Author Topic: BattleTech Planet Generator  (Read 10211 times)

dieffenbachj

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BattleTech Planet Generator
« on: 19 February 2011, 16:27:48 »
So, for my BattleTech game I've been increasingly frustrated by my inability to rely on the Internet's planet generators... they are always too realistic, too earth-like, or lack the details I would need for a BattleTech-style writeup. I could write them up by hand and just make up the details, but I'm someone who enjoys random tables and being surprised by the world unfolding around the heroes, and I hate coming up with planet details myself anyway.

So, I made my own generator to do the work for me. Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?bylfbyb5wb3xey5

I'm looking for input on it. As a brief blurb on my techniques for writing up the tables and statistics in it:

I basically just downloaded all of the Sarna BattleTech wiki's planetary data, put it into a spreadsheet, and gnawed on those numbers a while until I felt I had a good concept of distributions. For example, with the USIIR rating, there is a .75 to .85 correlation between a planet's Technological Sophistication, Industrial Development, and Industrial Output ratings, but they only have a .25 to .35 correlation with Raw Material dependence, and Agricultural Dependence has a mere 0.05 (tops) correlation with any other USIIR rating, and none of them have a strong correlation with planetary population. Or, while there were some exceptions, the Surface Conditions table for gravity, air, water, etc. is accurate to like 90-95% of the wiki.

At first it was entirely random with no roll modifiers between sections with as close a correlation to the wiki as I could get, but after my first test yielded a A-A-A-A-A rated toxic desert, I decided to fix that a little, adjusting random table numbers to make more sense, and adding modifier tables so that on average the wiki would still be correct, but worthless hunks of dirt would be less likely to have thriving civilizations and paradise earth-like planets would be more likely to.

Also, I'm not satisfied with the population calculation; it doesn't account for planetary habitability (even though planetary habitability seems to have a low correlation in this setting, probably due to habitation domes and things) but also it doesn't represent the Sarna averages; it ranges from ~5,000 to ~7-billion, but in BattleTech the average planet has almost 2 billion residents. I spent several hours trying to do some problem solving with multiple variables to make the formula Population=Q*x^(2d6 roll * k), but gave up, eventually going with Population=Q*e^(2d6 roll * k). If anyone can do such complex math solutions better than I, feel free to tell me what the solution is! XD But at least I can put off this gap between my system and the currently written-up BattleTech worlds as "the worlds that got written up are the big, important ones--the ones without write-ups are probably much smaller, so my system is probably more accurate..." but it's a shallow comfort :P

Anyway. Take a look at it, tell me what you think; I don't think my group will be going to a new planet for a while, but when they do I hope to quickly generate some planets on-the-fly during contract negotiations, so they can decide on whether to accept the contract based on whether the planet is appropriate to their forces _as well_ as the actual pay rate and things. And hopefully, after some comments I can finish polishing it off, then leave a more satisfactory copy on the forums for people to use.
« Last Edit: 24 February 2011, 19:03:41 by dieffenbachj »

Jackmc

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #1 on: 19 February 2011, 17:04:54 »
just to point out, there's nothing inherently implausible abotu a 5A toxic desert world, all you need is a plausible reason to justify the initial investment to setup the self-contained agriculture/environmental systems (after which 5A status would allow the planet to maintain them themselves).  If anything, from an RPG standpoint, that world is going to be far more interesting than your average 5A terrestial world. 

Nixing outliers makes sense in statistics, but it tends to make RPG's bland as those outliers often provide the easiest story hooks.

-Jackmc
« Last Edit: 19 February 2011, 17:06:28 by Jackmc »


dieffenbachj

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #2 on: 19 February 2011, 19:30:19 »
True, and I made sure that there's still the base chance of that ever happening--a couple lucky rolls and you could end up with an AAAAA toxic desert planet, no problem--but I wanted to make sure that it was a rare happenstance. Because if I'm handing the players a stack of potential contracts and they all have extremely oddball planets... well, having every other planet be oddball is nowhere near as special, awesome, or hilarious as having ONE planet be oddball.

So, I guess, my defense is "I'll be rolling these up in groups when it comes time to roll for how many contract offers they get, so making sure only a rare one is weird like that will work out for me."

Plus, even if that weren't the case--they were, say, an army, or special agents, or something, and they had to travel to specific planets as ordered by their boss... well, I wouldn't want every planet they visit to be awesome or special, either, because sometimes planets are just boring, 1.0 G, breathable air, B-B-B-B-B USIIR rating boringvilles.

But yeah, definitely see what you're saying.

Cannon_Fodder

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #3 on: 20 February 2011, 16:11:35 »
The last person to post a program here (the GUI character creator) turned out to be malware. So no offence if I don't trust you and give this a pass since you posted the day you joined the forums and I don't remember you from the last.


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Nastyogre

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #4 on: 20 February 2011, 16:15:40 »
I downloaded the PDF. Scanned it and opened it.
Its a legit file. Happy reading

dieffenbachj

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #5 on: 20 February 2011, 22:55:40 »
I posted 13 days after I joined the forums, and I only ever visited the last time when I had a question or when I posted my character sheet design: http://www.classicbattletech.com/forums/index.php/topic,1279.0.html

Either way, someone's confirmed it for you as benign, in case you want to check it out.

Cannon_Fodder

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #6 on: 21 February 2011, 03:01:57 »
I'm sure its fine. I tend to just make up the planets I need. Trying to stay canon is too much work for my lazy butt.

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BirdofPrey

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #7 on: 21 February 2011, 18:27:10 »
Trying to stay canon is too much work for my lazy butt.
Not to mention the fact that even if you do scour Sarna looking for ideal planets to have an adventure on, data is hard to come by for the majority of them.

rim_pirate

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #8 on: 24 February 2011, 03:17:12 »
About the population distribution: did you consider taking a log-normal distribution centered around 2x10^9?

dieffenbachj

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Re: BattleTech Planet Generator
« Reply #9 on: 24 February 2011, 19:03:24 »
When I was looking up various mathematical models, I did indeed see log-normal distribution--but my expertise is in calculus, not statistics, so I went with the slightly me-friendlier exponential growth curve.



In any case, I updated the file: http://www.mediafire.com/?bylfbyb5wb3xey5 tweaked some tables and values, added a modified version of the Special Features table from the Explorer Corps book (which was really easy to convert--the modifiers in Explorer Corps for that table range from -10 to +5, mine range from -8 to +7, so it was just a slight shift...). Some of the surface conditions now are slightly more connected to each other or to the planetary orbit.

I looked at a bunch of other tables in Explorer Corps and considered converting them, but they all seemed, well, too simple in some places or too complex in others. So I kept with my system in most cases.