Brainstorming population counts for stranded survivors (Star Trek)

[Binks]

I'm running a Trek campaign for my players and looking for some help in brainstorming what a population of stranded survivors stuck on a planet for ~200 years would look like upon the PC's arrival (something like that DS9 episode, but not the PC's descendants). However I am...at absolute best, a complete rank amateur when it comes to stuff like population growth, so I really have no idea what I'm doing here. I'm hoping someone more knowledgeable than I can weigh on on what a population like this would look like in terms of #s after so long stranded.

Some basic information to start with.

• The survivors were given aid to ensure their initial survival, so no massive die offs at the start as they got up to speed. For the most part the survivors died of old age, a bit sooner than they would have with Fed medical tech, but not that much so.
• The survivors tech base is mostly gone, they've retained pretty much all the knowledge of the ENT Vulcans and Humans, but the tools are destroyed.
• The planet is basically perfect for them, edible flora and fauna (and they had tricorders at start to determine poisonous and safe), ideal Earth-level climate, etc

There have been 4 incidents of people being dropped off here in the last 200 years, the first two were 194 and 193 years ago and amounted to 256 military age individuals (99 vulcans, 157 humans, slightly weighted towards more men than women but not that bad). The second two were 79 and 78 years ago (34 klingons, who keep to their own encampment, and 29 more humans who were integrated into the new civilization). Neither of the latter probably had much impact on the population, so mostly looking for what the first group of 256 people would have become over ~200 years of development time.

Spoiler: 'Shipwreck' incident details if it matters

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1. 194 years ago a Vulcan science ship (147 crew, 99 survivors of the incident that destroyed their ship) were brought here and given aid in setting up the initial encampment/village. All vulcans of military age, so probably 30yr old at minimum, closer to 100 on average, with an average lifespan of 200 years. None of the original group are still alive today, but they could have several generations of descendants by this time.

2. 193 years ago a Daedalus class ship (229 crew, 157 survivors of the incident that destroyed their ship) were brought here and dropped off with the Vulcans. All human (this is technically post-Federation, but the charter and such would have been signed the same year they went missing, so I'm going forward with the assumption the United Earth ship was 100% human and hadn't added any alien crew before going missing) of military ago, so probably 20yr old minimum, 30-40 on average, with an average lifespan of ~110yrs (unless you know better than I do what the average age of humans is in trek around 2179, in which case, that)

3. 79 years ago a Klingon Bird of Prey (36 crew, 34 survivors of the incident that destroyed their ship) were brought in and dropped off in a separate village close enough to trade but far enough to discourage combat (the Klingons were aware of the Khitomer accords and don't really see much value in fighting the Federation survivors anyway) with supplies and such to make do. All military age, which apparently can go as low as 10 or so for Klingons based on Alexander, with an average lifespan of at least 150yrs, so most of the initial group are still alive, which is good because the far lower #s and likely gender imbalance on a Klingon ship mean there probably are not many children roaming around.

4. 78 years ago a human-run Civilian Freighter (81 crew, only 29 made it to the planet) were brought in and joined with the federation survivors. 100% humans, varying ages from children to ~80 or so.

I've tried to use some population growth models, but I'm really not experienced enough with them to trust my results, so hoping someone here has some insights. Any advice at all helps. Thanks. :)

[Lvl 2 Expert]

It depends on what choices you make. The easiest thing to do is probably go by an average number of children (who make it to adult age) per woman/couple (who have made it to adult age) plus an average age of having children. That's average for all children, not first child.

Let's say there are 110 women in the original group and the average age of reproduction is 30. (Vulcans are a little elf-like age wise right? Does it need to be higher? The difference between the humans and the Vulcans will throw off the model a bit, but nothing bad for an estimate.) Now, children per woman. That one can vary anywhere between less than 1 for a colony dying out to 12 for "it's our holy obligation to populate this planet". Let's say 2.5 to get a nice example. That means the number of daughters/future couples per woman/couple is 1.25 Now you take that 110, and do it times 1.25 for every 30 years, 110*1.25^(193/30)~110*1.25^6.43~110*4.20=462 women/couples, *2 = 924 people in the generation that's currently around the age of the original colonists, so around 30 and starting families of their own.
Because this is a model we can just do the same for those 29 humans 78 years ago and add the numbers. So 15*1.25^(78/30)=15*1.25^2.61~15*1.79~27, *2 = 54 people, plus the 924 from earlier is around 978.
The one or two generations above them will also be around in decent numbers, let's say 1100 for the both of them together (more if their Vulcan DNA is working its magic). The next generation will be bigger again, but let's say not all of them have been born yet, so that's another thousand maybe (they kind of blur with the younger members of "the current generation", the model wasn't really designed for this sort of distinction), of which some already count as adults. So like 2300 adults and 800 kids or something?

That last group contained a lot of people who already reproduced and aren't going to do it on this planet, but by far most of the people are descended from a bunch of 30-somethings who have always been too busy with a career they suddenly didn't have any more, so they'll probably follow the model quite well. If you want to change the odds of the first generation to reproduce as opposed to any of the following generations you can just alter the seed number. If only 30 females from that first batch start a family on the island, take starting number 30 rather than 110.

The Klingons are in for a rough genetic ride starting about 2 generations in, their number is too small. But that doesn't have to stop them from reproducing, you're just going to see some Klingons with extra toes or missing ridges or stuff. Assuming the Klingons figure this is a war against the larger human colony they can only win if they get to equal numbers we might estimate a generation time of 20 years, 10 kids per woman and maybe 3 women surviving the original crash (no idea what the male:female ratio's are in the Klingon military) is 3*5^(79/20)=3*5^(3.95)~3*576.68~1730 current breeding age women/couples, so *2 = 3460 people in the current generation. That's kind of a big number, wasn't expecting quite that much. Not a lot of elderly, because each generation is so much larger than the last, but a butload of children. So let's say 4000 adults, plus currently maybe six times that number currently living kids, 24.000 or so. Take less ridiculous numbers of children per couple to get less ridiculous results.

[Nifft]

The Klingons are in for a rough genetic ride starting about 2 generations in, their number is too small. But that doesn't have to stop them from reproducing, you're just going to see some Klingons with extra toes or missing ridges or stuff.

These inbred Klingons go on to found the Holy Romulan Empire under the house of Habsburg.

[rferries]

How are you handling interbreeding? IIRC a Vulcan/human hybrid isn't possible without medical assistance (see: Trip's & T'Pol's daughter, solved by the time of Spock), which may not be available depending on the tech level of the colony. Same for human/Klingon and even Klingon/Vulcan.

Also, no other races? A pity... it'd be cool to have at least a couple individuals particularly long-lived species around (as with Odo and Dax in the DS9 episode).

[Binks]

@ Lvl 2 Expert - Those numbers look way more reasonable than what I was getting. 2-3K total pop sounds about right, and the math makes sense. As per the note below, will probably be dropping the count by ~500 or so total because of the difficulty of hybrids and the fact that many of the initial batch of survivors weren't exactly in the mindset of "we're going to be here for a while, time to have kids", but otherwise the math is super helpful.

The Klingons aren't really going to be looking at this as a war (I'm planning to have them subvert expectations a bit and be actually honorable Klingons :P), so probably won't be going anywhere near that number, but appreciate the math there as well. Did not expect they would be able to grow their numbers like that in such a short period, and it makes me feel a lot better about having some more children around their camp (but nowhere near that many). Thanks.

How are you handling interbreeding?

This actually occurred to me shortly after posting this, as I had forgotten the whole medical necessity thing. Probably won't have hybrids in the first group (so cutting the pop down slightly from Lvl 2 Expert's #s), but by the time the second group arrives the medical knowledge for how to have safe hybrids is common enough that they're able to make do, so a few adult Vulcan/Human hybrids, and a handful of their children, but probably no grandchildren is my current thought.

Also, no other races? A pity... it'd be cool to have at least a couple individuals particularly long-lived species around (as with Odo and Dax in the DS9 episode).

I know. I really want to include some other species, and am trying to work that out. If you have any ideas I'd love to hear them, but the issue is the Vulcan ship went missing a few months before the ratification of the Federation, and the Federation ship went missing a few months after it was ratified, having been a United Earth ship before that. So I don't really see why/how either ship would be carrying other species. The dates are already set (and there's good reasons for them, so I don't want to ask my players to accept a retcon on them) but if you have ideas for getting a few other longer lived guys on there would love to hear them as well.

Thanks for the information, really helping me ensure that my worldbuilding makes sense.

[RagingKrikkit]

Let's do the Vulcans first, since that's the easy one. With an original group of 99 slightly weighted towards males, let's assume 45 females. With the 7-year pon farr cycle, and assuming a 100% pregnancy rate (which would assumedly be the biological purpose of pon farr, to stabilize birthrates), we can surmise that every 7 years, those 45 females would produce 45 children, of which 22-23 would be female. Assuming that Vulcan menopause occurs at the same rough point as in humans (roughly 2/3 of the way through one's life), we can then assume that the maximum "breeding age" of a Vulcan is around 130. Thus, we can determine the number of "breeding cycles" each Vulcan female of the original crew would go through while stranded by age.

95-102: 4
88-94: 5
81-87: 6
74-80: 7
67-73: 8
60-66: 9
53-59: 10
46-52: 11
39-45: 12
31-38: 13


For simplicity's sake, I will attempt to divide the 45 females evenly between the number of breeding cycles, alternating between 4 and 5 per group. Thus we have

4: 4
5: 5
6: 4
7: 5
8: 4
9: 5
10: 4
11: 5
12: 4
13: 5

Assuming that a Vulcan reaches sexual maturity around the age of 21 (or after 3 breeding cycles), by the time the first children born planetside are able to breed, we have:

1: 4
2: 5
3: 4
4: 5
5: 4
6: 5
7: 4
8: 5
9: 4
10: 5
11: 0
12: 0
13: 0
14: 22
14(+1): 23
14(+2): 22

One cycle later, the first group of the second generation has been born, and the first of the original crew are removed from the breeding pool.
0: 4
1: 5
2: 4
3: 5
4: 4
5: 5
6: 4
7: 5
8: 4
9: 5
10: 0
11: 0
12: 0
13: 22
14: 23
14 (+1): 22
14 (+2): 33

That's four cycles down, and 28 years later we have a population of 96 breeding females, 55 underage females, and 4 "past prime" females. Double that and add the extra 9 males from the start, and we have a total population of 319. Does that sound excessive to anyone else? Perhaps we should cut the fertility rate to 50%? Once we hit the 128-year mark, I can clear the old group to remove those who would be dead by the time of the adventure, but it may be pretty wild by then. But other than determining the fertility rate and clearing out the old folks home at the right time, this model will work just fine to extrapolate the growth of the Vulcan population over the 27 breeding cycles that would occur during the 194 years you need.

If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go think about how much work I just put into figuring out the math of space elf sex.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

it's like a Vulcan Fibonacci sequence. (One of the classic examples of where you might encounter that sequence is very orderly reproducing rabbits. Since Vulcans like order so much it actually makes more sense in this case.)

I love how there are such completely different approaches to figuring the same thing out. A completely statistical approach from the perspective of the colony and an exact approach counting each individual. This thing has just the right kind of numbers for both to work.

[brian 333]

1) A few of the original Vulcan strandees will still be alive. With an average age of 250, this puts the younger adults at the time of the stranding at the ends of their life-spans. This would have a great deal of pressure on the humans to conform to the Vulcan ideals, as every human alive would have, from birth, been educated by Vulcans and indoctrinated to respect their elders. Vulcans, by default, become a permanent elder class in one human generation.

2) Vulcan/human hybrids in Trek require some medical assistance to survive conception. It is proposed in the survivors episode that hybrids are fertile with humans, but they may have been genetically manipulated to accomplish this, and they may or may not have been fertile with Vulcans.

3) Not every pon farr will result in pregnancy. Between the ages of 30, (Vulcan teenager,) and 150, (Vulcan matron,) a female Vulcan will be fertile seventeen times. It is implied in the Saavik stories that Saavik was impregnated by nu-Spock on the Genesis Planet when she 'helped' nu-Spock through his pon farr, and she was not undergoing pon farr at the time. It may be that the females become fertile when stimulated by a male undergoing pon farr, but it is also implied in Spock's wedding episode that children are bonded to their future mates which might serve to synchronize their mating cycles. In either case, though, a simple comparison to human fertility cycles demonstrates that human females are fertile seventeen times in under two years. Before birth control two years was about the pregnancy rate in humans, with five to a dozen live births in the normal fertile span. Extrapolating from this, one or two viable pregnancies in Vulcans would be more normal, unless pon farr virtually guarantees conception without protection. Assuming a Vulcan mother can match a human in children per lifetime, there is still the issue of longer lifespan, meaning that Vulcans would be in their third breeding generation while humans are in their tenth. Vulcans are being swarmed by humans!

4) Klingons have a life-span similar to Vulcans, but they breed like humans, with short pregnancies and fast growth. Alexander was 16 and deemed of age to serve in the military. Though this is presumed to be matched with a high mortality rate, Qo'nos was always depicted as being crowded with Klingons. In 100 years, most of the original colonists would still be alive, but they would already be matching the Vulcans in numbers, mostly because they would be into their fifth breeding generation.

5) Klingons have a psychological need for conflict and control. Without an outside enemy they turn upon each other. The human/Vulcan culture would make an easy conquest, leaving the klingons to fight over how many slaves they get. Unless there is some enemy on the world which needs fighting, either the Klingons will rule or they will be working to achieve that goal. I highly recommend that the Klingons arrive with an enemy they can fight off but not defeat, making them indespensible to the humans who feed them in exchange for protection. Perhaps they were transporting some ferocious, nearly sentient predators to serve as breeding stock for the arenas back home, and they escaped when the ship crashed. Now they hunt humans, Vulcans, and unwary Klingons.

[Binks]

Thank you all for the great help and information here. I think I've got enough to go with now that I can write out the remainder of the mission for my players to play through this weekend. All the advice has been tremendously useful and I'm a lot more confident now that I can make the "colony" look realistic enough that my players won't balk at it.