UPP, the very best

[Murph]

IMHO, the Traveller UPP system as used in CT with additions from Scouts, Merchant Prince and the various ALien books represents the most elegant, simple way to describe a world in a fairly detailed way. Not too much needless complexity, you can pretty much understand what the world is like at a glance. The later versions added complexity without really making it better.

Comment?

 

[N. Ofori]

I'd have to disagree. Not being a Traveller from way back , I'd have to say that I found UPPs rather intimidating, and having to flip back to a table every time I saw one just to figure out which digit was which, much less what the digit meant, was a tad aggrivating. It's also very easy to make mistakes when typing in UPPs for whatever reason.

Evnen after I'd memorized the order of the digits, they still annoy me. While Port, Size, Hydrographics, Population, Law level, and Tech level are either self-explanatory or easy to translate, Atmosphere and Government still require more memorization or looking up tables. For those reasons, I significantly prefer the data tables such as those in GT:Rim of Fire over UPP listings.

 

[aramis]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
IMHO, the Traveller UPP system as used in CT with additions from Scouts, Merchant Prince and the various ALien books represents the most elegant, simple way to describe a world in a fairly detailed way. Not too much needless complexity, you can pretty much understand what the world is like at a glance. The later versions added complexity without really making it better.

Comment?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Useful, compact, and convinient, but not user-freindly.

But once you get past mainworlds, the system gets broken quickly.

------------------
-aramis
=============================================
Smith & Wesson: The Original Point and Click interface!

 

[Vargas]

I vote for the UPP system because I think it supports the game well. The only place I have heartburn is with the fact that most stars are small and dim, rendering most worlds uninhabitable from the start. (It might be realistic but it makes travelling from rockball to rockball tedious).

 

[robject]

I'm bringing back this conversation, to ask for comments and suggestions on a variant UPP. Granted, we already have several thousand mainworlds detailed using the UPP system; I would like to get ideas for an alternate UPP which adds scope, but not detail, for worlds that don't fit the traditional UPP mold.

The Big Idea
System detail is the big idea - how to concisely describe the major bodies in a star system in a meaningful but not verbose way.

Examples
Generally this doesn't help us much in mainworld cases; however it might help in marginal cases, such as asteroids:

253 Mathilde XS00000-0 5x Ca
Halley XT00000-0 9x Ic
Ceres X000000-0 9x ?

Size
I'd just add a couple of special letters in the size code, such as:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Code Meaning/Diameter
P Panthalassic (~20,000km dia?)
(0 100-1000 km (or so))
(S 10-100 km)
T 1-10 km
U 100m-1km
V 10m-100m</pre>[/QUOTE]Size Multiplier
For asteroids and planetoids, I'd add a size multipler as a 'trade code':

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;"> Code Multiplier
2x 2
3x 3
etc etc...</pre>[/QUOTE]Composition
For asteroids and planetoids, I'd add a 'trade' code describing its principal composition:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Code General Composition
Ic Iceball (overloading 'Ice')
Ba Basaltic (overloading 'Barren')
Ca Carbonaceous
Fe Iron and Nickel-Iron</pre>[/QUOTE]For planets with atmosphere, I'd add a code describing the significant atmospheric element. I'd put it in front of the other trade codes so that it wouldn't get lost. However, I don't know what the most common atmospheres are likely to be made of, so here's my guesses:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Code Composition
CO Carbon oxides
SO Sulfur oxides
CH Methane (i.e. CH4)
O2 Oxygen (only has to be significant)
N2 Nitrogen</pre>[/QUOTE]Surface Temperature
Again, I'm not up on planetary temperatures, but I'd like to have something like this:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Code Temperature
Tc Relatively Cold
Tt Relatively Temperate
Th Relatively Hot</pre>[/QUOTE]

 

[Badbru]

THE major reason I never got into High Guard!!

Those ships are just a huge string of one's and zero's that looked like binary code to me. Far worse than any planetary UPP.

Give me the TNE descriptive page with all ships items detailed or even the MT ships full page layout over these any day.

Maybe I'm just not a mathmatician but I want to see a ship not a binary code string.

 

[RainOfSteel]

I think the UPP system had the right idea, but left out lots of information of critical importance.

I never did like the GT information layout for worlds shown in Behind the Claw, it just took up way too much space.

Things I'd like to see on the UPP line, and changes:

Last Survey Date

Ideally, also:
First Survey Date
First Survey Allegiance
Last Survey Date
Last Survey Allegiance

Plus:

Mineral Resource Content
Mineral Resource Exploitability
Biological Resource Content
Biological Resource Exploitability
(Galactic 2.4 convinced me of these four.)

Atmosphere should be % of pressure.
Atmosphere Type should be content of Atmosphere.
(Two separate stats).

Atmosphere's should be linked to in part to Hydrographics and Biological Content, because life drives the content of the air.

I'd even like to see an "Era" stat, that determined the overall age/development-stage of the world.

Era-1: Early Formation: Liquid molten mass with early spherical shape, the earliest possible planet; massive number of impacts with short lived impact sites from matter flying through the accretion disk of the solar system.

Era-2: Late Formation: Fiery molten surface with many impact sites across the globe from the heavy accretion disk still in existence.

Era-3: Post Formation: The accretion disk is minimal now, impacts only occuring every thousand years or so. Volcanic activity heavy, atmospheres are likely to be sulfur/carbon-dioxide or carbon-monoxide based, plus methane and other goodies.

Era-4: Dawn of Life: The accretion disk is mostly swept away now, major impacts occurring only every one hundred thousand years or more, and minor impacts occurring only every one to five thousand years. Water Vapor can now condense and form long standing pools. Somewhere on the planet's surface, in one of these pools, below an atmosphere of carbon/sulfur, life may just begin if the conditions are exactly, precisely, right. If that life is lucky, it may go on beyond it's short existence. Impacts are becoming quite rare.

Era-5: Simple Life: Depending on the type of life to arise, the atmosphere will swing from carbon/sulfur to oxygen/nitrogen (or some other mixture for other life formats). Most life on the world is uni-cellular, but a few lifeforms will have figured out multi-cellular organization, and will be doing their best to eliminate the single cell competition. All life exists in the oceans. Impacts are very rare.

Era-6: Complex Life: The dominant lifeform is multi-cellular. Single cell life exists, but always in between the nooks and crannies (and in both beneficial and inimical symbiosis). The largest life is about the size of a quarter. Most life exists in the oceans, but some lichens/bacteria (or their local equivalents) may exist on the shores or near water on land. From now on, impacts are epoch-level events.

Era-7: Early Creatures: Plants and animals (or their local equivalents) have developed, they may grown as large as two meters in size. Animals live in the oceans, and some plants have migrated on land to cover most hospitable places.

Era-8: Middle Creatures: Animals have moved onto land, but those in the oceans are still more complex and varied than those on land (where animal types are limited). Plants have spread virtually everywhere, with complex forms occupying all ideal lifezones, and simple hardy variants spreading even into relatively hostile lifezones. Animals may grown up to four meters in size, and plants up to ten meters.

Era-9: Late Creatures: Animals have become complex and wide ranging on land as well as in the seas. Plants have undergone long-term specialization for their environments, and both plants and animals have had long-term evolutionary effects upon each other. Plants and animals may now grow as large as their biology permits.

Era-10: Sentience: If intelligences is to evolve at all among plants or animals, now will be the time. If there is no sentience, then Era-9 is never left behind.


The Eras would be heavily dependent on Biological Content; some Eras could not be reached at all without a Biological Content of sufficiently high rating.

Atmosphere, Atmosphere Type, and Hydrographics would also tie into Era, as an Era-2 World is unlikely to have a Hydro-A rating (or most others stats, really).

 

[RainOfSteel]

Oh, yes, and there could be exotic A+ Era types for worlds where terraforming and other interference altered the course of events.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Further, I believe that the UPP should list Orbital Position thus:

Orbital Focus Point (OFP)
Object Type
Object Name
Orbital Distance

Object Types:
Star
Large Gas Giant
Small Gas Giant
Planet
Moon
Planetoid
.
.
Ringworld
Dyson Sphere
<other exotic object>

OFP would contain an Object Type. Thus, any object may orbit any other, although smaller objects generally will not have larger ones orbiting them. This would allow dispensation of the obsolete "orbital slots" concept, although it would have to include some type of check to insure worlds didn't wind up, inappropriately, on top of each other.

When OFP is blank, the star in question is the Primary, and in these entries, Hex will contain the hex number (no need to list the Hex over an over again).


A Mainworld Flag, to denote which world in a system is the traditional "Mainworld". Only one of these may be True per star, and may still be False for companion stars with worlds.

On a UPP mainworld list assembled from base information, the star information is shunted to the end of the line, and other bodies in the system are ignored.

However, in queries run against all worlds, this format will allow for inclusion of popultions on non-mainworlds in all types of calculations using but a single query (as opposed to messy multi-table and multi-database queries), especially for generalized economics and taxation queries and population totals queries. The inclusion of Last Survey Date allows for queries that include time, comparing data from mutliple times.

 

[robject]

Here's a good site for planetary classification schemes, which seems to give you most of what you need without adding an excruciating amount of data on the actual UPP line:

http://www.onewest.net/~dollan/ARCpclindex.html

Instead of adding a bevy of parameters, there can be one planetary classification, which can be looked up for data and commentary.

In fact, that would solve a lot of the UPP's limitations; pick the commonest world types found and describe them. Give each a unique name, and classify each world by that name.

These types will classify worlds by age, atmosphere, and content. There won't be a full combination, since some combinations are very likely and some are extremely unlikely. Include some 'exotic' indicators for the singular cases and you've got a decent method.

I'm starting to like that idea better than my "extend the UPP" plan...

 

[robject]

Originally posted by Badbru:
THE major reason I never got into High Guard!!

Those ships are just a huge string of one's and zero's that looked like binary code to me. Far worse than any planetary UPP.

Give me the TNE descriptive page with all ships items detailed or even the MT ships full page layout over these any day.

Maybe I'm just not a mathmatician but I want to see a ship not a binary code string.

Yeah, I have the same problem with the USP.

 

[robject]

Conversely, with the planetary classification scheme at this link, mentioned earlier:

http://www.onewest.net/~dollan/ARCpclindex.html

Also, I reckon there will have to be indicators for sentient intervention, such as terraforming and terreduction.

Or perhaps a secondary classifier needs to be proposed to indicate the impact of sentient beings.

World Classifications
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Molten
Metallic
Mercurial
Lunar
Terran
stage Ia: partially molten
stage Ib: early atmosphere
stage Ic: proto-oceans
stage II: middle Terran
cold
temperate
hot
stage III: mature
T-Prime
T-Norm
T-Tundric
stage IV: Post Terran
Martian
stage I. volcanic
stage II. freeze-thaw cycle
stage III. mature
Venusian
stage I. like Middle Terran
stage II. runaway greenhouse effect
stage III. volcanic cycle
Panthalassic
Iceball
Europan</pre>[/QUOTE]Are 23 world types enough? Let's take a peek at the Spinward Marches and see.

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Hefry 1909 C200423-7 S Ni Va *Lunar*
Regina 1910 A788899-C A Ri Cp *T-Norm*
Feri 2005 B384879-B S Ri *Venusian Stage II*
Roup 2007 C77A9A9-7 S Hi In Wa *T-Prime*
Pscias 2106 X355423-1 Ni *Martian Stage II*
Yori 2110 C360757-A Ri De *Post-Terran*</pre>[/QUOTE]Hefry has no atmosphere, and is in fact rather small, indicating mercurial or lunar type.

Regina is of course a typical garden world, but could be T-prime, T-norm, or even Martian Stage II.

Feri is weird. Small with a thick, tainted atmosphere and plenty of water, which may point to a Stage II Venusian.

Roup, of course, is another T-prime/norm candidate.

Pscias is most likely Martian Stage II, though it could possibly be Terran.

Finally, Yori is almost certainly Post Terran.

Well, what do you think about that?

 

[Straybow]

The UPP is a good case of over-abbreviation. One digit isn't enough to define what you need to know: population, spaceports, trade classifications, government and law, diameter, atmosphere, etc. You end up having to add extra bits of information all the time.

 

[robject]

Okay, I've toyed around with the mainworld generation rules and have these data points:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Size Atm Hyd Percentage (count)
------- ------- ------------ ------------------
Small None None : 20% (271)
Normal Normal Wet : 12% (168)
Small Normal Wet : 10% (146)
Large Exotic Water world : 5% (79)
Large Normal Wet : 5% (75)
Small Thin Wet : 5% (68)
Small Thin None : 4% (64)
Normal Thick Wet : 4% (60)
Normal Thin Wet : 4% (57)
Normal Exotic Water world : 3% (46)
Normal Thin None : 3% (42)
Normal Normal Water world : 3% (40)
Large Thick Wet : 2% (30)
Small Normal Water world : 2% (29)
Normal Thick Water world : 2% (28)
Large Normal Water world : 1% (20)
Normal Exotic Wet : 1% (20)
Large Exotic Wet : 1% (20)
Large Thick Water world : 1% (14)
Normal Normal None : 0% (12)
Small Normal None : 0% (12)
Normal None None : 0% (10)
Small Thick Wet : 0% (6)
Small Thick Water world : 0% (5)
Small None Wet : 0% (4)
Large Normal None : 0% (4)
Normal None Wet : 0% (1)</pre>[/QUOTE]Looks like 27 general planet types... a shoo-in for a classification system such as the ones I mentioned above.

 

[RainOfSteel]

The original UPP was meant to be a springboard for personal development. The trouble is, there are so many important details for hard-sf adventuring that the desire to extend it to include information a GM would really probably want to know without having to think it up on the fly is high, very high. More than that, randomly generated UPPs must make "sense", so that the information provided doesn't, as some TMLers put it, "Snap the suspenders of disbelief." (Which of course requires a generation system that creates reasonable data; it doesn't have to be right, even with what we know now, we still know little about the formation of solar systems; it just has to appear to be right).

The single line abbreviation system was meant to store huge amounts of data in limited space, especially with the computer resources avaiable at the time, when 16K of memory was a lot. It saved paper, too. A whole subsector on a single sheet with the map included.

Since printing has many options available, and gaming materials have expanded far beyond the original LBBs (yes, I know there's a large league who wish to bring them back), then it would hardly be impossible to create a dual-line UPP. In fact, there would really be two formats of UPP listings. The first would be Mainworld listings designed to dump the data on the most important world of each hex (and remember, there are only about 8800 or so actual hex locations in the Imperium (ala Atlas of the Imperium), which leaves out 2000 of the 11,000 worlds, which means that some of those Hexes are going to *have* to have two UPPs per Hex, no way around it). The second type would be a single system listing, showing all the bodies in a single star system.

By "listing" I mean printed or shown for display on-screen, and is in no way connected to the format of actual storage in whatever database medium is selected. (Obviously, UPPs were originally stored in simply flat files (and still are today by most computer programs), though this is no longer necessary, or even desireable.)

But, back to preferential discussion. I like the UPP because it is neatly compact, and stores considerable data (if haphazardly created, most of time). It is one of the core features of Traveller, is highly nostalgic, and I don't think Traveller would be the same without it.

 

[Nightshade]

In my opinion the UPP is almost useless. I don't have the key memorized so everytime I want to find out something I have to look it up.

 

[robject]

Nightshade,

The UPP key is more or less a textual database format: a shorthand for storing mass information very succinctly. It is well tuned for exactly that purpose, with the bonus that it is possible for humans to read it.

As it so happens, it's relatively convenient for computers to read, which turns out to be a Very Good Thing.

However, nothing beats the color of real prose, and even the classic adventures described the worlds they visited with at least a few paragraphs for the sake of the players and the referee.

I believe the UPP is primarily concerned with military allegiance, military strength, and interstellar trade, and so is not adventure-grade information. I doubt it was intended to be more than this. That's why I was looking for more color to squeeze in.

I now think that instead of another digit, a classification scheme referenced by name would be a much more productive solution. In fact, something like this (and I'm all for spelling out the trade codes nowadays, as an acceptable alternate, and splitting out the starport like it originally used to be -- most computers nowadays are beyond the 80-character-line limitation... and of course there are other options...):

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Yori 2110 Post-Terran C-360757-A Rich Desert 713 Imperial F1 V :1910

World Name Hex Classif. UPP Codes PBG Allegiance Stellar :Xboat</pre>[/QUOTE]In fact, given that the UWP (sorry, got the UPP confused there, didn't I?) is more computer-centric than human-centric, perhaps it's time to start thinking again about detailing entire systems. We already know that's going to take more than one line. There is no consensus on whether that format should be plaintext, as now, or XML, or YAML, or even binary.

But I think those areguments are beside the point. I mean, I love to dabble with different formatting, but the point is to ensure that one format can easily be converted to the other, because our computers might have to do this to talk with each other anyhow. Unless there's a standard dictated from Avery, of course.

I'd either stick to a text format or use YAML. Even YAML is a little wordy for me.

A "System Header Line" would have the system trade code, hex, allegiance, and flags like gas giant presence, asteroid belt presence, military base presence, and X-boat links. Or something like that (not sure yet):

S Yori 2110 Imperial No-bases Gas-giants Asteroid-belts :1910

After that, the UWP data, using Book 6 as a model:

</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">S Yori 2110 Imperial No-bases Gas-giants Asteroid-belts :1910
0.0 Liecs Star F1 V Yellow-White
0.3 Ninsun Molten Y-100000-0
0.8 Shalmaser Mercurial Y-400000-0
1.5 Amparak Belt Y-000000-0 Iron=10% Nickel=20% Ice=10%
2.6 Dectura Jovian 112kkm
10 Skyline Rings Y-R00000-0
30 Yori Mars-III C-360757-A RS-B Rich Desert PopMult=7 MAINWORLD
50 Tino Europan Y-200000-0
6.0 Niiku Jovian 200kkm
10.0 Amarilo Jovian 150kkm

...</pre>[/QUOTE]I'd have to think more about the asteroid belt's consituent string.

I was pondering how to handle moons, but it strikes me that an indent is sufficient to indicate a moon. Alternately, perhaps planetary orbits require a decimal point (for AUs), while satellite orbits never have one.

 

[RainOfSteel]

UWP . . . ah yes, that's right, I don't know what I was thinking there.

And as for storage format, I would pick relational first, and XML second. But's it's irrelevant, as long as I can run a single query to SUM the population of the Imperium (or any other statistic) without having to iterate a loop 11,000 times through proprietary formats and file structures just to include the non-mainworlds of each starsystem (along with the mainworld, of course) of the Imperium alone (not to mention all the other worlds, which, when combined, exceede the Imperium handily).

 

[robject]

Quite.

In fact, nowadays even UWPs live in more than one format -- they're of course in the traditional text format, but I also have the entire systems from several sectors broken down into a MySQL database on my computer.

And someone must have the data stored in XML somewhere (and it's easy enough to generate it from a database, I'll wager), and I've generated sectors into a YAML document:

(warning: this is Corridor, Deneb, Gvurrdon, Reft, Spinward Marches, and the Trojan Reaches in a 700k file*)

http://home.comcast.net/~downport/etc/tools/KnownSpace.yaml

(* Which can compress down to a measly 82k)

(Begin bandwagon sales-pitch)

I think you'll agree that YAML gives us the representative power we need without the COBOL-fingered layout of XML. Plus of course they're freely cross-translatable.

As a matter of fact, the YAML document might satisfy several types of people. It allows the statistics of a UWP, but also can be very, very human-readable (there are no <tags> to get in the way). It's easily converted to XML, and many parsers exist for it (though no robust ones for Java yet ).

(End bandwagon sales-pitch)

Update Well, now I'm inspired to write a UWP parser/system generator that classifies worlds and dumps readable output to a YAML document.

 

[MichaelSTee]

Hi all. First post on CotI boards!

I like the idea of using text files, as they can be read easily. I would use multi-line data for each star system, like thus:

One line for stellar data (star type, types and orbit distance for companions if any)
for each star that has planets:
one line for basic data about each planet - orbit distance and zone, world type, size/density/gravity, atmo pressure/composition, hydro
one additional line if world is Earthlike - terrain, # of continents, type of lifeforms
one additional line if intelligent life - short species description (physical,niche,psychological)
one additional line if natives have society - pop,govt,law,tech,culture,port,trade classifications,allegiance
one additional line if colony world - pop,govt,law,tech,culture,port,trade classifications,allegiance

Codes for most of these items: I would rather see one to three alphabetic characters that are abbreviations, instead of one digit alphanumeric codes that need to be looked up. For instance: density could be S,L,M for Silicate,Low-iron, or Medium-Iron. Atmosphere (composition) could be Ex,Co,In,ON for Exotic,Corrosive,Insidious, or Oxy-Nitro. World Types could be B,GG,HH,S,M,L for belt, gas giant, hothouse, small, medium, large (hothouse listed separately because we probably can't colonize it, while we could settle small worlds like Luna). And so on...

What do you folks think?