Northstar Ringworld

[Tom Kalbfus]

I found a reference to a ringworld in the Northstar system, but there is no actual description of it. As it orbits a G2 star, I assume it is similar in proportion to the Niven Ringworld. Does anyone know anything about this?

Northstar/Darkling Regions (Beyond 2819)
Second Survey
A000888-D
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Northstar_(world)

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Northstar/Darkling Regions (Beyond 2819)
Second Survey
A000888-D
Here's some more detail
System Details
Primary G2 V
Planetoid Belts 3
Gas Giants 0
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Northstar_(world)
Taken from this source, there is a ringworld in this system, there are no gas giants, and the presence of the ringworld probably has something to do with that, and there are three asteroid belts, taken with the main world, that makes four. The interesting part about it is that the ringworld isn't the mainworld, the asteroid belt is.

From the wiki:

Northstar is a ring of many small worldlets (planetoids AKA an "asteroid belt"), not capable of retaining an atmosphere or water, and both non-agricultural and preindustrial in nature.
These worldlets warrant hazardous environment precautions.
Life in a vacuum requires great discipline. After all, it only takes one forgotten seal on a vacuum suit to spell death. Those who survive tend to be very methodically-minded and attentive to small detail.
Despite the challenging of living on asteroid colonies, this settlement is at a moderate population status of over a hundred million, but not yet at a billion sophonts in size.
The worldlets are, for the most part, unable to produce quality foodstuffs and must import them.
These worldlets are working towards being an industrial world but lack adequate resources to do so. Local leaders are diligently working towards the expansion of this settlement's industrial manufacturing capability.
It is a Non-Aligned world dominated by human sophonts located in the Darkling Regions Subsector of Beyond Sector.
...
Description (Astrography & Planetology)

Northstar (Beyond Darkling Regions) system contains the ringworld of Northstar, the base of the Northstar Interworld Technological Services.

Monostellar System
Northstar Monostellar System


Star Name: Northstar Primary

Hierarchy: Primary

Color: Yellow

Classification: G2 V

Notes

Notes: Northstar is a G2 V class star with a luminoscity of 1 sol and a mass of 1 sol, the Northstar ringworld has a radius of 150,000,000 kilometers, a bandwidth of 1,600,000 kilometers and does a complete rotation around Northstar once every 9 days producing 1-g of centrifugal force. This system besides having a ringworld also has four asteroid belts, three of them are beyond the radius of the ringworld. The ringworld itself occupied orbit 3, the mainworld asteroid belt occupies orbit 2, the shadow square ring is in orbit 1. So this asteroid belt is between the shadow squares and the ringworld at approximately what would be the orbit of Venus if this was the Solar System. The average orbital distance of this innermost asteroid belt is 109,000,000 km, the average orbital period of the asteroids and the largest asteroid in this belt, where the starport is located is 225 days. This asteroid and all the others in this belt are shadowed by the shadow squares, when the asteroid passes in front of a shadow square it experiences 12.5 days of night, followed by 12.5 days of sunlight. The ringworld itself experiences 12 hours of darkness followed by 12 hours of daylight for a standard 24-hour day. If this assumption is true, then why is the asteroid belt the mainworld and not the ringworld? Can you think of any possible explanation for this?

Here is mine: The Ringworld has an asteroid defense mechanism, a powerful laser weapon which destroys any asteroid and any object that approaches within a certain distance of it. The inhabitants of the asteroid belt can't get close to the ringworld without being destroyed by the asteroid defense system, there is one way, but it is very risky. The ringworld doesn't target itself, once can plot a short jump to within 1000 kilometers above the atmosphere of the ringworld. If a ship emerges from jump space within that distance, the asteroid defense laser system will not target it. It is risky to do this as a chance of a misjump is rather high, thus the ringworld is rarely visited and then usually only by accident. The inhabitants of the ringworld are isolated and of a lower tech level than the mainworld of this system. There are interstellar ramjets docked to the rimwalls of the ringworld, the defense system will not target those, no one has learned how to operate those as of yet, so they remain docked to the walls of the ringworld.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

In the current view of the OTU, there are no Ringworlds or Dyson Spheres within Charted Space. Or so it has come down from the IP holder, Marc Miller be thy name.

Vanguard Reaches and The Beyond were published in the ancient, wild, woolly days of Traveller. PDFs are available at Drivethru. They were official at the time, but no longer. A pity since they were my favorite sectors.

Yours is in The Beyond. There were not many other references to the sectors elsewhere. the rest either fan-based or derived. The publisher's website can be found here http://web.archive.org/web/19970730073206/http://www.inlink.com/~scoundrl/paranoia.htm if you want more information about The New Era

There was one in listed in the GT: Alien Races 4. Likewise about the Ringworld per Mr. Miller.

 

[Grazelander]

Maybe I'm missing something but it describes a ring of worldets not a "ringworld". It even describes it as an asteroid belt in the wiki.

As Nathan mentions in canon the only ring world I believe still existent is the partial one in Hiver space, Lingkot I believe it is.

 

[Grazelander]

Maybe I'm missing something but it describes a ring of worldets not a "ringworld". It even describes it as an asteroid belt in the wiki.

As Nathan mentions in canon the only ring world I believe still existent is the partial one in Hiver space, Lingkot I believe it is.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Maybe I'm missing something but it describes a ring of worldets not a "ringworld". It even describes it as an asteroid belt in the wiki.

As Nathan mentions in canon the only ring world I believe still existent is the partial one in Hiver space, Lingkot I believe it is.

This is quoted from the website
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Northstar_(world)

Northstar (Beyond Darkling Regions) system contains the ringworld of Northstar, the base of the Northstar Interworld Technological Services.

That is all it says about the ringworld, that and the fact that it is a G2 V star, same type as our Sun. Now an asteroid belt or a planetoid belt is not a ringworld, a ringworld is a very specific thing, it is a band of solid material which encircles a star rotating fast enough to create outward centrifugal force to hold an atmosphere to its inner surface. Since it is a G2 V star, and with a G2 V star the habitable zone is in standard orbit 3 according the classic Scout book, then the radius of this ringworld is around 1 AU or 150 million kilometers, now the width of it could vary, it could be a very narrow ringworld (which would be easier to build) or it could be one that is 1,600,000 km wide (1,000,000 miles wide) as in the ringworld featured by Larry Niven, since it doesn't say which I will assume it is 1,600,000 km wide. Now to create 1-G of centrifugal force, this ringworld needs to rotate once every 9 days, the shadow square ring is at standard orbit 1, and it could orbit the star once every 90 days. since the shadow square ring takes ten times as long to orbit as the ringworld does to rotate, that means it orbits one tenth of its orbit every time the ringworld does a complete rotation, that means there are 10 shadow squares, but the ringworld only passes behind nine of them with every turn, creating nine 24-hour days with 12-hour nights, that is if this was build to accommodate Earth life., for different creatures these parameters would be different.

It is curious that this system seems to have nothing but four asteroid belts, one of them is the main belt, the mainworld inhabitants of this system live in the mainbelt. I'm assuming the ringworld doesn't count as the mainworld because it is isolated by its meteor defense system, which basically targets everything that comes near, and the lasers are so powerful that it overwhelms every possible defense screen which may be used by a tech level 15 society, that includes black globes and the live. (There is a limit to how much energy they can absorb and the meteor defense system easily exceeds that!) Any ship of the Imperium, even the largest and most heavily armored would be instantly vaporized by this defense laser. The only way to get close enough without being destroy is to do a microjump to within 1000 kilometers of its inner surface, as the meteor defense system will not risk targeting itself! I will assume this jump is possible to make though difficult. (The standard 100 diameter rule does not apply with the ringworld, since the ringworld is not a solid spherical object towards which this rule is usually applied.) The tough part is coming out of the jump within 1000 km of its inner surface, there is a risk of coming out farther than that and being targeted by the meteor defense lasers! It takes some time for those giant lasers to acquire their target on an object that suddenly appears in normal space, but there is not much time to calculate the next jump, but you would have to jump out immediately, the result would then be a misjump in a random direction by a number or parsecs. This is why getting to this ringworld is so difficult, getting from it however is relatively easy, you just have to clear the atmosphere, and your ship can make a jump, even to a point within the same system.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

In the current view of the OTU, there are no Ringworlds or Dyson Spheres within Charted Space. Or so it has come down from the IP holder, Marc Miller be thy name.

Vanguard Reaches and The Beyond were published in the ancient, wild, woolly days of Traveller. PDFs are available at Drivethru. They were official at the time, but no longer. A pity since they were my favorite sectors.

Yours is in The Beyond. There were not many other references to the sectors elsewhere. the rest either fan-based or derived. The publisher's website can be found here http://web.archive.org/web/19970730073206/http://www.inlink.com/~scoundrl/paranoia.htm if you want more information about The New Era

There was one in listed in the GT: Alien Races 4. Likewise about the Ringworld per Mr. Miller.

Since it is not official, then the GM can do with it what he will, but one can draw some conclusions about it from the information given, as scant as it is.

A ringworld would be much coveted by the powers that be, the one I'm talking about would have a surface area of 3 million Earths, the Imperium by contrast has 11,000 worlds, and not all of them are habitable, thus the ringworld has roughly 100 times the surface area of all the mainworlds in the Third Imperium, there has to be a reason why the Imperium or some of the other powers have not taken possession of it. I'd say the main reason is the meteor defense system, there is no way to reliably get close enough to land on its surface, the Jump Drives are not accurate enough to always come within 1000 kilometers of its surface, when they don't the ship is targeted and needs to jump out immediately or be destroyed! (Probably an initiative roll would be required to see if the ship can jump out before being targeted by the meteor defense system, since there is no time to calculate a proper jump, the result is a misjump!)

I think a major preoccupation of the people in the innermost asteroid belt would be remote viewing of the ringworld's habitable surface. While you can't approach it in normal space without being targeted and destroyed, one can still view what is going on at its surface through telescopes. The Ringworld only targets objects that some within a certain distance and ignores all others, it appears to be an automatic mechanism, the ringworld seems to have no other agenda than self-defense. A huge number of sophonts live on its surface, but there is no regular interaction between the ringworld inhabitants and the inhabitants of the rest of Charted Space, the meteor defense system prevents that from happening. There are fusion ramjets docked to its atmosphere retaining rimwalls, they act as stabilizers for the ringworld when it drifts off-center, they can detach and be flown independently, and the ringworld does not target them when that happens. It is believed that whatever mechanism controls the meteor defense system also remotely pilots the fusion ramjets, if one can figure out how to control them, they would provide a means of reliably traveling to and from the surface of the ringworld, there are trillions of such starships mounted on the sides of this ringworld. They often flare their engines to recenter the ringworld around its primary, though some occasionally go on expeditions to collect material from one of the four planetoid belts in this system.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Now I want to re-read Ringworld by Larry Niven.

As Tom Kalbfus pointed out a Ringworld, especially one built to support humans is probably one of the greatest things a species could ever find. 3 million earths is a lot of living room.

As the book pointed out it depends on the tech level that can be maintained. Raw materials would need to be brought in or the cheap transmutation mentioned in the book would be needed to supply metals and plastics needed to maintain the level of society. There are no mines or oil wells on the ringworld, dig too far down and you hit the foundation of the planet, not a vein of ore.

Think of the population you could build up to through. The number of people available as researchers, engineers, workers, soldiers. A limitless pool of talent to draw on. It would utterly warp the region in terms of economy, politics, military activity.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The only ringworld in the OTU charted space of the Imperium and its neighbours is the one found in the Leenitakot/Hinterworlds and you will find it mentioned in Challenge 39.

It is devoid of features, atmosphere, is uninhabited and is unlike Niven's ringworld in that regard.

IMTU I explain it as being part of the machinery needed to move a star/system into its own pocket universe.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The only ringworld in the OTU charted space of the Imperium and its neighbours is the one found in the Leenitakot/Hinterworlds and you will find it mentioned in Challenge 39.

Then what is this?
Northstar/Darkling Regions (Beyond 2819)
Second Survey
A000888-D
Here's some more detail
System Details
Primary G2 V
Planetoid Belts 3
Gas Giants 0
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Northstar_(world)

It is devoid of features, atmosphere, is uninhabited and is unlike Niven's ringworld in that regard.

IMTU I explain it as being part of the machinery needed to move a star/system into its own pocket universe.

The Northstar Ringworld is much more interesting that that old boring thing at Leenitakot/Hinterworlds

The Ancients are thought to have built an unfinished Ringworld in the Leenitakot system around -310,000.
http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Leenitakot_(world)
Leenitakot/Kandra (Hinterworlds 1432)
Classic Era (1115)
E77A6BB-5
Primary K3 V M7 V
Planetoid Belts 1
Gas Giants 4

They both come from the same wikitravellerrpg, so why do you say one is legit and the other is not?
Seems like the Northstar ringworld is more interesting, because the entry does not say its unfinished. After all, what is more interesting, exploring a lifeless world or one with life on it. Since everything is dead on Leenitakot what's there to find? Seems to me the Ancients left a bunch of incomplete projects, anyway the Northstar ringworld would have to be bigger since I has a more sunlike G2 V star as its primary. I would venture that the meteor defense system would act as a separator that prevents established powers from taking it over such as the Imperium for example. The other way to deal with it is make the ringworld lifeless, dead, and boring. "Nothing to see here, move on!" What's the point of that? If the GM's task is to make a ringworld boring and uninteresting, then why have it there in the first place, why not just have nothing instead. If you going to do a ringworld, do it Niven style or not at all!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Now I want to re-read Ringworld by Larry Niven.

As Tom Kalbfus pointed out a Ringworld, especially one built to support humans is probably one of the greatest things a species could ever find. 3 million earths is a lot of living room.

As the book pointed out it depends on the tech level that can be maintained. Raw materials would need to be brought in or the cheap transmutation mentioned in the book would be needed to supply metals and plastics needed to maintain the level of society. There are no mines or oil wells on the ringworld, dig too far down and you hit the foundation of the planet, not a vein of ore.

Think of the population you could build up to through. The number of people available as researchers, engineers, workers, soldiers. A limitless pool of talent to draw on. It would utterly warp the region in terms of economy, politics, military activity.

The ringworld would be a huge prize, the Imperium would love to get its hands on it, it would dominate the entire region and it would be setting in its own right, which is why the GM needs to have it well guarded. Since this ringworld has 3 million Earths worth of living space compared to the Imperium's 11,000 worlds, its shadow squares would also collect 3 million Earth's worth of Solar energy, these could power laser weapons way beyond anything the Imperium could muster or defend against. The laser weapons are built into the shadow squares themselves. If anyone gets too close to the shadow squares or the ringworld, they get targeted by these lasers, and there is no defense against them except not to trigger them. A black globe will absorb some of this energy, but these lasers would overload the energy storage devices and then vaporize whatever the globe was protecting. A reflect armor coating would not be enough, and these are x-ray lasers, sand casters will block some of this, but the sand will be vaporized and then whatever is behind the sand will also be vaporized. The only way to get around this is with the jump drive an try to jump so close to the ringworld that the ringworld's defense systems will not try to target you. The Imperium can't jump reliably enough yet, and they would take 40% losses to their fleet if they tried it, a scout vessel which tried to investigate it, would be taking a rather big chance, some might do it for fame, but not many. People can also arrive there by accident, by misjump for instance, getting off the ringworld is much easier as you have to jump away and not towards, the jump doesn't have to be precise to do that!

 

[Yatima]

If you wanted to adventure on a ringworld, but stick with Marc Miller's canon view, you could make the ring at that location a Bishop Ring or a Banks Orbital:

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/460db7f55a8d3

These are far smaller than a Niven-style ringworld, and probably well within the bounds of many civilisations in the OTU. Just another option worth considering.

J

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

If you wanted to adventure on a ringworld, but stick with Marc Miller's canon view, you could make the ring at that location a Bishop Ring or a Banks Orbital:

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/460db7f55a8d3

These are far smaller than a Niven-style ringworld, and probably well within the bounds of many civilisations in the OTU. Just another option worth considering.

J

The ringworld lacks exploitable minerals, the humans on the ringworld build things out of wood and stone, the exception to this rule are the spill mountains, sediment is transported from the bottoms of bodies of water to the spill mountains along the rim walls which hold in the atmosphere. Molten Liquid rock is transported through pipes made out of ringworld floor material, and is then deposited through outlets on the atmospheric side of the rim walls. The liquid rock is either dumped on top or extruded underneath the rock as magma, forming various minerals in the rock strata, this is the only part of the ringworld which experiences earthquakes and volcanism, rivers flow from these spill mountains carrying sedment back towards the center of the ringworld. I figure if we have a G2 V star, we light as well build a full size ringworld. A Banks Orbital would be best served by a type G2 IV subgiant such that its orbital period within the habitable zone is around 720 days. Each orbit would have two summers, two autumns, two winters, and two springs.

 

[InexorableTash]

They both come from the same wikitravellerrpg, so why do you say one is legit and the other is not?

The wiki — which is a work in progress — does not wholly reflect Marc Miller's vision of the OTU, which is his playground. Although he has welcomed other authors to build on it — and often with visions that surprised him but he retained — he does have the authority to edit it as he sees fit. While he retained most of the classic Paranoia Press designs for Vanguard Reaches and Beyond, based on communication in 2015 with Don McKinney who was relaying information from Marc to me for the Traveller Map site, the Ringworld in Beyond was decanonized. Similarly, the Inheritor Sphereworld Dyson Sphere in Nooq, which was presented in GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 3, is no longer considered part of the OTU.

Bear in mind that this has no bearing on what setting you as a referee provide for your players. You can add or subtract anything you want from any setting, or devise a totally new one. It would only affect what someone who wanted to publish (e.g. Mongoose) would be likely to hear if they approached the IP owner (i.e. Marc).

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

They both come from the same wikitravellerrpg, so why do you say one is legit and the other is not?

The wiki — which is a work in progress — does not wholly reflect Marc Miller's vision of the OTU, which is his playground. Although he has welcomed other authors to build on it — and often with visions that surprised him but he retained — he does have the authority to edit it as he sees fit. While he retained most of the classic Paranoia Press designs for Vanguard Reaches and Beyond, based on communication in 2015 with Don McKinney who was relaying information from Marc to me for the Traveller Map site, the Ringworld in Beyond was decanonized. Similarly, the Inheritor Sphereworld Dyson Sphere in Nooq, which was presented in GURPS Traveller: Alien Races 3, is no longer considered part of the OTU.

Bear in mind that this has no bearing on what setting you as a referee provide for your players. You can add or subtract anything you want from any setting, or devise a totally new one. It would only affect what someone who wanted to publish (e.g. Mongoose) would be likely to hear if they approached the IP owner (i.e. Marc).

Other than that, what is the problem with the ringworld? The dead one I don't see the point of, it is also built in a binary system, not the best thing for ringworlds. The general idea is to clear out all the planets, and that appears to have been done in Northstar, whether its official or not. I don't know why Marc Miller edited it out, did he give a reason? The one problem I can see is a ringworld would dwarf the Third Imperium in both population and in economy. Lets say we rolled 2 dice for population of each world and averaged them out. 50 billion + 5 billion + 500 million + 50 million + 5 million + 500,000 + 50,000 + 5,000 + 500 + 50 + 5 = 55,555,555,555 divide this by 11 and we get 5,050,505,050 or around 5 billion as the average population of each planet. If we multiply 5 billion people by 11,000 worlds, we come up with a population of 55 trillion, multiply that same 5 billion people by 3 million worlds and we get 15 quadrillion people or if we write that out its 15,000,000,000,000,000 people inhabiting the ringworld, the ringworld would have 273 times the population of the Third Imperium, it appears that under normal circumstances, the ringworld would be the dominant power in the region, and all of that would be confined to one system. I'd say give the ringworld 1 trillion interstellar ramjets, they are particularly huge space ships, each one is capable of transporting 15,000 passengers. They would be capable of transporting the entire population of the ringworld if each one of them was used. So lets see if we can fit them along the rimwalls. The ringworld is 150,000,000 kilometers in radius that means its circumference is 942,477,796 kilometers, lets make it 1 billion. Well there are 2 billion kilometers of wall space on the ringworld, and the ringworld rim wall is 1,000 kilometers high. Maybe 1 trillion ramjets is too many. If we go with 1 billion ramjets, each one can hold 15,000,000 passengers, and each one is 1 kilometer is diameter then each one would be separated by 1 kilometer intervals. What would happen if the PCs managed to steal one of these suckers? How big exactly would these ships have to be? I think a standard stateroom is 4 tons, so if there were 15,000,000 staterooms, that would be 60,000,000 dtons or 840,000,000 cubic meters. Lets say each ramjet has a cylinder of habitable area of 1 kilometer diameter and 20 kilometers long?

The volume of this cylinder is 15,707,963,268 cubic meters or 1,122,000,000 dtons, that is a massive ship! Just a few problems, the ship has a fusion torch drive not a maneuver drive, it can accelerate at 1-g with this drive, and it can accelerate up to 6% of the speed of light, at which point its magnetic ion scoop comes into play, it funnels interstellar hydrogen into its proton-proton fusion reactor. Because of interstellar drag, these ships cannot greatly exceed 6% of the speed of light, but it can refuel while in cruise using its engines in maintain velocity and interstellar hydrogen to keep its fuel tanks fueled, this allows the ship to power its life support indefinitely.

Typically these starships when on station keeping duty, collect solar wind from the Sun, and accelerate it out the back when needed to correct the positioning of the ringworld. often times its enough for them simply to deploy their magnetic fields to push back on the Solar wind. These starships are not so great for interstellar travel, they take 54 years to cross a parsec. The builders of the ringworld either did not have the ability to build a jump drive, or these ramjets were intended primarily for use as system ships, perhaps to mine the solar wind and to travel to the asteroid belts to mine for additional materials. If the PCs manage to steal one of these enourmous spaceships, they will still have the problem of finding a large enough jump drive to retrofit into it so it can be used for interstellar journeys of a reasonable length, they don't come cheap!

 

[Rick]

I always assumed that the Traveller Ringworld was a collective term for any sort of habitat ring, not just the very specific Dyson Ring. The O'Neill Halo in the Nights Dawn trilogy is a ringworld, a ring of individual asteroid habitats in geostationary orbit around Earth (later on in the series is a similar alien example around a star).

I see no reason why a ringworld shouldn't be an artificially created (and maintained) ring of asteroid habitats - it actually makes perfect sense from a lower tech point of view, especially if you start at the Lagrange points in an orbital path and work outwards and if you have a good source of asteroids in the first place.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There is a description of a ringworld in the classic Traveller book Worlds, and it specifically describes Niven's ringworld, so I assume it is not the planet Saturn, which also has been described as a "ring world".
Besides, what sort of ringworld would be interesting for you? An asteroid belt is nothing special!

 

[Rick]

There is a description of a ringworld in the classic Traveller book Worlds, and it specifically describes Niven's ringworld, so I assume it is not the planet Saturn, which also has been described as a "ring world".
Besides, what sort of ringworld would be interesting for you? An asteroid belt is nothing special!

Niven's Ringworld is more technically a "Dyson Ring", one very specific type of ringworld habitat, in contrast to Saturn which has been described as a ringed world (can you see the difference now?) and an asteroid belt which is a naturally occurring wide orbit of irregularly spaced asteroids. A ring world that consists of artificially emplaced asteroid habitats at regular spacings along a single orbital path is still a ring world, even if you fail to see the difference.

As it happens you have once again gone running off at a complete tangent without checking any facts. For example, the Northstar entry you brought up uses the classic Traveller UPP notation, not the Mongoose Traveller UPP; which means that, under the classic Traveller system, a Niven-style ringworld would have the notation 'R' in the main world size and a ring of asteroids or planetoids would have a '0'. So, Northstar has an ring of asteroids as its main world, presumably many of them are habitats and Northstar Interworld Technological Services has a base on one (or several).

Perhaps in future you should a- read the small print at the bottom of the page, b- check out the facts based on this and c- not jump to incorrect conclusions based on one single word in the description.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

There is a description of a ringworld in the classic Traveller book Worlds, and it specifically describes Niven's ringworld, so I assume it is not the planet Saturn, which also has been described as a "ring world".
Besides, what sort of ringworld would be interesting for you? An asteroid belt is nothing special!

Niven's Ringworld is more technically a "Dyson Ring", one very specific type of ringworld habitat, in contrast to Saturn which has been described as a ringed world (can you see the difference now?) and an asteroid belt which is a naturally occurring wide orbit of irregularly spaced asteroids. A ring world that consists of artificially emplaced asteroid habitats at regular spacings along a single orbital path is still a ring world, even if you fail to see the difference.

As it happens you have once again gone running off at a complete tangent without checking any facts. For example, the Northstar entry you brought up uses the classic Traveller UPP notation, not the Mongoose Traveller UPP; which means that, under the classic Traveller system, a Niven-style ringworld would have the notation 'R' in the main world size and a ring of asteroids or planetoids would have a '0'. So, Northstar has an ring of asteroids as its main world, presumably many of them are habitats and Northstar Interworld Technological Services has a base on one (or several).

Perhaps in future you should a- read the small print at the bottom of the page, b- check out the facts based on this and c- not jump to incorrect conclusions based on one single word in the description.

It is a stretch to say an asteroid belt is a ringworld, The reason why the Northstar listing has assize of zero is because the ringworld also found in the system is not the mainworld, the mainworld is an asteroid belt that is also in the system. For some reason the inhabitants of the ringworld, if there are any are not interacting with the outside universe, thus it is not a place where starfarers usually visit, instead they visit an the starport is located in the asteroid belt, not the ringworld. Anyway, a Dyson ring is more interesting than a mere asteroid belt, even if the asteroids are hollowed out and converted into habitats. I have to conclude the population of the ringworld itself is not included in the population of the mainworld listing, which is the asteroid belt, a ringworld population would be in the tens of quadrillions of people, which is 3,000,000 times 5,000,000,000 which is the average population of each system. A low population ringworld would have merely quadrillions of people or hundreds of trillions.

 

[Yatima]

Let me have one last go at contributing to this thread in the spirit of imaginative interpretation of UPPs and Descriptions.

A ring of habitats can be something quite distinct from an Asteroid belt, if you want it to be. In his book The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millennial_Project:_Colonizing_the_Galaxy_in_Eight_Easy_Steps) Marshall Savage spits that the first step in harnessing more of the power of the energy output of a star (the very purpose of a Dyson sphere and its derivative, the Niven Ring World) is to create thousands, then millions of individual habitats (using asteroids, artificial habitats etc). In this model, the Dyson sphere is not so much a solid shell around the star, but rather a Dyson cloud of artificial and individual habitats.

I find this a fascinating concept, and one you could see emerging much more naturally than the monolithic engineering project that a Ringworld or Dyson sphere requires.

So you could choose to interpret this description and UPP in this way, and therefore make it a lot more interesting than a mere Asteroid Belt.

J