Talk:Forine (world)

There's a big problem with the portrayal of Forine as covered with buildings. I'll leave aside the fact that I've put a lot of the population in orbital habitats and in the asteroids, precisely because Forine is such a miserable world, since that is non-canonical. But even if everyone did live on Forine, you still wouldn't get that effect. A 3,000 miles diameter world has a lot of surface, especially when it doesn't waste any of it on oceans, agricultural areas, and wildernesses. Try working out how much acreage each Forininan would have if the entire surface was single-storied buildings. Add the extreme unlikelihood that buildings would be single-storied, and the picture simply doesn't make sense.

I'm very tempted to rewrite the description wholesale, but I don't want to do that without giving others the chance to show me that I'm wrong. Are my calculations incorrect? (I can't give you my exact figures, because I made them a long time ago and I don't have them here, but I think it worked out at several thousand square meters per inhabitant).

Rancke 12:52, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that with a population of 6 billion, there would be loads of space per inhabitant; so a world wide arcology would most likely not be in use.

Given the inhospitable climate (Minus140+; doesn’t really matter what scale you use Celsius or Fahrenheit) the need for protection from just the temperature would be enormous; not even taking the atmospherics into account; a regional arcology might make more sense. Sstefan 13:24, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Oh sure. Arcologies or environmental domes are a must. Come to think about it, you might be able to do something with environmental domes (assuming for purposes of argument that TL 10 is sufficient to make Really Big environmental domes). If the domes cover not only residential areas, but also agricultural fields and artificial lakes and wildernesses, you may be able to cover a lot of Forine with them. Of course, this would give Forine the ability to grow its own crops, but I've never believed in the notion that a high-population world would import most of its foodstuff instead of using hydroponics and carniculture to grow it. The logistics are simply prohibitive - the number of ships you need to import food for 6 billion people is huge. (Note that I'm not saying that Forine can't import a lot of naturally grown food as luxuries, just that most of what its hoi polloi eats must be home-grown).

One problem is that I've no idea how big environmental domes that are reasonable for what tech levels, nor do I really have any feel for how much space domes for X people would take up.

Rancke 13:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree about the unlikelihood of a world-spanning arcology even with a population of 6 Billion, but I assue that it's the prerogative of the first person to post text on a system to define it however he or she wants. To my way of thinking, later posters are obliged to work within the confines of the 'founder's' conception of the world/system.

I don't think that posting first gives anyone 'dibs' on any system. To my mind, the important point when working in a shared universe is to cooperate with the other contributors in creating a fun, believable, self-consistent game universe. To that end, I generally consider it counter-productive to disregard other peoples' work, as long as it makes sense. There are plenty of blank spaces to work on. But if it does not make sense, I don't feel obliged to accept it (Unless Marc Miller or one of his minions tell me to do so ;-).

However, it's obviously a waste of effort for me to overwrite your stuff if you're just going to restore it. Likewise, it's a waste of effort for you to restore it if I'm just going to change it again. Which is precisely why I started this discussion. Hopefully, we can arrive at some mutually acceptable worldview. [R]

As for the matter of food imports, my inspiration there was the former USSR. In theory it was more than capable of producing all the food it needed and then some, but in practice it had to import huge quantities of the stuff. The reasons flowed from its ruling philosophy (which led to collectivized agriculture, an overemphasis on industrial production -- especially for military purposes -- and a total disregard for environmental factors) and the foibles of leaders such as Stalin and Khrushchev.

Given that we're positing an unbroken succession of dictatorial regimes on Forine extending back many centuries, it seemed reasonable to me to suppose that similar policies had led to similar results.

The former USSR didn't get its food shipped in on multi-million credit starships. Rancke 13:44, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

You are mistaken in supposing that it was I who posited a world-spanning arcology on Forine. Rather, I wrote my contributions on Forine to correspond with those of an earlier contributor. So please do not refrain from making any changes on my account.

The world-spanning arcology is originally from Behind the Claw. Incidentally, BtC simultaneously reduced the population of Forine to 1.6 billion... [Hans]

I'm not certain why the means of importation (multi-million credit starships or otherwise) should render the assumption of heavy reliance on offword foodstuffs invalid. I posit that a series of dictatorial regimes focused on industrial development and large scale infrastructure projects (largely for the glorification of the regime) would not accord high priority to meeting the common folk's needs for subistence. In any event, I replaced the word "most" with "much" in reference to Forine's food supply problems in response to your earlier critique. This seems to be in accord with canonical sources that refer to the importance of the Agworld Combine in meeting District 268's food needs.--Vendarth 22:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I have to back down on the claim that the logistics would be insurmountalbe. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations the other night, and the problem lies elsewhere.

• Assumption: Forine wants to import food for 1 billion people.
• Assumption: One man-day of food masses one liter.
• Assumption: Dedicated freighters can achieve an average of 9 days per jump.

Forine can only build jump-1 ships. This means that food from Tarkine requires a four-jump round trip to import. It also means that the ships have to refuel at Noctocol, creating a hideously vulnerable Achilles heel for Forine.

With a round trip time of 36 days, Forine needs enough cargo space for 36 billion man-days. This equals 36 billion liters or 2,666,667 dT (36 billion divided by 13,500).

Really big jump-1 ships have about 80% of their tonnage as cargo space. To provide 2,666,667 dT of cargo space, you need approx. 3,333,333 dT of freighter, say, 333 10,000 T freighters.

Using jump-2 ships like the Liverpool Class (Starships, p. 97) will improve the logistics quite a bit, but it does require Forine to buy them from some friendly world with jump-2 technology (or we could decide that Forine's space TL was higher than its High Common TL).

In any case, I have to admit that the ship figures aren't that bad. Forine would be able to finance a fleet to import that amount of food (or even more). The figures that are bad are the ones that concerns Tarkine's productivity.

Before 5FW, Tarkine had a population of 6 million. That means that in order to feed 1 billion, they had to produce food for 167 times their own number.

Tarkine has a TL of 7. Let's assume, for purposes of argument, that it has an agricultural TL two higher than that. According to World Tamer's Handbook, an agricultural laborer can produce 33 man-months of food per month in the growing season. And, of course, a society cannot consist solely of farmers. I'm not sure how big a percentage of Tarkine's population can be farmers or how long the growing season is, but we're already far below the production Forine requires to feed a billion, let alone six.

But what about Tarsus amd Motmos? Can't they provide the shortfall? Some of it, perhaps, but there are problems. First of all, Tarsus has a population of 2 million and Motmos of 7, and while Tarsus has a TL of 10, that of Motmos is only 5. That still won't produce all the food Forine needs. Secondly, the Ag World Combine also sells food to Collace. Whatever Collace buys comes out of what Forine can have. Thirdly, Tarkine is 7 and Motmos 8 parsecs from Forine. That means that any load of food imported from them takes four times longer to fetch and thus requirtes four times as many ships (or requires jump-4 ships; this is probably the best solution, provide that Forine can buy them somewhere (and put a permanent naval presence in the Flexos system).

(Pagaton is actually a much better bet for providing food. Although its low TL means that productivity per farmer is lower, it has a population of almost a billion. Make half of them farmers and give them a six month growing season and they can provide food for 4.5 billion people. Or rather, for 3.5 billion, since they need to feed themselves and their countrymen too, of course. But if we do that, we reduce the relative importance of the Ag Worlds to insignificance.)

(I'm not sure Pagaton has the required amount of arable land, though. And it certainly doesn't jibe with the description in BtC).

Finally, if you assume that Tarsus supplied, say, 75% of the food for 1 billion Forinians before the war, Forine's food imports would have been reduced drastically during the war. I don't think that a conflict that halves a population can possibly avoid affecting agricultural productivity negatively. As in, practically disrupting it completely. If the amount of food Forine imported had been enough to feed a billion, a lot of Forinians would have starved during the war (And after, since even with peace restored, Tarkine's reduced population would lower its production capacity proportionally). Rancke 13:11, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I like your edits to the Forine entry in all but one respect. The problem is that canonical sources seem to list the PLANETARY population as about 6 Billion -- not the SYSTEM-wide popuation. I must admit that I do not own all of the sources in question, but references elsewhere, plus the system-generation rules in the original Scouts book seem to bear this out.

Canonical sources either imply or sometimes flat out state (I don't know if the latter is the case with some Forine references; it's not in Safari Ship) that populations are planetary. Early Traveller did not accomodate the concept of multiple settlements in one system. And when it was introduced, population levels of secondary settlements were capped at one lower than the mainworld. But I don't think it stretches plausibility much (anything at all, really) to handwave that people sometimes say 'Forine' when they mean 'the Forine system'. As for secondary settlements not being able to have the PL as the mainworld, that seems to me to be a typical game artifact. I see no reason why a few systems can't have several settlements with the same PL. [Hans]

Moreover, the assumed population of 3 Billion residing in the Trojan points and asteroid belt would appear to greatly intensify the problem of food shipment costs that you detailed with such precision. Presumably such a large Belter population would, of necessity, have to be widely scattered, and moving between one body and another in the same asteroid belt could often require travelling to the opposite side of the system. Shipping a ton of food in-system may not be as expensive as importing it from out-system, but if nearly two thirds of the population must be supplied by such means, I suspect that the costs couild be equally unmanageable.

Which is why I assume basic food is produced locally in hydroponics gardens and carniculture vats. Only natural food will have to be shipped, and anything that's shipped in from out-system can just be shipped directly to the recipient. [Hans]

Finally, imposing and sustaining a non-charismatic dictatorship when nearly two-thirds of the population is scattered in this fashion would be extremely difficult -- if not impossible.--Vendarth 15:12, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

You don't impose a non-charismatic dictatorship. You impose a charismatic one which then degenerates into a non-charismatic one. I agree that a non-charismatic dictatorship is unlikely to last long, but then, canon only says that it lasts at least 15 years (from 1105 to 1120). I'm very uncomfortable with that 'long list of dictatorships' in the past, but I was already raining all over the parade and was putting that bit aside for consideration, in the hope that I could come up with something to make them work. But I must admit that I'd be much happier with a dictatorship that has only lasted about a generation and won't last another. Rancke 09:28, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

... as would any population under the dictator's thumb... Sstefan 11:17, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, dictatorship in one form or another (solitary or collective, open or disguised) is so common as to be virtually the "default setting" in human societies that exhibit marked imbalances in the distribution of wealth.