House Rule: Non-garden mainworlds with gas giants

[Tom Kalbfus]

Lets say the mainworld isn't a paradise, that is you need a space suit to walk on its surface, and it also has a low population say 6 or less, the only reason people come to this system is as a way stop to refill at the gas giant, in such a case, it makes sense that the main world should be one of the moons of the gas giant by default. People aren't going to travel very far after refilling at the gas giant, and by the, way skimming gas giants and processing their fuel takes time, people just might want to stop at the starport and fill up with already refined fuel, so basically the mainworld's main economy depends on the starport, most of its business is selling fuel and making repairs on starships passing through. most of the inhabitants live under a dome adjacent to the main world's starport. The mainworld is otherwise a bleak and barren ball of ice or rock.

 

[Reynard]

Bubba's Gulp and Gas (giant). See the largest ball of string in orbit!

 

[sideranautae]

Not enough reason to have a "main world". Just enough to have a "gas station" with a pop of at most, 2. Go out to a desert a 100 miles from nowhere where there is a truck stop. Same thing. (except the truck stop has more traffic)

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Not enough reason to have a "main world". Just enough to have a "gas station" with a pop of at most, 2. Go out to a desert a 100 miles from nowhere where there is a truck stop. Same thing. (except the truck stop has more traffic)

Well some world is always going to be the mainworld, also some of these starports do ship construction, I think you are going to need more than 100 to 999 people to do that. What about a world whose main industry is starship construction?

I might mention that starships are expensive, a Scout ship costs Cr27,540,500, the rules state that it takes 1 day per million credits of starship constructed., so it takes about a month to build a scout ship. So how many monthly salaries can the construction of one scout ship support? On page 87 of the core rulebook, it says an Average standard of living costs Cr1,200 per month, so how many average salaries will the construction of 1 Scout ship for that month support?
Cr27,540,500/Cr1,200 = 22,950 people, assume an average family size of 4 with one breadwinner per family, then a starport which constructs 1 scout ship per month will have a population of 91,801. All they do is build scout ships, 1 per month, and they probably import food.

 

[Reynard]

First of all, a population of 6 isn't a small population. It's a small city a worst. Low population is 1-3. One of the fun things (to me) is analyzing the whys of a main world's existence inherent to the random nature of the generation process and explaining its overall function relative to the subsector and sector. The trade codes definitely help defining a world's purpose. Too often, Referee and players alike only see a world as a dot on the map and a stopover to their next destination.

Also remember the definition of a Traveller mainworld is the designated most important world in a system. There's something about that particular planet explorers and developers decided it will be the place to center around.

Just because a world isn't a garden doesn't make it useless. It may have resources beyond mere colonization or its location in the region has significance. Remember the fourth dimension in planetary development - time. Worlds don't spring fully developed yesterday. They have a reason to have been originally established then evolve over time. They all have a story. Such stories are legion with world generation and stellar relevance. Tom's example is one particular example with a familiar theme, low population inhospitable world having an A or B starport in a system with a gas giant. Such a combination points to reliance on such a port as the main economy. Taken with tunnel vision, it's a good guess but now look at all local star systems. Why would they drop such high level ports there unless there's a need to perform repairs, let alone make, ships that can't be done elsewhere. Maybe it was actually a very successful corporate mining operation (hence the low population) that had the capital to keep upgrading what was originally a D or C class port for mining vessels to bring in more money in the ship business. Another familiar avenue is location. A system could have importance as the link to other systems so it stays solvent as the stopover for ship taking cargo elsewhere maybe, with an A port, becoming a depot for receiving and distributing goods.

So many choices.

 

[sideranautae]

Well some world is always going to be the mainworld,

You don't understand the use of the quotation marks in that sentence.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Well some world is always going to be the mainworld,

You don't understand the use of the quotation marks in that sentence.

According to the rules, if there is a system, there is a mainworld, even if it is only a small rock, you have to put something in the hex and they system listings, even if it is X000000-0, that is still a mainworld by the way. What difference does it make if it is in quotes? Who are you quoting?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

First of all, a population of 6 isn't a small population. It's a small city a worst. Low population is 1-3. One of the fun things (to me) is analyzing the whys of a main world's existence inherent to the random nature of the generation process and explaining its overall function relative to the subsector and sector. The trade codes definitely help defining a world's purpose. Too often, Referee and players alike only see a world as a dot on the map and a stopover to their next destination.

Also remember the definition of a Traveller mainworld is the designated most important world in a system. There's something about that particular planet explorers and developers decided it will be the place to center around.

Just because a world isn't a garden doesn't make it useless. It may have resources beyond mere colonization or its location in the region has significance. Remember the fourth dimension in planetary development - time. Worlds don't spring fully developed yesterday. They have a reason to have been originally established then evolve over time. They all have a story. Such stories are legion with world generation and stellar relevance. Tom's example is one particular example with a familiar theme, low population inhospitable world having an A or B starport in a system with a gas giant. Such a combination points to reliance on such a port as the main economy. Taken with tunnel vision, it's a good guess but now look at all local star systems. Why would they drop such high level ports there unless there's a need to perform repairs, let alone make, ships that can't be done elsewhere. Maybe it was actually a very successful corporate mining operation (hence the low population) that had the capital to keep upgrading what was originally a D or C class port for mining vessels to bring in more money in the ship business. Another familiar avenue is location. A system could have importance as the link to other systems so it stays solvent as the stopover for ship taking cargo elsewhere maybe, with an A port, becoming a depot for receiving and distributing goods.

So many choices.

I have to say a population of 6 is small for a World and large for a city. When our Earth was in the stone ages, our population digit would have been 6, the listing would look something like this: X867600-0. Millions of people spread out over an entire planet is a hunter/gatherer society. If the listing was X867500-0, I'd say the species was in danger of extinction, a population of 4 means the sentients are scarce, a person could land on their planet and not even realize they are there. I'm doing a wilderness sector, which means all the worlds in it are precontact nonspacefaring societies, so the tech levels range from 0 to 8, it the tech is less than six, then if the atmosphere is not 5, 6, or 8, I reduce the population to 0, and make sure the government and law levels are 0 also. If their is a planet with population 4 or less, they must be colonists or shipwreck survivors at least, no way could they be primitive natives. A stone age planet has millions of individuals, to tens of millions (7). If their are hundreds of millions (8) that could be an agricultural preindustrial society. Industrial pre-space societies could number from 8 to 9. A population of 3 indicates they are probably not native to the planet.

 

[Reynard]

"If the listing was X867500-0, I'd say the species was in danger of extinction,"

Species extinction is usually listed when it's in the thousands (POP code 3) which reports say humanity had come close to in the distant past. It's also the number we hear about with endangered species today. There's too little genetic diversity to sustain the creature over time.

Colonies and settlements on lower population worlds normally don't suffer such issues because there's often traffic from other worlds to add to the gene pools. For those worlds with low tech and low populations, there would need to be reasons they are not slowly dying off over time.