Steve Jackson Games Forums - [Space] example system stats

Steve Jackson Games Forums (https://forums.sjgames.com/index.php)

- GURPS (https://forums.sjgames.com/forumdisplay.php?f=13)

- - [Space] example system stats (https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=68072)

Agemegos

03-21-2010 03:15 AM

[Space] example system stats

Code:

Name of star:    CD -25°1169

system number:   139                  companion stars: 2                                

class of star:   K0 V                 1.  mass: 0.75    periapsis:  58 a.u.

mass:            0.8  M(sol)              class: K2 V     apapsis:  12 a.u.                

luminosity:      0.434 L(sol)         2.  mass: 0.75    periapsis: 322 a.u.                

age:             8.3 billion years        class: K2 V     apapsis: 964 a.u.

diameter:        0.008 a.u.               (companion 2 is actually a close binary pair)

                                                                

row     ID #  orbit radius      world type                 size   mass  grav.  atmosphere                hydro-   temp. climate   solar day Hab. RVM Affinity

number        (a.u.)(10,000 km)                            (D♁)   (M♁)  (g♁)                             graphics  (C)             (hours)

1       I     0.09              tiny rock planet           0.33   0.02  0.23   none                                463  infernal  infinite   0    0    0

2       II    0.24              standard greenhouse planet 0.95   0.85  0.95   superdense corrosive               1008        infernal  infinite  -2   -1   -3

3       III   0.43              large greenhouse planet    1.8    5.1   1.6    superdense highly toxic             416        infernal  infinite  -1    0   -1

4       IV    0.73                standard garden planet     0.93   0.73        0.84   thin breathable           50% water   5  cool          20.8   6   -1    5

5       V     1.2                small rock planet          0.41   0.06        0.33   none                                -79  frozen        11.2   0    0    0

6                             2 moonlets                                                                           -77  frozen               0   -2   -2

7       VI    3.8                medium gas giant           11     300   2.6    superdense corrosive                                   42.3                

8                             6 moonlets                                                                          -161  frozen               0   -1   -1

9       VIa         41          small ice moon             0.41   0.03  0.20   very dense mildly toxic   30% HC          -155  frozen        42.3  -1    0   -1

10      VIb         74          tiny sulfur moon           0.12   0.00  0.04   none                               -184  frozen        102   -2    0   -2

11                            4 moonlets                                                                          -161  frozen               0   -1   -1

12      VII   7.7                small gas giant            5.4   30     1.0    superdense corrosive                                   199

13                            5 moonlets                                                                          -195  frozen               0    0    0

14      VIIa        48          small ice moon             0.32   0.02  0.16   dense mildly toxic        70% HC   -191  frozen        170   -1    0   -1

15      VIIb        54          standard ice moon          0.37   0.04  0.30   very thin suffocating              -188  frozen        199    0    1    1

16      VIIc        62          small ice moon             0.31   0.02  0.16   very dense mildly toxic   60% HC   -189  frozen        245   -1    0   -1

17      VIId        69          tiny ice moon              0.25   0.01  0.13   none                               -203  frozen        292    0   -1   -1

18      VIIe        77          small ice moon             0.38   0.02  0.15   standard mildly toxic     80% HC   -193  frozen        343   -1    0   -1

19      VIIf        86          tiny ice moon              0.21   0.01  0.13   none                               -203  frozen        402    0    0    0

20                            4 moonlets                                                                          -195  frozen               0   -1   -1

21      VIII  14                small gas giant            3.9   15     1.0    superdense corrosive                                   115

22                            9 moonlets                                                                          -215  frozen               0    0    0

23     VIIIa        30          small hadean moon          0.27   0.01  0.14   none                               -233  frozen        115    0   -1   -1

24     VIIIb        34          tiny sulfur moon           0.25   0.01  0.10   none                               -227  frozen        140   -2    0   -2

25     VIIIc        39          tiny ice moon              0.17   0.00  0.07   none                               -221  frozen        175    0    1    1

26     VIIId        45          tiny ice moon              0.15   0.00  0.06   none                               -221  frozen        213    0    0    0

27     VIIIe        51          tiny ice moon              0.20   0.00  0.10   none                               -221  frozen        260    0   -1   -1

28                            5 moonlets                                                                          -215  frozen               0   -1   -1

Generated by Brett Evill's GURPS Handbook of the Planets. Copyright © 2010 Brett Evill.

GURPS Handbook of the Planets is a substantially faithful instantiation of the star system generation sequence from GURPS Space 4th edition, which is copyright © 2006, Steve Jackson Games Incorporated.

Agemegos

03-21-2010 04:39 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Code:

system number:   139   "CD -25°1169"

world:           IV    "New Tobolsk"



Planetology

                        

class of star:   K0 V        

mean distance:   0.73 a.u.

perihelion:      0.73 a.u.

aphelion:        0.73 a.u.

axial tilt:      38°        

annual period:   0.696 standard years

                 293.5 local days

local day        20.8 hours

                        

standard garden planet

        

diameter:        0.93 x Earth's

                 11910 km

density:         0.90 x Earth's

                 5.0 g/cm^3

surface gravity: 0.84 g.

                 8.2 m/s^2

escape velocity: 9.9 km/s

vulcanism:       none        

tectonics:       none        

climate:         cool        

temperature                        

        average: 5 C

    periphelion: 5 C

       aphelion: 5 C

illumination:    74% Earth's

oceans:          50%        

    composition: water        

    tidal range: 0.99m

atmosphere                        

     main gases: N2, O2        

     traces &c.:                        

          class: breathable        

       pressure: 0.76 bar (thin)

Agemegos

03-21-2010 06:36 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Code:

Economy

        

Habitability:      6

Resources:         poor         RVM:     -1

                                Affinity: 5

settlement type:   colony

carrying capacity: 1.3 E+7

population:        1.3 E+8      PR:       8

tech level:        2 (advanced)

per-capita income: G$ 7,290

typical wealth:    poor                

economic volume:   G$ 9.4 E+11        

spaceport class:   Class I        (1 N)





Society        

                                

• Religious theocracy

  – "Action Meditation"

  – involves psychedelic drug use

  – ecstatic dancing and drumming                

  – mandala dancing a routine observance                

  – monastic asceticism        

  – 'choregi' (abbots) rule towns

    + 'evangeli', 'archevangeli', 'principi', 'potentates' and the Primate rule in a feudal hierarchy

  – unbelievers shunned, heretics persecuted



• Pervasive performing art                                        

  – 'mandala dancing': acrobatic dancing on a religious diagram



• Domination                                        

  – disputes settled & status established by competitive mandala dancing

        

• Marked sex-role differentiation



• Pervasive sports

  – hawking

  – polocrosse        

  – pacer racing

        

• Exposure taboo                                        

  – neck to knee                                        





Government                                        

                                        

world unity:       feudal                

government type:   theocracy                

control rating:    3

Law:               traditional

      Enforcement: private, monks

        Judgement: legal scholars

        Penalties: capital, corporal, compensation

Partly generated by Brett Evill's GURPS Handbook of the Planets. Copyright © 2010 Brett Evill.

GURPS Handbook of the Planets is a substantially faithful instantiation of the star system generation sequence from GURPS Space 4th edition, which is copyright © 2006, Steve Jackson Games Incorporated.

Langy

03-21-2010 11:25 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Awesome. Are you going to be releasing your spreadsheet any time soon? I know you had concerns about releasing it before - especially in regards to how faithful it was to the actual GURPS Space system.

SpaceGurper

03-21-2010 12:02 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

I too would love to get my hands on that spreadsheet.

Agemegos

03-21-2010 02:32 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Langy (Post 955843)

Awesome. Are you going to be releasing your spreadsheet any time soon?

I don't know. I sometimes feel like letting it go in its present state.

Quote:

I know you had concerns about releasing it before - especially in regards to how faithful it was to the actual GURPS Space system.

Yeah. I'm happy enough to simply document the issue with the orbits of moons, but I would like to be substantially in compliance over tides, tidal braking, and rotational periods. And it doesn't look as though SJ Games is going to correct any of those errata. Also, I know Excel a bit better now and could do a better job with user input, but there would be a little bit of work involved.

martinl

03-22-2010 10:01 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

carrying capacity: 1.3 E+7
population: 1.3 E+8
tech level: 2 (advanced)

Is population really meant to be 10x carrying capacity?

Also, a TL2 polity controlling 130,000,000 people on an entire planet is a little odd. I'm sure there's a good reason for it (perhaps the landmass is concentrated and has few natural fortifications, or perhaps cultural unity is very strong, or even that the other polities are too small to show up on the summary), but now I'm curious. If you plan to write this up, please post.

Langy

03-22-2010 10:34 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Yeah, that population does seem a bit off. According to the guidelines in GURPS Space, it should be between 50% and 150% of the world's carrying capacity, since it's a TL2 society, which is less than TL5.

Agemegos

03-22-2010 11:26 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Population is not calculated by the spreadsheet.

This planet is from Flat Black, where TL2 agriculture and grazing are carried on with a legacy of TL10 Bio-Tech genetically-engineered crop plants, pasture plants, pharm, and grazing animals. Also, the quasi-nomadic 'stockmen' are using satellite downlink equipment to find pasture. The TL2 listed is a development level based on the scale of integration of the economy, and it determines the sophistication of local manufacturing, the productivity of the economy, per-capita incomes, and the exchange rate. Carrying capacity is calculated by the spreadsheet, but not directly relevant.

Similarly, the government was patched together by the Imperial governor about a century ago, handing out satellite communicators to choregi, evangeli, and archevangeli and bribing them to enter into a formal federation. All the Patriarch and his court of cardinals actually do is to appoint the senator and the Imperial district judge. In practice choregi are practically independent, responding slightly to nearby evangeli and archevangeli, but the rest of the feudal/ecclesiastical hierarchy is purely a legal fiction.

Even so, the wheels are coming off. The PCs don't have access to the best information, and the rumours are pretty thick, but its possible that the numbers of stockmen have risen beyond the point that their flocks will support even despite Imperial help with grazing management. In this year's southward migration they appear to be systematically capturing and burning cities. (Other possible explanations mentioned by assorted NPCs with theories include a backlash against persecution of stockmen and their choregi for heresy, some sort of anti-clerical movement among legal scholars with the stockmen, and (naturally) a plot by the Political Department to bring the colony under the sway of Imperial tyranny.

Not that the PCs care. Their only interest seems to be in stealing the Patriarch's carpet.

Adina

03-22-2010 06:38 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 956320)

Not that the PCs care. Their only interest seems to be in stealing the Patriarch's carpet.

Not just his carpet. The wax gallery would complement it nicely.

Jeff

martinl

03-23-2010 09:36 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 956320)

Not that the PCs care. Their only interest seems to be in stealing the Patriarch's carpet.

Well there you go - now you won't need to write up that 15 page brief you were so unsatisfied with earlier.

Anyone want to start a betting pool on what dismissive name the PCs end up calling the natives? 10 Quatloos on "wogs."

Adina

03-23-2010 10:12 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by martinl (Post 956752)

Anyone want to start a betting pool on what dismissive name the PCs end up calling the natives? 10 Quatloos on "wogs."

"Marks "

sir_pudding

03-23-2010 10:59 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by jmurrell (Post 957131)

"Marks "

I'd go old school and use "coney" in that case, but YMMV.

Crakkerjakk

03-24-2010 02:08 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

"Honored and Revered Hosts"

Agemegos

04-01-2010 08:07 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Are system stats like those in the OP useful or interesting to anyone?

jalapeno_dude

04-01-2010 09:51 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Are system stats like those in the OP useful or interesting to anyone?

Yes, though I'm more interested in individual planet/societal descriptions like the ones in posts 2 and 3.

Prime Evil

04-01-2010 11:13 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

The social and cultural descriptions generated in this sample are superb. They give just enough information for the GM to develop an interesting local culture. How much variety there is in the output from the spreadsheet when it comes to the social parameters? Can the GM tweak the inputs in order to generate particular types of societies? Also, does the spreadsheet generates any of the details of native lifeforms?

From the sample, it definitely looks like the spreadsheet handles multiple stars very well. Out of curiosity, how easy would it be to use the spreadsheet to input real astronomical data from the Hipparcos or Tycho-2 catalogs and use it to generate fictional details of the star systems in Earth's neighborhood?

Agemegos

04-01-2010 11:49 PM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prime Evil (Post 961184)

The social and cultural descriptions generated in this sample are superb. They give just enough information for the GM to develop an interesting local culture.

Thank you. I'm sorry to disappoint, but those were produced by hand, not randomly generated.

Quote:

How much variety there is in the output from the spreadsheet when it comes to the social parameters? Can the GM tweak the inputs in order to generate particular types of societies?

Again I'm sorry to disappoint. It was because of the difficulty of handling tweaks-to-setting that I chose not to implement any society-generation. I made the social data in the third post by combining some of the data from the spreadsheet that generates my own setting, and using some parts of the 'Generating a [Planetary] Society' sequence out of an old SF game called ForeSight, and tweaking, rearranging, and amplifying the results by hand.

Quote:

Also, does the spreadsheet generates any of the details of native lifeforms?

None.

Quote:

From the sample, it definitely looks like the spreadsheet handles multiple stars very well.

That much is a very faithful instantiation of the sequence in GURPS Space. But as it happens that instance is not randomly generated, it consists of real data for the system CD -25°1169. However this was fed in as input to the workbook through its provisions for designing or partly-designing a world, not faked over the output afterwards.

Quote:

Out of curiosity, how easy would it be to use the spreadsheet to input real astronomical data from the Hipparcos or Tycho-2 catalogs and use it to generate fictional details of the star systems in Earth's neighborhood?

In principle very easy, but with one huge snag. You would put your star-list in to an extra sheet in the workbook, and then use the system number as the index to LOOKUP statements in the input fields.

The huge snag is that catalogue data do not include the ages and masses of the stars, or at least not very many of them. And the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence takes those figures as its starting-point. You can estimate mass from spectral class, though unfortunately the sequence doesn't treat masses corresponding to some spectral classes. Then you come across the point that led to my giving up on that project: when you try to estimate age from spectral class and luminosity you come across a great many stars that are either too bright or too dim for that to work. I don't know why. It could be the result of errors in measurement: stellar distances are not known with great precision, and neither are apparent magnitudes and colour indexes.

Then there is a lesser snag in that some of the tables in the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence might need substantial tweaks to produce the kind of universe you have in mind for your campaign.

walkir

04-02-2010 12:55 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961117)

Are system stats like those in the OP useful or interesting to anyone?

Definitely. Rolling up a world is fun, including the system around it evolves into work way to quick.

Prime Evil

04-02-2010 02:20 AM

Re: [Space] example system stats

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

Thank you. I'm sorry to disappoint, but those were produced by hand, not randomly generated.

Pity. They are very nice and you deserve kudos for them. I think they strike a good balance between too little detail and too much.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

Heh. I think that I've got a copy of ForeSight lying around somewhere, but I haven't looked at it in years. My own campaign borrows some ideas from the old FGU Space Opera game.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

I can see that you follow the world generation sequence in GURPS Space faithfully even though I haven't checked the maths. Automating the advanced worldbuilding sequence is still an impressive feat. :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

Interesting. At least your spreadsheet supports this kind of customization. Very cool.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

The huge snag is that catalogue data do not include the ages and masses of the stars, or at least not very many of them. And the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence takes those figures as its starting-point. You can estimate mass from spectral class, though unfortunately the sequence doesn't treat masses corresponding to some spectral classes. Then you come across the point that led to my giving up on that project: when you try to estimate age from spectral class and luminosity you come across a great many starts that are either too bright or two dim for that to work. I don't know why. It could be the result of errors in measurement: stellar distances are not known with great precision, and neither are apparent magnitudes and colour indexes.

I've stumbled across the same issue when trying to design the nearby systems by hand. Fortunately, there are a number of astronomy websites that provide rough estimates for the mass and age of stars in our immediate neighborhood, but in many cases these are nothing more than informed guesswork. I ended up assembling a spreadsheet collating information on the stars in a 100 ly radius from various sources and then making my own judgment calls where necessary. The imprecision of measurements over astronomical distances can be sometimes be a good thing, providing a fudge factor that can be tweaked to generate a variety of outcomes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brett (Post 961206)

Then there is a lesser snag in that some of the tables in the GURPS Space starsystem generation sequence might need substantial tweaks to produce the kind of universe you have in mind for your campaign.

True. But when using an automated tool, it's possible to modify the tables to ensure that you generate exactly what you want.

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 05:52 AM.