Recovering from the Long Night

[DAT]

So I was thinking about how a world would recover from the Long Night.

Part of it would be building up the local economy and then Tech Level to be able to support building space and star ships.

But then the questions is what space ships (non-jump), and then star ships (jump capable) are built first?

Does a world build first exploratory scout space ships to explore the home system, then belter and merchant ships, then rescue and small military ships, then liners, then larger military ships, and then larger cargo ships?

Is the same cycle appropriate for a world sending out star (jump) ships to the nearby systems?

How big do you think the first scout star ships should be?

How big do you think the first merchant star ships should be?

-Dan

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DAT

So I was thinking about how a world would recover from the Long Night.

Part of it would be building up the local economy and then Tech Level to be able to support building space and star ships.

The Long Night has always been a poorly chosen name. It isn't a much of a "night". Traveller ships are fairly durable and even if they were not, there must be a couple hundred worlds that continue to build them in non-trivial numbers right through the Long Night, and use them to hold together multi-world states in the process. A world that has expanded its economy to the point it is now producing a surplus it thinks it would be worthwhile to export probably just has to recondition a merchant hull that's been mothballed for a few centuries for lack of anything worth carrying. Odds are though that some decades before it gets to that point the ship or two that stops by every few years will mention this place has a promising looking economic revival going on to one of the neighbors that still has a merchant marine and they'll drop by often enough to start up small scale trade.

I think it's a "night" in much the same way the Vargr Extents are a "chaos" - a horrible wilderness of state of merely *tens of billion*s of people living in unspeakably cruel economies that allow actual *competition*, plagued with alliances that can vanish in just *centuries* and governing families that have risen to positions of importance in *living memory*. How can anybody bear to live like that.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The Long Night has always been a poorly chosen name. It isn't a much of a "night". Traveller ships are fairly durable and even if they were not, there must be a couple hundred worlds that continue to build them in non-trivial numbers right through the Long Night, and use them to hold together multi-world states in the process. A world that has expanded its economy to the point it is now producing a surplus it thinks it would be worthwhile to export probably just has to recondition a merchant hull that's been mothballed for a few centuries for lack of anything worth carrying. Odds are though that some decades before it gets to that point the ship or two that stops by every few years will mention this place has a promising looking economic revival going on to one of the neighbors that still has a merchant marine and they'll drop by often enough to start up small scale trade.

...

The scenario I was thinking of was a more frontier world, that only had agro products during the first empire and no nearby industrial worlds, or a world that was first settled during the long night by a group fleeing a conflict and only access to worn out ships. So there are no ships available on world and no nearby regular interstellar merchants. In any case they have old knowledge of how to build a ship, but no facilities and, initially, not enough economic development to support development of the facilities. But over the course of the next few generations, they develop the local industries and economy in order to support a space program. How this expansion into space and to nearby systems is what I'm asking for ideas about.
-Dan

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DAT

The scenario I was thinking of was a more frontier world, that only had agro products during the first empire and no nearby industrial worlds, or a world that was first settled during the long night by a group fleeing a conflict and only access to worn out ships. So there are no ships available on world and no nearby regular interstellar merchants. In any case they have old knowledge of how to build a ship, but no facilities and, initially, not enough economic development to support development of the facilities. But over the course of the next few generations, they develop the local industries and economy in order to support a space program. How this expansion into space and to nearby systems is what I'm asking for ideas about.
-Dan

Well what are their goals? What does space have to offer them? Local orbital services (weather satellites, communications relays and the like) are so useful I can't imagine any place with substantial industries didn't maintain them through the Long Night. You don't need anything to put stuff like that into orbit than you need to build air rafts, and those are so useful to even a agro colony I imagine they'd be high on list of industries you'd want to develop.

But after that, there really aren't too many resources you can extract from space that you can't find on most planets, especially a planet that hasn't seen much development yet, i.e. on which the very best site for mining whatever-it-is hasn't been tapped yet. On the other hand, if there aren't any nearby industrial worlds, well, building a merchant fleet won't do much for you either if there are no nearby trade partners.

I think it's likely the first thing a planet like this might want badly enough to pay for might well be some system defense boats. Even one bad raid could be enough to make that look like a decent investment, especially since you wouldn't need a very impressive warships to stand off the sort of pirates who are desperate enough to be pushed all the way out to the edge of nowhere.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Well what are their goals? What does space have to offer them? Local orbital services (weather satellites, communications relays and the like) are so useful I can't imagine any place with substantial industries didn't maintain them through the Long Night. You don't need anything to put stuff like that into orbit than you need to build air rafts, and those are so useful to even a agro colony I imagine they'd be high on list of industries you'd want to develop.

But after that, there really aren't too many resources you can extract from space that you can't find on most planets, especially a planet that hasn't seen much development yet, i.e. on which the very best site for mining whatever-it-is hasn't been tapped yet. On the other hand, if there aren't any nearby industrial worlds, well, building a merchant fleet won't do much for you either if there are no nearby trade partners.

I think it's likely the first thing a planet like this might want badly enough to pay for might well be some system defense boats. Even one bad raid could be enough to make that look like a decent investment, especially since you wouldn't need a very impressive warships to stand off the sort of pirates who are desperate enough to be pushed all the way out to the edge of nowhere.

Your point about the System Defense Boats sounds very appropriate. I like the idea of them being First Empire relics. Time to pull out ISW and see if there is an appropriate one. I need to find my copy of Trillion Credit Squadron and figure out many 400 ton SDBs a starting population of say 10,000 can support under peace time conditions. Maybe I can assume they start with a fleet of 8, and they mothball any they can't support.

But after the population rises high enough* and there is some extra capacity, I envision a space program being developed. At first it will be for weather and communications, but soon will be for industrial processes. Asteroid mining I envision starting up soon after.

A source of Lanthanium (or what ever the canon element used in J-Drives is) could be found in an asteroid belt in system. That will support the first J-Drive ships.

* Any ideas on how high a population?

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The Long Night has always been a poorly chosen name. It isn't a much of a "night". Traveller ships are fairly durable and even if they were not, there must be a couple hundred worlds that continue to build them in non-trivial numbers right through the Long Night, and use them to hold together multi-world states in the process. A world that has expanded its economy to the point it is now producing a surplus it thinks it would be worthwhile to export probably just has to recondition a merchant hull that's been mothballed for a few centuries for lack of anything worth carrying. Odds are though that some decades before it gets to that point the ship or two that stops by every few years will mention this place has a promising looking economic revival going on to one of the neighbors that still has a merchant marine and they'll drop by often enough to start up small scale trade.

I think it's a "night" in much the same way the Vargr Extents are a "chaos" - a horrible wilderness of state of merely *tens of billion*s of people living in unspeakably cruel economies that allow actual *competition*, plagued with alliances that can vanish in just *centuries* and governing families that have risen to positions of importance in *living memory*. How can anybody bear to live like that.

Obviously that would depend on where you are. A large part of the Rule of Man universe suffered an economic and technological drop below the population it had been sustaining. Political instability has grown in many places. And certainly trade routes were hampered by the multiplicity of polities with undependable trade policies.

The more high TL states might have less of a difference. Even they would suffer from the lack of markets caused by the downturn(imagine if Japanese suddenly discovered that because of a civil war in America that reached nuclear level, no one wanted to buy cars or electronics anymore).

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by DAT

So I was thinking about how a world would recover from the Long Night.

Part of it would be building up the local economy and then Tech Level to be able to support building space and star ships.

But then the questions is what space ships (non-jump), and then star ships (jump capable) are built first?

Does a world build first exploratory scout space ships to explore the home system, then belter and merchant ships, then rescue and small military ships, then liners, then larger military ships, and then larger cargo ships?

Is the same cycle appropriate for a world sending out star (jump) ships to the nearby systems?

How big do you think the first scout star ships should be?

How big do you think the first merchant star ships should be?

-Dan

Think "motive, means, and opportunity". Start with means; they have to know that it is in fact possible to travel to the stars. Then motive; that can be anything. Wealth is the most reliable, at least if the past history of exploration is a guideline. Then opportunity: what is the astrography around their particular world and does it allow for exploitation given the motive and means. For instance the Chinese Empire had neither opportunity nor motive to go around the world, that is it did not know there was an empire that was fabulously rich by comparison(because of course there wasn't) and therefore did not have enough seafaring people who wanted to get fabulously rich by trade and plunder. The converse was true for European seafarers. Likewise the exploration of Terra's solar system is becoming more unlikely, because the means(hideously expensive spacecraft) is not proportional to the opportunity(an array of deathworlds which it will be hideously expensive to exploit).

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by DAT

Your point about the System Defense Boats sounds very appropriate. I like the idea of them being First Empire relics. Time to pull out ISW and see if there is an appropriate one. I need to find my copy of Trillion Credit Squadron and figure out many 400 ton SDBs a starting population of say 10,000 can support under peace time conditions.

My guess would be none, 10,000 people is a small town. Even 400 tons is a sort of serious warship - something in the gunboat or medium cutter range that would have a crew of dozens - not something a town police force would have on hand. I'd expect a colony this small to own a couple ship's boat/modular cutter sized things. SDBs are certainly cheap enough it wouldn't be crazy for the First Empire to buy and deploy one or two to anywhere big enough to feed the crew, but they'll be going into mothballs right away if new crews stop rotating in.

But after the population rises high enough* and there is some extra capacity, I envision a space program being developed.

Traveller has some construction capable ports on planets with ridiculously tiny populations (and ridiculously low Tech Levels), but it's hard to imagine anything smaller than millions supporting spaceship industry. The smallest state that owns a warship in the hundreds of tons range today is Malta (population 425,000) but they bought her from Italy. But Ireland (4.6 million), New Zealand (4.6 million) and Belgium (11.2 million) all have navies with 8 to 10 ships in the several hundred tons range, and built at least some of them in their own yards. A few million people (pop 6) probably can build a few genuine warships if sufficiently motivated, and a few tens of millions (pop 7) probably see it as both affordable and useful even if not seriously threatened - they likely have enough traffic the government can make a case for needing something just for a police presence.

A source of Lanthanium (or what ever the canon element used in J-Drives is) could be found in an asteroid belt in system. That will support the first J-Drive ships.

It's Lanthanum, but there's really no reason to look for asteroid sources. Despite their name the "rare earths" are not particularly rare - crustal abundance of La is about half that of copper or nickel, ten times that of tin, several hundred times that of silver, and they're lithophiles, so they aren't locked in the core of planets particularly (which is what happened to the cosmically much more abundant nickel for example).

Of course one market for small jump capable warships in the Long Night might well be people who want to buy them to *become* radiers, or take a shot at making themselves king of some marginal little colony world. Nobody says a few million people can't be highly motivated to build a few of these things because their leaders think becoming pirates sounds like a fun and profitable career.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by DAT

Your point about the System Defense Boats sounds very appropriate. I like the idea of them being First Empire relics. Time to pull out ISW and see if there is an appropriate one. I need to find my copy of Trillion Credit Squadron and figure out many 400 ton SDBs a starting population of say 10,000 can support under peace time conditions.

If the naval tax rate is 1% and upkeep is 10% and per capita GDP is 50k, that gives a total of 500k in ships, which is zero SDBs. 100k people can probably manage a fighter or two, 1M for an SDB.

[DAT]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Think "motive, means, and opportunity". Start with means; they have to know that it is in fact possible to travel to the stars. Then motive; that can be anything. Wealth is the most reliable, at least if the past history of exploration is a guideline. Then opportunity: what is the astrography around their particular world and does it allow for exploitation given the motive and means. ...

Good points.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

For instance the Chinese Empire had neither opportunity nor motive to go around the world, that is it did not know there was an empire that was fabulously rich by comparison (because of course there wasn't) and therefore did not have enough seafaring people who wanted to get fabulously rich by trade and plunder. ...

Actually I think the latest is that the Chinese did do a fair amount of exploring, India, East and West coasts of Africa, and North and South America. They didn't do the exploring the most economically, using large mega-sailing ships that required deforesting large portions of the country. But what shut them down was that the bureaucracy decided it was too disruptive to the Chinese society.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

The converse was true for European seafarers. ...

True.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Likewise the exploration of Terra's solar system is becoming more unlikely, because the means(hideously expensive spacecraft) is not proportional to the opportunity(an array of deathworlds which it will be hideously expensive to exploit).

I don't know. I think mining may draw us into space. He-3 from the moon, Iridium from the asteroids, etc.
-Dan