The conundrum is well known now - and the arguments. On one hand, Traveller is one of the most (if not the most) extensively developed settings out there, and is a resource that many of us want to make use of. It's all well and good to want to make a more robust and realistic world geneation sequence, but it leaves the possibility of using resources for the Third Imperium as a setting out in the cold.
Personally -- and this seems to be the stance of the Ancients -- I only consider the actual sector data inviolable. Anything else is tweakable AFAIAC.
On the other hand, it is obvious that such a simple model for world generation -- basically, a series of simple triangle-curves describing attributes of a world -- is bound to fail to model many things. One that continues to come up is the possibility of atmosphere and large population on a small world.
I thought about this for a while and it occurs to me that perhaps the worlds should represent something larger than they do on the low end.
One way to do this is to have the UWP size digit represent mass instead. Suppose each "point" of mass is 1/8 earth mass. That would make "mass" 1 worlds about size 4, which is more reasonable to expect to have some sort of atmosphere, and has a much larger surface to hold a large population without your world becoming a miniature coruscant.
Of course this messes with any extended planetary data, and assumptions about gravity in specific rules set. I think the "100 diameter" figures could be left alone, as a planet's gravitational influence is more a function of its mass than its diameter, and so it should affect the jump drive at a distance in proportion to its mass.
Personally -- and this seems to be the stance of the Ancients -- I only consider the actual sector data inviolable. Anything else is tweakable AFAIAC.
On the other hand, it is obvious that such a simple model for world generation -- basically, a series of simple triangle-curves describing attributes of a world -- is bound to fail to model many things. One that continues to come up is the possibility of atmosphere and large population on a small world.
I thought about this for a while and it occurs to me that perhaps the worlds should represent something larger than they do on the low end.
One way to do this is to have the UWP size digit represent mass instead. Suppose each "point" of mass is 1/8 earth mass. That would make "mass" 1 worlds about size 4, which is more reasonable to expect to have some sort of atmosphere, and has a much larger surface to hold a large population without your world becoming a miniature coruscant.
Of course this messes with any extended planetary data, and assumptions about gravity in specific rules set. I think the "100 diameter" figures could be left alone, as a planet's gravitational influence is more a function of its mass than its diameter, and so it should affect the jump drive at a distance in proportion to its mass.
