World Building.

[BytePro]

That's just my point. How many people are there on an oil rig? Would you say 'none' because all of them are transients?

That there point is like mixing apples and oranges to get lemonade. :file_21:

The official population is zero. The transient population varies by platform and time, of course.

Nothing in the rules or the setting information says that the population score has anything to do with citizenry. ...

Nor that it doesn't.

One is free to choose something that makes the most sense in their version of the OTU or ATU. <shrug> I choose not to think the Scouts went around counting everyone individually - and instead gathered information from local sources when available, and collaborated (or used if need be) physical survey information. I also choose to think they didn't count visitors - be it a large transient work force, tourists, pilgrims, prisoners, refugees in 'temporary' camps, crews of other ships, or themselves.

I also take Pop 0 as referring to a single digit count (the RAW power of 10), 0 (the RAW table entries), or unknown (IMTU) population at the time of the last survey. There are all sorts of imaginable reasons this number would be used - and no believable reason anyone could give me to expect the population number could always be known, much less accurate, nor trusted enough to always be reported or always worth reporting. Hence I like to see Pop 0 as also representing 'Unknown'.

I and a good number of people could come up with 'rationalizations' for any possible UWP combination. Blatantly restricting UWP combinations would detract from the creative inspiration of the UWPs. From a playable standpoint - how many star systems do most Players visit. I suspect this is not enough that occurrences of really strange combinations are a bad thing. In fact it may be a very good thing, despite being hard to believe when one looks at the totals for the entire OTU...

 

[Dagrill]

I submit that there's a lower limit to the number of people you'd find on a world with a shipyard capable of putting together imported components to make a functional spacecraft.
And keep in mind that to get a Class A starport rating, you need to provide all the other services a Class A starport provides. A shipyard alone does not a Class A starport make. So there's another source of employment.
And, no, transients don't hep explain anything. Transients count towards the population score too. There are canonical worlds where most of the population are transients; there's at least one where the entire population is explicitly composed entirely of transients.
Hans

Hi,

I think transients do not count in poulation, otherwise you'd be massively overcounting the population of Charted Space.

When a scout ship visits a world it must make an effort to avoid double counting people, so asking for a register of citizens is a good starting point for producing the population stat.

Also if we are talking 3I the Starports are part of Imperial territory, so a Governer & staff must be shipped in from somewhere.

If we are not taliking 3I somebody had to pay to put a starport there, in Mongoose they blame GeDeCo for building all the A and B starports in the human part of the Trojan Reach, so all the company employees manning the starports probably look forward to returning home one day, probably as far away from Aslan space as they can find...

I was also musing on the profitability of a non 3I A starport for a planet, presumably the locals would get to share these profits and the hired help would not.

Regards

David

 

[Dagrill]

Based on what I know of Traveller (very little) that would make sense if traveling from world to world was a matter of hours but as you said above it's a week minimum. It's also expensive to boot. Traveller is age of sail. It's not moving from country to country in Europe it's moving from Europe to the Americas, in the 1800's at best.

Hi,

So it still works for the eighteenth century. Nelson was based at Antigua (in the Leeward Islands) for years in the 1780's, but he still considered Norfolk home, his crews would have felt the same. Incidentally his squadron was available to defend the ports in the area, so also provinding defence of the expensive Port asset at English Harbour.

Whilst government functions weren't as developed as today there were and still are plenty of people willing to move abroad for a living and today we have individuals willing to spend 20 million just to go into space.

Regards

David

 

[HG_B]

And if there really are thousands of transients living on Pixie, how come they don't generate any trade or traffic at all? According to the trade rules, freight and passengers are generated with the modifiers the official population score provide for.

Hans

In this very limited example (Pixie), maybe the company hauls all freight needed for its employees. Much like an offshore oil rig situation. You don't have Free Traders doing spec between the mainland and the rigs. So, the "trade" only exists to/from the system where the company bases its logistics from for the Pixie system operation?

Just a though and only for this explicit type of set up.

 

[Dagrill]

Hi,

Whilst not Mongoose, I have just read page 120 of the core T5 rules, which talks and provides examples of "Guest" clones as a labour force, with personality edited out.

Regards

David

 

[HG_B]

Hi,

Whilst not Mongoose, I have just read page 120 of the core T5 rules, which talks and provides examples of "Guest" clones as a labour force, with personality edited out.

Regards

David

Not really applicable to this example as the 3I has outlawed slavery...

 

[rancke]

In this very limited example (Pixie), maybe the company hauls all freight needed for its employees. Much like an offshore oil rig situation. You don't have Free Traders doing spec between the mainland and the rigs. So, the "trade" only exists to/from the system where the company bases its logistics from for the Pixie system operation?

But free traders already handle only the odd bits that the regular freighters and liners miss. Maybe the only regular merchants that touch on Pixie all belong to General Shipyards (or General Products), but any other world with a similar population will have Oberlindes or Sinzarmes or Ekatur handling all the regular traffic just as General Shipyards handle all the regular traffic to Pixie. So the amount of trade and traffic that "falls through the cracks" should be similar.


Hans

 

[HG_B]

So the amount of trade and traffic that "falls through the cracks" should be similar.


Hans

Not for a closed company situation. The is no trade that falls between the cracks on Oil rigs. But, as I stated, it only explains extreme/limited situations like this. Not places where there is any significant pop "outside" of the single concern.

 

[rancke]

I think transients do not count in poulation, otherwise you'd be massively overcounting the population of Charted Space.

I don't think double-counting a few thousand transients here and there -- or a few millions for that matter -- would result in any detectable overcounting.

When a scout ship visits a world it must make an effort to avoid double counting people, so asking for a register of citizens is a good starting point for producing the population stat.

If a world is organized enough to provide the Scouts with an accurate census, it's probably organized enough to provide a list of people who are currently offworld.

I don't think we've ever been told the purpose of compiling UWPs. We know the Scouts do it, but for whose benefit? What purpose?

If you check on the population of Antarctica, Wikipedia will inform you that it varies between 1000 in winter to 5000 in summer. And I can guarantee you that each and every one of that number is also being counted somewhere else. But it's a lot more useful (or at least interesting) to be told that there's a 1000 people on Antarctica in winter than to be told that there are zero, because they're a citizens of othert countries so they don't count.

They count all right. Even if they do count twice.


Hans

 

[HG_B]

If a world is organized enough to provide the Scouts with an accurate census, it's probably organized enough to provide a list of people who are currently offworld.

Hans

Agreed. The 3I would probably require people obtain 3I citizen passports for interstellar travel. Those would be scanned into a database as you arrive & depart systems.

If Imperial starports regularly upstreamed that data, automated software could also spot fraudulent passport usage...

 

[Dagrill]

If you check on the population of Antarctica, Wikipedia will inform you that it varies between 1000 in winter to 5000 in summer. And I can guarantee you that each and every one of that number is also being counted somewhere else. But it's a lot more useful (or at least interesting) to be told that there's a 1000 people on Antarctica in winter than to be told that there are zero, because they're a citizens of othert countries so they don't count.
Hans

Hi,

Not sure Antartica is a good example, (other than as a colony), in view of how eager everyone is to exploit the resources there.

I feel I should say that World Gen irrititates me the most about Traveller and IMTU
many worlds would be unrecognisable due to the changes I have made to Population, Government, Law and Tech level.

Regards

David

 

[BytePro]

...
If you check on the population of Antarctica, Wikipedia will inform you...

Wikipedia :rofl:

My bathroom has a population when someone is in it. My attic has a population - of insects (darn it!).

Antarctica has a transient population. There is no official unqualified population of Antarctica - just a colloquial count.

Beating a dead horse can be amusing on casual observation. Just plain sad on continued observation and consideration. Carcass starts to smell after a while, too. (So I'll stop commenting about this issue!)

 

[rancke]

Antarctica has a transient population. There is no official unqualified population of Antarctica - just a colloquial count.

Exactly my point.


Hans

 

[BytePro]

Exactly - so Scouts would report an official population of 0.

In their world description they would state the world typically hosts a transient research population of 1000-2000 beings from other systems.

 

[rancke]

Exactly - so Scouts would report an official population of 0.

That's what you think. I think they would either report a population of 1000 (the minimum) or one of 3000 (the average).

But that's part of the problem. We don't actually know just what it is the Scouts count. The rules says that the population score indicates inhabitants and Merriam-Webster says that an inhabitant is "one that occupies a particular place regularly, routinely, or for a period of time". I submit that while some transients (like visiting starship crew) obviously don't count towards that, some (like starport and shipyard personnel) just as obviously would count. It certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with citizenship or the lack thereof.

Thinking of the trade rules, I think that a good suggestion for what the Scouts count is those people found in a system that has an obvious economic "footprint".

In their world description they would state the world typically hosts a transient research population of 1000-2000 beings from other systems.

How many world descriptions do you know of that make that distinction? I just took a quick browse through Behind the Claw and most of the low-population worlds are 'populated' by transients. Researchers from offworld universities are popular, as is mining colonies. There are some where you might argue that the recently arrived population of outsiders could have decided to put down roots and become permanent residents. There's even one or two where such an argument would be plausible (there's one where the population are all farmers; they presumably plan to stay, although one would hope for their descendants that they get enough more immigrants to make a viable population soon).

As for Pixie, I see no more justification for counting 90 anarchic belters than for not counting the starport and shipyard personnel. Either way something is wrong. Pixie should either have a population score of 0 or of 3 or 4. Possibly as low as 2. Pop 1 is right out.


Hans

 

[BytePro]

That's what you think.

Indeed - and you quoted me and agreed with 'Exactly'.

I think they would either report a population of 1000 (the minimum) or one of 3000 (the average).

Certainly an option. Most definitely not the only option. By the rules and as provide in the official setting, they report extremely low to 0 'population' with facilities like starports. Which logically entails other options. Anyone is free to choose to be illogical about it, of course.

 

[rancke]

Indeed - and you quoted me and agreed with 'Exactly'.

That a population was reported despite being composed entirely of transients. Therefore being a transient did not rule out being counted as part of the population.

Certainly an option. Most definitely not the only option.

Just the one that makes sense.

By the rules and as provide in the official setting, they report extremely low to 0 'population' with facilities like starports. Which logically entails other options.

None of which are consistently applied in canon.

Anyone is free to choose to be illogical about it, of course.

I'll treat that remark with all the respect it deserves.


Hans

 

[BytePro]

:file_21:

Thanks for the laughs!

 

[McPerth]

As I said in other threads, one of the things that makes me think the pop digit in UWP represents the permanent (censed) population in the system is the fact that UWP is quite fixed, while transients in a system may vary a lot.

To keep with the same example you gave about Anctartica, let's imagine the population varied by a factor of 10 from summer to winter (so, instead of population varying from 1000 to 5000 ir varied from 1000 to 10,000. What digit would that represent, 3 or 4?

I can envision planets whose population varies by a factor of 10 or more from 'in season' to 'off season', being due to solar activity, proximity of a companion that varies habitability, unstable or highly excentric orbits, etc..., yet the pop stat in its UWP is not variable (in fact the only variations on it I've seen are for very good reasons, as MT:HT).

 

[rancke]

As I said in other threads, one of the things that makes me think the pop digit in UWP represents the permanent (censed) population in the system is the fact that UWP is quite fixed, while transients in a system may vary a lot.

And as I've just pointed out, a) the definition doesn't mention citizenship and censuses at all (nor, as I didn't point out then but will now, would all these worlds even have a census to begin with) and b) a lot of canonical populations (including most low-population worlds with descriptions) are composed entirely of transients.

To keep with the same example you gave about Anctartica, let's imagine the population varied by a factor of 10 from summer to winter (so, instead of population varying from 1000 to 5000 ir varied from 1000 to 10,000. What digit would that represent, 3 or 4?

Whatever the Chief Suveyor thought was the best way to resolve the problem. Either the minimum or the average. Mind you, the kind of transients I'm talking about wouldn't vary with the seasons. He'd be on the world for a tour of duty and would be replaced by another transient when he left. Allow me to coin the term 'stable transient' for that sort of inhabitant. We thus have three sort of people rather than two: permanent residents, stable transients, and (short-term) transients.

I submit that the permanent residents (if any) and stable transients should both qualify as 'inhabitants'.


Hans