T
The Shaman
Guest
Same here. I never found the zero exponent confusing.
Strange New Worlds
- Thread starter Supplement Four
- Start date
T
The Shaman
Guest
Same here. I never found the zero exponent confusing.
M
Malenfant
Guest
Because obviously they're limited by their borders. You don't have that problem when there's an entire planet available to you.Originally posted by atpollard:
Why do all of those people crowd into Hong Kong and Japan when Cambodia and Laos have all that empty space?There must be some social factors beyond the basic Size, Atmosphere, Hydrographics that affects their decision. [/QB]
Three people on a garden world makes no sense at all - heck, there's nothing to stop a Free Trader from landing, capturing or killing everyone and claiming the planet for themselvesthen.
M
Malenfant
Guest
Because obviously they're limited by their borders. You don't have that problem when there's an entire planet available to you.Originally posted by atpollard:
Why do all of those people crowd into Hong Kong and Japan when Cambodia and Laos have all that empty space?There must be some social factors beyond the basic Size, Atmosphere, Hydrographics that affects their decision. [/QB]
Three people on a garden world makes no sense at all - heck, there's nothing to stop a Free Trader from landing, capturing or killing everyone and claiming the planet for themselvesthen.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
FWIW vis-a-vis the Pop code, Book 7 Merchant Prince (or Spinward Marches Campaign, or some other, not sure the order of publication) intorduced the concept of Barren Worlds in the trade classification line. A Barren World was defined as no pop, no gov, and no law.
So I guess Pop 0 is only "no inhabitants" if the world is also Gov 0 and Law 0. This always seemed an odd selection to decide it on though. Even with those three at zero you can still have a class A starport and TL13. Pretty advanced barren world
It can be explained as a colony under construction, just waiting for completion before everybody moves in. Yeah, I don't mind working with the rolls, as long as I don't have to stretch too far.
So I guess there are no low pop (1-9 sophont) settlements with Gov 0 (family bond) and Law 0...
...except for those willing to flaunt canon and commit high heresy and actually let sense guide their description rather than just throwing bones and interpreting the arcane meanings of the way they land around the fire
So I guess Pop 0 is only "no inhabitants" if the world is also Gov 0 and Law 0. This always seemed an odd selection to decide it on though. Even with those three at zero you can still have a class A starport and TL13. Pretty advanced barren world
It can be explained as a colony under construction, just waiting for completion before everybody moves in. Yeah, I don't mind working with the rolls, as long as I don't have to stretch too far.So I guess there are no low pop (1-9 sophont) settlements with Gov 0 (family bond) and Law 0...
...except for those willing to flaunt canon and commit high heresy and actually let sense guide their description rather than just throwing bones and interpreting the arcane meanings of the way they land around the fire
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
FWIW vis-a-vis the Pop code, Book 7 Merchant Prince (or Spinward Marches Campaign, or some other, not sure the order of publication) intorduced the concept of Barren Worlds in the trade classification line. A Barren World was defined as no pop, no gov, and no law.
So I guess Pop 0 is only "no inhabitants" if the world is also Gov 0 and Law 0. This always seemed an odd selection to decide it on though. Even with those three at zero you can still have a class A starport and TL13. Pretty advanced barren world It can be explained as a colony under construction, just waiting for completion before everybody moves in. Yeah, I don't mind working with the rolls, as long as I don't have to stretch too far.
So I guess there are no low pop (1-9 sophont) settlements with Gov 0 (family bond) and Law 0...
...except for those willing to flaunt canon and commit high heresy and actually let sense guide their description rather than just throwing bones and interpreting the arcane meanings of the way they land around the fire
So I guess Pop 0 is only "no inhabitants" if the world is also Gov 0 and Law 0. This always seemed an odd selection to decide it on though. Even with those three at zero you can still have a class A starport and TL13. Pretty advanced barren world
It can be explained as a colony under construction, just waiting for completion before everybody moves in. Yeah, I don't mind working with the rolls, as long as I don't have to stretch too far.So I guess there are no low pop (1-9 sophont) settlements with Gov 0 (family bond) and Law 0...
...except for those willing to flaunt canon and commit high heresy and actually let sense guide their description rather than just throwing bones and interpreting the arcane meanings of the way they land around the fire
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Same here. I never found the zero exponent confusing. </font>[/QUOTE]The simplicity is nice and that is why it is treated as such and was later specifically changed to be clearer I expect. But the confusion is clearly there with the Pop 0 being described as NO inhabitants in CT. If you never experienced it I'd say it's because you fortunately missed that in both Book 2 and Book 6
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Same here. I never found the zero exponent confusing. </font>[/QUOTE]The simplicity is nice and that is why it is treated as such and was later specifically changed to be clearer I expect. But the confusion is clearly there with the Pop 0 being described as NO inhabitants in CT. If you never experienced it I'd say it's because you fortunately missed that in both Book 2 and Book 6
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Agreed.
Really? I mean sure I can come up with a story for 5 bureaucrats with computers all alone on a world but I can also do the same (and far easier I think) for the 5 hunters with clubs and rocks all alone on a world.
Precisely
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Agreed.
Really? I mean sure I can come up with a story for 5 bureaucrats with computers all alone on a world but I can also do the same (and far easier I think) for the 5 hunters with clubs and rocks all alone on a world.
Precisely
Space Cadet
SOC-12
Let me try:Originally posted by Malenfant:
[QB]
I'm sorry, I have to laugh when I hear that sort of response.
Where's the imagination involved in coming up with a ludicrous explanation for a tiny rockball that's less massive than Earth's moon yet has a habitable N2/O2 atmosphere, orbits a red giant, and has tens of billions of people on it frolicking around in the really low gravity?
In Traveller we have gravity generators. If you place those just underneath the rockball's surface and project the gravity field outward, you can have a 1-g field on a rockball that's smaller than the moon. and with 10 billion people on this planet, this is not only feasible with traveller technology, but economical too. Now why would they be here? Well originally the Red Giant wasn't a Red Giant, the 10 billion people originally lived on a garden world when their star began to leave the main sequence, naturally they had to evacuate their homeworld, there was a nice convenient rock ball waiting for them in the outer solar system, so they moved there and adjusted the place so that it had a standard atmosphere and a 1-g field at its surface.
Yes you would, but it was fun coming up with the explaination in your example.
White Dwarfs last a long time, who knows when they were in the Red giant stage. What you start out with is a binary, one star is more massive than the other star and so burns its fuel quicker. The two stars are initially at least far apart. The more massive star leaves the main sequence and inflate engulfing its companion in its outer atmosphere. The smaller star keeps on burning away, the outer atmosphere of the red giant is quite tenuous, but it drags the smaller star closer and that star orbits faster and faster creating a wake in its path as it accumulates mass. The Red giant then sheds its outer layer and its core contracts into a white dwarf while blowing out a planetary nebula. The shock wave of the second star passing through the planetary nebula triggers the formation of second generation planets. The Red Giant left plenty of material in its passing for the formation of planets, and a spiral nebula forms around the twin binary consisting of a main sequence star and a white dwarf. Planets coalesce around this pair, and one planet in particular develops life, this planet didn't even exist when the white dwarf was a red giant, so I don't see the problem here.
You know its possible, with current technology, to detect a gas giant orbiting such a pair as you described, are you prepared to "eat your hat" when such a discover comes about?
Space Cadet
SOC-12
Let me try:Originally posted by Malenfant:
[QB]
I'm sorry, I have to laugh when I hear that sort of response.
Where's the imagination involved in coming up with a ludicrous explanation for a tiny rockball that's less massive than Earth's moon yet has a habitable N2/O2 atmosphere, orbits a red giant, and has tens of billions of people on it frolicking around in the really low gravity?
In Traveller we have gravity generators. If you place those just underneath the rockball's surface and project the gravity field outward, you can have a 1-g field on a rockball that's smaller than the moon. and with 10 billion people on this planet, this is not only feasible with traveller technology, but economical too. Now why would they be here? Well originally the Red Giant wasn't a Red Giant, the 10 billion people originally lived on a garden world when their star began to leave the main sequence, naturally they had to evacuate their homeworld, there was a nice convenient rock ball waiting for them in the outer solar system, so they moved there and adjusted the place so that it had a standard atmosphere and a 1-g field at its surface.
Yes you would, but it was fun coming up with the explaination in your example.
White Dwarfs last a long time, who knows when they were in the Red giant stage. What you start out with is a binary, one star is more massive than the other star and so burns its fuel quicker. The two stars are initially at least far apart. The more massive star leaves the main sequence and inflate engulfing its companion in its outer atmosphere. The smaller star keeps on burning away, the outer atmosphere of the red giant is quite tenuous, but it drags the smaller star closer and that star orbits faster and faster creating a wake in its path as it accumulates mass. The Red giant then sheds its outer layer and its core contracts into a white dwarf while blowing out a planetary nebula. The shock wave of the second star passing through the planetary nebula triggers the formation of second generation planets. The Red Giant left plenty of material in its passing for the formation of planets, and a spiral nebula forms around the twin binary consisting of a main sequence star and a white dwarf. Planets coalesce around this pair, and one planet in particular develops life, this planet didn't even exist when the white dwarf was a red giant, so I don't see the problem here.
You know its possible, with current technology, to detect a gas giant orbiting such a pair as you described, are you prepared to "eat your hat" when such a discover comes about?
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Only whatever would then stop the next band of Travellers from capturing or killing that Free Trader crew and claiming the planet for themselves. And so on, and so on
Maybe (just one idea) the 3 are the only ones who have ever developed symbiosis with some very nasty virus native to the world? Said virus also granting it's symbiotic survivors (1 in a billion) remarkable curative powers, close to immortality/invulnerability (but the ones who die, die truly horribly). Of course such an explanation would require more development. Red Zone Quarantine, research studies, etc. etc.
Imagine all the perfectly intact ships of the desperate gamblers just sitting there, with no one who can use them since they have been exposed to the virus and are subject to destruction from the Navy Blockade if they try to lift.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Only whatever would then stop the next band of Travellers from capturing or killing that Free Trader crew and claiming the planet for themselves. And so on, and so on
Maybe (just one idea) the 3 are the only ones who have ever developed symbiosis with some very nasty virus native to the world? Said virus also granting it's symbiotic survivors (1 in a billion) remarkable curative powers, close to immortality/invulnerability (but the ones who die, die truly horribly). Of course such an explanation would require more development. Red Zone Quarantine, research studies, etc. etc.
Imagine all the perfectly intact ships of the desperate gamblers just sitting there, with no one who can use them since they have been exposed to the virus and are subject to destruction from the Navy Blockade if they try to lift.
M
Malenfant
Guest
You just proved my point - that makes no sense at all for lots of reasons.
First, how the hell is it economical to cover every square meter of the surface of a rockball with grav plates? For a 1000km rockball you're looking at about 12 trillion square metres of grav plates! Where's the power to run those going to be generated? Why the heck is it easier and "more economical" to do that than to put them in big o'neill-style space stations instead that don't even need grav plates?
And do you have any idea how long it takes for a red giant to puff out its outer layers and turn into a white dwarf? It takes thousands of years, it's not something that just happens overnight.
I'm sure it was, but it still makes no sense at all.
The problem is that it's complete nonsense.
Stars don't "engulf" eachother when they expand. Two stars in a close orbit are going to remain separate no matter what, because if one becomes a red giant then all that happens is it fills its roche lobe and starts dumping material on the other star (that's how you get nova systems if one star is a white dwarf). You don't get one star inside the other, somehow retaining its structure while it's being dragged through the other and spiralling in towards its core, it just doesn't work like that. It's kinda pointless explaining all the other reasons your idea doesn't work either, but certainly if it ever did work out like that then it would be a very rare configuration - yet when you look at your average Traveller sector you'll find a hell of a lot of binaries with a close white dwarf companion.
Not really. I'm quite prepared to see one or two examples of a weird situation like this, that definitely does have an exceptional explanation. But I'm very confident that they'd be very rare configurations.
IIRC we already know of one system where it looks like a brown dwarf spiralled in through the outer envelope of a red giant to end up in a close orbit around a white dwarf. But that isn't anything like the scenario that you described.
M
Malenfant
Guest
You just proved my point - that makes no sense at all for lots of reasons.
First, how the hell is it economical to cover every square meter of the surface of a rockball with grav plates? For a 1000km rockball you're looking at about 12 trillion square metres of grav plates! Where's the power to run those going to be generated? Why the heck is it easier and "more economical" to do that than to put them in big o'neill-style space stations instead that don't even need grav plates?
And do you have any idea how long it takes for a red giant to puff out its outer layers and turn into a white dwarf? It takes thousands of years, it's not something that just happens overnight.
I'm sure it was, but it still makes no sense at all.
The problem is that it's complete nonsense.
Stars don't "engulf" eachother when they expand. Two stars in a close orbit are going to remain separate no matter what, because if one becomes a red giant then all that happens is it fills its roche lobe and starts dumping material on the other star (that's how you get nova systems if one star is a white dwarf). You don't get one star inside the other, somehow retaining its structure while it's being dragged through the other and spiralling in towards its core, it just doesn't work like that. It's kinda pointless explaining all the other reasons your idea doesn't work either, but certainly if it ever did work out like that then it would be a very rare configuration - yet when you look at your average Traveller sector you'll find a hell of a lot of binaries with a close white dwarf companion.
Not really. I'm quite prepared to see one or two examples of a weird situation like this, that definitely does have an exceptional explanation. But I'm very confident that they'd be very rare configurations.
IIRC we already know of one system where it looks like a brown dwarf spiralled in through the outer envelope of a red giant to end up in a close orbit around a white dwarf. But that isn't anything like the scenario that you described.
Until you need to answer questions of how they got there and why has the population not increased. Then 5 Scientists studying vulcanism to stabilize a world otherwise ripe for settlement makes more sense than a TL 0 hunting party out scouting new worlds to populate. Pop 5 at TL 0 can be explained, it is just harder than a post interstellar TL.
Until you need to answer questions of how they got there and why has the population not increased. Then 5 Scientists studying vulcanism to stabilize a world otherwise ripe for settlement makes more sense than a TL 0 hunting party out scouting new worlds to populate. Pop 5 at TL 0 can be explained, it is just harder than a post interstellar TL.
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
It's GM's call. If he sees a Pop 0 world and wants to add a couple of station operators that are transferred out every six mo's (but two people are always on the world operating the equipment, thus the pop of 2 people is not "transient"), then why not do that?
The govt code could mean the place is governed from afar--the same govt code from a nearby world.
Or, if the GM chooses, the place is fully automated, and Pop-0 means zero permanent residents (but maybe a crew of 2500 workers spend 4 mos. a year on the world with annual equipment upkeep, but since the workers are only there 4 mos. out of the year, they're considered transient and not part of the official Pop code).
Point being: There's a lot of explanations. The GM just needs to get creative and satisfy himself...then sell it to his players.
-S4
Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
It's GM's call. If he sees a Pop 0 world and wants to add a couple of station operators that are transferred out every six mo's (but two people are always on the world operating the equipment, thus the pop of 2 people is not "transient"), then why not do that?
The govt code could mean the place is governed from afar--the same govt code from a nearby world.
Or, if the GM chooses, the place is fully automated, and Pop-0 means zero permanent residents (but maybe a crew of 2500 workers spend 4 mos. a year on the world with annual equipment upkeep, but since the workers are only there 4 mos. out of the year, they're considered transient and not part of the official Pop code).
Point being: There's a lot of explanations. The GM just needs to get creative and satisfy himself...then sell it to his players.
-S4
