I have a bunch of other questions. Some of these fall into the realm of “I’m trying to apply science-y math to a fundamentally math-light set of rules” but I have difficulty ignoring real world science, even if it’s in a realm that’s not fully understood.
So here are my questions:
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The Shackleton Expanse book uses some planetary classes that do not appear in the Core rulebook. I think, mostly, there’s enough information about the classes to understand what they are. The one I don’t fully understand is the Class-I (Ammonia Clouds) class. The Star Trek: Star Charts book describes Class-I planets as gas supergiants (not to be confused to gas ultragiants, Class-S and Class-T). Are these two Class-I designations describing the same world? The Star Charts book uses this text: “Tenuous, comprised of gaseous hydrogen and hydrogen compounds; generates heat.” Ammonia is a hydrogen compound. Is that what’s being described?
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There are, sadly, no instances of Class-H, Class-N, Class-T or Class-Y generated by the tables (there are a bunch of other classes, in Star Charts, but those four are listed in the STA Core book).
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The Inner Worlds Table and the Outer Worlds Table are the same (in my v1.1 version of the Shackleton Expanse book). Is that right?
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Some other RPGs (e.g. GURPS: Space) assert that most giant stars (e.g. Luminosity Ia, Ib, II) don’t have planets. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the rules about that.
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A thing I have difficulty wrapping my head around: the primary world’s orbit number is generated by die roll. I can, for example, roll up an M5V with 7 orbits, where the primary world (a terrestrial planet) is in orbit #5. But a star that insubstantial has a very close garden zone. (GURPS: Space says 0.1 to 0.2 AUs; Star Hero argues 0.025 to 0.042 AUs). If my terrestrial world is that close to the star, it seems unlikely that there are four inner orbits containing other planets. (Maybe I should imagine that the terrestrial world circles a gas giant that’s providing necessary heat?)
BC