Venus - useful?

[Jame Rowe]

If you've ever read the Reaches trilogy by David Drake, then you've seen one version of Venus being used. :wink:

 

[zozotroll]

One of the problems of argueing about what was known or believed 1000 years ago is that 200 years ago a bunch of myths developed about how ignorant they where, that are still believed to in fact be true.

For instance, the flat earth. Perhaps peasants in their villages believed the earth was flat. nobody who was educated did. It had been known for over 1500 years of so that it was more or less round. And they even knew close to how big it was.

The Greek that figured it out was off by only 1%. But after his time, europeans hads lost the measure of distance he used. So by the middleages, there was to schools of how big the earth was. The debate was not would you fall off the edge, but that you would run out of food before you could get to the other side.

Ironicly Columbus beleived in the smaller and wrong number. His crew was not close to mutiny because they thought they where about to fall off the world, but becasse they knew they where just about to the point where they did not have enough food to go back.

Fortunetly for them, they bumped into a place they had not expected to find. And Columbus gets credit for something he didnt set out to do.

 

[RandyT0001]

So maybe people can just lighten up and let other do what the heck they like in their TU.

Who in which post said what that is preventing somebody else from doing what they want to do in their Traveller universe? What physical force is being used to do this?

It's good to hear the facts and science behind an issue,

Agreed. When you hear some facts and gain a better understanding about the science about an issue one has the opportunity to learn something new which might provide a unique twist or complication to an adventure that the PC's never realized before.

but if someone chooses not to employ that information in their setting, well, that's entirely their choice, and I'm sure it's made for the best personal reasons.

Agreed. Just because the referee knows about hydrogen diffusing through metal vacc suits doesn't mean he has to use it. He can choose to ignore it and play on.

No sense in arguing about it here, really.

Nobody is "arguing" with anybody as far as I can perceive. I was trying to have a discussion with Jeff about in game logical reasons why a government would prefer to build a prison on a Venus like world which would require additional costly maintainance due to the corrosive nature of the atmosphere as opposed to an airless rockball. He had stated in a post where he had a number of logical and sensible reasons to build the prison on Venus. I thought I might have missed something during my considerations of the situation that he had thought of. When he offered his reasons I analyzed them and presented my thoughts and insights as to their shortcomings for being "logical" within the game setting. He suddenly gets all defensive about it stating that I'm arguing with him (huh?) and just trying to "discredit" the idea (huh?).

I, and as far as I can tell EDG, am not telling anybody how to run or play their game. You have a face to face or an online game play it like you and your players want to, have fun. What EDG, being a actual real life planetary scientist, is doing is offering scientific insights to the thread topic "Venus - useful?". I take what I want/need and ignore the rest (sorry doc). I wish that there were other degreed professionals on the boards that offer such help. It would be nice to be able to ask a biology question and have a doctor (Phd) offer his insights on the question.

Well that's the end of my rant. YMMV

 

[klingsor]

I would tend to side with the 'Venus is useless' side mostly because of the real world facts. Though there is also a role playing problem. The place is so nasty that any incident is basically instantly fatal which is somewhat detrimental to role-playing. It makes a hard vacuum look forgiving! There you might have a chance (2001's helmet less space walk for example) but nothing like that is remotely possible on Venus.

On the other hand what could you do with it for a scenario?

1. A Maguffin - though it is going to have to be pretty tough to have any chance of surviving in the first place. Possible Ancient artefacts are a nice hook here as their action are inexplicable and their technology godlike (Clarke's Third Law).In The Fenris Device, one of the Hooded Swan books by Brian Stableford had an alien starship placed on a Venus like world to keep it out of reach.

2. Goodies. Rare minerals are always a good hook but they are going to have to be really valuable to make it worthwhile. Does anyone else remember the old Dr. Who story The Robots of Death? It was set on a mining vehicle that ranged about the surface of a rather nasty but mineral rich planet. A story that is well worth a look for a great plot.

3. Prison. I can't see it being really sensible but humans (at least) at not entirely sensible, give a dictator a chance of imprisoning his problem opponents (a problem in that he cannot just have them tortured to death or killed in a convenient accident) there and he might well jump at the chance.

4. Tourism. It seems awfully decadent but this might work. However I don't believe the visibility on Venus is really good enough to make it a paying proposition unless they have a lot of other attractions - Casinos with a hellish theme spring to mind. Bizarrely this is starting to sound plausible.

5. Science. Remotely operated probes would be good but someone might want to do things the hard way.

6. Atmosphere skimming. I like this idea, I blame an ancient scenario in White Dwarf for this though I think it was set above a gas giant.

A problem for any of the resource extraction ideas is that the real Venus is a little too well known so a fictional planet is easier to work with as you have more slack to work with.

 

[Stattick]

Years ago, a Solmani megacorporation conducted extensive exploratory mining on a Venus. This was a calculated risk based on computer models which predicted extremely rare, hard to manufacture chemical compounds in the planet's crust. Though the mine ran successfully for several years, advances in chemical synthesis techniques allowed similar compounds to be made industrially, eliminating the need for the mine.

The megacorporation kept up the mine for years after its official close, as the costs of maintenance were far lower than the costs of building a new mine if the facility were needed again. A handful of generations and hostile takeovers later, you have a new meacorp with little clue why it is holding onto this expensive hole in an insidious rock, and they place it on the auction block.

The auction happens to coincide with clandestine advances in Jump-7 theory, an avenue which could give the Imperial government an edge in a universe where communication is at the speed of travel. Since any progress in this field relies on very specific compounds, the ones originally found in the Venutian mine, the Imperium quickly bought it up using a holding company as an alias.

To keep the mine and its research a secret, the Imperium and the local subsector government have chosen the offer death-row criminals a second shot at "life". Many take the government up on the deal, and are shipped to the mines to spend the rest of their days. Life in the mines is hell, but the guards are always happy to gesture to the airlock and remind prisoners that they can leave whenever they want.


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There we have it. It's not the perfect story, but it's solid enough that I think my players would buy into it. There is reason for the mine to exist, reason for it to now be a secret prison planet, and even several available adventure hooks.

I may just use this.

So far, this is the only option that's been presented that I think is logical. I wasn't specifically looking for a prison scenario, but I don't mind it either. I may alter the details a bit if I decide to use it. For instance, I may drop the atmospheric pressure down considerably, and drop the temp down moderately. An equipment failure would still spell certain and instant doom for those relying on the tech to protect them from the hellish conditions. However, it would make it seem more feasible for the colony to exist.

I like the idea of a megacorp holding it after it's become obsolete too. I'm thinking that they're using and continuing to support a loosing proposition because it lets them exploit a tax loop. Once they get bought out though, the new corp owners start auctioning off some of the assets they don't want. The Imperium buys the colony for pennies on the dollar - afterall, who'd be crazy enough to bid against them on a colony world like this one?

I'm not sure whether to use it as a prison planet or not, but I'm leaning that way now... If so, it sort of reminds me of how Siberian gulags were used in the ol' USSR. It would be a place to quietly send all of your political dissidents, with the expectation that they'd never return. But like being sent to Siberia, there was always a small chance that you might survive your decades long sentence, or be given a pardon if the political climate changes back in the capital. I'd imagine a considerable number of nobles and high ranking military officers there, working in hellish, slave-like conditions, just trying to survive another day. They wouldn't know the details of what they're working on, just that they go into the extremely dangerous mine shafts everyday to work. Every day, prisoners die in the shafts. Every morning, the guards come to collect up the bodies of those that had died during the night, to toss their naked bodies outdoors in a shallow pit. The pressure and acids in the atmosphere would annihilate the evidence in a matter of hours, leaving only a calcium residue behind in the pit.

Meanwhile, in a nearby compound, or up in the orbital station, Imperium scientists live well and experiment at trying to find a way of making the J7 engine stable enough to use. The primary resources they need for their experiments they can mine and/or produce in-system with the slave labor, enough so that this blackest of black-ops would be virtually impossible to detect through tracing paperwork or supplies. A code red system would keep away virtually all traffic, including those pesky psychics that might ferret out information about what they're really doing here. Officially, this is just a small Imperium bio-research station and political prison - no visitors allowed.

 

[EDG]

One slight problem with the J7 idea - a hot, insidious hellhole world is likely to be within the 100D limit of the star. So they wouldn't actually be able to test the engine there!

 

[EDG]

I would tend to side with the 'Venus is useless' side mostly because of the real world facts. Though there is also a role playing problem. The place is so nasty that any incident is basically instantly fatal which is somewhat detrimental to role-playing. It makes a hard vacuum look forgiving!

And yet, we have worlds in Traveller where billions of people quite happily live in similar environments. The Hard Science mods go a little way to correct this, but in the playtest I was pushing for B and C atm worlds to have much larger penalties to populations.

 

[klingsor]

I had forgotten about that. You would surely need a pretty strong reason to live there though.

 

[Stattick]

One slight problem with the J7 idea - a hot, insidious hellhole world is likely to be within the 100D limit of the star. So they wouldn't actually be able to test the engine there!

Well, that's a simple enough work around... They can do their testing at an in-system Gas Giant orbital station. That'd give 'em a fuel supply too.

 

[EDG]

Well, that's a simple enough work around... They can do their testing at an in-system Gas Giant orbital station. That'd give 'em a fuel supply too.

So they'd build the thing on an inner insidious world, then have to go all the way out beyond the 100D limit to a GG to test it? Why use the Insidious world at all then - why not build the testing ground on one of the GG's moons?

 

[tneva82]

One slight problem with the J7 idea - a hot, insidious hellhole world is likely to be within the 100D limit of the star. So they wouldn't actually be able to test the engine there!

So change it instead that rather than J7 engines they are testing prototype idea of jump engine that works within 100d distance. That's engine many militaries would be interested to get their hands on.

 

[Stattick]

Well, that's a simple enough work around... They can do their testing at an in-system Gas Giant orbital station. That'd give 'em a fuel supply too.

So they'd build the thing on an inner insidious world, then have to go all the way out beyond the 100D limit to a GG to test it? Why use the Insidious world at all then - why not build the testing ground on one of the GG's moons?

Because the insideous world is where they're getting the rare raw materials they need...

Or tneva82's idea. I'm easy. :lol: