Population codes above A - why?

[Lapthorn]

Does anyone like this feature of world generation? I regard populations in the hundreds of billions and above as kind of daft and requiring a lot of explanation. The odd one per sector might be warranted if the ref feels like it, but a 1 in 54 chance (if my maths are right) is much too high for my liking.

I like a solid random process where I can go in and tweak things here and there to make them more interesting. I don't want to have to go through a randomly generated sector (e.g. using thalassogen's excellent website) and fix things that are broken by rerolling a load of population, gov, law and tech codes.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not that Classic Traveller worldgen was perfect - uninhabited garden worlds next to airless size-1 rockballs with 90 billion people, yes yes. But now the airless size-1 rockball has a 1 in 218 chance of having quadrillions of people on it.

There's a lot I like about T5, but this change is not one of those things.

 

[thalassogen]

I guess, it's a matter of taste. I like some support of higher pop worlds. It's OK that it's there. That said, I like my universe more Firefly-like: a few densely populated core worlds and lots of sparsely populated fringe worlds.

 

[rancke]

It seems to me that the last thing any Traveller universe needs is a higher average population per system. Systems with billions and tens of billions of inhabitants already dominate the economy and military of their sectors. Systems with hundreds of billions can only make matters worse.


Hans

 

[atpollard]

For meta-game reasons, very high populations may be undesirable, but they are biologically easily obtainable and within the realm of physically achievable with 20th century technology.

As a curious statistic, the entire population of the earth standing shoulder to shoulder will fit within the borders of a large city. That same population living in one large suburb, would fit within the borders of Texas. There is physical room for a staggering human population (at great ecological expense) and recent data on vertical farming suggests that it could feed itself with tall urban 'greenhouses'.

So it becomes an issue of desirability rather than physical possibility (even without sci-fi answers like orbital habitats and farms).

 

[HG_B]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not that Classic Traveller worldgen was perfect - uninhabited garden worlds next to airless size-1 rockballs with 90 billion people, yes yes. But now the airless size-1 rockball has a 1 in 218 chance of having quadrillions of people on it.

There's a lot I like about T5, but this change is not one of those things.

CT world gen was about as wacky as it got. It would be better to have several gen templates based on subsector age (how long a major race has been in area, presence/proximity of native Major race or absence, etc.

 

[Daddicus]

I didn't check your math, but assuming your 1 in 54 is correct, that's less than one per subsector (depending on system density; I'm assuming 50% have worlds).

The other thing is that there very well could be worlds where the smaller population rules the larger. For example, the Star Trek (ToS) episode The Cloud Minders seems to be like this.

But, as a random chance, feel free to house-rule it. I suspect virtually nobody plays without some house rules.

 

[simonh]

For meta-game reasons, very high populations may be undesirable, but they are biologically easily obtainable and within the realm of physically achievable with 20th century technology.

Seconded. Earth's population is only in the billions, but if we were serious about supporting a high population and forget the ecological consequences we could probably increase it tenfold. With a higher proportion of land area to ocean, we could go a lot further.

Also high population doesn't necessarily translate to more economic power. Look at India and China just 20 years ago. Population heavyweights but economic flyweights. That's changing now, but there wasn't anything inevitable about that. Even high technology doesn't necessarily help, just look at Russia. It has a space programme, advanced fighter jets and nuclear weapons, but without oil and gas to prop up it's economy it'd be even more of a basket case than it already is.

Simon Hibbs

 

[rancke]

For meta-game reasons, very high populations may be undesirable, but they are biologically easily obtainable and within the realm of physically achievable with 20th century technology.

Yes, but Traveller is a game, not a simulation. Meta-game reasons count.


Hans

 

[Ref00000]

Yes, but Traveller is a game, not a simulation. Meta-game reasons count.


Hans

bit of both, really. IMO, anyhow. one of the things that's kept me playing Traveller all these decades is the fact that when you use the tools on the table, it's a heck of a lot more like a Multiversal Simulator than chess.

 

[HG_B]

Yes, but Traveller is a game, not a simulation. Meta-game reasons count.


Hans

Yes they do. However the "meta" reasons will be different by game group so, simulation for the main rules and tweaking for meta reasons done by each GM...

 

[Spaceresearcher]

Does anyone like this feature of world generation? I regard populations in the hundreds of billions and above as kind of daft and requiring a lot of explanation. The odd one per sector might be warranted if the ref feels like it, but a 1 in 54 chance (if my maths are right) is much too high for my liking.

I like a solid random process where I can go in and tweak things here and there to make them more interesting. I don't want to have to go through a randomly generated sector (e.g. using thalassogen's excellent website) and fix things that are broken by rerolling a load of population, gov, law and tech codes.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Not that Classic Traveller worldgen was perfect - uninhabited garden worlds next to airless size-1 rockballs with 90 billion people, yes yes. But now the airless size-1 rockball has a 1 in 218 chance of having quadrillions of people on it.

There's a lot I like about T5, but this change is not one of those things.

It all depends upon how large the planet is doesn't it?(It's not hard to explain a world a bit larger than Jupiter surely). A world say 100 times the size of Earth but with the same characteristics, could sustain a LOT more people. Then there's that golden treasure of Science Fiction which blew my mind. The concept of 'The Ring World' and later on the Dyson Sphere concept. It just blows my mind thinking about a world that massive, surrounding a star. I also wondered how the orbit would work as I've always thought of orbital mechanics in terms of a gyroscope, where there's one point the furthest away and another point closest to the star. With this configuration there is a kind of pulling and pushing effect if you will. With a perfectly circular world or sphere, I don't see how it could rotate efficiently. Kind of like how the Earth needs the Moon for there to be tides. Essentially with a sphere you would effectively end up with a geosynchronous orbit around the sun, or even no orbit at all. Incredible concept to comprehend.

As for the economy of the system, well that's something I think Traveller handles incredibly well. This is because with the speed of jump, not all worlds are always instantly accessible to others with instantaneous communication. Essentially I've always viewed all systems as governments unto themselves, there own individual self sustaining economies(obviously less inhabited harsh environment worlds would be a different story and then there's the fact that not every world will have all the materials other worlds do, so that forms the basis for massive trade routes across the galaxy from the mega worlds).

The main thing that I always found intriguing with Traveller is the very loose xboat routes. There kind of like a weak thread linking the galaxy together, but at the same time with communication being limited to Jump speed seem but an illusion to aid in bringing worlds together when really there all on there own. (Please do correct me if others have grander visions).

As for explaining the world, well it could simply be a race of mindless clone people genetically engineered for the sole purpose of performing there destined life work to produce goods and food for the rest of the imperium. Then when they die, there chopped up into pieces and used for fertilizer to go back into the system and keep it a sustainable cycle. That way the mega world serves as a galactic assett not a mind blowing catastrophe waiting to happen.
This could form the back drop for a campaign of human rights activists performing the Traveller version of the animal activits freeing of caged Chickens.

 

[Draconian]

High-population planets

It's theoretically possible. Fusion power, if discovered now, WOULD solve all our problems. There is no limit to the mega-projects we could construct and run if we had fusion power. A place with favourable economics could bloom regardless of the current terrain, shucks, you could terraform things. You would have the huge cities like in Episodes 1 and 2 of STAR WARS, on Coruscant, with a bullseye dominating one of the world triangles.

Everything urban, an arcology with sustainable food agriculture (assuming the proles are almost totally vegetarian). But I dunno about the code F, quadrillions.

The odds in T5 are (Pop. code = 2D-2, re-roll a 10 with 9+1D6

1's (0): 1/36
10's (1): 2/36
100's (2): 3/36
1000's (3): 4/36
10,000's (4): 5/36
100,000's (5): 6/36
1,000,000's (6): 5/36
10,000,000's (7): 4/36
100,000,000's (8): 3/36
billions (9): 2/36
ten billions (A): 1/216
hundred billions (B): 1/216
trillions (C): 1/216
ten trillions (D): 1/216
hundred trillions (E): 1/216
quadrillions (F): 1/216

The distribution is totally simplistic, creating, as you said, sparsely populated garden worlds and densely populated rocks. Given hundreds of years of settlement and nearly free fusion energy, the garden worlds should be populated more, and in fact over-populated.

 

[aramis]

The distribution is totally simplistic, creating, as you said, sparsely populated garden worlds and densely populated rocks. Given hundreds of years of settlement and nearly free fusion energy, the garden worlds should be populated more, and in fact over-populated.

Actually, non-homeworld gardens are likely as not to be private reserves and/or zoos, and kept sparsely populated on purpose, while people are moved to arcologies with vat protein and pure hydroponics, importing hydrogen captured from nearby gas giants, comets, and ice asteroids.

And the people living on those gardens are likely to enforce the blockades mercilessly - unauthorized shipping being blasted into bits if it fails to surrender immediately.

Envision Earth, with the population limited to 100,000,000 people, and all the rest being shipped up to Lunar colonies and orbitals, especially fusion powered internally lit pseudo-O'Neil cylinders.

Come to think of it, that's the view not just of me, but of the Gundam Novel Trilogy's author, Yoshiyuki Tomino. Earth becomes a paradise once again, while humanity generally becomes a spacefaring civilization that knows no natural sunlight. (Aside from the humanoid manned combat units, it's actually harder sci-fi than Traveller is.) If you haven't read the novels, you've really missed out.

 

[rancke]

Actually, non-homeworld gardens are likely as not to be private reserves and/or zoos, and kept sparsely populated on purpose, while people are moved to arcologies with vat protein and pure hydroponics, importing hydrogen captured from nearby gas giants, comets, and ice asteroids.

And the people living on those gardens are likely to enforce the blockades mercilessly - unauthorized shipping being blasted into bits if it fails to surrender immediately.

Envision Earth, with the population limited to 100,000,000 people, and all the rest being shipped up to Lunar colonies and orbitals, especially fusion powered internally lit pseudo-O'Neil cylinders.

While I've recently been forced to concede that UWP populations per definition doesn't include the total system population but only that of the mainworld, I still think it's an exceedinly bad idea that they don't. Not useless but actively counterproductive (from a gaming point of view). UWPs are indeed world profiles, unfortunately. They ought to be system profiles, even if that requires some other word than system to avoid confusion with ship profiles.

OTOH, now that I think about it, it does provide an easy way to explain Class A starports on low-population worlds: There are millions of people living elsewhere in the system and the starport personnel commutes to work. Yeah, that's the ticket!


Hans

 

[Draconian]

While I've recently been forced to concede that UWP populations per definition doesn't include the total system population but only that of the mainworld, I still think it's an exceedinly bad idea that they don't. Not useless but actively counterproductive (from a gaming point of view). UWPs are indeed world profiles, unfortunately. They ought to be system profiles, even if that requires some other word than system to avoid confusion with ship profiles.

Hans

We must suppose that interplanetary travel is dirt-simple in the future, like hopping on a bus. Each planet, worldlet or planetoid belt has its own UWP, so I assume the population is sorted out according to resources or jobs or whatever. The cultural codes however are system-wide, although exceptional cultural differences can occur in enclaves and such.

 

[HG_B]

While I've recently been forced to concede that UWP populations per definition doesn't include the total system population but only that of the mainworld, I still think it's an exceedinly bad idea that they don't. Not useless but actively counterproductive (from a gaming point of view).

Absolutely. Quite lame actually.

 

[Shonner]

I don't think a trillion humans would get along with each other on the same world.

 

[Reban]

I don't think a trillion humans would get along with each other on the same world.

The thing is....it doesn't have to be humans does it? It can be a trillion sophonts, perhaps an intelligent insectoid species with a caste system that means many billions are simple minded drones with the trillionth being the queen.

Non-human populations are a good reason for pop codes greater than A.

 

[HG_B]

I don't think a trillion humans would get along with each other on the same world.

?? As a person I don't have a personal sense of how many people are on Earth. It is dependent on pop density (size of land mass.) Humans currently get along in high density cities...

 

[Shonner]

The thing is....it doesn't have to be humans does it? It can be a trillion sophonts, perhaps an intelligent insectoid species with a caste system that means many billions are simple minded drones with the trillionth being the queen.

Non-human populations are a good reason for pop codes greater than A.

I was gonna say, humans don't do the hive thing all that great. I would argue that intelligence and hive-mind do not work together.