The Factory Floor

Q: What can we do to encourage questions?

1:01 PM

Worldbuilding Meta

Looking at our stats the one big thing where we could fail is not getting enough questions to bother keeping the site open. Our questions per day keep falling, and more and more of the questions we do get are being axed for various reasons. Personally I think we need to try and help those quest...

How're things?

not bad

Excellent

1:07 PM

hmm, that question that was just posted is a really interesting one

going to a wedding in 13 minutes

getting some work done before I go

Fun?

Or duty?

paid work

Meant the wedding, actually

Unless you did too... Which would be odd

lol

it's a friend getting married

me and my girlfriend are witnesses

1:31 PM

@TimB That's good, not all weddings are fun

2 hours later…

3:48 PM

@Mourdos what if i have the result but I want to know what might have caused it?

and the starting point is not really important

then your question is probably too broad

how to terraform a cold planet ?

I have result, it's a temperate and warmer planet
I want the process and I have the initial situation

which is the starting point

starting point is cold planet, ending point is warm planet

you want the process

yes, just the process
it's too broad ?

4:07 PM

nope because in that case you have start and end

I have a city with x and y characteristics, how large can it become ?

so the starting point needs not to be vague

should I split my question for the different climate and eras ?

basically the theory Mourdos is proposing is that you can supply 2 out of the 3 and ask for tyhe other

but if you ever have multiple unknowns

then you're too broad

do you need the answer for multiple climates and eras?

you see, I'm not asking the question for a specific city

two axis of difference is too many, a single might be ok. (I.e. specify the climate and ask for the differences over a tech range ... or specify a tech and ask across climates)

what do you mean by tech range? pre-industrial is too broad ?

I'm trying to find a good categorization for historical periods. The one we learn in school is bad because it's not universal.

wiki.travellerrpg.com/Tech_Level_Comparison_Chart

4:20 PM

A simple example - do they have the wheel? Domesticated animals? Aquaducts?

agriculture?

currency?

yes they do have all of this, they have the technology to make aquaducts.

but these tech include everything as long as it's past the bronze age and prior to that, cities where almost inexistent

nope

incas didn't have the wheel

I did not know that. But I don't know what other technologies are important enough to be mentioned in the question. I supposed that they should have the wheel.

that's the thing - pre-industrial is a wide range right from stone through bronze and iron age

so just pick an age and if the age is old enough mention if they have domesticated animals/vehicles/etc and you good to go

(there were substantial stone and bronze age settlements ... not cities by modern standards but still substantial)

4:42 PM

I edited the question but I fear it's too narrow. Narrower questions tend to become less useful for others.

nope, looks good

anyone else wanting cities in the desert can look at this one

I deleted the comments