Interesting or Realistic Star Systems

[Tellon]

I am curious what you guys generally use -- to poulate your TU's or Pocket Empires -- as the OTU is already set

for me, I stick to a generally boring realism -- so ~75% are small M stars -- generally like what we see here around us .. which means the mainworld will be either a habitable zone world, tiny and probably a rocky world on orbit 0 -- or a tiny iceball. Or we smile at the presence of a SGG in hopes of creating a mars-sized world with a chance of habitable stats .. lol

But I have also heard how others like "interesting" stars, so you can have some fun with your mainworlds and try and make something worthwhile visiting .. lol

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

I try to keep things reasonably scientific - radiation-blasted asteroid belts and airless worldlets orbiting O and B stars; A-type stars having a few habitable worlds in spite of the intense UV; F, G, and K-type stars having the majority of '867' worlds; and K-type stars and L/T-type stellar objects lacking enough UV to maintain photosynthesis, but at least they're warm and stable.

The devil is in the details. It once took me almost an entire year to detail one five-planet system around an F8 star, because I just had to get the life zone the right distance from the primary, and I had to make sure that none of the planetary orbits interfered harmonically with any of the others, and that the ecology of each world had to have synergy, and because it simply all had to make sense without resorting to hand-waves, shortcuts or literary tropes!

Nowadays, if I 'design' a system, I just follow one of the methods from the Scouts LBB and be done with it - a few hours at the most. Ecology is simple: natural or artificial, photosynthesis or chemosynthesis, native or induced, or some combination. Large predators are usually at the top of the food chain, with algae and/or bacteria at the bottom.

A few anomalies exist, like the system with the twin SIZ-7 worlds orbiting each other at roughly 1.2 million kilometers separation (one a garden world and the other a tectonic nightmare), orbiting a G2-type star at roughly the same distance as the Earth from Sol. Another anomaly is the SIZ-6 world in a cometary orbit (aphelion~37AU / perihelion~0.5AU) that still somehow manages to maintain enough liquid water on its surface to support a TEC-3 civilization. And so forth...

 

[aramis]

I'm using a hybrid of T20, MT, and MGT rules, tweaked heavily, in my new ATU.

I'm using the hard science mods from MGT for mainworlds, and modified mainworld gen for other worlds in system. At this point, system gen is pretty much no longer looking much like anything else...

I just generated a system with 12 inhabited planets/moons, one of which must be driven by volcanic volatile chemosynthesis, since it's in orbit 12 around a G7II... Takes several hours per system.

 

[BlackBat242]

The devil is in the details. It once took me almost an entire year to detail one five-planet system around an F8 star, because I just had to get the life zone the right distance from the primary, and I had to make sure that none of the planetary orbits interfered harmonically with any of the others, and that the ecology of each world had to have synergy, and because it simply all had to make sense without resorting to hand-waves, shortcuts or literary tropes!

Nowadays, if I 'design' a system, I just follow one of the methods from the Scouts LBB and be done with it - a few hours at the most.

I see you found professional help for your OCD.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

I try to keep things reasonably scientific - radiation-blasted asteroid belts and airless worldlets orbiting O and B stars; A-type stars having a few habitable worlds in spite of the intense UV; F, G, and K-type stars having the majority of '867' worlds; and K-type stars and L/T-type stellar objects lacking enough UV to maintain photosynthesis, but at least they're warm and stable.

Interesting. Can M type stars sustaing photosynthesis?

Regards,

Ewan

 

[aramis]

Interesting. Can M type stars sustaing photosynthesis?

Regards,

Ewan

Any form of light from near IR through low-end UV can... the difference being what chemicals are needed to do so. Chlorophyll works well enough, in our yellow star's light.

Different analogues would evolve in other light spectra; an M-star should have more reddish absorbing analogues to Chlorophyll, and might even include our Chlorophyll a, b, c & d.

http://www.solstation.com/life/a-plants.htm discusses (and matches my recollection) that Blue and Red wavelengths are the hot-spots for Chlorophyllic photosynthesis in the majority of terran plants.

http://johnsonm.com/Info/Chlorophyll shows the spectal absorbtion range for Chlorophyll a and b.

 

[Antony]

For my United Worlds Commowealth setting I imported the Hipparcos data set and manually entered recent data for things like brown dwarfs and generated the systems details using the program Astrosynthesis. I then tweak systems as I require them. Saves a lot of time.

Incidently it is possible to do a 2D sector with this program. I have entered data from my Banners Campaign to see how this would work. Pretty well once the sector template is set up.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Any form of light from near IR through low-end UV can... the difference being what chemicals are needed to do so. Chlorophyll works well enough, in our yellow star's light.

Different analogues would evolve in other light spectra; an M-star should have more reddish absorbing analogues to Chlorophyll, and might even include our Chlorophyll a, b, c & d.

http://www.solstation.com/life/a-plants.htm discusses (and matches my recollection) that Blue and Red wavelengths are the hot-spots for Chlorophyllic photosynthesis in the majority of terran plants.

http://johnsonm.com/Info/Chlorophyll shows the spectal absorbtion range for Chlorophyll a and b.

Thansk for these.

But what effect, if any, would this have on imported Terran plants?

Regards,

Ewan

 

[Vargas]

I just go with the Book 6 system generation sequence. It's reasonably random and gives me the kind of results I'm interested in. Based on my experience with 2300AD, anything more realisitic tends to result in a lot of rocks orbiting unremarkable stars.

 

[Icosahedron]

I go with Book 6 generally, but rationalise it a little for stars that are particularly big, bright, small or dim. I also rationalise some of the UWPs so I have less tall tales to invent.

I also figure that to get the stellar population density right, every subsector hex is occupied, but the 'empty' hexes contain ultra dim red or brown dwarfs that don't have a planetary system. They are therefore useless for mining or refuelling, are not marked on star maps and simply act as a bookkeeping balance to ease the strain on my belief suspenders.

 

[ffilz]

One thing I've been thinking about is having a star system generation system, that rather than generating random world parameters, and then we try and make sense of them, starts by identifying what planets the system has by type. It should be capable of taking the star type (or types) into account, so it won't generate earth-like planets around stars that current understanding couldn't support such. The GM could also choose to place certain planet types in the system.

Then we can have tables for each type of planet that randomly generate the things that can be variable. So an earth-like planet might have a range of sizes, temperature bands, water coverage, population, etc. A vacuum world would have it's own tables of what might vary.

I'd like some realism, but I don't want to roll up 1000s of stars to get a few stars with earth-like planets. I also want to be able to quickly generate the system where I know I want to habitable planet, but I'm not invested in the type, or perhaps I do know it's earth-like.

Frank

 

[Tellon]

cool

1 world I created -- a small 4A1 with a very dense Nitrogen/Methane atmosphere -- the planets density is high, and has active plate-techtonics (but slowing down slightly), "geysers" of water/ammonia, the oceans are 85% water/15% Ammonia -- and the "rainfall" is generally a nitogen/methane rich 'soup' of organic compounds, and the thermal vents on the oceans bottom are a real source of life..(heat + light + chemical reactions going off)

the "life"? you ask ... is sentient

I actually made them as a "pancake" shaped critter -- a lot like a jellyfish. Using various light frequencies as a means of communication. So lots of ocean going life -- for some reason, I never got to thinking about the land or any atmosheric 'life' -- as I concentrated on the oceans.

So I basically made a "warm" Titan using what a lot of folks considered the atmosphere of the early earth -- lots of N2, NH3, CH4, CO2 and so on --

The world, being at orbit 0 on an M0V is a tidally locked world (So lots of trippy weather at the equators); and since the atmosphere is thick enough -- the dry side is BONE dry -- and hot -- but not too hot -- as the heat is transfered, and the cold side is a large ice sheet -- obviously creating the awsome twilight zone we think of on tidally locked worlds.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Interesting. Can M type stars sustaing photosynthesis?

Regards,

Ewan

Oops! Typo.

I meant to post that M stars, and L and T objects do not have enough UV in their emissions to support terrestrial photosynthesis. This holds true for only MTU, and your results may vary.

 

[Tellon]

Oops! Typo.

I meant to post that M stars, and L and T objects do not have enough UV in their emissions to support terrestrial photosynthesis. This holds true for only MTU, and your results may vary.

lol -- yeah, no matter if we deal with cyanobacteria, red algea, brown algae, true plants and so on -- with chloro a,b,c,d and some postulate an e -- we have upwards of 5 types of photosynthesizing going on

Now as for my planet (the "warm" titan above) I have much more of a chemosynthesis going on .. but if I would work on "plant-life", it might be fun to see what kind of metabolic/energy creator a N2/CH4 base could create.

 

[aramis]

Thansk for these.

But what effect, if any, would this have on imported Terran plants?

Regards,

Ewan

Dim is a relative term. If you're close enough to be in the ecosphere, they won't thrive in local competition, but even a red star will produce enough that, when protected from local life, they can grow... mars-like, rather than earth like in most cases, tho, as many M_V and MD have no appreciable ecosphere.

 

[leo knight]

I feel like such a Luddite! I use straight Book3/ MGT basic. The only time I mention stars is for color, both figuratively and literally.

My regular playing group isn't science illiterate, merely uninterested. They grew up on Star Trek, Space 1999, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, et al. Their idea of a heavenly body:

I started to do a realistic write up of the systems in my new campaign, or at least as realistic as someone with one year of high school physics and a "University of Google" degree can get. :smirk: I started with our Solar System and worked out, using as much real data from Wikipedia, etc., as I could find, using most of the stars within 5 parsecs, bright stars out to 10, and filling in with made up M class stars between 5 and 10 pc. I intended to detail the primary star, or stars, the main world, and the nearest gas giant, if any. I intended to move the habitable worlds to the G and K class stars, marginal worlds to the M class stars, getting less habitable as the stars got less luminous. I hadn't decided what to do with Altair, but Procyon and Sirius would have airless rocks at best.

I realized it was futile when I was running a one-shot. The PCs had to get from the main world to a moon of a gas giant about 5AU out. I started to calculate the travel time at 1g. "Are those equations? Are you doing algebra? Are you nuts?" Details like stellar type don't matter to players who see the universe as a shooting gallery. If I ever write up this stuff, I should title it "Grand Theft Starship".

Also, I suspect I may be mildly OCD, and can re-do and re-do, in perfectionist detail, until my fingers bleed. So fast and dirty keeps me out of trouble.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

LBB-3 will cover the majority of instances, with LBB-6 covering the rest. My work-up for "System: Thrace" was so detailed that it was embarrassing. Did my players really need to know the middle name of the second wife of the first assistant to the District Seven director of the Global Computer Technicians' Guild? I doubt it ... unless they were even more hopelessly OC than I ever was.

If the world is a mere stop-over, then LBB-3 stats are sufficient. If the world features prominently in an adventure, then LBB-6 is better. Only when an entire epic arc takes place in one system over the course of a real-life year with the same players would I even think of detailing the system's cultures, customs, ecologies, economies, politics, religions, et cetera...

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Dim is a relative term. If you're close enough to be in the ecosphere, they won't thrive in local competition, but even a red star will produce enough that, when protected from local life, they can grow... mars-like, rather than earth like in most cases, tho, as many M_V and MD have no appreciable ecosphere.

Thanks Will.

Regards,

Ewan

 

[Peter Schutze]

>I started with our Solar System and worked out, using as much real data from Wikipedia, etc., as I could find, using most of the stars within 5 parsecs, bright stars out to 10

I can give you out to 50ly including recent 'discovered' systems in csv

If you use astrosynthesis I can even give you a 'sector' file to 20ly with all known exoplanet stars to about 40LY added in

This is basically the raw data for any traveller 2300 game (which is 3D and in lightyears not parsecs)

 

[ffilz]

Peter,

I'd love to see that data. Where is astrosynthesis to be found (assuming that's a program)?

Thanks

Frank