[Space]: Habitability modifiers for tidelocked and resonant worlds

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Well, the resonant world isn't so badly off as all that. While the non-coastal land surface is going to experience radical variations of temperature, the place where I live experiences a range of about 130 degrees fahrenheit and the plants cope just fine simply by waiting for the sun to shine again and taking advantage of long days to grow twice as fast as more southerly plants.

What is annual primary production per unit area around there? How does it compare with global average? The ocean off Alaska is absurdly productive, isn't it?

As for the tide-locked world, it's not so much that the habitability is lowered, as it is that the carrying capacity is lowered.

True enough, though it comes to the same thing at TL8 and above and at Habitability 4 and above.

However since both the west pole and the east pole will probably be concentrations of water, with the sea level lower in the twilight zone it won't be so bad as all that.

Why do you single out the east and west "poles"? I wouldn't have thought there would be a lot of difference among the points around the terminator.

Plants will grow between 0 C and 40 C, whereas the temperature range between hot pole and cold pole is likely on the close order of 100 K. A nice broad band around the twilight zone might possibly be of an equable temperature, but unless the planet on the whole is rather cool it's likely to be rather dimly lit, a constraint on photosynthesis/primary production. What effect on carrying capacity would you suggest?