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Old 03-28-2019, 06:48 PM   #1
hal
 
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Default What do you think the Long Night was like?

Hello Folks,
The subject line says it all. As things begin to wind down from the end days of the Second Imperium, slowly but surely, the Second Imperium begins to sink into a relative dark age due to the lack of trade amongst worlds.

One would expect that worlds whose population are less than modern day towns (110,000 for example was the town I grew up in back in the 1960's and 70's). Such a town might have some manufacturing capabilities, but without access to raw materials (ores, petroleum, etc) its industries would scale back or die out entirely. Without replacement parts for those goods manufactured elsewhere in the United States - its capital investments would eventually grind to a halt.

As I see it, it is sort of like TRAVELLER: THE NEW ERA in the sense that parts begin to wear out and support of technology is at a premium. We don't have the same cause of massive population die outs per se, but I have to ask...

If Medical technology requires vaccines, medical drugs, etc - to maintain its core of medical support, if you cut off that support, it would flag (ie slow down) and become a lower tech medical society over time.

My question then is this:

What population rating would it take to maintain for example, a TL (GURPS Tech this time!) 3 society? TL 4? TL 5 etc.

Clearly, the founding of the Colony in the Americas (such as Plymouth, Boston, New Amsterdam/New York City etc) could be founded and could even avoid sinking too deeply from the parent tech.

So - thoughts? How many class A starports would you think a full sector could have without reigniting trade to "Imperial" Levels, but perhaps maintain a low grade of trade with one or two worlds over time with no more than a handful of starships?
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Old 03-28-2019, 07:01 PM   #2
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

The lazy option is 'max TL = population code', probably with an exception that pop-9 and up are uncapped.
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Old 03-28-2019, 07:25 PM   #3
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

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Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
The lazy option is 'max TL = population code', probably with an exception that pop-9 and up are uncapped.
Day-YUM! That is a sweet possibility. That slurping sound you heard was of me stealing the idea as foundational for what I'd like to do.

At TL 3, we had cities that could reach population values in the region of 10's of thousands. 90% (or thereabouts) were involved in food production. What if we went the route of determining the population NOT involved in food production?

Just tossing out ideas - but your lazy option looks appealing to an extent.
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Old 03-28-2019, 09:26 PM   #4
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

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The lazy option is 'max TL = population code', probably with an exception that pop-9 and up are uncapped.
Why uncapped? I could fully believe that tech levels above a certain point require the material, economic, and demographic support of an interstellar trade network, and are unsustainable on an isolated, single world.
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Old 03-28-2019, 10:07 PM   #5
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

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Why uncapped?
We have enough canon of solo worlds or very small groups of worlds that exceed TL A. The most extreme examples would be Darrian (TL-G, total pop including colonies not likely over B) and Samiqys (reached limited TL-H without being interstellar capable, so presumably not above pop-A before they wiped themselves out).

If you're using GURPS TL instead of Traveller TL you can probably keep the mapping.
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Old 03-29-2019, 05:39 PM   #6
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

The "Long Night," like the "Middle Ages," is mainly a self congratulatory tag to say "We are better than what came before us. And we represent true connection to the worthy and legitimate past." The whole idea of "The Long Night" is about saying the Villani are worthy and the Solimani are illegitimate troublemakers.

Doubtless many places were cultured and sophisticated during "The Long Night," just as the European "Dark Ages" weren't all that dark in much of Europe and the wider world.
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Old 03-29-2019, 07:11 PM   #7
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

That begs the question Astromancer...

The dissolultion of the First Imperium/Second Imperium resulted in a period in which worlds were no longer connected to each other, but became separated in some shape/fashion/form.

Something like that is not going to be a "business as usual" kind of affair, and if back sliding does happen (where worlds are not self-sufficient), it would accelerate a process in which the degeneration would take hold, then eventually loosen its grip.

Now, if there were ANY planets capable of stepping up and exerting authority, they would have done so, but then the question becomes one of "Why didn't they take over more of their neighbors when they had the capability?"

In other words, those worlds who could manufacture and maintain jump capable ships should have had an easy time forcing their less capable neighbors into relationships that favored them over all else.

There was a LONG time between when the Second Imperium goes under and when the Third Imperium takes the stage doing just what I outlined above. They organized, used their ability to produce jump capable ships to exert their power projection (navy and military) along with their economic power (which these days is called soft power). Military as Hard, economic ties as soft - why literally CENTURIES passing before the Third Imperium starts the process rolling?

Scenarios:

Low population, low resource worlds can maintain jump drives and manufacture small drives - but doesn't have the structure to project their power or the economic activity to form soft power.

High pop worlds capable of organization, but lacking the technology or assets required to produce jump drives

A high pop world with a low pop high tech would should have been able to pair together with an alliance and then proceed to dominate their neighbors via the same mechanisms as outlined in POCKET EMPIRES.

A high tech Hi Pop world capable of being the nucleus of the next Imperium at the best, or a major pocket empire at the least.

If you look at the timeline of events:


-200 Ravages of the Long Night have reduced the Chanestin Kingdom's fleet to a single jump-capable ship. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 09.

This implies that somehow, Chanestin is either losing jump capable ships due to activity against their ships, or they are losing ships due to a degeneration in capability to maintain and manufacture new parts or new ships.

-107 Sylean trader-emissaries executed as spies by the Chanestin Kingdom, based on Keshi (Core 1938); war results. Travellers' Digest #10, DGP, 1987, p. 25.

In the span of 93 years, Chanestin is somehow capable of going to war with other star systems/confederations?


-102 Chanestin victories have resulted in the capture of several Sylean worlds. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 09.

Five years later, Chanestin is winning against the Sylean Confederation???


-100 Sylean Expansion Wars end with Sylean dominance of the Sylean Main. Travellers' Digest #09, DGP, 1987, p. 37.

Ah, so Sylea is fighting a multiple front war by this time? That starts to make sense.

-69 Sylean Federation begins an offensive to recapture the worlds conquered by the Chanestin Kingdom, which results in a 25-year war of attrition. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 10.

More war, which in turn means more opportunities to lose jump capable ships, or devotes resources towards war instead of peace time pursuits that improve the quality of life or increment the civilian research into better technology.


-44 The Chanestin Kingdom and the Sylean Federation, worn out over their 63-year-old war, agree on a peace treaty. Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 10.

Ok, now we're at peace right?

-25 The Chanestin Kingdom, seeing the threat posed by the expansion of the Sylean Federation, launches a deep strike against Shudusham (Core 2214). Milieu 0 Campaign, Imperium Games, 1996, p. 10.

Now Chanestin becomes aware that it is a fight for survival - not due to hard power projected by the Sylean Confederation, but by its soft power. Alliances are being formed that are HUGE, economic ties are being forged that bind worlds together. This is the start of the Federation going from a pocket empire to something larger, which in the next 25 years, presage the birth of the Third Imperium.

Ultimately? The Long night has to see the capability for trade diminish in some fashion due to the lack of technology to maintain sufficient fleets for trade. It has to politically fragment so thoroughly, that it doesn't begin to regrow. It goes from about -1200 on down to the year -25 ish before we begin to see a change from such disjointed political entities to where we have wars of pacification, wars of unification, and wars of pure naked aggression. Cue the Emperor's Theme song as Cleon the First takes the throne.

Just as Trade slowed down dramatically during the Dark ages of the Middle Ages - but did not necessarily disappear entirely, so too would the situation be problematical.

As I dig in deeper, I'm seeing something I'd neglected...

Minor races are those worlds in which humanity never discovered the jump drive, but were seeded by the Ancients. Sylea is one of those worlds that had a native human population before the Vilani met up with them.

THAT is going to make life a bit difficult in trying to construct a narrative. :(
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Old 03-30-2019, 12:54 PM   #8
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

What do I think the Long Night was like? Very different to how the Sylean Federation would paint it in order to legitimise their incorporation as The Imperium.

I will try to explain where I am coming from with this conclusion, but to do so we have to backtrack a bit.
Cultures change over time. The Vilani pre-Imperium were explorers, merchants, colonisers, adventurers. They then became blood thirsty oppressors for a thousand years of consolidation wars. They then settled into deliberate cultural and technological stagnation. Which of these three represents the true nature of the Vilani?

The Ziru Sirka was made up of Vilani worlds (after five millennia of occupation I don't think the word colonies really fits), worlds with minor human races that were interfertile with Vilani (so some Vilani hybridisation is likely and some members of these races would end up on Vilani worlds), and finally worlds originally occupied by minor 'alien' races (which would also end up with a human population components as well as migrating to Vilani/minor human race worlds).

How would these ex-Ziru Sirka worlds, cut off from the authorities that enforced the cultural stagnation, change over nearly two thousand years? Vilani tech stagnation wasn't the only way they kept a lid on TL development, they spread the manufacture of critical high TL machinery over several worlds, with the final assembly of those components at another, the net effect of this black box method being that few worlds knew everything about construction of TL8+. Once cut off from regular trade there was likely to be a TL regression with one big caveat - the presence of Terran humans on some worlds.
Any ZS world with a sizable Terran fleet/army presence has the joined up knowledge of the technology to have a stab at maintaining the machinery - Note that Sylea was such a world...

Interstellar government and cultural stagnation went away, leaving worlds to develop their own economies, political systems and cultural norms. It is those worlds you explore during a long night campaign, and it is those worlds that have had almost two thousand years to develop their own way of doing things that the Sylean Federation would seek to re-incorporate into their new Imperium.
First they have to convince those worlds of the benefits of signing up, second they invent the fiction of a dark age during which humanity regressed and there was much suffering.

So there you go - my views on the OTU long night - it is a fiction invented by the Syleans to give more credence to their re-establishment of an Imperium. Yes the Vilani Imperium eventually collapsed at the interstellar level, but this would not cause the die back and economic collapse of entire systems that you see in the MT Hard Times era then Virus outbreak.
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Old 03-30-2019, 02:03 PM   #9
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

Quote:
Originally Posted by hal View Post
Day-YUM! That is a sweet possibility. That slurping sound you heard was of me stealing the idea as foundational for what I'd like to do.

At TL 3, we had cities that could reach population values in the region of 10's of thousands. 90% (or thereabouts) were involved in food production. What if we went the route of determining the population NOT involved in food production?

Just tossing out ideas - but your lazy option looks appealing to an extent.
Remember many supplements that spoke of the Long Night mentioned that, if they maintained electrical generation, they often maintained their technology. Hydro-dams and similar power sources that are renewable without advanced replacement parts or manufacturing bases, would mean a longer time to build the ecconomic base to a stable level.
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Old 03-30-2019, 08:49 PM   #10
hal
 
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Default Re: What do you think the Long Night was like?

Hey Mike,
Thanks for your thoughts. I'll be thinking about what you said and have some thoughts to send back your way.

Part of the problems from where I sit is the fact that much of "things" that have been written about, are all at a remote level. In other words, the authors write of things in an abstract manner without having specifics in front of them to work with.

Case in point - although CT Book 6 SCOUTS was published in 1983, but we largely don't see stellar information being attached to the star systems until 1985 with the Spinward Marches campaign. Yet - much of what we have about the long night stems from books that were written in 1980 (Library A-M for instance).

In all honesty, it would have been madness to try and generate ALL of the stellar data for each of the star systems in the Third Imperium (or first, or second for that matter). Then we have the issue of "lesser races" - humanity that had been seeded by the Ancients, who never discovered the jump drive on their own.

Possibilities for starting settlement dates for any given world range from prehistoric times (Ancients) on up to First Imperium on through modern times of the Third Imperium (prior to the civil war, prior to the virus etc). As a consequence, there was no attention paid to the possibility that populations on M Class stars may very well have died out due to the low energy output of such stars and the inability to maintain large groups of population with food and such. I'd seriously doubt that the Ancients would have settled worlds that were of marginal interest to them and their "pets" (what were humans in those days anyhow???!!!). Vargr are an uplifted species in the sense that they were modified from canine stock and turned into an actual race. With so much left unanswered from the Ancients days, it is hard to conjecture anything about it- and as a result of it, can justify anything that the random die rolls present us. <shrug>

None the less - what is NOT answered with regards to the "Long night is a fable" approach is this:

Let's say you have this "Set" - let's call it a simple circle for now. It is the totality of known space and all of the settled worlds. Draw another circle - but this time, let's make it larger than the initial circle. This is "all of the unknown space and known space within the Galaxy here in this dimension". Thus, that area outside the first circle is unknown. That area inside the circle is known. The area within the first circle might even have a new circle inscribed within that, which we're going to call the First Imperium. Now, everything within that circle are all of the known worlds that were part of the First Imperium. They were ruled by their masters, they were connected by trade, taxation, and possibly even a unified culture (unlike what the Third Imperium would become!). If the whole "Long Night" is a fiction - the question arises...

That circle represents 100% of the First Imperium. By the time of the Third Imperium, it is no longer a full 100% unified and functioning entity, but instead, a fragmented area that lacks unification, lack of a monolithic culture, and certainly a lack of trade/tax flow. So we go from 100% unified 1st imperium to something, which in turn becomes the starting point of the Third Imperium as it attempts to reunify things. In some aspects - despite there being no black wars - wouldn't the dissolution of a unifying culture imply that there would be regressions for those worlds incapable of self-sufficiency? Wouldn't there had to have been a time period in which those worlds - STILL retaining their electricity power generation capabilities - have eventually grown strong enough within the span of only few centuries to reform and take over the former 1st Imperium territory? Year -1776 is credited with the time as the fall of the Second Imperium, despite the fact that the Second Imperium still existed. Sort of the Roman Empire still existing on records, but instead of maintaining its borders, is now starting to shrink.

What shrunk relative to the First Imperium? Did worlds die out? Did worlds go "rogue" telling the Second Imperium "Take your quotas, your laws, and your tax impositions - and put them where the sun don't shine?" Did break away regions come into being? Did the Second Imperium start to suffer a multiple but slow motion fracturing not unlike that of the Civil war that was to tear the Third Imperium apart rapidly in MegaTraveller?

We know that you mine ore from deep within the ground, and we know that ore has to be purified, broken free from the rock - before it can be turned into swords. Yet - few of us could tell you specifically how it is done right? When an author tells us "They mined the ore and created an industrial empire" - we can vaguely understand the HOW of it.

HOW did the Second Imperium fragment? What happened during this break up period? Why did the break up period last so long? How long did it take for the Sylean Federation to go from a federation to an EMPIRE builder? How long did it take to recover all of the First and Second Imperium's territory before it is a mature Third Imperium?

Star Travel isn't about hopping aboard a ship, setting sail on the space ocean and catching the Solar Winds or jump space winds etc - reaching your destination and starting colonies and outposts. It is a logistical effort that would resemble in cost, a minor war. Then those colonies have to repay their initial cost in some fashion, as few people are willing to toss away good money for an altruistic endeavor. Those Colonies then mature at some point in time, take on a character of their own, and desire their own self-determination if at all possible.

More on this in my next post
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