I highly recommend reading "Red Mars" for ideas on terra-forming...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_trilogy
The Hard Work of Terraforming
- Thread starter Renaissance Man
- Start date
Quote:
Originally Posted by rancke View Post
Life support for space habitats is available very early. The Shionthy system is interdicted, yet houses 70 million people in space habitats at a TL of 8. I suspect that if I look for them, I'll be able to find belter populations with lower TL than that, but I haven't actually done so.
JBHemlock:I totally agree. Once you have access to spaceships to haul around the gear needed to tunnel out asteroids and make them into habitats, the gear itself can be fairly low tech.
Mongoose Traveller cleared up such cases quite nicely by adopting a fairly reasonable and flexible interpretation of TL, allowing for imports of some components and equipment of higher or lower TL from outside. A lot of discussions of unusual or surprising world TL anomalies on the Mongoose boards have been cleared up by a simple reference to what the rules actually say. I'm not sure whether T5 is helpful in this regard.
Simon Hibbs
That's why I chose Shionthy as evidence. It's under interdict, so there's not going to be any imports of higher technology.
As for a reasonable interpretation of TL, I've always been of the opinion that the reasonable interpretation was that higher tech can be imported in limited quantity (usually by a minority that can afford it), but that the TL for a system indicates the technology that a sizable majority of the population lives under.
Any interpretation that essentially says "We say TL X, but the really crucial bits are actually TL Y" is IMO badly broken. Unless the really crucial bits are few enough and cheap enough to make it work.
Hans
That's pretty much what Mongoose Traveller says. Some types of technology, even locally supported technology, can be one or two TL higher or lower than the rated TL.
I don't see what's badly broken or unreasonable about that. It shouldn't be surprising if, faced with an existential threat, a world focuses it's efforts on technologies required for survival at the expense of other kinds of technology.
As an example, we currently don't have atomic rockets, but that's entirely down to political will. If we really desperately needed NERVA rockets, we could have had them back in the 70s, so that's an example of tech from at least one TL lower than ours that we don't have.
On the other hand, we have fairly decent chemical rocket launcher technology. Soon thanks to SpaceX we may have properly re-useable chemical launch vehicles. That's likely to be rare in the OTU because even worlds that don't have gravitic tech likely know it exists and won't bother with chemical rockets at all unless they absolutely have to, because they'll know it's a dead end. So that's probably an area we're more advanced in than the average Traveller world at our stage of development.
Simon Hibbs
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That's also the CT rule on it; DGP's Grand Census (and the later World Builder's Handbook) allowed each of the TL table columns to vary from base by ±5
Plus or minus 5! I was about to say, "Wow;" then it occurred to me that we still have pockets of humanity living with stone-age technology and fair-size chunks of the population living at about TL3 to 4.
I can easily imagine a world with a predominant TL that's very low, say TL 3 over several large continents, but a small enclave or island that's very high tech.
How about a primitive world where offworlders have been selling the natives advanced weaponry, so you have stone age tribes fighting each other using gauss rifles and FGMPs?
Given history on earth, it would be extraordinary if this sort of thing didn't happen .
Simon Hibbs
The neat thing about "politics" in this context is that you, the designer of worlds, have near-absolute control over the local politics. You can impose any limits or stretch any boundaries that you can rationalize to reflect the culture you're trying to portray.
Jeff M. Hopper
SOC-14 1K
Given the past OTU history of Charted Space, I fully expect that some of the smaller worlds were terraforming projects by the Ancients. Only now after 300,000 years of neglect do we see the atmospheres going away.
Of course, considering the Ancients' technology, a completely inhabitable world around a Type O or Type B star is possible. Completely artificial and handcrafted, no less.
Of course, considering the Ancients' technology, a completely inhabitable world around a Type O or Type B star is possible. Completely artificial and handcrafted, no less.
A rather scary hypothesis occured to me some time ago concerning Robot or machine based interstellar empires.
The fact is, if machines are running everything they DONT need to terraform, can quite happily use planets for raw materials in much their natural state and could take their time to get between star systems, they dont need FTL.
So if the machines get smart enough to question their basic orders, can self repair and dont have any direct contact with their organic creators?
What do you suppose is going to happen. If a machine based intelligence evolved somewhere in the universe, given enough time it could become the dominent form of intelligence everywhere.
And the process seems to be occuring in the here and now. A relatively few number of humans have left the Earth and spent time in orbit, even fewer have set foot on Earth`s Moon.
Over the same period human built machines have also landed on the surface of Mars and Venus, surviving quite happily for several years in some cases, have visited all the major planets in the Solar System and have even left it completely!
Sifu Blackirish
SOC-14 1K
Sifu peeks in...
Yes, very good call. One might consider another option. Organics are used because they have no choice. IMTU Mars is a penal colony, with nothing permitted to be launched from the surface. Prisoners have no options but to use whatever tools are supplied or to make their own.
Another option would be a lost colony from exploration misjump or economic collapse, as in HARD TIMES.
Yes, very good call. One might consider another option. Organics are used because they have no choice. IMTU Mars is a penal colony, with nothing permitted to be launched from the surface. Prisoners have no options but to use whatever tools are supplied or to make their own.
Another option would be a lost colony from exploration misjump or economic collapse, as in HARD TIMES.
Terraforming the Old School Way
Hey hey, in the magazine series "Different Worlds" an author by the name of Doug Houseman had several articles about terraforming, including some really awesome graphics. I contacted him and he gave me permission to post them online, which I will do soon after I clean them up a bit. Sadly, he has lost the original articles and will be happy I have them and will send him copies, but he never got around to Part 3 of the series. I hope having them in his hands will spark that final push. Cheers, Maxx
Hey hey, in the magazine series "Different Worlds" an author by the name of Doug Houseman had several articles about terraforming, including some really awesome graphics. I contacted him and he gave me permission to post them online, which I will do soon after I clean them up a bit. Sadly, he has lost the original articles and will be happy I have them and will send him copies, but he never got around to Part 3 of the series. I hope having them in his hands will spark that final push. Cheers, Maxx
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Faunaform.
Well, as everybody knows now, Mars is entirely populated by robots ...
If it doesn't need planets to live on, it doesn't need planets. Abandon the inner system worlds and go from outer system to outer system, using the resources there, mine asteroids and small moons. Maybe drop something in close to take advantage of the power of the local sun in some way, but otherwise I suspect they'd ignore gravity wells as much as possible.
Heck, you could have a robot civilization spread through the Trav universe and they'd barely get noticed. They'd be an oddity studied remotely by scientists, but there wouldn't be much interaction between the two civilizations because one spends most of its time and energy in the zone that the other jumps around to get from inner world to inner world.
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