Those of you following Molotov's campaign design thread will note that I've been throwing around some maths to get the correct gravity and year length for his planet's other attributes. Okay, it's not all that important, but it's still nice to have sorted rather than just having random numbers.
Anyway, I've been using a spreadsheet for the purpose, and I've tried to tidy that up so that so you lot can use it. The zip package of the Excel spreadsheet and "Read me" can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?xg3g91dcm4g43ad
I don't pretend that it will make designing a planet easier, but if you're the kind of person that likes to provide physical data on the planets you write, it should let you get the numbers agreeing with one another without you needing to do the sums yourself.
If you're not interested, then fine, but if you want it, go nuts.
No guarantees that it's all perfect (I only did a crude "neaten and add some user friendliness"), but I think it's all working. Get back to me if it's doing something stupid, or simply to tell me what you think.
fascinating concept, just need to take a proper look at this...
Very nice idea, but I'm afraid I'm a little confused as to what it's designed to do. For example, if I wanted to see what happens to the figures if I make a day 36 hours long, is it designed to show me this?
Tullio
EDIT - Scratch that. The "Value" column is what's intended to be modified - ie: Planetary Mass = 2 to show the figures for a planet twice the size of Terra, right?
It's designed to make it so that if you've got a planet of given physical criteria, it'll tell you what the gravity should be, and how long the years should be.
In other words, it matches a planet of X mass, and Y diameter to the appropriate rate of gravity, and does a similar thing for the planet's years.
So if you're the sort of person who likes to give that kind of details about the planets you write (some people are), it makes it so you can easily work out numbers that actually agree with each other. Okay, it's not an essential thing to do - but it doesn't hurt to get it right.
Also as regards the "Planetary mass 2 = Twice Terra"... Not necessarily. There's a unit system (select the light blue cells, and there's a drop down list), so you can enter a planet's weight in other units if you'd prefer.
So, you can put in actual figures in kilograms, kilometres or whatever - I just figured multiples of our solar system was a more intuitive system.
marco, just tried to download said profile (mediafie) was private and couldn't gain access
Whoops. Sorry, the first file got corrupted somehow, and I never uploaded a replacement. Try the new link in the first post.
It's not a particularly sophisticated version. I may eventually do a version which figures atmospheric pressure and other interesting things, but that's not going to happen for a while.