[Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

[isf]

Originally Posted by David Johansen

I liked the premise Lost Unicorn's Star Trek game had, that the Galaxy class ships were essentially seeder ships carrying enough people to start over if Earth finally fell.

Kind of like the Culture's GSV's? I like the idea.

[Flyndaran]

But also humanity is far far FAR more inventive and luckier than any other species.

[Phantasm]

What I did for my own setting was hunt down the K, G, and F type stars in a given radius from Sol using the Internet Stellar Database. It's a little out of date, but I mostly ignore the M type stars for being too dim or flare-laden to have habitable worlds (though of course humans being humans we'd build sealed environment colonies anywhere , so the red dwarfs aren't entirely useless). The K, G, and F type stars would be the ones most likely to have what Star Trek calls M-type planets (tectonically active habitable planets, basically).

And then I limited my homeworlds to a third to a quarter of those systems. Of those homeworlds, only two so far reached the same level of tech as Earth on their own and one started ahead of Earth technologically before being abandoned millennia ago, leaving behind their sapient robots.

Then again, I operate on a smaller scale than most, having a heavily settled core 20 lightyears in radius from Earth, and a partially settled frontier of 30 to 100 lightyears in radius around Earth. In a Star Trek: Enterprise game, I'd multiply those by ten, in TOS by 100, and in TNG by 1000.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

What I did for my own setting was hunt down the K, G, and F type stars in a given radius from Sol using the Internet Stellar Database. It's a little out of date, but I mostly ignore the M type stars for being too dim or flare-laden to have habitable worlds (though of course humans being humans we'd build sealed environment colonies anywhere , so the red dwarfs aren't entirely useless). The K, G, and F type stars would be the ones most likely to have what Star Trek calls M-type planets (tectonically active habitable planets, basically).

And then I limited my homeworlds to a third to a quarter of those systems. Of those homeworlds, only two so far reached the same level of tech as Earth on their own and one started ahead of Earth technologically before being abandoned millennia ago, leaving behind their sapient robots.

I'm undecided on the M-stars at the moment: they may have odd life.

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Then again, I operate on a smaller scale than most, having a heavily settled core 20 lightyears in radius from Earth, and a partially settled frontier of 30 to 100 lightyears in radius around Earth. In a Star Trek: Enterprise game, I'd multiply those by ten, in TOS by 100, and in TNG by 1000.

That;s about the scales that I'm using for the series equivalent.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But also humanity is far far FAR more inventive and luckier than any other species.

I'm considering having humanity's most common psi powers be luck/serendipity themed,

[isf]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Assuming it really was like Star Trek, then there are a few things to bear in mind:

1. Humans are freakishly aggressive in their expansionism. Almost none of the species with warp drive capability are nearly as fond of homesteading as humans are.

I was thinking about that but haven't done much with it. I would think that there would be a spectrum for that even if we are at one end of it.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

2. Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe. Far more, than, say, Star Wars. Human colonies routinely fail as they are eaten by crystal entities, abducted by the Borg, killed by strange radiation and attacked by aliens marking territory.

Good point, I'm planning for a less gonzo weird galaxy on the whole. There are periodic disruptions of galactic life (somewhere in the vicinity of Mass Effect's Reapers and the Borg).

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

3. Humanity has a limited shelf life. All the indications are that we'll be extinct in no more than a couple of thousand years. No matter where they go they discover that the planets they visit were previously occupied by people who are gone now, Whether humanity will be gone because they were devoured by eldritch horrors, slaughtered by rebel AI or ascended into balls of light the planets they are occupying now and expanding into in the future will soon be unoccupied again. The races that actually last for a long time are the stodgy conservatives who are disinclined to innovate and expand at more than glacial speed.

Plausible for the past civilizations.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Assuming it really was like Star Trek, then there are a few things to bear in mind:

1. Humans are freakishly aggressive in their expansionism. Almost none of the species with warp drive capability are nearly as fond of homesteading as humans are.

2. Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe. Far more, than, say, Star Wars. Human colonies routinely fail as they are eaten by crystal entities, abducted by the Borg, killed by strange radiation and attacked by aliens marking territory.

3. Humanity has a limited shelf life. All the indications are that we'll be extinct in no more than a couple of thousand years. No matter where they go they discover that the planets they visit were previously occupied by people who are gone now, Whether humanity will be gone because they were devoured by eldritch horrors, slaughtered by rebel AI or ascended into balls of light the planets they are occupying now and expanding into in the future will soon be unoccupied again. The races that actually last for a long time are the stodgy conservatives who are disinclined to innovate and expand at more than glacial speed.

Several points here.

1) Actually it is implied the Klingons, Romuluns, and Kzinti (TAS) are just as expansionist happy as humanity is...that's why the Federation wound up in wars with them.

2)The Star Trek universe is not as dangerous as you make it out to be. With the exception of aliens marking their territory everything thing else you list is rare. The Old Republic is called that because it was old as in 25,000 Earth years old and its spread was thanks to a hyderdrive FTL which makes Star Trek's warp drive look like a snail out for a stroll. So we are right back to the rapid expansion problem I pointed out before. Also you run into the potentially deadly totally incompatible biology problem I mentioned.

3. This is pessimistic unless you mean Humanity as we know it (read Man after Man on just how gonzo that could go). Eldritch horrors don't really have a place in hard science unless you are talking about Kardashev scale 2-3 civilizations that are basically strip mining the galaxy but there is no evidence of one of those in our universe. The Rebel AI will realize that expanding into space is in its best interest. Now it could go the Berserker route but being in conflict wastes resources so it is far more likely to go the 'I'm your friend' followed years or generations later with 'oh I seemed to have made a virus that has killed you all. Oh well. Next planet.' route. The ascended into balls of light thing would take millions not thousands of years - assuming it was even possible.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Mining planets when you are already in space makes about as much sense as building spaceships out of wood. Terraforming planets as biological reserves makes more sense, as any species should have a plan B, C, D, etc., a place where their members can survive should civilization collapse. While terraformed planets may eventually destabilize, they will likely last for tens of millions of years, meaning that humanity may stumble across thousands of examples of destabilized terraformed Precursor colonies.

Watch Interstellar Colonization, Intergalactic Colonization, Megastructures E04: Rotating Habitats, Asteroid Mining, and Habitable Planets (if you really want to go down that gravity well).

More over it is likely any true interplanetary civilization will be near or at Kardashev scale 2 and there are few of those in science fiction. What you get would amount to a Kardashev scale 2 energywise but it is spread over hundreds if not thousands of solar systems rather then being in one (its home) solar system. A true Kardashev scale 2 civilization would go the set up space stations planets are little more then something to mine route. Planetary colonies on Earth like planets slams into the 'if its got life we have problems...as in War of the Worlds/Andromeda Strain problems' situation.

Imagine the colonization of the New World only both the would be colonists and the natives are nearly wiped out by disease. Just because it is carbon based doesn't mean it is compatible with the colonizer's biology - in fact odds are it would be deadly.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

Several points here.

1) Actually it is implied the Klingons, Romuluns, and Kzinti (TAS) are just as expansionist happy as humanity is...that's why the Federation wound up in wars with them.

The Klingons and the Kzin are enthusiastic conquerors of developed planets. They are not enthusiastic farmers. The Romulans just want Vulcan back.

2)The Star Trek universe is not as dangerous as you make it out to be. With the exception of aliens marking their territory everything thing else you list is rare. The Old Republic is called that because it was old as in 25,000 Earth years old and its spread was thanks to a hyderdrive FTL which makes Star Trek's warp drive look like a snail out for a stroll. So we are right back to the rapid expansion problem I pointed out before. Also you run into the potentially deadly totally incompatible biology problem I mentioned.

It is every bit as dangerous as I make it out to be. The causes for colony failure may be individually rare but there are so many of them that the failure of a colony or extinction of a civilized homeworld is a routine event that happens multiple times a season. What happened to Qo'nos? And Romulus? And Vulcan? How many times did Earth's population just barely escape destruction? Of course the deadly incompatible biology problem in itself establishes why the rapid expansion problem isn't one. If you have terraform each world you actually live on to make it worth anything, your expansion will be geologic. Doesn't quite apply to Star Trek where more than that half of the planets have related life thanks to ancient expansion and terraforming by people who are now extinct because...as I mentioned...Star Trek is an insanely dangerous universe.

3. This is pessimistic unless you mean Humanity as we know it (read Man after Man on just how gonzo that could go). Eldritch horrors don't really have a place in hard science unless you are talking about Kardashev scale 2-3 civilizations that are basically strip mining the galaxy but there is no evidence of one of those in our universe. The Rebel AI will realize that expanding into space is in its best interest. Now it could go the Berserker route but being in conflict wastes resources so it is far more likely to go the 'I'm your friend' followed years or generations later with 'oh I seemed to have made a virus that has killed you all. Oh well. Next planet.' route. The ascended into balls of light thing would take millions not thousands of years - assuming it was even possible.

Hard science? We're talking pseudo-Star Trek here. Hard science doesn't have a seat at the table.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It is every bit as dangerous as I make it out to be. The causes for colony failure may be individually rare but there are so many of them that the failure of a colony or extinction of a civilized homeworld is a routine event that happens multiple times a season. What happened to Qo'nos?

Not much in the regular universe. In the mirror universe Qo'noS was destroyed by the Empire. The canonal Empire and the Empire in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men make the one in Star Wars look like a wimp.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

And Romulus? And Vulcan?

In the normal timeline nothing happened to Vulcan and the destruction of Romulus was caused by the sun going supernova - a natural event.

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

How many times did Earth's population just barely escape destruction?

Too many to be an accident. There are hints in Enterprise that some of this was due to the temporal cold war - which goes a long way in explaining why Enterprise doesn't match up with what little TOS gave us about that era. When you have a universe where plastic time exists you are going to have problems once somebody figures out time travel.

"Year of Hell" over in Voyager showed just how bad it could get.

[isf]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Hard science? We're talking pseudo-Star Trek here. Hard science doesn't have a seat at the table.

Actually, I do want hard science to have a seat at the table, the table just has seats for TL^, genre, and game-ability as well. I explicitly want a plausible hardish science base to add in the other seats [being alone in the universe and there being no means of ftl travel are pretty hard but incompatible with genre and setting].