Population sizes
- Thread starter Bakemono
- Start date
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
If you use either of the Variations for UWP generation methods (in the gray box on page 180, you can get positive DMs for Population.
Also, as the GM, you might want to give a region a positive (or negative) DM to population to account for the age or settlement pattern of the area.
For example, I would expect the Core subsector of the Third Imperium would have higher populations and so might have a positive DM applied to all POP rolls there. A newly explored area might have a negative DM applied. Your call though.
Also, as the GM, you might want to give a region a positive (or negative) DM to population to account for the age or settlement pattern of the area.
For example, I would expect the Core subsector of the Third Imperium would have higher populations and so might have a positive DM applied to all POP rolls there. A newly explored area might have a negative DM applied. Your call though.
Pop-A covers up to 99Billion people (10e11 - 1) That's "quite a few"(tm). Usual Traveller settings don't really have systems that are so comprehensively exploited as to allow more than that many people, even in a solar system volume. Orbitals are too hi-tech and even space station habitats retain too much danger for them to be sites of common mass habitation.Bakemono said:
Even then, the pop figure is usually considered to be those living on the main world... and pushing a hundred billion onto an earth-like would be a *bit* crowded.
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
One of the house rules that I often use is a redefinition of the Population figure after it reaches 10
I used:
10: 10-30 Billion
11: 40-60 Billion
12: 70-99 Billion
I used:
10: 10-30 Billion
11: 40-60 Billion
12: 70-99 Billion
For real world comparisons, covering all of Europe in a Hong Kong density city would result in tens of billions of people (Pop A). Covering Asia and Africa with high tech farms would provide 7 km of farm for each km of city. That would still leave all of Nort America, South America and Australia as wilderness providing room for population growth.
It would be different than most people are familiar with, but it is not impossible - even with current technology.
It would be different than most people are familiar with, but it is not impossible - even with current technology.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
EDG said:
Without starting an argument about economics or politics, I think its pretty widely accepted that currently, the main cause of that is uneven distribution and inefficient reprocessing and distribution . We could feed every on now, but some areas would have to stop being so....obese. Probably all that would do is cause another population jump, but with tech advancing, birthrates usually decouple from food. (the data is available both from the UN and from several academic and Governmantal press sources....sadly, I no longer have the references, not do I have time to provide them, so take this with a BIG grain of salt if you want).
Huge propulations are sustainable with technological support -for a while -and in a thousand year civilization I assume that growth is minimal for any of the really Hi pop worlds (and they are reasonably stable at their levels -this may be "hand to mouth draconic rationing and every scrap of resource desperately recycled stable" , but thats an adventure waiting to happen)
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
atpollard said:
Or in....MEGA CITY ONE ! (a shameless geek riff on a later traveller product)
captainjack23 said:
Oh I know that. But what on earth makes you think that it'd be any better anywhere else? I think you'll always get that sort of uneven distribution, inefficient processing, and general unfairness wherever you go. You'll still have billions of poor or impoverished or starving people on pop A worlds, probably more than the whole current population of Earth !
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
EDG said:
Or not. Its the future -surely somthing will get better, if nothing else the size of the surpluses or the means of distribution. But we've had this argumant about food and population sustainability before. Shall we agree to disagree and move on ?
captainjack23 said:
You can if you like. I've been in lots of arguments, I don't recall that one
I think the future will be much like today, which is much like the past. Some people will "have", and some people will "have not". There'll be rich and poor divides on every heavily populated planet, and resources straining to cope with populations and industries. It may not be the same as it is today, but I think some things will never change.
There will always be an inequality in the distribution of resources. In every industrial nation since the industrial revolution, income/wealth ( and thus food ) distribution follows a pareto curve which has been fairly consistent regardless of the polictics of the society...even communist/socialist ones.
When someone gains a bit more than others, he'll use it to gain still more, which means that some will get less and those with less will continue to fall behind.
It hasn't varied since such data has been available, so I see no reason to assume it will be significantly different in the far future..... not unless humanity's 'moral compass' changes ( and I share Mark Twain's view about 'moral compasses' ).
When someone gains a bit more than others, he'll use it to gain still more, which means that some will get less and those with less will continue to fall behind.
It hasn't varied since such data has been available, so I see no reason to assume it will be significantly different in the far future..... not unless humanity's 'moral compass' changes ( and I share Mark Twain's view about 'moral compasses' ).
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
EDG said:captainjack23 said:
You can if you like. I've been in lots of arguments, I don't recall that one
I think the future will be much like today, which is much like the past. Some people will "have", and some people will "have not". There'll be rich and poor divides on every heavily populated planet, and resources straining to cope with populations and industries. It may not be the same as it is today, but I think some things will never change.
Which begs the question of why to play a SF game - for escapism, I suppose , but why impose that mindset on on it ? Never mind... rhetorical question, really
In any case, answer me this: is your objection that high population worlds shouldn't exist , or that even at the top population things will be inequitable ?
because I have no gripe with the second point....I said, "stable", not "pleasant", after all.
captainjack23 said:
I dunno about you, but I play SF to imagine what life is like in the future, or to imagine what it's like exploring the stars. I like my futures to make sense though. I guess I'm just more "simulationist" with my gaming than you? There's escapism, but if it's too unrealistic for my taste then I may as well just be playing D&D to get my escapist kick. (not that D&D is bad - in fact the new edition rocks on toast I think).
The latter mostly. I still don't buy that pop A+ worlds will be sustainable though - they consume a massive amount of resources, and if they go down then billions will die. I suspect there's a practical cap beyond which a population just can't be sustained - kinda like how waves can only get so tall before gravity starts bringing them down. I'm not sure any world government would really want their populations reaching that limit, but it all depends on the economics and technology.
There are plans currenly under way to grow food in 'high rise farms' located in the city itself. Obviously still 'proof of concept' stuff, but it opens the posibility that population is only limited by available surface area and the technological ability to build up. Pop F is actually plausable for an anti-grav/fusion culture.
Imagine a pop B world, with pop multiplier 7. That's about 100 times as many people on Earth as there are now. Let's been simple and multiply the population of every conurbation by 100. London, New York and Moscow will have about 1 billion people in them each. Mumbai will have a number of people in it equal to the current population of China (1.3 billion). Baghdad will have 500 million. Vancouver will have about 250 million. Villages that had thousands now have hundreds of thousands of people.
Sure, it's very simplistic, but I reckon anyone who thinks they can get their heads around those numbers isn't thinking about it hard enough. Imagine a city with the population of India or China today! Imagine the sheer logistics of that - getting food for people to eat, getting around, getting government support, finding a place to raise a family... it's mind-boggling.
EDIT: I meant pop multiplier of 7!
Sure, it's very simplistic, but I reckon anyone who thinks they can get their heads around those numbers isn't thinking about it hard enough. Imagine a city with the population of India or China today! Imagine the sheer logistics of that - getting food for people to eat, getting around, getting government support, finding a place to raise a family... it's mind-boggling.
EDIT: I meant pop multiplier of 7!
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
EDG said:
As is faster than light travel, really. But yes, imagining that is the stuff of traveller; and many sf games; and so we have Trantor which essentially needed a galaxy to support it.
But, oddly, we seem to basically agree...they are mind boggling, and inequites will be vast. Plus, Pop B worlds are very rare - in fact, impossible without modifiers.
captainjack23 said:
I never really got any inkling about Trantor's massive population from the first three Foundation books - IIRC it was mentioned at one point maybe but that was about it... didn't do anything to evoke the sheer scale of it.
How many people was Coruscant supposed to have on it in Star Wars?
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
EDG said:
Trantor was a earth size planet with the land entirely covered by the city -way high, and underground, and out into the seas. Unless everyone got a mansion with a baseball field, I'm guessing the population was high. One reference I recall was that a dozen ag worlds existed solely to help feed it; and the maitainance of the support trade routes for it were most of the empires effort and policy in the late empire. Its mostly in the history interludes, and in some other stories in that universe (foundation and not)
For almost all of the first books it's mainly offstage, and a ruin by the third one.
Coruscant is pretty much a trantoresque situation, possibly with less population, as there is some open space and non-functional architecture.
