Question of the Week

[ailelie]

This is the last question of the week, as well as the of the month.

(4) How do the denizens of your ecosystem use/ration/adapt to the resources available to them? Who wants want? How do they get more when needed (creation, re-purposing, negotiation with other systems, invasion, etc)? Does everyone get what they want at a minimum cost?

This entire question can be boiled down to a single yes or no, plus why: Is your ecosystem balanced? Why or why not?

Imbalance creates conflict and conflict can lead to interesting situations for your protagonists or even the start of a story.

Comments

[annariel]

I'm characterising my solar system by an assumption that transport is comparatively cheaper in most cases than manufacturing (for instance food) in situ but it is time consuming. At present there is no over-arching political structure so each city is, essentially, an independent political entity and space itself is essentially lawless.

So the merchant ships are the vital economic conduit between the words. Food can be grown far more cheaply on New Gabarone than on the non-life-supporting worlds while power and minerals are cheaper to import from those worlds than for New Gabaronians to mine. Obviously the system is potentially fragile, if a way was found to terraform the other worlds, or grow food and livestock easily in atomosphereless environments then New Gabarone would have to rely on the fact that it's such a pleasant place to live and visit (compared to everywhere else!) for it's economy. If one of the city governments were to become expansionist, or piracy were to become too big a problem then, again, the economic basis of the system would shift.

At the moment, though, the system is comparatively resource rich and each individual unit sufficiently small that the pressures to change the existing structures are small...

[twisted_times]

IIRC, someone once said "In Biology, if you've reached an equilibrium, you're dead."

In other words, all ecosystems are dynamic, so are not completely balanced even if they may seem to be; any ecosystem will be pushed and pulled in different directions, by the shift from day to night, the changing of the seasons, the angle of the rotational axis of your planet(s), eccentricities of orbits, plagues of locusts, smallpox, other bacteria and viruses or the sudden arrival of a meteorite or monolith on the planet's surface.

Adaptability will be a big factor as to how well a species will thrive; imagine a planet like the one in Harry Harrison's Deathworld trilogy - big, highly geologically active planet, brutal and changeable weather systems, high angle of axial rotation and an eccentric orbit. All of those factors lead to species that were highly adaptable, often evoloving into different species as conditions changed. OK, it's an extreme example, but it make my point. :)