BOTF: how much time a "turn" represents.

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mullet
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BOTF: how much time a "turn" represents.

Post by mullet »

The way BOTF is set up: if you think about how much a population increases per turn, relative to how much a ship could move in a turn, relative to how much technological advance can happen in a turn, its painfully obvious they had no intended period of time that a "turn" is meant to represent, however......

From overthinking it, and, severe mental gymnastics: I've got a scenario that matches these figures.

10 turns = 1 year , and, 100 population = 1 billion humanoids.

The first thing: Earth population max is 210, and, current IRL would be over 700 by my conversion, and we don't even have Mars terraformed or level 9 hydroponic farming. What gives?

After the atomic wars, and a lot of people leaving on stasis colony ships, humanity got used to having a LOT more elbow room, so to speak, and, by this modified perspective: 2.1 billion is considered slap full.

Family planning has been perfected to currently unimaginable levels in this future. Its no hassle whatsoever to maintain the global population exactly between 2.096 billion and 2.104 billion; an arbitrary number deemed the perfect compromise of sustainable against productive.

More mental gymnastics needed....

Using my conversion, a human colony system can go from 200 million to 4 billion or more in under a decade.......um.... even if all these 2 million were exact even ratio heterosexuals all at the early possible child bearing ages, i'm not sure such growth is even technically achievable. Clones? No. You can't clone that much because of the "replicate fading" (TNG S02 E18)

Even if doable (pardon the entendre) about %90+ of the population would be very young children; not qualified to work at a mass replication plant, or, interpenetrate intelligence reports at a data bank. So: it doesn't work? Are we done here?

Not quite.

In TNG S06 E07, some of the characters were turned to kids by transporter accident, and later: turned back to adults. In how it was explained: there was nothing that said the subject needed to have first been an adult.

Lets just say: that all the advanced species of the galaxy found this ability way sooner, and, use it frequently to populate colony worlds at a high rate. Even if: mothers kept babies in their tummies naturally for about nine months, those children could reach childbearing age themselves in about two minutes.

That episode also had a technology that "accelerated growth". Dr. Crusher used it to make a potted plant old, but, determined it couldn't work on people, .... but, maybe in the BOTF-verse it can.

While infants are being matured to adulthood in a few minutes, in maturation chambers, or transporter buffers: they live a compressed virtual lifetime so, they have adult mental acuity and education level.

Its similar to the alien satellite that made Picard live for 30 years as a flutist on a doomed planet.

Parents can choose to interact with the simulation, so: they experience a normal full childhood, and, could be raised by their real parents.

Considering all this: it would still be a mystery why some planets would choose to breed beyond its food supply and starve out a portion of its population every five weeks, but.... i don't know.......

It would also mean: per every colony I ship you destroy in battle, your murdering 100 million sentient humanoids. Your a monster!

Now: ship travel times.

A standard map is: 25x18 squares. Lets say this map represents the small portions of the alpha and beta quadrants that TNG and DS9 mostly take place in.



Lets say: this is roughly 1/32 of the whole galaxy.

An Intrepid class (Voyager) moves 4 squares per turn, making it capable of traveling the length of the whole theater in 6.2 turns, or, 7 months and two weeks by my conversion table.

This would be generally reasonable, if, Trek didn't frequently tweak travel times throughout the franchise in service of the plot, but, hey...its reasonable

Using my crazy BTOF math and the above map: Dr. Bashir's trip to the conference on Romulus would take about 3 months. If i remember correctly: it was less than a week...anyway.

The distance from USS Voyagers starting point in the delta quadrant to Earth is about 30 BOTF map lengths or 780 squares at a rate of 4 squares per turn equal to 40 squares every year. So: 19 years and 6 months. Not quite the 75 years the show says, but, reasonable to consider "stranded".

What not might be reasonable: correct me if i'm wrong, but i think DR. Bashir's journey to Romulus took a week or less; to cover a distance roughly 1/64 the total galaxy length.

Lets round up to a full week for that trip.

Lets just round up and say Voyager needs to go a full 1/1 galaxy length, and, account for possibly having to go around the barrier of the galactic core, and say its 1.2 full galaxy lengths.

About 1 year, 6 months using the Imgur map, and, throwaway lines from Ds9, and, leaving BOTF out of it....

You have to also consider that the Belaraphon was probably not going its maximum possible speed.
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eber3
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Re: BOTF: how much time a "turn" represents.

Post by eber3 »

You put a lot of thought into this, and your reasoning isn't too bad. I will point out that the "75 years" amount for Voyager to get back to Federation space includes things like not being able to maintain max warp for extended periods, maintenance shutdowns, needing to stop for trade, etc. All things that this game doesn't factor in.
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