Cray
09/13/02 08:04 AM
64.83.29.242
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...where the skies are so...uh...reddish-orange smoggy gray?
Just to get your imagination working: Have you seen Bladerunner and/or Soylent Green Recently?
HISTORY
Savannah is a lone Periphery planet outward of the Combine-Lyran border. It was settled in the early 2200s shortly before the Terran Alliance granted independence to all planets more than 1 jump from Terra. For this reason, only a few thousand colonists settled Savannah even though it was a very fertile, water-rich planet. The few shiploads of colonists were from "the South", in the Terran Alliance member state the United States of North America. Savannah was named as much by the settler's passion for rekindling Southern "culture" as for its many fertile savannas and plains, a pun that got real old real fast with the colonists.
With their support unexpectedly gone and little outside contact, the Savannans just farmed and multiplied, farmed and multiplied. There wasn't much else to do - the technology for building a TV/computer entertainment network just wasn't there, the economy wasn't robust enough to support much leisure time, and the transportation network for long-range vacations didn't exist. Savannah's history until the coming of the Star League in 2580 is pretty dull. There wasn't even a civil war, pirate attacks, or war with neighbors.
Reunification War
Savannah supported a Ryan Ice Cartel franchise for its neighbors from the 2400s onward, and had a credible aerospace maintenance facility built in 2490 with Lyran financing to support the Ice Cartel and take advantage of an untapped market in its region of the Periphery. Its agriculture and water supplies made it important to its few neighbors, so Savannah saw more than its share of visiting traders. Many of these were Lyran. It was of little surprise that Savannah was annexed by the SLDF at Lyran urging in 2580. There was little conflict over the annexation - the planetary militia responded to the invaders, thinking they might be pirates and disguise. The few engagements were a mixed bag of success and failure: Savannah infantry (and police SWAT teams) successfully, easily cleared out a few SLDF units from government buildings while half of the huge Savannah mech force (which totaled 6 third-hand mechs at the beginning of the invasion) was destroyed when ambushed by an SLDF combined arms battalion at a space port. Most of the rest of the military was caught completely unprepared and were either captured in their barracks or found out about the invasion when the planetary government announced its complete surrender. Most militia equipment and personnel served with the new Star League-backed administration.
Star League Prosperity
Savannah prospered under the Star League. The Star League's habit of centralizing and specializing Periphery planets strongly benefited Savannah's agricultural sector. Its Lyran advocates kept the worst of the post 2720 taxes and economic pillaging of the Star League away from Savannah. The following Star League Civil War also suited Savannah as it was a primary base for SLDF units working over the Rim Worlds Republic (which was only a few jumps over yonder). Later, it extensively supplied (at Star League expense and Savannan profit) food supplies to war-damaged planets of the Rim Worlds. As the Rim Worlds collapsed (or sort of faded away), Savannah picked up quite a few refugees, especially the ones able to afford passage - professionals and technically talented middle class people who brought useful skill sets to Savannah.
Succession Wars Business Plan Failure
With the agricultural and trade-dependent aerospace markets going south as the Succession Wars loomed, Savannah decided it would diversify. It was strategically near two of the Great Houses, and it could use its new refugees to supply a product both trade partners craved: guns!
When the Succession Wars began, both the Lyran Commonwealth and Draconis Combine held a grudge against Savannah's habit of selling guns to their hated enemies. Both Houses sent fleets by to bombard Savannah's key military industries and discourage further arms sales. The Lyrans, with good intelligence from long-established trade ties to Savannah, blew up arms factories. The Combine, without good intelligence, just shot up any industry its warships orbited over, shot up orbital facilities, and spread a few bioweapons to keep Savannah too busy to rebuild military industries quickly. Savannah collapsed into near anarchy for about a decade.
Recovery
"Near anarchy" consisted of roving bandit gangs and petty warlords making life miserable for the average Savannah citizen. This banditry came to halt after a decade of increasingly organized campaigns by wealthy landowners and more respectable warlords wiped out the roving gangs. When the last major warlord's band was defeated "in detail" (i.e. slaughtered to the last man) and the last large gang (of about 300 bandits) were all given a good, ole' fashioned Southern impaling on the same day (well, it's more of a Balkans tradition, but cultures that like to impale hundreds of people should be allowed to claim impaling as a local old fashioned tradition if they want to), civilization is considered to have returned to Savannah. The new warlords and landowners quickly resurrected the semi-functional remains of the old government and elected a President. On the surface, Savannah was the model of post-Succession War recovery.
However, the warlords and wealthy (many holding noble titles from the Star League, though technically not part of the Savannah government) did not bring civilization back to Savannah out of the goodness of their hearts. They simply liked having the little people pledge loyalty to them in exchange for protection. Further, they did not like fighting because it destroyed their hard-won wealth and followers. The resurrection of the old government and election of a figurehead President was to avoid a fight over who would be king. The government was immediately subverted by the nobles, too, when a few minor legal changes made it feasible for people under nobles' protection to give their votes to a noble, who would be their "proxy." Of course, if people wanted continued protection, they had to give their vote to a noble.
The obvious way to power on Savannah was to have more people owing allegiance to a noble. Since warfare was frowned on (though most nobles retained sizable house guard units…in theory, detachments of the planetary militia), Savannah went back to its pre-Star League ways of agriculture and reproduction. There wasn't much else to do.
Savannah's population at the fall of the Star League was a bit over 1 billion. It doubled, and doubled, and doubled in the intervening years with fewer checks and balances against population growth than even India or Africa of 20th Century Earth. (Higher technology, plentiful water, industry, boundless arable land, etc.) However, by 2930, Savannah was well and truly approaching an "urban hell" state of things as its population exceeded 10 billion. This was still short of Terra's pre-Succession War record and narrowly surpassed Sarna's high, but Savannah didn't have Terra's or Sarna's standard of living.
2930 is a rather interesting date because it was when Savannah had its first significant foreign contact in over a century, one almost worthy of awakening the State Department and finding diplomats. (Previously, the several hundred thousand State Department bureaucrats just handled the quarter to half dozen visits per year from Periphery traders). Comstar found Savannah and initiated contact. A heavily populated planet like Savannah quickly received a B-rated HPG and was about to be re-introduced to human space when a famine washed over Savannah. Since in the first half of the 2900s, Savannah was still adjusting to the idea of its bloating population and not prepared for such rapid population growth, a famine was able to strike this relatively industrialized, advanced planet. Savannah manners being what they were, the locals ate the foreigners first rather than turn on their lifelong neighbors.
They turned on the neighbors a few days later.
Comstar held an odd grudge about its HPG crew and diplomatic team being eaten by a ravenous mob and interdicted Savannah. Point in fact, it blew up the HPG with Comguard aerospace fighters and then abandoned Savannah to its own devices.
Savannah came to terms with the demands of its explosive population growth in the remainder of the 30th Century. This came with associated developments in suppressing unrest, food distribution and production, and redesign of city infrastructures. Paying for the construction of housing for peasants provided nobles with the final control they needed to turn most of Savannah's population into serfs. In exchange for housing, serfs were tied to the housing. Travel beyond a fief was at the behest of a noble. This was a very modern serf (police state) system, too: ID cards and movement tracking sensors and databases made sure peasants did not wander.
The oppressive, urban hell conditions of Savannah began to lift when the Sumter noble family acquired control of the Energy Department. This gave it several full, critical departments under its control. The first (notable) Counter Sumter began a modernizing process on Savannah's infrastructure in about 3000 AD: trading aging, 21st century fusion power plant designs for less expensive 23rd century designs, overhauling the sewer system so it ran more cheaply, using higher levels of technology in recycling systems so they were more cost effective, etc. Though each upgrade required hardship on the part of serfs (increased taxes, reduced services) for the initial capital investment, they eventually paid for themselves. Through this painful bootstrapping process, Savannah's standard of living improved.
Count Sumter made enemies by improving the lot of serfs. He was assassinated in 3011 by a shortsighted noble conspiracy. I call the conspiracy shortsighted because there were no follow-up plans to the assassination - the conspirators (a rather dumb group of conservative nobles) figured everything would go back to normal when Count Sumter was executed. Instead, Count Sumter (the new one, the old Count's daughter) unleashed a purge of epic proportions under the guise of "rounding up murder conspirators." She had the full cooperation of the government, which favored the Sumters over conservative nobles. (The government would regain a lot of authority for its cooperation with Count Sumter.) The purge eliminated over half of the nobles on Savannah, including Savannah's Duke and every successor to the Duke ahead of the new Count Sumter.
There were 57 successors ahead of Count Sumter.
The judicial system's liberal interpretation of inheritance laws gave most of the purged nobles' property to the new Duke Sumter. Property included real estate, which include the leases of serfs, which included the pledged votes of serfs. In the space of 3 bloody weeks, Duke Sumter gained control of a bit over half of the proxy votes on Savannah. Not coincidentally, many of the nobles executed "for collusion" had proportionally large shares of proxy votes. Incidentally, killing half the nobles on a planet of 30 billion people meant killing millions of nobles.
And the serfs loved her for it.
Duke Sumter was able to continue her father's reforms. This was not (just) out of the goodness of her heart. Many of the industries that benefited from increasing standards of living (i.e. disposable cash) among the serfs were owned by Sumters. Streamlining and reform of the government (previously dumping grounds for favorites of nobles) was allowed as payback for the government's aid. Shedding millions of workers freed vast amounts of budgetary money for the government to play with, and head bureaucrats liked having disposable cash in the budgets more than having millions of workers.
From 3011 to 3049, Savannah bootstrapped itself up with continually improving standards of living. By the 3030s, it was merely miserable. By the 3040s, it wasn't much worse than the average Eastern European nation of the Soviet era. Significant increases were made possible by a flood of cheap raw materials from space. Count Sumter had kicked off a project to mine Savannah's moon Augusta. This typified Savannah's approach to self-improvement: incredible numbers of people were thrown at the problem. By 3020, several million miners were working Augusta and learning in a school of hard knocks. Brute force, massive ignorance, and hundreds of thousands of fatalities later (fatalities: almost as good for controlling unemployment as a new job), useful industrial metals were being fired via mass driver as 100-ton slugs to artificial receiver lakes on Savannah. Dropship and shuttle production were up and turning out vehicles that only exploded every 1000th launch or so (which meant there were spaceport explosions every few days by the 3030s).
One advantage Savannah had in this recovery is that its Star League-era universities and libraries had not been destroyed in the Succession Wars. They had been neglected, looted by nobles who wanted stylishly large libraries, and underfunded because the nobles didn't like serfs to have good educations, but a great deal of advanced technology was available to Savannah. And when the government and Sumters decided it was time to export some of its swelling population in 3020, they dug into the old university databases and began training a batch of KF drive engineers. (This would take years because there were, basically, no science professors were familiar with KF drive theory and no such courses had been offered for years. A search turned up a handful of science hobbyists familiar [if not skilled] with the topic. They were press-ganged into the task of creating Savannah's first generation of KF drive engineers and professors capable of teaching the subject.)
Savannah's jumpship project was another brute force and massive ignorance project. It would involve tens of thousands of construction workers shaping Goony Bird (don't ask), the 4th planet in Savannah's system (which was known to be rich in germanium) into a credible support base for a construction yard orbiting Goony Bird. It ran years past schedule, was grossly over budget, and became a pork barrel project to keep highly trained space workers employed. But it was finished by 3033 and promptly started building jumpships.
In 3043, it actually completed a jumpship that did not misjump (or just partially jump) every tenth time it tried to jump. Have you seen the Philadelphia Experiment (the first movie) recently?
Around 3045, expansion of the first shipyard over Goony Bird ceased and construction of another began (with a goal of 10 shipyards by 3075). This was as much a matter of sustaining employment as recognition of just how many jumpships it took to move 1 billion colonists per year. Undeterred by the damage of the Succession Wars and only limited by its own budget, Savannah was only vaguely aware that it would outpace the annual jumpship production of the Inner Sphere by 3070, though its annual production would be an anemic shadow of the once-vast Star League shipbuilding capacity. (Pop quiz: which pre-Star League House Leader once owned a personal fleet of 1000 jumpships, and in what years did s/he reign?)
In 3049, Savannah had a fleet of 10 homemade quasi-Merchant-class jumpships operated by its Stellar Cartography Corps (to find decent, nearby planets) and State Department (to make contact with neighbors and determine how hard they would be to overrun with billions of colonists). Its standard of living was climbing and might reach that of 20th Century Western Europe by the early 32nd century. Its population surpassed 60 billion. Life was good. Then the Clans appeared.
Clan Invasion
As with other Periphery "powers" during their sweep toward the Inner Sphere, a detachment of Clan warriors decided to test the mettle of Savannah's military to see if it was a worthy foe. What the Clans found was a planet with over 50 times the population of all the Clans, an industrialized planet that had enormous slack (in Clan eyes) in its economy - all that wasted effort on pork barrel projects and useless consumer goods. Bidding was ferocious but, in the end, the Jade Falcons won the right to invade.
The Green Turkeys secured the President's Mansion, Congress Building, and capital city's (Richmond's) spaceport within minutes of dropping from orbit.
The President, Cabinet, and Duke Sumter were meeting in a military base under a mountain thousands of miles away when the Clans invaded. Their meeting had nothing to do with the Clan invasion. In fact, they were unaware of Clan surveillance missions over the planet. (The Department of Transportation's sub-sub-sub-division, Near-Savannah Space Traffic Control, had noted "anomalies" and "UFOs" over the past month; reports had reached the Traffic Control Assistant Sub-Secretary of the DOT by the time of the invasion.) The Cabinet did not learn of the invasion for another 7 hours. The meeting was more about several unresolved budgetary items worth a few trillion C-bills that the nigh-powerless Congress was going to rubberstamp at the Cabinet's "request" and a minor rebellion of several million secessionist King-Marxists. (These were Marxists who worshipped The King, aka Elvis, as a god and were armed with stolen military weapons.) The Cabinet mistook the Clans for another minor rebellion with stolen military grade weaponry that had managed the unimpressive feat of capturing figurehead government offices. Accordingly, it let the local military commander deal with the situation rather than meddle unnecessarily. On the other hand, the King-Marxists were serious enough to require coordination between the Federal Security Bureau (secret police), military, and the logging companies that would supply the emergency orders of several million sharpened poles for impaling the rebels. A few dozen rebels of some obscure bird-worshipping cult with mechs and heavily armored infantry wasn't worth the Cabinet's attention.
The local military commander (somewhat more aware than the Cabinet that the rebels were actually advanced invaders) spent the next few days studying the invaders while they declared themselves rulers of the planet, that the planet would be integrated into the Clan Jade Falcon, etc. etc. At his direction, the local government helpfully put the invaders in a luxury hotel near the spaceport and opened the military hangars there for storing their mechs. Yes, Savannah respects it new masters, Savannah obeyed them, Savannah was a good boy….
With this sort of honest and complete cooperation from the locals, the Jade Falcons were rather unprepared for the sewer- and airborne infantry division that overran their barracks.
The Cabinet interrupted its efforts to identify, isolate, and round up King-Marxists when Jade Falcon warships first attempted to sweep the infantry division away from their base and then "cleansed" the base after it was overrun anyway. The spaceport was (typically) in the middle of the city and the hotel-cum-barracks was on the port's outskirts, so about one hundred thousand Savannans were injured or killed by the "precision" orbital bombardments (plus about 6000 infantry). Clearly, these bird-worshippers would need some more high-level government attention.
The government (via expendable assistant under secretaries posing as high ranking officials) spent the next year falling hand over foot to "aid" the Jade Falcons when the Falcons re-invaded and "conquered" Savannah again. The Falcons, especially their administrators, were simply overwhelmed by the task of managing 600 times the entire Jade Falcon population. "Helpful" 1000-page reports (on government doings, industrial output, etc.) filled with details (except in the incomplete summaries, the only parts the Falcons read) only increased the morass the Clan administrators had to wade through. They relied heavily (without admitting it) on suggestions from their native helpers who told them what useful supplies the Falcons could get from Savannah.
The Savannah government had quickly figured out the Falcons had no concept of the SCALE of Savannah, and could thus awe them with tiny fractions of Savannah's industrial output. The popular trick was to provide a day's production of some item (military utility vehicles, ammo, uniforms, rations, etc.) in a spaceport warehouse for the Falcon administrators to see. This inevitably stuffed the single, elephantine warehouse to overflowing and awed the administrators, who (due to the Clans' efficient, on-demand, need-based supply system) rarely saw so much accumulated anything in one place. The administrators would thus be burdened with the task of trying to arrange enough merchant caste dropship flights to haul the "wealth" to the Jade Falcon invasion fleet and juggle cargo space on ships to handle it all. (The delivery of 5000 military utility vehicles - jeeps - kept them busy for a week. To this day, the Savannan jeeps remain in use in the Jade Falcon corridor and baffled Inner Sphere intelligence agencies that had never heard of Savannah.) The only costly loss was the confiscation of all Savannan jumpships and placement of orders for many more.
After a year of seeming good behavior and cooperation (and a mass impalement of the last King-Marxists, followed by the use of the bodies to bolster Savannah's limited red meat supply), Savannah's government redirected Augusta's mass drivers. They were to intercept the orbits of several objects about the size of the artificial receiver lakes that normally caught the 100-ton slugs of ore fired by the mass drivers. The objects (1 warship, 4 jumpships) represented the entire Jade Falcon naval presence in the system and had been in well-known orbits for days or even weeks. The slugs (from multiple mass drivers) arrived about simultaneously. They differed from the normal foamed-metal slugs by having crude RAM on their noses and basic, battery-powered ECM suites. The merchant-caste jumpships were shattered, all literally broken in half or thirds by the titanic ore slugs. The warships were wrecked, adrift and filled with crew that had been subjected to a shock that had turned them into chunky salsa. Freed from fighting and rounding up King-Marxists, the bulk of the Savannah military overran the Jade Falcon military bases on planet in the space of a few minutes and for only a few thousand casualties. (About a quarter of the Clan warriors were simply arrested by police as they mingled with the pleasantly subservient and cooperative locals around their bases.) This left about 1000 Clan civilian caste administrators scattered across Savannah.
Hundreds of high profile people only needed trivial manpower expenditure by Savannah's internal security agencies to keep an eye on. In fact, most of the Clan administrators were (after a year's time) living in private residences befitting Savannah nobles, which meant arcology-top apartments with scores of personal servants. The servants were, of course, almost entirely secret police. They took mere moments to capture the administrators once the Savannah counterattack was launched.
(Adjusting for the difference in populations, consider this analogy: conquer the US with 1 soldier and then supply 5 administrators to "rule the US." Do the FBI, Secret Service, and CIA have enough manpower to surround them all - yes, all 6 of the invaders at once - with spies and hit men disguised as personal servants? Can the US military disguise efforts to launch a counterattack on that single occupation soldier without him noticing?)
Nuke'em From Orbit?
The news of the Savannah victory reached the Clans from the Diamond Sharks, which learned of it when one of its merchant caste's jumpships arrived in system to visit this valuable planet. A loose agreement of Warden and Crusader Clans prevented the Jade Falcons from pushing forward plans to exterminate Savannah, plans that even some Falcons objected to - such exterminations were things Amaris and Spheroids did, not Clan Warriors. This matter was all but forgotten when, just days later, ilKhan Showers was killed at Radstadt and Falcons subsequently found themselves paired with the hated Steel Vipers in the Inner Sphere. Intervening events such as Tukayyid, the Refusal War, etc. have left the Falcons with far more on their minds than their losses at a backwater Periphery planet.
Happy Days
In the intervening years, particularly after being driven out of the Inner Sphere, Clan Diamond Shark has taken to trading with Savannah. Savannah's incredibly cheap labor means it can build mass quantities of low-tech goods for a pittance. The Diamond Sharks have found that they can "buy Manhattan with beads and trinkets" with Savannah. Small trinkets of horribly obsolete industrial technology (24th Century stuff is preferred by Savannah over later technologies - easier to utilize than incomprehensible black box stuff from later centuries) netted vast treasures for the Diamond Sharks. From the Savannan perspective, however, those trinkets meant billions of saved man-hours of labor, controllable jumps in productivity, and economic growth at controlled rates. The technology to easily manufacture long-lived bearings was worth 10,000 tons of SRM ammo. Improved mining and gauss rifle technology (i.e., some text books and a few lessons from Shark scientists) cut the cost of metal ores from Columbia by 30%, saving vast sums of money, and was easily worth 112,337 electric ground cars that will be serving the Diamond Sharks for decades to come.
Diamond Shark remains uncertain how Savannah achieved its (second) victory over the Jade Falcons (particularly: how did Savannah defeat the Falcons' warship?) and thus has satisfied itself with trade rather than attempting to repeat the conquest. It is fairly certain how Falcon ground garrisons were defeated (the Sharks have orbital photographs of Savannah military parades).
Expansion
In 3060, Savannah used its painfully accumulated fleet of jumpships to launch an invasion of a half-dozen neighboring 'garden' and 'adequate' planets within 1 jump of Savannah. Invasion is an exaggeration - only one of the planets had more than a million inhabitants, and Savannah's mechanized infantry units just sort of set up a new government without any fighting to speak of. (In one case, the soldiers trebled the population of a planet.) Savannah imported hundreds of thousands of laborers to the planets over the next three years. These skilled- and semi-skilled workers are establishing basic infrastructures for planned waves of colonists, billions of colonists. The birth control chemicals Savannah was adding to its food and water were only slowing the tidal wave of children. Likewise, attempt to change the big-family culture of Savannah with soap operas featuring small families (to drop hints to Savannan women that families of 6 kids weren't necessary) were not catching on. So, colonization it would be.
SAVANNAH CAMPAIGNS
Savannah is a difficult place to play for Battletech. The government strictly controls access to military weapons; aside from some merc units hired to the Savannah Military Forces (SMF), there is no room for mercs, especially domestic ones. The "Sumter Revolution" put military power firmly back in the hands of the government. This means that not only is it nigh-impossible to stage mercs out of Savannah, nobles do not get their own "house" troops anymore (which were technically militia detachments). This leaves the possibility of playing government troops, but that would mean confronting the size of the SMF, which is adequate to suppress an urban hell of 60 billion people. It's mostly infantry, but it's still munchkin as hell. Even the small expeditionary forces to takeover local planets involved a tidal wave of infantry that, while plausibly sized, are just out-of-scale for BT militaries. So it's best to ignore that little discontinuity and look at other campaign possibilities.
Savannah is better suited as for a "Periphery Merchant" campaign, or "Power Building Noble" campaign. If you like the idea of a horde of servants and even millions of serfs paying rent to you, then a Savannah noble may be fun - and you won't be particularly overpowered as far as the setting goes. Or, at the other end of the scale, the "Street Punks Trying to Escape an Urban Hell" campaign. Picking up an ignorant Savannan street punk and dropping him into a cosmopolitan Inner Sphere setting should be a lot of fun.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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The_Nice_Guy
09/13/02 12:38 PM
137.132.3.8
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I just finished The Shiva Option, and the similarities between your Savannahians and the barghs were hilarious!
But only one problem comes to mind. How many populated worlds were there in the system? Heck, when you were talking about 30 billion, I thought it was a joke, but a later mention of 60 billion had me boggling.
A Terran condition planet, at the VERY MOST, can support 15 billion at abysmal living conditions(assuming that it has no deserts at all, unlike us). The bugs in Shiva Option had max 30 billion on one world in atrocious conditions(extreme overcrowding, cannibalism, no consumer culture), and that was only possible because of their hive mind. I assume the authors did their research on planetary population limits to get to that figure.
I simply cannot believe any one planet can support 30 billion humans. How much rubbish does that come out per day, you suppose?
A Malthusian nightmare, to be sure.
The Nice Guy
Beyond common courage. The mark of a true soldier.
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Cray
09/13/02 12:53 PM
64.83.29.242
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>and the similarities between your Savannahians and the barghs were hilarious!
I wrote up most of Savannah long before I got the Shiva Option, about 2 years before, actually. Including setting the population.
>How many populated worlds were there in the system?
There's one inhabitable planet with all but a few million of the 60 billion people. Several million live on various uninhabitable planets, moons, and space stations.
>A Terran condition planet, at the VERY MOST, can support 15 billion at abysmal living conditions(assuming that it has no deserts at all, unlike us). The bugs in Shiva Option had max 30 billion on one world in atrocious conditions(extreme overcrowding, cannibalism, no consumer culture), and that was only possible because of their hive mind
Overcrowding is not necessary with 60 billion people. At low urban population densities, urban areas around cover about 1% of the land area of Savannah.
I extrapolated from India's area, population density, and agricultural self-sufficiency. There's plenty of room for both people and required farms.
>I simply cannot believe any one planet can support 30 billion humans.
Then I'll convince you. Fire away with your questions.
>How much rubbish does that come out per day, you suppose?
Next to none. The wonder of 23rd Century recycling: use fusion heat to vaporize rubbish to its component elements, reconstitute as needed. Maybe use a dehydrating step first to reclaim water.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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NathanKell
09/13/02 03:56 PM
24.44.238.62
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I hate to be rude, and I do love your fluff, but...has that changed since you last posted it?
If it has--whoopee! (helloooo reading glasses!)
If not, it's still cool. 
EDIT: Never mind, I'm reading it anyway... 
-NathanKell, BT Space Wars
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson
Edited by NathanKell (09/13/02 04:01 PM)
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Cray
09/13/02 05:33 PM
12.91.128.246
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When did I last post it?
Yeah, that's a fairly thorough retread of the Savannah setting.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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NathanKell
09/13/02 06:37 PM
24.44.238.62
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"I cannot recall."
Half-year, mebbe? But that was focused on the clan invasion and the aftermath, and the early, early, history, none of the juicy SW-era and Sumter stuff.
-NathanKell, BT Space Wars
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.
Thomas Jefferson |
The_Nice_Guy
09/13/02 06:42 PM
137.132.3.8
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India, as told to me by some friends from that part of the world, is becoming severely overcrowded. And living conditions are terrible, even by eastern europe standards. Their water sources are draining at tremendous rates. New Delhi is literally sinking into the land.
According to your fic, a population of 60 billion on one world. Okay, I'll divide it by 60 to get 1 billion. What percentage of the world's land area does India take up, with its 1 billion people?
About 2%? And that's being very generous, counting the south pole and a great deal of land that might be less than desirable(desert mountains etc). The actual figure might be about 5-10% of arable land on earth.
Multiply that figure by 60 to get 60 billion, and you would need to throw in the fact that Savannh has three times the arable land mass of earth. Now that simply isn't a terran planet anymore, but a gaian paradise!
India also has about a third of the world's poor(more actually, if you don't count the starving slobs in Africa), and 70% of them are engaged in agriculture.
And with that many people consuming, what are the chances of severe environmental damage leading to loss of useful land? Even without dumping, the presence of noble owned industries is surely a cause for concern. How many of these guys would even care if the environment is damaged, even to the extent of reducing the amount of arable land? All they want is to make a quick buck!
So 60 billion might not be impossible, but you will need
a) A world with twice the arable land of earth.
b) An extremely impoverished society that will be nowhere near even eastern european, or dare I say it, China's standards of living.
The Nice Guy
PS. Found a site which gave estimates based on prosperity levels. However, it must be noted that these are figures based on earth's food supplies and land area.
http://www.sunpath-designs.com/maxpop/
But the estimates the site gave are telling. 60 billion on earth(a rough equivalence with Savannah)? I guess it would still be about the level of prosperity as Northwest Africa, after factoring in technological improvements.
Beyond common courage. The mark of a true soldier.
Edited by The_Nice_Guy (09/13/02 07:01 PM)
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Cray
09/13/02 07:37 PM
12.91.128.246
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Sorry, man, you need harder numbers than that:
Using India's population density (336 people/square kilometer), you need 18 million square kilometers of urban area for the people. The Earth has 149 million square kilometers of land. Oops, not 1% of the land area like I said earlier, but 12%.
But that covers farming AND habitation - India is currently self-sustaining, though the situation IS going downhill. But still, Savannah could have as much as 88% of its land area unused.
Yes, India is running out of water, New Delhi is sinking, etc., but India doesn't have limitless fusion power or 23rd Century technology, does it? Savannah is not quite India.
Savannah has one-eighth India's population density overall. It has centuries more advanced technology. It only needs (currently) 12% of its land area to compare with India's degree of habitability to sustain 60 billion people - it COULD have 88% waste land and still be just fine.
Water? Not a problem. Savannah is 70% water, just like Earth. Boundless, somewhat salty water waiting for a little bit of spare fusion heat to produce drinkable water.
Agriculture: not a problem. Savannah is more habitable than Earth. Getting 12% of it to match India's degree of habitability is not a problem.
What's the issue?
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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The_Nice_Guy
09/14/02 09:07 AM
203.124.2.59
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Your calculation is off by a magnitude. Taking 60 x 10^9(60 billion) people, dividing the figure by the population density to get the land area required, comes out to 1.78 x 10^8 square kilometers of land, or in plain speak, 180 million square kilometers. I don't think you failed your math, did you?
Now, that raises an interesting point. 180 square kilometers of land is clearly more than even earth's TOTAL land area by at least 20 percent.
Unless your world has 50% land mass, I don't see how that is possible.
The Nice Guy
Beyond common courage. The mark of a true soldier.
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Cray
09/14/02 09:55 AM
12.91.117.157
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D'oh!
Well, there you go. The whole planet is at India's population density, give or take a bit.
Urban population densities
Or:
code:
Rank Aggolomeration Population Residential Sq. KM Pop/Sq. KM
1 Tokyo-Yokohama 27,245,000 2,819 9,664
2 Mexico City 20,899,000 1,351 15,465
3 Sao Paulo 18,701,000 1,168 16,017
4 Seoul 16,792,000 885 18,965
5 New York 14,625,000 3,298 4,434
6 Osaka-Kobe-Kyoto 13,872,000 1,281 10,825
7 Bombay 12,101,000 246 49,202
8 Calcutta 11,898,000 541 21,990
9 Rio de Janeiro 11,688,000 673 17,364
10 Buenos Aires 11,657,000 1,385 8,416
11 Moscow 10,446,000 981 10,646
12 Manila 10,156,000 487 20,867
13 Los Angeles 10,130,000 2,874 3,525
14 Cairo 10,099,000 269 37,509
15 Jakarta 9,882,000 197 50,225
16 Teheran 9,779,000 290 33,726
17 London 9,115,000 2,263 4,028
18 Delhi 8,778,000 357 24,570
19 Paris 8,720,000 1,118 7,797
20 Karachi 8,014,000 492 16,292
Using those sorts of densities and the wonders of arcologies, it's easy enough to cram in 60 billion people. Heck, with arcologies, 60 billion people could live in Tokyo-like comfort covering only 6 million square kilometers.
That raises the question of food, but the oceans, arcologies, and abundant farmland should provide.
>Unless your world has 50% land mass, I don't see how that is possible.
It's quite common in BT. Remember, water is rare. Water worlds like Terra are prized. Also, by increasing the planet's diameter by 18%, you get the required land area while still having 70% oceans.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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The_Nice_Guy
09/14/02 10:07 AM
137.132.3.8
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But none of these cities are self sufficient, right? They still require an enormous ecological footprint to sustain their populations.
And do arcologies exist in the BT universe at all?
Also, I don't think you should increase the planetary diameter, because it would imply a heavier planet mass, and thus a heavier surface gravity(1.1G? I sorta forgot the equation for gravity  ) , unless you're also advocating a lower core/mantle density.
Simply increasing the surface land area to 40 percent should do the trick. It still represents a 25% increase in gross land area over just 30%, and comes out to about 187 million square kilometers. The only problem I can forsee is whether the smaller ocean volume is capable of playing its part in the planetary ecology.
And heck, they could always live in the seas, right? 
The Nice Guy
Beyond common courage. The mark of a true soldier.
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Cray
09/14/02 10:25 AM
12.91.117.157
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>But none of these cities are self sufficient, right? They still require an enormous ecological footprint to sustain their populations
They're more self-sufficient than a 20th Century Terran First World city. They recycle most of their water, waste (fertilizer!), garbage, and their dead (mmm, red meat). And, as noted, the footprint would fit in approximately the available land area at 20th Century Indian usage rates. Desalinization via abundant fusion power makes water more available than ever seen in the 20th Century.
>And do arcologies exist in the BT universe at all?
Yes; Max Liao met Jaime Wolf in a Terran arcology to discuss the Wolf Dragoons entering Capellan employment. Terra did reach a population of 12 billion during the Star League - I suspect you can find arcology references in the SLSB and the various Comstar books that discuss Terra.
>Also, I don't think you should increase the planetary diameter, because it would imply a heavier planet mass, and thus a heavier surface gravity
An 18% diameter increase means, I think, an 18% gravity increase. This can be compensated by reducing density to midway between Terra and Mars, if 1.2G is annoying enough. It isn't - Tharkad, Outreach, Canopus IV and Rasalhague have 1.1G.
>And heck, they could always live in the seas, right?
Indeed. In another, older draft of Savannah you might dig up on rec.games.mecha, you'll see the seas are heavily utilized for food production via aquaculture (fish and kelp farms, not normal net fishing of wild fish stocks). It gives an excuse for there to be some untamed land area beyond useless waste lands.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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novakitty
09/14/02 02:00 PM
192.195.234.26
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Assuming the density remains constant, an increase in diameter would lead to an increase in mass much more than the diameter change. Doubling a diameret would typically increase the volume and mass of an object by about a factor of 8. Using this approximation, an 18% diameter increase with the same density would lead to a 2.75G increase.
A 3.75G planet might be unpleasant, but you can argue that away with the previously considered option of less dense materials. Since there is little to no analysis of the makeup of planets other than earth, you have a great deal of freedom to define the structure of the planet you write.
meow
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Cray
09/14/02 03:11 PM
12.91.117.157
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>Assuming the density remains constant, an increase in diameter would lead to an increase in mass much more than the diameter change. Doubling a diameret would typically increase the volume and mass of an object by about a factor of 8. Using this approximation, an 18% diameter increase with the same density would lead to a 2.75G increase
No. You're dealing FAR too heavily with approximations. Recall that gravity is not simply a function of mass, but also of the inverse squared radius. Double diameter and, yes, mass will increase eight-fold for a constant density. However, a doubled diameter means surface gravity is reduced four-fold. 8/4 = 2. In other words, double the diameter and you only double the surface gravity.
Thus, the relationship between diameter and gravity is a simple linear one. Why? I'll show you.
The equation for surface gravity (in meters/kilograms/seconds is):
g = (Gravitational Constant) * (Planetary Mass in kg) / (planetary radius in meters, squared).
The gravitational constant is 6.67x10^-11 m^3 / s^2
Let's test this with Earth. Earth has a mass of 6x10^24 kilograms and a radius of 6368979 meters.
g = (6.67E-11 m^3 / s^2)(6E24 kg) / (6368979 m^2)
g = 9.87 m/s/s
And 9.8m/s/s is, indeed, 1G.
Now, let's try a planet with a diameter 18% larger diameter than Earth, but the same density.
18% larger diameter means (1.18x1.18x1.18)=1.64 times the volume. Density is constant, so mass is 1.64 times Earth, or 9.86x10^24 kilograms. Radius = 1.18x6368979m=7515395m. So, the surface gravity is:
g = (6.67E-11 m^3 / s^2)(9.86E24 kg) / (7515395 m)
g = 11.6m/s/s
11.6 m/s/s / 9.8 m/s/s = 1.18. In other words, a linear relationship between diameter and surface gravity exists.
Also, a linear relationship between planetary density and surface gravity exists.
So, by increasing Savannah's diameter 18%, surface gravity goes up 18%. Do you want links to physics websites confirming the equations I used?
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Edited by Cray (09/14/02 03:16 PM)
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novakitty
09/14/02 05:14 PM
192.195.234.26
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Ah yes, I forgot the distance from the effective point-mass.
meow
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