[Game] Generate a Space Trader Setting

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by (E)

Question 58 revisited post 99

3. Human
General TL 9.25, Genetic Engineering TL 8.75 - Food production TL 8.75 Medicine TL 9 - Strict Cybernetic Limitations, Computers TL 8.75 - Strict A.I. Limitations, Weapons TL 9.5
Notes: Powered armour only at prototype stage.

Computers at 8.75 seems somewhat low- we're 800 years after we managed to build AI afterall. Are you seeing something in our canon that suggests a regression?

[TGLS]

Question 83 by Daigoro
Get enough whackos, erm... people of a like-minded worldview... together, with sufficient funding or time to buy or build their own colony ship, and they can shoot of into the broad starry yonder to found a commune that embodies their own little socio-politico-religio view of utopia. Many of these are never heard from again- as they drifted stranded in deep space, empty of fuel, or were torn apart by internal squabbles, or just found a place and survived but no one else has stumbled upon them yet. How many of these "Lost Colonies" departed civilised space, How many of those are still functioning out there, and how many of that number has the Library of the Ashes documented? How many have been reunited with galactic society? Which ones would be best to open a trade route to?

There are surprisingly many colonies that have gone missing over the years, considering the high cost in the early years, and lack of availability of new sites in later years. For the more recent lost colonies, end up failing to find a site before supplies or infighting breaks out, while for the older ones it was usually an engineering mistake that couldn't be fixed that did them in.

Conservative estimates by Librarians are 600 surviving lost colonies, originated by humans (over half are Divergers), having documented approximately 3500 cases and found "satisfactory evidence" of of 227 surviving colonies, and 1300 failures. The estimate is based on probabilities of the undiscovered colonies managing to survive are based on the similarity in the case to evident colonies.

One unusual case are the Sirians, a generation ship launched from comet orbiting Sol in the mid-22nd century. Their target was Sirius, considering a habitable planet was discovered just 30 years before launch. Fearing corruption from Earth, they did not bring any communication devices, which is a real shame considering the habitable planet was discovered to be an error 25 years after they left. No evidence of the comet or a colony was found in Sirius many years later, making some think they planned to move on to a further system, or just live on the comet forever. The Librarians are very interested in what happened to this colony.

Only about 77 (27 human) have been reunited with galactic society. Many like their isolation, and want nothing to do with galactic society. The Librarians are kind enough to not disclose their location. Pylos IV is the most integrated lost colony in galactic society, despite have only being found 20 years ago. Unlike most other lost colonies, they were merely a very early attempt to travel to far stars. They were especially hard to find considering they stopped short of their original goal. They are appreciated for their wines, boosted by a bacteria native to their planet, and precious metals (the asteroid belt is a motherlode). Tourism to Pylos IV is popular because of the "alien humans" chic, considering they have been isolated for the better part of a millennium, and many businesses operate there due to low taxes.

I will forgo a question because there are too many.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Computers at 8.75 seems somewhat low- we're 800 years after we managed to build AI afterall. Are you seeing something in our canon that suggests a regression?

8.75 TL in computers would be a strong fear of A.I. which is probably over doing it. I'll bump it up to 9 (?). Looking one of the posts on the first page robotics should be retarded a bit too. And I'll need to work in a reference to robots in the interplanetary war post too. Any thoughts on the Divergers TLS?

Random sport: Zero G bicycle racing. Started my asteroid miners inside circular rooms, go fast enough to stick to the walls. Full spherical track.

[ericthered]

I would guess you can still have really nice hardware without AI.

[(E)]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I would guess you can still have really nice hardware without AI.

Your definately correct there. My thinking was there would be aspects of computer tech are at full 9.25 levels and other ones quite low

Dibs on the habitats question,

[(E)]

Question 87 Habitats
Asteroid habitats can be the cheapest to build, it is fairly easy to dig, seal, spin and equip a metal rock. solar panels, radiators, a communications array and a airlock are connected up on the outside and your ready to go. The spin is what makes these simple habitats so common. Anyone working asteroid and debris fields usually has their ships biomonitors order them to get to gravity fairly regularly.

Some asteroid habitats are even simpler, asteroid miners in for the long hall will sometimes start with a large rock carve a hole, seal it and attach their ships lifesupport. They gain somewhere with gravity and a large space in which to work.

O'Neil habitats are usually made by experts and are fairly commonplace. A team will come and start by locating the materials and shunting them into location, if a space elevator is present in the system then the raw material is usually sourced there. Either a projected field or a structural reinforcement generator and a super light frame provides the start point. The raw material for the hull is turned into wire and the basic hulk is woven by drones. The layers of the hull are periodically welded solid by lasers or solar reflectors.

Skyhooks are more complicated and their manufacture usually begins with a specially constructed O'Neil habitat to serve as an on site factory. While a skyhook is being constructed the O'Neil habitat usually serves as a fuel depot, which helps offset the higher cost of construction.

The construction of a skyhook alone results in a "trail" of dozens of habitats left over just from the mining and building.

The reasons for habitats are numerous. Surveying a system is a lengthy enough task to require a base of operations.
Terraforming projects usually require an orbital base of operations. Ships need fuel and Skyhooks harvest it very cheaply.

The biggest issue with terraforming is that it takes time to get things just right. While your waiting for that you have to live somewhere. Habitats have the advantage of not suffering from any of the side effects of the terraforming process. That said many glass house habitats are built on worlds being terraformed after the "heavy lifting" is not needed anymore. Some planets have unique environments that discourage terraforming on such worlds every thing from cloud cities and floating arcologies to subterranean mazes are seen.

Systems like Vather require and desire a great range and amount of food. An ideal star can provide the energy needed for farming on a grand scale.

The location of a habitat is largely a result of its purpose. Close to a star you get habitats that want to be hidden and ones with a huge energy requirement. Antimatter manufacture and hyperspace converter rings are manufactured in these locations. Military bases and criminal hideouts use the energy output of the star to conceal their presence.

Further out you get the habitats that have a merely very high energy requirement, smelters and heavy industry. Then when you get to the goldilocks zone you get the farming, terraforming support and biofactory habitats.

Note: a chandelier habitat looks like a man made tree of solar panels, radiators and Habitat modules growing out of an asteroid. When the asteroid is mined out the habitat is moved to a new one.

Question 91
It's a quiet afternoon and your in your asteroid habitat resting after a hard week surveying the system. Your proximity sensors scream a warning but it's too late to turn out the lights and hide behind the sofa. The Nth day Atheists are knocking on your airlock door and asking you about your religeon. How do you answer?

Spaceport rumor: A new varient on the military carrier concept is being tested in the SaKilt system a string of carriage like ships are connected lengthwise and will attempt a 7D jump.

[Daigoro]

About the Tech Levels, I'd view most of a galaxy-spanning setting as at least generally TL10. TL9 means cyberpunk age to me. Here we have some AIs- not completely banned in earlier posts, available as large government or corporate megacomputers, only banned as a humanoid robot. And we have limited nanotech, which is also TL10. TL10 fits either the slow or retarded TL progression start dates in Ultra-tech (p8), although obviously that's a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule (although 3116 should be TL11 for a slow progression- maybe it's just being introduced now.)

Thus, TL10 baseline, with some retardation for things like genetics, medicine, cyberware- we haven't lost the knowledge of how to do those, we just haven't improved on it any more. The Black Bess is an early gauss gun? So that makes it early TL10. TL9-9.5 for retarded technologies, and TL8 for seriously backward stuff. I don't think we need to see anything TL11, except for coming out of cutting edge research labs.

I'm not seeing any significant trade barriers between all the species, so to a first approximation, if one group gets a new toy, it should disseminate fairly rapidly throughout civilisation, although CyKoi reluctance to novelty would be one exception to this.

I'm having trouble seeing how the Divergers would work though. If they've got such a huge population base and high TL in adaptive tech (cyber, genetics), why do they need to steal and plunder to meet their needs? They should be the main power bloc, with little standing in their way. The only answer I can think of is that "Diverger" is a very loose label applied to a lot of disparate, splintered groups who are all fighting against each other and have no cohesive purpose.

[(E)]

With the tech level feel free to add .5 to each TL mentioned I am getting the idea my shorthand is different from yours.
Some of the full TL 10 tech I thought could be a bit counter to having full trading justification. I will write it up again
That was one reason why the human food tech was pushed down. I thought late TL 8 at one stage for that.
(Also regards the gauss tech I thought you got early examples of a specific technology in the TL before? (My gurps players are fantasy fans so I haven't used 4thed Gurps for high tech stuff)

There are lots of available justifications for the lower TL. Purges and political pressure being the first two that leap to mind. Add a global environmental catastrophe with the population hiding in arcologies or fleeing.

Having the specie's TLs different was again to promote trade. Thought exercise have a look at the TL post and put together a high tech ship and crew piecemeal.
The reason, that I should have included in the write up, is infrastructural it takes a while (very streached reason) Add in a fact that while they are low now they are rapidly changing might work.
Edit, slower spread of technology could also be justified by language differences, initial trust issues, something historic we haven't covered yet?

The Diverger issue I think would work best as Question 92 It's an unusual situation and there has to be an interesting write up.

A while back there was a post suggesting the majority of Divergers where just those that where genetically adapted to different planets.

[(E)]

Tech levels of the big nine
rewrite
Biotech does not translate well between species.

Humanoid
1. CyKoi
General TL 9.5, Naval Weapons TL 9, Theoretical TL 10.1
Notes: Slow to introduce new technology

2. Sulth
General TL 9.8, Biotech 10.5 - Genetic Engineering TL 11

3. Human
General TL 10.1, Genetic Engineering TL 9.1 - Food production TL 9.1 Medicine TL 9.5 - Strict Cybernetic Limitations, Computers TL 9.5 - Strict A.I. Limitations, Weapons TL 9.5, Robotics TL 8.9
Notes: Powered armour only at prototype stage, tied in to retarded robotics technology.

3.5. Diverger
Average General TL 9 - Large infrastructure shortcomings, Biotech - Genetic engineering 10.4 - Medicine TL 9.9 - Cybernetics TL 10.1, Computers TL 10.1, Robotics TL 10.5
Note: wild range of TL's due to limited infrastructure, some habitats are quite high on the galactic scale of tech. Many surface dwelling Divergers are completely reliant on outside sources for technology. The higher sub TLs represent peak tech not average tech.

4. Xylysus
General TL 9.75, Computers TL 10.5 - Robotics TL 10.9, Weapons TL 9.5

Non-humanoid
5. Akriti
General TL 9.9, Weapons TL 9.5

6. Rhii
General TL 10.1, Weapons TL 9.5
Notes: Technology well integrated into society, good improvisers

7. Chetai
General TL 10, Materials 10.25

8. Mar Kan
General TL 10, Shields TL 10.2, Q.M.I TL 10.2

9. Enclave Worms
General TL 10.1 Computers TL 8, Theoretical TL 10.5, Jump TL 10.5
Notes:Never developed a need for computers

Overall
Notes: Nano-tech is risky, May be some other gaps in TL 10 not mentioned here. Mono wire probably exists if not Structural reinforcement field would maintain skyhooks, artificial gravity does not seem viable, ships have exposed radiators, two types of shields projected and structural reinforcement, cylindrical cabin structures (internal or external) provide some escape from zero G though spin gravity.

[TGLS]

Question 92 (Yeah, I know, this wasn't an official question, but I will answer it anyway.)
Why are Divergers weak?

In theory, Divergers should be a powerful faction; at just over a trillion people, embracing advanced modification technology, and a powerful presence in space, they could easily be punching over their weight. However, many are reduced to banditry or live on very poor planets (poor environments, food supply, infrastructure, wealth, etc.). Why is this?

1) Embargoes: Many groups (almost all humans, various alien trading partners), refuse to trade with Divergers. While this may appear to be a negligible effect, it forces Diverger planets to produce everything, whereas for the rest of the galaxy planets can focus on a few products. Worse, when shortages of important goods set in, instead of having the galactic economy pick up the slack, starvation and stoppages happen.

2) Factionalism: About 1/2 of all Divergers governments are stable democracies. Because of this, government change is generally handled by coups, violent or otherwise, instead of elections. As such, these governments spend a great deal of effort watching themselves, sapping valuable resources from themselves. Coups, even the most non-violent ones, are always affairs that take many years to reach the same amount of strength.

3) Differing views of Divergers: Many of the impartially defined Diverger worlds disagree on whether they are Divergers (This is a major point of contention with 32nd century anthropologists; even the most radical Humanist planets allow for genetic modification to correct genetic disease, which some consider a Diverger trait.). About 20% consider the divergences that they use are still in line with Humanist thought, and 30% work with a "reformed" or "moderate" Humanism that allows for their preferred modifications. Only 20% of the statistical Divergers consider themselves Divergers. Because of this, even Divergers themselves are reluctant to work together, as many would rather work with others they consider Humanists.

4) Bionic/Cybernetic Split: A 15% of Divergers are radicals on one side of the split, while another 25% have weaker opinions. These Divergers tend to think of either Bionics or Cybernetics negatively, from a poor choice to an active abomination. These opinions, while considered silly by many Divergers, are significantly disruptive to inter-Diverger relations; occasionally a Bio planet and a Cyber planet want to work to achieve some goal, then radicals protest, the leadership is replaced, and the whole venture is shut down. Even more tolerant planets this is a problem, radicals force government attention through terrorism.

5) Alienist problems: Even when aliens are willing to work with Divergers, some divergers are unwilling to work with them. Some think that they have created enough diversity amongst themselves, others are disgusted with what they consider poor design, and some few consider humans to have the whole galaxy as their birthright (This exists on humanist worlds too, and is known as Imperialist Humanism). This attracts surprisingly much attention in Diverger media, despite the rarity of aliens on Diverger worlds. On worlds where they are dominant, every now and then accusing another as an Alienist spy is used as a pretext to coup or purge. When they are the minority, the disruptions can run out of hand on their own.

6) Tendency to Run Away from Problems: Many Divergers come from a legacy of running away; their ancestors were the first to move away from Earth, and many Diverger colonies were formed by some moving away from the core worlds. When group of Divergers are really annoyed by the government, they tend to move away instead of trying to change things. This has only become more and more of a liability as the galaxy is fills up.