How common is space travel in Traveller

[warwizard]

CT also had two modifiers, DM+1 if a medic 2 or better and a DM+1 if the popcicle had a high endurance, DM -1 if the subject had a low endurance, so Dumerest would only die one in thirty six times he subjected himself to the low lottery assumming he had a high endurance and made sure the ship used a good medic.

Ship has a good medic = 8% or so death rate
popcicle has a good con and ship has a good medic <3% death rate
popcicle has bad con and ship has no medic = about 27%

Obviously some people just shouldn't travel by low berth.

 

[aramis]

Perhaps no need, but what about interest? I have no need to see the Pyramids, but I sure hope to one day.

It sounds like the consensus is the math of the basic books makes it such that the average 3Ier not only has never been off-system, but they don't even know anyone who has. That's sort of bleak.

No, it's sort of realistic for non-American and non-Europeans. In general, the larger the country, the fewer the people (as a percentage) who've ever left it. I've been outside the US a few times, but I've several friends who've never left Alaska, and one who, at 50, had never even left the Borough of Anchorage. Not even so far as the state fair in Palmer.

Most people never go more than 100 miles from the place of their birth. Currently, most Europeans travel at least occasionally within Europe, but during the cold war, the East was mostly people who didn't travel anywhere, no matter how much they want to.

The average imperial citizen in the Marches (for which hard canonical data is obtainable) is from a highly oppressive government with high to extreme law - rigid controls of civilian movement. They are quite likely told nothing about the imperium, other than the relative immorality of the offworlders (many of the high pop worlds are religious dictatorships).

The Imperium IS a bleak place. PC's are the bright spots. Just look at the early canon adventures. The Imperium is a reflection of the Empire of Star Wars as much as it is of Niven and Pournelle's Co-dominion (also not a terribly happy place). It's ugly, racist, brutal, efficient, and makes a pretense at trade. And that's the nice side of it.

The BS addage of "Men, Not Laws" is, if in any way based upon the "reality" of the 3I, a sure sign of abuse, not responsiveness. Think of the likes of Tarkin, quietly seeing to it superiors have accidents and incidents until they come to power. People willing to use fear to their advantage.

Trade isn't the lifeblood - it's the illusion of freedom that is maintained.

ANd the prices of passage are several years income worth for the average man... a price that just doesn't get paid. Even low passage is several months worth, and potentially lethal to the passenger.

 

[Enoki]

No, it's sort of realistic for non-American and non-Europeans. In general, the larger the country, the fewer the people (as a percentage) who've ever left it. I've been outside the US a few times, but I've several friends who've never left Alaska, and one who, at 50, had never even left the Borough of Anchorage. Not even so far as the state fair in Palmer.

Most people never go more than 100 miles from the place of their birth. Currently, most Europeans travel at least occasionally within Europe, but during the cold war, the East was mostly people who didn't travel anywhere, no matter how much they want to.

The average imperial citizen in the Marches (for which hard canonical data is obtainable) is from a highly oppressive government with high to extreme law - rigid controls of civilian movement. They are quite likely told nothing about the imperium, other than the relative immorality of the offworlders (many of the high pop worlds are religious dictatorships).

The Imperium IS a bleak place. PC's are the bright spots. Just look at the early canon adventures. The Imperium is a reflection of the Empire of Star Wars as much as it is of Niven and Pournelle's Co-dominion (also not a terribly happy place). It's ugly, racist, brutal, efficient, and makes a pretense at trade. And that's the nice side of it.

The BS addage of "Men, Not Laws" is, if in any way based upon the "reality" of the 3I, a sure sign of abuse, not responsiveness. Think of the likes of Tarkin, quietly seeing to it superiors have accidents and incidents until they come to power. People willing to use fear to their advantage.

Trade isn't the lifeblood - it's the illusion of freedom that is maintained.

ANd the prices of passage are several years income worth for the average man... a price that just doesn't get paid. Even low passage is several months worth, and potentially lethal to the passenger.

I guess its a matter of perspective. I've been around the world several times with the military and done considerable foreign travel without them not to mention lots of travel within the US and all over North and Central America....

 

[Thanos]

Speaking of the U.S. I'd wager more people from either coast have traveled more than people in the middle.

I'd also argue that Trade IS the life blood. It's what all those (or most of 'em) treaties are based on.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

Kinda like air travel was for the 60s and 70s for those who were affluent enough to travel they did .... or if you where a chic terrorist back then ...alot.:rofl:

 

[aramis]

I guess its a matter of perspective. I've been around the world several times with the military and done considerable foreign travel without them not to mention lots of travel within the US and all over North and Central America....

I saw stats last year showing that under 5% of the US had ever left the country, counting all current and former military personell. (Who account for about 3%-4% of the population, but many never leave the US. I know a guy whose 20 years were served in 2 states: Alaska and Texas... he was USAF. Basic & Tech in TX, assigned EAFB, extended to 8 years, back to TX for DI duty, 3 years, assigned a different duty in Tx for 4, extended to 6 in position, then back to EAFB... and out. Never left the US. Not even to Canada or Mexico.)

Europe is much higher due to several countries' universal conscription, but that seems to be going away, too.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

I saw stats last year showing that under 5% of the US had ever left the country, counting all current and former military personell. (Who account for about 3%-4% of the population, but many never leave the US. I know a guy whose 20 years were served in 2 states: Alaska and Texas... he was USAF. Basic & Tech in TX, assigned EAFB, extended to 8 years, back to TX for DI duty, 3 years, assigned a different duty in Tx for 4, extended to 6 in position, then back to EAFB... and out. Never left the US. Not even to Canada or Mexico.)

Europe is much higher due to several countries' universal conscription, but that seems to be oing away, too.

Conscription is almost disappeared in the majority of NATO countries ....the Germans have reduced there conscription to a laughable training period.

Honestly I believe in the concept of conscription....as we have seen presently with the ⌧ (the war against terror .... get your mind out of the gutter) there is a real disconnect between the operations on the ground and the populations focus... professional forces tend to be not at the forefront of the general populations attention. Also there is the ancillary issues of raising taxes to pay for the war and casualties thereof. Last conscription builds on the ideas of citizenship and instill a level of discipline.mega:

but back to the OP: International Air Travel is such a pain in the rear these days .... in the last ten years I flew back and forth between continents about 16 times 75% at government expense. Heck If I could I would low berth it sometimes .... Trans Atlantic flights are long.... I can imagine what a flight from US to Australia is likeo:

 

[Peter Schutze]

>Most people never go more than 100 miles from the place of their birth.

I doubt that applies universally. I've met very few Aussies who live within 100miles of their birthplace

>I saw stats last year showing that under 5% of the US had ever left the country

did you know that outside of the USA that is a fairly common stereotype of Americans .... their world ends at the state border.

except for the very poorest people here, the annual vacation is frequently a drive several hours away. Most of my european friends drive 3-4 hours for a weeks vacation in another country at least every 3 years

>I can imagine what a flight from US to Australia is like

sydney to LAX is nowhere near as bad as say sydney to frankfurt .... 10-11 hours vs 8-9 plus 11-13 hours depending on where the refuelling stopover is

 

[Enoki]

>Most people never go more than 100 miles from the place of their birth.

I doubt that applies universally. I've met very few Aussies who live within 100miles of their birthplace

except for the very poorest people here, the annual vacation is frequently a drive several hours away. Most of my european friends drive 3-4 hours for a weeks vacation in another country at least every 3 years

Live in Arizona, or the US West, sometime. Driving across town (Phoenix) takes 45 minutes. I have two acres I'm going to build on 152 miles from house and drive there a couple times a month. The next major city is Tucson, 151 miles away and 2+ hours drive.
Driving to LA or San Diego is no big deal.... At least until the current crop of morons running things drove up gas prices, my they rot in their own personal hell....

 

[Carlobrand]

In the Traveller universe, the Cr1000 low passage cost represents about the cost of 200 days of food for one person (bought from the grocer and cooked yourself). You can figure yourself how that translates in modern terms, based on your own grocery budget. How much of an impact that is on the given buyer depends on the world you're on and how favorable it is to the middle class - 200 days of food is a bigger bite for a sharecropper than a dentist.

However, it also comes with an alarmingly high chance of death: one in twelve won't make it even with the best medical supervision, unless you've tweaked the rules in some way. In other words, the only person likely to travel that route is someone willing to risk a very real chance of death to get himself off the planet. That's more likely to be the sharecropper than the dentist - so, more like the folk who gambled on the atlantic crossing in the 1600s than the ones trying it in the 1900s. Desperate folk. REALLY desperate folk. Folk for whom using that Cr1000 to move to another city or another country on their own world just ain't gonna do it. Fugitives, the persecuted, the low-caste or second-class citizens, the ones who've managed to offend the local Mafia or are fleeing some dreadful blood-feud - folk for whom the chance at a new life is worth the chance of death.

(If I were going to change the rules, guess which rule I'd change first.)

More realistical in terms of travelling with the expectation of survival is the middle passage - the choice of any budget-minded person who would rather not risk death and doesn't happen to have the skills to attract a working passage. That costs Cr8000 - a year's groceries for a family of 4.5 (well, 4.38). That's actually not much of a savings over the Cr10,000 high passage cost. That means that interstellar travel is really something for the fairly well-to-do: the rich when they please, the lawyers, doctors, and dentists who've been saving for several months just for this trip, maybe the clerk or plumber who's scrimped and saved for ten years and has some strong reason for spending his life's savings on this.

Unfortunately, it's hard to tweak that without either making hash of the basic economy or the ship construction rules, 'cause interstellar travel is only barely profitable even at those rates.

(By comparison, passage on the ill-fated Titanic was a "mere" 12 pounds for second class passage and 3 to 8 pounds for steerage - in an era when a laborer might earn 6 pounds in a month and a clerk might earn 8-9. It was a lot cheaper to get from Britain to the United States in 1912 than it is to get from Porozlo to Efate in 5629 AD.)

 

[saundby]

I'm with Aramis on the proportion of Travellers, both for 3I and for MTU.

Travelling involves a stack of risks and problems that the average person won't or can't deal with, and that the powerful can avoid by having some flunky or hiree do it for them while they stay home to enjoy their power and luxuries.

Travellers are even more unusual in Traveller, to my mind, than adventurers in a standard fantasy RPG. Since the PCs tend to move in the travelling circles--startowns, interstellar trading classes, nobility--it looks like a larger proportion of people than it is. It's like hanging out on the docks and figuring one person in three among the whole population is a longshoreman.

 

[rancke]

Travelling involves a stack of risks and problems that the average person won't or can't deal with,...

The CT rules for travel by low berth exaggarate the lethality for game purposes, as evidenced by rules in later versions that deal with the same phenomenon. (Low Berth could (and IMO is) still be unpopular for various reasons, ranging from less lethal but still holiday-ruining health effects to urban myths about Low Lotteries and gruesome Low Berth deaths.

...and that the powerful can avoid by having some flunky or hiree do it for them while they stay home to enjoy their power and luxuries.

You can't perform tourism per proxy.

Travellers are even more unusual in Traveller, to my mind, than adventurers in a standard fantasy RPG. Since the PCs tend to move in the travelling circles--startowns, interstellar trading classes, nobility--it looks like a larger proportion of people than it is. It's like hanging out on the docks and figuring one person in three among the whole population is a longshoreman.

And yet there are Traveller worlds with significant off-worlder tourism industries, such as Alell, Heya, and Kamsii.


Hans

 

[LeperColony]

I thought the Imperial Navy maintained a frozen watch for some of its ships. If 16% of LB passengers die, who would ever accept that assignment?

 

[rancke]

I thought the Imperial Navy maintained a frozen watch for some of its ships. If 16% of LB passengers die, who would ever accept that assignment?

IMTU there are essentially three ways to put someone into low berth. You can spend hours under close medical supervision putting someone down, in which case they can be revived by pressing a button and letting them revive on their own. You can spend ten minutes by a competent med-tech supervising the process, in which case it requires ten minutes' supervision by a competent med-tech to revive. And you can jump into a low berth and press a button, in which case it'll take a full med-team hours at a hospital to revive someone safely -- or as safely as possible.

Frozen watch personnel are put in low berths using the first method.


Hans

 

[Tobias]

I handle it roughly like overseas travel in the 19th century. So you have the military and other professionals including shipboard personnel. You have the elite somehow involved in interstellar government. You have migration of poor people in substandard conditions (in Traveller, low berths.) And finally you have the occasional affluent adventurer.

 

[Tobias]

It was said that one in a million travel in space. I have seen populations for the spinward marchs (a unsettled backwards sector) in the trillions that implies hundreds trillions in know space. Thats 100s of millions of travelers. With 5000 or so for the large liners or 500,000 liners moving through out space. With about 30,000 systems thats 15 or so liners coming and going to any given system.

These numbers are off. Canonically, the population of the Spinward Marches is a few hundred billion. The total population of the Imperium is 15-20 trillion people.

 

[far-trader]

It was said that one in a million travel in space. I have seen populations for the spinward marchs (a unsettled backwards sector) in the trillions that implies hundreds trillions in know space. Thats 100s of millions of travelers. With 5000 or so for the large liners or 500,000 liners moving through out space. With about 30,000 systems thats 15 or so liners coming and going to any given system.

These numbers are off. Canonically, the population of the Spinward Marches is a few hundred billion. The total population of the Imperium is 15-20 trillion people.

Actually, you're both correct

Per the original CT Supplement 3 Spinward Marches copyright 1979 the total population of the Marches (including non-Imperial worlds) is just under 900 billion. However, that was generated/created with the basic world gen of LBB3.

Per the updated canon* of the Spinward Marches Campaign copyright 1985 the total population is probably trillions (maybe some 4 trillion at a guesstimate). However, that was re-generated/re-created (fudged probably) to include the updated world gen which added the population modifier code and increased the total population significantly.

* If it was done the way it appears then personally I think this was done badly. The introduction of the pop mod should not have added to the population. It should have been done differently. An increase overnight of an averaged 5x the population and nobody saw that as a problem? But, what you gonna do... Hey! How about a war with the Zho that kills off trillions of... no, I guess not

EDIT: ...you know, it just hit me, the move from Small Ship (LBB2) to Big Ship (LBB5) sort of fits with the move from Low Pop (LBB3) to High Pop (LBB6). Just saying, maybe you can't have one without the other and maybe, just maybe the game designers figured this one out all those years ago and it took this long for that to twig for me It ties in nicely with the argument of little travel vs lots of travel. Maybe what is missing is a similar increase in wealth for that population.

 

[Tobias]

Actually, you're both correct

No, just me.

I did a quick count of the revised data from the MegaTraveller Imperial Encyclopedia, which included pop multipliers. All the high population worlds together account for 350 billion inhabitants. Even if the average other world had an average population of 100 million, which it doesn't, you'd still have less than 400 billion total. I may have missed a few hi pop worlds in my quick glance, but still, we're looking at less than 500 billion.

My calculation for the whole Imperium are simple: About 300 pop-A worlds with an average of 50 billion inhabitants each, plus about 600 pop-9 worlds, 5 billion each on average. 18 billion total, add to that the population of all the other worlds, and you'd be looking at ~20 trillion. Pop multipliers are included in this calculation.

 

[aramis]

My numbers for the marches are pretty close to Tobias' ones.
from the version hosted at travellermap.com...
counting mainworlds only: 381,803,419,622
Even assuming the systems can double that*, still not a trillion.

* unlikely, since subordinate pops seldom hit mainworld pop -1, and can't exceed same.

 

[far-trader]

Granted my presumptions may be incorrect or inaccurate, I haven't counted the SMC total, it was just a quick guestimate based on I'd understood that the pop code effect would average 5x the stated Pop.

So where once an original Pop 4 would count 10,000 people (presumed) in the Sup 3 calcs the updated data would average a Pop Code Multiplier of 5 for 50,000 people. Taking the stated total in Sup 3 of some 872.123 billion Pop Code Multiplier average of x5 for about 4.36 trillion.

I'll happily take the lower number but I imagined this was where the disconnect between the hundreds of billions and trillions was coming from.

I wasn't even counting subordinate populations of additional worlds in systems (granted, only a percentage, but possibly significant)