Terraforming

[Enoki]

A rough rule of thumb for costs would be the following as a percentage of the world's GDP:

No serious economic impact = 3 to 7%
Some economic impact = 15 to 20%
Major economic impact = 30%+

I doubt most economies could go much beyond 30% GDP into terraforming as that would almost certainly result in the decline of overall capacity in the long run.

The population and technology rules take care of the differences in those. Less population and less technology equal less GDP. That in turn means the time invested to get the same result increases and the end cost is roughly the same, just taking longer to get there.

As a concrete example, look at our planet. Prior to about 1970 or so, there were virtually no pollution controls on anything. In roughly 50 years we've made major strides in cleaning up many forms of pollution, particularly air and water.

So, it would be reasonable to say that we've altered the atmosphere by one value (from tainted to untainted... more or less) in that time. Please, don't nitpick that, it's just a rough example. That's using only a few percent of the world's GDP.

If on the other hand, you have a world willing to use a "wartime" amount of GDP (20 to 30%) to terraform, they would be able to make changes pretty rapidly, at least at first. Down the road, the law of diminishing returns would kick in and make things more and more difficult and costly to do. We see the same thing with pollution controls here today.

 

[Enoki]

Now, an interesting one would be:

UWP E6506C2-1 A primitive desert world.

The locals try to get more water and up hydrographics by 1.

This requires a 6+ result. But, their TL 1 gives them a -12. Population gives a +1. We could choose to impact the economy but let's not.

So, our first 50 attempts automatically fail. We can't get a 6 on 2D6 because of the modifiers. At this point persistence has increased our modifiers by +5. The next 10 rolls need an 11 or 12 result. We don't get one. Persistence is now +6. Our second attempt (roll 62) succeeds. The UWP is now E6516C2-1.

It took us 620 years to do it, but we finally got a large body of water on the planet. So, it is possible for even relatively primitive planet's populations to terraform, at least some, even if it takes forever.

The reason I did this one is to test the extreme cases using this system to see if it still works. I'd say the above is a reasonable outcome. I would think a medieval to late ancient age culture with millions of people could figure out how to divert and collect water to create large lakes or a sea on their world. What wouldn't be possible for them is to radically change the planet's characteristics the way a very high TL culture could. Thus, they can manage changing their environment by 1 level over centuries but they'll never manage to change it by 3 or 4 without boosting technology.

 

[mike wightman]

In isolation fair enough, but what if they can call on the resources of the subsector or sector to help out?

The canonical example I quoted can only be feasible if the government of Thisbe is able to use resources way above their TL to bring the ice asteroids and comets that are going to increase their hydrographics and atmosphere - which logically means help from outside their system.

 

[Enoki]

In isolation fair enough, but what if they can call on the resources of the subsector or sector to help out?

The canonical example I quoted can only be feasible if the government of Thisbe is able to use resources way above their TL to bring the ice asteroids and comets that are going to increase their hydrographics and atmosphere - which logically means help from outside their system.

The easiest way to model that would be that these factors change the TL and pop of the planet doing terraforming. That is technology and workers are imported to do the terraforming and would be reflected in changes to the UWP.
Bringing in ice asteroids to increase the water on a world would be an example of using technology to raise hydrographics. That is already modelled in an abstract fashion. The model I proposed doesn't dive into the details of how a world terraforms to get a result, but rather only the overall time and effort required to get that result.

Obviously, a high tech world, or one that has access to high tech, can do things a low tech world couldn't. The high tech world needs a large moon to get tidal action and maybe some degree of tectonics going so they import one, dragging a large asteroid to the world being terraformed and put it in orbit. Even if this took several decades to accomplish due to limitations on thrust and the overall distance to be travelled to get it in the right spot, that's taken care of with the model. The specifics are just left out.

So, if outside resources and technology are used, simply modify the TL and population values to reflect that. Or, give the economic impact modifiers to the world without the penalties of being treated as an amber or red zone. The result would be the same either way. I'll add a note in the design to that effect.

 

[Blue Ghost]

A guy I watch on occasion has a video dedicated to the subject, and also references and links to the one individual whose spent a good portion of his life on the topic; Martyn J. Fogg.

Linky; https://youtu.be/ikoNQNj9ZnU

My opinion on Traveller and Terraforming is that even though it's alluded to, it's more of a Houserules motif for the original rule set; i.e. non-OTU stuff for groups that use the rules to create and game in their own settings.

That is to say contemporary Traveller, that is from MT up to T5, still sticks with hyper-tech security themes, so things like Terraforming and other more traditional scifi, seem fall outside the OTU scheme of things. Still an interesting topic.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Does any edition of Traveller have rules for Terraforming? How long does it take? What is the rate of change? How much does it cost? How much manpower (or sophont-power or robot-power) is required? etc.

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

Things like Mars are terraformed just in time for the Sun to swallow whole.

The state of a planet doesn't change in my games. A terraformed world would be a fluke that Travellers discover.

 

[Timerover51]

Right now, Kilauea Volcano on the Big Island is giving a great demonstration on how to locally add an atmospheric taint to the atmosphere. The online report is the first time I have ever seen "vog" used, for "volcanic smog". The scientists are estimating that 15,000 metric tons of sulphur dioxide is being released a day.

 

[infojunky]

Pondering the basics of the world generation rules, one could say more than a fair amount of Terraforming has already occurred. Look at the number of results that have some form of a breathable atmosphere.

Note Terraforming was discussed in DGP's Worldbuilders.