entire world: the logical conclusion to a century-long project to build a network of beanstalks between the surface and orbit. Over time, the beanstalk stations simply ... merged together to form this vast solar power-capturing ring, where energy is free, space is free but oxygen is something you pay for through the nose, and where air smuggling is a crime punishable by ten hours of W.O.O. "With. Out. Oxygen."

There you are. Off the top of my head. High pop worlds, garden worlds.

Have fun.

 

[lucasdigital]

How do I make these unique, interesting and alien?

I've done the hyper-polluted Bladerunner style world, the 'world-city' Corsuscant type world and the Megacity One surrounded by irradiated wilderness type world.

What else?

And when the UPP suggests a garden world, how do you stop these looking like Earth or like a Star Trek set?

Low pop worlds, I have no problem, my worlds are alien, challenging and different....

I try not to get to dependent on established SF worlds, it's very easy to get stuck in those powerful images from movies. I'd recommend hunting down the works of SF illustrators for ideas, even looking through photos from exotic places on Earth. Recently I was looking at photos of the Moscow unground canals - this quickly got turned into a vast underground Waterway in Porozlo. I imagined that a city of 2 billion would require the kind of water management, the likes of which no city on Earth has ever seen. These underground waterways were large enough to float oil tankers down. In this way, thinking about a small part of the world lets you get a hook, from which you can extrapolate other things.

In general, I think of very high population worlds as using Archologies rather than sprawling cities. There's often interesting work presented on this futurist site - http://spacecollective.org/gallery/

 

[EDG]

The population digit might include the residents of orbital habitats. With large enough habitats and/or an artificial ring around the planet, that Pop A world might actually have a billion or so inhabitants on the ground and more than ten billion inhabitants in a huge number of orbital cities, habitats, "islands" or artificial ring(s). In such a case the world itself might not be polluted at all - it might serve as a giant nature reserve, with the population living in orbit.

This.

If it's a really high pop system (A+) I assume the population is the population of the entire planetary system, not of the planet alone (I do that anyway really, regardless of whether there's tens of billions (or more) people there - it's just that if you have a small pop of say 30,000 then it's likely that all of it is on the "mainworld").

Most of the trade that is required to support a high population mainworld would be traffic within the system, not outside it. I'd imagine lots of orbital/lunar/lagrange agro and industrial colonies, all with massive freighters constantly shuttling goods back and forth to the mainworld. The "satellite" communities (orbitals etc) would mine asteroid belts, strip mine moons, have vast manufacturing and agricultural facilities on them etc. There'd still be trade with other systems, but the hipop world should be less reliant on them and more reliant on its own "satellites".

 

[captainjack23]

Most of the trade that is required to support a high population mainworld would be traffic within the system, not outside it. I'd imagine lots of orbital/lunar/lagrange agro and industrial colonies, all with massive freighters constantly shuttling goods back and forth to the mainworld. The "satellite" communities (orbitals etc) would mine asteroid belts, strip mine moons, have vast manufacturing and agricultural facilities on them etc. There'd still be trade with other systems, but the hipop world should be less reliant on them and more reliant on its own "satellites".

It's an excellent point. For flavorizing, It reminds me of Japan in WWII -and possibly today. As ignificant part of the merchant marine was dedicated to shipping within the sea of Japan -essentially "insystem"; which meant that when they lost their shipping to Subs and military use, the home islands started starving much faster than other blockaded nations due to internal disruption. On the other hand, they had an immense fleet of small coastal shipping (often sail) which made an excellent picket system simply due to numbers - close to japan, its hard to not be in sight of a japanese ship For trivia purposes, its why the Dolittle raid had to launch early)A high Pop system of the kind described would be similarly vulnerable, but would also be very hard to sneak around in, or enter secretly.

 

[captainjack23]

How do I make these unique, interesting and alien?

I've done the hyper-polluted Bladerunner style world, the 'world-city' Corsuscant type world and the Megacity One surrounded by irradiated wilderness type world.

What else?

Azun is a good suggestion -huge archeologies, separated by open land.

Another consideration is to take the planet size into account. A siz A one will have more surface room than a Siz 5 (the mean); it may similalry have less wreckage (ala Bladerunner) and less urbanized cities simply due to more room.

A huge very high tech hi population could spread out much more if resources were easily available and distributed. Could be much more of a Jane Austin Britain type planet.

Japan, as I suggested, is another idea. Very dense population, very structured culture and society -and no megacity radlands or bladerunner pollution (?), either.

The thing is, the main cause of the grittyworlds is too much crowding for resources (yes, duh); but resources are partly a function of technology - if the population has an approximately equal chance of getting what they need, (which includes employement), one can see a dispersed very high population planet; it would require extreme advances in (among other things)food production, resource distribution and waste disposal, as well as decentralized local production...but hey. This is a sci fi setting.

And when the UPP suggests a garden world, how do you stop these looking like Earth or like a Star Trek set?

Low pop worlds, I have no problem, my worlds are alien, challenging and different....

Easy. A garden world just needs a good ATM, water and a good temp. For traveller, all one needs is enough water and breathable atmo.

The coasts of the antarctic certainly count as garden (water plus air), as do the deepest of the equatorial jungles (assume the congo or the amazon for water); one could argue that Utah around the salt lake does, also.

The post cambrian/semi-devonian earth would count, too, depending on when the oxygen switch occurred -one could have no life worth mentioning on the land, and still have enough O2 to count from the sealife.

Similarly, the post dinokiller asteroid world probably still counted as garden even with mass climate disruption, vast ecological destruction and toxic decay products everywhere, possibly firestorms everwhere or complete sunlight loss (or both) but....enough O2 and water.

Finally, consider that megacity one earth might well count as a garden world - atm normal, no taint (apparently, noone wears breathers or resperators full time), Water code 7 (polluted, yes, but that isn't part of the ATM code).

Don't get hung up on the garden part....barely tolerable (as opposed to habitable) places can be garden worlds -just compare them to(say) Venus or the moon.

 

[EDG]

I'd imagine lots of orbital/lunar/lagrange agro and industrial colonies, all with massive freighters constantly shuttling goods back and forth to the mainworld. The "satellite" communities (orbitals etc) would mine asteroid belts, strip mine moons, have vast manufacturing and agricultural facilities on them etc. There'd still be trade with other systems, but the hipop world should be less reliant on them and more reliant on its own "satellites".

As an addendum... I think the pop UWP breaks down above A anyway. Think about it - you already have up to 99 billion people in the system with pop A. You could have 10 billion people on or around each planet in our solar system and you'd still have 19 billion left for the Asteroid and Kuiper belts.

Now crank that up to pop B, where you have hundreds of billions of people in a single system - up to 999 billlion people! At that point you'd probably be talking about vast virtual communities, with tens of billions of people uploaded into gigantic computronium VR simulations and all the billions of fleshies clumped around the planets and their orbits.

At pop C, where we're talking about a minimum of 1000 billion people - about 150 times the population of the Earth at the moment and a maximum of 9999 billion people, it gets kinda unimaginable. At this point the numbers get so silly that it can't possibly be supported by any kind of pre-Singularity infrastructure. You'd have to be talking about ringworlds and dyson spheres at the very least.

 

[captainjack23]

I'd imagine lots of orbital/lunar/lagrange agro and industrial colonies, all with massive freighters constantly shuttling goods back and forth to the mainworld. The "satellite" communities (orbitals etc) would mine asteroid belts, strip mine moons, have vast manufacturing and agricultural facilities on them etc. There'd still be trade with other systems, but the hipop world should be less reliant on them and more reliant on its own "satellites".

As an addendum... I think the pop UWP breaks down above A anyway. Think about it - you already have up to 99 billion people in the system with pop A. You could have 10 billion people on or around each planet in our solar system and you'd still have 19 billion left for the Asteroid and Kuiper belts.

Now crank that up to pop B, where you have hundreds of billions of people in a single system - up to 999 billlion people! At that point you'd probably be talking about vast virtual communities, with tens of billions of people uploaded into gigantic computronium VR simulations and all the billions of fleshies clumped around the planets and their orbits.

At pop C, where we're talking about a minimum of 1000 billion people - about 150 times the population of the Earth at the moment and a maximum of 9999 billion people, it gets kinda unimaginable. At this point the numbers get so silly that it can't possibly be supported by any kind of pre-Singularity infrastructure. You'd have to be talking about ringworlds and dyson spheres at the very least.

Ironically, as far as I can tell, one can only get those populations with the Hard science options being used (go figure). With standard MGT/CT generation, A is the max possible.

 

[EDG]

Ironically, as far as I can tell, one can only get those populations with the Hard science options being used (go figure). With standard MGT/CT generation, A is the max possible.

The options are a bit strangely named, IMO.

(is anyone else having trouble loading this thread BTW? I think it's hanging on lucasdigital's avatar image, maybe)

 

[captainjack23]

Ironically, as far as I can tell, one can only get those populations with the Hard science options being used (go figure). With standard MGT/CT generation, A is the max possible.

The options are a bit strangely named, IMO.

(is anyone else having trouble loading this thread BTW? I think it's hanging on lucasdigital's avatar image, maybe)

Nope, no problems loading.

They do describe what they mean by the two options -Space Opera and Hard Science. I think part of the problem is that the terms themselves are some of those categories that seem to be well defined until considered closely. I mean...there isn't much consensus here about traveller being SO or HS -or even what qualifies as which.

 

[EDG]

Somewhat OT, but...

The so-called "Space Opera" option definitely solves the bulk of Traveller's traditional realism problems from a physical perspective (which is ironic, since most classic Space Opera doesn't concern itself with physical realism, whereas Hard Science does).

The so-called "Hard Science" option is applied as well as the so-called Space Opera option, and reduces the randomisation of the populations and starports by tying them to habitability. So you have more physically realistic worlds and (arguably) more socially realistic populations/starports.

When I suggested this sort of approach during the playtest I figured that it'd be better to set the maximum population to A for realistic populations.

 

[captainjack23]

Somewhat OT, but...

The so-called "Space Opera" option definitely solves the bulk of Traveller's traditional realism problems from a physical perspective (which is ironic, since most classic Space Opera doesn't concern itself with physical realism, whereas Hard Science does).

The so-called "Hard Science" option is applied as well as the so-called Space Opera option, and reduces the randomisation of the populations and starports by tying them to habitability. So you have more physically realistic worlds and (arguably) more socially realistic populations/starports.

Probably for the physical stuff; socially, very arguable. Hard to describe much realism in projecting the motivations of people today, let alone the future. But, this is an agree to disagree, situation, I think.

When I suggested this sort of approach during the playtest I figured that it'd be better to set the maximum population to A for realistic populations.

Meh. It's called compromise. It happens.

 

[lucasdigital]

Ironically, as far as I can tell, one can only get those populations with the Hard science options being used (go figure). With standard MGT/CT generation, A is the max possible.

The options are a bit strangely named, IMO.

(is anyone else having trouble loading this thread BTW? I think it's hanging on lucasdigital's avatar image, maybe)

I'm not seeing any problems with the hosting of the image. Maybe it was a dns quirk. Anyway, if it looks to be causing problems, message me and I'll remove it. Erm all 2K of it.

 

[EDG]

I'm not seeing any problems with the hosting of the image. Maybe it was a dns quirk. Anyway, if it looks to be causing problems, message me and I'll remove it. Erm all 2K of it.

It just seems to hang for a while and says "transferring data from www.digitalplaces.info" in the status bar. But if I stop the loading everything pops up straight away anyway. Not really sure what's going on there...

 

[Mithras]

Thanks all, your posts have been very useful and I think I've just about fleshed out the Vilis and Regina subsectors with a few lines of description. Enough for my players to get a feel for the world, and enough for me to hang encounters and adventures on.

 

[captainjack23]

Thanks all, your posts have been very useful and I think I've just about fleshed out the Vilis and Regina subsectors with a few lines of description. Enough for my players to get a feel for the world, and enough for me to hang encounters and adventures on.

Excellent ! Glad to have helped .

 

[Guardnacho]

Maybe there is a social/Tech solution. How about huge low berth facilities. Residents then serve 'low duty' much like jury duty.

 

[aspqrz]

Maybe there is a social/Tech solution. How about huge low berth facilities. Residents then serve 'low duty' much like jury duty.

You know, there *is* a "low tech" solution ...

It's called "not having kids" and can be achieved with technologies of TL2 or better, if not earlier, using barrier methods of birth control.

And, strangely, its the reason why the "real world" (tm) will never achieve the ludicrously high pop levels we are talking (in excess of ten billion, on a sustained basis) ...

As you are no doubt aware, this is a major "problem" in wealthy first world countries because families are having less than two children per - and even two children per isn't enough to maintain the population, anyway!

Why?

Well, its fairly obvious ... do I need to explain?

And the reasons really have nothing much to do with the existence of tech levels that would *allow* a higher population to be supported ...

The only way these ludicrous high pop worlds could exist, really, is if there was some sort of fundamentalist religious enforcement of not only anti-birth control measures but actually enforcing higher than desired reproduction rates.

And, of course, what does that do ...

... it means people *emigrate* to all those ludicrously low tech worlds nearby, for "lebensraum", and rough it a TL or two lower than the TL of their massively populated homeworld and are grateful for it!

Yet another of the logical problems caused by ill conceived attempts to "explain" and "detail" the OTU :roll:

Phil

 

[rust]

Besides, a world with both a high technology level and a high population
is an interesting "economy problem": High technology tends to reduce
the size of the work force required for the economy (e.g. robots doing
more and more of the jobs previously done by humans), so what does
the economy look like to enable all those people to make a living ?