To round or not to round?

I'm working up a spread sheet, and generating alot of Star systems. One thing I'm noticing is that if you bound the numbers for the UPP at 0 then you see a noticeable spike in zeros. Some times this bounding makes sense, such as for hydrographic or atmospheric but other times it seems more arbitrary, and it has a compounding effect. Such as for Government and Law Level. I can think of several was that the level of Government or Law could be negative. Say for instance on a world engaged in a planetary war.
I'm curious what other people think about this?

For some things, 0 and A and absolute limits: I cannot see a negative hyrdographics value, nor anything over 100% for that. Most of the other fields are really lists in some sort of order, so really the values are more of a key to the value and not the value itself, unlike the hydrographic code. Well, population and size: cannot have a negative population nor smaller than 0 which is a belt and could be as small as a single rock or something like Glisten and spread out. Atmosphere 0 is a vacuum, so I cannot see anything less than nothing for that field either.

Okay, so the 1st 3 4 physical stats I cannot see going below 0 as they are directly corollated to a physical aspect, and 0 of anything (atmosphere, size, hyrdo) is the lack of those things. And population cannot be negative. So those "keys" represent a numerical value or percentage.

The TL I cannot see going below 0 either: while we like to link the TL to eras, it is never a 100% clean match. and 0 means no technology so not sure how we could have a negative technology.

Now, with that, it would be interesting if those values, though limited to 0 in the UWP, could still carry over the actual value (-2 for example) as a DM where applicable. Been a bit since I've done world generation, but in a lot of other systems I use. there are effects that carry over from other rolls even if you have to round up the final value to fit ti final product.

And sorry, I seemed to wandered all over. Early still...

In answer: where things cannot be below 0, round. But if they can be below 0 and have a latter affect, keep the value for the DM but for the LBB3 world it will be listed as 0. Effectively an invisible DM once you are past generation. That's how I'd handle it (almost like the T5 genetics wher you keep the 1st die, there is a "hidden" value for those values not allowed to go below 0 but can based on DMs and such)

coliver988 said:

cannot have a negative population

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You can ... but that's a Spooky Halloween type adventure, where the population is DEAD and actively HAUNTING the place.
Definitely not your "typical" UWP code.

coliver988 said:

In answer: where things cannot be below 0, round.

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My take is that results below zero for UWP codes get bounded at zero. Full stop.
Apply the zero bound for determination of UWP code before moving onto the next step of determining the next code in the sequence.

I can almost see negative values as an applied vector. This represents a planet that, for example,  really "wants" to stay anarchistic. Let's say it's got 95 residents (pop 1) and a corporation brings in a few hundred workers for something -- mining, perhaps. You'd expect it to become either captive or corporate government, but the pre-existing negative bias to the government stat will turn it into something else.

No, I do not have a proposed for a rule mechanic. I do know that GOV is a list, and not necessarily a sequential one. Though worldgen mechanics suggest that gaining 1 Pop code value should raise the Gov code by 1 as well, it does not work like that in the real world.

Grav_Moped said:

I can almost see negative values as an applied vector. This represents a planet that, for example,  really "wants" to stay anarchistic. Let's say it's got 95 residents (pop 1) and a corporation brings in a few hundred workers for something -- mining, perhaps. You'd expect it to become either captive or corporate government, but the pre-existing negative bias to the government stat will turn it into something else.

No, I do not have a proposed for a rule mechanic. I do know that GOV is a list, and not necessarily a sequential one. Though worldgen mechanics suggest that gaining 1 Pop code value should raise the Gov code by 1 as well, it does not work like that in the real world.

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If pop goes up or down, I would reroll government, to take effect in the next 10 years- peacefully or not.

Should be interesting if it was a captive government….

kilemall said:

If pop goes up or down, I would reroll government, to take effect in the next 10 years- peacefully or not.

Should be interesting if it was a captive government….

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I went through that a few years ago when trying to "roll back history" for a few worlds. At typical growth rates, it's about 200 years for a pop code step. And you can't simply drop a gov code step every 200 years back to match. Somewhere I've got a chart of which government types follow from others, and how they'd get there. Not a roll-it table, though.

Grav_Moped said:

I went through that a few years ago when trying to "roll back history" for a few worlds. At typical growth rates, it's about 200 years for a pop code step. And you can't simply drop a gov code step every 200 years back to match. Somewhere I've got a chart of which government types follow from others, and how they'd get there. Not a roll-it table, though.

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If gov were a progression we would start with x government at y population, instead it’s a range. With a roll you might get something radically different, or the exact same thing.

kilemall said:

If gov were a progression we would start with x government at y population, instead it’s a range. With a roll you might get something radically different, or the exact same thing.

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Yes and no.

Yes, because it's definitely not deterministic. No, because there's some degree of path dependency.

Grav_Moped said:

Yes and no.

Yes, because it's definitely not deterministic. No, because there's some degree of path dependency.

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If you are referring to pop changes and now it’s an altered range, yes that’s what I’m saying. If you mean something else, I am not following.

kilemall said:

If you are referring to pop changes and now it’s an altered range, yes that’s what I’m saying. If you mean something else, I am not following.

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Basically, I'm saying that what government you get next after a pop change (or had before one, if you're looking back) is heavily influenced by the one you began with. It's not (or shouldn't be, anyhow) the same distribution as when rolling from scratch.

No game mechanic for it, though

Grav_Moped said:

No game mechanic for it, though

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Why wouldn't there be a "reroll" of government type every time the UWP population code goes +/- 1?
That way, world governments are not a case of "progression" in discrete increments (and therefore entirely Too Predictable™ as population changes).

Grav_Moped said:

Basically, I'm saying that what government you get next after a pop change (or had before one, if you're looking back) is heavily influenced by the one you began with. It's not (or shouldn't be, anyhow) the same distribution as when rolling from scratch.

No game mechanic for it, though

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I disagree. In many cases it’s going to be an attempt to sweep away the old.

The new pop is going to shift the range up or down.

Think of it as just an extension of the point of the crazy UWP rolls in the first place- as a prompt for unique scenarios/settings.

Story sim not reality sim.

kilemall said:

I disagree. In many cases it’s going to be an attempt to sweep away the old.

The new pop is going to shift the range up or down.

Think of it as just an extension of the point of the crazy UWP rolls in the first place- as a prompt for unique scenarios/settings.

Story sim not reality sim.

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Here's how I went at it with Collace/D268 a few years ago:
Collace Between the Lines, post #10

That said, I kind of want to re-write the place, and change the world's backstory from being an analogy with Türkiye-changing-to-enter-the-EU to an analogy with post-military-dictatorship Chile. Maybe some syncretist combination of the two, perhaps.

(I definitely want to do something along the lines of recent-past Chile somewhere though, even if it's not Collace/D268.)

Grav_Moped said:

Here's how I went at it with Collace/D268 a few years ago:
Collace Between the Lines, post #10

That said, I kind of want to re-write the place, and change the world's backstory from being an analogy with Türkiye-changing-to-enter-the-EU to an analogy with post-military-dictatorship Chile. Maybe some syncretist combination of the two, perhaps.

(I definitely want to do something along the lines of recent-past Chile somewhere though, even if it's not Collace/D268.)

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That’s exactly what I would be avoiding, just going up the government chain by pop. Far more interesting to go to the unexpected.

Say one rolls a captive government- how did their pop stresses make that a palatable solution?

But IYTU as they say.

kilemall said:

That’s exactly what I would be avoiding, just going up the government chain by pop. Far more interesting to go to the unexpected.

Say one rolls a captive government- how did their pop stresses make that a palatable solution?

But IYTU as they say.

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Fair 'nuff. I using we've got different objectives here.

kilemall said:

Say one rolls a captive government- how did their pop stresses make that a palatable solution?

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The revolution came ... and lost.
The world was "conquered" militarily by a neighbor.
Things got so BAD™ that the world population petitioned a nearby system to bail them out of their own mess.
Economic management screw up left the world at the mercy of creditors ... who now "own" the place.
It was an "inside job" of conspiracy+corruption.
A "government in exile" out of the star system has lost legitimacy and/or relevance and been replaced by other ... interests.

Note that some of the above are consensual circumstances ... while others lean more towards being a hostile takeover type of deal.



And anyone who thinks that screwing up the economy so badly that a "bailout" by another polity sounds a bit farfetched ... that's how Texas became a state in the union ... in order to pay off the nation's (of Texas') debts with money from Washington DC.

1. Scotland - Acts of Union.

2. China - Belt and Road Initiative.

3. Argentina - in it's own category.

4. Banana republic.