General Water World Weather

[atpollard]

Again, this depends on how you think of a city. Is it relatively horizontal, like a small town? Failures can be isolated.

Are we talking about New York City, where it'd be massively vertical as well? If the latter, what happens when the lifters in an upper-level module fail and it crashes through a few other modules on the way down?

Personally, as a Land Planner, I would design a million person city as 2000 x 500 person (2000 dT) modules all permanently interconnected so that if a module fails the 4,000,000 dT combined structure only has 3,998,000 dTons of lift and will begin to fall at 1/2000 G (0.005 m/s2). If it normally floats at an altitude of 1 km, that leaves about 10 minutes to effect repairs or hit the water at 3 m/s velocity (the equivalent to a 0.45 meter fall at 1 G). So the city only needs to be strong enough to survive a 0.5 meter fall (people will already survive a 0.5 meter fall).


Your analysis is correct for building gossamer structures that are not self supporting without Grav tech (like free floating floors with no support structures) … but I am not proposing that.

 

[kilemall]

For failure, wings if the atmosphere is thick enough to support it. Modular only.

The modular version isn’t so crazy if you reassess cities as voluntary collectives and you can and do readily connect up for the season, tax purposes, cultural events, etc. Very different urban governance model if entire neighborhoods can move away.

Another safety mechanism, standardized power coupling so even if the local module power fails/runs out of fuel it can ‘buy’ from the current interconnect until it can be repaired/refueled.

 

[gchuck]

Roll 2d6
1.) Clear sky
2.) Overcast
3.) Cloudy
4.) Light Rain
5.) Heavy Rain
6.) Major Storm

This is what I'm using for the Scouts base;
Throw 2d6 for Daily Weather
2: Thunderstorm with torrential rain (Winds 1-4: 5-20kph gusts 5-6:20- 40kph gusts)
3: Windy and/or light rain
4: Mild Storm and/or moderate rain
5: Clear
6: Partly Cloudy or Overcast
7: Clear
8: Clear and breezy
9: Partly cloudy and breezy
10: Severe or Heavy Storm (Winds 1-4: 5-20kph gusts 5-6: 20-40kph gusts)
11: Partly Cloudy or Overcast
12: Partly Cloudy

I'm thinking this may suffice for the WA world that's in the works. Just crank up the wind speed a bit.

 

[Enoki]

Having weather like that would make colonizing such a world very sketchy. That's a lot to overcome right away. It's almost a "DUNE" like scenario in terms of environmental hostility. There better be something really worthwhile there to justify all the trouble.

Submersibles can certainly work (depending on what resource is being extracted). However, similarly, you could probably just do as well with a reinforced space ship that can either weather the events via straight buoyancy, or "simply" lift up and off out of trouble to a new, calmer area, or park in orbit for the storm to pass. In the end, having no actual, permanent surface installation.

I one case where I had a low pop water world, it was a turbulent one with massive waves. The "starport" (a D) was located with the only settlement inside the cone of a now extinct volcanic vent of very hard granitic material that could withstand the pounding of the seas. That put it above sea level and for the population (hundreds to possibly a thousand + at most) it allowed an existence on an otherwise inhospitable planet.

Of course, given the low law level, it was also largely a dangerous den of thieves and outlaws... Think bar fights and other Traveller-esqe behavior.