World Building.

[rancke]

I have to disagree with you here, my uncle who was a prison warder lived in a village well away from Wakefield and commuted to work as do many other people.

He still lived on the same planet he worked on. I can guarantee you that with jump drives for interstellar transport people don't commute to a job in the next starsystem. Transients would travel there, stay for a number of months or even some years and then be replaced by someone else when they returned to their homeworld. Thus many transients will have the same 'footprint' as a permanent resident; he's just made up of a succession of different people.

I can quite easily see a world with a small population that is a major institution, the City of London (not the huge rambling mess outside) is quite a good example in this world.

I don't see it. An oil rig might be a good analogy, but not a major financial hub situated in the center of a huge city serviced by agricultural and manufacturing from even further away.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

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[rancke]

Figures such as pop might change, unlike say those such as size; there is question of when the survey was done.

Very true. If, say, the shipyard closed and the workers left the world, the population would be changed the next time the Scouts revised the UWP. And the starport rating would be changed at the same time.


Hans

 

[Dragoner]

ef it

 

[rancke]

If the figurative time is 1105, that is 40 years after second survey, plenty of time for radical change.

I strongly suspect that at the very least worlds on X-boat routes are updated a bit more frequently than every Imperium-wide survey. But that's not the point I was making. Even if the UWP is actually 40 years old, it would have made sense 40 years ago. You can't explain an odd UWP by cherrypicking one digit and say that that is 40 years old but that other one is current. Either they're all 40 years old or they're all current.

And if you check such worlds as Paya and Fulacin, you'll find that the UWPs for T5 the Thomas has posted on the wiki have been updated since the Second Survey.


Hans

 

[HG_B]

At the risk of sounding argumentative, the GM should use common sense and feel free to modify/change undesirable random results.

Illogical results should NOT be built in. They should be by GM fiat. Otherwise you spend too much time changing system stats to something logical. You have it backwards.

 

[Dragoner]

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[Thanos]

I agree the RAW regarding star port quality/size are not perfect. World size, pop and tech should be used in determing the size of the star port. How many large shipping ports do you know of that are not surrounded by major cities?

 

[Thanos]

Is there an advanced world building/system creation book or rules set out there from Mongoose?

 

[Dragoner]

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[McPerth]

As I've discussed this on numerous other occasions, I won't embark on yet another round.

But in the end you could not resist it, could you ?

That would be a Class C starport (Class C+ if there is refined fuel and annual maintenance available).

As for MgT Core Book, paage 178, only starports A and B have refined fuel, starport C has it only unrefined.

As for earlier versions (CT and MT), only starports A and B could perform annual maintenance for starships. I did not find it for MgT, where both, A, B and C are told to be able to make repairs, but maintenance is not specified (or at least I did not find it).

 

[Thanos]

But then that makes large ports automatically ship builders, which isn't supported by the real world either; so it is a situation of 6 to one half dozen, either way could be correct.

Of the major ship builders currently how many are located in small towns? Seriously. I don't know.

 

[CosmicGamer]

There is a Mongoose starports book that goes into more detail.

As for MgT Core Book, paage 178, only starports A and B have refined fuel, starport C has it only unrefined.

As always, I consider the rules as guidelines and in this case, the table on page 178 is not necessarily an all inclusive got to have or absolutely can not have list.

For example, the starports book has this to say about Class C Starports: "Refined fuel is available but supplies can become depleted." There is a table you can roll on to determine refined fuel availability.

As for earlier versions (CT and MT), only starports A and B could perform annual maintenance for starships. I did not find it for MgT, where both, A, B and C are told to be able to make repairs, but maintenance is not specified (or at least I did not find it).

I'm not sure if annual maintenance is part of Mongoose. On page 138 it says "Maintenance should be carried out each month." and there are rules for if the maintenance is skipped.

The starport book addresses, to a degree, the fact that all starports of the same class are not the same.

 

[Dragoner]

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[CosmicGamer]

Of the major ship builders currently how many are located in small towns? Seriously. I don't know.

I'm not sure what someones definition of "major ship builder" or "small town" would be.

Sorry about formatting. Don't have time to make an actual chart.

The Top 5 Shipbuilding Countries Based on Gross tonnage
Country - Gross Ton Produced - #of Ships Produced - % of World Total
1 South Korea -137,596,000 GT - 2,303 - 37.45%
2 China - 123,961,000 GT - 3,999 - 33.7%
3 Japan - 63,641,000 GT - 1,607 - 17.3%
4 Philippines - 5,919 GT - 117 - 1.6%
5 Vietnam - 4,296 GT - 952 - 1.2%

The companies
1. Hyundai Heavy Industry – Ulsan, South Korea
The Leader in the Shipbuilding sector, Hyundai Heavy Industry is based on Ulsan with a record of 93,893,700 GT which includes 1428 ships of various types and sizes.
2. Daewoo Shipbuilding – Okpo, South Korea
Okpo is a district in Geoje.
3. Samsung Heavy Industry – Geoje, South Korea
4. Hyundai Samho – Samho, South Korea
5. Mitsubishi Heavy Industry – Nagasaki, Japan

 

[Dragoner]

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[GypsyComet]

I'm not sure what someones definition of "major ship builder" or "small town" would be.

The Top 5 Shipbuilding Countries Based on Gross tonnage
Country - Gross Ton Produced - #of Ships Produced - % of World Total
1 South Korea -137,596,000 GT - 2,303 - 37.45%
2 China - 123,961,000 GT - 3,999 - 33.7%
3 Japan - 63,641,000 GT - 1,607 - 17.3%
4 Philippines - 5,919 GT - 117 - 1.6%
5 Vietnam - 4,296 GT - 952 - 1.2%

So the top 5 are Pop 7, 9, 8, 7, and 7, respectively.

 

[Dagrill]

He still lived on the same planet he worked on. I can guarantee you that with jump drives for interstellar transport people don't commute to a job in the next starsystem. Transients would travel there, stay for a number of months or even some years and then be replaced by someone else when they returned to their homeworld. Thus many transients will have the same 'footprint' as a permanent resident; he's just made up of a succession of different people.
I don't see it. An oil rig might be a good analogy, but not a major financial hub situated in the center of a huge city serviced by agricultural and manufacturing from even further away.
Hans

hi Hans,

it's the nearest I can produce to a real example of an Industrial world to a non industrial world. To give another example, in the 70's my next door neigbour;s father went to work in Qatar, he worked there for well over a decade making only 2 or 3 trips back to the UK each year, at the time Qatar had a tiny population and most of the work force came from outside the country, they didn't become citizens of Qatar but retained their original citizenship, I also remember it ruined the father son relationship with my friend for life.

Actually, my main gripe with the figures is that a world with under a thousand citizens has a representative democracy, surely at that tech level everyone that wants to participate would be involved in a democratic government?

Regards

David

 

[Marchand]

Mongoose Traveller has "space opera" and "hard science fiction" rules that relate population to habitability and starport class to population. These result in a lot of lo-pop, low-class-starport worlds. Whether a given GM and group find that to be fun is up to them.

Be that as it may, I think it's a mistake to regard the CT and CT-derived basic MgT rules as a reality simulator. They are a prod to the imagination. For that purpose they work well and are not broken, in my opinion. If I roll up a world that doesn't immediately make sense, my creativity gets engaged, which might involve tweaking the numbers manually until I have something I am happy with.

Gurps Space is pretty much as close to a reality simulator as any RPG product for SF setting generation is ever likely to get. I respect its rigor and I quite enjoy bringing it down from the shelf sometimes. But fundamentally I find CT more enjoyable to play with because it engages my creativity more.

Another angle is the tradeoff between plausibility and labour intensity. Gurps Space generates more consistently plausible results than CT at a cost in terms of work required.

 

[Vladika]

Of the major ship builders currently how many are located in small towns? Seriously. I don't know.

Bath Iron Works in Maine. Population 8,493.