 November 27, 2017 - 10:08pm | A good question. It would depend on who is chartering the colony and what one's concept of the UPF Council of Worlds is. Look at how we have various UN treaties dictating what can be officially done in space, whether it is to try to colonize the Moon or whether or not private ventures can launch their own missions. In the Frontier one would have to decide how much of a "frontier" it really is from the home worlds. Did the Human, Vrusk, Dralasite and Yazarian home worlds charter the missions to colonize the area... the Basic Game's brief blurb seems to indicate that... Over what time period was the original Frontier settled? Since I have a hate/love view of the Zebs timeline I'd rather use the non-Zebs canon project you helped create (was it last year already?). Assuming the Humans, Dralasites and Vrusk home worlds chartered the original colonies, how many waves of colonists arrived in the Frontier? Was it one big ship from each world? Or a series of ships? Or was there continuing migration for a time? Did this migration to "the Frontier" ever really end? Well, given the last series of modules where there's an expedition going out beyond the Frontier to find the Sathar, I guess contact with the home worlds was interrupted at some point. We know from Warriors of the White Light that Humans expanded into the Frontier from the direction of the Theseus system. So, Minotaur is for all intents and purposes, the prime planet where Humans might call their "home world" absent contact with the real one. From the Dramune Run module, we know that the Dralasites expanded to Dramune from the direction of <!--[if gte mso 9]> Then you'd run into the pre-UPF questions of who is settling where? Who can claim what system? Are there really just one overall government for a given star system? In the case of Dramune, no. In the case of Truane's Star, yes. But some of these planets might have independent colonial governments from the main one. Early, pre-mega corporation colonies would have been started by various businesses, though later brought into a planetary or mega-corp government. What about other criminally controlled colonies other than the Outer Reach? I bet there might be indpendent mining colonies outside of a star system government's control. Laco I would bet would have at least two separate colonial governments -- one for the northern polar region and the other for the southern region, but the rest of the system is wide open since no one really regulates it other than the UPF with its seemingly weak regulations (at least pre-Second Sathar War). Just a few musings for you. Joe Cabadas |
 November 28, 2017 - 7:55am | It depends on what may be of use within the colony or system. Do they have any resources that may be of use to one or more party? Some might suit the purposes of one group more than another. For example, their might be a planet whose atmosphere and climat is very warm and humid, so these factors and others make make it seem like any ideal holiday resort for Dralasites. Other races might find these conditions generally intolerable and so place less value on it. A system might not have any habitable planets, but instead have various worlds and perhaps one or more asteroid belt that have some material or other value. |
 November 28, 2017 - 12:06pm | I believe alot of what is considered part of th territory of a colony has to do with the resources available to the colonists and their sponsors if they have any. Or simply given this is the Frontier then Force Projection would equal Territory. The entire Clarion system is obviously controlled by the government on Clarion thanks in large part to the Clarion Royal Marines. Alcazaar we are told is controlled by the UPF but each of the moons is controlled by a different Megacorp. Volturnus is not a colony but the homeworld of the Eorna. Since the Star Devil was able to pretty much take control of the planet while the Eorna hid, we currently have a situation where until the UPF is defending the Eorna unitl they can build their strength back up. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 November 28, 2017 - 12:27pm | Im looking for something like "COW has agree that x ammount of AU is the usual territorial limit of a colony. Or everything inside the Kupier belt. Although i suspect with the variableness possible in star systems that its going to be X ammount of AU. Note: all the world of the frontier were refered to as colonies so i use that designation. Or should we ignore questions of territorial limit? Sure, if a planet lacks a space based militia then it can do little more than complain to the COW over territrial violations. Still i think there will be a recognized territorial limit if only by convention if not by treaty or law I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 28, 2017 - 1:01pm | Here is something from the real world: NOAA is responsible for depicting on its nautical charts the limits of the 12 nautical mile Territorial Sea, 24 nautical mile Contiguous Zone, and 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). The outer limit of each of these zones is measured from the U.S. normal baseline, which coincides with the low water line depicted on NOAA charts and includes closing lines across the entrances of legal bays and rivers, consistent with international law. The U.S. baseline and associated maritime limits are reviewed and approved through the interagency U.S. Baseline Committee, which is chaired by the U.S. Department of State. The Committee serves the function of gaining interagency consensus on the proper location of the baseline using the provisions of the 1958 Convention on the Territorial Sea and the Contiguous Zone, to ensure that the seaward extent of U.S. maritime zones do not exceed the breadth that is permitted by international law. However several countries ignore or try to circumvent this. I am talking about you North Korea who say their boundary is much farther out and China who through the building of artificial islands are claiming a great deal more of the South China Sea. That is how I picture the Megacorps and the Governments of the Frontier doing business. There are established precedents in law but in reality they are circumvented in many different ways. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
November 28, 2017 - 2:45pm | Alright this is something to work with: territorial limit is a little beyond the orbit of the planet, exclusive economic zone is far enough to usually include the inner asteroid. belt. Outer system is free to developed. A limited territorial limit acvomdates systems like Dramune. In practice a system like Clarion or Fromeltar, ie having a militia, are by precident able to police much further than their EEZ because of "national security interest" I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 28, 2017 - 5:59pm | As with Alcazzar, if the moons of a planet are included or open to separate colonization is an issue. There could also be a time limit on the territorial claims. A newly established colony might have say 100 years to grow and develop into using their full territorial claim or lose it so that other groups can develop the territory. You could go with the system used in many parts of the US. Area is controlled by one group as it is undeveloped, mostly this is a county seat. As the villages, towns, and cities expand they annex territory to take it under their control. A colony might start with a central government that controls all the territory and has the colony grows they allow new groups to use and govern the areas but still under the central government control. In this way miners on the second planet could control the local laws while still paying tax and answering to the central government on the third planet. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
November 29, 2017 - 6:48am | As with Alcazzar, if the moons of a planet are included or open to separate colonization is an issue. There could also be a time limit on the territorial claims. A newly established colony might have say 100 years to grow and develop into using their full territorial claim or lose it so that other groups can develop the territory. You could go with the system used in many parts of the US. Area is controlled by one group as it is undeveloped, mostly this is a county seat. As the villages, towns, and cities expand they annex territory to take it under their control. A colony might start with a central government that controls all the territory and has the colony grows they allow new groups to use and govern the areas but still under the central government control. In this way miners on the second planet could control the local laws while still paying tax and answering to the central government on the third planet. I think this is a good way to go. and the government would look on licensing of concessions to mine or whatever within its territory or Exclusive Economic zone as an income stream. ADventure seed: small colony (no militia) contracts with PCs and their ship to transport and play muscle for their emmisarry to an illegal mining operation as he negotiates a settlement ie the miners pay for a license or vacate their operation. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 29, 2017 - 2:18pm | Hmm. One of the problems I have with this approach is that it's a bit 'white bread' - well, it tends to fall back on old tropes. Each planet just has one government. This seems somewhat unlikely, seeing as different parts of a planet could be controlled by different parties. It perhaps might work if any given world has settled it's various differences. Okay, new worlds may start off being perhaps a quite unified entity, but there's no reason to supposed that different parts of it may go off and do their own things. This doesn't necessarily mean that it leads to conflict, but it makes things less homogeneous. But also more complicated. Also, one part of a star system may have worlds which have a different outlook to other worlds in that system. This could possibly change into a more fractious situation, but possibly not. |
November 29, 2017 - 3:13pm | Ah What? These are colony worlds. Each is found and generally settled by one group so they would have one government. The influx of new beings and how they are allowed to set up in the system is what we are determining here. The US history has several different colonial groups which sometimes merged peacefully and sometimes had clashes but this was over vast areas with travel times measured in months. A system may have alot of area but little of it would be suitable for colonization so the actual land area where new beings could settle would be small. Add in a simple satellite system around the planet and new ships aren't going to be dropping in unannounced. Maybe after terraforming which takes years and decades and then so more time for cultural differences to arise you might have the "fractous situation" but not initially. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
November 29, 2017 - 4:36pm | The Canned setting is a whole lot of white bread with only a few exceptions. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 30, 2017 - 9:40am | The Canned setting is a whole lot of white bread with only a few exceptions. Except for the very few modules set in the "canned" setting -- Warriors of the White Light, Dark Side of the Moon, the Dramune Run, and to some extent the Volturnus modules (indicating that Truane's Star has one system government), and the Gran Quivera adventures in the Basic Game, a lot of things are open regarding system/planetary governments. Yes we know a bit about Laco, Zebs did flesh out some worlds with very brief descriptions while adding the mega corp planets/systems, but other than that and fan submissions to Star Frontiersman and Frontier Explorer magazines, the referee (starbitrator for those who liked that name...) can pretty much design what they want. Joe Cabadas |
November 30, 2017 - 9:40am | Ah What? These are colony worlds. Each is found and generally settled by one group so they would have one government. The influx of new beings and how they are allowed to set up in the system is what we are determining here. The US history has several different colonial groups which sometimes merged peacefully and sometimes had clashes but this was over vast areas with travel times measured in months. A system may have alot of area but little of it would be suitable for colonization so the actual land area where new beings could settle would be small. Add in a simple satellite system around the planet and new ships aren't going to be dropping in unannounced. Maybe after terraforming which takes years and decades and then so more time for cultural differences to arise you might have the "fractous situation" but not initially. Even if a colony world is initially set up by one particular group, it might not stay that way. It's also unlikely that, unless is has a massive amount of manpower to draw upon, that the whole planet will be under the control of that one group. A planet may actually have quite a lot of it's surface suitable as a living environment. Planets will vary. It doesn't seem unlikely or unusual that a planet could have it's surface colonised by more than one party. For example, I'm writing a sourcebook for the 2300AD RPG at the moment, and my focus is just on one colony on one world. This colony is ostensibly Ukrainian, but the planet was first discovered by France, and France has a small colony on the planet. Another rather large area is colonised by an independent state that only exists on that planet and has no off-world national allegiances. Even the Ukrainian colony is made up of other nationalities. Colony or not, having a 'one planet' one government' thing is a scifi trope. A useful convenience but not what I'd call realistic. Unless a group manages to completely blockade a world there's not much that can be done to stop others living on other bits of it, unless somehow they have some legal precedent which protects their sole interest and therefore only allows that party to run the whole planet - even if they perhaps only actually control one or two landmasses. |
November 30, 2017 - 10:49am | And yet there is still a need for the discussion of territorial limits. You missed that cannon details of Out Reach being controlled by various criminal warlords but the orbital stations or was it just Dark World was controlled by the Malthar. Fromeltar has two inhabited worlds and yet one militia which leads me to think that Groth is subservient to Terledrom. and the AD footnote on Zik-kit in Kizk-Kar system says that its controlled by the government of Terledrom and exports its resources for manufacturing on Terledrom. And KHs says that both Fromeltar and Kisk-Kar have militias the implication is that they are the same force. This Outer Reach is a mess but still a member of the Council of Worlds and a signatory of the UPF. and KHs lists two separate militias for this system. And there we have Truane's Star 2 planets and one militia with implications of one system government as you pointed out but also as per the Volturnus series the Pale government is involved in the fabled "police action" on Cygnus Omicron IX which is never identified in cannon but has been fan cannonized as a gas giant with rebellous miners requiring the Palon government to insist on its control of. I hear what you're saying and yet My take is that in the formation of the UPF there were some exceptions to the one system government like Dramune and Fromeltar (Fromeltar being a two system one government example). that in forming the UPF they gave everyone a say each system so to speak although Dramune is an exception and Fromeltar retains control over kisk-kar but Kisk-Kar does not get a vote. Later as you have the rise of mega corp colonized planets that the COW will enact 'laws' that limit the gorwing influence of the mega corps requiring that the planet have self determination to have a seat so that its not the mega corp getting a seat on the COW. Although the mega corps will have inordinate influence no doubt. I hear what your says but its more along the lines of we can craft whatever we want for a system. Sure we can but ultimately the baseline is the cannon with various degrees of weight to various sources. In a close to cannon setting i very much think that there should be territorial limits. Sure these things created conflict in Dramune but then its cannon that there have been 3 Dramune wars. You can even have a system where there is a complicated mess like Outer Reach that forces some modification of the standard territorial limits and EEZ. But saying that not every planet should have one gov does not nullify the fact that this setting could use them. Reguardless of other settings. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 30, 2017 - 2:58pm | 'One world, one government' is a convenience, especially in terms of the RPG itself. I understand that, but I do so whilst also recognising that it's a trope and a bit hand wavy  Territorial limits are tricky because they're pretty much the same for a planet as for a country. If the whole world is ostensibly one country, you could simplify the notion of territory by saying that there are ground rules and that perhaps these are a set of agreed rules and laws and that these are followed across the Frontier. But if a system has more than one colonised planet, with a different government running each one, what and where are the 'territorial waters' between them? |
 November 30, 2017 - 7:15pm | Yes, it is easier to write about one world, one government. It is even easier to write about one system one government. However breaking the white bread paradigm has an appeal. But I see a problem when it comes to who controls the territorial limits of a world into space? Think of a simplified world with two countries, each controlling one of the two contents of the world. Who has jurisdiction of the space above, orbit, when it comes to interacting with the other governments of the Frontier? Who is collecting the taxes for goods going and leaving the planet? Think of all the other things that governments want to control. This will create conflicts between the two governments that will result in either disagreement or cooperation. I see one group ending up gaining control or cooperation. I don't see separate control zones lasting very long, especially after going through two Sather wars. -iggy |
December 1, 2017 - 5:20am | Unfortunately your "one world one government" trope is the entire Frontier. No planet in the Frontier is listed as Balkanized. Everyone is a single government most run by one race. There is good reasons for this in the Frontier. There are no homeworlds with massive excess population to send out to take over or share new colony worlds with. Clarion is supposed to be one of the most settled planets and it has only twelve cities. Not countries, Cities. Some worlds are supposed to have only One Star Law Ranger to keep the peace. That can only happen with a tiny population. The one example we have of a shared planet is Kraatar. Started by Humans, the Vrusk came in later. The Humans either did not have a government or allowed it to be taken over by the Vrusk Trade Houses. Either way it is a one government planet. If there are other planets with different groups on them who govern themselves in a small way we are talking about a planetary government. They could be like the United Kingdom where four countries all answer to one unifying government. Each of the four does some governing but in relations with the rest of the countries on Earth they are the UK. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
December 1, 2017 - 7:46am | I'm trying to come up with a planet with multiple governments and how they manage the orbital territory around their planet. One I imagine is a polarized world. Put one country on one side and another on the complete opposite. Then each controls the orbital territory above it. This works for geostationary orbits but fails for about everything else as the orbits will cross into each others territory. Another that ignores orbits and makes it neutral territory. Another that has each country claiming a moon, or in a case like ours, claiming a side of a tidally locked moon. What other way could this be done to break the trope? -iggy |
December 1, 2017 - 8:46am | You are going to have to figure some basics of economics to make that work. I can claim the Moon as my own private domain. No one is really going to listen to me. Same thing with trying to make a territorial claim on a colony world. You are going to need two governments on the same planet which both have the economic base to support their off world territorial claims. Giventhe lore of SF there is little hope of that. Only the major planets have starships and they are generally limited to 5 or less ships. Clarion is supposed to be one of the richest planets and can only manage one frigate and four assault scouts. Population is another concern. How many beings are going to be in each country and on the outposts that are supporting their claim? Remember you are going to need military, economy workers both manufacturing and agricultural, government employees, underage minors and senior citizens, maybe some luxury items too like a university or tourist attractions. Remember it takes Frontier colonies decades and centuries to build up population much less competing colonial interests. Then this government will need to have a reason to be spending resources making a claim on off world territory. Room to expand the population is definitely out. An economic boom is a possibility. Doubtful a military reason is needed unless they are really antagonistic toward the other government. On could go total social and have some religious reason they feel the need to claim the territory. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
December 2, 2017 - 2:19am | One way around it perhaps is to imagine what it would be like if aliens arrived in orbit and started communicating with Earth. Would we all be throwing mixed voices and messages at them, or would we perhaps communicate via an ostensibly global body such as the UN? If we use the UN as our united front, that could make it seem that we communicate as a whole unit, rather than disparate groups. If we say that perhaps in SF things are more civilised and mature than we are here on Earth, then perhaps planets do possibly have different groups, ideas, etc living on their surface but they have some unified body which represents them as a planet. |
December 2, 2017 - 6:26am | While not related to territorial limits, this is a concept for an adventure I did which may help illustrate your point: Concept On the colony planet Mecon 7, 13 beings have been murdered in the same gruesome way. The murders were not linked together because of the multiple law enforcement jurisdictions on colony. Finally, a Star Law Marshall returns to the colony after chasing a Sathar agent off world.
Background
Mecon 7
A standard Earthlike planet with a 1.0 gravity
It has a Native population of about 40,000,000 beings called
Axgti. They live in an area which borders a middle sea in the equator zone.
They have a twenty-member Sheriff/Ranger department. Internal law enforcement
is handled by a different agency the Sheriff/Rangers handle Axgti among the
Core 4 and interactions between Axgti and Core 4
There is a Core 4 population of about 10,000. About 3000 of
them live in the Port City (the main city of the planet). The town has a four
being Police Department lead by a Dralasite Police Chief and three officers,
two Human and one Yazirian.
About 1500 Vrusk live in a Vrusk community centered around a
mining operation. All of them belong to various trade houses working on the
mining operation. They have a five Vrusk Constable Force who handles problems
mainly dealing with improper etiquette and dealings with beings not part of the
Vrusk community.
There is a Streel Corporation mining operation with about
1000 various Core 4 beings working it. They have a 30 being security detail and
a four Yazirian Special Investigative Unit (mainly trained in counter espionage
they also handle criminal investigations)
The rest of the Core 4 beings on planet live on ranches and
farms and small mining and timber cutting operations within 200 kilometers around
Port City.
There is one Star Law Marshall assigned to the
planet. The Marshall was supposed to do this assignment as an easy ride to
retirement considering all the other law enforcement on the planet and the low
risk of Sathar or Pirate activity. This has not proven to be the case as the
Marshall has already settled an almost shooting war between the Vrusk and
Streel and uncovered a Sathar plot to use the planet as an advanced base. In the above the Star Law Marshall in the "planetary law enforcement". By UPF law the Star Law Marshall would be the one to handle things in the territorial areas and anywhere on the planet since he is the only one with the planet wide jurisdiction. The other law enforcement agencies are restricted to their smaller jurisdictions but represent differing groups/governments on the planet. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
