Mike--
Just finishing up the questions here because I said I would.
I just realized that Regina is in the TNE book so I can see the UWPs and
observe directly what you did in detail.
I am going to be comparing your process to the thoughts that I have laid
out over the past couple days so that I can translate your apples into my
oranges. This is NOT to criticize your approach at all, but having thought
through this before (22 years ago) to come up with a solution, I just have
to approach this in a way that allows me to make sense of it. So again, as
you've said to me several times lately, please don't take this as
criticism or argument. I'm just trying to think it through by own lights.
If being the idiot who tried to do this the first time grants me any
benefits, maybe this is it. :-)
As I said in an earlier e-mail, my first test is presence of hab zone or not.
1. You swapped Yres and Menorb not so much because you HAD to (both
already had hab zones) but because assigning an Earthlike star to Menorb
is nicer because it was a Hi-Pop world with a thin breathable atmosphere,
and since Yres had an insidious atmosphere and fluid oceans it seemed like
less of a waste to put an oddball bright giant star there, which probably
started life around a B1 or B2 V.
Again, please do not take this as criticism, but as both did have hab
zones, I think of this as cosmetic, not required. However, given the
desire you expressed in previous e-mails to permit as much as possible the
ability for worlds to develop indigenous life, you moved the shorter-lived
star away from the more hospitable world. While I might not have felt
compelled to do that, I can understand why you did. (But, just for the
sake of discussion, it might also be possible for life to form in gooey
Yres with its previous V star, so maybe it's a coin toss.) In general,
since there are bright giants in the galaxy, there ought to be some in
Traveller, and just because they've croaked whoever used to live there,
there is still a habitable zone for humans to colonize in, and that makes
sense in the game. (Now if I'm reminded that Menorb has distinctive
indigenous life that I'm overlooking I may have to penalize myself.)
2. For Uakye M9 V has no hab zone (discussed previously, dangit), so you
bumped it up to K9. You could have bumped it up as low as M4, but once
you're bumping, it's a matter of taste, and since its Atm is vacuum (very
thin) K9 was fine. And actually in a form of (possibly superstitious)
conservatism, Geo would often change M9s to K9s to only change one digit,
as anything between K5 and M4 was a distinction without a difference
anyway, so I thought that was fine, so you did what we would have done.
But actually I believe that when we tried this back in 1992-93 we figured
that worlds like this weren't that much more hospitable than airless rocks
(0.1-0.42 atm) as they would require permanent "domed" habitats to allow
survival anyway, so the presence/absence of stellar heat was not that big
an issue. I might have said this didn't make the cut. If this were in the
Wilds, these people would have died. For me this also is cosmetic,
atmosphere not breathable without assistance, so not required.
3. Already discussed Alell, no hab zone, but still no hab zone, and as it
is a Rich world, is Bad.
Definite screw-up on my part, as it is a Rich world and requires extra
attention. Call it a double failure.
4. Alell, Whanga, Feri, Beck's World, Moughas, D companion changed to V as
had breathable atmosphere
As I've written previously, on some level we figured that having a hab
zone was the first priority, and these already did. And a degenerate means
that it's maybe already made a mess like a planetary nebula, so could
interfere with the indigenous life in the system, IF it is a close
companion. On the other hand, if it is a far companion or a really small
star to begin with (no red giant, goes straight to the left of the main
sequence without making a mess), it might not interfere, and allow
reasonable variation in the game under some circumstances.
For a quick, safe rule of thumb, I concur with turning Ds into Vs for
planets with atmospheres. To allow for the interesting variation that
Traveller might want to admit, maybe not always. But for the sake of not
quibbling, I'll take a full hit on five worlds, Five failures (separate
failure for Alell).
5. Pixie, Enope, XX D companion changed to D as no atmosphere, so having a
degenerate is okay
While this is a semantic difference with no game effect, the point is to
use the language correctly, so two more failures.
6. Regina, D changed to V as had breathable atmosphere. However, Regina is
a special case, its system was described in detail in several Traveller
products with its named stars Lusor, its D companion Speck, and Darida
with a separate, so I left it as is, but should have changed Speck from M8
D to D.
While I deliberately made the decision to preserve the defined, named
("Speck") degenerate in Traveller's oldest defined world, I did fail to
make the semantic change, so another failure.
7. Heya, did the change D to V as dense breathable atmosphere, but then
swapped the luminosity classes. That got you two habitable zones instead
of just one (the bumped V had none). Based on your remark below about a
"home" star, I'm wondering if you roughed out the orbits to see how the
star orbits and hab zones interacted. However, you describe this as a
mistake to have kept the giant, and I don't understand this. The K III
would have previously been, say a G V, and while it would have fried its
original habitable zone, it has pushed this habitable zone outwards. For
smallish stars (including Sol) this new period could last a few billion
years, long enough for life to evolve again before the helium flash, and a
similar period after helium flash. But more to the point, depending on how
the binary system is configured, the red giant behavior may not interfere
with worlds in the habitable zone of the existing V star, so does not
necessarily impair its ability to continue developing life. Moreover, it
does not at all prevent colonizing humans in the past 8000 years from
living there. Since giant stars do exist, we don't want to exclude them
from the Traveller universe, so these stars could easily be in the length
period before or after the helium flash(es).
Since the first issue was a D in a system with breathable atmosphere, I
will take this as another failure, but since I'm not yet convinced that we
have to expunge all giants, because at the very least we can accept that
some worlds have lost their original life and have been colonized since
then, I will hold of on awarding myself a double failure at this point.
However, Heya is a Rich world, so the current single failure counts double.
8. Keng, as with Heya, did the change D to V as standard tainted
(semi-breathable) atmosphere, but then swapped the luminosity classes.
That also got you two habitable zones instead of just one (the bumped V
had none). You also call this a mistake, same comments as Heya above.
Same as Heya above, single failure, possible double failure, pending
further discussion.
One thing that I assume you have not done with the binaries/triples is
work out their orbits to see what the real impact is because of the time
required. You are presumably aware that depending on how the rolls work
out you can be prevented from using the habitable zones. Based on some of
your remarks above (mostly about Heya and Keng) it appears that you may
have made some assumptions, or placed them by fiat. However, the problem
with this is that Traveller provides no means to store these
configurations in the UWP data, so even though you work out the system
configuration in a satisfactory way, someone else may not, and you can't
tell him what yours was anyway. The vast majority of UWPs have probably
not been processed all the way through, and another piece of evidence for
this is that there are so few quad star systems in the 3I data.
In any case I am skeptical of the ability of multiple star systems to
create worlds that are stable enough for life to develop. Complex patterns
of heating and cooling and tidal forces on the worlds themselves and their
orbits create a lot more variables that work against a world getting the
chance to develop life. So a lot of the work that we spend on "fixing
stars" can be squandered in a multiple star system where you can't get the
orbits to work out.
So, out of 32 worlds in the subsector, I've scored 13 failures against
myself, so a 40.6% failure rate. That's not weighted against total
possible number of failures against the pre-TNE data, but I'm not trying
to wheedle my way to a more presentable score anyway, so I doubt I will
take the time. But the point is that, assuming Regina is representative, I
have a better understanding of what "not far enough" means, so I guess I
can live with that.
What do you think of my report card, Dad?
> To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show
you
> what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken
from
> my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out
everything
> but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.
>
> The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:
>
> - Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
"V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
> Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie
and
> enope get their white dwarf outright listed.
>
> - Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
> swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
environment.
>
> - Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars
were
> swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
> really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good"
star
> should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed
world),
> not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was
originally
> listed.
>
> - As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those
seven
> duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.
>
>
>
> This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say
RSB
> "did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous
extremes,
> this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who
ever
> even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated
success
> is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.
>
>
>
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
> Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the
"old"
> is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.
>
> 1705 Efate K4V
>
> 1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D
>
> 1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V
>
> 1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II
>
> 1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V
>
> 1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D
>
> 1807 Knorbes G3V
>
> 1808 Forboldn G0V
>
> 1809 Ruie G5V
>
> 1810 Jenghe M0V
>
> 1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D
>
> 1904 Boughene K7V
>
> 1909 Hefry K6 II M6V
>
> 1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D
>
> 2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D
>
> 2007 Roup F9V
>
> 2106 Pscias K5V
>
> 2110 Yori F1V
>
> 2201 Dentus M2V
>
> 2202 Kinorb-1 G7V
>
> 2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D
>
> 2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D
>
> 2207 Wochiers F0V
>
> 2303 Yorbund M3V
>
> 2306 Shionthy M4V
>
> 2308 Algine G9V
>
> 2309 Yurst K9V
>
> 2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D
>
> 2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D
>
> 2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D
>
> 2408 Rethe G7V
>
> 2410 Inthe-2 F8V
>
>
Just finishing up the questions here because I said I would.
I just realized that Regina is in the TNE book so I can see the UWPs and
observe directly what you did in detail.
I am going to be comparing your process to the thoughts that I have laid
out over the past couple days so that I can translate your apples into my
oranges. This is NOT to criticize your approach at all, but having thought
through this before (22 years ago) to come up with a solution, I just have
to approach this in a way that allows me to make sense of it. So again, as
you've said to me several times lately, please don't take this as
criticism or argument. I'm just trying to think it through by own lights.
If being the idiot who tried to do this the first time grants me any
benefits, maybe this is it. :-)
As I said in an earlier e-mail, my first test is presence of hab zone or not.
1. You swapped Yres and Menorb not so much because you HAD to (both
already had hab zones) but because assigning an Earthlike star to Menorb
is nicer because it was a Hi-Pop world with a thin breathable atmosphere,
and since Yres had an insidious atmosphere and fluid oceans it seemed like
less of a waste to put an oddball bright giant star there, which probably
started life around a B1 or B2 V.
Again, please do not take this as criticism, but as both did have hab
zones, I think of this as cosmetic, not required. However, given the
desire you expressed in previous e-mails to permit as much as possible the
ability for worlds to develop indigenous life, you moved the shorter-lived
star away from the more hospitable world. While I might not have felt
compelled to do that, I can understand why you did. (But, just for the
sake of discussion, it might also be possible for life to form in gooey
Yres with its previous V star, so maybe it's a coin toss.) In general,
since there are bright giants in the galaxy, there ought to be some in
Traveller, and just because they've croaked whoever used to live there,
there is still a habitable zone for humans to colonize in, and that makes
sense in the game. (Now if I'm reminded that Menorb has distinctive
indigenous life that I'm overlooking I may have to penalize myself.)
2. For Uakye M9 V has no hab zone (discussed previously, dangit), so you
bumped it up to K9. You could have bumped it up as low as M4, but once
you're bumping, it's a matter of taste, and since its Atm is vacuum (very
thin) K9 was fine. And actually in a form of (possibly superstitious)
conservatism, Geo would often change M9s to K9s to only change one digit,
as anything between K5 and M4 was a distinction without a difference
anyway, so I thought that was fine, so you did what we would have done.
But actually I believe that when we tried this back in 1992-93 we figured
that worlds like this weren't that much more hospitable than airless rocks
(0.1-0.42 atm) as they would require permanent "domed" habitats to allow
survival anyway, so the presence/absence of stellar heat was not that big
an issue. I might have said this didn't make the cut. If this were in the
Wilds, these people would have died. For me this also is cosmetic,
atmosphere not breathable without assistance, so not required.
3. Already discussed Alell, no hab zone, but still no hab zone, and as it
is a Rich world, is Bad.
Definite screw-up on my part, as it is a Rich world and requires extra
attention. Call it a double failure.
4. Alell, Whanga, Feri, Beck's World, Moughas, D companion changed to V as
had breathable atmosphere
As I've written previously, on some level we figured that having a hab
zone was the first priority, and these already did. And a degenerate means
that it's maybe already made a mess like a planetary nebula, so could
interfere with the indigenous life in the system, IF it is a close
companion. On the other hand, if it is a far companion or a really small
star to begin with (no red giant, goes straight to the left of the main
sequence without making a mess), it might not interfere, and allow
reasonable variation in the game under some circumstances.
For a quick, safe rule of thumb, I concur with turning Ds into Vs for
planets with atmospheres. To allow for the interesting variation that
Traveller might want to admit, maybe not always. But for the sake of not
quibbling, I'll take a full hit on five worlds, Five failures (separate
failure for Alell).
5. Pixie, Enope, XX D companion changed to D as no atmosphere, so having a
degenerate is okay
While this is a semantic difference with no game effect, the point is to
use the language correctly, so two more failures.
6. Regina, D changed to V as had breathable atmosphere. However, Regina is
a special case, its system was described in detail in several Traveller
products with its named stars Lusor, its D companion Speck, and Darida
with a separate, so I left it as is, but should have changed Speck from M8
D to D.
While I deliberately made the decision to preserve the defined, named
("Speck") degenerate in Traveller's oldest defined world, I did fail to
make the semantic change, so another failure.
7. Heya, did the change D to V as dense breathable atmosphere, but then
swapped the luminosity classes. That got you two habitable zones instead
of just one (the bumped V had none). Based on your remark below about a
"home" star, I'm wondering if you roughed out the orbits to see how the
star orbits and hab zones interacted. However, you describe this as a
mistake to have kept the giant, and I don't understand this. The K III
would have previously been, say a G V, and while it would have fried its
original habitable zone, it has pushed this habitable zone outwards. For
smallish stars (including Sol) this new period could last a few billion
years, long enough for life to evolve again before the helium flash, and a
similar period after helium flash. But more to the point, depending on how
the binary system is configured, the red giant behavior may not interfere
with worlds in the habitable zone of the existing V star, so does not
necessarily impair its ability to continue developing life. Moreover, it
does not at all prevent colonizing humans in the past 8000 years from
living there. Since giant stars do exist, we don't want to exclude them
from the Traveller universe, so these stars could easily be in the length
period before or after the helium flash(es).
Since the first issue was a D in a system with breathable atmosphere, I
will take this as another failure, but since I'm not yet convinced that we
have to expunge all giants, because at the very least we can accept that
some worlds have lost their original life and have been colonized since
then, I will hold of on awarding myself a double failure at this point.
However, Heya is a Rich world, so the current single failure counts double.
8. Keng, as with Heya, did the change D to V as standard tainted
(semi-breathable) atmosphere, but then swapped the luminosity classes.
That also got you two habitable zones instead of just one (the bumped V
had none). You also call this a mistake, same comments as Heya above.
Same as Heya above, single failure, possible double failure, pending
further discussion.
One thing that I assume you have not done with the binaries/triples is
work out their orbits to see what the real impact is because of the time
required. You are presumably aware that depending on how the rolls work
out you can be prevented from using the habitable zones. Based on some of
your remarks above (mostly about Heya and Keng) it appears that you may
have made some assumptions, or placed them by fiat. However, the problem
with this is that Traveller provides no means to store these
configurations in the UWP data, so even though you work out the system
configuration in a satisfactory way, someone else may not, and you can't
tell him what yours was anyway. The vast majority of UWPs have probably
not been processed all the way through, and another piece of evidence for
this is that there are so few quad star systems in the 3I data.
In any case I am skeptical of the ability of multiple star systems to
create worlds that are stable enough for life to develop. Complex patterns
of heating and cooling and tidal forces on the worlds themselves and their
orbits create a lot more variables that work against a world getting the
chance to develop life. So a lot of the work that we spend on "fixing
stars" can be squandered in a multiple star system where you can't get the
orbits to work out.
So, out of 32 worlds in the subsector, I've scored 13 failures against
myself, so a 40.6% failure rate. That's not weighted against total
possible number of failures against the pre-TNE data, but I'm not trying
to wheedle my way to a more presentable score anyway, so I doubt I will
take the time. But the point is that, assuming Regina is representative, I
have a better understanding of what "not far enough" means, so I guess I
can live with that.
What do you think of my report card, Dad?
> To illustrate what I am talking about with the stellar data, let me show
you
> what I did with the Regina subsector. Do note that, while this is taken
from
> my 1248 work, there are no spoilers here, as I have stripped out
everything
> but the hex location, world name, and stellar data. No spoilers here.
>
> The data is below, but let me highlight what was done for the changes:
>
> - Any star that was size "D" either becomes just "D" or is moved to
"V", depending on the atmosphere present. So, Alell, Whanga, Regina, Feri,
> Beck's World, and Moughas all get their white dwarf promoted, and Pixie
and
> enope get their white dwarf outright listed.
>
> - Stars too big (e.g. Menorb) or too cold (Uakye) get their star
shifted to something more sustainable. In the case of Menorb, its star was
> swapped with the nearby Yres so that the Red Giant star didn't totally
disappear, but both worlds end up with more reasonable stars for their
environment.
>
> - Heya and Keng were done a little more creatively, and the stars
were
> swapped so that the giants would be retained, but the other star could
actually host the home world. This is an example of a mistake I made, as I
> really should have wiped out the Giants, and at the least, the "good"
star
> should have been listed first (as it is the home star of the listed
world),
> not second. Even so, the attempt was to give the relatively nice world a
compatible star, but not completely eliminate the Giant that was
originally
> listed.
>
> - As a side note, the Regina subsector was host to two of those
seven
> duplicate names: Kinorb and Inthe.
>
>
>
> This is just an example of what DED and I are talking about when we say
RSB
> "did go far enough". However, just to stress this to ridiculous
extremes,
> this is not really a criticism or complaint. You were the only one who
ever
> even really tried to fix that stuff. That it wasn't an unmitigated
success
> is irrelevant; you tried. We both recognize that effort and salute it.
>
>
>
> Mike West
>
>
>
>
>
> Anyway, here is the data. Note that the "new" is shown first, and the
"old"
> is shown second. Anything with only one entry wasn't changed.
>
> 1705 Efate K4V
>
> 1706 Alell M7V M7V <- M7V M7D
>
> 1802 Yres M5 II <- G5V
>
> 1803 Menorb G5V <- M5 II
>
> 1805 Uakye K9V <- M9V
>
> 1806 Whanga A1V M1V <- A1V M1D
>
> 1807 Knorbes G3V
>
> 1808 Forboldn G0V
>
> 1809 Ruie G5V
>
> 1810 Jenghe M0V
>
> 1903 Pixie M0V D <- M0V M1D
>
> 1904 Boughene K7V
>
> 1909 Hefry K6 II M6V
>
> 1910 Regina F7V M6V M8V <- F7V M6V M8D
>
> 2005 Feri G4V M3V <- G4V M3D
>
> 2007 Roup F9V
>
> 2106 Pscias K5V
>
> 2110 Yori F1V
>
> 2201 Dentus M2V
>
> 2202 Kinorb-1 G7V
>
> 2204 Beck's W M0V M2V <- M0V M2D
>
> 2205 Enope K6V D <- K6V M5D
>
> 2207 Wochiers F0V
>
> 2303 Yorbund M3V
>
> 2306 Shionthy M4V
>
> 2308 Algine G9V
>
> 2309 Yurst K9V
>
> 2402 Heya M8 III K6V <- K6 III M8D
>
> 2405 Keng M9 III G5V <- G5 III M9D
>
> 2406 Moughas K9V M9V <- K9V M9D
>
> 2408 Rethe G7V
>
> 2410 Inthe-2 F8V
>
>