Mainworlds orbiting gas giants per subsector?
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
Inhabited satellites? Why not inhabited satellites of satellites?
https://planetplanet.net/2018/10/09/can-moons-have-moons/
Conveniently, these would have relatively normal day/night cycles.
https://planetplanet.net/2018/10/09/can-moons-have-moons/
Conveniently, these would have relatively normal day/night cycles.
No, not inhabited satellites. Mainworlds.
As defined on Page 37 LBB:6 Scouts and in other locations in all other versions:
The main world is the world in the system which has the greatest population.
We've had inhabited satellites, planetoids, KBOs, dwarf planets, flotsam, and jetsam since LBB:6. The question is how many mainworlds should be satellites of larger bodies. Answering that question is hard for two reasons.
First, none of Traveller's various sysgens are scientifically accurate. This isn't because those sysgens are "bad" or the people who wrote them are "stupid". It's because the actual science is in such a state of flux. Every exoplanet discovery shuffles the deck supporting some theories, discounting others, and adding more data which needs to be taken into account. Sysgen is a mess because the real world science it should be based on is a mess. An exciting mess, a mess in which wondrous discoveries are seemingly made every day, but still a mess.
Second, the only ways a mainworld can be a satellite is either "by hand" or as a result of a series of very low probability rolls in sysgen. The "by hand" method produced the laughable distribution on the map sudnadja kindly shared. Writers and others over applied a trope they felt was "cool" and crammed dozens of Sa mainworlds in a few sectors.
LBB:6 sysgen can produce Sa mainworlds, just not at the rate seen on sudnadja's map. Even the Marches' two examples may be too many when using LBB:6. Coming up with an Sa mainworld in LBB:6 is convoluted because it requires several things to happen.
You need to already have the mainworld UWP, you're using the continuation system. Next, the system you roll up needs to have enough non-mainworld components and enough empty orbits to "force" the placement of a gas giant in the habitable zone. When placing known components, gas giants are placed first, belts second, and an existing mainworld last.
Wil could probably run the probabilities in his sleep but the chances of having a certain number of gas giants which can only fit into a certain number of orbits if the habitable zone is used can be calculated. My back of the envelope jottings suggest that the Marches' two systems is roughly the expected amount.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I may be missing something here but when I roll a planet of the week if the size is 6 or less then I may decide it is a gas giant moon and describe it as such.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
It depends on whether or not the Main World is close to Earth-like or not. If not, then not so much a problem. If it is Earth-like, then I have a very hard time believing it. You could have the main world in one of the gas giant Trojan Points, if it is an asteroid belt or small planet. Otherwise, you do have to consider the radiation belts surrounding the gas giant.
That's what most of us do, Mike. The question is whether it should be what Traveller Map does.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
I have no problem with this whatsoever. This is particularly true for worlds that lack an atmosphere or are otherwise generally unhospitable to life wandering around in shirtsleeves. They could easily be a satellite of a gas giant for any number of reasons.
It could be that this world's position is better placed for asteroid mining, skimming the gas giant for production of whatever and fuel on that world, or that there are other occupied satellites around the gas giant.
If you run a lot of extended system generations (something I do), you start to find that there are many with secondary worlds that are almost as useful, or even more useful in some cases, than the main world. It's even possible to have two or more viable local economic systems within a system in some cases.
One change I've made manually to some I've rolled up is to allow a good secondary world to have a starport that is one letter worse than the system one simply because it makes sense. That is, you have two well populated and viable worlds in the system. The main starport is say an A class, while the second world gets a B or C starport instead of just a spaceport.
It could be that this world's position is better placed for asteroid mining, skimming the gas giant for production of whatever and fuel on that world, or that there are other occupied satellites around the gas giant.
If you run a lot of extended system generations (something I do), you start to find that there are many with secondary worlds that are almost as useful, or even more useful in some cases, than the main world. It's even possible to have two or more viable local economic systems within a system in some cases.
One change I've made manually to some I've rolled up is to allow a good secondary world to have a starport that is one letter worse than the system one simply because it makes sense. That is, you have two well populated and viable worlds in the system. The main starport is say an A class, while the second world gets a B or C starport instead of just a spaceport.
No big deal. Usually with neato systems like this, I've ventured into pulp Sci Fi, and decide based on what sort of style or coloring I want subsectors to have.
I assume this average is taken from T5 world generation mechanics and not just from people placing the Sa code by hand? If it's from the world generation, I find it an acceptable distribution, though I'd always envisioned these as being somewhat rarer (possibly because they were rarer in older worldgen...).
This is a really good point and would require a bit of justification about why it wouldn't preclude habitation, unless a bit if handwavium is used to protect the planet.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
Given that higher tech levels can control gravity, they can probably produce large electro-magnetic fields to shield from most or all of that. On a tidally locked planet, you simply build in the area where the planet is shielded from radiation by its mass.
With worlds that are vacuum, or otherwise requiring lots of life support, it could simply be that they've built where the radiation is irrelevant inside the habitable areas of the planet.
I'd think that a main world in a class M star system would have more issues. Being close to the star it is going to face not only radiation, but the occasional stellar eruption of mass that sweeps across the planet. Being tidally locked and close to the star are no different than being a satellite of a gas giant really, only more dangerous.
I found one in canon (or at least its Wiki alt-history) that has some improbable stuff to start with, and could use some retconning to make it more plausible: Trexalon/District 268 (SM 1339).
First, it looks like it was specifically written as a near-peer competitor (at one TL lower) for Collace/District 268 (SM 1237), but required a resource constraint to drive its ruthless interplanetary expansionism and the rise of the corporate government of the Trexalon Technical Consortium. The resource constraint imposed by the writer is to convert the the UWP's stated Atm-6 (standard) into Atm-5 (standard, tainted -- by extreme cold), and implies a demand for imported food.
I think that's pushing things a bit far. It already has one perfectly good resource constraint: it's almost a desert (Hyd-1). Therefore, it's not necessary to freeze out the otherwise breathable atmosphere to get the societal consequences necessary for the narrative.
Timerover and Enoki just provided another resource constraint: there will need to be significant global radiation shielding infrastructure. Someone has to maintain that, and they're going to be well-positioned to control the entire planet. Hence, the TTC.
The radiation shielding is also going to be a planetary defense vulnerability. Whatever system is used will need multiple redundant backups as well as being heavily defended. It goes without saying that a direct attack on these facilities is morally and -- to the extent that the Imperial Laws of War extend beyond Imperial borders -- legally equivalent to using nuclear weapons or relativistic bombardment.
That also explains why an otherwise hospitable world with substantial mineral resources was unpopulated when discovered by the Sword Worlds. Nearby Collace was colonized for mining by the Sindalian Empire, and abandoned when that empire fell. Trexalon was two parsecs closer to the core of the Sindalian Empire and logically should have been exploited too -- but given its UWP, there should have been a lot more survivors there than the Darrians found at Collace. The Sindalians were no strangers to genocide, and wouldn't have hesitated to destroy Trexalon's geomagnetic field generators during their final war, with horrifyingly catastrophic results.
And the weather should be interesting. If Trexalon's orbit is on the plane of the ecliptic, the gas giant it orbits will eclipse it for days at a time (maybe weeks, I haven't run the numbers) on a regular basis, on top of that orbit changing its distance to the primary star, on top of the gas giant's orbital eccentricity, on top of Trexalon's axial tilt. Whee!
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Controlling local gravity is one thing, but generation a magnetic field large enough to cover a planet, or even a small moon (that's no moon) [sorry, that just leaked out] would be possible but the energy requirements may preclude it from being feasible at TLs where a planet may be the preferred settlement over a large orbital of some sort. I haven't looked up the sort of power required to go into that sort of set-up. Anyone got any ideas on that?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I've seen a couple of videos on the subject of creating a magnetic field between the radiation source and the body to be protected, the field strengths are doable with current technology.
I'll try to find the links.
ok first one is to the science asylum - brilliant youtube channel IMHO - explaining how to protect Mars from the sun's radiation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU0RN_dC2PY
I'll try to find the links.
ok first one is to the science asylum - brilliant youtube channel IMHO - explaining how to protect Mars from the sun's radiation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU0RN_dC2PY
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In game terms, the magnetic field generator can be considered analogous to a spinal mount particle accelerator, available at TL 8. The world will need heavy spacelift capability to put it there and maintain it, but grav tech at TL-8 makes it possible. They'd better not lose spacefaring capability though...
