Is it just me or does the Idari feel kind of.....small? Its supposed to me a galaxy spanning mega ship with the population of a dying world and its the size of the national mall which in retrospect wouldn't feel very spacious if it was stuffed with people, let alone have enough room to cram plants and trees and wild spaces on. For me at least I see it being EASILY 10 times that size in order to feel a lot more in line with its description. Additionally Absalom station should be much bigger as well. My mind is seeing the Citadel from Mass effect as a baseline and even that dosen't seem big enough for what they want in their descriptions.
Am I thinking about this too hard?
I always pictured it as the size of Babylon 5, 8km in length
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I always pictured it as the size of Babylon 5, 8km in length
yeah, same here. it's big.
remember also that Absalom Station as statted out, is probably what one might think is on the small side of things.
Ultimately, it's your game. Make it as big or as small as you want.
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The problem with sizes, especially in space is, that humans are very bad in realizing sizes and especially volumes.
I always try to compare station sizes to real world cities.
Let's take a look at Absalom station (Population: 2 mio)
2 mio people are roughly the population of the Paris city area.
Paris urban area is given with 105 km^2 resulting in a density of 21,000 people/km2.
So if Absalom only had one deck it has to be a size of 10km x 10km.
Let say it has 20 decks (not much or?) => 100.000 people per deck => ~ 5km^2 per deck => 2,2 km x 2,2 km
Lets say one deck has a height of 50 meters (~a 12 story house), then we are at 2km x 2km x 1km. Adding 30% for life support, power generation etc. and we are still smaller then Absalom in the game (8 km diameter ~4 km height).
The Idari has a population of 40.000, lets double this to count for all the people who left the Idari since it's arrival and double this again to count for lifestock, plants etc. => 160.000 people => 7,6 km^2.
Now keep in mind that it's a hollow cylinder (Basically a O'Neil Cylinder).
The Idari is 4km long and has a radius of 0,4 km.
So 3km long, radius of 0,4km => cylinder surface (2 x pi x r x height) => 10 km^2
So more there is more then enough space for all people (and lifestock) on board. (Keep in mind that you also have most of the volume of the cylinder for life support etc.)
Tldr: Absalom Station has roughly enough space to fit 8x Paris in it and the Idari could hold ~200.000 peoples without problems.
The problem is the "bigger is better" trend in Scifi. Some IPs really go to ridiculous large sizes without thinking about what these numbers really mean. (Yes I'm looking at you Warhammer & Star Wars).
The problem with sizes, especially in space is, that humans are very bad in realizing sizes and especially volumes.
I always try to compare station sizes to real world cities.
Let's take a look at Absalom station (Population: 2 mio)
2 mio people are roughly the population of the Paris city area.
Paris urban area is given with 105 km^2 resulting in a density of 21,000 people/km2.So if Absalom only had one deck it has to be a size of 10km x 10km.
Let say it has 20 decks (not much or?) => 100.000 people per deck => ~ 5km^2 per deck => 2,2 km x 2,2 km
Lets say one deck has a height of 50 meters (~a 12 story house), then we are at 2km x 2km x 1km. Adding 30% for life support, power generation etc. and we are still smaller then Absalom in the game (8 km diameter ~4 km height).
The Idari has a population of 40.000, lets double this to count for all the people who left the Idari since it's arrival and double this again to count for lifestock, plants etc. => 160.000 people => 7,6 km^2.
Now keep in mind that it's a hollow cylinder (Basically a O'Neil Cylinder).The Idari is 4km long and has a radius of 0,4 km.
So 3km long, radius of 0,4km => cylinder surface (2 x pi x r x height) => 10 km^2
So more there is more then enough space for all people (and lifestock) on board. (Keep in mind that you also have most of the volume of the cylinder for life support etc.)Tldr: Absalom Station has roughly enough space to fit 8x Paris in it and the Idari could hold ~200.000 peoples without problems.
The problem is the "bigger is better" trend in Scifi. Some IPs really go to ridiculous large sizes without thinking about what these numbers really mean. (Yes I'm looking at you Warhammer & Star Wars).
I see what you're going at and I can also see what you mean by the math. HOWEVER it is also implied in these that there is plenty of open space in these vessels for either green space, traffic, or food, which skews that idea.
I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who has spent lots of time on Navy vessels and even though those ships are big and we are cramming 6000 people onto an aircraft carrier (1000 ft long) those people are mostly sleeping 3 to a bunk space instead of being in regular apartments as is implied in the lore. Yeah a lot of space is devoted to tools of war but I imagine a similar percentage of space is being devoted to hanger bays, commerce space, warehouses, junk yards, recycling plants, and food production on these stations, not to mention the excess of spaces being devoted to the rich and powerful.
It still feels pretty small to me, and I can agree with your argument that Warhammer has skewed my brain on size
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I would say the bigger issue with their size is not "population matching volume", its "population matching influence and power". Both the Idari *and* Absalom Station really need both their size and population bumped up by at least a factor of ten to match their political, economic, and military significance within the Pact Worlds. Especially the Idari, since we are supposed to take seriously the idea that the Idari attacking and invading Akiton would have been at least vaguely plausible and non-insane.
The British Empire at its height is a great example of a smaller country with HUGE influence.
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I see what you're going at and I can also see what you mean by the math. HOWEVER it is also implied in these that there is plenty of open space in these vessels for either green space, traffic, or food, which skews that idea.I'm looking at this from the perspective...
I totally understand your point of view.
Open/green spaces are already counted for in cities (also infrastructure, health care etc.) and I also added 30% additional space (in the case of the Idari I even doubled the space).So I think my estimations are not that far off.
I think the biggest issue with station/ship size is, that doubling it's size didn't mean doubling it's volume, but instead increase it by a factor of 8.
So if you take a aircraft carrier and double it in size (to 2000 ft x 2000 ft x 2000 ft), you don't have (cramped) space for 6000 people but instead for 48.000 people.
If do this again two times, you are at a station with roughly 2,5 km (8000 ft.) side length which has space for 3 Million people (and space for 43.520 fighter jets^^).
As said, scaling sizes (and especially volumens) are something which can be tricky.
Because of this I normally model my players ships in 3D (sometimes just as a rough blockout) and it always amazes me how many (or with small ships how less) space there is. :)
I see what you're going at and I can also see what you mean by the math. HOWEVER it is also implied in these that there is plenty of open space in these vessels for either green space, traffic, or food, which skews that idea.I'm looking at this from the perspective...
I totally understand your point of view.
Open/green spaces are already counted for in cities (also infrastructure, health care etc.) and I also added 30% additional space (in the case of the Idari I even doubled the space).
So I think my estimations are not that far off.I think the biggest issue with station/ship size is, that doubling it's size didn't mean doubling it's volume, but instead increase it by a factor of 8.
So if you take a aircraft carrier and double it in size (to 2000 ft x 2000 ft x 2000 ft), you don't have (cramped) space for 6000 people but instead for 48.000 people.
If do this again two times, you are at a station with roughly 2,5 km (8000 ft.) side length which has space for 3 Million people (and space for 43.520 fighter jets^^).As said, scaling sizes (and especially volumens) are something which can be tricky.
Because of this I normally model my players ships in 3D (sometimes just as a rough blockout) and it always amazes me how many (or with small ships how less) space there is. :)
Darn kids and your actual understanding of math and physics!
On to my next point......48,000 seems like not a lot of people. I live in a "podunk small town" and that has 55,000 people. I'd like to think that the Idari came with a lot more people to at least, I'll assume many left when they pulled in but it seems like in the span of a generation or 2 you have millions of Kastathas roaming around the pact worlds having come from such a small sample size.
I see what you're going at and I can also see what you mean by the math. HOWEVER it is also implied in these that there is plenty of open space in these vessels for either green space, traffic, or food, which skews that idea.I'm looking at this from the perspective...
I totally understand your point of view.
Open/green spaces are already counted for in cities (also infrastructure, health care etc.) and I also added 30% additional space (in the case of the Idari I even doubled the space).
So I think my estimations are not that far off.I think the biggest issue with station/ship size is, that doubling it's size didn't mean doubling it's volume, but instead increase it by a factor of 8.
So if you take a aircraft carrier and double it in size (to 2000 ft x 2000 ft x 2000 ft), you don't have (cramped) space for 6000 people but instead for 48.000 people.
If do this again two times, you are at a station with roughly 2,5 km (8000 ft.) side length which has space for 3 Million people (and space for 43.520 fighter jets^^).As said, scaling sizes (and especially volumens) are something which can be tricky.
Because of this I normally model my players ships in 3D (sometimes just as a rough blockout) and it always amazes me how many (or with small ships how less) space there is. :)
Darn kids and your actual understanding of math and physics!
On to my next point......48,000 seems like not a lot of people. I live in a "podunk small town" and that has 55,000 people. I'd like to think that the Idari came with a lot more people to at least, I'll assume many left when they pulled in but it seems like in the span of a generation or 2 you have millions of Kastathas roaming around the pact worlds having come from such a small sample size.
Where do you live that 55k is considered "podunk small town"? Where I'm from, a small town is less than 20k & a podunk is less than 2k.
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Here are some other numbers showing high population density in areas much smaller than Idari.
Number working in World Trade Centre on average working day prior to 11 September: 50,000
Average number of daily visitors: 140,000
Koloon walled city contained 50,000 residents[1] within its 2.6-hectare (6.4-acre)
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On to my next point......48,000 seems like not a lot of people. I live in a "podunk small town" and that has 55,000 people. I'd like to think that the Idari came with a lot more people to at least, I'll assume many left when they pulled in but it seems like in the span of a generation or 2 you have millions of Kastathas roaming around the pact worlds having come from such a small sample size.Earlier Starfinder books had a big problem with too small population sizes. It got better with Near Space with Vesk cities actually having millions of inhabitants.
But in general, the majority of core races would actually be small minorities in the Pact System because of their history or home.
I wonder if the population numbers were accidentally carried over from Pathfinder. It may all so be a population reduction from dealing with climate change pre-gap.
(Apparently) Ten of the most Densely populated cities
Manila, Philippines (119,600/mi2)
Pateros, Philippines (94,400/mi2)
Mandaluyong, Philippines (90,460/mi2)
Baghdad, Iraq (85,140/mi2)
Mumbai, India (83,660/mi2)
Dhaka, Bangladesh (75,290/mi2)
Caloocan, Philippines (72,490/mi2)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (70,950/mi2)
Bnei Brak, Israel (70,810/mi2)
Levallois-Perret, France (68,460/mi2)
Now, that doesn't mean much to me, I can't really visualise a Square mile but using some funky conversions (No guarantee of accuracy so take them as rough numbers) a square mile is roughly 484 American football fields... So that's roughly 247 people living on a football field.
Side note, all numbers are based from google so accuracy is not guaranteed
A few things.
They didn't take all the Kasathan. There were plenty that stayed behind on their home planet. Either they didn't think the Idari was a good idea, they thought the planet could support the population left without he idari residents, or the idari was just survival plan C and AB D EFG were all done as well.
The other is that a podunk town may be a few square miles, but its a few miles X a few miles. A space station on the other hand is a few square miles x a few square miles x a few square miles. Every 10 or 20 feet up doubles the amount of living space you have.
10 by 10= 100 Square miles
10 by 10 by 10= 1,000 square miles.
Also, its kind of funny that soon after the idari showed up drift travel became a thing.
Idari Kasathan " My ancestors have been in this ship for 800 years. my great great great great grandfather gave his life so his descendants could...."
Drift travel Kasathan "Daaaaaaad are we THERE yet? Its been THREE DAYS and Blorik is making faces at me AGAIN!....
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(Apparently) Ten of the most Densely populated cities
Manila, Philippines (119,600/mi2)
Pateros, Philippines (94,400/mi2)
Mandaluyong, Philippines (90,460/mi2)
Baghdad, Iraq (85,140/mi2)
Mumbai, India (83,660/mi2)
Dhaka, Bangladesh (75,290/mi2)
Caloocan, Philippines (72,490/mi2)
Port-au-Prince, Haiti (70,950/mi2)
Bnei Brak, Israel (70,810/mi2)
Levallois-Perret, France (68,460/mi2)Now, that doesn't mean much to me, I can't really visualise a Square mile but using some funky conversions (No guarantee of accuracy so take them as rough numbers) a square mile is roughly 484 American football fields... So that's roughly 247 people living on a football field.
Side note, all numbers are based from google so accuracy is not guaranteed
Kowloon walled city is around 210 by 120 metres (690 by 390 ft) or about the size of 6-foot ball fields, so that's 8333.33 people per field. The typical Kawloon living space size was around 23 m2 (250 sq ft) stacked 13 to 14 stories high.
with a whopping population density of 1,930,000/km2 (5,000,000/sq mi)It might not show up on a list of most populated cities since it was demolished sometime in the 1990s, right before the offical demolition parts of Kowloon was allowed to be destroyed filling a Jackie Chan movie.
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A few things.
They didn't take all the Kasathan. There were plenty that stayed behind on their home planet. Either they didn't think the Idari was a good idea, they thought the planet could support the population left without he idari residents, or the idari was just survival plan C and AB D EFG were all done as well.
The other is that a podunk town may be a few square miles, but its a few miles X a few miles. A space station on the other hand is a few square miles x a few square miles x a few square miles. Every 10 or 20 feet up doubles the amount of living space you have.
10 by 10= 100 Square miles
10 by 10 by 10= 1,000 square miles.
Also, its kind of funny that soon after the idari showed up drift travel became a thing.
Idari Kasathan " My ancestors have been in this ship for 800 years. my great great great great grandfather gave his life so his descendants could...."
Drift travel Kasathan "Daaaaaaad are we THERE yet? Its been THREE DAYS and Blorik is making faces at me AGAIN!....
Kasathan parent to their school-age kids, " when I was your age it took 3 generations to get to school both ways, and we had so much homework we had to grow more arms to keep up.
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Now, that doesn't mean much to me, I can't really visualise a Square mile but using some funky conversions (No guarantee of accuracy so take them as rough numbers) a square mile is roughly 484 American football fields... So that's roughly 247 people living on a football field.
It always amazes me how americans measure in everything except SI units (which everyone else in the world uses^^).
including football fields.. american football fields. :)
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It always amazes me how americans measure in everything except SI units (which everyone else in the world uses^^).
Now, that doesn't mean much to me, I can't really visualise a Square mile but using some funky conversions (No guarantee of accuracy so take them as rough numbers) a square mile is roughly 484 American football fields... So that's roughly 247 people living on a football field.
I tend to think of everything in terms of Second Life regions 256 x 256 meters.
Another common visual measurement, used for large bodies of water is the Olympic size swimming pool, which qualifies as an international standard :)
One of the most ridiculous is the number of hamburgers to reach the moon 30,267,637,800
A hectare is just a bigger plot of land than most people that aren't farmers have seen. An acre is a good sized back yard. its hard to visualize an area an absurdly large number you can't visualize of something you can (like 1,000 meters)
Earlier Starfinder books had a big problem with too small population sizes. It got better with Near Space with Vesk cities actually having millions of inhabitants.But in general, the majority of core races would actually be small minorities in the Pact System because of their history or home.
The way I understood it, humanity sorta Titan A.E.'d itself when the Big G disappeared, and they're intended to be a majority-minority. But minority nonetheless.
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A hectare is just a bigger plot of land than most people that aren't farmers have seen. An acre is a good sized back yard. its hard to visualize an area an absurdly large number you can't visualize of something you can (like 1,000 meters)
astronomical unit might be one of the few crazy large units you can visualize but only because there are maps of the solar system to show the distance.
I had a conversation with a friend once where we measured every thinking in terms of is relative size compared to the Death Star.
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A hectare is just a bigger plot of land than most people that aren't farmers have seen. An acre is a good sized back yard. its hard to visualize an area an absurdly large number you can't visualize of something you can (like 1,000 meters)astronomical unit might be one of the few crazy large units you can visualize but only because there are maps of the solar system to show the distance.
I had a conversation with a friend once where we measured every thinking in terms of is relative size compared to the Death Star.
I don't know how well people can imagine an AU correctly.
That tiny blue LED is earth, not the giant ball planet you usually see in an astronomy book.
Also, if people have trouble with accurately understanding mile or km, they're going to have a real bad time trying to comprehend just what 1 AU means, and just how much distance that is.
Where do you live that 55k is considered "podunk small town"? Where I'm from, a small town is less than 20k & a podunk is less than 2k.
I see what you're going at and I can also see what you mean by the math. HOWEVER it is also implied in these that there is plenty of open space in these vessels for either green space, traffic, or food, which skews that idea.I'm looking at this from the perspective...
I totally understand your point of view.
Open/green spaces are already counted for in cities (also infrastructure, health care etc.) and I also added 30% additional space (in the case of the Idari I even doubled the space).
So I think my estimations are not that far off.I think the biggest issue with station/ship size is, that doubling it's size didn't mean doubling it's volume, but instead increase it by a factor of 8.
So if you take a aircraft carrier and double it in size (to 2000 ft x 2000 ft x 2000 ft), you don't have (cramped) space for 6000 people but instead for 48.000 people.
If do this again two times, you are at a station with roughly 2,5 km (8000 ft.) side length which has space for 3 Million people (and space for 43.520 fighter jets^^).As said, scaling sizes (and especially volumens) are something which can be tricky.
Because of this I normally model my players ships in 3D (sometimes just as a rough blockout) and it always amazes me how many (or with small ships how less) space there is. :)
Darn kids and your actual understanding of math and physics!
On to my next point......48,000 seems like not a lot of people. I live in a "podunk small town" and that has 55,000 people. I'd like to think that the Idari came with a lot more people to at least, I'll assume many left when they pulled in but it seems like in the span of a generation or 2 you have millions of Kastathas roaming around the pact worlds having come from such a small sample size.
California. "Small" cities run in the 500,000+ range. There's 40 million people in this state so I'm familiar with population density. For as many densely populated places such as LA there are vast stretches of NOTHING in-between. The populations of these planets should be much higher. IE with modern medicine, communication, and food production methods populations should be MUCH bigger all around. Some of these planets should have numbers in the Billions, instead they are barely inhabited with maybe a few million people. Earth isn't even all that densely populated when it comes to being able to sustain a large population, we just suck at resource management, which is something that Starfinder universe has done a pretty good job. I get newly colonized planets having small populations but homeworlds should be at least reasonably inhabited in order to sustain their basic populations and promote some level of genetic diversity. Even on the Idari it states that there are reclusive traditionalists that live in "the plains" and manage populations of grazing animals in what can only be described as a vast sprawling wilderness but is in reality less than a few dozen hectares. That's why I was having trouble seeing these numbers as sustainable for the amount of productivity thats supposed to be happening (even barring robots). Its almost like during the gap every planet in the universe minus Vesk lost 90% of its population. This is indeed possible but it seems weird that there wasn't a huge population boom after things stabilized.
maybe after Ravagog escaped golarion and the gods had to create the universe where his nomming left off space time they could only think of so many backgrounds for people
maybe after Ravagog escaped golarion and the gods had to create the universe where his nomming left off space time they could only think of so many backgrounds for people
I can get behind that. Maybe they took who was left and spread them around and did their best to seed in a previous "life" with the illusion that life had moved on. Since there was no more Golarion they spread those races around the solar system and reinvented a few more just to make sure there was balance (ie an undead race, a good race, a militaristic race, etc). Its like Rovagug smashed their toy and they had to glue it back together the best they could.
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California. "Small" cities run in the 500,000+ range. There's 40 million people in this state so I'm familiar with population density. For as many densely populated places such as LA there are vast stretches of NOTHING in-between. The populations of these planets should be much higher. IE with modern medicine, communication, and food production methods populations should be MUCH bigger all around. Some of these planets should have numbers in the Billions, instead they are barely inhabited with maybe a few million people. Earth isn't even all that densely populated when it comes to being able to sustain a large population, we just suck at resource management, which is something that Starfinder universe has done a pretty good job. I get newly colonized planets having small populations but homeworlds should be at least reasonably inhabited in order to sustain their basic populations and promote some level of genetic diversity. Even on the Idari it states that there are reclusive traditionalists that live in "the plains" and manage populations of grazing animals in what can only be described as a vast sprawling wilderness but is in reality less than a few dozen hectares. That's why I was having trouble seeing these numbers as sustainable for the amount of productivity thats supposed to be happening (even barring robots). Its almost like during the gap every planet in the universe minus Vesk lost 90% of its population. This is indeed possible but it seems weird that there wasn't a huge population boom after things stabilized.
Ah, see, I'm from Texas. 11 million fewer people with an extra 100k square miles to spread them out in. Just have a hard time reconciling 55k with the term 'podunk' when I've worked in towns that struggle to break 4 digits in their population.
But yeah I agree that the given population numbers for Starfinder are just whatever a given writer thought sounded good in their heads & not a whole lot of thought was put into it after that. I tend to ignore the numbers wholesale.
Ah, see, I'm from Texas. 11 million fewer people with an extra 100k square miles to spread them out in. Just have a hard time reconciling 55k with the term 'podunk' when I've worked in towns that struggle to break 4 digits in their population.But yeah I agree that the given population numbers for Starfinder are just whatever a given writer thought sounded good in their heads & not a whole lot of thought was put into it after that. I tend to ignore the numbers wholesale.
I agree and think that the numbers they throw out are really off in general.
This argument really makes me thing of the idea of "scale" as we see it in general in comparison to our own view of things and where we live. In pathfinder you can expect to find small villages with maybe a few hundred people being the norm and thats the scale that maybe the writers see (and if they live in Washington thats wholly common to have a sprinkling of tiny towns everywhere) whereas for me the scale is skewed much much higher. I consider a town of a few hundred people to be microscopic because of the population density I'm used to (and central California is widely considered to be a condensed version of Texas). This makes me wonder how people in extremely populated places like Japan see even my "small town" in terms of scale when major cities run in the 10+ million residents.
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2 things might justify the low population of the Idari
1 - a LOT of Kasathas seem to have left
2 - it is a generation ship - meaning that it had to raise its own food for hundreds / thousands of years.
so yeah, it's politically important [enough to get a seat on the Pact] but it might not be a population heavyweight.
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IIRC those thrusters that propelled the ship now make for great energy production for heavy manufacturing.
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A hectare is just a bigger plot of land than most people that aren't farmers have seen. An acre is a good sized back yard. its hard to visualize an area an absurdly large number you can't visualize of something you can (like 1,000 meters)astronomical unit might be one of the few crazy large units you can visualize but only because there are maps of the solar system to show the distance.
I had a conversation with a friend once where we measured every thinking in terms of is relative size compared to the Death Star.
I don't know how well people can imagine an AU correctly.
That tiny blue LED is earth, not the giant ball planet you usually see in an astronomy book.
great video! But even the textbook image of an AU is off-scale it's still way easier to visualize than the equivalent distance in lightyears 0.00001581251
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2 things might justify the low population of the Idari
1 - a LOT of Kasathas seem to have left
2 - it is a generation ship - meaning that it had to raise its own food for hundreds / thousands of years.
so yeah, it's politically important [enough to get a seat on the Pact] but it might not be a population heavyweight.
also as a generation ship, the goal of it isn't to expand the population during the trip but to maintain it until it arrives.
great video! But even the textbook image of an AU is off-scale it's still way easier to visualize than the equivalent distance in lightyears 0.00001581251
With the textbook giving people the impression than and AU is about 10 earth diameters its EASY to visualize but its not being correctly visualized.
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great video! But even the textbook image of an AU is off-scale it's still way easier to visualize than the equivalent distance in lightyears 0.00001581251
With the textbook giving people the impression than and AU is about 10 earth diameters its EASY to visualize but its not being correctly visualized.
10 is not too... far off, only missing 11720 earth diameters. If you had a folding page long enough to show that it would still fit in a football field. To draw a light-year to the same scale would likely need a piece of paper several times the length of a stack of hamburgers staked between the earth and moon.
all this makes me wonder how do other species in Starfinder visualize distance or other measurements.
Contemplatives likely have thought about this a lot...
Kasatha's have 4 arms so might think in units of 20, or maybe use one set of hands to count decimal points?
Space goblins and Ysoki might have interesting visualization especially related to the size or valume of junk or techonology
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great video! But even the textbook image of an AU is off-scale it's still way easier to visualize than the equivalent distance in lightyears 0.00001581251
With the textbook giving people the impression than and AU is about 10 earth diameters its EASY to visualize but its not being correctly visualized.
10 is not too... far off, only missing 11720 earth diameters. If you had a folding page long enough to show that it would still fit in a football field. To draw a light-year to the same scale would likely need a piece of paper several times the length of a stack of hamburgers staked between the earth and moon.
all this makes me wonder how do other species in Starfinder visualize distance or other measurements.
Contemplatives likely have thought about this a lot...
Kasatha's have 4 arms so might think in units of 20, or maybe use one set of hands to count decimal points?
Space goblins and Ysoki might have interesting visualization especially related to the size or valume of junk or techonology
A tediously accurate map of the solar system if the moon were only one pixel.
Supposedly accurate scale map of the solar system that you can scroll through.
And yet, starfinder ships only have to accelerate at something like 2g to cross from pluto to pluto's orbit on the opposite side of the sun in the CRB's max 8 days sublight... granted, that's without slowing down when they get there.
So, really difficult to visualize for the average human.
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great video! But even the textbook image of an AU is off-scale it's still way easier to visualize than the equivalent distance in lightyears 0.00001581251
With the textbook giving people the impression than and AU is about 10 earth diameters its EASY to visualize but its not being correctly visualized.
10 is not too... far off, only missing 11720 earth diameters. If you had a folding page long enough to show that it would still fit in a football field. To draw a light-year to the same scale would likely need a piece of paper several times the length of a stack of hamburgers staked between the earth and moon.
all this makes me wonder how do other species in Starfinder visualize distance or other measurements.
Contemplatives likely have thought about this a lot...
Kasatha's have 4 arms so might think in units of 20, or maybe use one set of hands to count decimal points?
Space goblins and Ysoki might have interesting visualization especially related to the size or valume of junk or techonologyA tediously accurate map of the solar system if the moon were only one pixel.
Supposedly accurate scale map of the solar system that you can scroll through.
And yet, starfinder ships only have to accelerate at something like 2g to cross from pluto to pluto's orbit on the opposite side of the sun in the CRB's max 8 days sublight... granted, that's without slowing down when they get there.
So, really difficult to visualize for the average human.
thanks that's another great webpage!
On my computer 1 AU = about 2 minutes of fast scrolling...| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I really don't grock how things that small and far apart have so much attraction but rocks don't visibly pull on each other.
(cept hemetite)
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I really don't grock how things that small and far apart have so much attraction but rocks don't visibly pull on each other.
(cept hemetite)
Put two baseballs a meter apart in the vacuum of space and they will meet each other in the middle. Takes about three days.
The force just isn't strong enough to overcome friction & air pressure.
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Even a six digit amry is not realistic for the conquering of a complete planet.
Planetary conquest is a trope of many scifi stories which would NEVER work (same for planetary blockades). Simply because of the sizes are too large to control.
Look at our own history. After WW2 US have to bring back ~ 6 Million people from Europe alone (Operation Magic Carpet). And this were only the US troops. Also this was a "Liberation-war" and no "Conquest-war".
Other known wars and troops involved:
Invasion of Poland 1939 - 1,6 Million german troops
Gulf War I - 1 Million Allied troops
If you take this numbers and thinking about conquering a complete planet (even one half populated as Earth), you have to think in troop sizes of several hundert million if not a few billion (not to mention the insane logistics behind it).
As said before, we humans are really bad when it comes to realize the size of large numbers.
How was the first rule of P&P RPGs? "NEVER try to explain things in the game with examples from the real world." ;)
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Speaking of which, I can't quite tell if someone was on the ball for that when writing near space.
When conquering other worlds in their system, the vesk seem to have just taken orbital supremacy, plopped down a megafortress/city with millions of troops/citizens, and called it a day.
IIRC, the ijtikri, skittermander and pahtra homeworlds still only have that one megacity as the center of vesk population on each planet, with varying levels of control over the native species, and limited development elsewhere in the globe.
I assume if some native state tries to declare independence the vesk just say to themselves 'oh good a war to fight' and load up millions into the dropships and head on over. Not really what modern day would call 'conquered', but to the vesk it seems to be good enough.
The Vesk preferring one central stronghold per planet feels entirely consistent with their colonial approach to things. Let the Pahtra rebels control the hinterlands, they control the only way out of the gravity well.
Planetary invasion is always a problematic topic as it gets used a lot but would hardly ever work when you think about it.
The Idari has already been mentioned, but the same would apply to the Vesk trying to invade Triaxus or the Attack of the Swarm AP.
At least the vesk in the Veskarium have step one down: create your own resource base and population center on planet so you don't have to ship in from elsewhere.
Planetary invasions are easy as long as you have enough nukes. Offer the natives the opportunity to willingly follow and enforce your laws, scrub them and repopulate if they decline. The Idari wanted the planet, not the inhabitants, after all. Their existence was an unfortunate and unforseen complication that could have been resolved from orbit, theoretically.
It surely has to be cheaper to bombard the population away and then fix any environmental effects than to invade with an army and take every city with house to house fighting. I gather the Azlanti run a mixed strategy, some of each. It's also probably cheaper than terraforming a lot of marginal planets, just do pest control on one that is already good enough.
Walter John William's Dread Empire's Fall series has an alien species who has conquered several subordinate species (including humans) via this method. All the contemporary ships manned by humans in their navy are named after Earth cities that were obliterated by antimatter bombs until the survivors set up quisling governments to accept and obey the minimal occupation forces and start adopting a new culture and getting their population redistributed throughout the empire. Thousands of years later humans proudly serve on the Bombardment of Los Angeles, Bombardment of Delhi, etc. and regard their homeworld as a backwater, their only two officially approved contributions to empire culture that hadn't been discovered elsewhere better being some decorative ceramics and a branch of music theory. There are also a couple of completely exteriminated planets because the uplift plan went awry or the a single cell of subversives tried to develop a bioweapon to target the alien overlord species. It's very LE with extreme emphasis on both the L at the lower levels and E at the higher levels.