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New Rabbit Hole: Star System Generator

NanoEtherNNanoEther
edited January 10 in Inspiration Pad Pro General

It's a bit more then that, I'm probably repeating some of what's in AS, but here are my goals:

Generate a system of one or more stars
Generate system hazards/travel advisory
Determine natural habitability zone
Generate planets/stations
Determine if a planet is in the natural HZ
Generate planet hazards/travel advisory
Determine if it has a population (if it is in the HZ, open air settlements may be prevalent)
Generate settlements

The first point is done, and I'm looking for better data on HZ

What I'm interested in are thoughts on possible hazards, some examples:
System:
* Not fully surveyed, FTL more hazardous
* Remnants of Space Battle/accident, Navigational hazards present
* Pirates active, (is there a suppression force)
* Natural radiation sources make scanners less effective
* Local navigation rules irregular
* Navigation restrictions (gov forces conducting training, transport of something important/dangerous)

Planet
* Fugitives from law
* Local medical alert (disease, parasite, toxins)
* Required inspections

while some can be used as hooks, they can also represent complications, or just be background

The thought behind the hazards is based on the port briefs I would get; sort of like a travel advisory, but often includes the added hazard of death-by-power-point
Like for Japan:
There will be protestors, they will protest for about an hour, then leave; do not get involved, just let them protest.
Do not, do not, wear inappropriate clothing, this includes things like t-shirts with mushroom clouds, that say 'nuke them all' or similar

For Australia:
Do not cheat on your wives here, the women here will fly to the US to great you on the pier. It has happened.

But the briefs would also list places to avoid, and other risks

Comments

  • jdalejjdale

    Would the hazards be linked to the other parameters? Or are you just looking to brainstorm a big list?

    You can certainly have a table of hazards that says things like, for example:

    required [|token|formal|extensive|intrusive] inspections to [|avoid agricultural pests|ensure tariffs are paid|catch antiquity smugglers|etc.]
outbreak of [@disease]
temporal anomaly results in arrival {1d10} [|days earlier than expected|days later than expected|hours earlier than expected]

    and so forth.

    If you search the net you can probably find some lists already. Use them as loose inspiration, turn them into madlibs, and create subtables and you'll start getting real variety.

  • NanoEtherNNanoEther

    There will likely be some interactions, and looking for other ideas as well
    A toxic atmosphere will necessitate a sealed habitat and suits
    anti-piracy/customs may show up in response to pirates/smugglers; any of which could cause issues.

    The generator is going to be geared towards creating an inhabited star system. it could be as little as an outpost circling a star with no planets, to multiple population centers.It will concentrate on ports when it generates a large pop, otherwise it'll get out of hand.

    And there is a way to weigh inline selections; it's not pretty, but:
    [|token|formal|formal|formal|extensive|extensive|intrusive]
    of course, if it gets complex, I think calling a table is better

  • NanoEtherNNanoEther

    Found my Spacemaster book from 92 [ICE 9050], and have been making tables from it. Ran into a snag, I don't use prompts or when/do's often and I couldn't find something to make it easier. I've got the table setup to display the the 'Mod' variable as part of the output, and it's not changing. Here's the snippet:

    Prompt: Difficulty {Extremely Severe|Very Severe|Severe|Moderate|Light|Routine} Moderate &
[when]{prompt1}=={Extremely Severe} [do]{Mod=={-30}}[end] &
[when]{prompt1}=={Very Severe} [do]{Mod=={-20}}[end] &
[when]{prompt1}=={Severe} [do]{Mod=={-10}}[end] &
[when]{prompt1}=={Moderate} [do]{Mod=={0}}[end] &
[when]{prompt1}=={Light} [do]{Mod=={10}}[end] &
[when]{prompt1}=={Routine} [do]{Mod=={20}}[end]

    It's probably something simple.
    It's a common set of modifiers for RM
    Select the difficulty, and a modifier (Mod) is added to the roll
    Altering the first two options is required to make a dictionary table possible, and I'd still need to pass through when/do operations to do this, so why bother.
    Alternatively, is there a way to query the position of the selected option from the prompt1? then I could just use math.

  • jdalejjdale

    It looks like you are trying to do all that processing in the prompt itself. I don't think you can do that. Remove the & at the beginning of the first line so it stands by itself, and then move all those When statements into a table.

    I think using a dictionary table to look up the values is the best solution though. You just need to abbreviate Extremely Severe and Very Severe to be no more than 10 characters long.

    Alternatively, you could list the modifiers in the prompts, and then process them as strings to strip off everything but the value. So for example:

    Prompt: Difficulty {-30: Extremely Severe|-20: Very Severe|-10: Severe|0: Moderate|10: Light|20: Routine} 0: Moderate

Table: TableOne
[{prompt1} >> Left {[{prompt1} >> At :]-1}]

    I feel like there must be a value function that would be easier than using those two filters but I didn't find one.

  • NanoEtherNNanoEther

    I like it, it's simple

    BTW I've converted the mission/motivation table, business table, equipment mishandling table (minus a crit table), and random events (which had a few good items for the system generator).
    Would it be OK if they were posted?

    While I am going to create other tables, like the skill and crit tables, those have core mechanics tied to them, so they'll be kept for my use.

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