World building new major races

[Nelphine]

While I'm not using WHB for this (I'm developing my own simplified rules based on RTT world generation), I am currently trying to develop rules for randomly generating major races (counting Aslan as a major race) that would be able to generate charted space.

What I've got so far is that major races occur about 1/30 sectors. In turn this means intelligent sophonts fail (and completely die, embracing the 'great filter' theory) about 34/36 times (and the majority fail around TL 5, implying early nuclear tech is a common 'great filter'), resulting in many worlds leaving failed civilizations on them (yay exploration of ruins!).

I'm quite happy with everything up to TL10 (assuming no jump technology is found).

Jump technology is a bit trickier (TL9+).

The specific problem I'm trying to grapple with is population distribution.

I've currently got that population of a TL9 major race is around 30 billion (2d6 x4 billion), and roughly triples every new TL, resulting in around 20 trillion at TL15, with a reasonably high amount of variance. This allows for the charted space species to fit into this model, and so I like the population model for each TL. It's straightforward enough to be usable.

So what about population distribution is causing issues? Well, to put it simply, each planet of X+2 results in 100 less worlds of population X.

This makes any variance of higher population worlds result in absolutely massive variance in lower population worlds. For instance, the third imperium has ~11,000 worlds. But if it had 1 less Pop A world, and replaced it with pop 6 worlds, that would mean an extra 10,000 worlds in the 3I, doubling it's world total. (Imagine if it was Pop B to pop 4 instead.. *shudders*)

So I'm trying to come up with a system to generate worlds that's straightforward, that somehow corresponds to total population, but still leaves total number of worlds in a reasonable ballpark

It would be fine if I generated worlds, and just used their total population as the total population of the species, but I still want the end result to fit in an approximate range.

Any thoughts or advice?

Please note: I love world building of this nature. The whole purpose is to randomly generate sophonts and their area of influence. That may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's certainly mine.

 

[coolAlias]

My suggestion would be to revise your assumption that population triples every new TL; while this may be true at lower TLs, here on Earth in real life we seem to be plateauing and even going in the opposite direction once tech / society / education reaches a certain level.

Free from a strict population progression formula, you could then simply roll population for each of their worlds as normal and sum them all up to get a total population count for that species.

 

[Geir]

(I would call nukes early TL 6, but that's just me)
Strictly for the Charted Space universe, I was under the impression that current 'Major Races' were essentially nonexistent outside Charted Space (though Deepnight Revelations junks that idea). At least that was my understanding from Marc's musings, one or two steps removed from first hand. But let's assume that is 'old information.'

I would think 1:30 sectors is a bit low, but workable. The thing missing in Charted Space is a good definition of Deep Time. The Ancients are only 300K years gone, and there's rumors of things going back a few million, but the galaxy is basically 13 billion years old, and sophonts could have started emerging 8-10 billion years ago (maybe, our sample size of examples sucks). Unless you have some sort of Berserker-like cleaner (or like the Inhibiters in Reynolds universe, and those things that hate sharp angles in some of Jack McDevitt's books) there'd be a lot more mega-structure ruins of dead civilisations lying about.

Once again, we're stuck with arguing from a single example (us) and don't know how it will go, where the Great Filter is (if there is one), and how long a civilisation lasts, much less how the population curve goes. On Earth, it's likely an S-curve leveling at about 10 billion, but we're one pandemic from a collapse, and if death is 'conquered' - at least as far as aging is concerned - even a very low birth rate will cause an exponential growth of population over time. And expansion to new worlds might cause new little s-curves of population that when looked at in an expanding sphere (or circle on a sector map... never mind...) are basically exponential.

Even in Charted Space, there are sublight civilisations (past or present) that never developed jump, at least on their own, and in isolation, those races could sprawl.

There was also a thread some years back talking about a 'civilisation maximum' tech level based on population: 10^N where N was the max tech (that would be 1 quadrillion for TL15, so maybe it was N-1 or N-2, but whatever - I riffed on it a bit for the Sector Construction Guide, but not to the extent that would be useful for building a major race). No idea if that holds true or whether the Third Imperium is sluggish because of Vilani conservatism - and again each sophont race could be different.

Okay, I typed a lot and most of it was not that helpful, but at least it's a few things to think about.

 

[Sigtrygg]

I think Marc's dictat over major and minor races was that there can be no more major races in charted space, beyond its borders there are races that make the major race racist distinction moot.
There are cultures that occupy more territory than the whole of charted space, there are cultures that achieved Ancient levels of technology millions of years before the Droyne came to be, there are cultures that exceed them...

"The First Starfarers
We place the age of the universe at more than fifteen billion years.
The oldest stars in Charted Space are dim red dwarfs some ten billion years old.
Intelligent life first appeared in Charted Space more than two billion years ago."

By Charted space do they mean our whole galaxy or only the Third Imperium and its environs? Did "intelligent" life evolve sooner somewhere else in our galaxy?

"Intelligent life first began sublight travel between the stars more than a billion years ago."

Once again is this in the local part of the galaxy or the galaxy as a whole?

"Short-lived beings found sublight travel tedious and frustrating and contented themselves with confinement to a few star systems. Longer lived races ranged far and wide using generation ships, cold sleep, and even electronic personality transfers."

There is another way, relativistic speeds of 0.9c are canon for imperium and dark Nebula, what if the first starfarers could achieve even higher fractions of c and thus use time dilation to range further.

We know that according to Marc Grandfather invented the first jump drive, did the earlier races have alternative FTL means by then?

 

[Nelphine]

My suggestion would be to revise your assumption that population triples every new TL; while this may be true at lower TLs, here on Earth in real life we seem to be plateauing and even going in the opposite direction once tech / society / education reaches a certain level.

Yes, the population chart for non jump species is not the same. It plateaus.

My explanation is that it's about space- at very low TL (TL0) it grows far faster per TL, and then it drops down to doubling per TL in modern times, until its only increasing by about 50% for TL 8.

So without jump, TL9 and 10 definitely aren't tripling, its far lower than that.

I would think 1:30 sectors is a bit low, but workable. The thing missing in Charted Space is a good definition of Deep Time. The Ancients are only 300K years gone, and there's rumors of things going back a few million, but the galaxy is basically 13 billion years old, and sophonts could have started emerging 8-10 billion years ago (maybe, our sample size of examples sucks). Unless you have some sort of Berserker-like cleaner (or like the Inhibiters in Reynolds universe, and those things that hate sharp angles in some of Jack McDevitt's books) there'd be a lot more mega-structure ruins of dead civilisations lying about.

Once again, we're stuck with arguing from a single example (us) and don't know how it will go, where the Great Filter is (if there is one), and how long a civilisation lasts, much less how the population curve goes. On Earth, it's likely an S-curve leveling at about 10 billion, but we're one pandemic from a collapse, and if death is 'conquered' - at least as far as aging is concerned - even a very low birth rate will cause an exponential growth of population over time. And expansion to new worlds might cause new little s-curves of population that when looked at in an expanding sphere (or circle on a sector map... never mind...) are basically exponential.

My assumption is that on the time scales of the game, the exponential growth doesn't get going for non jump species. While this would obviously not be true in a larger context, in the context of trying to randomly generate chunks of space that would be similar to Charted Space, which is broadly a setting that many people like, this is true. (This is also why I don't care if major species are supposed to be outside charted space - the idea is not to add this to charted space, but to generate regions of space that are like charted space for different universes.)

As a small note, I do have TL10 species (without jump) colonizing other systems, its just very minimal. (And I arbitrarily limit non jump species to TL10, due to comments below about link between population and TL and space)


However, Jump then opens it back up again, and space (on the time scales that a game is concerned about), become available, and so population starts increasing much faster again. (This is also why I'm tying population growth to TL, NOT to time - it could certainly be exponential when looked at it in time, or not, and it handwaves away how to deal with sluggish species like vilani - they are sluggish both in population growth and tech, and the argument is that they will advance in tech as fast - when compared to TL - as someone who is fast at growth or TL. This doesn't have to be true of course, but it works out nicely for making a playable universe with major races that are comparable to each other - if you don't have the tech to fight back, then you don't have the population to be perceived as a threat (because economic power and therefore military power, are primarily derived from population), and vice versa. This also means that once a 'weaker' major race does become a perceived threat, they will also have the tech to be able to fight back.)

Again, the purpose is to make a playable plausible universe that's intuitive and straightforward to generate, not to make a realistic simulator.

Free from a strict population progression formula, you could then simply roll population for each of their worlds as normal and sum them all up to get a total population count for that species.

Going back to this again, because of the previous comments, I'm specifically making TL and population linked, and I'm happy with that link - it generates a nicely playable universe with different factions that can fit together in a plausible way.

However, this leads back to 'how do I calculate number of worlds'. Number of worlds is ALSO something that would be perceived as a threat by other species (as it is more easily known than population, and therefore would be used as an inaccurate proxy), and so i want to arbitrarily link population and number of worlds in a way that is also conducive to a playable universe with plausible factions.

 

[Nelphine]

(I would call nukes early TL 6, but that's just me)

Yeah, that's exactly I'm doing.. TL 5 species, starts to get into TL6, discovers nukes, kill themselves, and the archeological ruins appear to be TL5 because TL6 didn't have a chance to get a proper foothold.

 

[Nelphine]

I would think 1:30 sectors is a bit low, but workable.

Yeah, the problem is I'm limiting myself to 1d6 and 2d6 (with simple modifiers). Intuitive simple playability is important. So if I change it, the most intuitive change would be to make major species generate on an 11 or 12 instead of just 12 (on 2d6), which would triple the occurrence, making it 1 in 10 sectors (which i think is a bit high).

Ideally, I would make it occur on an 11 but NOT on a 12, which would only double it to 1 in 15 sectors (since i actually want 1 in 20 sectors). But that's hard to justify when intuitiveness is a primary goal.

 

[Geir]

Yeah, the problem is I'm limiting myself to 1d6 and 2d6 (with simple modifiers). Intuitive simple playability is important. So if I change it, the most intuitive change would be to make major species generate on an 11 or 12 instead of just 12 (on 2d6), which would triple the occurrence, making it 1 in 10 sectors (which i think is a bit high).

Ideally, I would make it occur on an 11 but NOT on a 12, which would only double it to 1 in 15 sectors (since i actually want 1 in 20 sectors). But that's hard to justify when intuitiveness is a primary goal.

Roll 2D and either 2 or 12 are Major? 2:36 or 1:18?

 

[Nelphine]

I've got 2 as the majority of minor races that survive.
2 -> minor race that survive, roll again for TL 0-8 but no ability to detect aliens in orbit
3-11-> minor race that died at TL =roll-2
12-> race that survived, roll again for TL TL7-10 capable of detecting aliens in orbit or in the system, and if roll a 12 for TL here, then jump capable and roll again for TL (haven't worked out probabilities here, as I want world distribution first)
I guess I could make this second roll give jump on 2 or 12..

 

[coolAlias]

Going back to this again, because of the previous comments, I'm specifically making TL and population linked, and I'm happy with that link - it generates a nicely playable universe with different factions that can fit together in a plausible way.

However, this leads back to 'how do I calculate number of worlds'. Number of worlds is ALSO something that would be perceived as a threat by other species (as it is more easily known than population, and therefore would be used as an inaccurate proxy), and so i want to arbitrarily link population and number of worlds in a way that is also conducive to a playable universe with plausible factions.

That's fair. So, how to determine number of worlds from total population?

If you use the log of the population (rounded to nearest or down), then e.g. 1 trillion = 12, 1 billion = 9, 1 million = 6, etc.

Probably have a lower limit on mulit-planet species, e.g. 9+ using the above numbers.

From there you could multiply the log(pop) number by some factor, say 1D6-1 with 0 as 0.5 to get an approximate number of worlds, albeit with no idea of the actual population distribution among them.

As a quick example, say there was a species with a population of 42 trillion. Since we probably don't want to use a calculator, for log(x) we can just count the number of digits and subtract 1, which gives us 13 as log(42e12) rather than 13.6.

This is enough to allow multiple worlds, so we roll D6-1 and multiply by 13, giving us a range of 6.5 to 65 worlds. At the upper range, many of those worlds will probably be small colonies, bases or outposts, etc.

For a smaller population of 10 billion, we'd get a Pop# of 10 * D6-1 for a range of 5 to 50 worlds. That's pretty close to the above, which maybe isn't ideal.

To fix that, you could do something like this:
Pop# < Floor (e.g. 9): worlds = 1
Pop# < 11 or 12: worlds = 1D6 or 2D6 +/- some DMs
Pop# > 10 or 11: worlds = 1D6-1 (min 0.5) * Pop#

Or add +2D6-2 worlds per Pop above 10.

Anyway, hopefully that sparks some ideas on your end. Good luck!

 

[Limpin Legin]

each planet of X+2 results in 100 less worlds of population X

Please explain .

You know dice rolls are just Normal "gaussian" distributions - will they be sufficient for modelling inter-sector population dynamics?

 

[coolAlias]

As for distributing the popluation among the total worlds, what is the maximum population any give world could support? If you look at it from that perspective, then perhaps rolling for population for worlds until you reach the desired total population level isn't a bad idea, and also gives you a resulting total world count.

Alternatively, you could assume some majority of the total population is accounted for by one or a few core worlds, with the rest scattered about.

Population % distributed in major worlds = 0.5 + (0.1 * D6-1) for a range of 50-100%, but a different weight may be more appropriate
Number of worlds inhabited by the Majority Population = 2D-2 +/- DMs for e.g. Tech Level or Total Pop, minimum 1
Total other worlds = Number of Major Worlds * 2D +/- DMs and/or multiplied by some other factor
Average population of those other worlds = (Total Pop - Major Pop) / Number of Other Worlds

 

[Nelphine]

So the current range I have for the 3I (a TL15 society), is 2d6 pop B worlds, 4d6 pop A worlds, 8d6 pop 9 worlds, 16d6 pop 8 worlds, find the total population of all those worlds and subtract it from ~17.5 trillion, take the remaining (which is likely in the 10s of billions, but could be hundreds of billions) and split it into pop 7 planets (so probably thousands of pop 7 planets), then add up to 300,000 planets with a population of 6 or less.

As you can see, that volume is absolutely huge, and not what I want at all, AND it requires a step where you add things up (finding pop 7 worlds) which isn't simple at all.

The goal would be to have something that results in some number between 6000 and 16000, that then has a variance of +-8000 or so.

I've done a population distribution by 'size class of worlds', and in theory a TL15 society has roughly 93% +1d6% of its population in planets that are pop 7 or higher, which is what gave the formula above, that results in far too many planets.

So it honestly probably needs to be noticeably higher (like 99% + 1d6x0.1%) of its population in planets that are pop 7 or higher.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yes, the population chart for non jump species is not the same. It plateaus.

My explanation is that it's about space- at very low TL (TL0) it grows far faster per TL, and then it drops down to doubling per TL in modern times, until its only increasing by about 50% for TL 8.

So without jump, TL9 and 10 definitely aren't tripling, its far lower than that.



My assumption is that on the time scales of the game, the exponential growth doesn't get going for non jump species. While this would obviously not be true in a larger context, in the context of trying to randomly generate chunks of space that would be similar to Charted Space, which is broadly a setting that many people like, this is true. (This is also why I don't care if major species are supposed to be outside charted space - the idea is not to add this to charted space, but to generate regions of space that are like charted space for different universes.)

As a small note, I do have TL10 species (without jump) colonizing other systems, its just very minimal. (And I arbitrarily limit non jump species to TL10, due to comments below about link between population and TL and space)


However, Jump then opens it back up again, and space (on the time scales that a game is concerned about), become available, and so population starts increasing much faster again. (This is also why I'm tying population growth to TL, NOT to time - it could certainly be exponential when looked at it in time, or not, and it handwaves away how to deal with sluggish species like vilani - they are sluggish both in population growth and tech, and the argument is that they will advance in tech as fast - when compared to TL - as someone who is fast at growth or TL. This doesn't have to be true of course, but it works out nicely for making a playable universe with major races that are comparable to each other - if you don't have the tech to fight back, then you don't have the population to be perceived as a threat (because economic power and therefore military power, are primarily derived from population), and vice versa. This also means that once a 'weaker' major race does become a perceived threat, they will also have the tech to be able to fight back.)

Again, the purpose is to make a playable plausible universe that's intuitive and straightforward to generate, not to make a realistic simulator.



Going back to this again, because of the previous comments, I'm specifically making TL and population linked, and I'm happy with that link - it generates a nicely playable universe with different factions that can fit together in a plausible way.

However, this leads back to 'how do I calculate number of worlds'. Number of worlds is ALSO something that would be perceived as a threat by other species (as it is more easily known than population, and therefore would be used as an inaccurate proxy), and so i want to arbitrarily link population and number of worlds in a way that is also conducive to a playable universe with plausible factions.

This data can come from the Travellermap although I do not know how to do it. Get a list of all of the planets in charted space by Allegience and Population. Figure out the percentage of the total number of planets for each Population Code. Then just apply whichever polity's percentages best fit what you have in mind for the new major race.

Not sure if that is helpful or not.

 

[Nelphine]

No, I'm specifically not using traveller population generation as it's far too arbitrary for my taste, and is something that regularly comes up as an issue in charted space. Overall populations and planet numbers seem well liked, but not individual planets, so I'm trying to redo the population distribution on purpose.

But I appreciate the idea- it makes sense in the context of what else I had provided earlier, as I hadn't made this particular wrinkle clear.

 

[coolAlias]

So the current range I have for the 3I (a TL15 society), is 2d6 pop B worlds, 4d6 pop A worlds, 8d6 pop 9 worlds, 16d6 pop 8 worlds

Why no pop C worlds? For a pop of 17.5 trillion, seems like they could easily have 1+ trillion+ pop worlds, which would go a long way toward solving the issue of too many worlds.

 

[Nelphine]

Basically for the same reason I don't randomly generate blue super giant suns - imo they should be so rare, that they probably only come up once or twice in a region the size of charted space, and so they should simply be hand placed (and take away 10 pop B worlds when you do so). I'll be specifically putting that in as a rule, I just don't want to randomly generate them.

 

[Nelphine]

As for distributing the popluation among the total worlds, what is the maximum population any give world could support? If you look at it from that perspective, then perhaps rolling for population for worlds until you reach the desired total population level isn't a bad idea, and also gives you a resulting total world count.

Alternatively, you could assume some majority of the total population is accounted for by one or a few core worlds, with the rest scattered about.

Population % distributed in major worlds = 0.5 + (0.1 * D6-1) for a range of 50-100%, but a different weight may be more appropriate
Number of worlds inhabited by the Majority Population = 2D-2 +/- DMs for e.g. Tech Level or Total Pop, minimum 1
Total other worlds = Number of Major Worlds * 2D +/- DMs and/or multiplied by some other factor
Average population of those other worlds = (Total Pop - Major Pop) / Number of Other Worlds

This data can come from the Travellermap although I do not know how to do it. Get a list of all of the planets in charted space by Allegience and Population. Figure out the percentage of the total number of planets for each Population Code. Then just apply whichever polity's percentages best fit what you have in mind for the new major race.

Not sure if that is helpful or not.

so i think i need to do something like this, i just need to do it on a larger scale.

like.. roll 3d6x1000 for number of worlds, and then simply apply percentages (with different values than charted space), rather than trying to randomly roll any given size of world. And then, the percentage can have some small variability in it.

 

[Nelphine]

hum. i could do two things: roll for number of planets that this sophont will be able to claim as theirs before running into another major race, and then a second (smaller) roll for number of planets they have already claimed

 

[Nelphine]

And then if I follow that to it's conclusion.. 3I actually has far fewer worlds than it should because it's hemmed in by it's neighbors.

So then, number of worlds that a major species should claim prior to meeting other races shouldn't be worlds at all. It should be 30 sectors (or preferably 15 sectors) IF they all expand at the same time.

So then, we assume that they run fully into neighbors at.. TL12? Or 13?

So then, it's about claiming sectors, not worlds. (With rules for subsectors and systems on the borders).

Modify by TL (if the assumption is TL 12, then a TL15 will expand faster and claim more, while a TL10 will not have expanded to fill all their allotment yet) and by .. government type (will need an overall government type, not just planetary government).

Then apply percentages to the sectors claimed.