T5 Second Survey

T5 Second Survey is a project that is conducting an ongoing overhaul and clean up of the world and stellar data published primarily in the 1980s and 90s for the Official Traveller Universe (OTU).

This is a meta-story article about game design. For the in-universe article by the same name, please see the Second Survey article.

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The data has gone through three primary iterations over several time periods:

1. Legacy Astrographic Data
2. Sunbane
3. T5 Second Survey

Description

This project has several goals:

• Update the astrographic data to the current Traveller 5th edition rules, including the new extensions.
• Address several shortcomings in the generation of the data in previous versions, including stellar data and UWPs.
• Produce a consistent and known set of data for current and future Traveller publishers. All of the Mongoose Traveller books published since 2009 have used this data.

T5 Second Survey adjustments

In order to make the collection of legacy astrographic data more consistent, the project took the approach of overwriting the the previous data if the new changes made sense. The T5SS adjustments to the previous versions of data includes:

• Fixing stellar data to match the current understanding of stars. Specific changes would be:
  • Replace the dwarf (D) class stars with M class stars
  • Reduce the size of some giant stars (OBAF) to more reasonable sizes (GK)
  • Fix the M class stars to a minimum of M4 if the world is habitable
• World generation changes include
  • Increase the size of worlds with thin or better atmospheres to match the physics that small worlds can't hold atmospheres.
  • Adjust the TLs of all worlds in the Imperium to be a maximum of 15.
  • Adjust the TLs and populations of worlds in several sectors to ensure each sector economy falls in a specific range of values.
• Trade code changes would include
  • Fix the trade codes to match the rules in the T5 Core Rules
  • Add the sophont codes to worlds where they are known
  • Add the O: (owned worlds) or Mr notation to worlds that are Gov 6

History of Sector Design for the OTU

Astrographic Data has grown and changed many times over the history of Traveller:

History of Sector Design for the OTU

#	Year/s	Design System	Remarks
1.	1977 to 1978	Legacy Astrographic Data (No official maps)	Traveller started life as an RPG game without a setting or designated star charts. There was, as of that time, no star charts, maps, or Charted Space.
2.	1979 to 1983	Legacy Astrographic Data (Pre-Sector)	The first Traveller star charts were designed as simple dot maps. Many early legacy publishers created a variety of settings, maps, and materials, some of which has never been officially placed within the OTU.
3.	1984 to 1994	Sunbane (AOTI / MT / Dot Map)	As computer programs grew more sophisticated, better data was created including the well-known Sunbane data set. In 1984, the Atlas of the Imperium was published, which still sought to preserve the legacy data. It developed into Sunbane. In 1989, The data was uploaded to Genii. In 1994, the files were hosted on the Sunbane FTP server.
4.	1992 to 2004	Sunbane (Galactic Datasets)	Sunbane was eventually included as a date set for the early Galactic design software, which could create entire sectors in Galactic File Format. Random generators began to be created in this period. The software is very clunky and dated by today’s standards. For the most part, the legacy data was not overwritten much in this period.
5.	1998 to Present	T5 Second Survey (Heaven & Earth)	H&E largely superseded Galactic although many still use that venerable software. Many homegrown programs and web sites also exist to create star systems, sectors, and even galaxies. Many publishers overwrote the legacy data in this period, particularly T20 and MGT products.
6.	2007 to Present	T5 Second Survey (T5SS Updated Datasets)	T5SS was created as an update to the previous data sets including the most common one, the Sunbane set. Several companies including T20 and MGT have slowly been upgrading parts of Charted Space. FFE oversees the entire process. T5SS has updated the UWP's of thousands of worlds to be more consistent with current astrophysics knowledge. For instance, full atmospheres cannot be held by very small worlds as they do not possess sufficient gravity. So, many worlds had their size increased along these lines. Many 3's became 5's or larger. A T5SS manual is part of an effort to somewhat standardize the chaotic system. FFE has re-canon-ized some of the legacy data in this current, ongoing period.

History

With the publication of the playtest version of the Traveller 5th edition core rule book (2008), Don McKinney, Robert Eaglestone, along with Marc Miller engaged in a project to collect and update the known astrographic data.

1. The early work was done by Rob with Dan "Far Trader" Burns, gathering details, supplying and filling in gaps, then Don (with the help of Andrew Ford and Roger Howe, aka "the Australian Specialists") picked up and continued working on the sectors within the Imperium, which was then reviewed by Marc and used for the rewards for the T5 Kickstarter.
2. Since 2009, most Mongoose Traveller OTU books have been produced using the data from this project.
3. As of April 2013, this project has all of the sectors with at least two Imperial worlds largely second-draft completed (some details, for example, owning worlds for some captive governments remain undetermined, and smoothing out inconsistencies in the stellar data).
4. Additionally, Ziafrplians Sector and Gvurrdon Sector have been done as part of the effort to supply baseline data for Mongoose Traveller projects.
5. Traveller Map serves as the publication source along with and interactive user interface. The T5 Second Survey begins publication to Traveller Map in 2014.

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.

• Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science