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Old 09-17-2013, 10:46 PM   #131
zorg
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Default Re: Flat Black

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Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
Well, how about Memini Tellurem ("I remember Earth")?
Remember the Dead! But fight for the living. That's from some computer game a few years back. Memini Tellurem is a bit too wistful for a motto, too nostalgic. It has less punch, I think.
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Old 09-17-2013, 11:34 PM   #132
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Default Re: Flat Black

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Remember the Dead! But fight for the living. That's from some computer game a few years back. Memini Tellurem is a bit too wistful for a motto, too nostalgic. It has less punch, I think.
It's about as wistful and nostalgic as "Remember the Alamo".
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Old 09-18-2013, 01:03 AM   #133
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Default Re: Flat Black

It might depend on which Imperial service is going to use the motto. An interventionist branch - military, intelligence - might prefer something more proactive. I imagine a bunch of guys shouting hoo-ha and assaulting a WMD factory tend to go for a punchier, active, action-y slogan; compared to one which basically describes a motivation.

A more administrative, or, more broadly speaking, a less executive branch might do well with the Remember Earth motto. Here, the described motivation would possibly be more important than the mode of action.

I'm not saying Remember Earth is totally inappropriate, mind you! I'd just prefer something else, depending on the specific service. Imight not have been sufficiently clear on that point.
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Old 09-18-2013, 02:05 AM   #134
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Default Re: Flat Black

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I imagine a bunch of guys shouting hoo-ha and assaulting a WMD factory tend to go for a punchier, active, action-y slogan;
Um... "a bunch of guys shouting hoo-ha" would likely be at a strip club or whorehouse, not on the field where they might say hooah...
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Old 09-18-2013, 02:07 AM   #135
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Default Re: Flat Black

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Um... "a bunch of guys shouting hoo-ha" would likely be at a strip club or whorehouse, not on the field where they might say hooah...
Or Oorah. Or whatever it is that commonwealth types yell. Probably "Get Some!"* cause everybody yells that.

*I imagine the Yeomen at Crécy were yelling "Get thee some!"

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Old 09-18-2013, 02:16 AM   #136
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Default Re: Flat Black

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Um... "a bunch of guys shouting hoo-ha" would likely be at a strip club or whorehouse, not on the field where they might say hooah...
It's the future! They shout in a weird and incomprehensible pidgin!

As to strip clubs, I have no idea how these are handled in Flat Black ;)
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Old 09-18-2013, 02:24 AM   #137
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Default Re: Flat Black

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As to strip clubs, I have no idea how these are handled in Flat Black ;)
Seems to be based on prurient taboo breaking that's utterly alien to Imperial culture. In the colonies there are certainly a myriad of variations.
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Old 09-18-2013, 02:28 AM   #138
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Default Re: Flat Black

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As to strip clubs, I have no idea how these are handled in Flat Black ;)
A few pages in the second issue of the comic were set in a strip club. I'll see whether I can find them for you.

Of course, it wasn't an Imperial strip club.
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Old 09-18-2013, 06:24 AM   #139
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Default Colony lists

Well. That's a big job done!

I modified my spreadsheet that implements the GURPS Space star system design sequence so that instead of generating a star at random it reads observational data out of the Extended Hipparcos Catalogue, a recent catalogue of nearby stars. Then I looped it through the 101 thousand stars in the catalogue to generate a whole sphere of nearby stars. And then I did that 200 times over and picked the set of results I liked (number 169, as it happens).

Then I took only the habitable planets out of that and fed them into a model of the history of colonisation in FLAT BLACK, and worked out how many immigrants of what sort would arrive on each one, in each decade. That gave me 625 colonies to which emigrants had gone from Earth, and told me when they had left. I named all those colonies. Then I worked out a good (but I'm sure not optimal) selection of those at about the right distance to be sector HQs, and assigned each colony to the sector of which the HQ was its closest SHQ.

Then I built a cowboy model of the industrial development and population growth of each colony, and ran it to determine the population of each primary colony and its development level. And I put the results in the FLAT BLACK wiki. 624 colonies, listed alphabetically by name, by distance from Sol, by economic development level, by population, and by sector.

The tables give you the
  • name of each colony
  • star name or catalogue number and planet number for its planet
  • spectral class of the star
  • distance from Sol in light-years
  • constellation (direction) it's in
  • a percentage rating ("salubrity") of how attractive surface conditions are on the most habitable planet in the system
  • population as at 606 PDT
  • development level (The Suite is everything over 8.0)
  • size & type code for the starport facilities
  • name of the sector it's in
  • distance to SHQ in light-years
  • size of the planet relative to Earth
  • surface gravity in gee
  • atmospheric pressure in bar
  • percentage of the surface covered by oceans (disregarding ice)
  • level of solar illumination on the planet, relative to Earth, as a percentage
  • average surface temperature, in Celcius
  • length of the year, in annis (Earth years)
  • length of the day (if any) in hours
  • catalogue number in the Handbook of Planets

Now that that is done I can start sketching out some colonies.
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Old 09-18-2013, 04:07 PM   #140
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Default Re: Colony lists

Hmm. In previous versions I translated development level from its native scale (the ForeSight tech level scale) to the roughly-equivalent GURPS tech levels. But I became concerned that this suggested that people on, for instance, Navabharata were still running steam trains and laying telegraph cable rather than importing cellular telephone equipment and main components for locally-assembled brand-name air-pickups.

So this time I put the ForeSight TLs in but labelled them "development level". Is it enough to look at the table and see that anything over 8.0 is pretty damned snazzy? Should I get cracking on a key to the tables? Or would it be safe to go back to GURPS TLs?

For your temporary convenience, the correspondence between FS and GURPS tech levels is roughly as follows. Of course the correspondences of future TLs are very rough because of different projections for future technology.
FS TL GURPS TL
0.0 TL 0 (early)
0.5 TL 0 (mature)
1.0 TL 1 (early)
1.5 TL 1 (mature)
2.0 TL 2 (early)
2.5 TL 2 (advanced)
3.0 TL 3
3.5 TL 4
4.0 TL 5
4.5 TL 6
5.0 TL 7
5.5 TL 8
6.0 TL 9 (early)
6.5 TL 9 (mature)
7.0 TL 9 (advanced)
7.5 TL 10 (delayed)
8.0 TL 10 (standard)
8.5 TL 10 (advanced)
The actual tech level of the campaign is TL10 (approximately conservative hard SF, but a little bit liberal and with of course the Eichberger device and the warp encapsulator). There are some poor people in backward hell-holes who can't afford the good stuff, but they aren't really living in Iron Age economies.
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