Tuesday, October 16, 2018

Paradise cracks (Traveller Tuesday #17)

Tech level 5 is the highest common tech level on Ishee, the upper limit in general use (though we've established that an awful lot of new technologies flood the market as well), but what's the low end of Ishee's technological development? Rolling 5 on 2d6 and Ishee's fragmented culture lets us know that this technological floor is set at level 3. Isheean inteligentsia (and the ruling council) continuously pump out shiny new inventions, but most people use technology somewhere between analogues of technology used in the United States in the 1930s on the high end all the way down to technology like that used in Europe between the Industrial Revolutions. That means that even electricity isn't universal on this planet! That's certainly a dramatic background to display the elites' innovations.

We roll a 7 on the next 2d6 roll, determining the energy tech level, establishing it at the high common tech level of 5. Isheean machines ~ or at least the quotidian ones ~ are generally run on petrochemicals and the internal combustion engine, which gives a rather specific and surprising image of Isheean life. I wonder what kinds of environmentalist movements might spring up here. The next 2d6 roll comes up 5, giving Ishee a computer/robotics technology level of, well, 5 ~ electric calculators, but not quite computers, even room-sized ones, yet.

I roll a 9 on the next 2d6 roll, but it's for the level of communications technology on Ishee and I feel that Isheean elites, concerned so deeply with attempting to change culture, have put strong efforts into their innovations along these routes taking root. That 9 would set communications at Ishee's computer tech level of 5; I'm stepping in as the creator to artificially raise this tech level to Ishee's limit on this tech. That's 6 (late GTL6, equivalent to the mid-20th century U.S.). Ishee has television and advanced audio recording, which makes it much easier to introduce the populace to new whizz-bang tech. However (importantly) it lacks the cloud of commsats that would come in the next tech level. This allows us to finish off our picture of Ishee's common tradegoods, as we can now look at informational resources. It will produce recordings on a 2d6 roll of 4 or less, artforms on a 5 or less, software on 3 or less, and documents on a 5 or less. Rolling 4, 8, 6, and 3 mean that Ishee exports recordings and documents on a significant level.

An 8 on 2d6 tells us that Ishee's medical technology matches its computer/robotics level of 5, putting mass vaccinations and X-rays as their highest common medical technology. This is rapidly followed by an 11, which pushes Ishee's level of environmental technology up one level to the limit of 6. That gives us skyscrapers, weather prediction, and (importantly for such a hot planet) underground cities. This lets us find out if terraforming has occurred on Ishee. It works the same way as determining its resources, so a -3 or less would result in atmospheric terraforming, a 1 or less would indicate greenhouse or albedo terraforming, a 4 or less that terraforming efforts affected the hydrosphere, and a 5 or less that the terrain has been altered on a massive scale. The existence of native life puts a strong depressing effect on those numbers, completely precluding changes having been made to Ishee's atmosphere. However, I kinda really want the Isheeans to wander the world as freely as possible, so I'm going to again step in and alter the results. Both Ishee's albedo and its greenhouse have been changed to lower its temperature, creating the possibility of a slow extinction of Ishee's native biosphere. You better bet there's an environmentalist movement here. Maybe that's the charismatic dictatorship! Not a religious group, but an ecological one. A 6 and a 2 indicate that Ishee's hydrosphere is unchanged, but that a very sizable portion of its surface has been physically reshaped.

With that terraforming, we can lower Ishee's greenhouse effect by 10% and its energy absorption by 0.05. Rerunning the base temperature calculations, we discover we have changed that temperature to 356.115º K (83.115º C, or 181.607º F ~ the hottest day recorded on Earth is 56.7º C). Ishee's environmental technology isn't advanced enough to practice weather control. I'll also mention (lest I forget) that Ishee does not currently have the widespread technology to address what they've done to the planet's native life, which is quite a wrinkle in the debate over what should be done!

Anyway, I roll a 10 on 2d6, which raises Ishee's land transport technology to 6. That means that they have amphibious vehicles, all-terrain vehicles, and armored fighting vehicles (tanks), and an 8 sets its water transport at the same level, adding submersibles and SCUBA technology. An 11 sets Ishee's air transport technology at the highest level of development in common use here: 7, which translates to supersonic jets and hang gliders. Whereas a 7 means its space transport technology is the least developed, at a tech level of 4, or none (TL5 marks the first unmanned space rockets).

I'm going to say that Balvaneh-ye Motamedi, the fourth-largest city in the Guild-State of the Rose Brothers (population: 532,214) has the Class-E Starport that serves as the primary access to and from Ishee. Rolling 2d6 3 times, I get three 7s. Rather than jackpot, that gives the Guild-State no other starports, only spaceports. I'll figure out how good they are in a little bit, but first let's find out if the Marches or TCI have their own Starports. Oleinik has three chances: 6, 11, and 7 are all larger than 5, leaving Oleinik with spaceports only. Its rival Jermaine gets 6 and 8, so it's in the same boat. And the foreign colony of TCI gets a 9, leaving Balvaneh-ye Motamedi's as the only starport on the planet. The remaining primary cities have a 1-in-3 chance of receiving a Class-Y Spaceport, elsewise they will get a Class-H. I roll 6, 4, 2, 2, 2, 1, 3, 1, and 6, meaning that:

Holden, Guild-State (population: 799,023 people), Scopula Vicina, Guild-State (population: 650,169 people), Landell de Moura City, Jermaine March (population: 761,773), and Moa, TCI (population: 758,380) all have Class-H Spaceports, little more than a cleared area of open space with decent firmament and little traffic or interstellar commerce.  Cape Canaveral is probably a Class-H Spaceport today.

and

Pursuit of Life, Guild-State (population: 599,580), Nueva Veracruz, Oleinik March (population: 796,209), Machrihanish, Oleinik March (population: 555,167), Neo-Edinburgh, Oleinik March (population: 466,559), and Daedalus City, Jermaine March (population: 544,487) have Class-Y Spaceports, which are literally nothing but the potential for a spaceport.

From this, I can see that Oleinik, alone among the Isheean nations, has essentially no access to space. This is likely representative of the consular marquesal contracts ~ I imagine that the Marquis Oleinik is the one of the two charged with handling most interplanetary affairs, while the Marquis Jermaine is the only of the two allowed to develop space facilities.

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