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Old 04-19-2020, 04:47 PM   #11
Anaraxes
 
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.
But that's not the case. The Enterprise routinely runs into technologically superior aliens (Andromedans, Melkotians, Talosians, Squire of Gothos, Apollo, the Organians, the Borg, Q, Dominion, etc). They also run into primitive societies, both capable of interstellar and interplanetary travel, or not.

There's something of a selection bias in that only some interesting stories get told, and "All out war, Federation vs the Squire's Parent's Nation's Army" wouldn't be very interesting, and neither would "Federation Orbital Bombardment of the Ming China Planet" (outside of the Mirror Universe version of the show. Sometimes such things even happen, but offscreen (Federation vs. the Borg). Then there's that annoying habit of advanced races all being evolved past the point of caring about silly wars, which takes out most of that half of the possible stories.

But it's not true that everyone in the galaxy is at the same tech level.
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Old 04-19-2020, 04:56 PM   #12
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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You have ~16,000 stars in ~11,000 systems within 100 ly, which probably translates to ~110,000 asteroid belts, gas giants, and/or terrestrial planets around the stars. Our current numbers are based on what we can detect, which is fairly limited, as the majority of the detections depend on either large objects close to small stars or objects oriented exactly so that we can observe transits across the star reliably. We are likely seeing the unusual systems rather than the normal systems.

While I agree that our current data on exoplanets is limited, I'm inclined to use numbers proposed by astronomers as a base if Ii can. I'm basing these numbers on the estimate of "In November 2013, astronomers reported, based on Kepler space mission data, that there could be as many as 40 billion Earth-sized planets orbiting in the habitable zones of Sun-like stars and red dwarfs in the Milky Way, 11 billion of which may be orbiting Sun-like stars."


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If you take the above assumptions, then we can extrapolate further. Let us extrapolate that a minimum of 20% of the systems have worlds with complex life, a minimum of 20% of those worlds have supported technological sapients in their past, a minimum of 20% of those worlds currently support technological sapients, and a minimum of 20% of those worlds have warp. You would end up with ~2200 worlds with complex life, ~440 worlds with previous technological sapients, ~88 worlds with existent technological sapients, and ~18 species with warp. That is more Star Trek numbers and allows a Warp 6 ship a decent probability of finding something or someone of interest.

I'm not assuming that warp 6 is a commonly achieved speed until late in the setting. Do you have a reason for those specific extrapolations or do those numbers just feel better to you?
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:17 PM   #13
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

These are numbers that would fit best with a Star Trek like space opera, large enough to be interesting and small enough not to be overwhelming. As for population growth, the past fifty years of our history has shown that, on average, human fertility drops as average wealth increases, to the point where every developed nation has negative population growth without immigration, so a warp capable society not expanding beyond a defensive perimeter would be quite possible. Women have better things to do than to just have babies and/or families require two incomes to maintain economic stability.

It is highly unlikely that a warp capable humanity would have high population growth after the influx of wealth from the Sol System. High levels of social support (universal health care, subsidized day care, direct payments to parents, etc.) may be enough to turn negative population growth into low population growth, but the majority of women will stop at two children. Since the minorities that embrace high population growth are the ones that would most likely leave to start up colonies and get eating by unfriendly creatures, their contribution would likely be negated.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:33 PM   #14
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Originally Posted by Anaraxes View Post
But that's not the case. The Enterprise routinely runs into technologically superior aliens (Andromedans, Melkotians, Talosians, Squire of Gothos, Apollo, the Organians, the Borg, Q, Dominion, etc). They also run into primitive societies, both capable of interstellar and interplanetary travel, or not.
...
It realistically shouldn't be a single species, rather than the hundreds to thousands in the setting often separated by thousands of light years.

And I did say major players, not everyone.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:35 PM   #15
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Mixing any period SF with modern hard science in this area works out uncomfortably. Any star with a name of its' own has that because it's bright and bright stars tend to be too young to have Earth-like planets. For example, Sirius is only 240 million years old. Vega is twice that but that's till not nearly enough. Antares is only 11 million years old and isn't going to get much older (BOOM!).

Sure, and the farther away from Earth, the more speculative the data will be. I'm not so concerned with named stars as such, but things like the local bubble, nebulas, globular streams [there is one about 33o ly away], and other real features.


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The last time we had at it on these boards we ended up with a hard science number of 200 light-years between Earth-like planets. Even the number you got out of Space 1e was 100 ly. You might have gotten terraformable worlds every 50 or 60 ly.

Do you have a link to that discussion? I searched for terraformable and didn't find anything.


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In terms of useful advice (expecially for a flexible science setting that was Trek-like) I would not try and use Real World data. I'd just make stuff up concentrating on how much time I wanted PCs to spend travelling between planets.

That's what I'll end up doing if this approach doesn't work out. I'm sure that my players won't care either way: this is just for me.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:38 PM   #16
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Originally Posted by Flyndaran View Post
That assumes all species including humans breed like rabbits. Modern prosperous nations barely have population growth. I don't see why futuristic societies would be so different just, because they're colonizing new planets.

Of course over thousands or tens of thousands of years, even minuscule growth would be "problematic" for the genre.

As has been pointed out, the ST universe is a dangerous place; although I'm toning down/eliminating a lot of the crazier stuff.


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But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.
It's a fun trope perfect for gaming, but some players may consider it a tripping point for sci fi hardness.

I don't think the players in my group will care about that.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:50 PM   #17
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Assuming it really was like Star Trek, then there are a few things to bear in mind:

1. Humans are freakishly aggressive in their expansionism. Almost none of the species with warp drive capability are nearly as fond of homesteading as humans are.

I was thinking about that but haven't done much with it. I would think that there would be a spectrum for that even if we are at one end of it.


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2. Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe. Far more, than, say, Star Wars. Human colonies routinely fail as they are eaten by crystal entities, abducted by the Borg, killed by strange radiation and attacked by aliens marking territory.

Good point, I'm planning for a less gonzo weird galaxy on the whole. There are periodic disruptions of galactic life (somewhere in the vicinity of Mass Effect's Reapers and the Borg).


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3. Humanity has a limited shelf life. All the indications are that we'll be extinct in no more than a couple of thousand years. No matter where they go they discover that the planets they visit were previously occupied by people who are gone now, Whether humanity will be gone because they were devoured by eldritch horrors, slaughtered by rebel AI or ascended into balls of light the planets they are occupying now and expanding into in the future will soon be unoccupied again. The races that actually last for a long time are the stodgy conservatives who are disinclined to innovate and expand at more than glacial speed.

Plausible for the past civilizations.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:52 PM   #18
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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But also humanity is far far FAR more inventive and luckier than any other species.

I'm considering having humanity's most common psi powers be luck/serendipity themed,
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:53 PM   #19
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Originally Posted by David Johansen View Post
I liked the premise Lost Unicorn's Star Trek game had, that the Galaxy class ships were essentially seeder ships carrying enough people to start over if Earth finally fell.

Kind of like the Culture's GSV's? I like the idea.
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Old 04-19-2020, 05:56 PM   #20
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Default Re: [Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

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Originally Posted by Phantasm View Post
What I did for my own setting was hunt down the K, G, and F type stars in a given radius from Sol using the Internet Stellar Database. It's a little out of date, but I mostly ignore the M type stars for being too dim or flare-laden to have habitable worlds (though of course humans being humans we'd build sealed environment colonies anywhere , so the red dwarfs aren't entirely useless). The K, G, and F type stars would be the ones most likely to have what Star Trek calls M-type planets (tectonically active habitable planets, basically).

And then I limited my homeworlds to a third to a quarter of those systems. Of those homeworlds, only two so far reached the same level of tech as Earth on their own and one started ahead of Earth technologically before being abandoned millennia ago, leaving behind their sapient robots.

I'm undecided on the M-stars at the moment: they may have odd life.


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Then again, I operate on a smaller scale than most, having a heavily settled core 20 lightyears in radius from Earth, and a partially settled frontier of 30 to 100 lightyears in radius around Earth. In a Star Trek: Enterprise game, I'd multiply those by ten, in TOS by 100, and in TNG by 1000.

That;s about the scales that I'm using for the series equivalent.
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