Climate and Density Key

IISS Scouts use a variety of distinctive climate and density data when conducting planetary surveys.

Metadata

The density and climate files are created automatically, using the most likely combination according to existing data and formulae from GURPS Traveller: First In.

• Many sectors have a climate file in their masthead.

Description / Specifications

They thus may not match previously manually determined planetary densities or climates. (If it is significantly different from manually determined information, and it is desired to use the manually determined characteristics, then terraforming is likely.) The predictions are more uncertain for worlds not inhabitable without significant technological assistance (e.g., asteroid belts).

Key Parameters of Sector Climate Files

The column meanings are as follows:

• Hex: Hex number
• Name: Name of the world, with an * for Amber Zoned and ** for Red Zoned

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• SAH: Size, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere from the Universal World Profile - these may have been altered for realism if the datafile was not canonical
• MSPR: Maximum Sustainable Population (without technological assistance), with the first number being for normal humans (or other beings with similar requirements) and the second being the maximum for alien races (including minor Human races).
• Gs: Most likely gravitational pull.
• APres: Most likely atmospheric pressure

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• DCl: Most likely density class, from GURPS Space, in ascending order:
  • Sil - Silicate (like Pluto)
  • LIr - Low Iron (like Mars or the Moon)
  • MIr - Medium Iron (like Earth or Venus)
  • HIr - High Iron
  • Met - Metallic

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• DNum: Most likely density (grams per cubic centimeter)

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• Clim - Most likely climate at the 30th latitude (albeit biased toward Earth-normal), from GURPS Space and GURPS Traveller: First In - each band is at least 10 degrees Fahrenheit hotter on average from that below:
  • Torr - Torrid (too hot for human habitation without technological assistance) "Inferno world" (a type of He Hellworld)
  • VHot - Very Hot "Inferno world"
  • Hot - Hot
  • Trop - Tropical (hot + water = tropical vegetation)
  • Warm - Warm
  • Norm, Nrm-, or Nrm+ - Earth-normal; may be on the cold side (Nrm-) or hot side (Nrm+), including intermittently (e.g., ice ages) (a type of Ga Gaia world)
  • Cool - Cool
  • Chil - Chilly
  • Cold - Cold
  • Tundra - (cold + water = tundra vegetation)
  • VCld - Very Cold
  • Froz - Frozen (Ic Iceworld)
  • Frig - Frigid (too cold for human habitation without technological assistance) "Cryo world" (a type of He Hellworld)

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• AU - Distance in AU of the mainworld from its (main) sun(s)
• TLk - Whether the world is likely to be tidally locked (Y), might be (?), or probably isn't (N)

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• TF - How likely the world is to have been terraformed (YY indicates almost certain); note that this assumes that terraforming is done toward climatic characteristics preferred by the major races (or similar minor races)

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• Ali - Whether the world is significantly more habitable by alien life, or by a highly divergent human minor race (e.g., one that is likely to be unable to reproduce with other species of Humaniti)

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• SJLm - The 100D (100 diameter) limit for the star, in AU
• Star(s) - The star(s) of the world, with those in parentheses being further away from the planet; these may have been altered from those in the datafile due to either complete lack of realism (no M9 V stars exist, for instance) or bad formatting of the datafile star types

History & Background / Dossier

Dr. Allen W. Smith, a Traveller fan, entirely created this data as an original work. It corrects many of the errors that the TML community felt the Sunbane data set contained due to a very bad random number generator.

July, 2010 TML Posting from Dr. Smith

Hi. I've just finished putting some files up on the Traveller Wiki that give the most likely climate and density of planets in 92 sectors; please see Category:Sectors with climate data for a list of the sectors in question. This is automatically generated (I'll be putting up the programs involved once I have someplace suitable to do so) using rules and data from GURPS Space and GURPS Traveller: First In; it may not correspond with previously created ones - it is the _most likely_ set of climates, densities, etc to get the available characteristics (size, atmosphere, hydrosphere, etc of planets, data on their stars when available, whether the world is Industrial/Mining, etc). If there are significant differences, suspect some sort of unusual event - terraforming, asteroid bombardment in the Final War, or whatever. Hope it's useful in people's campaigns!

References and contributors

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Author & Contributor: Dr. Allen W. Smith
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science