Everything Wrong With Star Frontiers - Vector-Graphics/walkersysgen GitHub Wiki
Or more specifically, the Star Frontiers planet generator, which is at https://starfrontiers.us/files/RefereeToolKit-StarSystemGeneration.pdf .
FTL Drive – Faster‐Than‐Light engine that propels ships at incredible speeds, anywhere from 0.5 LY per day and higher. Few ships have drives which allow the ship to exceed 4 LY per day. An FTL Drive extends a field around the ship to induce this travel velocity, but cannot do so until outside various influences of a star’s neighborhood.
Right, because I totally need to use your setting's FTL drive when generating systems for MY PURPOSES. +1 (1)
FTL Horizon – this refers to the minimum distance from any given star where the FTL Drive can manifest its field. Any closer than this and the field fails to manifest. It just fizzles and fails. The FTL Horizon is noted as being at the outer extreme of the stars habitable zone (the same influences which allow the zone to be able to support life interfere with the field’s manifestation, one reason why all races take so long to discover the FTL field effect).
Again, what's with all this? Why do planet generators try to specify how FTL in particular works, when that is one of the most varied aspects of sci-fi settings? Like, sure leave the system so you don't crash into an asteroid or some debris or something, but like... +1 (2)
And also, what "influences"? The... star? And also, habitable zone. +1 (3)
Gravity Well – this represents a gravitational influence around a planet or star. An object or ship caught in gravity well will descend towards the object unless another force (like thrust) reacts against it. Larger, more massive objects in space have more impressive gravity wells. In space, a gravity well can be strong enough around certain types of stellar objects (such as stars or black holes) to cause objects to be pulled off course (even light particles!)
This scene does not contain any orbits whatsoever. Like, you'd expect an understanding of gravity in space to come with a basic understanding of... what an orbit is! +1 (4)
Region – The orbital zones are broken down into five types of areas. Near (the closest orbital zone to a star), Inner (the second zone), Habitable (the third zone – though not all habitable zones contain or support life), Outer (the three zones beyond the habitable zone) and Far (all zones beyond this). These represent different distances from a star, and affect the conditions found on any object in that zone. Orbital zones and Regions are not scientifically determined and are a construct of this generation system.
Why does it spend so much time going over this painfully inaccurate abstraction? There is no such thing as a habitable zone! And what people call the habitable zone can totally have more than one planet in it, even in small systems! +1 (5)
Similarly, anything in the star’s Far region suffers from the frigid conditions of being so far away from the star.
Yet another generator that refuses to recognize the very real possibility (especially in universes where life is implied to be abundant) of life on ice planets! +1 (6)
Although the orbital zones have numbers, after the star system is generated the numbers are no longer needed and a planet’s position is known only by its region.
Really? ONLY by its region? We haven't even gotten into any tables yet and this is already going too far with abstractions! Where's the conversion from orbital zone to AU☉? +1 (7)
Okay, finally we have some tables. First of all, very hot stars are WAAAAAY too common in this chart. Most stars are red, orange, and yellow dwarfs: only a couple out of 100 stars are going to be brighter. While I understand skewing the distribution away from M-type stars (in fact, I do this in WSSG) for interest, still having half of the stars be M-type and half of them being larger still represents a relatively even distribution of two different types of systems. +1 (8)
Seriously? I would have just assumed the star is main sequence and moved on. But here main-sequence stars aren't even a majority! Red dwarfs are less than 20% of stars in this system, and that's assuming red subdwarfs count! +1 (9)
Oh, so there IS an orbit-zone to AU☉ conversion! Why did it say there wasn't previously? +1 (10)
These probabilities are.... acceptable. It makes sense to vary how common planets are by the star type. But why the heck are companion stars considered part of the same system? And why can they just orbit in-between planets and other stars? Oh shoot, we forgot to add a binary star system, better just shoehorn it into the planet generation! +1 (11)
Note: If you are creating a world that can support life make sure you refer to the Planetary Creation Chapter: Planets Capable of Supporting Life
Oh boy... well, we know what we're in for at least. +1 (12)
That's definitely an interesting way of framing mass from gravity and radius! At first I thought that a factor of the diameter was missing, but realized it was packaged up with the density IN the gravity, and since I'm pretty sure everything is in Earth units, it all adds up! -1 (11)
These types of planets all have roughly the same structure: a central metallic core (mostly iron) with a surrounding silicate mantle. These planets have canyons, craters, mountains and volcanoes. Some terrestrial planets possess atmospheres cable of supporting life.
Oh, so now we're just DENYING icy planets as a possibility! Except maybe mesoplanets, but it never specifies the composition for those (again from my last reviews, composition is kind of important. I guess you could derive it from the density, but it isn't really like this system makes that easy to compute. +1 (12)
And now they generate moon sizes without regard for the size of the planet, except for a small asterisk saying moons can't be larger than their host planets! Moons that are even close to the size of their host planet are exceedingly rare for major planets: Earth is the odd one out here. +1 (12)
OK, they haven't technically generated any more for moons than they have for planets at this point, but they've still been waffling about habitability in the background the whole time.
OK, now it's time for the "feature table", which luckily the system says I can ignore, but I won't because I want more content and I also want to make fun of more sci-fi tropes.
Some unknown creature, able to live in deep‐space without the need for life‐ support is found. It may live on a planet or a moon, and may not be hostile.
??????? What does this mean? What is meant by "life-support"? Like, sources of energy and matter? But like, how though? +1 (13)
Ruins and remnants of ancient civilization that predates current cultures by (roll 1d100x100) years. The remnants may be on a planet or moon, but might be found on an asteroid.
OK, worlds that were recently colonized by a civ but were abandoned. If spacefaring civs colonize around 100 planets on average, that's like, one per few thousand planets in recent history, which is a little high but I'm willing to give it a pass.
An alien device floats in space. Possibilities are mines, ships, hulks, probe, etc. It may be rigged to detonate or repair itself, and might hold valuable information about the alien race that left it.
Uh, it's... a space station? Or a remnant of a megastructure, like a dyson swarm power collector? Why would it be rigged to explode? +1 (14)
A large comet or rogue world passes by every (1d100x10) years. It is calculated that in (1d100x100) years, it will collide with the either the planet or its moon, either of which is disastrous for this world.
That's being waaaaay too common (this is a 1 in 1d10 roll!)! Nibiru-like situations are pretty much unheard of, given usually these 100-10000 year intervals would have already passed. Also, who's running a game for 100 years??? Or even 10? +1 (15)
The moon has been drastically altered or manufactured by unknown beings. There is a 10% chance this is a Dyson moon (a Dyson sphere has a hollow center and may be able to be entered at the poles).
That's no moon... That's a space station. Okay but seriously, do these people have any idea what a dyson sphere is? Unless there's the tiniest star ever inside that moon, that's not anything with Dyson's name on it. And also, why is everything always "unknown" and "mysterious"? Where's my artificial moon that was literally just built by the Zaglorpers from the next system over? +1 (16)
The moon collided with a large meteor several thousand years ago. The debris from it has been caught by the mass of the moon and looks like a ring when viewed from the planet's surface. The debris may be of value (50% chance to roll on the precious resource table).
Hey, why don't my PLANETS get rings? +1 (17)
Also, moons with rings generally depends on moons with moons. Which is exceedingly rare for, again, a 1 in 10 chance, over a rather large chance of rolling on the table to begin with. +1 (18)
A previous civilization (or perhaps a lost ship from a bygone era) left a lone robot behind, which has picked up some very strange and intriguing habits.
Cherish this singular robot, since I think it's the closest we're getting to a post-biological civ. But seriously, precisely one (1)? +1 (19)
Natural photo luminescent aluminates minerals are present on one of this world's moon's surfaces. It glows in the dark rather than just reflecting light, never letting the world see complete darkness. The planet has atmospheric reactions to the presence of one or more of its moons. As the moon streaks across the sky, the atmosphere produces aurora borealis‐like light shows
Neither of these are how moons work. +1 (20)
Also, that second one has some serious scale issues. +1 (21)
STEP 4: DETERMINE FTL HORIZON DISTANCE
SKIP +1 (22)
Uhhhh, that's where it ends apparently. There was a "habitable planet generation" chapter teased early on that I really wanted to get into, but I guess I won't. 10 sins for not showing it to me, one for each sin I already listed thinking I was going to get to that point. +10 (32)