[Star Trek like] number of planets and sapients

[isf]

Originally Posted by maximara

The flaw in this as pointed out in several of Isaac Arthur's videos (IMHO the entire channel should be a must see for anyone interested in "hard" sci-fi) once warp drive enters the picture with the idea of planets being isolated goes south fast.

I have watched several of his videos and also recommend them. The existence of some tl^ in the setting makes many of his analysis less useful/

Originally Posted by maximara

In classic Star Trek it was decided that the cube of the Warp number was how fast you were going (there are obvious problems with this idea but let's run with it).

That's the scale that I'm planning on using so far to give mostly consistent travel times.

Originally Posted by maximara

So Warp 6 was 216 times the speed of light. So in one year that civilization could send colonist ships to any (or every) habitable planet 216 light years away. Unless every one of those colonies are abandon our high tech for the simple life they have warp drive and I think you can see where this is going.

Yes, but warp 6 isn't going to be a common;y achieved speed until late in the setting. Warp 1 or 2 is likely to be more common.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by isf

100 ly r (0 warp, 2 sapient, 170 live)
250 ly r (1 warp, 500 sapient, 50K live)
500 ly r (43 warp, 43K sapient, 4.3M live)
1000 ly r (172 warp, 172K sapient, 170K live)
2500 ly r (1100 warp, 1.1M sapient, 1M live)
5000 ly r (4300 warp, 4.3M sapient, 4M live)

Mixing any period SF with modern hard science in this area works out uncomfortably. Any star with a name of its' own has that because it's bright and bright stars tend to be too young to have Earth-like planets. For example, Sirius is only 240 million years old. Vega is twice that but that's till not nearly enough. Antares is only 11 million years old and isn't going to get much older (BOOM!).

The last time we had at it on these boards we ended up with a hard science number of 200 light-years between Earth-like planets. Even the number you got out of Space 1e was 100 ly. You might have gotten terraformable worlds every 50 or 60 ly.

In terms of useful advice (expecially for a flexible science setting that was Trek-like) I would not try and use Real World data. I'd just make stuff up concentrating on how much time I wanted PCs to spend travelling between planets.

[Flyndaran]

That assumes all species including humans breed like rabbits. Modern prosperous nations barely have population growth. I don't see why futuristic societies would be so different just, because they're colonizing new planets.

Of course over thousands or tens of thousands of years, even minuscule growth would be "problematic" for the genre.

But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.
It's a fun trope perfect for gaming, but some players may consider it a tripping point for sci fi hardness.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.

But that's not the case. The Enterprise routinely runs into technologically superior aliens (Andromedans, Melkotians, Talosians, Squire of Gothos, Apollo, the Organians, the Borg, Q, Dominion, etc). They also run into primitive societies, both capable of interstellar and interplanetary travel, or not.

There's something of a selection bias in that only some interesting stories get told, and "All out war, Federation vs the Squire's Parent's Nation's Army" wouldn't be very interesting, and neither would "Federation Orbital Bombardment of the Ming China Planet" (outside of the Mirror Universe version of the show. Sometimes such things even happen, but offscreen (Federation vs. the Borg). Then there's that annoying habit of advanced races all being evolved past the point of caring about silly wars, which takes out most of that half of the possible stories.

But it's not true that everyone in the galaxy is at the same tech level.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

But that's not the case. The Enterprise routinely runs into technologically superior aliens (Andromedans, Melkotians, Talosians, Squire of Gothos, Apollo, the Organians, the Borg, Q, Dominion, etc). They also run into primitive societies, both capable of interstellar and interplanetary travel, or not.
...

It realistically shouldn't be a single species, rather than the hundreds to thousands in the setting often separated by thousands of light years.

And I did say major players, not everyone.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That assumes all species including humans breed like rabbits. Modern prosperous nations barely have population growth. I don't see why futuristic societies would be so different just, because they're colonizing new planets.

Of course over thousands or tens of thousands of years, even minuscule growth would be "problematic" for the genre.

As has been pointed out, the ST universe is a dangerous place; although I'm toning down/eliminating a lot of the crazier stuff.

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.
It's a fun trope perfect for gaming, but some players may consider it a tripping point for sci fi hardness.

I don't think the players in my group will care about that.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That assumes all species including humans breed like rabbits. Modern prosperous nations barely have population growth. I don't see why futuristic societies would be so different just, because they're colonizing new planets.

Of course over thousands or tens of thousands of years, even minuscule growth would be "problematic" for the genre.

But my "realism issue" with Star Trek type universes is how nearly every major player, even those newly discovered, are at almost the exact same tech level.
It's a fun trope perfect for gaming, but some players may consider it a tripping point for sci fi hardness.

That's certainly reasonable, but it falls foul of the problem with all discussion of aliens, in that we have no data at all.

For ex, if technological advancement is 'normally' an exponentiating curve, as Heinlein posited, the chances of two sapient races meeting on comparable levels is essentially zero. That would reflect the rate of advancement that the West has seen over the last 3 or 4 centuries. If you imagine first contacts between cultures at 1750 level, 1850, 1950, and 2120 levels, you see substantial differences over short periods.

But if 'normal' advancement is far slower, the equation changes. If the 'norm' is bursts of fast advancement amid plateaus, that produces potentially a totally different picture. This sort of picture is consistent with larger scale human history.

We don't have any data, so it's ultimately all speculation.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

That's certainly reasonable, but it falls foul of the problem with all discussion of aliens, in that we have no data at all.

For ex, if technological advancement is 'normally' an exponentiating curve, as Heinlein posited, the chances of two sapient races meeting on comparable levels is essentially zero. That would reflect the rate of advancement that the West has seen over the last 3 or 4 centuries. If you imagine first contacts between cultures at 1750 level, 1850, 1950, and 2120 levels, you see substantial differences over short periods.

I think that teal world technologies are mostly s-curves and not exponential.

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

But if 'normal' advancement is far slower, the equation changes. If the 'norm' is bursts of fast advancement amid plateaus, that produces potentially a totally different picture. This sort of picture is consistent with larger scale human history.

We don't have any data, so it's ultimately all speculation.

Yes, I think this makes for a better story for this kind of setting.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by isf

I think that teal world technologies are mostly s-curves and not exponential.

For individual technologies or related groups of them, yeah, definitely. For the overall technical/scientific ability of a society...that's more complicated.

You can argue that the history of the human race does show an exponentiating acceleration of science/tech. We were (as far as we can tell now) in the primitive stone age for megayears, before we were modern humans, in the higher stone age for tens of millennia or more, accelerating into recorded history, where it got faster and faster.

But...that's the appearance at the lowest resolution. When you zoom in, the smooth accelerating curve suddenly gets spiky and full of fast spikes and long shallow plateaus and even dips.

It might be, for example, that once a society reaches warp-tech level, or whatever FTL you're using, that getting to the more advanced stuff takes orders of magnitude greater resources and energy, so your tech levels off until you've filled the galaxy and are able to tap galaxy-wide resource bases. Then comes a fast period again.

[isf]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Mixing any period SF with modern hard science in this area works out uncomfortably. Any star with a name of its' own has that because it's bright and bright stars tend to be too young to have Earth-like planets. For example, Sirius is only 240 million years old. Vega is twice that but that's till not nearly enough. Antares is only 11 million years old and isn't going to get much older (BOOM!).

Sure, and the farther away from Earth, the more speculative the data will be. I'm not so concerned with named stars as such, but things like the local bubble, nebulas, globular streams [there is one about 33o ly away], and other real features.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The last time we had at it on these boards we ended up with a hard science number of 200 light-years between Earth-like planets. Even the number you got out of Space 1e was 100 ly. You might have gotten terraformable worlds every 50 or 60 ly.

Do you have a link to that discussion? I searched for terraformable and didn't find anything.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

In terms of useful advice (expecially for a flexible science setting that was Trek-like) I would not try and use Real World data. I'd just make stuff up concentrating on how much time I wanted PCs to spend travelling between planets.

That's what I'll end up doing if this approach doesn't work out. I'm sure that my players won't care either way: this is just for me.