Alternative World Forms.

[marvo]

Here's something else that has always bugged me. On page 8-9 of LBB 3 there is a reference to alternate world forms. It lists: Rosettes (grouped planets without a star), RingWorlds (as per Larry Niven) and SphereWorlds (Dyson Sphere).

In none of the OTU that I have read do I ever see any other references to these. Does anyone know if any of them exist in the OTU? If so where? Has anyone added one to their TU? In MTU I added a Ringworld of much the same size as the one in the book of the same name. About 100 million miles radius and 1 million miles wide. For UPP I made it much the same as an earthlike planet but with a letter 'Q' for size. The size is an oddity, but the surface area is about 3 million times that of the earth. Loads of room for whole civilisations and life forms to develop.

Has anyone been brave enough to put in a dyson sphere? (I am assuming Rosette worlds are bogus unless you have some massive energy source to keep them warm. It also reminds me of the awefull Andromeda world ship.)

 

[Malenfant]

I sure there's supposed to be a bare, skeletal ringworld in the OTU (at Leenasomethingorother, somewhere to coreward?). Can't rememember where exactly, but I'm reasonably sure it's canonical. It's guarded by a religious sect or something.

There's also a partially complete dyson sphere that the Inheritors live on - they're a minor race from one of the GT Alien Races books. But the environment there is rather hostile (fluorine atmosphere, for starters)

There's also the possibility of an Orbital (a la Iain Banks Culture books) - a much smaller ringworld that's more like a space station, a few hundred km across. It'd be just a ring with a habitable band with no central star (presumably it has some kind of artificial light source somewhere though. I've never really seen that part explained).

Dunno about the 'bogusness' of rosettes, but if you're towing around a few vacuum worlds then you won't really care about how warm they are

. It's clearly not something you want to do for habitable planets though.

 

[robject]

Tireen. The ringworld is at the coreward side of Vargr space in Tireen.

Or so they say. Never been there, myself.

I thought rosettes were fine, if you could juggle planets' orbits without causing major catastrophes, that is. Say three planets with nearly the same mass. Terra, Venus, and Something Else. Don't know how stable that is, but it sure might be fun.

 

[robject]

Originally posted by robject:
Tireen. The ringworld is at the coreward side of Vargr space in Tireen.

I was wrong. Check out the official TU timeline for these:

-390,000 Multi-world rosette buit at Tireen (2910 Knaeleng, in the Vargr extents) by Ancients.

-380,000 Ringworld constructed at Leenitakot (1432 Hinterworlds) by Ancients.

Knaeleng is waaay the heck out there. Like, 3 sectors coreward from Vland.

 

[JustinThyme]

I don't "get" sphere-worlds or ring-worlds of any type. Gravity would only equalize when the thing is closed. How would you keep the bloody thing accelerated until completion?

 

[Malenfant]

-380,000 Ringworld constructed at Leenitakot (1432 Hinterworlds) by Ancients.

Aha, thank you. I would have gone nuts trying to remember what the name was

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I have an adventure coming up in and around that very Ringworld. The Hinterworlds are awesome.

 

[Durkin]

Hello all,
My 2bits worth on this topic.
There is apparently a few of these "mega-structures" located thoughout the 2 sectors spinward of the marches. (The Beyond and The Vangaurd Reaches - I think those are their names. Atleast, that is, according to a couple of LBs published by Paranoia Press.
As for how to construct the darn things ... I don't know. I think Niven's books give a pretty good idea of both how it's done, and how the darn thing (a ring world) would work.

 

[peteyfroggboy]

A useful resource:

http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/dysonFAQ.html

 

[JustinThyme]

Interesting reading, but definitely fiction and farfetched. Even Nivens solutions are imaginary. Still, one can see the way to have fun with the premise; which is what I believe Freeman was doing when he hypothesised this sphere construct. Even a physicist must play his own brand of Traveller.

 

[mike wightman]

The Culture orbital is usually built in orbit around a star or planet. It is spun to simulate gravity and it gets sunlight by being at an angle to the star so that the inner surface of the ring furthest from the star receives the sunlight.
Since it spins there is a day/night cycle.

 

[Hemdian]

Originally posted by Marvo:
Here's something else that has always bugged me. On page 8-9 of LBB 3 there is a reference to alternate world forms. It lists: Rosettes (grouped planets without a star), RingWorlds (as per Larry Niven) and SphereWorlds (Dyson Sphere).

In none of the OTU that I have read do I ever see any other references to these. Does anyone know if any of them exist in the OTU?

There was mention of a Dyson Sphere in an adventure in Challenge Magazine (one of the Halloween specials). Admittedly, it was stated policy that anything in JTAS was a variant ... and I assume the same goes for its successor Challenge Magazine.

The adventure is around the PCs discovery of a derelict drifting in space. Upon reading the captain's log they find that, after a misjump, it had encountered a Dyson Sphere. After a quick exploration the ship had been invaded by a left over Ancient killer robot that starts to wipe out the crew one by one. The adventure was written so that it could be used anywhere. As such there was no specific location given ... except to say that since the Dyson Sphere blocked almost all radiation it was very difficult to detect (in other words it remains undiscovered in a hex listed as empty).

I ran this for my group years ago, and had a friend (who's not in the group) read the captain's log to tape. They I spiced it up with some sound FXs (captain being attacked during his last entry). Alas said tape has deteriorated somewhat over the years to the point where you can barely make out what is said. You could probably poke holes in the science but it was fun at the time.

Regards PLST