System Generation

[Dragoner]

Maybe a picture from the USGS will help:

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/pictures/full-size/global-water-volume-large.jpg

That is the volume of the oceans to the planet. It is very doable.

oops: too big of pic, here is the website-

http://ga.water.usgs.gov/edu/2010/gallery/global-water-volume.html

Doing the math, I get roughly about 42.5 years for 100 10k ton lift capacity ships to lower earth's hydrographic percentage by 10% working 360 days a year. Very roughly, with there being 1.4 billion km^3 of water over about 360 million km^2 (70% of a 6400km radius sphere's surface area) to a mean depth of 3.8 km. Less if one goes by a higher than 9cubic meters in a ton.

 

[aramis]

A couple large comets carry as much water as the lake content...

 

[Dragoner]

Pretty small on a cosmic scale.

If my math is correct, I get just over 28 years for 13.5 m^3 instead of 9 m^3 per ship tonnage.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Ah-ha!

So actually, according to Dragoner's math, then it is not that damned impossible after all. Sweet, go maths.

So, just to make this work out with something like some real numbers, so we go with a average (or is mean, I never remember the difference) depth of 2 kilometers and Size 6 world.

Either way, nice to see that math is not taking the neato factor after all.

Oh and for you just change it folks, I really don't believe in changing my rolls, which is going to make that asteroid with TL-3 interesting to figure out.

 

[aramis]

Oh and for you just change it folks, I really don't believe in changing my rolls, which is going to make that asteroid with TL-3 interesting to figure out.

Brass -n- glass sealed environments, massive solar steam boilers - think Space 1889 without liftwood...

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

That should be easy.

Brass -n- glass sealed environments, massive solar steam boilers - think Space 1889 without liftwood...

Since I never had nor played Space 1889 I can do that pretty quick. Still I do get the steampunk thing, I do have a hardback copy of the Difference Engine which I still take out and read here and there. So, yeah, I think i can do that. Thanks, Aramis, nicely done.

 

[aramis]

Since I never had nor played Space 1889 I can do that pretty quick. Still I do get the steampunk thing, I do have a hardback copy of the Difference Engine which I still take out and read here and there. So, yeah, I think i can do that. Thanks, Aramis, nicely done.

≤Fake Londoner Accent≥Good God, Man! Get out there and get it! It's the only right and proper Steampunk Game!≤/Fake Londoner Accent≥

Seriously, 1889 is one of the better Steampunk settings, but it's actually TL4, now that I think about it. US Civil-War era Steampunk, however... (Or much of the Wild West, which was tech-suppressed from the TL4 Europe and East US due to lack of infrastructure.)

(And, truth be told, I'm equally as fond of Castle Falkenstein.)

 

[CosmicGamer]

From the rules:

Note that tech level is an indication of what can be made by local resources, not the limit of what might be encountered.

On an asteroid, I'd assume the people are there for a reason and that doesn't need to include building a high tech industrial manufacturing society. They have whatever tech they need for their principal purpose and order replacements from elsewhere as needed.

Their habitats may be high tech, perhaps prefabs.
They have power sources but they can't manufacture new ones.
They have high tech tools to do some repairs but no way of manufacturing high tech tools.

Perhaps some process they perform on ore got them classified as TL 3.

 

[Dragoner]

So, just to make this work out with something like some real numbers, so we go with a average (or is mean, I never remember the difference) depth of 2 kilometers and Size 6 world.

IMTU, terraforming is done by large companies on generally a hundred year basis, but that includes creating a biosphere, weather satellites, basic infrastructure, etc. with colonization happening all through the process. The actual exploitation and speculation of the world is done by planetary corporation similar to in Piper's Little Fuzzy.

For your size 6 world with hyd 9, it is covered by 260576100 km^2 of water at 2km depth (your spec); so that means an ocean(s) of roughly twice that at 521152200 km^3 and 10% being 52115220 km^3. The 100 10k ton lifters... o: don't work, I found an error in my earlier math, that's what I get for being braindead at the end of the day. It is still doable, but one has to increase capacity by an order of a thousand, the weight comes out to 1.5 trillion metric tons a year for 100 years, which sounds like a lot (but actually matches the match I did 20 years ago originally figuring out t-forming numbers), but in comparison, 2 trillion regular tons of ice have disappeared from Greenland between 2003-2008 according to NASA. This sounds like a job for a space elevator, and remember, ice displaces more volume than water so taking ice would drop the ocean level even more.

 

[SmilingKnight]

Space elevators need to be at the equator though, so transporting polar ice down there isn't cost effective. Which means you just pump water up it, which you don't even have to do mechanically, you just let the atmosphere siphon it up the pipe! Ice in orbit problem solved.

 

[Dragoner]

Big project, yes, but not impossible, imo.

 

[SmilingKnight]

Oh, I just had an idea for a planet set up like that, where they have a disaster at the space end and can't close the pipe. Ocean drains and you have an incredibly difficult to navigate low orbit series of ice rings, and a tonne of high level tech abandoned on the surface. Adventure time!

 

[Dragoner]

That is good, a T-form project apocalypse.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

From your hijacker.

Wow, and here I was just trying to help the OP with an example of a T5 SysGen and have hijacked the thread in to how can a world lose a point of Hydro.

Sorry, but only sort of since I am getting very cool methods for taking all the water off the planet.

On the other hand, when I do get a few other systems/planets detailed I might just post or link them here again since I got such excellent feedback.

Again, apologies for the hijack and thanks to all who have responded to my Hydro problem.

Laterness,
Craig.

 

[Galadrion]

Hm. Looks like you lot overlooked the most likely source of the UWP problem - database entry error. Either the original survey report or the later one had somebody fatfingering a digit on entry. Referee's choice which figure is the error.

Alternatively, this world could be a borderline case, right on the edge between the two classifications. The difference between an 8 and a 9 in the Hydrographics stat might be 1% (or even less!) of surface area, if it lies right at the boundary of the two classifications. And if that is the case, the surface area might actually vary that much over decades or centuries.

So there are two plausible scenarios. Up to the referee to decide which applies in his/her Traveller universe - if either does. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can come up with things like this.