Well, let's think what we'd do for a large-city sized station rotating around a sun without a planet as far as UPP goes.

Port: A - if you built an amazing self sufficient solar-circling city, you must have a big port.
Population: Let's say 7. Let's make it the NYC of the spaceways. 30 million.
Hydrographics: Let's say 0. That covers up to 5% water and you aren't going to get any more green+blue space than that.
Atmosphere: 6. Standard no taint.
Government and Law can be rolled so could be anything.
Tech: I think a minimum for something that big of TL10+. I'd think High Stellar or the high end of Average Stellar, so let's call my example tech level D.

New York has about 28K/sq mile in 303 square miles, but that's not covering the need for agriculture, industry, port space, solar collectors, etc.  But all that is inside a station that might be cubical or spherical or whatever.... but it should not be more than 400 km diameter in any event. So we use the 'S' for size.

So we have:
AS607**-D

That would kind of cover it, but I might still prefer an X or some similar 'this is something special' code.

TomB





On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 4:04 AM Steve Simenic <xxxxxx@outlook.com> wrote:
Do the existing UWP attributes not apply to artificial structures? They already cover moons and asteroids. 

Most of the attributes are relevant whether the “world” is natural or artificial (pop, govt, law level). Hydrographics is a percentage and atmosphere is still applicable so those are fine. The available starport facilities and local tech level still apply of course. 

In theory, size can extend beyond 15 - eHex provides us with possibilities up to 30, not including the special codes X, Y, Z and ? for “unknown” (see page 22 in T5.10). 

Now, a system to randomly generate special worlds - that’s an interesting thought!


From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> on behalf of xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2020 3:52:07 PM
To: The Traveller Mailing List <xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Subject: Re: [TML] "That's no moon, it's a . . ." (was: Where the UPP fails me...)
 


On Tue, Apr 28, 2020 at 10:17 PM David Johnson <xxxxxx@zarthani.net> wrote:
TomB <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

So, I'm envisioning, like many of the systems we have found, a star with no planets. Now, you might say 'they're out there, but nobody goes there'. 

Lot's of good comments and observations from others already but, imho, this star would not generally show at all on a subsector map or world data listing . . . because it has no ~world~.  As others have suggested, the UWP system is focused on what's most relevant to Travellers and this star system is a place they can't travel to any more easily than to a deep space "empty hex."

Except that a place like that could have thriving interstellar trade and economy which immediately makes it something that people would want on their maps. The map is basically 'all the places that players might go'. I realize UPP doesn't cut it, but it was the early cut of that concept and it has stuck with us.

It does model worlds form largest to smallest to unoccupied so I see little reason not to represent artificial structures.

To me, population matters (for Grand Census it should....) and much of that is omitted too.

I guess what I want is a fulsome known space gazeteer/navigational rutter/galactic geography database with an ability to handle odd contingencies.

If I had a station that was in an orbit around the sun, it would have a lot of potential energy from the sun plus it might be able to do some good science (esp if the sun was doing something strange). 

What would I do for a UPP for a mainworld? No planet. How do I denote a station? UPP, you fail me!

Again, plenty of helpful insight from others already but this doesn't quite seem like the right question.  The UWP isn't intended to tell us about artificial structures, whether they be a Ulysses-like robotic orbiter, a Death Star-sized "space station" or something exotic and colossal like a Niven ring or Dyson sphere.

That would be the case whether it was a star without any planets or a colossal artificial structure of some sort in a star system with planets.  You'd need something in the "Remarks" information to lay out the details about the artificial structure, similar to the way an Imperial Research Station is identified (i.e. not in the UWP).

These you can at least argue for because they are not a political entity, they do not have significant population or trade or facilities (for trade), and they are ostensibly secret in many cases.

 

I mean, what if you managed to come up with some sort of way to encode something like this in the UWP--"DJVVVVV-+" for Northstar in the old Beyond sector--and then encountered a star system with ~multiple~ such structures?  I don't think the answer would be multiple UWPs and then the idea of choosing the "most important" one to capture with a modified UWP could be somewhat arbitrary.

So, I sort of like this bit for Northstar better than the UWP: "Remarks - Ringworld."

I'd like to point out we already know of canonical systems (I believe) where the main world (for the UPP) is not the major pop or even necessarily the most trade important. So there are already arbitrary choices made. Or at least nobody has ever elucidated the IISS basis for selecting the mainworlds in any detail.

 

Cheers,

David
--
Victoria, British Columbia
48° 25' N, 123° 21' W

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