----------| Am 07.02.2010 08:45 schrieb Onno Meyer: |---------- > Thomas replied to me: > >>> Say the colony ship carried biotech terraforming gear. They got >>> into engine trouble, and had to find an alternative destination. >>> The crew now faces a terrible choice -- terraform an inhabited >>> planet, or let their colonists die. >>> >> Given that the terraforming has to be done in a reasonable amount of >> time after the ships arrival. That means that the "biotech terraforming >> gear" has to be prepared (meaning "preproduced") in advance in order to >> be available in significant amounts on arrival. But this gear has to be >> shaped for the target, otherwise it would not work (at least not work as >> expected). >> > Nobody said it would be easy or a sure success. There must be > jobs for heroes and villains, not just accountants. > Ok, from the dramatic point of view, you are right. I did not looked on the stuff from a GM's perspective, more from a "Real Life" one. > The beauty of biological systems is exponential growth until > the capacity of the world is reached. Just one breeding pair > of something nasty could transform the local ecology, if it > breeds fast enough. Of course they would use more than one > pair to make it faster and more certain ... > Biological systems do not only grow exponentially, they can also die on that rate if only minor aspects change ... so one breeding pair may be enough, or even millions may not be sufficient because the spawn did not survive until fertility ... > And if the terraforming works not quite as expected, so what? > It will be better for the colonists than no terraforming, and > still a disaster for the locals. > The third option for a result (and in my eyes the most likely for any attempt of juryrigged terraforming) is that neither the colonists nor the locals can survive on the converted world. >> So after a misjump (or what else lead to the disaster you are >> talking about) the scientists (given there are some aboard) will need a >> decent amount of time to create new biotech terraforming gear - AFTER >> first collecting enough information about the starting conditions - >> before the colonists can even begin with the terraforming process. >> > So the colonizer transport hides in the outer system for a > year or a decade. > ... or a century or a millenia ... :-) >> From this point onwards various problems may arise: >> >> * if the locals' TL is high enough, they would be able to defend >> themselves - and the colonists' ship is a non-moving target ... >> > Or a moving target, if it retains STL engines. > I think this still depends on the size of the ship, and also on the equipment. So what kind of boats will such a ship carry? Lots of shuttles, or more a lighter type of vehicle? What will be the range of these boats? The size? Will they be armed (the original plan says, we want to colonise an uninhabitated world ...)? > But sufficiently advanced locals could help to repair the FTL drive, so there > is > no need to terraform their world against their will. > Right, but that's another story. >> * if the colonists were transported in a form of stasis (cryogenic >> sleep, for example) it is possible that this could not be >> maintained after arrival ... >> > Then the colonists are dead and the story is over. So assume > that they can be maintained some more, but not indefinitely. > The crew has to do something relatively soon. > Agreed. >> * it is also possible that the resources of the colonists' ship are >> not sufficient to produce enough "gear" >> > In Turtledove's Worldwar series (a technological invasion, not > a biological one, mostly) the aliens thought they had not just > enough stuff but also vastly overengineered gear for the task. > They were wrong, but just barely, which turned it onto an > eight-volume story rather than a short novella. > Agreed. >> * due to the short time (in relation to the time spent for the >> originally intended destination) there is a good chance that the >> world resists from being biotechnically terraformed - perhaps with >> a little help from the locals... >> >> As a conclusion I doubt that a lost colony ship with only biotechnical >> terraforming gear is able to successfully take over another world as the >> intended colony world. Now one may argue that this is only a matter of a >> high enough Techlevel, but with TLs above 13 or 14 ships do not longer >> get lost in such a way - and the need for colony SHIPS has also gone. >> > Depends on the TL difference and the tech rules. A TL11 colony > ship with reactionless thrusters should be able to evade TL9 > warships indefinitely, and TL11 shuttles can play tag with > TL9 interceptors. Against TL8 locals, they might even get > something done while they do the evading. Against TL7 or less, > they have space superiority if they can rig just a one laser > drill in a shuttle. > > And if the GM wants ships to get lost/shipwrecked, there are > always options. For example, assume that there can be only > one FTL drive per ship, since even 'cold' backups would > interfere with the technobabble. > > When I write vehicles, my gut reaction is to make them 'safe' > against the failure of any one (or any two or three) gadgets > by adding redundancy. But as a GM, I prefer ships which can > fail in interesting, non-lethal ways. So don't take a backup > jump drive, take a workshop and survival gear instead, the GM > should provide a challenging planet where the 'muscle' of the > crew can fend off natives while the 'techies' repair the ship > and all get a chance to rescue an exotic alien princess on > the way out. > Again, my point of view was different. With a GM's attitude to tell an interesting story and to "bend" some logic accordingly, you are absolutely right. But having players with "Why" as the most often used word in a game session made me cautious about too much "logic bending". You know that saying that a lie always requires another lie? Sometimes I found that each bend requires - at least - one other bend, and in the run of the game, it is sometimes really difficult to keep track of them. That's why I try to get all the possible background questions answered on beforehand, based on common sense and today's science as much as possible - and without too much artificial obstacles like "second stardrive interferes with onboard systems" (although sometimes this might be the last resort, making it still an idea to keep ...). As players are, in game they will come up with more than enough unexpected issues the GM has to deal with ... >> By the way: how long do you think it will take to terraform a hostile >> world into a garden Eden, with biotech only? How many stages would be >> necessary? Would it be possible to do it with just one single "gear", >> induced just once in the beginning of the process? >> > Depends on the initial hostility. Starting with a Mars or a > Venus, the answer is millenia, and several stages. > > Starting with Earth and adding a new DNA base pair or new > isomeres of sugar or starch would be easier, and it might > be enough to make the locals allergic to their world. > I meant "hostile" in a more "living" sense, more in the direction of Pandora or Midworld, where Terraforming (with Biotech only, that's the assumption here) means first getting rid of the deadly locals (as you mentioned already) and transform the remaining life forms into harvestable food. Terraforming must have something to work with. Terraforming of a desert (dead?) world like the Moon is impossible. But how "alive" is Mars? Or Venus?
Some physical conditions cannot be changed by Terraforming; first is gravitation, followed by rotational period and length of the year. The intensity of radiation cannot be changed, too, although it might be possible to reduce their effects (with clouds or a denser atmosphere). But some of the unchangeable conditions eliminate some of the other options (so without a decent gravity it is impossible to create significantly dense atmosphere; a tidally locked world would not develop an equal distribution of heat easily, ...). The stages got important if considering the time frame. Looking at the "Terraforming" of our own world there have been four or five stages where Earth would have been completely uninhabitable by Mankind. The "uncontrolled" transformation from one stage to the other took aeons here, but how fast could it be done by Man? In any case, the scale would be too large as this could be played as a RPG adventure or campaign. We have not talked about the aspect of adopting the colonists to the conditions of the new world. Given that there is time enough this might be an option as world and colonists can "meet on half way". But this did not really change the original question: "What about terraforming an inhabited world, in form of an biological invasion by a lost colony ship?" While writing this, another question arises: Will someone really send out a one-shot colony ship? An expedition, that has to do all in one go, succeed or die? Is it not more likely that first some exploration ships will be sent to potential worlds, than expeditions that will take closer looks, right before the terraforming teams will show up. And only the final ships will carry colonists that shall live on ready prepared worlds. But this would mean that those ships will not carry any gear to explore or terraform - because is should be done already ... Yes, from the story telling point of view that's boring - if such a ship misjumps, it's dead. But from a more realistical point of view? -- Thomas Thrien Geo 51° 28' 12" N 7° 32' 17" E _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
