captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
rust said:
With brussle sprouts in butter and bacon. MMMMmmmmm.
World Generation
- Thread starter vitalis6969
- Start date
With brussle sprouts in butter and bacon. MMMMmmmmm.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
BP said:
Well, in all fairness, traveller doesn't have those either if one pays attention to later CT corrections either . Or MT, or T4........or MGT. Minimum tech rules do exist.
And, as per Niven, plateau, with a type C atmos, could easily support a TL 0 culture .
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
BP said:Quite true!captainjack23 said:
However, as this is an axiom - a starting point from which other statements are logically derived - one normally accepted 'corollary' would be that technology is the decoupling mechanism.
Thus - 'biggest believability issue with the worldgen' - that being a relative statement, not an absolute - and TL mods...
Quite true ! And, as noted there are TL minimums for habitability. So, not so much of a problem there. That said, where should the relationship go from there ? Is higher TL likely to have more or less people once we've established that raw habitability isn't an issue ?
That they do!Seem rather reasonable to me (in my defense - I don't use the random methods at all - don't see any need what with only 8 things to define and worlds being a major plot aspect of most games...)
Didn't see that box off to the side (pg. 179) that has minimum TLs for atmo... meant to look - the OP seemed to imply rolling multiple worlds without TL to support atmo needs - but it looks like the biggest gripe was low gravity.
I can see his points in the OTU given the lack of specific support for non-baseline humans re gravity differences - though MgT makes some player accommodations re skill checks on pg 170. Such cultures must have 'regular exercise regimes and medicinal supplements' as part of their ingrained social mores (fun opportunities for the Ref there! :twisted
You won't be able to determine likely population levels without the time factor, or knowing how many colonists arrived in the first place. So called garden worlds could also be biologically hostile - while we're discussing authors' worlds, what about Harry Harrison's Deathworld series? A planet where nothing is out to get you might end up being more attractive than carving out a foothold in a jungle...
Population growth rates have as much to do with mortality rates as well; a low tech society may well have many more pregnancies per woman than a high tech one, but may have a high infant mortality rate. Local disasters such as plagues and ecological collapses will also muddy the waters, as will technological solutions to reproduction matters such as cloning or IVF (right here, now in the 21st century, every pregnancy could be made multiple just with IVF).
Ultimately, the cap on polulation is likely to be food resources, but a young colony may not have hit that cap. Conversely, an old colony on an inhospitable world may have been able to artifically enlarge the cap through technology or wealth.
Population growth rates have as much to do with mortality rates as well; a low tech society may well have many more pregnancies per woman than a high tech one, but may have a high infant mortality rate. Local disasters such as plagues and ecological collapses will also muddy the waters, as will technological solutions to reproduction matters such as cloning or IVF (right here, now in the 21st century, every pregnancy could be made multiple just with IVF).
Ultimately, the cap on polulation is likely to be food resources, but a young colony may not have hit that cap. Conversely, an old colony on an inhospitable world may have been able to artifically enlarge the cap through technology or wealth.
The only thing that really got to me with the world creation rules was the minimum TL needed for the atmos, which really is only for planets (IMO) that were dodgy atmos worlds given colonies and atmos processors (ala LV-426 in Aliens).
I mean, on Earth we were once a TL 0 world and I dont think early man had troubles with the atmos due to there being no tech to process it, yeah? :?
I mean, on Earth we were once a TL 0 world and I dont think early man had troubles with the atmos due to there being no tech to process it, yeah? :?
PrinceYyrkoon
Mongoose
rust said:
'Next to'? You mean 'light years apart from'.
Colonies spring up in strange places for a variety of reasons not altogether obvious at first glance. I happen to think that Traveller's system is a great aid to inventiveness, and can, paradoxically, lead to a more believable environment. Space is, after all, a huge, strange place.
'Regions' of space, all with a connect to each other, with 'plausible' relations, can seem fairly homogenised, which is ok if you like Star Wars space opera, but its not going to be sufficient for every campaign. You can deal with world building any way you like, nothing is forbidden, obviously, but the system as written produces results which can be stimulating.
I like Brussel sprouts too, but putting bacon with them is barbaric.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
rust said:
you owe me a keyboard........
Some time ago I put together a fomula that world size and hydrographic stat to see how much surface area a world had relevant to earth.
That made things even more crowded on a lot of the smaller hi pop worlds,
When I put the figures in for worlds in the Marches some worlds had a population density equivalent to B.
I was going to correct the pop figures to allow for this but then realised that it is much easier and more playable to treat the pop stat as ageneral measure of population density rather than a strict population figure
That made things even more crowded on a lot of the smaller hi pop worlds,
When I put the figures in for worlds in the Marches some worlds had a population density equivalent to B.
I was going to correct the pop figures to allow for this but then realised that it is much easier and more playable to treat the pop stat as ageneral measure of population density rather than a strict population figure
For what it's worth:
Size 1 (1600km diameter) = 8 million square km. Evenly spread, 10 billion would mean a little over 1000 persons per square km, or about the population density of Malta.
Size 2 (3200km diameter) = 32 million square km; 10 billion would give a population density of about 300 persons per square km, which is typical for many countries (Japan, Belgium and India have densities higher than this).
Planets are big.
Size 1 (1600km diameter) = 8 million square km. Evenly spread, 10 billion would mean a little over 1000 persons per square km, or about the population density of Malta.
Size 2 (3200km diameter) = 32 million square km; 10 billion would give a population density of about 300 persons per square km, which is typical for many countries (Japan, Belgium and India have densities higher than this).
Planets are big.
It occurs to me that at about TL9, it's going to be easier in many respects to colonise a low gravity vacuum world than a garden one. Artificial gravity takes care of most low-G health issues, and pressurised environments are a mature technology. Gravitic M-Drives remove any real economic problem with moving ice around a solar system to provide water, fuel and oxygen.
No biosphere to deal with means no chance of infection or hazardous weather or life forms. If the world is tidally locked on the primary, you even have a handy radiation shield in the planet itself (just build on the cold side), although simply digging down should work fine for most vacuum planets. You'd likely want to go underground anyway because of meteorites. Low gravity means easier excavation anyway.
Since the planet is basically all wasteland, there will be more immediately usable surface to site cities than on a normal world, with all those inconvenient forests and oceans and such to be dealt with. Also, since this type of world is likely to be much more common than garden ones, entities specialising in colonising them (private or public) have an advantage over those that do not in market terms.
No biosphere to deal with means no chance of infection or hazardous weather or life forms. If the world is tidally locked on the primary, you even have a handy radiation shield in the planet itself (just build on the cold side), although simply digging down should work fine for most vacuum planets. You'd likely want to go underground anyway because of meteorites. Low gravity means easier excavation anyway.
Since the planet is basically all wasteland, there will be more immediately usable surface to site cities than on a normal world, with all those inconvenient forests and oceans and such to be dealt with. Also, since this type of world is likely to be much more common than garden ones, entities specialising in colonising them (private or public) have an advantage over those that do not in market terms.
steelbrok said:
Sure, but urban population densities can exceed 10,000 per square km. 19 of the top 20 cities right now do this:
http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-125.html
Also, if you're going to get into multiple billions, it's only fair to consider that not all size 1 worlds will be 1600km in diameter. Original Traveller didn't cover this, but MegaTraveller and TNE did. In those, size 1 was 800km to 2399km, with size 2 from 2400km to 3999km. Basically the next size code takes over at halfway between the previous nominal diameter and the next one.
My overall point, though, is that even the extremes of small planet and high population that can be generated by the normal system are not impossible to deal with.
I think this is more than a bit misleading, because all of these populationrinku said:
centers need and have a much bigger and much less densely populated
"hinterland" area, without which none of them could exist.
The problem would be a technology that would make it possible to satisfy
all of the needs of densely populated areas without this less densely popu-
lated "hinterland", from atmosphere and water recycling through food pro-
duction to recreation - a completely closed system that requires very little
open space. In short, a stationary space station that does not require any
input from outside to survive.
I am not sure whether the average Traveller technology could provide it
on the scale of billions of people - and how they would be able to pay the
life support costs of 1,500 Credits per person and month ...
