Zhodani base 1001 subsectors, and Population Multiplier

[tolcreator]

Question the first:
Played with the Berka/Zhodani base subsector generator for a bit:
http://zho.berka.com/data/random/

I'm curious about the "Settlement" option. I know Megatraveller had a Backwater/Standard/Mature/Cluster option, but this adds several more: Hub, Frontier, Outer limit, and Barren. These don't just modify the starport type, but also seem to modify the population (and possibly more).

Is this from a published subsector generation rules, or is it something made up just for this tool?

Question the second:
I've seen "Population Multiplier" on .sec files, and worked out that this is a number to generate the approximate population. Earth would have pop 9, pop multiplier 6, for 6 billions. Is this in any of the subsector generation rules? Couldn't find it. If not, how is it generated? Straight D10?

 

[GypsyComet]

The Pop Multiplier is from prior editions of Traveller. Mongoose decided to skip it. A Straight D10 works fine, except that you need to re-roll 10's (you want 1-9) and because Mongoose uses a 0 Pop to represent a truly Barren world, any 0 Pop worlds just get a 0 Pop Mult as well. It makes Pop 1 worlds slightly problematic, in that you can't define a world as having only 4 people, but that's fairly minor as problems go.

 

[GypsyComet]

Earth also just officially hit a Pop Multiple of 7.

 

[Hans Rancke]

The Pop Multiplier is from prior editions of Traveller. Mongoose decided to skip it. A Straight D10 works fine, except that you need to re-roll 10's (you want 1-9) and because Mongoose uses a 0 Pop to represent a truly Barren world, any 0 Pop worlds just get a 0 Pop Mult as well. It makes Pop 1 worlds slightly problematic, in that you can't define a world as having only 4 people, but that's fairly minor as problems go.

Compared to the problem of coming up with an explanation for why an interstellar community would accept 4 people as a sovereign population it's certainly minor.

(Note: I'm not saying that it's not possible to come up with a few explanations (mostly legal fictions of one kind or another) why a low-population world might be accepted as a sovereign peer of worlds with big enough populations to actually afford a starship; I'm saying such cases would be very few compared to low-population worlds that were considered non-sovereign parts of neighbors.)

EDIT: For rolling government types, I would introduce an extra roll: First, roll 1D. If the result is higher than the population level, government type is 6 (captive). Otherwise roll normally.


Hans

 

[GypsyComet]

Given the most likely government types for Pop 0 and 1 (with that -7 or -6 mod on the Gov roll), the idea that the world is either a Space Family Robinson thing or the lonely outpost of some corporation is not too odd for open space, but may be a bit much for a long-lived Imperium.

On the other hand, it may be a manifestation of the reality that many systems are simply not interesting enough to have attracted *significant* effort during the timeframe the UWP covers. One in twelve systems is going to have fewer than 100 people in residence, and one in six will have fewer than a thousand. No matter what the physical part of the UWP says, if the world is boring and poor, then it is quite possible that "colonies", sovereign or otherwise, may have come and gone multiple times over the spacefaring age of Man. Humans will colonize for a variety of reasons, including "gotta get out", and at nearly every scale of effort from one guy and his parked Seeker to millions in sleeper ships. Not all of these will have succeeded, or even be remembered or recorded.

 

[Hans Rancke]

On the other hand, it may be a manifestation of the reality that many systems are simply not interesting enough to have attracted *significant* effort during the timeframe the UWP covers. One in twelve systems is going to have fewer than 100 people in residence, and one in six will have fewer than a thousand. No matter what the physical part of the UWP says, if the world is boring and poor, then it is quite possible that "colonies", sovereign or otherwise, may have come and gone multiple times over the spacefaring age of Man. Humans will colonize for a variety of reasons, including "gotta get out", and at nearly every scale of effort from one guy and his parked Seeker to millions in sleeper ships. Not all of these will have succeeded, or even be remembered or recorded.

It's not the fact that a low-population world hasn't attracted a lot of people that I have a problem with. It's easy to come up with multiple variations of "It's profoundly uninteresting"[*]. It's that the neighbors recognize those few dozen people as a legitimate, sovereign population.

[*] Though some worlds (e.g. Human-prime and Human-norm) doesn't LOOK uninteresting and may require some "Big Brother" putting up KEEP OUT signs (and enforcing it).

Hans

 

[GypsyComet]

I look at it this way, at least in the context of the Imperium. One of those neighbors probably supplied the people and the financing in response to a business plan. As far as that world is concerned, at least in the short term, those eight guys aren't sovereign so much as "ours". The other neighbors probably watch, sell supplies (if they register the commerce at all), and generally express disinterest unless something really interesting happens. After all, THEY did the same thing to the same planet 300 years back, and 240 years back, and 175, and 121, and 60. If this bunch of "colonists" can do better, the neighbors will just buy the stuff they want from them and let someone else take the operational loss. If they feel, for governmental reasons, the need to participate, they'll either send over some real help, thus growing the colony and encouraging it to eventually cut ties to the originating world, or start a competing community, earning the world a Gov 7 when the Scouts come by the next time.

Under the umbrella of the Imperium, only that handful of bad actors in planetary governments is going to look at a fledgling colony and start handing out Letters of Marque. How many of those there are really depends on how dark your Imperium is.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Well, it could also be all about the Imperial Nobility.

Each Noble needs to be a noble of SOMETHING. Dropping a few people on a world gives you the right to call yourself the Baron of New Nowhere.

Chicks dig titles....

 

[Hans Rancke]

Each Noble needs to be a noble of SOMETHING. Dropping a few people on a world gives you the right to call yourself the Baron of New Nowhere.

Each high noble needs to be a noble of an Imperial member world (barons and marquesses) or a cluster (counts and viscounts) or a duchy or a domain. However, the Imperium is doubling up on high noble titles (e.g. Norris is both Marquis of Regina and Baron of Yori, Leonard Bolden-Tukera is both Marquis of Aramis and Baron of Lewis) so it does not appear to have any real need of more high noble titles. And why should it, when nobles can also be rank nobles and honor nobles, neither of which requires an entire populated world to be the noble of?


Hans