A 2.3% population rate increase will mean that the population of the colony will double in 30 years (ish). Don’t know if that's ok or not. Depends on the size of the original colony population. That would mean a fertility rate around 4 (ish), meaning that each female will be having on average 4 kids.

That’s large families for an enlightened high tech civilisation with comprehensive medical treatment and very low infant and female child birth mortality.

But hay! Who knows? Colonies are going to want to have sustainable economic and social bases, so they may want to attract couples or individuals who are looking for large families.

Placement of settlements? The placement of settlements in the world as we know it was based around the availability and limit of transport. So on land it's very much to do with the economics of mussel transport and how much you need to feed that mussel. i.e. if the amount of food you can pull is the same as needed to feed the animal pulling then there is no economic sense in transporting it that way. That's why major settlements in the real world are all based around the sea and large rivers. Water transportation is far more economic. The Vikings can trade all the way into the Mediterranean by sea, but you can't pull an ox cart more than 10 miles on land.

The other thing that controls our current living arrangements and settlement placement is services. All these follow the road network; power, sewage, gas, water, comms, transport. While I'm sure there are many off grid residences in the US and Australia, there are relatively few in the UK, in fact I'm not sure we have any unsealed roads.

So what about an enlightened high tech civilisation with unlimited power and access to resources? Placement of settlements in relationship with each other? Anywhere you want. If you have Grav you can live where ever you want on planet:
	https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/consgoods/vehicles/keralahousegrav.html
and get to where every you want in a very short space of time:
	https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/consgoods/vehicles/watsonairraft.html
That or your doing like we are in COVID and working from Home. Jeff didn’t pick up and publish my Vanguard Class Weather GPS Com Satellite but it's on the TML somewhere probably around 2009/10.

Unlimited free power (essentially) fixes a lot of problems.

Can’t help you on question 5 ...

Best regards,

Ewan

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxxx@simplelists.com <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> On Behalf Of Alex Goodwin
Sent: 26 October 2020 17:11
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Subject: Re: [TML] Parental Advisory: Modelling the Great Leap ... Sideways

On 25/10/20 8:20 pm, Thomas Jones-Low wrote:
> I have not seen any set of Traveller rules, or even closely related
> rules , that have specific answers to your questions.
>
> There are two references you may or may not have that I recommend.
>
> World Builders Handbook has some details for colony building. The
> survey rules should allow ranking a set of worlds to determine
> suitable for colonization. And who goes second.
>
> The second would be T4s pocket empires which describe how worlds would
> interact with the larger universe.
>
> For a short hand rule of thumb I would do the following. Take a list
> of candidate systems and rank them in order of habitable of the main
> world: garden world, marginal worlds, and other worlds. I would add
> the resources available and subtract the distance from the existing
> systems to order each sub list. Then start at the top and work through
> the list.
>
> I know both the books referenced above have event charts which may
> modify the growth rate of the colony. But for a general rule, that
> sounds right.
>
Thomas, thanks for your help and patience.  I wasn't expecting a codified set of rules, just pointers to something to add to the Multi-Edition Mashup (GT, GTIW, MGT1, MGT2 so far) that is Parental Advisory.

A couple of yarns with Eddles helped me organise my thoughts somewhat.

Broadly, colonies that I'm considering are _economic_ ventures.  This implies that some sort of trade route must exist between a proposed colony site and a hubworld - as at 2126 AD, that means Terra itself. I'll leave organising a billion-person starlift (to directly provide the base for another hubworld) to the Regiment O' Toms.

After some wombat RTFM and realises, per the Branch Route table (p131, GTIW), said wombat can confine his attentions to the stars within 29 parsecs _by trade route_ of Terra.  As Teapot is 8 pc from Terra along what will be (by GM fiat) a trade route (Terra - Prometheus - Loki - Dismal - Teapot), that likewise confines my attentions to the stars within 21 pc of Teapot.  Thus, Question The First is broadly answered.

However, Eddles did ask if Teapot should be counted as the hub?

During one of those yarns, Eddles suggested differentiating colony efforts - those sponsored by a major institution and those not. Sponsored colony efforts can count their WTN as +0.5 higher.

"The Affinity score for each world summarizes both resource value and habitability." - that's the magic score to put into each of Thomas' sub lists.  I feel dumb.  According to GTIW, affinity scores are normally the mainworld's resource value mod.  The exception there is for Garden worlds with a more-than-Very-Thin atmosphere - they get a +3 across the board, then mods and sods based on atmo, hydro, and climate.

For convenience, I'll pile the bonused Garden worlds into the highest-priority list, everything else with positive affinity into the marginal list, and the residuum into the outpost list.

Question The Second requires more wombat RTFM.  Per p128 of GTIW, colonies _are_ placed deterministically - "Every Imperial Vilani, Conquered Vilani, and Terran world with an Affinity score greater than 0 will be a colony world."

That addresses straight up colonies fairly directly.  Still not sure how to handle randomly-placed outposts - intermediate waypoints and colony pathfinders are not a problem.  Maybe wait if/until a colony lands on a J-1-reachable cluster of systems, then check the other systems in the cluster for random outposts?  (9 or less on 3D6).

Question The Third (average annual population growth of 2.3% pa) is yet to receive feedback.

Question The Fourth just got answered, I think.

Question The Fifth (background events including the Second Interstellar
Disagreement) is also yet to receive feedback.

 Alex
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