UWP TBD

 One of things you note with the 2d6 systems, raise a crop of worlds and you are bound to get some wasted hell hole of a world, with an atmosphere that could make Superman cringe and it will have a few billion or tens of billions.

Conversely you may have a planet with a class A starport, a potential shipbuilder for the entire subsector only to discover it has a population of hundreds or dozens. Yeah so they could crank out a launch in a year. If that was all they did. Yeah. Maybe they have a bazillion robots? Androids? They're a thing now, right? 

The old slogan: people will settle anywhere doesn't seem to cover all situations. A more accurate statement may be, people will settle anywhere there's money to be made. So yeah, you can have billions living on that acid pit of a world. Put something valuable there. Perhaps an exotic organic material in the atmosphere, produced by bizarre native life living in the upper atmosphere. Terraforming the planet would destroy these lifeforms  and the chemicals they produce. Meanwhile the people here are making money and building and raising families.

As for the garden world with a population of 1 or 2. Surely a world with a breathable atmosphere and water must support life. The life might be the problem. Maybe it is highly evolved, vicious and regards humans and Terran flora and fauna as snacks. Terraforming will involve burning an area of ground and then spreading soil and planting Terran crops. Animals released are quickly eaten, poisoned by plants or both. It will be generations before a large enough area will be colonized with Earthly life forms. The kicker is when they discover most native life reproduces with spoors, that are spread by winds, and fires into areas believed safe.

The many space port workers live in the high port and have no desire to colonize that fœtid and fecund hell hole.

Or let's go another way. The shipyards and major money making is on the airless moon of the garden world. Millions work and trade there. However,  the man wielding real power (CEO, Duke, etc) makes his home on that sparsely populated garden spot. Perhaps fortunate citizens ae allowed there for brief vacations as a reward. In any case, he has political power so the world he resides on is declared the main world. You don't want to get him angry. 

TL;DR People will live in hell holes if there is money to be made. People are territorial and will try to laud their own planet and be gatekeeper to settling the planet. Other worlds in the same system may have real economic power but for a variety of reasons not be the main world as far as the polity is concerned. This could be due to politics, tradition o corruption at the highest levels.



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