... and what happens if you Psionically Teleport through a Portal?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist). :devil:
Ring Worlds and Dyson Spheres revisited.
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(Sorry, I couldn't resist). :devil:
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
One of the more interesting points missed by a lot of people in the original SotA - within Grandfather's three system pocket universe you still use jump drives to travel between the three systems. The jump space of the pocket universe is also detached from our universe/jumpspace combo.
As to the teleporting through a portal - no different to stepping through the portal, you end up in the pocket universe.
As to the teleporting through a portal - no different to stepping through the portal, you end up in the pocket universe.
... and what happens if you Psionically Teleport through a Portal?
(Sorry, I couldn't resist). :devil:
And how far can you psionically teleport in a Ringworld before the vector changes too much? With a radius of 1 AU, you could go quite far before the vector changes on a perceptible way...
See that in a Stanford Torus this is reversed, due to smaller radius, and psionic teleport range should decrease accordingly...
Types of Ringworlds
I think that "Big Portal" may be one type of ringworld. In other words, a single-purpose Really Big Machine. Deep Thought, as it were, only a million times bigger. "Habitat" is the archetypal ringworld.
The Trade Code determination rules show clearly that a ringworld may be High or Low population, Industrial, Non-Industrial, Agricultural, Non-Agricultural, Rich, and Poor. It can be in a Vacuum, Barren, Dieback, a Desert.
Just as clearly, Trade Code rules show that a ringworld cannot be an Asteroid world, a Garden world, a Hellworld, or an Ocean or Water world (Note that it CAN have Hyd A, but it's still not a waterworld. That may be an errata item.)
Can a ringworld be a "Weapon" (singular)? A "Carrier of Naval Depots"?
Can a ringworld be a "Research base" or indeed a single unitary base of any kind at all?
The surface area is staggering.
Try to picture an Industrial ringworld. The majority of the structure is dedicated to industrial production.
Now try to picture an Agricultural ringworld. Billions of square miles of vertical farming.
(Now try to ship those goods anywhere in a timely manner.)
I think that "Big Portal" may be one type of ringworld. In other words, a single-purpose Really Big Machine. Deep Thought, as it were, only a million times bigger. "Habitat" is the archetypal ringworld.
The Trade Code determination rules show clearly that a ringworld may be High or Low population, Industrial, Non-Industrial, Agricultural, Non-Agricultural, Rich, and Poor. It can be in a Vacuum, Barren, Dieback, a Desert.
Just as clearly, Trade Code rules show that a ringworld cannot be an Asteroid world, a Garden world, a Hellworld, or an Ocean or Water world (Note that it CAN have Hyd A, but it's still not a waterworld. That may be an errata item.)
Can a ringworld be a "Weapon" (singular)? A "Carrier of Naval Depots"?
Can a ringworld be a "Research base" or indeed a single unitary base of any kind at all?
The surface area is staggering.
Try to picture an Industrial ringworld. The majority of the structure is dedicated to industrial production.
Now try to picture an Agricultural ringworld. Billions of square miles of vertical farming.
(Now try to ship those goods anywhere in a timely manner.)
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I don't see why not. A ring world is real estate. Real estate holds depots, research stations, etc.
The whole issue of megastructures hasn't ever been explored to my liking in Traveller.
I have been cataloguing and collecting various megastructures at the Traveller Wiki here: [http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Megastructure ]
There are only a few of the big-trope megastructures such as ringworlds, beanstalks, and sphereworlds, but there are dozens of the more common ones such as underwater cities, floating cities, and arcologies.
It's interesting.
Positive vibes to you!
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
I completely forgot about arcologies (floating and otherwise) and beanstalks. Thanks for that.
Agreed on both counts, especially the latter.
They are canonically present; we want* rules for them!
*as definitely distinct from "need" - nice-to-have stuff rather than "cannot play without it" stuff
Well, according to your own numbers, even a small ring arround Neptune would have the surface of 25 earths...
I'd expect this same ring to have agricultural sections, industrial sections, barren sections, etc..., so, it could well have several trade codes, each one in a distinct section of the ring.
The trade classifications isn't actually about how much agriculture or industry a world has; it's about what price modifiers you get on agricultural and industrial goods. A high-population world can easily produce more agricultural goods for export than an agricultural world.
Sadly, the writers who detailed certain parts of the OTU misunderstood this and had worlds with pop 6 be a significant contributor to the food imports of high-population worlds...
(Note that I'm not saying these agricultural worlds wouldn't be able to sell food to high-population worlds. But it would be luxury food, not basic subsistence food in significant amounts).
Anyway, back to the ringworld. The basic trade system just isn't geared to account for that sort of detail. Otherwise you would also be able to have a world that had agriculture on one continent and industry on another count as both agricultural, non-agricultural, and non-industrial.
Hans
I agree.
Similarly, I also agree with McPerth: a Ringworld can be modeled as a lot of separate planets, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Finally, though, in the end, even a world's trade ability is implicitly focused on its starports. Note that by the early TL 20s we have teleportation: presumably, a functioning ringworld can JIT* its goods to any designated service point with no noticeable lag. Good "computers" are required!
So the abstraction still works, but reasonable caveats need to be in place.
* Just In Time production, carried to extremes. Might as well call it Just In Time Teleport: JITT.
I don't think that's strictly true, and I have an example.
New Zealand has a pop of ~4m and exports an ungodly amount of dairy and other agricultural products. IIRC dairy exports account for something like 10% of NZ's GDP, and agricultural exports in general account for 30%.
New Zealand is particularly competitive for dairy production because the climate allows the cows to be left outside the whole year round - They produce the whole year round and you don't need to keep them in heated barns over the winter.
In spite of NZ being a small country and a long way away from anything else, Fonterra (the main NZ dairy company) is the second largest producer of dairy products in the world.1
I think a smaller pop 6-7 world could - if shipping were economical - produce certain things that the climate or circumstances (or even the climate or circumstances of a particular region) made economical, and could produce them in large enough quantities to export to a larger population world and account for a significant fraction of the market.
This would be dependent on the market on the destination world. However, you could reasonably see a situation where smaller worlds are significant players in specific markets, and not just markets for luxury goods.
1 - http://www.statista.com/statistics/326373/top-20-dairy-corporations-worldwide-based-on-market-share/
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I can't access the source you quote. How many people would New Zealand's exports feed?
Well, that boils down to what is considered significant. I'm quite willing to stipulate that some worlds may be able to produce basic stables cheaper than others. What I doubt is that millions can produce enough to contribute significantly to the daily rations of billions.
But I admit that 'significant' is a weasel word. What would you consider a significant fraction of a daily ration? I find that I'm not really sure myself. Would 1% be significant? Surely 10% would be?
Hans
I was curious, so some rough calculations ...
NZ exports about 1.43 billion kg of milk solids.
1 kg of cheese has about 4000 calories
NZ exports about 5.7 trillion calories
Typical person needs 2500 calories per day x 365 days per year
about 900,000 calories per person per year
5.7 trillion calories / 900,000 calories = feeds 6.3 million other people each year
... so 4 million feed themselves and another 6 million.
Thanks for your work, A.T..
Although that supports my theory, I feel compelled to note that New Zealand must produce more calories than what's in its milk. I believe there are quite a bit of sheep farming. (I remember a hilarious comic called Footrot Flats or something like that anbout a New Zealand sheep farm).
Highorbit_drifter
SOC-12
Where the transport infrastructure exists it is possible to make a profit moving even basic foodstuffs around. I sincerely doubt a high population world would not be able to feed itself, if only food-yeast from the vats under the city-arcologies. But it also seems likely, if the New Zealand example holds up, worlds can export even non-luxury foods. Maybe not common grains but certain types of grains that are currently have a high cultural demand on a nearby high pop planet.
The main point is that Hans is correct in saying the trade rules are not granular enough to account for specific details of trade. The CT rules are meant only to abstract a specific, small, section of interstellar trade. You could use the same rules on a single world with a population of 7 or more and several different cities, using an old fashioned boat to move agri products up the river, and industrial parts back down.
I think the idea of agricultural worlds, industrial worlds, etc., was taken literally after Star Wars introduced desert worlds (or is that a yummy dessert world?), jungle worlds - i.e. worlds that are only one thing.
Sure, it might seem that way to pcs that only get a few kilometers from a starport at most, and only know a world produces agri products that the next world on their rout wants to buy. But a decent GM will be able to riff beyond farmland world and flesh out a planet if the need arises.
See that in some HiPop worlds (glisten comes to my mind), basic food may be quite artificial (at best hydroponic grown), so any naturally grown foodstuff (even basic grain or floor or the lowest quality meat/fish) may be luxury food for them...
Today, smoked salmon is quite a luxury food in most places, but it's said that in Asturias (north of Spain), at the begining of XX century, there was a miner's strike complaining that they want to eat something else tan salmon, as it was their basic food, eing fished and smoked by themselves or their wives...
Highorbit_drifter
SOC-12
I can see it being Hyd A and not a waterworld; its entire inner surface is covered in ocean, but underneath (and in the walls maybe) are areas of dry, or at least exposed to vacuum. With the vast sizes we are talking about that dry area, only a few percent of the ring-ocean, could be larger than the surface of Terra.
Didn't Ringworld answer that issue? You have elevators to the "outside/downside/vacside" and use a rocket/maglev or other vacuum vehicle to get to where you want to go in a timely manner.
I like the idea of it being like Deep Thought. Even at a relatively low tech level, if the structure is dedicated to computing it might have achieved sentience. John Varley explored the idea of a sentient (mini) ringworld in Titan.
There are two mutually opposed SF tropes about artificially produced food. One is that it's bland and unappetizing and that naturally grown food is a treat for those who have to subsist on it. The other is that it tastes perfectly fine and that those who subsist on it become nauseated at the mere thought of eating dirty germ-infested 'real' food.
Hydroponics is already (at TL7) capable of producing perfectly fine-tasting food (perfectly natural stuff like tomatoes too), and carniculture shows every sign of becoming feasible in the not too distant future (TL8). So it's quite unlikely that natural food wil have any taste advantage that will outweigh the smaller space and fewer resources used in hydroponics and carniculture.
Rather, some artificial food will be exotic luxuries to some populations and some so-called natural food will be exotic luxuries to other populations.
In the writeup of Yori that I'm working on, I've come up with half a dozen export articles all made from high-quality carniculture and hydroponics raw materials treated with special (and famous) Yorian salt.
If you absolutely want to make cheap, bland food artificially, then I'm sure you can. But then, you can grow cheap, bland natural food too.
Hans
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