Space Opera / Hard Science World Creation

[E.T.Smith]

Some things I'm not clear about with these modifications to the basic world-gen process.

The effect of the Space Opera mods are pretty clear; They make water-rich standard-atmosphere worlds rarer and up the percentage of airless rockballs, thereby creating subsectors dominated by a few key fertile worlds rather than dozens of middling ones. However, I'm a little unclear on what the Hard Science mods are trying to achieve. The text about "rugged individuality and frontier spirit", I'm sorry to say, comes off as uninformative blather. Obviously I can see that the mods shift the subsector population from the inhospitable worlds to the more accommodating ones, I'm just not sure what the point of that is.

One specific issue: the Space Opera mods state a -6 DM to Hydro for world sizes 0-1 whereas the standard world-gen simply gives size 0 and 1 worlds an auto hydro of 0. Is the intention here that water is more likely on minor worlds under the space opera mods, or is it just a typo?

Also, how does the use of these modified generation procedures affect a merchant campaign? I imagine rich markets end up farther apart, straining ship finances considerably.

 

[Golan2072]

The effect of the Space Opera mods are pretty clear; They make water-rich standard-atmosphere worlds rarer and up the percentage of airless rockballs, thereby creating subsectors dominated by a few key fertile worlds rather than dozens of middling ones. However, I'm a little unclear on what the Hard Science mods are trying to achieve. The text about "rugged individuality and frontier spirit", I'm sorry to say, comes off as uninformative blather. Obviously I can see that the mods shift the subsector population from the inhospitable worlds to the more accommodating ones, I'm just not sure what the point of that is.

Hard Science solves some plausibility issues with the standard rules, especially with tiny worlds holding breathable atmospheres in the habitable zone (quite unrealistic) as well as low-tech worlds with inhospitable environments and large populations. It also increases the population of worlds with breathable atmospheres and decreases the population of less habitable worlds (as people are more likely to prefer to live in an open-air colony than on a dome-colony rockball). Finally, Hard Science rules make the local starport dependent on population size, which means that Starport-A (or B) could no longer exist without a large enough population to work in its shipyards and their supporting industries.

In other words, they make the universe seem more believable and realistic-feeling.

One specific issue: the Space Opera mods state a -6 DM to Hydro for world sizes 0-1 whereas the standard world-gen simply gives size 0 and 1 worlds an auto hydro of 0. Is the intention here that water is more likely on minor worlds under the space opera mods, or is it just a typo?

This was probably meant to produce more iceball worlds, or rockballs with ice - remember that with no atmosphere a world with a hydrosphere above zero receives the Ic trade-code.

 

[EDG]

TBH I'm not sure why they called them "space opera" and "hard science"... if anything the "Space Opera" ones should be called "Hard Science" because those are directly based on realism, and the "Hard Science" ones should be called er, something else that isn't Space Opera.


It looks like these mods were included based on suggestions that I made during the playtest.

The "Space Opera" mods are there to make worlds more realistic - small worlds just aren't going to have breathable atmospheres in the habitable zones, because they can't retain nitrogen or oxygen or water. So the effect of that is to remove all those tiny rockballs with standard atmospheres.

The -6 DM to Hydro for size 0-1 worlds looks like an error and should be removed because as you say the size 0-1 world already have 0 hydrographics.


The "Hard Science" mods are there to basically link population with habitability. In the default rules (and CT) you didn't have any connection between the two, so you could have tens of billions of people living on a hellhole that makes Venus look like paradise. With the Hard Science DMs though the intent is to have lower populations on less habitable or completely uninhabitable worlds, and higher populations on the garden worlds (those with atm 5/6/8). The size mods there are because low gravity and high gravity are going to make worlds less habitable too.

Similarly, the alternate rule for creating starports means that higher population worlds will usually end up with better starports and lower population worlds will end up with worse starports (as opposed to the default where there's no link between population and starport at all). The logic being that the starports are built where the markets (i.e. people) are, and you're not likely to want to plonk a massive starport on a backwater world with 10 people on it.

Bear in mind that the "Hard Science" mods are a LOT more lenient than what I was originally suggesting in the playtest. If I had my way I'd have seriously reduced the populations on atm B and C worlds.

 

[E.T.Smith]

TBH I'm not sure why they called them "space opera" and "hard science"... if anything the "Space Opera" ones should be called "Hard Science" because those are directly based on realism, and the "Hard Science" ones should be called er, something else that isn't Space Opera.

I think it really is just those labels that are making me scratch my head. While the roll mods presented produce useful results, they really don't have anything to do with the genre titles applied to them. "Space Opera" especially is misapplied, since I generally associate that phrase with the looser science of the sort actually implied by the basic world-gen process.

 

[Golan2072]

Similarly, the alternate rule for creating starports means that higher population worlds will usually end up with better starports and lower population worlds will end up with worse starports (as opposed to the default where there's no link between population and starport at all). The logic being that the starports are built where the markets (i.e. people) are, and you're not likely to want to plonk a massive starport on a backwater world with 10 people on it.

IMHO the issue here is more infrastructure than markets; a (relatively) good starport could be feasible on a low-pop world if the said world is on a trade route (and thus ships going to lucrative markets down the road need refueling/repairs) or if this world has strategic importance (and thus the Navy is going to finance a large starport as a forward fleet maintenance point). However, starports A and B (and to a far lesser degree, C) require a significant industrial infrastructure to operate: they need to produce massive amounts of refined fuel, large stockpiles of spare parts (and importing them would usually be expensive), and raw materials for building ships (as starports A and B include shipyards), not to mention the manpower required to run the large starports themselves. Sure, automation would reduce the manpower requirements, but would never eliminate them completely.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

You are correct, but the HS rules will TEND to put poorer starports with lower populations. The 2D-7+POP number gives a lot of variance in what a given world can have.

BUT, if you roll that Starport E on a Hi Population world, it will be pretty rare and then when you, as the GM, say "Oh, they must be Xenophobic" it isn't something that you have to do half-a-dozen times per sub-sector. It also gives you a built in minimum population for the bigger starports.

 

[E.T.Smith]

In addition to population, I noted that the Starport roll doesn't account for location. I found it odd that a world sitting alone in a rift, where ships are presumably few and far between no matter how rich the world is, could somehow support a class A port, yet a world lucky enough to sit on the junction of a couple mains, where ships are going to pass through frequently even is its an airless rockball, might end up with an X.

So I've been adding the following DM's to the starport roll.

No connection to Main: -1
Fully isolated by 1 parsec: -2
Fully isolated by 2 or more parsecs: -3
Main Junction, 3 spurs: +1
Main Junction, 4 or more spurs: +2

 

[Klaus Kipling]

In addition to population, I noted that the Starport roll doesn't account for location. I found it odd that a world sitting alone in a rift, where ships are presumably few and far between no matter how rich the world is, could somehow support a class A port, yet a world lucky enough to sit on the junction of a couple mains, where ships are going to pass through frequently even is its an airless rockball, might end up with an X.

So I've been adding the following DM's to the starport roll.

No connection to Main: -1
Fully isolated by 1 parsec: -2
Fully isolated by 2 or more parsecs: -3
Main Junction, 3 spurs: +1
Main Junction, 4 or more spurs: +2

This has never been addressed by worldgen as far as I know. It should be.

It's quite vexing seeing a hi pop teeny rockball next door to an empty garden world. Or those several X starports on the Spinward Main, making j1 trade awkward.

But, it would be a complex task to come up with such a system, beyond the remit of the core rules, methinks.

 

[EDG]

This has never been addressed by worldgen as far as I know. It should be.

It's quite vexing seeing a hi pop teeny rockball next door to an empty garden world. Or those several X starports on the Spinward Main, making j1 trade awkward.

But, it would be a complex task to come up with such a system, beyond the remit of the core rules, methinks.

Yeah, it'd be a really nice thing to have (and I've dabbled with something similar myself) but it means you need to have mapped things out already. Plus it's a real bitch to try and figure it out in a program because you need to calculate distances based on hex/column locations .

It's a good guideline to use as a "post-processing" stage though, after the UWPs have been created and you've got the systems mapped out.

 

[Ishmael]

I made my own system a while ago.

pop is modified by atm and hyd
It uses information from the social profile generated by world builder's handbook or Pocket Empires to give dm's for tech. There is also a dm from the pop value because I feel you need a certain number of people to support higher tech societies. This give manufacturing tech, but higher tech comes from imports.
The starport type comes from the tech value.

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=33366&highlight=uwp

 

[rust]

I made my own system a while ago.

Nice system, I like it.

I have stopped using UWPs long ago, but perhaps I will re-introduce them
with MGT, and your system might be a good way to improve the current
MGT UWP for my purposes.

 

[Solivagus]

The -6 DM to Hydro for size 0-1 worlds looks like an error and should be removed because as you say the size 0-1 world already have 0 hydrographics.

It is clearly an error, but I'd assumed that the DM was meant to replace the automatic 0, in which case its the DM thats wrong (since a DM of -6 when the size gives an -6 already is still an automatic 0)

 

[EDG]

The -6 DM to Hydro for size 0-1 worlds looks like an error and should be removed because as you say the size 0-1 world already have 0 hydrographics.

Whoa, hold on a mo.

The DM-6 is for ATMOSPHERE 0-1, not size! So I presume the idea is that these rules superimpose/replace the default -4 DM. So I guess what it's actually saying is:

Hydrographics DMs, Default rules:
Size 0,1: Hydrographics 0
Atm 0,1,A,B,C: DM-4

Hydrographics DMs, Space Opera rules: 
Atm 0,1 (any size): DM-6
Atm 2,3,B,C (any size): DM-4
Atm A, size 5+: DM-4

Size 0 or 1: Hydrographics 0
Size 3 or 4, Atm A: DM-6
Size 5+ Atm A: DM-4 (default rule)

This can be rephrased a lot more clearly if you account for the sizes and atmospheres - this is what you get with the Space Opera rules for each world size:

Size 1: atm 0, hyd 0.
Size 2: atm 0, hyd DM-6.
Size 3 and 4: atm 0 or 1 or A, hyd DM-6 always.
size 5+: any atm, hyd DM-6 if atm 0/1, hyd DM-4 if atm 2/3/A/B/C.

 

[EDG]

I have (completely arbitrarily) decided that in the Default and Space Opera rules, the Tech Level is raised to the environmental minimum if the generated TL is below that. But in the Hard Science rules, the population will be reduced to 0 if the generated TL is below the environmental minimum (this is actually the default action as described in the CT Alien modules where the environmental TLs first showed up).

This results in a lot more barren (uninhabited) planets in the HS rules, but not for the reason you'd expect. What seems to be happening is that the DM-1 for population if the world is not atm 5/6/8 coupled with the fact that you now roll 2d-7+pop for starport now means that you have a lot more starport D/E/X worlds. The X starport worlds have a DM-4 on Tech Level (which I never saw the point of, personally), which more often than not pushes the tech level way down below the environmental minimums, thus killing all the population.

 

[Golan2072]

I have (completely arbitrarily) decided that in the Default and Space Opera rules, the Tech Level is raised to the environmental minimum if the generated TL is below that. But in the Hard Science rules, the population will be reduced to 0 if the generated TL is below the environmental minimum (this is actually the default action as described in the CT Alien modules where the environmental TLs first showed up).

An alternative is to raise the non-habitable world TL to the required minimum in Core areas of your polity (long-settled, economically-developed, well-explored and with almost any world sitting on some trade route) and to zero the population of non-habitable worlds on the frontier if their TL is insufficient (as only the most suitable worlds would be colonized in the first colonial waves while hellholes would mostly be bypassed).