World building new major races

Kzinti, sorry, Aslan are not as large as Robots presents.
Yeah, that wasn't necessarily the best example in hindsight. I'm not going to assume that Aslan need bigger seats. Dolphins, K'kree, Virushi, and definitely Orcas, they need bigger seats. Well, at least two of those don't actually 'sit', but you get my drift. And one of them won't even go into a single-place vehicle....
 
I would tend to calculate population differently; I would calculate up how many kg of each species could be supported by the biosphere & surface area of a planet, and use that as a ceiling. Different species might have factors to limit their maximum population below the 'maximum carrying capacity' though; for example Aslan males are very territorial, and extremely protective of that territory -- which puts limits on how densely Aslan worlds can be packed. I rather suspect that maximum-Aslan-per-planet is lower than maximum-Droyne-per-planet for any given planet.

As to productivity, I would count individuals or groups of individuals, so average mass per individual would be important. I feel like that is a better way to approach different sized sophonts, because many folks already realize that the scaling between Starships-Vehicles-Robots is pretty flawed & in need of revision. Do the work (behind the scenes) in kilograms (or liters) per individual, and you sidestep that issue entirely.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, I'm not going to go into great depth on that.
It's just going to be a quick mention of roughly waht you could do, and a statement that we assume most species are human sized, but with a mention that population ratings are primarily used for economic purposes, so it may be important for unusually sized species.
 
Yeah, that wasn't necessarily the best example in hindsight. I'm not going to assume that Aslan need bigger seats. Dolphins, K'kree, Virushi, and definitely Orcas, they need bigger seats. Well, at least two of those don't actually 'sit', but you get my drift. And one of them won't even go into a single-place vehicle....

Personally.. if average Aslan is 2m by 100kg, and females outnumber males 3 to 1, then I think it would be reasonable to assume that the average male Aslan is 230cm by 115kg. And that's certainly enough to require more seating than a human. That being said, I'd want to make Aslan acceleration benches to seat 3 per ton, not 2.

So in an ideal world I do want Aslan to be size 5, but I want the sizes to go up with 40% intervals rather than 100%.

Edit: the 2m by 100kg is average male Aslan, not average Aslan, so the math here does not work. I'd still like to see sizes going up by 40% not 100%.
 
Last edited:
I would tend to calculate population differently; I would calculate up how many kg of each species could be supported by the biosphere & surface area of a planet, and use that as a ceiling. Different species might have factors to limit their maximum population below the 'maximum carrying capacity' though; for example Aslan males are very territorial, and extremely protective of that territory -- which puts limits on how densely Aslan worlds can be packed. I rather suspect that maximum-Aslan-per-planet is lower than maximum-Droyne-per-planet for any given planet.

As to productivity, I would count individuals or groups of individuals, so average mass per individual would be important. I feel like that is a better way to approach different sized sophonts, because many folks already realize that the scaling between Starships-Vehicles-Robots is pretty flawed & in need of revision. Do the work (behind the scenes) in kilograms (or liters) per individual, and you sidestep that issue entirely.
Actually, I hadn't thought of the cultural side of things. Aslan on average use x10 or so more space per Aslan than say a human, even if they are the same Size. Even the descriptions of Aslan cities point out that you can wander from the wilderness into a city and not know that you are in a city. So that tracks. That would mean with 2 identical planets, Planet A can support 10 Billion humans, while the other planet can only support 1 Billion Aslan. Interesting, but perhaps more detail than you are looking for.
 
Yup definitely more than I'm working with right now. That would be something that would come up with detailed creation of the stats of the species, not with the creation of the worlds.

And, while these things might matter (somewhat), if we assume:

Size 8 world with good atmo and water, can support pop 7 at TL 0, and pop A at TL 8, then we see that's ROUGHLY 1 pop rating per 2.5 TLs. And we'd probably say that the size of the world isn't a HUGE influence, maybe 1 pop rating per 2 size.

So then a 6 world (small for earth like), and TL12, can probably support pop B

And arguably, those populations for Earth are not what the world can support, which would increase all of the pop ratings a world can support by another 1.

So even if the culture reduces that by another pop rating, the planet can still support far more than this system is likely to ever generate, regardless of the cultural set up.
 
Following the strange events that lead to the Vilani "discovering" jump 2, the Consolidation Wars ensured only the Vilani has jump 2 tech throughout the Ziru Sirka.
Not intending to derail the thread, but out of curiosity; what are these strange events you are alluding to, and where can I find more information on them?

As one of my many side-projects, I've been trying to gather and compile as much information on the Vilani from as many sources and editions as I possibly can, and yet this didn't ring any bells to me.

Off the top of my head, it is convenient that the Vilani developed J-2 just a few years before they sent their huge punitive expedition to teach the Luriani a lesson regarding opposing the Ziru Sirka, but beyond that I can't seem to recall any information regarding their development of J-2.

Either I've comically failed an EDU check, or haven't stumbled into it yet.
In either case, your help would be appreciated!
 
Yeah, I'm not going to go into great depth on that.
It's just going to be a quick mention of roughly waht you could do, and a statement that we assume most species are human sized, but with a mention that population ratings are primarily used for economic purposes, so it may be important for unusually sized species.
It's not really that difficult; the rules for it are almost completely outlined in MGP 20002-- 2300AD 'Tools for Frontier Living' page 12, under 'Biosphere'. They use it to talk about the 'Biosphere' attribute of a colony; but that attribute is the average of 'Biomass', 'Biodiversity', and 'Biocomplexity' -- and all we are really interested in is the 'Biomass' value. This is an expression of 1x10^(Biomass) in millions of tonnes on the planet; Humans, as an example, make up about one ten-thousandth of the Biomass of modern Terra, so that gives us a baseline for 'kilograms of sophont population which can be sustained on a planet'.

I am pretty sure that Aslan make up a smaller percentage of the biomass of their developed worlds -- they are almost completely carnivorous, which restricts the nutrition available to them. They need to wait for herbivores to process plant into meat, with all the energy losses that entails. K'kree are also a restricted-diet type -- but they do not need other creatures to process plants for nutrition. The reduction in 'kg which can be sustained' for them is due mostly to choosing not to eat non-plants.

[Edit: interesting related graphic. It also uses the same units as 2300AD 'millions of tonnes of biomass'. /Edit]
 

Attachments

  • Biomass_v9.png
    Biomass_v9.png
    1.1 MB · Views: 0
Last edited:
Personally.. if average Aslan is 2m by 100kg, and females outnumber males 3 to 1, then I think it would be reasonable to assume that the average male Aslan is 230cm by 115kg. And that's certainly enough to require more seating than a human. That being said, I'd want to make Aslan acceleration benches to seat 3 per ton, not 2.

So in an ideal world I do want Aslan to be size 5, but I want the sizes to go up with 40% intervals rather than 100%.
The height and weight is for male Kilrathi, sorry, Aslan.
Good try though.
 
OK, so next step.. trying to figure out rules for E.T. presence on worlds outside of their core/settled space, but inside their explored space.

Requirements: it should be common enough that people exploring from outside of the explored space, will encounter a world with presence on it before getting into the core settled space of the E.T.
It should be rare enough that other E.T. could also settle in the same region (as part of their own explored space) without causing immediate problems (culture dependant of course). Call it a max of 25% of the space used up, but that's very open to change.

The planets should never match core worlds for size, so current assumption is max pop of 6.

Current math, assuming odds for each population rating are the same regardless of TL (when we see TL14 and 15, we see that this assumption won't work)

If a TL9 species has 1% of their population in this area, then about 6% of life bearing worlds in that area have presence.

TL10: 2% population means 24% of lb worlds. (Note: this probably means the explored area for TL10 is too low)

TL11: 3% of population means 13% of lb worlds

TL12: 4% of population means 17% of lb worlds.

TL13: 5% of population means 33% of lb worlds.

TL14: 6% of population means 83% of lb worlds.

TL15: 7% of population means 194% of lb worlds.


So obviously, we have issues with the amount of worlds at TL13-15 being higher than desired. TL10 is also very out of whack to the rest of the curve.

Thought? Reduce amount of population? Make higher TL have a chance at pop 7 worlds (and presumably more often have pop 5 and 6 worlds?)

What percentage do you think would actually meet the requirements? Is TL9 too low and therefore likely to be missed altogether? Even if it is, as TL9 is that OK?
 
OK, so next step.. trying to figure out rules for E.T. presence on worlds outside of their core/settled space, but inside their explored space.

Requirements: it should be common enough that people exploring from outside of the explored space, will encounter a world with presence on it before getting into the core settled space of the E.T.
It should be rare enough that other E.T. could also settle in the same region (as part of their own explored space) without causing immediate problems (culture dependant of course). Call it a max of 25% of the space used up, but that's very open to change.

The planets should never match core worlds for size, so current assumption is max pop of 6.

Current math, assuming odds for each population rating are the same regardless of TL (when we see TL14 and 15, we see that this assumption won't work)

If a TL9 species has 1% of their population in this area, then about 6% of life bearing worlds in that area have presence.

TL10: 2% population means 24% of lb worlds. (Note: this probably means the explored area for TL10 is too low)

TL11: 3% of population means 13% of lb worlds

TL12: 4% of population means 17% of lb worlds.

TL13: 5% of population means 33% of lb worlds.

TL14: 6% of population means 83% of lb worlds.

TL15: 7% of population means 194% of lb worlds.


So obviously, we have issues with the amount of worlds at TL13-15 being higher than desired. TL10 is also very out of whack to the rest of the curve.

Thought? Reduce amount of population? Make higher TL have a chance at pop 7 worlds (and presumably more often have pop 5 and 6 worlds?)

What percentage do you think would actually meet the requirements? Is TL9 too low and therefore likely to be missed altogether? Even if it is, as TL9 is that OK?
Make it a function of reduced presence over stellar distance as represented by Mains and such. Apply these percentages to the Population number of the worlds. This should also reduce the TL of harder to reach worlds.

J-1 Mains inside their settled space - 100%
J-1 Mains outside of their settled space - 50%

This should work, then you modify it by Jump Capability of the civilization. If the Civ is TL-11, then apply this to all worlds that are only reachable with J-2. If they are TL-9 or 10, Use 10% for in their settled area and 5% for outside of it.

Then keep it as a progression. It the Civ is J-1 and the worlds are on a J-3 route, use 1% for worlds in the settled area and 0.5% for the worlds in the explored area.

For worlds on a J-4 only route, 0.1% inside the settled area and 0.05% for those in the explored area. This may fix your problems and give you lower TLs and lower Pops on the fringes.
 
So, if I'm reading this correctly, rather than having a max pop of, say, 6, you'll still allow for the same max pop, but you'll cut the population value in half if it's outside settled space.

So, if we roll pop 7, then the population goes from 1.25 million to 12.5 million.

If it's outside of jump range, then drop it by 1 pop rating for each additional jump tech required to reach it, and still do the cut in half.

So if it rolled pop 5, but needed 2 extra jump than TL provides, it would be pop 3, going from 125 to 1250 people.
 
Not intending to derail the thread, but out of curiosity; what are these strange events you are alluding to, and where can I find more information on them?

As one of my many side-projects, I've been trying to gather and compile as much information on the Vilani from as many sources and editions as I possibly can, and yet this didn't ring any bells to me.

Off the top of my head, it is convenient that the Vilani developed J-2 just a few years before they sent their huge punitive expedition to teach the Luriani a lesson regarding opposing the Ziru Sirka, but beyond that I can't seem to recall any information regarding their development of J-2.

Either I've comically failed an EDU check, or haven't stumbled into it yet.
In either case, your help would be appreciated!
I sent you a message, did you get it?
 
So, if I'm reading this correctly, rather than having a max pop of, say, 6, you'll still allow for the same max pop, but you'll cut the population value in half if it's outside settled space.

So, if we roll pop 7, then the population goes from 1.25 million to 12.5 million.
Other direction. Goes from 12.5 million to 6.25 million. If you decide to just use subtraction of the Pop Code for each level of difference. This might be simpler and easier than the method I described. Then it would go from 12.5 million to 1.25 million.
If it's outside of jump range, then drop it by 1 pop rating for each additional jump tech required to reach it, and still do the cut in half.

So if it rolled pop 5, but needed 2 extra jump than TL provides, it would be pop 3, going from 125 to 1250 people.
You might have to fiddle with the numbers a bit to get a set of numbers that works for what you are looking for specifically, but yes, that is what I mean.
 
You might have to fiddle with the numbers a bit to get a set of numbers that works for what you are looking for specifically, but yes, that is what I mean.

Let the fiddling begin!

Lol.

OK, so I like the concept. I don't like the 'half' again, as I've already done that twice, and while 250,000-2,500,000 can reasonably be expected to have the same economic power, dropping it to 125,000 to 1,250,000 starts to stretch that concept a little too much.

So instead I think I just make it a full population rating drop for being in the explored zone. (With potential further drops for being off the mains)

Given that the explored zone is always larger than the core zone, this also works out well. If it was only half, then the population total would end up at least as high as the core zone. By making it 1/10, it will mean the explored zone is lower than the core zone.

So.. for TL9, the explored zone is 8 times larger than the core zone.

For TL15, given the expected restriction to 15 sector core zone, the explored zone is about 10 times larger than the core zone.

Given we definitely want the total population of the core zone to be much higher than the explored zone, I think we actually drop 2 pop ratings for being in the explored zone, rather than just 1. That would give a population about 10% the total of the core zone.

However, that implies that just as many worlds per sector will be colonized as in the core zone. I dont really want that, I want it to be much rarer.

So back to only dropping pop rating by 1, but instead of having population on every world, we make a 2d6 roll for the world, and only on an 11+ do we check for population.
 
OK. So, now we've got working population distribution when we know what the polity looks like from the big picture.

Now, we get to figure out the math, when we don't know any of that, which is the entire goal of this whole system I'm developing.

The players come into a new star system.

We roll the system and it's worlds. We check for native life, and don't find any.

Now, we have to check for life of another E.T., without knowing what the next system past this one looks.

Broadly, there are a few contributing factors:

Have we already met another E.T.? Do we know their core areas, and could this system be part of it? If not, could this system be in their explored zone?

If any of that is yes, then we just follow the rules for that E.T.

If there could be multiple E.T., the one (if any) in the core area gets first crack at all the planets. Then all other E.T. take turns rolling the remaining planets. (Cultures allowing)

If it's in the core zone of multiple E.T., hopefully we already determined that their relationship is like, and follow that.

What if we can't easily tell if the system is in the core zone or explored zone of a given E.T.?

If it looks like it's probably in core or explored zone of a given known E.T. we can do a simple probability based on the TL of the E.T. and the distance to the known core of that E.T. and the distance to the known 'not core or explored zone' of that E.T. I'll write up a chart, core vs explored vs neither. Then we can roll for that E.T as already determined.

But that's all the easy part.

What if we haven't met any other E.T. yet, or the ones we have met are far enough away, we know this can't be in their core or explored zone? What about finding the explored zone of a new E.T even though we're in the core or explored zone of a known E.T.?

If it's within 35 parsecs (roughly one sector) of the homeworld of any known E.T., including the players homeworld, do not roll for new E.T. life. (While this isn't completely accurate, this should make things more playable, and by rolling for native life above you can still meet aliens including E.T. by finding their home system.)

Beyond that, a given system (hex) could be the meeting point of up to 6 E.T. polities. You'll probably have explored at least 3 potential directions already though, so we'll say on average 3 potential E.T. polities (should this be 2? Hmm. No, for the following) but if we're in the explored or core zone of known E.T. then we drop that potential by one for each known E.T that already covers this system.

So, for those 3 potential polities (-1 per known E.T. polity already present) we know the following. And in order to see if there are multiple such polities, if we succeed on any of hte following rolls, then we can roll again for a second polity (if permitted) and if that succeeds, we can roll again for a 3rd polity (if permitted).

The majority (3/4) of E.T polities will be TL11 (core of 3 sectors, explored of 16)
The next most common (5/36) are TL12 (core of 8, explored of 36). And 1/36 will be larger.
Then (1/18) TL10 (core of 1, explored of 4). And 1/36 will be smaller.

E.T. also generate about 1 in 15 sectors. (So I'm defining these 15 sectors as their 'own' sectors.)

So in theory, 3/4 of the time, those ET will explore their own sectors.
1/12, they will not have explored their own sectors.
1/6 will explore their own sectors, and some of their neighbors sectors.

Therefore, if its within 70 parsecs of an E.T. homeworld (roughly 2 sectors), then an unknown polity will have explored that system on a 12 (and therefore, have a chance of having planets, as per it being part of explored space for that E.T.)

No, this doesn't work. This rolls the 1/36 chance every system, but it needs to be a 1/36 overall. 1/36 per system will practically guarantee that there is a TL13+ E.T. nearby. so.. 60*16*2 = 1920 means.. 1/36*1/36*1/36*1/2

So.. per system, we'd have to roll 2d6 and if we get a 12, then roll 2d6, and if we get a 12, then roll 2d6, and if we get a 12, then roll 1d6, and if we get a 4+, then a TL13 E.T. has explored the system and therefore may have a presence as above (11+ on 2d6).

That seems.. completely absurd. What's a better way than rolling 7 dice??
 
Please keep long-distance trade in mind; if you are detailing civilizations and sectors before you get down to the 'individual system' level, then you might be able to build in 'efficient/inefficient at X' so that exports/imports of 'X' are attractive. This will certainly change how you determine trade codes and goods available on each world, and I do not know how much trouble that will be.

If you are starting with a known number of ET civilizations, you can make each weak or strong in the same number of different basic commodities, so that they are advantaged by trading with each other. You might also consider doing something similar on a roughly 'Sector' basis -- this sector is bad at agriculture, rich in radioactives, etc.
 
no, i'm doing the opposite. i'm trying to figure out how to create an E.T. civilization from a single system, because when you're exploring, you're virtually never going to find the homeworld first.

i do like that idea of trying to affect trade codes that way, but at the moment, this is kind of the 'big hump' - how do i determine the existence of an E.T. from a random system that is probably not even in the core of the E.T.?
 
no, i'm doing the opposite. i'm trying to figure out how to create an E.T. civilization from a single system, because when you're exploring, you're virtually never going to find the homeworld first.

i do like that idea of trying to affect trade codes that way, but at the moment, this is kind of the 'big hump' - how do i determine the existence of an E.T. from a random system that is probably not even in the core of the E.T.?
If I were you I would just rough out a Sector or two using your method in advance. (A border region where two or three civilizations touch. Then map out the UWPs and call it done for rough area to play in. Then you already know what is there and you can randomly generate a new map for each campaign.
 
Back
Top