The Wave and Dystopian Colonies

[Ulsyus]

Rob's death rates are... excessive.

You have to be a trained psion to have any risk of death.

If you retcon it to psi potential then we have an issue - what is the psi potential of a child? We know your maximum is at age 18, but what is it at 14, 10, 6? Are babies born with their full psi potential - unlike every other characteristic.

It would be nice to be able to edit my own posts to update them like Rob does.

Do you have any updated or approved no’s to offer up Mike?

Besides your points, the mortality numbers in the original table make the Wave effectively a demographic bomb that destroys a generation. Besides the shielded cold sleep option, a society would need;

1. A cultural response to all the insane survivors (mad zombie kiddies? Logan’s Run-ish Cubs?)
2. A plan to replace the youth lost to the wave, again possibly a cultural response

That’s where birth-chambers used for regular offspring instead of clones might come into their own, or a new generation designed & bred a-la in C.J.Cherryh’s Cyteen.

 

[kilemall]

If there was a general population hit the high pop high LL/authoritarian governments would at a minimum drop their DMs, and a shock like this would IMO cause a government type reroll.

The planning and colonization would presumably result in captive governments. But if the controlling government changes or cannot maintain control due to implosion, that authoritarian colonization may change.

Exhibit A, the Spanish Empire and colonies after the invasion of France.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

An effect of 50 percent drop in population is not a big deal.
I just came across this thread. Depending on the effect you are trying to achieve as well as the when you are looking back, this may in fact not enough deaths. As existing OTU examples, look at the the Black War Zone generation rules in Hard Times and Collapse Effects Determination generation rules in TNE core rules pp. 190-191. Both had their own flavor of modifying UPP by destroying Population and Tech Levels. Sometimes the Atmosphere Digit if you make a rare roll in the Black War tables. Both are the existing examples in the OTU of creating / expanding The Wilds.

TNE used Virus' ability to usurp technology as the mechanism for loss, so....
Step 1: Maximum Sustainable Population (MSP) - Besides possibly Boneyarding the planet to 0 from the start, you could drop the Pop UPP from 1 to 6 points. This represents at minimum 90.0% to 99.999 die off (before rerolling the Population multiplier). You could still boneyard due to said drop
Step 3: Actual Population - If TL reduction occured in Step 2, every 4 points of reduction (round UP) kills off 10% of the remaining population. By the die rolls for TL you could (but unlikely) lose 18 TL, thus reducing the population by up to 50%. Realistically given the OTU, more like up to 40%, but still...
Step 4: Low Population - If your Pop UPP is now 5 or less reduce population by a further 50%.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Though HIGHLY variable here, you are looking at 10% - 80% die off. You could, in fact @robject , factor in environmental damage from Agents of the Imperium (plants go crazy!), economic changes like Hard Times, and Population Recovery ala TNE after 10+ years after Wave ("Hard Wave Times"), up to Milieu 1900.

 

[Condottiere]

In the short term, fifty percent drop in population is disruptive.

In the long term, it would depend on exactly who survived.