Colonization history of the Third Imperium

[hal]

Hello Folks,
A while back I started to compare the maps of the First Imperium against that of the Third Imperium. The reason being - is I'm trying to reconcile the history of settlements within the Spinward Marches with the history of the Third Imperium.

Per the source books, Mora was settled by year 60. Just for giggles, I used the resources of TRAVELLERMAP.COM and checked the distance from Vland to Mora. The answer I got was 92 Parsecs using Jump-2 engines requiring 47 Jumps total.

The map for the First Imperium shows that the First Imperium never got too deeply into the Corridor sector, but only colonized Subsectors D and H (and not the entirety of H either).

Ultimately, it may not require the full distance to Mora from Vland, but the distance is not inconsequential. At best - Vland may have settled regions deeper into Corridor, and from there, into Deneb - but I have to ask myself the following question...

What was so important in Mora that could not be had closer in Deneb's sector? Why was the Spinward Marches such a heavy draw on the colonization effort, that Vland (and ultimately the Third Imperium) would make a heavy effort to colonize the Spinward Marches in lieu of the Corridor, then Deneb, then finally, the Spinward Marches?

For now, I'm re-reading my World Tamer's Handbook (for use with Traveller: The New Era) in an effort to see what is required for a colonization effort. If GURPS TRAVELLER GROUND FORCES postulates that each soldier needs roughly 5 dTons of consumables to wage war, I would hazard a guess that a civilian colonist probably needs twice that to try and set up a permanent colony.

POCKET EMPIRES indicates that it takes roughly 136 years to build a class A starport from a class X starport start point. the time can be halved if extra Resources Units are allocated towards the construction of the Star Port (halving it to 68 years at best).

For now, I'm scratching my head trying to make sense of it so I can build a reasonable background for my campaign set in the year 99 since Emperor Cleon staged his bloodless Coup and announced the birth of the Third Imperium.

I want to start the game in the Deneb Sector in the Star Lanes subsector. This way, Mora as a settlement has been around for 39 years, and the presumption is/was - that sectors nearest to Mora had to serve as a staging area for ships moving on to Mora.

I've reduced the TL of the listed worlds for that subsector to account for devolving from the future 1105 values - that however, raises a whole new can of worms. Using the rules suggestions for degrading 1105 data to year zero - I now only have two worlds capable of TL 10+ with A class starports. Neither of those two worlds have a population capable of engaging in settling Mora, which implies that the colonists are either low tech colonists being settled from near by worlds, or they come from at least a subsector (or more) away.

Hmmm. A puzzle to be sure.

[jason taylor]

Most of Vilani colonial records made in an effort to secure space supremacy. A dissenting group equiv to that found in Nusku might well have provoked expansion. As would the discovery of the Zho, though records do not exist of that during the First Imperium. But that would likely be an Area 51 kind of secret.

[hal]

Hi Jason,

Crunching the numbers...

Vland/Vland to Mora/Spinward Marches is 92 parsecs. 47 jumps at 3 jumps per month - works out to 15 months just to travel. That works out to 16 months for any odd delays, otherwise it is 15.67 months.

That's just ONE way there. Spend time surveying Mora, then heading back with that information would be a touch closer to 32 months to maybe 36 months depending on on long the survey takes. That's three years assuming that someone went out hunting for Mora the same year as the Third Imperium is proclaimed to have come into existence.

Why Vland spent the most of its energies exploring Rimward - but not spinward makes me think "hmmm, that's odd" It is closer (read as "easier" to explore the corridor sector than it is to expand further away from Vland towards Terra. Terra is 219 parsecs from Vland.

Distance to Mora from Vland? A mere *cough* 92 parsecs. Less than half the distance to Terra.

[jason taylor]

Oh, I see, it was the mention of Vland that got me thinking you were making a tie with the Ziru Sirku. There could be any number of reasons including coming across it accidently.

[hal]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Oh, I see, it was the mention of Vland that got me thinking you were making a tie with the Ziru Sirku. There could be any number of reasons including coming across it accidently.

See - that's the crux of the problem...

Colonization isn't a matter of "coming across it accidentally"

Generally speaking - one goes for the low hanging fruit first because it is easiest, gives you the highest return on the least investment.

Let's say for the sake of argument, you find a place of just about equal capabilities - at half the distance.

The time it takes to travel to the new "home" is half the time. That means essentially, half the cost. In the time it takes you to get one load of colonists from the main world to the colony that is further away, you've been able to service the closer world twice. If you have a break down - you're not stranded so far away that help can't reach you in time. The line of communication isn't so long that you have to be psychic about what is needed and when.

Now, want to bet that if I started at the one subsector in Corridor that listed as being a part of the original First Imperium - that I can't find a closer "prime garden world" type of world that isn't closer than Mora is?

Think about that for a second. Vland to Mora takes 47 jumps using Jump-2 technology. Somehow, Mora is settled by year 60. Assuming that in year 0, there are zero colonies between Vland and any of the sectors never touched by the First Imperium, and likely never touched by the Second Imperium (they went belly up trying to rule the first imperium after only 400 years of existence per the written history).

Is it IMPOSSILBE that there weren't colonies that went out after the Rule of Man began? No. It is possible that there may have been a few. Problem is - the logistics involved in transporting sufficient material for use by the colonists (food, pre-fab buildings, raw materials necessary for sustaining the colony's production, capital expenditures in the form of construction equipment, spare parts, fuel, lubricants, farm equipment, preservation technology (aka refrigerators, sealed packaging equipment for long term storage of farm/fish goods etc) - and you begin to see the problems that will be involved in making a viable colony.

Let's say for the sake of argument, that a colony needs 10 dTons of goods (Generic so as to free the mind from massive accounting purposes!) per person. Let's say you want to drop off 10,000 people for the colony outright. Furthermore - you need to use ships that initially can make a profit if they are privately owned, or the Imperium has to cough up enough money to not only pay for military funding, cultural funding, administrative funding, etc - but now also has to scrape some money up to buy say, three Heavy Frighters (Try building a 1500 dTon hull with Jump 2, capable of transporting people and/or goods just for giggles).

How many trips will you need to transport 10,000 people? How many trips will it take to transport 100,000 dtons of goods? You need to balance the needs of shelter and food for the colony until it can either become self sufficient in its own food production, or it has to be able to produce something that it can exchange for food from another world that will ship food out to it.

WORLD TAMER'S HANDBOOK was written for TRAVELLER: THE NEW ERA - nor is it a book I'd recommend trying to translate into GURPS numbers.

Why? It recommends a cost of 4,000 Credits per dton of goods being transferred from one location to another. It essentially utilizes the Trade model from MERCHANT PRINCE where the average value of a dTon is about 5,000 credits. Dig up my post on the value of M1 Garands being shipped and how many guns per Dton of Volume it would take in real life (yes, I found the stats on a real world package for rifles, how many rifles per crate, and then calculated just what it would take to fill a volume of 500 cubic feet (1 dTon). Let's just say that its worth was definitely MORE than 5,000 credits. Doing the math? 5,000/500 leaves us with things valued at 10 credits per cubic foot...

well, nuff said. If I made up game mechanics for simulating the building of colonies based upon what it takes to transport a given number of people per ship, with a time expenditure per distance from the colonizing world to the colony world itself - you would find it highly unlikely that someone would go to Mora at all until they had settled all the viable worlds closer to the prime world.

60 years is not enough to settle all of those worlds in TWO subsectors (Corridor and Deneb) before finally needing to hit Mora itself.

Why was Mora so important? Maybe Cleon, when he spent time at the Vland Library, discovered something so important that he HAD to settle Mora quickly. In game terms - that's like having to settle Japan from ENGLAND going across the Atlantic Ocean first, across virgin territory in the United States region, building a port so you can build a new ship so you can cross to Japan - oh, after building some farm land so you can provision your second ship to cross into the Pacific. (analogy wise at least). Wouldn't you be tempted to settle in Plymouth first, then New York, then Ohio Valley, then Kansas or Texas - maybe skip over the inhospitable Midwest with its deserts or less fertile areas etc?

Short of a gold rush type event, Mora should be on the list for colonization AFTER Deneb gets filled up, and Deneb should get a lesser priority until Corridor fills up. None of that will happen within 58 years (remember, it takes 15 to 16 months of jump-2 behavior to reach Mora, and if they hit in the year 60, they had to have left in 58 give or take)

And I can almost hear you ask "What if Mora was settled from somewhere closer than Vland?" If the maps are right, and Corridor, Deneb, and Spinward Marches are hardly settled at all - the question would become "what world could possibly spawn more settlers when you'd need an area that thinks hardships to gain new land locally is less worth the while than the same hardships 92 parsecs away?

For me? To spawn settlers - the spawning world has to have a reasonably high population rating that 10,000 people isn't even a blip on the Population modifier value, let alone the population value in the UWP. At a guess, we're talking at least Pop 8. Why 8? The United States has a population listed in 100's of millions - and we still have plenty of room available for people to develop land. We can still feed not only our own population, but export surplus elsewhere. We don't have as many people emigrating out from the US as we have immigrating into it. New York City has a population in excess of 1,000,000 people, and that is a Pop 6 city by its own self.

How long does it take for a colony of 10,000 people to grow and become a Pop 8 world? That's a pop 4 world becoming a pop 8 world. Page 128 of GURPS TRAVELLER INTERSTELLAR WARS suggests that a population starting at 10,000 - would on average, with a perfectly average Earth like world (habitability rating 7 like Earth's is) would on an average die roll be 10 (average of 3d6) + 21 (3 x 7 habitability rating) start at 21 as a roll (or 20,000 base, plus 1 for every 10 years. 21 from 68 is 47. 47 x 10 (remember, you get a +1 bonus to that roll for population for every 10 years the colony is in existence).

That makes it roughly 470 or so years to take a 10,000 population world to a pop 8 level. So "new" colonies are not going to likely spawn to Mora within 60 years. You need a world whose population is already at a mature pop 8+ level from the start. Not a whole heck of a lot of prospects in Milieu Zero's First Census data present in Milieu Zero Campaign.

:(

Mind you, one can always wave one's hand and say "look at me, not at what is behind the curtain!" Make up your own (or in my case, my own) story to gloss over the ugly warts and move on saying that the story is more important than obsessive attention to detail.

;)

That is on the same level as my realizing after nearly what, 17 years, that the extra power slices in a Jump drive can be used to power lasers with extra energy - all because no one did a logic test on just how much energy is produce aboard the Traveller ships per the rules?

Well, the hay is calling my name loudly - as only can happen when staying up over 20 hours til 4:40 AM.

[Proteus]

A classic (and CT?) "pull" might be awareness from scouts' reports of the increasing density of Ancient sites as you approach the Spinward Marches.

I don't have my books with me, but I seem to recall at least a few Second Imperium (and even Long Night) colonies being specifically cited in the Marches.

Or maybe everybody on Vland just suddenly *had* to own a set of Darrian-manufactured dinnerware?

[hal]

When I tried out the features at TravellerMap.com - one of them listed the locations of ancients sites - of which there were indeed a few in the Marches.

The thing to keep in mind of course, is that the support material was written in support of... yup, the Spinward Marches material. It would stand to reason that it would appear there.

However - one of the tie ins that would be easy to use is the fact that Cleon the First spent time at the AB library on Vland for a year. Who knows, perhaps that prompted him to go for a "treasure hunt" for something he came across while on Vland.

While I'd have to think it unlikely - I could see someone wanting to use that rational. Why would I be hesitant to use it? If Cleon made it a big deal to reach Mora as fast as possible, the people he needed to help run his newly minted Third Imperium would have thought he was nuts, and possibly would have caused him problems. If on the other hand, he was subtle about it, he might have been able to make it work, but for one minor little detail - Mora was settled after his death. Now, at 3 jumps per month from Vland to Mora, that's about 16 months worth of travel time. Dying 7 years before the founding of Mora would likely mean that he died before the expedition was launched. Not conclusively against the possibility, but it does put a speed bump there in my opinion.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by hal

The map for the First Imperium shows that the First Imperium never got too deeply into the Corridor sector, but only colonized Subsectors D and H (and not the entirety of H either).

You do know there's a Second Imperium, and the "Long Night" in there right? There's 2000 years between the fall of the First Imperium and Year 0. And there's lots of canon activity along the rim during it - the entire Deneb sector is supposed to be colonized/fought over between the Vargr and the Second Imperium. First contact with the Zhodoni happens at -2000, during the Second Imperium, and with the Darriens at -1511, during the Long Night.

Edit: For that matter, are you even sure there wasn't anybody already living on Mora in 60? Historically "settled" doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a population already there, just that the current elite assumes they didn't count.

[Anthony]

It may be politically useful for the 3I to pretend that the 'Long Night' was static and stagnant, but that doesn't make it true. Unfortunately we don't have much history on Corridor and Deneb sectors.

[hal]

To respond to both Anthony and MaLloyd...

The fact of the matter is - as you both noted, there is a paucity of data available for a lot of the things involving either of the Corridor or Deneb sectors. There is a paucity of information available for the time span in which is referred to as the Long Night. All of that is true.

None the less - when you don't have a lot of information, and you need to make sense of it in some wise - then you go with what you have.

Until recently, I'd never even see a map of the First Imperium's borders. It looks like someone (who I don't know, and I would LOVE to have a private chat with that person!!!) used the resource TravellerMap.com to make that particular graphic. How reliable that map is - is open to conjecture. In the absence of anything else, it is all I have to work with right?

Because I do have such a paucity of data, my eyes lit up when I stumbled across this site:

https://www.freelancetraveller.com/f...t/1100to0.html

It gives guidelines for taking 1105 data, and reducing it for year 0 values for those regions not specifically mentioned in the Milieu Zero database.

then there is this:

http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/First_Imperium

Which lists the borders or limits of the First Imperium. If I could find out who created this (It looks like it was done via TravellerMap.com) I would love to have a private chat with him/her!

When I spent the time analyzing the data from year 0 against the year 1105 for Corridor - I found that roughly 28% of the listed worlds for 1105, were depopulated for the year 0. The largest magnitude of population change was -7 (ie from a world pop 7 down to a pop 0). The only other world to suffer that much of a change was Giivluu Gaa, whose population was listed as 1 in year zero, and goes up to 8 in year 1105. Of all of the worlds listed, only 25 worlds had a population (out of 267 stars) whose population remained unchanged. In light of the evidence in real life where political structures (such as Communism and draconian birth control policies of One Child in China) can impact on population growth enough to result in negative population growth without war or famine - I no longer have a problem with believing that a population can remain relatively stable with zero growth over a large span of time. In addition, populations can go up, down, etc within a few centuries. The "Snapshot" effect being what it is, only gives us valid information for a given moment in time.

Then we have the actual histories as listed in TravellerIntegratedTimeline by Don McKinney (the PDF is freely available for those who want it). It lists any mention of any date along with its accompanying "Event" and where that source was that the data was taken from.

In the end? I have to try and reconcile actual distances as given by TravellerMap.com (Terra to Vland is over 200 parsecs away while Mora is only 92 parsecs from Vland) with history and an understanding of what I call the "low hanging fruit" mentality of humanity in general.

Feel free to point out other possibilities. ;)

In the end? If the First Imperium failed to colonize past their entry point from Vland into Corridor (despite Vland being their home world and the Vargr raiding the Vilani in Corridor), then it is highly unlikely that Terra, with its logistical tail being over 200 some parsecs - would have been able to do what the Vilani didn't.

If the data in Milieu Zero shows that 28% of the Corridor worlds had a population of 0 that would later have a population at all in 1105, then it is a reasonably safe bet to assume the numbers will be similar, if not worse, for Deneb and/or Spinward Marches. I could possibly crunch the data between all of the other sectors listed in Milieu Zero and their 1105 counterparts to have a broader data set. But from what I've seen thus far:

Dataset size of 267 worlds:
25 worlds had the same pop value in year 0 as they would have in year 1105.
75 worlds had zero pop in year 0 that would later have populations in 1105
157 worlds had no change of starport type
27 worlds upgraded their Starport type B to a Starport type A
34 worlds upgraded from C to B
27 worlds upgraded from D to C
14 Worlds upgraded from E to D
8 worlds upgraded from X to E

I can't be the only person who wants guidelines for a year Zero data set (or there wouldn't have been the guidelines suggested at Freelance Traveller) and having Milieu Zero data at all suggests that Marc Miller recognized the need for such "changes of data" or he'd have not done it. He just didn't give us the entire known space data set.

As always, it is easier to criticize other people's work than it is to craft one's own - so, this is not INTENDED to thumb my nose at all of the forty plus years of accumulated Traveller material not making much sense. Those writers who wrote what they did, likely didn't use the Traveller Atlas to count distances or to use the MegaTraveller "historical timeline" of what happens where/when, and what technological levels were available at any given time.

Likewise, my attempts are going to have problems where - because I have a paucity of data to work with, will have to make assumptions, presumptions, and invent things that others are not going to like (hence In My Traveller Universe thinking). None the less - I'm at least trying to make a stab at it, and welcome others to put in some ideas of their own (thereby making my efforts a little less likely to be blinkered in that I can only see what I see).

Do I now believe that population can and will grow unfettered? I need only look at the First world demographical data to see that various nations are experiencing negative growth (ie shrinking) due to economic factors. Political factors impact on economic factors, which in turn, can impact on the growth rates. Rome's population began to shrink when the taxation levels become high enough to impact on family life. Likewise, taxation of any kind in excess of a given amount forces the working class to live within its means (starvation being the result of living beyond your means). So, yes, I can live with the idea that populations can remain stable over a given period of time (knowing that in 1100 years, the population snapshot in one year might change upwards 100 years later, then drop badly after another 200 years, and then slowly climb upwards again for the next 400 years etc).

As for Anthony's comment about trade and such during the Long Night...

I'm of a mind to take your comment seriously - but I also have to think about the rules presented in MegaTraveller that reflects what happens when trade largely disappears as a result of war, and what happens in TNE when the Virus hits and civilization grinds to a halt. How much different would the long night be relative to those two events? How long can a starport remain in operation if there isn't sufficient trade to keep them solvent? How long can starships trade and remain solvent if the tempo of trade drops significantly? If trade is barely profitable at the level of say, 2 to 3% profit margin - what happens when the trade drops to almost zero?

What happens when a world's tech level makes it such that it has to become self-sufficient just to survive?

In the end? Whether you use the Trade model from MERCHANT PRINCE from Classic Traveller game system, the FAR TRADER rules from GURPS, the similar system from T5, or even the original rules from CT's three black books - the question becomes one of "How many starships will there be plying space in the Long Night?

My suggestion here? Give me a starting point that you think is reasonable. Remember what I said about it being easier to criticize others work than to create one's own? Don't worry about my criticizing your initial "gift" of where to start. At least it is a start point that I can try to work with and see where it takes me.

Just as few people take the time to crunch numbers (like how much does it cost to outfit a Battalion - such as given in GURPS TRAVELLER GROUND FORCES) or how profitable is it to build a Starport with a given number and capacity for storage fuel tanks, buy a few fuel trucks for transport of fuel to the starships, try to estimate how much traffic a relatively small world gets from its nearby trade partners and then figure whether or not such a fuel company can profitabily survive - few people take the time to figure out how much it costs to build a star port, pay the payroll of the employees, maintain the star port etc. It is an "article of faith". But if you know for instance that you have only 70 ships that can ply their trade between worlds that will stop off at this particular world - then you have a whole new dataset to work with. You can create the spreadsheets assigning wage requirements and derive a cost value. You can use a maintenance cost based upon original value (say, 5%?) and work with that. You can figure out the overall ball park of costs and then say "um, 70 ships can BARELY keep a star port operational" or "70 ships can not keep a star port operational". That is when the fees for the star port operation have to rise to meet their obligations. If those fees cut into the profitability of those 70 ships, then fewer ships arrive (having been driven away via the fees). At some point in time, there will be a critical point where trade is no longer viable based on the numbers constructed for use with Traveller in any game system, let alone GURPS.

I've got the inclination to at least try. If you got ideas, or you want to work out the solutions yourself (because I know you have a better capacity with math than I do!) then feel free to pursue this if you're curious enough to try. I not, then it is up to me to work out my own solutions to my own questions.

;)

Just don't expect an Einstein like result. *teasing grin*