Populations that include transients

[rancke]

Since those are not 'statements' as you claimed and don't answer my question regards references to official statements, yes, of course, apart from that.

Rob and Don are official enough for me. YMMV.

A 'set' of two systems out of tens of thousands?

A couple of examples. If you want a full list you're out of luck, although I could easily furnish you some more if you'd like to have a go at explaining them. Otherwise I think a couple of examples should be good enough to prove my opinion correct.

Sorry, I have a hard time believing no one can come up with fictional rationales for a handful of systems.

I can't help that.

I quite agree that the odds used in system gen do not accommodate a full setting well, but the full setting map of charted space is established and long ago published. Writers have to work with that, not what they'd like.

I've already answered that. If it works, don't change it. If it doesn't work, change it to something that works and stick to that from then on.

Looked at based solely on what we actually know (or have good reason to suspect) about our own solar system and observed exoplanets - most of the UWPs are 'implausable'. Looked at from a standpoint of science-fiction, and an eye towards gaming in the setting, is a quite different story.

Different, yes. Totally different, no.

Wasn't dismissing your opinions - was identifying them as such, since you did not and were using your opinions as if facts.

It's like when I had dinner with a friend and he served rubbery tiger shrimp slathered in garlic. I told him there was too much garlic. He could have told me that it was just an opinion, but it was a fact that there was too much garlic for me. The fact that there wasn't too much garlic for him didn't change that.

Likewise it is a fact that some of the canonical explanations are too implausible for me. The fact that they don't stick in your craw doesn't alter that.

Its my opinion that you don't actually think the 3I is plausible. Stating that no plausible fiction can account for the occurrences of UWP combinations in a setting you otherwise suspend disbelief for regarding interstellar royalty, jump, psionics, animal derived aliens, gravitics, pocket universes, system controlling ancients and such just comes across as a pet peeve (pun intended).

It's based on empirical evidence. I can't explain them. No one else has been able to. Until and unless someone does come up with explanations that work, I'll continued to believe that no explanations are possible. If someone proves me wrong, so much the better.

Oh, and your logic is flawed. Just because I accept some implausible underpinnings of a fictional universe doesn't mean that I have to accept all implausibilities. I'm perfectly entitled to accept jump drives and still reject the notion that a sufficiently high Survival skill will enable someone to survive in outer space without a life support system.

I get that, but its really unproductive. Not interested in convincing you of anything - simply discussing a topic brought up on a public forum.

Telling me that my opinion is wrong and that I'm being unproductive is equally unproductive. Coming up with fixes that prove me wrong would seem a better use of time.

Addressing the actual systems in question, or sharing your own fixes, would seem a better use of time. <shrug>

If I was able to come up with a fix, I wouldn't be claiming that it was impossible to come up with a fix, now would I?


Hans

 

[BytePro]

So, you don't have any actual official published sources for statements you claim to exist, nor any extensive list of systems that you claim are too many in number to explain, and everything you state as fact should automatically be assumed to be your opinion only, and your opinions are facts to you, which makes them facts regardless.

Got it. :rofl:

 

[Vladika]

If I could weight in here for a moment.

I too have noted that there are serious problems with the published lists of world systems.

It seems that High Tech, Class A worlds are often underpopulated. This is all to often with cases of Class A Starports with to small of populations to serve even annual maintenance needs.

There are lots more, including small or bad atmosphere, with unusually large populations.

I agree it's to late to change with so many publications out there, but, it is annoying nonetheless.

Another problem, as I see it, are sub-sector capitals with good population levels but lower tech than their constituent worlds. Also, those same critical worlds on hostile borders without the ability to support a High Tech fleet.

Just some of my pet peeves.

 

[rancke]

So, you don't have any actual official published sources for statements you claim to exist

Already answered.

...nor any extensive list of systems that you claim are too many in number to explain...

Already answered.

...and everything you state as fact should automatically be assumed to be your opinion only

Not at all. I said that you should feel free to assume that because I felt unable to explain the difference to you. Later I came up with the analogy of the garlic shrimps, but feel free to keep your assumptions. If you're not going to contribute constructively to the discussion, you can assume anything you like for all I care.

(I admit to a certain amount of inconsistency here. By my own logic I should just give up on you, and yet here I am, still trying to explain to you (I think it comes from my upbringing where I was taught that if you didn't speak up, you were tacitly conceding the argument). But then, I don't believe I need to be 100% consistent all the time.)

...and your opinions are facts to you, which makes them facts regardless.

Sometimes opinions are facts. Or perhaps you don't consider it a fact that I don't like too much garlic?

Got it. :rofl:

Good for you. Saves you the bother of coming up with actual arguments. But as I said, do feel free to get back to me if you come up with any substantial arguments to refute my opinions.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

A whole lotta useful material here, I gotta say. What is abundantly clear is that there is no consistent treatment of the UWPs. Objectively, that makes sense: multiple individuals given freedom to apply their imaginations to the milieu, the highest rule being to make something entertaining for the buyer. Within the milieu, we can argue sense into it: corrupt officials, officials bowing to political considerations, changes over time, and so forth. The individual game master can use any of those reasons as a basis for either holding onto or modifying a given UWP as his game circumstances require.

...

I disagree. It's unreasonable to insist on sticking to UWPs that are an impossible challenge to meet.

Sorry, 'impossible challenge to meet' is just an opinion, and when it comes to fiction a hard one to justify. ...

IMHO, sticking to the published data is almost always the better way to go. However, the UWP does not exist in a vacuum. Through various supplements and additions, we use it to evolve data on trade volume and shipping, per capita income, even military data. Finding a way to explain an anomalous world is challenging; finding a way to explain it without impacting those secondary statistics can be pretty close to impossible.

Traveller Adventure paints a picture of a Paya with many more people hanging around than are counted in the UWP. It's an imaginative handling, a place that will stand out in the player's mind, well worth having in your own TU. It's also a handling that is problematic in some ways: absent TA, Paya is a world whose "military" is at best a small contingent of part-time militia and constables geared more toward police and rescue work, a world whose starport exists primarily to support through-traffic and do some work for the naval base, a world with a per capita GDP of Cr 8000 and a total annual GDP under Cr 5 million. The TA view presents me with a world of multimillionaires with a GDP potentially a hundred or a thousand times greater and an undocumented population potentially ten times greater than the official population - numbers that will have a significant impact on the number of ships passing through and the kinds of encounters the players are likely to have while there.

At some point, you're bending other rules to make your imaginative solution to a particular world's UWP problem work. That's OK: special cases can be fun places. However, if you're going to conjecture a world of several thousand undocumented folk, you might do better to go ahead and change the UWP to reflect that reality so that those secondary statistics can likewise be modified to reflect that reality, rather than having special cases for each one. Paya's so-called representative government of 600, for example, might be better described as a world with a population in the thousands ruled by a small self-perpetuating oligarchy.

Me, I still say stick as close to the published UWP as you can and no fudging (TA is clearly fudging), but when canon gives you Pixie, it's all bets off and every man for himself. Ultimately, the only folk you have to please are your players.

 

[rancke]

IMHO, sticking to the published data is almost always the better way to go.

By this do you mean that even if the published material is self-contradictory, conflicts with other published material, and breaks your suspension of disbelief, it's still almost always better to stick to the published material, or do you mean that in almost all cases the published data is neither self-contradictory nor in conflict with other material nor belief-suspender-breaking?

Because if it's the second, I think I've addressed that adequately with the first half of the credo I've posted a couple of times: "If it's not broken, don't change it..."

But if it's the first, all I can say is "Huh?!?"


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

By this do you mean that even if the published material is self-contradictory, conflicts with other published material, and breaks your suspension of disbelief, it's still almost always better to stick to the published material, ...?

Please note my "Pixie" doctrine. Odd bits can serve the basis for some very imaginative worlds, but when the conflicts and discrepancies reach a point where you simply can't make them work, then one does what one must and makes no apologies for it. Or, to quote the rules: "At times, the referee (or the players) will find combinations of features which may seem contradictory or unreasonable. Common sense should rule in such cases; either the players or referee will generate a rationale which explains the situation, or an alternative description should be made."

When the game hands you lemons, you make lemonade. However, when the game hands you a rotten egg, you really want to consider throwing the egg in the garbage and getting your own - there's really not a lot you can do with a rotten egg without stinking things up.

 

[McPerth]

A lot of the time the problem with "we don't count the lefthanded ones" explanations is that the Scouts have no reasons not to count the lefthanded ones. Especially since they manifestly do count them in other cases.

If they are who count the people... I still believe at least in some cases they trust the plant's government census.

 

[rancke]

When the game hands you lemons, you make lemonade. However, when the game hands you a rotten egg, you really want to consider throwing the egg in the garbage and getting your own - there's really not a lot you can do with a rotten egg without stinking things up.

Then I guess the only potential for disagreement between you and me is whether some dodgy canon bit is a lemon or a rotten egg. My own way to determine that is to see if I can make lemonade with it. If I can't, I categorize it as a rotten egg.

I'm only too pleased to be proven wrong by someone else making lemonade with it, but I don't consider "I can't do it myself, but I'm convinced there must be someone out there who can make lemonade out of it" a good enough argument to recategorize rotten eggs. (This is a further refutation of BytePro's 'arguments', not a response to anything you've said).


Hans

 

[rancke]

If they are who count the people... I still believe at least in some cases they trust the plant's government census.

I'm sure they do. I just don't think the cases where they trust planetary censuses are the same cases as the ones where the actual and the reported figures are blatantly different.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

I'm sure they do. I just don't think the cases where they trust planetary censuses are the same cases as the ones where the actual and the reported figures are blatantly different.


Hans

I agree. Those cases where they're most likely to trust planetary authorities are the cases which are least likely to create a problem for us: worlds with populations too large for a scout to practically count on his own, with numbers big enough for questions about starport personnel and transients to be irrelevant, with governments intrusive enough to have a strong interest in making reliable counts and repressive and influential enough to make trouble for a scout who had the audacity to doubt what they told him.

These small-pop worlds that give us such headaches, they should be relatively straightforward for a scout to take census ... unless of course you get the kind of scout whose report consists entirely of, "Mostly harmless."

 

[savage]

Space based population

It appears like everyone is trying to justify planet population size vs starport size.

Has there every been anything written or thoughts around the space based population of a subsector (or system) based on the tech level and starport of the main planet?

 

[Carlobrand]

It appears like everyone is trying to justify planet population size vs starport size.

Has there every been anything written or thoughts around the space based population of a subsector (or system) based on the tech level and starport of the main planet?

Justify, no. Make playable, yes. The generation system has the potential to roll occasional absurdities like a Class-A port around a world with a population of no more than a few families. When that occurs in official publications, we're left trying to make something sensible of it for when our players go there. Some of the ways official game aids have handled the issue ... well, they've sometimes created as many problems as they solved, as we discussed through the thread.

By "space based population," do you mean the population living in orbit around the primary world, or the population of the system that resides in locations other than the main world, including on moons, planetoid belts, lesser planets, and so forth? To the best of my knowledge, neither CT nor MegaTrav provide any guidance on orbital populations. I vaguely recall some magazine article that delved into starport characteristics, but I don't remember any of it.

CT Book 6 provides rules for determining the population and characteristics of moons, planetoid belts, and lesser planets in the system. The population code is rolled independently, but if it exceeds the population code of the main world it is reduced to one less than that of the main world. (Technically, it appears acceptable to roll a population code equal to that of the main world. Go figure.)

I don't know how GURPS, Mongoose, or the others handle it.

 

[savage]

pop code

Justify, no. Make playable, yes. The generation system has the potential to roll occasional absurdities like a Class-A port around a world with a population of no more than a few families. When that occurs in official publications, we're left trying to make something sensible of it for when our players go there. Some of the ways official game aids have handled the issue ... well, they've sometimes created as many problems as they solved, as we discussed through the thread.

By "space based population," do you mean the population living in orbit around the primary world, or the population of the system that resides in locations other than the main world, including on moons, planetoid belts, lesser planets, and so forth? To the best of my knowledge, neither CT nor MegaTrav provide any guidance on orbital populations. I vaguely recall some magazine article that delved into starport characteristics, but I don't remember any of it.

CT Book 6 provides rules for determining the population and characteristics of moons, planetoid belts, and lesser planets in the system. The population code is rolled independently, but if it exceeds the population code of the main world it is reduced to one less than that of the main world. (Technically, it appears acceptable to roll a population code equal to that of the main world. Go figure.)

I don't know how GURPS, Mongoose, or the others handle it.

Supplement 3 gives the max pop of a subsector but not details on the worlds in the Spinward Marches. Behind the Claw gives pop numbers for worlds but does not add up to those pop numbers...sooooo. hmmm. Unfortunately, the entry for space based or orbital populations are rare. Equal to the world pop is interesting but not logical. It should vary based on the world environment. I would think. Or be completely independent. I guess checking World Builder is the next step for me.... I was going to say 10%-20% of the subsector population was not on a primary planet but that was just a swag.

 

[Whipsnade]

Has there every been anything written or thoughts around the space based population of a subsector (or system) based on the tech level and starport of the main planet?

As Carlobrand neatly explained, no.

LBB:6, as Carlobrand also explained, did give us a method determining populations in the system but off the mainworld. Sadly, that method contains many of the same flaws the mainworld method does.

An optional addendum for orbital populations which takes into account factors like mainworld population, system TL, mainworld physical characteristics, and others would be easy to cobble together.

I'm most likely in the minority here but I wouldn't necessarily factor the UWP starport rating to an orbital population equation. I regularly employ the description of the UWP listed starport as the system's public starport to "explain" away some of the hi-pop/good tech/bad port mismatches that occur in canon. (Sysgen produces too many of those for my liking however.)

 

[Carlobrand]

Supplement 3 gives the max pop of a subsector but not details on the worlds in the Spinward Marches. Behind the Claw gives pop numbers for worlds but does not add up to those pop numbers...sooooo. hmmm. Unfortunately, the entry for space based or orbital populations are rare. Equal to the world pop is interesting but not logical. It should vary based on the world environment. I would think. Or be completely independent. I guess checking World Builder is the next step for me.... I was going to say 10%-20% of the subsector population was not on a primary planet but that was just a swag.

Note that the Supplement 3 population figures are in conflict with the population figures implied by the Spinward Marches Campaign. SMC added a 3 digit code that, among other things, gave you a 1-9 multiplier value to refine the pop code. This did not exist at the time of the original Supplement 3; in that book, those subsector populations are basically made up by the writer. In consequence, we've got things like a Supplement 3 Cronor subsector population of 3.682 billion, where the new data in SMC shows Cronor subsector with a total population of around 9 billion.

Some of it can be written off as population changes between the 1105 and 1112 surveys, but some of Supplement 3 is just impossible. Trin's Veil, for example, lists a subsector population of 111.3 billion; SMC's population figures for that subsector add up to only about 15 billion. Mora subsector's supposed to have 221 billion souls according to Supplement 3; SMC's figures add up to a bit under 41 billion. In too many cases, the Supplement 3 figures are only possible if one assumes almost every significant pop code in the subsector represents close to the maximum population for that code (i.e. 99 billion for A, 9 billion for 9, and so forth). In a nutshell, about half the population of the Marches disappeared between Supplement 3 and SMC, and most of the affected sectors were too far from the FFW battlefronts to be able to use that as an excuse.

I don't have Behind the Claw, so I don't know whether GURPS chose to model after Supplement 3 or SMC for their version of the Marches.

By convention, the main world of a system is the world in that system with the highest population. The populations of the other worlds in the system are semi-independent, which is to say they're rolled separately but they need to be lower than the main world (or else they'd qualify as the main world). That leaves the potential for quite a large "undocumented" population.

 

[Whipsnade]

I don't have Behind the Claw, so I don't know whether GURPS chose to model after Supplement 3 or SMC for their version of the Marches.

I'll have to dig out BtC sometime this week and check. However, given BtC's well known ignorance of canon, I'll bet it ignores the population figures in both S:3 and SMC.

By convention, the main world of a system is the world in that system with the highest population. The populations of the other worlds in the system are semi-independent, which is to say they're rolled separately but they need to be lower than the main world (or else they'd qualify as the main world). That leaves the potential for quite a large "undocumented" population.

Agreed, especially once the pop multiplier code was added. In an admittedly extreme example, you could have a system with a mainworld population of 1 billion (pop code: 9 and multiplier:1) and few dozen worlds/moons/belts each with a population of 900 million (pop code: 8 and multiplier:9)

 

[rancke]

I always assume that the population information is for the total population of the system. In most systems that works because most or all people live on the mainworld. Spacebased population in orbit around a world I count as population of that world. That's how I explain 26 billion people 'living' on a world like Rethe -- a lot of them live in space habitats using Rethe as a gravitational anchor (Others live in space habitats in the Rethe System's two planetoid belts, though Rethe's population (as long as you include the orbital habitats) is the biggest of the three).


Hans

 

[rancke]

I'll have to dig out BtC sometime this week and check. However, given BtC's well known ignorance of canon, I'll bet it ignores the population figures in both S:3 and SMC.

Most (though not all) of the erroneous population figures were errata'ed.


Hans

 

[aramis]

I always assume the pop figure is for the mainworld and its orbital facilities, but no other bodies in system. Which is grounded firmly in CT Bk 6.