03-06-2013, 01:44 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GURPS Space - assistance
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No, you want lagrange points. |
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03-06-2013, 02:42 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Whills Universe, Whills Multiverse
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Re: GURPS Space - "desert planet"
I'm really liking this forum.
Even though I don't roll for the aspects most important to me, I try to keep my choices within the ranges possible from rolling. For a Standard Garden world, the minimum hydrographical coverage is 45% (min roll with optional variation of the result by 5%). Is this worldbuilding system indicating that desert planets like Arrakis or Tatoonie (with maybe single-digit hydro) are just not possible? What if the planet had 45% at one time, leading to plant life, oxygen, animal life and conditions suitable for human colonization, but then the oceans, seas and lakes were somehow drained into massive underground reservoirs within the planet? Step 4 on p.81 mentions worlds possibly having extensive underground water supplies but that doesn't count towards its hydro rating. Could something like that make a 5% hydro desert planet with polar seas at all reasonable? Before the loss of the oceans, if there were already large deserts on the planet with lifeforms adapted for that environment and the change happened slow enough, I'm thinking a desert planet with a smattering of plant and animal life of its own is possible. As unoriginal as it may be in sci-fi, I really want desert planet in the Astral System! |
03-06-2013, 02:50 PM | #13 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GURPS Space - "desert planet"
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03-06-2013, 03:25 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Whills Universe, Whills Multiverse
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Re: GURPS Space - desert planet
That's not what I wanted to hear, but I truly do appreciate your reply. I really am trying to make my star systems as plausible as possible, but if I absolutely have to whip out the cosmic hand and waive something into existence, I will. Perhaps a long time ago, a very advanced species reverse-terraformed the planet to degree for some unknown purpose, and solving that ancient mystery as well as setting things in motion towards a return to its more garden-like past will be plot point in the campaign. Yeah, that's the ticket.
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03-06-2013, 03:58 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, Solar System, Milky Way, Whills Universe, Whills Multiverse
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Re: GURPS Space - gas giant arrangement
In an eccentric gas giant arrangement where a gas giant formed outside of the snow line and migrated sunward before stablizing into a new orbit, shouldn't one of the outer orbits be left empty of any gas giants to represent the inner gas giant's original orbit before migration?
Or is that not necessary because a cause for the migration could be that the original gas giant orbit was not stable in the long term, which is what may have caused the close encounter that sent the eccentric gas giant inward in the first place? |
03-06-2013, 05:05 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: GURPS Space - gas giant arrangement
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
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03-06-2013, 05:07 PM | #17 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: GURPS Space - "desert planet"
This is one of the reasons that I am intensely skeptical about the habitable tide-locked worlds that the GURPS Space 4th ed. generator produces in such profusion.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. |
03-06-2013, 05:31 PM | #18 | |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: GURPS Space - assistance
Quote:
The equipoise, the point at which the planet's and moon's (or whatever) gravity is equal and opposite is on the line between the planet and moon rather close to the moon, whereas the barycentre is closer to the planet. And the problem with the equipoise is that it doesn't stay still (as the barycentre does), nor does any possible trajectory at the point give you a circular orbit with co-incident period. "Park" your ship at the equipoise and what happens is that the equipoise moves away following the moon in its orbit. And no possible velocity that you give your hip at the equipoise will make it keep up with the equipoise as it moves.
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Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 03-07-2013 at 06:02 PM. |
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03-06-2013, 05:59 PM | #19 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: GURPS Space - "desert planet"
Wouldn't that just make a very different but possibly still life sustaining water cycle?
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03-06-2013, 06:19 PM | #20 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: GURPS Space - assistance
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Tags |
gurps space, space, star system, system generation, world generation, worldbuilding |
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