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General Expansion, migration, and population growth

Mår Ekkertsen

Mår Ekkertsen

SOC-12
Peer of the Realm
I am about to flesh out a new region and I am looking for resources to help calculate population growth into that region. I imagine the region is freshly opened and a healthy Third Imperium-ish, OTU in good times, is at hand with candidate populations ready to migrate; some megacorps are prepared to assist, for their profit, of course; and the expansion into the region has political backing as well from nearby regions.

Are there official or unofficial resources you can help me find?
 
This is extremely unofficial and strictly IMTU so take it with a grain of salt.

Regarding initial colonization, I assume there is a target world that is about to be settled. I roll Starting Population with 1D-3 with a minimum of 1. I then roll the Pop Multiplier with a straight 1D.

I apply DMs based on the target world. Clearly Ga attracts more interest than De, for example.

This generally gives a start-up colony an initial population from 10 hardy souls up to 6,000 bright-eyed colonists.

For the migration phase, I use 50 year turns, each turn rolling 1D which is added to the Pop Multiplier. Again, DMs based on the physical trade codes of the world. When the Pop Multiplier hits 10 or more, the Pop digit ticks up one and the remainder becomes the new Multiplier.

So the big 6,000 person colony (Pop 3^6) rolls a 6 for growth, that gets the permanent Pop to 4^2 or 20,000 people after 50 years. I re-roll Government and Law Level at this point, and take a look at the starport and TL as well. If it had instead rolled a 2 and only grew to (Pop 3^8) 8,000 people after 50 years, well, I guess there's something happening there - very little interest to new colonists, tougher conditions than expected, political shenanigans, mega-corp issues...

The Pop increase works great for "core" or well-settled areas too when advancing the overall timeline of a campaign.

As I said, decidedly non-canon. But hopefully it will give you some ideas if nothing else.
 
I looked around about this a little bit.

Historically, Earth population growth peaked around 2% per year.

This is important in two ways.

First, how fast your colonies will grow. You can be aggressive with 4% a year, but that's only 2.2x the population after 20 years. 7.1x after 50. In a hundred year, it's kind of explodes at 50x.

And second, how much "excess" population you have to bleed off of the mother world.

Next, consider the raw dTons necessary to move a population.

Swagging small ship universe 5000 ton J2 colony ships gorged with low berths, that's 3700 people per trip, with a small space for personal items. So, it would take 10 of those ships to move a million people in one year. Low berths is probably the "densest" form of travel on a star ship, at least humanely.

So, for just raw math, 55000 dTons of ships per million per year.

A planet with 1B people at 2% growth is creating 20M people a year. You could probably afford to take 10M of your "able bodied" each year for colonization, but it will have an impact on future growth since you can't just take the aged and very young.

Mind, according to TCS, a 1B population planet can host 1M tons of shipyards per year. That's a lot of 5K ships.

Always fun to budget the exodus...
 
For voluntary immigrants, you will get those that are discontented with the things or their situation on the planet of origin. People who are satisfied with things do not immigrate. The planetary governments are going to ship out all of those that they consider undesirable or expendable, with hopefully a rough balance between male and female. Think Australian convict ships and Russian exiles to Siberia. The megacorps are not going to send their best and brightest, but those that they can dispense with the easiest.

Then as it will take a while to get any colony to be self-supporting, you willl be sending food and needed equipment for a while. For food, figure a little under a metric ton a year, although packaging may make that up to a metric ton. As for equipment and machinery. you need to budget about 5 or so Traveller dTons per person.

How much money are you planning to use to send people out?
 
The OTU in various version of Traveller have discussion or even rules :xh: on the subject of populstion growth:

1.TNE has rules concerning population growth to modify the UWP of planets. After the destructive effects of Virus are applied to the UWP, you may apply one of a few multipliers for growth over the 70+ years after the passing of Virus. When you see how badly things get knocked down and then on growth only the multiplier of the extension changes most times, it seems silly. But consider: A reduction of just 1 point on the main UWP implies an around 90% extermination of the population.

2.Marc Miller's Traveller - Milieu 0 Campaign was a hardcover which combined the softcovers Milieu 0 and First Survey. In between the two main parts was a new section of the growth of the Third Imperium from IY 0 to 200 along with data on numbers of systems absorbed decade by decade, sector by sector. It is not available on Drivethru. Perhaps on the FFE CD-ROM

3. GURPS: Traveller Interstellar Wars - In that book , randomly generating Vilani Empire and Terran Confederation colonies the population roll is on a chart that grants a +1 to the roll for every 10 years the colony has existed. The Vilani roll on the same table but all Vilani worlds get a +40 (400 years?) to the roll.

4.Traveller 5 - The major / minor race thing is finally given teeth. Basically the talk that those races that learn Jump Drive independently rule space is a truism in Charted Space (What other universe was T5 designed for :) ).
Essentially, the "minor races" give up when confronted with a major race get a permanent case of defeatism and stay home.

The Favored Society Effect Inverse. Many societies send out expeditions to the stars and find the universe is already settled. Some societies are visited by starfarers bringing new technology and the implied message that the stars are home to better, stronger, superior cultures. Most such societies retreat to their own territories, content to rule their homeworld and focus inward.
The Kisthdra first ventured beyond their home system in NAFAL-driven ships on expeditions expected to take hundreds of years. Instead, their crews returned home aboard Vilani starliners less than a decade after they left. The realization that the stars had already been conquered, and that they belonged to someone else, crushed the collective spirit of Kisthdra society: they rarely venture beyond their world even now.
The overall result is interstellar domination by a favored few sophonts, and many worlds: each home to a unique race with its own introspective interests.
Click to expand...
 
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Something that I strongly doubt would be the case with Terrans... our sci-fi has done too good a job programming us as "we can make a place no matter what or who else is out there".

I'm not denying that a good-sized portion of the population might suffer "cultural shock" and retreat, but a large enough percentage would welcome the chance to "get out there and meet everyone and see everything" that the species as a whole would become "connected" to the interstellar society.


Hence the "most" in that T5 description, not "all".
 
I, very strangely, find I want like buttons to positively reinforce comments, even when i have no constructive response.

i appreciate the commentary.
 
n2s said:
I, very strangely, find I want like buttons to positively reinforce comments, even when i have no constructive response.

i appreciate the commentary.
Click to expand...

You have the "like" button in the upper right hand side of the post. It is the scales symbol.
 
BlackBat242 said:
Something that I strongly doubt would be the case with Terrans... our sci-fi has done too good a job programming us as "we can make a place no matter what or who else is out there".

I'm not denying that a good-sized portion of the population might suffer "cultural shock" and retreat, but a large enough percentage would welcome the chance to "get out there and meet everyone and see everything" that the species as a whole would become "connected" to the interstellar society.


Hence the "most" in that T5 description, not "all".
Click to expand...
I think the idea is a minor race that is contacted by a major race gets connected into someone else’s interstellar society. (So their own independent technological progression basically stops and they follow the progression and development of the major race)
 
Correct. This was the surprising discovery that came out of a recent poll on giving Reputation. No one seems to be willing to explain why some have the ability and some don't. I started that poll because I see the scales on every post and thought that was universal.
 
The Scales Icon only appears on all posts for Moot-members, because clicking and designating approval/disapproval with the Scales Icon will also ultimately assign good or bad Reputation to the poster of the given post. Anyone can see the scales icon on their own posts so that they can click on it and see what approval/disapproval others (Moot-members) have given them (if anything).

Access to the Reputation System is explicitly listed as a benefit of Moot membership: http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/faq.php?faq=mootfaq#faq_mootbenefitsfaq

You can see a total list of all the approval/disapproval given to all of your posts under the Control Panel:

Along the top of the screen:
Click: UserCP dropdown
Choose: Control Panel

​
@agorski: I think you were a Moot member at one time?
 
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