Step by Step Worldbuilding

[La Volpe]

If you're looking to design a solar system from scratch, I wouldn't worry too much about making it 100 percent realistic. You can get into some pretty complicated stuff that even scientists researching them for years don't really understand. I'd just create some parameters that look semi-realistic, then run with it. You're probably not going to include a full description of the composition and orbit of each planet, and even if you did I doubt anyone would try to run a simulation of the formation of your solar system.

I once tried to do something very similar to what caters is doing now (i.e. create a whole solar system from scratch), but it eventually just ended up with me spending weeks on end discovering countless new, complex, and frankly fascinating things about solar systems and planets (and not understanding very much of it). There was just so much stuff that I had to know that I was getting nowhere with the actual story.

I think that you can get a 95% realistic world/solar system/energy weapon/etc. with a reasonable amount of research. But to cross that last 5% to make it a 100% realistic takes a lot longer. And I've found that it takes a lot of fun out of a story. I like to handwave the few details that could possibly cause my entire premise to be faulty. But maybe that's just me.

 

[Nomadica]

My point is simply that in many situations its still useful to back up new, good technologically with the old. That doesn't mean replace it. like when you mentioned a hand pump. That's great to have along side a well designed modern water system. A hand pump still has value today. It wouldn't hurt to base time measurement of a planet off the solar system. It would simplify it because it would be practically handed to you instead of having to invent a system. What benefit would come from redesigning a time system. I would use a moons orbit to measure time, it doesn't have to be called a month and it doesn't matter if the orbit is slow or fast. I find it highly unlikely that a society would lack a name for their lunar cycle. That name would be a form of time measurement even if its not the most commonly used. Just customize it to the planet. That's the fun part. What if your new planet spins 1/4th the rate of earth? Bet you'd still have a name for this cycle even though you wouldn't have a sleep cycle that coincided with the light and dark periods and it would still effect you unless you were completely under ground maybe. Obviously a society would layer other measurements of time over the solar ones like we have minutes and such, but to me the solar ones still make sense to have. I see the question flipped around. Unless you can find a great benefit to booting them why wouldn't you keep using the same functional system? though it could make sense to use other systems too as we do today non of them has replaced our local solar based ones.

 

[Russ]

My point is simply that in many situations its still useful to back up new, good technologically with the old. That doesn't mean replace it. like when you mentioned a hand pump. That's great to have along side a well designed modern water system. A hand pump still has value today. It wouldn't hurt to base time measurement of a planet off the solar system. It would simplify it because it would be practically handed to you instead of having to invent a system. What benefit would come from redesigning a time system. I would use a moons orbit to measure time, it doesn't have to be called a month and it doesn't matter if the orbit is slow or fast. I find it highly unlikely that a society would lack a name for their lunar cycle. That name would be a form of time measurement even if its not the most commonly used. Just customize it to the planet. That's the fun part. What if your new planet spins 1/4th the rate of earth? Bet you'd still have a name for this cycle even though you wouldn't have a sleep cycle that coincided with the light and dark periods and it would still effect you unless you were completely under ground maybe. Obviously a society would layer other measurements of time over the solar ones like we have minutes and such, but to me the solar ones still make sense to have. I see the question flipped around. Unless you can find a great benefit to booting them why wouldn't you keep using the same functional system? though it could make sense to use other systems too as we do today non of them has replaced our local solar based ones.

In this scenario, a new planet entirely, you are not discarding a functional system, you are building a system from scratch. Earth's old "functional" system would be useless on a new planet.

Now, if you folks speak english, they might well choose to call interim measures of times, weeks and months. But there is no logic or reason to tying them to arbitrary (or effectively arbitrary planetary motions).

The chances are that (like here) the number of weeks and months doesn't work out evenly or in any functional way with days and years.

Our current calendar is obviously flawed and based on superstition and religious belief. If you had a chance to build a new calendar from scratch why would you choose to build in pre-existing flaws that you know about when you have a chance to build something better?

There is actually a lot of good reasons to fix our calendar but we just don't get around to it:

Is It Time to Overhaul the Calendar? - Scientific American

Calendar reform - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World Calendar - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And these are just examples of how to try to fix a screwed up system. If you had the chance to build a rational system from the get go I don't see why you wouldn't.

 

[Nomadica]

I can see what you mean and the inefficiencies in our own system. I still have a hard time imagining that a society would not take into consideration their moon or moons to some level if moons are present. Depending on the planet that may or may not be efficient. I look at time in terms of visible changes and movements. At the very least I can't imagine not taking visible changes into consideration. Like seasons for example, which a planet may or may not have, is a time telling system or time marker for me on a basic level. Perhaps that means my brain is primitive. Would people really ignore a rhythmic visible time marker if it wasn't 100 % perfect? I myself would not but I see that you would so I don't know. What would you put in it's place?
I have a hard time excepting a system that I cant see.

 

[Sheilawisz]

The Carrington event is an excellent example. It could, if handled badly, cause power outages in some places for as long as a year. But if that is the risk, then the natural next question has to be what do you do to avoid that risk?

Do you not use GPS? Dump cell phones and replace computers with slide rules just to be safe? Or do you drive your science to become more advanced so that you can give more advanced warning of those type of events (which we now do, up to 20+ hours actually), and design more robust equipment that won't fail catastrophically when faced by such an event?

I think the answer is pretty straightforward.

Indeed, I agree that it's necessary to keep getting ready for another Carrington event because it's going to happen someday. I know of the warning systems and the strategies that have been designed to deal with it, but still this is a challenge that our world has never faced and we cannot be sure how well we would deal with it.

We can only hope that our advances would get us through some terrible natural disaster alright, but there is no certainty about how well we would do. Another type of disaster that we have not faced yet is a colossal volcanic explosion, and it's not even a supervolcano that would be powerful enough to get our world in trouble.

Exactly two hundred years ago, 1816 was a year without a summer in the Northern hemisphere.

The unusual and very harsh weather ruined agriculture that year, and as a result there were confusion, panic, violence and many people facing starvation. The cause of this disaster was a volcanic explosion of Mount Tambora in what now is Indonesia the year before that, which was so powerful that the world has not seen anything like it since then.

What would happen if a similar explosion took place today?

We have an incredible world with loads of advances that were difficult to imagine a long time ago, and many people consider civilization to be unstoppable while in fact we have not faced a severe, really serious challenge yet. I think that we will always be vulnerable in one way or another, and even an Interstellar power like what Caters describes could face some kind of trouble.

For example, I really hope that interstellar travel is impossible.

Sure it would be epic and incredible to see Earth's powerful ships venturing into the mysteries of interstellar space, so glorious, so great... I love the idea of it, but this also means that if we ever reach the capability to do that then surely many other civilizations out there would be able to do the same.

What if we encounter others? What if they come here first?

Caters: Your ideas sound intriguing, but if you really want your story and settings to have an authentic Sci Fi atmosphere you should worry more about the acceleration and deacceleration processes that would be involved in the travel. Inertia represents a huge problem, not to mention a possible encounter with some tiny particle along the way and the prolonged lack of gravity.

Good luck with it! I want to create a good Sci Fi story someday, but it's really difficult to do right.

 

[TheKillerBs]

Societal collapse is not realistic if you're talkng about a global scenario. I meant a local collapse, which really has happened all the time during history. Poor choice of words, perhaps. The reason I brought it up is because things like water distribution systems require a stable society to work well. The societal infrastructure is, for me, the most complex and vulnerable component of any such system to the extent that the other components are irrelevant. If either country were involved in a war in their own soil, their water system (and power supply and everything else) would fail very much.

 

[Russ]

I can see what you mean and the inefficiencies in our own system. I still have a hard time imagining that a society would not take into consideration their moon or moons to some level if moons are present. Depending on the planet that may or may not be efficient. I look at time in terms of visible changes and movements. At the very least I can't imagine not taking visible changes into consideration. Like seasons for example, which a planet may or may not have, is a time telling system or time marker for me on a basic level. Perhaps that means my brain is primitive. Would people really ignore a rhythmic visible time marker if it wasn't 100 % perfect? I myself would not but I see that you would so I don't know. What would you put in it's place?
I have a hard time excepting a system that I cant see.

The only reason you have trouble seeing such a system, is because we have always done it one way. One of the great things about spec fic is that it invites us to think far beyond our historical/cultural assumptions.

Only certain contingencies caused us to adopt our little disfunctional calendar that bumps along. There is no reason to believe that those contingencies would arise such that another society would do the same thing again.

 

[Darkfantasy]

Beware of world builders disease.
If this Astrology stuff is really important to your novel then obviously establish it. If not don't waste your time there. Some people work from the outside in (as you do) some work from inside out (with the MC) Their life then draw it out to the lives of others, other cultures and so on.

I tend to split my planet into two. I look at the physical world (what would exist their without humans) Then I look at the Cultural world (what people bring/affect). I decide which is centre stage and I work mostly on those things because other wise you can get bogged down.