Hey guys,
Is there an official errata for the core book?
I wrote a small script last night that would generate worlds according to the rules there, including the "realistic" worldgen rules. The problem is, however, that it results in 30-50% of worlds having a TL that is too low for survival. This means I either have a bug in my script, or there's a bug in the generation rules. Since I can't find any bug on my end, I'll work from the later assumption...
For example, if a world has Atmo A, it requires a TL of 8, which is barely feasible just by the physical characteristics; the world gets +1 for that Atmo, and maybe another +1 for size 3-4.
I can of course house-rule it. The easy way is to just set worlds to the minimum TL required, but it's actually fun to have a few worlds with problems (just not half of them!).
Another solution would be to assume that "colonies" (Pop 6-) have the same TL as their "parent" planet. This is hard to implement in a simple script, but easy enough to do manually afterward and an entirely realistic solution to the problem.
Proposal for a RNG solution:
The "realistic" rules work under the assumption that worlds will be remote frontier worlds with low populations. This is fine, but ignores:
a) People generally will have the tech to settle where they live or they wouldn't do so (unless they are sentient space lemmings).
Assume different TL mods for atmosphere:
b) Asteroids and orbital complexes need SOME form of spaceport by their very nature, unless it somehow got destroyed... +2 on roll to starport result if size=0 and pop>0.
This reduces the likelyhood of X class starports on these worlds, which carry a hefty -4 TL penalty.
These additions seem to reduce the "too-low TL" results to 10-20%, and they CAN result (rarely) in TLs that are too high for the default Traveller setting:
Port;Size;Atmo;Hydro;Pop;Govt;Law;TL;Climate;Trade;Zone;Notes
A;0;0;0;8;6;7;18;Temperate;As Ht Va ;;
This world got:
+2 from size
+3 from atmo (my mod, would be +1 otherwise)
+1 from hydro
+6 from Star port
Guess the lucky guys rolled a 6 on the d6 for TL. Have only seen one such world so far in 100+ results that I checked for it.
c) Optional addition: Increase the population penalties for unsuitable worlds. If it is a hostile planet, people will be much less likely to settle there.
Right now, a world with a bad atmo or bad size gets a -1 which still means 91.6% have at least population 1. A world with bad atmo and bad size has 83.33% likelihood of being inhabited.
Doubling those penalties would reduce that to 58.33%. This would further reduce the "TL too low" issue by simply, well, making fewer such problem worlds inhabited in the first place. The problem is that it also reduces the max pop of those systems from "hundreds of millions" to "million" range and having a few high pop asteroid belts is cool, so I dislike this.
Anyway. Thoughts? I'd like to nail this down before I create my sector.
Is there an official errata for the core book?
I wrote a small script last night that would generate worlds according to the rules there, including the "realistic" worldgen rules. The problem is, however, that it results in 30-50% of worlds having a TL that is too low for survival. This means I either have a bug in my script, or there's a bug in the generation rules. Since I can't find any bug on my end, I'll work from the later assumption...
For example, if a world has Atmo A, it requires a TL of 8, which is barely feasible just by the physical characteristics; the world gets +1 for that Atmo, and maybe another +1 for size 3-4.
I can of course house-rule it. The easy way is to just set worlds to the minimum TL required, but it's actually fun to have a few worlds with problems (just not half of them!).
Another solution would be to assume that "colonies" (Pop 6-) have the same TL as their "parent" planet. This is hard to implement in a simple script, but easy enough to do manually afterward and an entirely realistic solution to the problem.
Proposal for a RNG solution:
The "realistic" rules work under the assumption that worlds will be remote frontier worlds with low populations. This is fine, but ignores:
a) People generally will have the tech to settle where they live or they wouldn't do so (unless they are sentient space lemmings).
Assume different TL mods for atmosphere:
b) Asteroids and orbital complexes need SOME form of spaceport by their very nature, unless it somehow got destroyed... +2 on roll to starport result if size=0 and pop>0.
This reduces the likelyhood of X class starports on these worlds, which carry a hefty -4 TL penalty.
These additions seem to reduce the "too-low TL" results to 10-20%, and they CAN result (rarely) in TLs that are too high for the default Traveller setting:
Port;Size;Atmo;Hydro;Pop;Govt;Law;TL;Climate;Trade;Zone;Notes
A;0;0;0;8;6;7;18;Temperate;As Ht Va ;;
This world got:
+2 from size
+3 from atmo (my mod, would be +1 otherwise)
+1 from hydro
+6 from Star port
Guess the lucky guys rolled a 6 on the d6 for TL. Have only seen one such world so far in 100+ results that I checked for it.
c) Optional addition: Increase the population penalties for unsuitable worlds. If it is a hostile planet, people will be much less likely to settle there.
Right now, a world with a bad atmo or bad size gets a -1 which still means 91.6% have at least population 1. A world with bad atmo and bad size has 83.33% likelihood of being inhabited.
Doubling those penalties would reduce that to 58.33%. This would further reduce the "TL too low" issue by simply, well, making fewer such problem worlds inhabited in the first place. The problem is that it also reduces the max pop of those systems from "hundreds of millions" to "million" range and having a few high pop asteroid belts is cool, so I dislike this.
Anyway. Thoughts? I'd like to nail this down before I create my sector.
