Common Sense: Evaluating UWPs

[RainOfSteel]

Worse, there are a host of people with email clients that insert or delete spaces at random positions along the subject line, splatting dozens of subject groups all over the place and generally making it difficult to impossble to follow threads. In fact, this problem has gotten much worse lately, with two or three threads playing out across up to 10-15 subject groups with microscopically different subject lines.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

IMTU:

SIZ = (3D-3)
ATM = (2D-7)+SIZ
HYD = (2D-7)+ATM

ENV = 1-((|SIZ-8|+|ATM-6|+|HYD-7|) / 3)
Note: Round off fractions to nearest integer ("|" is the symbol for "Absolute Value").

POP = (2D-7)+ENV
GOV = (2D-7)+POP
LAW = (2D-7)+GOV

In the canonical CT system, the most likely world is 555-555, while IMTU the most likely world is 777-555.

Also...

HYD B: Depth of ocean is 10% of radius.
HYD C: Depth of ocean is 20% of radius.
HYD D: Depth of ocean is 30% of radius.
HYD E: Depth of ocean is 40% of radius.
HYD F: Depth of ocean is 50% of radius.
Note: HYD F worlds are 100% water or fluid. If a HYD F world is water, then increase the radius of the world by 549.7% to maintain surface gravity at 1 gee.

And...

GOV E: Ethnic Oligarcy; the economy is based upon slavery - the forced labor of an ethnic or racial majority by an ethnic or racial minority.
GOV F: Cybernetic Dictatorship; the government has been turned over to (or taken over by) an Artificially Intelligent Supercomputer. The AIS monitors and controls every aspect of every citizen's life.

And...

LAW B: No freedom of assembly.
LAW C: No freedom of movement.
LAW D: No freedom of press.
LAW E: No freedom of speech.
LAW F: No freedom of privacy.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
IMTU:

SIZ = (3D-3)
ATM = (2D-7)+SIZ
HYD = (2D-7)+ATM

Atm is based on Hyd. In Earth's early history, we had oceans before we had an appreciably dense Atm, and big oceans before we had much O2.

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:


<snip>


HYD B: Depth of ocean is 10% of radius.
HYD C: Depth of ocean is 20% of radius.
HYD D: Depth of ocean is 30% of radius.
HYD E: Depth of ocean is 40% of radius.
HYD F: Depth of ocean is 50% of radius.
Note: HYD F worlds are 100% water or fluid. If

In the process of planetary formation, how do you get a world that is 100% water?

<snip>

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by RainOfSteel:

In the process of planetary formation, how do you get a world that is 100% water?
[/QB]

You don't.

you might get very small worlds (size S or 1) that are made almost entirely of ices - some of Saturn's satellites look like they're made entirely of ice given their low densities. But you couldn't get a large world made entirely of water or ice - and certainly not within the Frost Line - because larger worlds are always large enough to accumulate rocky planetesimals when they form and then differentiate the rock from the ice.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

How do you get a world that's 100% water?

You don't, unless "Grandfather" was involved in the accretion process. Otherwise, by dice roll alone, I come up with about a 595.3E-09 percent chance of a world composed entirely of water, anyway (I should re-check that number, as it seems a little high).

The 549.7 percent increase in the radius of a 100% water world was based on the Earth's density of 5.497, as opposed to 1.000 for pure water.

It is much more likely - in the real world, anyway - that a world of HYD B+ would be composed of ammonia, methane, and water ices in varying proportions. Finding out the density of an anhydrous fluidic world - even one composed entirely of ammonia - would give a better idea of how large such a world would be and have a surface gravity of 1 gee, and whether or not such a world could even exist within the 'Life Zone' of a star or closer.

Is is also more likely that such a world would be HYD A to C than D to F.

The supposition that water formed on Earth before the Atmosphere runs contrary to what I learned in college. Granted, my degree is in electrical engineering, but this does not preclude my ability to read and understand what has been written by degreed astrophysicists.

What these astrophysicists have stated is that either ATM and HYD formed concurrently (through cometary accretion), or ATM formed before HYD, and that chemical reactions between the pre-oxygenated - and mostly ammoniated and methanated - atmosphere, and the oxidized and perchlorated minerals in the Earth's crust formed hydrates, which in turn eventually broke down under the influence of ultraviolet light, lightning, and volcanism to form free OH and H radicals. These radicals combined and precipitated from the atmosphere as water molecules.

Liquid water has been shown - by mathmatical simulation and experiment - to boil away as vapor while in a vacuum as close to the Sun as is the Earth (or sublimate directly to vapor from solid ice), and be blown off into space by the solar wind without an atmosphere to act as a buffer. Granted, this happens much faster on a smaller world - Mars being the prime example, and comets being even better.

So, while it is extremely unlikely that a world five-and-a-half times the size of the Earth could be composed of nothing but pure water, making the leap in reason from that idea to the proposition that water formed before an atmosphere makes even less sense.

SIZ, then ATM, and then HYD. This dice-rolling process mimics what scientists already know about real-world accretion processes. Marc Miller knew that, and so do I.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Now that the 'Chicken or Egg' controversy has been laid to rest, what comments do you have on my GOV E to F, and LAW B to F ideas?

 

[Malenfant]

Speaking as one of those scientists...

As I understand it the atmosphere forms basically at the same time as the planet itself forms. Accretion starts as larger masses pull in more material - gas and dust (and ices if they're present) - from the protoplanetary nebula. The basic buiding blocks from which they form contain a lot of hydrated minerals. As this is happening and the protoplanet is growing, the surface is heated by the impacts, and melts at a variety of scales. Also, heat is being generated inside the planet as short-lived radioactive isotopes decay (this is one reason why we think the solar system's formation was triggered by a supernova, otherwise the shortlived stuff would have decayed before anything had a chance to form and we see the decay products in the final planets). This means that - for large-ish planets at least - the interior is hot and so is the surface. All this melting breaks down the hydrated minerals and liberates the water and other volatiles trapped in the rocks, and that ends up being vented into space either directly through a magma ocean at the surface or via volcanoes when the surface has cooled enough. The gases that are liberated form the primordial atmosphere (or are lost to space if the planet's gravity is insufficient to retain them). In the Earth's case (and Venus, and probably Mars) the water ended up being retained and started raining out of the atmosphere as soon as conditions became stable enough for it to do so (ie the temperature became cool enough). Plus there would probably be some input from cometary impacts too. Before the rainout, the atmosphere was probably extremely dense and very thick and laden with water vapour. So that formed the oceans.

But all the while, there is more gas and volatiles being pumped out by volcanoes, and also being lost to space. if the volatile volume erupted by the volcanoes drops below the rate that it's lost to space (or locked up in the soil either chemically or as ice) then there'll be a net loss of volatiles, and the planet dries up - which is probably what happened to Mars. In Venus' case, the temperature was too high because it was too close to the sun (and the luminosity of the sun has been inreasing with time), so the oceans evaporated and formed a massive greenhouse effect to produce the hellhole we see today.

So yes, the atmosphere forms first, but the hydrosphere is somewhat dependent on what the conditions at the surface are like. It's certainly not right to say that you just add the ATM code though, because then you end up with a situation where it's more likely that worlds with exotic atmospheres have global oceans, which is not necessarily true.

But there is no way you'll ever get a large world made entirely of water. You can get large "panthalassic" worlds that basically consist of rocky cores the size of Earth with an extra 1000-2000 km of water on top, but those are still not entirely water.

As for using the standard Grandfather excuse - well, if he does that then I grow more and more convinced that he's just a batty old fart who did lots of random things for no reason

. (then again, for all his supposed genius he was dumb enough not to try making robotic assistants first...)

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Keklas Rekobah:
How do you get a world that's 100% water?

You don't, unless "Grandfather" was involved in the accretion process. Otherwise, by dice roll alone, I come up with about a 595.3E-09 percent chance of a world composed entirely of water, anyway (I should re-check that number, as it seems a little high).

The 549.7 percent increase in the radius of a 100% water world was based on the Earth's density of 5.497, as opposed to 1.000 for pure water.

It is much more likely - in the real world, anyway - that a world of HYD B+ would be composed of ammonia, methane, and water ices in varying proportions. Finding out the density of an anhydrous fluidic world - even one composed entirely of ammonia - would give a better idea of how large such a world would be and have a surface gravity of 1 gee, and whether or not such a world could even exist within the 'Life Zone' of a star or closer.

Is is also more likely that such a world would be HYD A to C than D to F.

The supposition that water formed on Earth before the Atmosphere runs contrary to what I learned in college. Granted, my degree is in electrical engineering, but this does not preclude my ability to read and understand what has been written by degreed astrophysicists.

What these astrophysicists have stated is that either ATM and HYD formed concurrently (through cometary accretion), or ATM formed before HYD, and that chemical reactions between the pre-oxygenated - and mostly ammoniated and methanated - atmosphere, and the oxidized and perchlorated minerals in the Earth's crust formed hydrates, which in turn eventually broke down under the influence of ultraviolet light, lightning, and volcanism to form free OH and H radicals. These radicals combined and precipitated from the atmosphere as water molecules.

Liquid water has been shown - by mathmatical simulation and experiment - to boil away as vapor while in a vacuum as close to the Sun as is the Earth (or sublimate directly to vapor from solid ice), and be blown off into space by the solar wind without an atmosphere to act as a buffer. Granted, this happens much faster on a smaller world - Mars being the prime example, and comets being even better.

So, while it is extremely unlikely that a world five-and-a-half times the size of the Earth could be composed of nothing but pure water, making the leap in reason from that idea to the proposition that water formed before an atmosphere makes even less sense.

SIZ, then ATM, and then HYD. This dice-rolling process mimics what scientists already know about real-world accretion processes. Marc Miller knew that, and so do I.

I fully understand that non-oxygen atmospheres do not need oceans to form, and that water-based oceans need an atmosphere to exist in the first place.

However, we did get oceans somewhere along the way. Life appeared in them. Some time later, aerobic life developed, and the oxygen content started to go up (traces might well have existed from cometary impacts, but with all those volcanic volatiles in the air, I wonder how long free O2 could have gone without oxidizing?), etc.

Atmosphere types 2-9 are oxygen based. I believe these types, especially 4-9, will not appear without oceans with aerobic life pumping out oxygen into the air and soaking up CO2 from anaerobic life. It's true that life on land contributes to the O2/CO2 cycle, but in the beginning, it was just life in the oceans.

Of course, this goes to my belief that Atmosphere needs to be divided up into Atmospheric Pressure (though I fail to see how I can record bars or pressure percentages--which vary greatly--in a single UWP digit) and Atmospheric Content values. Atmospheric Content would be ruled by a combination of factors, including the evolutionary state of the world (the Era stat I proposed over in UPP, the very best) and the Hydrographics; which itself would be divided into Coverage and Content values, and the content of the Hydrographics would matter, an ammonia ocean is not going to mix with an oxygen atmosphere).

Read through the Era stat, I suggest a Sulfur/Carbon atmosphere at Era-4, before the first proto-oceans, when the first chances for life begin.

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Yeah, if you started to implement negative pop modifiers for worlds that weren't habitable (on top of the -2 to the 2d roll that's already there), then you'd get much better results.

Perhaps something like this?:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Atm Pop mod Max Pop
0 -4 6
1 -4 6
2 -3 7
3 -3 7
4 -1 9
5 -0 A
6 -0 A
7 -1 9
8 -0 A
9 -1 9
A -3 7
B -4 6
C -5 5
D -2 8
E -2 8
F -3 7</pre>

[/quote]Coming to this late - maybe someone else has said something to this effect already but...

Who says you have to use only simple modifiers?

Why not population halved instead of pop value -4? Why not consider alternative uses for a single die six?

 

[Malenfant]

Because simple modifiers are easier to use?

Saves mucking around with dividing digits by a load of different numbers. (I'm assuming you mean divide the pop UWP by a number, not the actual population - the latter wouldn't make much difference in most cases, it'd only lower the pop digit by one at most)

 

[Hal]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
Because simple modifiers are easier to use?

Saves mucking around with dividing digits by a load of different numbers. (I'm assuming you mean divide the pop UWP by a number, not the actual population - the latter wouldn't make much difference in most cases, it'd only lower the pop digit by one at most)

Exactly. Instead of a -4 to population with a max pop of 6 as I saw in your first chart... roll 2d6 divided by 2 (if you want a bell curve like distribution for population, or roll 1d6 plain for the population for those worlds you feel are just "corporate posts for the short duration".

Sorry I wasn't more clear.

 

[Morte]

Now that people use computer programs and spreadsheets for this stuff, instead of dice and pencils, is there really any need to simplify the math?

 

[SanDragon]

Don't use pencils and DICE?!??! Heathens! Sacrelidge! It's a pen & paper, tabletop game!!

*walks away shaking his head.*

 

[RainOfSteel]

Starsystem #1: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 10 hours later, done.

Starsystem #2: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 8 hours later, done.

Starsystem #3: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 4 hours later, done.

Starsystem #4: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 2 hours later, done.

Starsystem #5: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 2 hours later, done.

Starsystem #6: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 2 hours later, done.
.
.
.
.
Starsystem #11000: roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write, roll, write . . . 2 hours later, done.
.
.
.
. . . Aproximately 462 eight-hour long days later.


Or . . . Heaven & Earth 2 Beta: 5 Seconds/Sector + 60 Seconds to save and type in file names, times 28 Sectors = approximately 30.33 minutes.


For such a savings in time, heathen sacrelidge is acceptable.

 

[SanDragon]

OKay, okay, granted. It's like comparing a horse & carriage to... well... a jumpship. Why was that concept so difficult to link?

 

[Malenfant]

Actually, I'd prefer to do them by hand so I can keep an eye on things. At least until I get a system for generating UWPs hammered out that doesn't produce some nonsensical values like the current one does.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Yes, but the tough part will be figuring out a way to insert that system into a GUI interface. Galactic 2.4 is pretty old, and while the code is open, it's a frightening spaghetti mess. HE 2.0 is not open. Universe might be an alternative, but I haven't looked into it.

QLI hasn't yet published a world buidling book. I think it may be time for an official sourcebook that is based on the latest in what we know (or think we know, anyway) about planetology, solar system formation, and stellar distribution and occurence.

One with systems mechanics that acknowledge that some attributes can have multiple effects on each other, and that a starsystem can be effected by other, nearby starsystems (although this latest, world linking feature, would be of most use to computer starsystem generators).

----------EDIT
And yes, I admit I wouldn't mind seeing a *little* skewing to make sure enough habitable worlds appear to make for a milieu interesting to play in . . . or perhaps part of the system could be a skew factor, where 0 Habitability Skew would represent hard-edge reality (as far as we know it), and a high Habitability Skew would toss out lots of habitable planets. This would allow for greater automatic customization for alternate settings (making it easier for such alternate settings to appear).

 

[Malenfant]

Such a book is basically out - it's called GURPS Traveller: First In

It's not 100% realistic, but it's a damn sight better than anything that's been published for other versions of Traveller.

 

[RainOfSteel]

And, unfortunately for me, it generates GT World Info, and not CT/MT/TNE/M0/T20:UWPs.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Also, from many posts here and on the TML, and even echoed over in irregularwebcomic . . . doesn't it produce an excessively high number of starsystems without anything useful in them? Something about lots of rockball worlds.