Originally posted by far-trader:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
No, but the UWP is far less useful if it doesn't include the average transient population, and various formulas for calculating the GWP of worlds (in
TCS, Striker, Pocket Empires, and
Far Trader) certainly assumes that it does.
But of those the first two are not meant to apply to the RPG OTU and so any such assumption seems false for them.</font>[/QUOTE]I beg to differ. I can't dispute that Marc Miller has chosen to decanonize
TCS and
Striker twenty years after they were published, but they were most demonstrably
meant to apply to the OTU. The two subsectors detailed in
TCS is still part of the OTU and the part of
Striker I refer to says "Using Striker with Traveller" in large friendly letters.
I don't remember getting that impression from anything I've read but certainly Pocket Empires presents an extreme case so I can't see it applying to the stable OTU Imperium.
Rules are rules, at least rules as simple as those that deal with population sizes and productivity in
Pocket Empires. There no reason why they shouldn't also apply to the stable Imperium. Especially since the UWPs are supposed to be universal and certainly applies outside the stable Imperium too.
I've never seen Far Trader. Is there a specific bit in it that says so?
The rules and all the trade figures given (which covers the entire Spinward Marches) assumes that the UWP population figure is an accurate factor in calculating the economic activity of the world.
I think I've said before that if Pop is an official tally of resident citizens it works with the trade formulas which rely on knowing how many people contribute to interstellar trade (and hence taxes) and travel, even if its just a fraction of those who are actually able to.
I'm not quite sure what your argument is, but my argument is that someone living and working on a world will contribute to the economy of that world regardless of whether he has lived there all his life and intend to go on living there until he dies or whether he came there last year and intend to leave next year. Whatever he is doing
this year will affect the world he is working on, not the world he came from or the world he is going to.
So you have one example where it specifies that the Pop includes transients. I have one where it doesn't, Arkaene in EA #1.
That's the world that is described as having a thriving trade despite having an official population of 0? It really sounds like that example scores for my side when you think about it.
I don't think either case is strong enough on its own to make the call one way or another.
Actually, I agree. Which is why my main argument is that UWPs are much less useful if they are not accurate.
(OK, they are more useful if TPTB are willing to correct past mistakes. If they're not...
)
Be that as it may, I fail to see much advantage in saying "You can't count on the UWP figures, because they don't include everything pertinent" rather than "Some UWP figures are wrong" and errata'ing them PDQ.
Personally I'm directly opposite your opinion and think the Pop should never include transients and if you do then you need a singularly good explanation for each instance. Otherwise shouldn't you count them at every world they land on?
It appears that we're thinking about different things when we use the term 'transient'. I'm thinking about people who live
and work on the world the same way oil riggers 'live' on an oil platform. And I think that is the kind of transients people think of when they try to explain worlds with 60 people running Class A starports and garden worlds with 20 citizens.
And I said '
average transient population'. That's the figure that gives us a firm handle on how many buildings the colony has and how many law enforcers it can afford and how many spaceport dives there may be much interstellar cargo the world generates and how many ships visit it annually. Whereas the number of people who live there permanently tells us very little unless it's practically the same figure.
Hans
