#530 - Build Tall, Not Wide
This one starts all the way back in the early 22nd century when the KF drive was new and everybody and their pet goat was Boldly Going into the Final Frontier looking for new places for the human race to settle. A prospector who found a habitable world could write their own check; a prospector who found a system with
two habitable worlds was considered a legend.
And then there's the Jackpot, one of the wildest and most consistent stories of the early planet rush. According to the tale, one ship out doing a survey well away from where most of the serious colonization efforts were found what the astrophysicists call a "super-habitable" system. Where most star systems have no habitable worlds, or only one marginally-habitable planet, by some quirk of random planetary formation the Jackpot was graced with
three dozen habitable planets and moons, all ready and raring to be settled. Naturally the prospector raced back to Mother Terra to tell everyone what they'd found... and were promptly ignored by the majority. Even assuming that they were telling the truth and not some old spacer's tale, a system like the Jackpot was way the hell out in the back of beyond. There were plenty of systems nearer to Terra, why risk life and limb dozens of jumps away when you didn't have to? A neat curiosity sure, but that was all.
And so the Jackpot faded into legend. But there were always a few who believed; some colonists who followed the prospector back out to the system, and a trickle of people who found stories or heard from friends of friends. When the Terran Alliance finally tripped and faceplanted on its hubris some refugees fleeing that nonsense found their way to the Jackpot and--after a little culture shock--became part of the family. After all, there was plenty of room for everyone. The Jackpot prospered, tucked away in one of the many air-gaps in known space, for hundreds of years. People sometimes came to settle, occasionally trade ships would wander out looking for goods not produced by any of the local worlds, and the system was for the most part happy and peaceful.
It didn't last of course; nothing ever lasts forever, and besides this is a BattleTech setting so naturally the tides of conflict have to come along sooner or later. But eventually one of the Houses, or the SLDF, or the Clans, or the WoB or
somebody will knock on the door and the outside world will demand admission to the Jackpot. The question is, what happens next?
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Dev Notes: Okay, so what the hell, right? Well, I happened across
this article that was aiming for a theoretical maximum number of habitable worlds you could squeeze into a solar system without destabilizing the whole enchilada. I was rather taken with the idea of a system like this existing somewhere in BT space, just doing its own thing out of the way until BT nonsense intrudes and all of a sudden they've got to start making choices regarding their destiny.
Jackpot could be pretty much anywhere the Terran Alliance isn't in the 2110 - 2199 range; deep periphery, periphery or even in some overlooked part of the Inner Sphere for maximum hilarity factor.
The habitable bits of the system consist of four Saturn-scale gas giants in the habitable zone, each with five large moons of rougly earthlike habitability. A pair of Earth-sized binary moons are co-orbital with each gas giant at the leading and trailing Trojan points. The majority of these planets and moons are human-habitable, though that might be stretching things juuuust a bit with a few of them. As a resource base, the Jackpot by itself is roughly as capable as a minor kingdom, with plenty of living space even after multiple centuries of expansion.
System government could be just about anything, really; I favor democratic socialism but YMMV and there's plenty of space to develop most any types of government you'd like. However that shakes out, it's probably best for it to be ancient history before the Inner Sphere or whoever comes knocking.
I might develop this further--been knocking out a list of world names for possible further expansion--but for now I thought I'd toss this out and see if it sparked anybody else's imagination. :)
xoxo,
The Fun Tyrant