Worlds without Roads

[atpollard]

Depending on how much time and effort you want to put in to it, you start off with the initial colonization, how much money and resources they had access to, what tech base can they maintain, and then let it organically grow.

Hehe ... now we are in danger of a "why I don't adventure in the OTU" rant.

Biter had 20 million people 700 years ago when it was smashed in a war and has recovered to an Ag world of 3 million people.

I have no idea how long ago it was settled, but long enough that the decedents could have walked anywhere on Biter by now. Ag suggests broad population distribution across large swathes of the surface. Farms and ranches of thousands to tens of thousands of acres all along the water sources. All that surplus food has to get to a city to be processed and to a Downport to be exported so you can pay for that new combine to increase farm yield. That means long roads with heavy trucks used very infrequently. That is expensive to build and maintain and the cost is spread among only 3 million people ... about 750,000 families.

[Or something else if roads are not affordable.]



Please suggest an alternative settlement pattern.
I would love to hear how you think the last 700+ years unfolded.

I am not right, I am just trying to wrap my head around the details of a fairly typical Traveller world.

 

[Condottiere]

As I said, it depends on how much time and energy you want to invest.

If you study historical maps and geography, combined with historical happenings like wars, plagues, economic bubbles, and so on, demographics and transport systems start to make sense.

That would allow you a model to apply on Biter.

If they dropped an atomic bomb on the capital city, it may have been moved closer to an economic centre, especially if eighty percent of the electorate got wiped out. Or they may have rebuilt it, in order for the next regime to retain the remnants of legitimacy.

 

[flykiller]

if all those dash-cam videos on YouTube are any indication.

my understanding is that all vehicles in russia are required to have dash cams. so, every time there's an accident the whole world gets to see it. meanwhile most accidents in most other countries are unrecorded and thus not observed. thus russia's accident rate is disproportionately represented.

 

[atpollard]

As I said, it depends on how much time and energy you want to invest.

Not that much.

I was looking for B.O.T.E. order of magnitude data to establish some parametric guidelines for what to expect when a ship docks on a world and someone wants to leave the starport. Odds are I will have little more than a Name, UPP and trade codes as a starting point.

100 hours of modeling planetary settlement patterns is too much effort to determine whether they need to Rent a Car or Charter a Plane or Ride the Train to another city. I would rather put that time into the next few adventures.

 

[McPerth]

I agree.
However, this is the obvious next point.
And what happens on TL 5-8 worlds with millions of people?

I guess at those TLs most population with an unified government are clustered in a handful small cities, as, not in small part for the problems you say, it would be quite difficult to maintain a unified government in such conditions.

It's also (IMHO) quite likely those clusters are along the coasts, allowing for maritime traffic among them, so being in fact islands of population in an ohterwise unpopulated world.

So, the land transport needss are only for those clusters, not for the entire planet (while some routes among them can exist, equivalent to the "caravan roads" that cross unpopulated áreas on Earth, and even some railroads, equivalent to the Transiberian, if they are seen as needed), and most traffic among them being carries by sea (or air, on the top TLs).

Even if the government is balkanized, the most likely situation (again IMHO) is several city-states, each one forming one of those clusters.

See that this is more or less the situation depicted in Aramis (B659772-6)^{note 1} in the Cadre ticket in LBB4 page 23 (or at least as I understand it): several coastal enclaves on the only moderately large continent of the planet and a large out-track, thinly populated with no formal government

note 1: there ae two planets named Aramis in SM. This one is the one in 2540, not the Subsector Capital in 3110​

 

[Condottiere]

I'd still do with coast and riverine traffic, especially if natural resources are adjacent.

Waterways only require minimal maintenance, and you can scale traffic as needed.

 

[atpollard]

I'd still do with coast and riverine traffic, especially if natural resources are adjacent.

Waterways only require minimal maintenance, and you can scale traffic as needed.

I agree.
Rivers, lakes and coasts are an under used resource in world descriptions.

Imagine a world where the downport and three largest cities are all located along a "Mississippi" or "Nile" type of river and large boats are the best way to get from point A to point B. So the characters start the adventure waiting to board a riverboat for a four hour cruise to the first stop and a 30 hour trip to their destination. That would be different than jumping on the high speed rail and arriving at the city in 20 minutes.

I love that sort of local color for a world.
For IMTU TL 7-9 "Biter", I went with a Wing-in-Ground-Effect Flying Boat as a 'fast' transport between towns and cities. Suddenly, the locations of rivers and lakes becomes important.

 

[Condottiere]

You may want an inner sea, in that case.

 

[atpollard]

You may want an inner sea, in that case.

That would have been ideal.
I am actually more of a LBB1-3 Traveller fan.
I like the challenge of taking the random cards you are dealt and just making them work. The problems become opportunities for stories.

I used an online random generator and kept the first map that had about 40% water. It turned out to be one super-continent surrounded by a small pole to pole ocean. This placed most of the population on the East/West coasts with most of the flights being along the coast or trans-oceanic.

There are small (10 seat) private charters that do river hops between the towns inland.

It has been a lot of fun.

Most freight is via tracked vehicles that follow unimproved paths (or ships that have not played a part in the story).

 

[Condottiere]

I don't think you'll have canals, just widening of existing waterways.

Since this is scifi with an accelerated tech development, by the time your economic centres need that type of communications, they'll set up a railway.

 

[atpollard]

I don't think you'll have canals, just widening of existing waterways.

Since this is scifi with an accelerated tech development, by the time your economic centres need that type of communications, they'll set up a railway.

With that level of personal interest, are you a member of the Cartographer's Guild (the website for fans of maps and artists)?

 

[Condottiere]

No, but I look at a lot of maps, historical, campaign and battle.

I got interested when in Geography the text book illustrated settlement development types and town planning.

 

[aramis]

I am going to question this assumption as well. There are two reasons why roads need maintenance. Use and weather.

Using a road (i.e. driving on it) causes the road to shift and makes it less usable. Damage to road by use goes by the 4th order of weight. A vehicle weighing twice as much causes 16x damage to the road surface. So a road built to handle heavy truck traffic can handle any number of cars without significant damage. It also means if you assume the only traffic driving on the road is light passenger traffic you can both spend less on building the road (because it's not as heavy duty) and less on maintenance. There is a tipping point of course.

Weather causes it's own set of damages to the road. Freezing causes frost heaves, rain causes pot holes, sun degrades the surface, wind erodes the surface, etc. Depending upon the climatic zones on Biter, the roads may or may not be degraded by the weather at the same rate as Terran roads. The Thin atmosphere and lesser amounts of water implies less damaging kinds of weather.

There's also simple thermal change expansion/contraction of the road surface - especially notable on bridges and concrete roads, where expansion joints are de rigeur.

 

[whartung]

So how much does a road cost to build and maintain?
What is the annual per-capita cost on the population?
CAN THEY AFFORD TO BUILD ROADS?

They can't afford to NOT build roads.

Roads are a core piece of infrastructure that support commerce and trade, as well as potentially defense.

You may have scattered settlers "off the grid" out in the "frontier", but even then they'll rely on trails at least, and especially in any place that isn't plowing their fields with sticks, nobody is self reliant -- they all need supplies and materials, at least they do if they're participating in society.

 

[flykiller]

Roads are a core piece of infrastructure that support commerce and trade, as well as potentially defense.

a potential core piece, sure. such needs also can be met by aircraft, railroads, canals, and in traveller grav transport. which works best is determined entirely by local resources and circumstances.

 

[flykiller]

100 hours of modeling planetary settlement patterns is too much effort to determine whether they need to Rent a Car or Charter a Plane or Ride the Train to another city. I would rather put that time into the next few adventures.

you could set the adventure on the transport. a train would work best for that, and trains are universal from tech 5 to present day.

what was that movie - midnight train to calcutta or something?

 

[Condottiere]

As colonialists, they'll have collective memories of the most suitable transport infrastructure that a prevailing industrial base can support.

One advantage is, they know what they should have next.

 

[atpollard]

They can't afford to NOT build roads.

Roads are a core piece of infrastructure that support commerce and trade, as well as potentially defense.

You may have scattered settlers "off the grid" out in the "frontier", but even then they'll rely on trails at least, and especially in any place that isn't plowing their fields with sticks, nobody is self reliant -- they all need supplies and materials, at least they do if they're participating in society.

The IMTU "Biter" is only TL 7-9 (depending on region), so one solution I implemented was to make 'Pickup trucks' as tracked vehicles capable of travel over unimproved dirt paths. Since they can't afford to build/maintain roads, the vehicles need to accommodate the conditions. However, 60 kph is common on a road, but 30 kph is a more reasonable speed for travel through unimproved terrain. This makes overland travel a significant effort in terms of time. A recent 1600 km trip to the nearest town requires over 53 hours of travel ... about 4 long days of hard driving for most people. Compare that to 16 hours at 100 kph driving on an interstate highway.

This is where these questions about roads first arose. From attempting to connect small scattered towns across a great savanna.

 

[Condottiere]

You're going to want a GPS system.

 

[Timerover51]

So how much does a road cost to build and maintain?
What is the annual per-capita cost on the population?
CAN THEY AFFORD TO BUILD ROADS?

Do you want me to check with my friend on the cost of building new roads and maintaining them in Lake County, Illinois? It should be noted that this is a well-developed area with a large labor pool and plenty of companies familiar with road construction and maintenance. We do not have any problems with terrain, such as building in mountains, crossing large rivers, or dealing with large areas of swamp or virgin forest. All of those add to the cost.

I do have information from my various Army manuals on the time it takes to build a given length of road in a given terrain and area. However, that data would assume a high level of mechanization and ready availability of construction materials.

Edit Note: Am I correct in assuming a Tech Level of between 7 and 9 for the planet?