[Space] System Generator

[Pomphis]

See ? Physical work is dangerous. Don´t do it. Concentrate on your duties and create new cocktails. I don´t recall details, but I once spent major parts of a summer in my (then) favorite bar (it closed) on making new cocktails based on port. I am sure that there are many other new continents to discover.

[Pragmatic]

Bumping to check for progress.

[Rupert]

IME the only ways to get decent service when it comes to computers is to either do it yourself, have a good friend do it while you sit round giving 'helpful' advice and drink their good coffee, or if you must have a shop do it get a time from them when it will be done and turn up at that time and hang round being a nuisance until it's done - that way they'll at least start working on it when you turn up to collect it.

[Fnordianslip]

Damn you Agemegos! I'm supposed to be working on thermodynamics and physical chemistry tomorrow, but I think you can guess what I'll be spending my time on... I can hardly wait to check out the spreadsheet. Glad to hear your mac got back in one piece as well!

[Bandii]

Will we eventually be able to specify star types?

[Mgellis]

I've been playing with this...

So far...WOW. :)

I love that while it randomly generates solar systems, you can control the random number seeds and, if you want, "restore" old solar systems you want to take a second look at.

One request...any way to add an extra decimal place to some parts of the display? It's sort of odd when you see things like M6 star...luminosity: 0 or tiny rock planet...mass: 0. :) Yes, you can go to the World Details table, but it would be nice to see it on the "main" display.

One possible issue...I got a few odd results with worlds that look like they should be tidally locked, but aren't. I got one Earth-like world orbiting an M5 star, with a system that is 8.8 billion years old, but (unless I read the display on the World Details table incorrectly) it is NOT tidally locked. That seems really odd.

Universe: 99, System: 110115

Thank you. This is already very cool. I can't wait to see the "post-alpha" versions.

Mark

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Select the cell you want to alter. Choose <Format> <number> and alter the number of decimal places.

This actually didn't work, but reducing the font size to 9 did. Go figure.

Mark

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Do you have the corrected version? How is tidal locking looking to you?

I am finding that a preponderance of 'habitable' planets are either so cold that it is hard to imagine there being any liquid water at their surfaces, or else tidally locked, or else alternately scorched and frozen by the eccentricity of their orbits.

When I rework this stuff for my own use I'm going to have to make the Ocean/Garden disambiguation a lot more forgiving to young planets, as well as banishing the excessive eccentric Jupiters, and cutting down orbital eccentricities altogether. And forget about randomly generating anything much dimmer than M2.

Tidal locking is looking better...mind you, I have no actual science to back this up; it's more of a "yeah, that makes sense" evaluation. :)

I haven't been seeing too many ultra-cold garden planets, but perhaps I'm just not hitting the right random numbers. (Of course, if I was actually using the program to design solar systems for a campaign, an article, or an e-book, I would just cheat and ignore any solar system I didn't feel made sense...as long as you've got about 75% M-type stars and 15% K-type stars and 10% everything else, I figure it will be "close enough for gaming.")

Mark

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

It seems to me that you waste an awful lot of time rolling up one hundred systems for every plausibly habitable world you get.

Not anymore, thanks to you. :)

Seriously, I can run through 100 solar systems with your spreadsheet in a matter of minutes. That's MUCH faster than creating even one system with dice, figuring out what the results mean using the rules in GURPS Space, etc. Even if I was throwing out four out of five solar systems for one reason or another (most of the time, the reason would probably be, "Yes, a plausible solar system, but very DULL...let's see what the next random number seed brings..."), I could map out an area of space as large as a subsector from Traveller (i.e., 30-40 solar systems) in a couple of hours. That would give most people enough room to run a campaign for a very long time.

Even in its Alpha incarnation, your spreadsheet is a thing of joy and beauty. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Mark

[Mgellis]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

I generated a hundred solitary stars of mass 2.0. 96% were white dwarfs. None had a habitable planet or moon.

I generated a hundred solitary stars of mass 1.9. 94% were white dwarfs. None had a habitable planet or moon.

Are you bragging or complaining? :)

More important, does this mean you can now assign a mass to a star and the program will randomly generate the rest of the solar system?

By the way, going back to some earlier comments you made, one habitable planet for every one hundred solar systems does not seem unreasonable. It is interesting that for each of these worlds, there might be several that are "gardens" in that there is liquid water, some oxygen in the atmosphere, and some kind of life, but which might not be very "habitable" by human standards. This seems quite plausible. It's interesting that so many are tide-locked worlds that orbit M-type stars. A glitch in the "rules" or a reasonable extrapolation of what science is trying to tell us, that life can establish itself almost anywhere where there is liquid water and, once it is established, tends to keep itself going, flourishing even in some pretty odd places?

Thanks.

Mark