[TML] Noncanonical TU 3D.

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 1/1/08 5:06 AM, "Thad Coons" <tocoons at gmail.com> wrote:

>   Well, there is a limit to what you can observe from earth. Still, trying
> to detail 70,000 stars out to 1000 light years is far more than I need or
> can use.  The source file I'm using has 8500 odd stars out to 150 LY (A
> respectable fraction of the entire Third Imperium)  and does have
> information on the classification as well as other notes. I have 80 odd
> systems within a 20 LY radius mapped,  I don't think I could handle a bigger
> piece of the universe than will fit within 50 LY, so while I appreciate the
> offer, it's not necessary.   The scouts and colonists (and industrialists,
> and the traders,  and the politicians)  in my TU are going to be plenty busy
> for a long time to come.
>   GT: First In had some very nice system design rules, but tryng to tweak
> it so it would generate a world with a given UPP was a real headache, and a
> complete system gave me more information than I could use.  Trying to use
> Heaven and Earth to automate the process was another kind of headache. But
> if I'm not trying to match a pregenerated UPP and can start with an
> uninhabited system, those should give results that are good enough for what
> I want.

Hmm.  The set I have is part of the Hipparcos data.  It has 4981 systems out
to 150 LY (434 systems within 50 LY, 59 in 20 LY), although of course a lot
of those are binary and multiple systems.  What data set are you using?  I
might like a copy of yours.  :)

First In seems to use a very similar system to the old classic Traveller
system of world building.  I prefer GURPS 4Ed:Space.  You randomly determine
the age and initial mass of a star.  That tells you what the star should
look like now.  But it's sort of limited, only making stars of .10 to 2.00
Solar mass.  This month, I've been researching the current best estimate of
the initial mass function, which extends from Brown Dwarfs several times
Jupiter's mass, up to stars about 150 Solar mass.  Plugging those into this
program I found tells you how the star evolves over time.  The G4:Space
tables are rather simplified.

With those things, I can fill whatever volume of space I want with stars of
all sort, and generate planets for them.  I don't plan on forcing worlds to
match pre-rolled UWPs.  I see real star data mainly as useful to see if my
generator looks like reality.  :)