Hi Pop Worlds

[aspqrz]

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 ?

Well, the obvious answer in a Trade Based Imperium is ... gee ... would that be ... trade ... :shock:

But, of course, if you understand all the shortcomings of the way in which the OTU is/has been described, then that makes a mockery of ... well, pretty much everything about the way the OTU has been "developed" ...

But that was my point, I s'pose :wink:

Phil

 

[rust]

Well, the obvious answer in a Trade Based Imperium is ... gee ... would that be ... trade ... :shock:

I just tried to imagine a high population / high technology world where
billions of people are employed in the trade with hundreds of neighbou-
ring low population / low tech worlds, so that the number of traders on
the high / high world that deals with a specific low / low world would be
higher than the entire population of that world ... :lol:

 

[aspqrz]

Well, the obvious answer in a Trade Based Imperium is ... gee ... would that be ... trade ... :shock:

I just tried to imagine a high population / high technology world where
billions of people are employed in the trade with hundreds of neighbou-
ring low population / low tech worlds, so that the number of traders on
the high / high world that deals with a specific low / low world would be
higher than the entire population of that world ... :lol:

Which is, sorta, my point ... as I have noted elsewhere, demographic realities are such that if such high pop hellholes (and, regardless of tech, a planet with 40 billion pop would be a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens) existed, there would be population movement to places where there would be ... less ... population ...

And the places with ... less ... population, assuming they are inhabitable without requiring high tech means, will reach a natural equilibrium - probably somewhere around a billion, based on what we can reasonable suppose from "real life" ...

And with all those people on high pop worlds needing to be employed, well, that means there's plenty of places to trade with ... the fact that the OTU assumes, seriously, that there are worlds in regular contact with the Imperium (i.e. within Imperial borders, often on marked trade routes) which have TLs more than a level below Average/Average Stellar are, frankly, unbelievable given that ...

* it has been made plain, explicitly so, that the Imperium is a vast state whose entire raison d'etre is promoting trade on a massive scale ...

* there are those pesky, unbelievable, high pop worlds ...

... so, like I said, the OTU is, once again, hoist by its own petard!

(For non english speakers: "Hoist by your own petard" is, IIRC, from Shakespeare ... who probably got it from "regular" Elizabethan usage ... a petard was an explosive charge designed to blow down castle gates ... but had to be emplaced by some poor bloody infantry[man] ... and if he got the timing wrong, well, he was "hoist by his own petard" ... )

Phil

 

[EDG]

This is why I think the mainworlds themselves shouldn't ever have more than 10 billion people on them... but there's a lot of room in the system for more. I think a high TL system could support 100 billion people on satellite colonies and orbitals - but the TL will need to be at the high end (14/15?) to do it. Orbitals would be preferred to colonies on inhospitable worlds though.

I really can't see planets (or even systems) having trillions of people on them though.

 

[captainjack23]

I suppose the question should be asked....what worlds with 100 billion + populations?

I mean, if the GM creates and places a world with 40 trillion people, whoopy for him, but it's his campaign, and itsclearly a homebrew.
Straight MGT and CT (I really don't know MT well enough to be sure about its mods and erattas) certainly have no way of getting a pop above A -which is where current earth is over halfway to. The traveller universe and system don't have to explain those worlds because it doesn't create them; unless one uses a specific option ....which is new to MGT anyway. So, the solution is, don't use the hard science options if it creates unrealistic populations.

If there's a hive world, it's a plot point entered by the GM; and the system doesn't have to justify that fer hecks sake. Otherwise, it also has to explain a race of huge invulnerable bouncing lightbulbs* with PK and ESP I encountered at some loon's convention game, and if thats the case, I quit.



* not an exaggeration: described as "huge lighbulbs on springs, that bounce around beating the snot outa you until you thing of the right line in a doors song"**. I went to the restroom and never came back.



**turns out, the line was "you cannot petition the lord with prayer !" actually pretrty easy if youre a doors head.......but still.

 

[atpollard]

Which is, sorta, my point ... as I have noted elsewhere, demographic realities are such that if such high pop hellholes (and, regardless of tech, a planet with 40 billion pop would be a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens) existed, there would be population movement to places where there would be ... less ... population ...

While Traveller produces many 'hellholes' of various populations, the belief that populations of tens of billions MUST make a world "a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens" is simply unfounded.

Let us begin with a festering 'hellhole' like Paris France in the early 21st century. It currently has a population density of about 20,000 people per square kilometer (including the large public forests within the city). If we wanted to house a population of 40 billion people in Paris-like cities, we would require over 2 million square kilometers of cities.

However, the LAND Area of the Earth is about 149 million square kilometers, so only about 1.3 percent of the Earth's land would need to be urbanized to accommodate 40 billion people. A population of 400 billion people would require only 13% of the Earth's Land Area (roughly all of Russia and Mongolia).

Since Paris represents about 20% of France's GNP, it would seem that many people (who are free to move elsewhere) find Paris not quite the 'hellhole' that you assume it MUST be.

 

[captainjack23]

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) ...

<snip>

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

Basically, yes. But two points

1. worlds with no way off (tech, system, blockade)
2. Aliens. I mean, this is SF, right ?

Without starting a Marc vs antiMarc arguments, I do remember the suggestion or at least the statement of intent that the really high Pop worlds were homeworlds, of other human or alien races. The actual stable population for the spacefaring societies on secondary worlds starts to stabilize around 4-6; which is why the basic avearge generic planet has a pop of 5.

Convenient travel starts becoming an option much sooner than pop 9/A I'd guess. Think more of a network of towns across the midwest - populations stable (mostly) and not booming, with core cities of increasing in size as people leave. Thats the model I have, anyway.

 

[captainjack23]

and, regardless of tech, a planet with 40 billion pop would be a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens

I'd also note that planets with any pop will be a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens......ever lived in a small, isolated town ?

The people to whom it is a hell hole are generally those least able to leave it -which is part of why it's a hellhole, to close the circular logic path...

 

[rust]

Since Paris represents about 20% of France's GNP, it would seem that many people (who are free to move elsewhere) find Paris not quite the 'hellhole' that you assume it MUST be.

Well, many Parisians - like many citizens of other cities of that size and
population density - very much enjoy the opportunity to flee from their
city quite often, to get their recreation in a much less crowded environ-
ment.

A densely populated planet without such an opportunity to leave the ci-
ties behind at least now and then would be very much different from
our real world situation, I think.

Trying to imagine a world where I would have to spend my holidays in
the same crowds that I have to "enjoy" each day in the city really ma-
kes me think of a "hellhole".

 

[EDG]

While Traveller produces many 'hellholes' of various populations, the belief that populations of tens of billions MUST make a world "a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens" is simply unfounded.

Tell that to someone starving in a famine, or suffering after a disaster, or trying to survive in a warzone.

Planets are not uniform societies, regardless of what the UWPs say. Non-balkanised worlds have it easier, yes, but there's still going to be vast differences in living standards across the planet.

 

[Mithras]

Mmm, mitigating the billions that I can't really accomodate in my reimagined Regina subsector, I may redo the population UPP. Simply, 8 is 100 million as normal, 9 is 500 million, and A is 'over 500 million'...

That lowers those horrendous billions scattered around the subsector, which is frontier, and I want it to feel frontier.

 

[captainjack23]

Mmm, mitigating the billions that I can't really accomodate in my reimagined Regina subsector, I may redo the population UPP. Simply, 8 is 100 million as normal, 9 is 500 million, and A is 'over 500 million'...

That lowers those horrendous billions scattered around the subsector, which is frontier, and I want it to feel frontier.

By solving the issue to your own campaign's satisfaction, I am hereby recommending you for the coveted "starburst for extreme common sense".

 

[captainjack23]

While Traveller produces many 'hellholes' of various populations, the belief that populations of tens of billions MUST make a world "a hellhole to a significant number of its citizens" is simply unfounded.

Tell that to someone starving in a famine, or suffering after a disaster, or trying to survive in a warzone.

Planets are not uniform societies, regardless of what the UWPs say. Non-balkanised worlds have it easier, yes, but there's still going to be vast differences in living standards across the planet.

Which diversity between planets is also the point. atpollard was saying that it isn't inevitable that it will be a hellhole, not that it will be a Utopia. Yes, I agree that hi pop worlds will more likely than not be problematic; but it's not impossible to design a specific and reasonable if rare or unlikely, situaton that works. And since we all seem to agree that Pop A is neither impossible nor intolerable, any higher pop planets will be GM generated artifacts, with an explaination...not a randomly occurring mess.

 

[rust]

Besides, just to make things a bit more complicated: As far as I under-
stand it, the system is used for alien species, too, and I could imagine
some species that could have a population in the high billions without
the problems humans would most probably encounter - just think of an
aquatic species using not only the two dimensional surface of their pla-
net, but all the three dimensional volume of a water world's ocean as
its living space.

 

[Mithras]

I certainly have used alien sophonts as populations, and I see nothing wrong with that - it works for Candory, Andory, Chronor and Darrian, doesn't it?

 

[AndrewW]

Could even be a mixed worlds with an alien species living in the oceans while the humans occupy the surface.

Of course humans use verticle space as well with skyscrapers and could build domed colonies under the oceans as well. Or floating cities, or both.

 

[captainjack23]

Besides, just to make things a bit more complicated: As far as I under-
stand it, the system is used for alien species, too, and I could imagine
some species that could have a population in the high billions without
the problems humans would most probably encounter - just think of an
aquatic species using not only the two dimensional surface of their pla-
net, but all the three dimensional volume of a water world's ocean as
its living space.

Size scale isn't an absurd issue either. A sentient race of Krill (oh, say forming a hivemind as needed) could have astronomical numbers. Or, a photosythetic race -or at least one with a significant ability to passively generate nutrition.

Or, consider a very high tech garden world with completely bioengineered ecosystems, abundant cheap non-polluting power, off planet production, easy & cheap space travel and convenient interstellar trade, widespread micro developed low footprint gravitic based logistic and supply systems*. Population of 300 billion dispersed over 600 million sq Km in small "villages" and homesteads, on land or under water as needed(alternately in 3000 floating archeologies, but that's so typical) at about 500 persons/sq km. A very Japanese society, or alternately Jane Austin England writ huge; or Pharonic Egypt if one gives the government full control of water and or food.

It works, even if it is the rresult of several unlikely but helpful factors and history; it's fragile, insanely fragile, "..So fragile, one Barbarian could wreck it" (Rammer, by Niven) . But it's there for the players.

Who will probably cause economic chaos, social unrest, armed revolt resulting in complete collapse, mass starvation and 99.9% dieoff, but that's the nature of players.

Hmmm. Theres an interesting turn for a hellhole -on the surface, it looks like utopia - but when one gets there everything , absolutely everything, is completely devoted to keeping things running and balanced on a knife edge, at that. And perhaps everyone knows it.


*In other words, a high tech, hi pop traveller OTU world.....

 

[rust]

Thinking about it, I am not even sure that it would have to be very
fragile.

The water world colony setting I am currently playing around with
(yep, another water world - must be a kind of obsession ...) has a
planet with a diameter of 13.492 kilometers, giving it a surface of
about 571 million square kilometers, and with an average depth of
1,400 meters the ocean has enough volume for aquaculture to feed
a rather huge population

With an average of only 10 persons per square kilometer, the pla-
net would have a population of about 5.7 billion, and still room for
lots of "untouched" (even unexplored) wilderness.
Well, and if one would distribute those 5.71 billion among seafloor
habitats, floating cities and some outposts elsewhere in the system,
the planet could almost appear somewhat "empty" to visitors ...

 

[EDG]

The water world colony setting I am currently playing around with (yep, another water world - must be a kind of obsession ...) has a
planet with a diameter of 13.492 kilometers, giving it a surface of
about 571 million square kilometers, and with an average depth of
1,400 meters the ocean has enough volume for aquaculture to feed
a rather huge population

Volume won't really be as big a factor as you'd think there though - only the uppermost parts of the ocean will be usable for most aquaculture because most life needs sunlight. once you get below the photic layers (a max depth of only a few hundred metres at most), it's pitch black down there.

And then not all the ocean will be usable due to climate concerns (water too cold, hurricane belt etc).

 

[rust]

Volume won't really be as big a factor as you'd think there though - only the uppermost parts of the ocean will be usable for most aquaculture because most life needs sunlight.

You are of course right, in fact I have "earmarked" only the first 200 m
of my setting's ocean for aquaculture.