2nd attempt; space armarda

[A Viking Yeti]

Worholes are very hard to sustain, though. Much less, accelerate near the speed of light at the same time. A quantum time-machine would have to be a very expensive great wonder of some sort. I think there's actually a different dimension of every random act in our, or any other, universe. So if you did try to go back in time, you'd end up in an alternate dimension. Of course, I could be way off .

 

[Bluemofia]

you mean a parallel universe?

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Like there's the 3 spatial dimesnsions and 1 dimension for time that makes up our universe. Then the 5th dimension contains all the parallel universes as unidimensional "strings," their length being the 4th dimension of time. I guess I should've explained more. Of course, this is just what I think.

 

[Celeborn]

no opinions on my terrain ideas?

*Ponders*

 

[Bluemofia]

your terrain ideas are great, but can you include a moon terrain?

 

[Smoking mirror]

Viking Yeti, I realy like your alien idea. Such a creature would have to have to deal with many extra technological challenges in thier journey in to space, by the time they landed on their nearest moon they would be much more advanced, overall, than the humans.

I'm working on two races at the moment then, just for design concepts, the units will have to wait till I've got the humans first two eras done. I've been having some pallette troubles, mostly to do with the fact that the new high detail textures ive been using werent vetted properly for borderline civ colours (if a grey is slightly blue/grey it can cause all sorts of trouble), so I've got to standardize all the textures before I proceed.

However, all human unit models are done for the first two eras, animation starts tomorrow with the shuttle group. I'v eeven prepared some quick death animation textures, so the actual animation should go quite quickly.

Viking yeti's alien race would have access to high strength semi biological materials, and thier ships would be super tough, to safley contain the high pressure aquatic enviroment on board. I'm thinking of a race that has very expensive but tough ships, perhaps not so strong on attack as on deffence.
Here is a preview of what I came up with, they require some difficult pallette work to include purple as a main colour, but I think it will be worth it for the highly alien apperance.

My other race is going to be a mix of two races from the same star system. A "host" being, Somewhat insect/lobster/arachnid in apearance who on a nearby world discover a highly intelligent hivemind-parrasite. After a few years of war (and willfull collaboration), the parrasite gains full control over the host culture, and the two races soon become dependant on each other. Thier technology will be fairly weak, as the culture has little need for advancement for its own sake, its only motive being expansion and survival of the hive mind. However, their government/society will be very strong.

 

[Grey Fox]

How about the Lizards from the World War "what if" story by Turtledove?

They call themselves "the Race".
They've been one empire for 10's of thousands of years, so their science has gone slow.

They like to plan things before they execute, and they never rush an invention or technology.

If they would invent a TV, it would be a fully working, very good TV from the start, no released "prototypes" etc.

They are very obedient, and they live to serve the emperor. They don't have relationships like us humans, and they only "mate" when their females are in the season. And they lay eggs. The mating season is pretty chaotic, where the men have hardly any control of their behaviour.

They have already conquered two solarsystems, with a race within each when they invade earth in the books. They are the Rabotevs and Halless, two races that are fully assimilatad into the Empire.

Well, that's the Race

 

[Smoking mirror]

When it comes to theories of the nature of the universe I have my own ideas. The fact is no one actualy knows the true nature of the universe, so the best you can do is follow the popular scientific trends. I try to synthesise my own ideas from current discoveries.

Generaly I belive in a universe of finite physical size, expanding out from the big bang. I belive that either the universal constant is not high enough to enable the continuous expansion of the physical universe against the pull of gravity, or we live within a bubble universe, that is within a second universe and so on. The overall trend being a meta-universe that expands out ward from the moment of the big bang (or perhaps a meta-big bang) untill the weight of gravity eventualy causes it to collapse. As the universe begins to shrink, and expansion becomes contraction, time runs backward. Eventualy after you have lived your life in reverse with cause and effect reversed (technicaly it would be impossible to tell if time were running forward or backward. Time could be running in reverse right now and you wouldn't even know it) and the universe has contracted down to the big crunch (a big bang in reverse, not a implosion, but a backwards running explosion).

For a moment time and space do not exist and this is the moment that all other realities start from. Slight quantum fluctuations in the nature of the quantum vacum cause an infinate number of big bangs, each creating a whole universe with its own physical laws, and characteristics. A universe may be "clumpy" like our own, with matter and energy, and planets and life forms, or it may be "smooth" with galaxies of emptyness. These caracteristics are caused by the state of the quantum fluctuations in the vacum during th first moments of the big bang.

This is not a cycle as such, the alternate universes do not exist one after the other, as they are created outside of the normal flow of time, which itself is probably just an illusionary side effect of the expansion and contraction of the finite bubble universes. Each universe, the full infinity of them, exists at the "same time", and certain effects such as gravity may spread between them. However, they are not temporalry attached, unless there is a simpathetic temporal echo alighning them by size (so that if you could cross into another parralel universe it would be the same size as ours, so technicaly the same date, unless the physical laws were different).

The most important point of this idea is that our own reality is not unique, not only are there an infinite number of realities where we dont exist, there are also another infitite number of them where we do, and even an infintie number where we exist and make exactly the same decisions as we have in this reality. All those other you's, are all you. However you do not have a direct consious link with them, becasue you are physicaly seperated from them. Imagine if your brain were cut in half, but some how kept alive. To some extent you would form two consiousness's, each aware of itself, but not the other. (don't try it at home!)

 

[Bobisback]

Looks cool, I did not feel like reading the hole thread though. I just looked over it reading here and there. Do you have a estimate on when it will be done

 

[MarineCorps]

Originally posted by TheMorpheus
I don't know if the EDF Yamato is useful for this project. But if you are interested in the unit I could create it.
.

Yes do make!

 

[Bluemofia]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror
When it comes to theories of the nature of the universe I have my own ideas. The fact is no one actualy knows the true nature of the universe, so the best you can do is follow the popular scientific trends. I try to synthesise my own ideas from current discoveries.

Generaly I belive in a universe of finite physical size, expanding out from the big bang. I belive that either the universal constant is not high enough to enable the continuous expansion of the physical universe against the pull of gravity, or we live within a bubble universe, that is within a second universe and so on. The overall trend being a meta-universe that expands out ward from the moment of the big bang (or perhaps a meta-big bang) untill the weight of gravity eventualy causes it to collapse. As the universe begins to shrink, and expansion becomes contraction, time runs backward. Eventualy after you have lived your life in reverse with cause and effect reversed (technicaly it would be impossible to tell if time were running forward or backward. Time could be running in reverse right now and you wouldn't even know it) and the universe has contracted down to the big crunch (a big bang in reverse, not a implosion, but a backwards running explosion).

For a moment time and space do not exist and this is the moment that all other realities start from. Slight quantum fluctuations in the nature of the quantum vacum cause an infinate number of big bangs, each creating a whole universe with its own physical laws, and characteristics. A universe may be "clumpy" like our own, with matter and energy, and planets and life forms, or it may be "smooth" with galaxies of emptyness. These caracteristics are caused by the state of the quantum fluctuations in the vacum during th first moments of the big bang.

This is not a cycle as such, the alternate universes do not exist one after the other, as they are created outside of the normal flow of time, which itself is probably just an illusionary side effect of the expansion and contraction of the finite bubble universes. Each universe, the full infinity of them, exists at the "same time", and certain effects such as gravity may spread between them. However, they are not temporalry attached, unless there is a simpathetic temporal echo alighning them by size (so that if you could cross into another parralel universe it would be the same size as ours, so technicaly the same date, unless the physical laws were different).

The most important point of this idea is that our own reality is not unique, not only are there an infinite number of realities where we dont exist, there are also another infitite number of them where we do, and even an infintie number where we exist and make exactly the same decisions as we have in this reality. All those other you's, are all you. However you do not have a direct consious link with them, becasue you are physicaly seperated from them. Imagine if your brain were cut in half, but some how kept alive. To some extent you would form two consiousness's, each aware of itself, but not the other. (don't try it at home!)

just make the map have y anis and x axis connect, and scientists have a new therory of the universe:

our universe's brane (short for membrane) is floating in the 4th dimension with another 3 dimensional universe brane. after trillions of years of expansion, the Branes move closer and closer togeather from the attraction of gravity. when they get close enough, they start to ripple, and they come togeather at different points at different times.

When they colide, they release a massive amount of energy similar to the big bang. later, the stars and galaxies form and yada yada yada. this also explains the speeding up of expanison and the fluctuations in the microwave backround. later, when both universes are basically empty, the 2 branes pull each other togeather again.

this is said to have already happened an infinite of times, and will continue toward infinity. scientists started on this because of the current theory of the big bang, and first, they added inflation, and now dark energy. so some scientists are getting a bit bothered, what if this is like another "the sun goes around the earth, and the planets need more circles to go around of so they can fit the observations."

 

[A Viking Yeti]

Wow, some interesting ideas here. I personally like my own, I find it more tangible, IMHO. But what new ideas were ever really tangible from the start?

Concerning the big bang, I think the infinite vacuum (assuming the universe is infinite, which I think we only percive it to be since we're, relativistically speaking, infinitly small) of the pre-universe formed an anti-black hole. Which then istantanously spewed out an equal amount of matter to correct physics. We know that quatum particles can temporarily "break" the conservation law. Matter spews out, is pulled in by the gravity of itself, crushes to an infinitly small point, causing infinite quatum randomocities to send it out of the horizon in the other direction. BAM!!! Another big bang. Or should I say "BANG!!!" . Actually, now that I think about it, we don't even need a begining; we could be locked in an infinite pattern of "BANGS!!!" Then again, the Christians could be right, too. At least that would be simpler, .

BTW: Glad you like my alien idea. High acceleration under very dense water would make them inertia resistant, too. This would be very good for space flight, they could accelerate much more quickly then we'd be able to. You're models look fantastic.

 

[Bluemofia]

actually, a vacuum has a few particles here and there, and i have a theory myself. what if, the center of the universe is a naked singularity, (refer to my first post here if you want to know what it is) but it is not realy naked, and that the edge of our universe is an event horizon in another universe, but matter can get in, but not out. and to contradict anyone who says anything that falls into a black hole cant get out, a black hole with a charge has 2 event horizons. an outer (where you can't escape) and an inner (when the Pulling stops and you can stay there for as long as you please, but you can't escape past the inner Event horizon.

if my theory is true (chances are no), this would be a freaking huge black hole.

 

[A Viking Yeti]

According to special relativity, time slows to a halt at the surface of an infinitely dense object. Gravity slows time, but it's an interresting idea. Why is there a "zone" where there is no gravitational attraction? If your theory is true, then all physics are only local, and could easily change outside the outer horizon. Also, what if the univers containing our black hole-universe was also, itself, in a black hole, and we WERE the singularity. A singularity could be another universe, and time as we know it (according to relativity) doesn't exist. We are in infinite limbo, within infinite limbo, with infite limbo, etc... This would sorta be like SM's theory and mine fused. Boggles the mind .

 

[A Viking Yeti]

BTW: Yes a vacuum has some particles, but not before the existence of all matter, I'm assuming .

 

[Xen]

it seems that you are accepting submissions for alien races, is this true, because if it is, can I submit one too?

 

[Smoking mirror]

Of course, If its a good sugestion I'll try to implement it in my design process, chances are that I'll canibalise the best bits.

One other race I've been thinking of are a culture of noncorperal beings, perhaps just recorded data paterns of a long lost race.
During the early period of human expansion a lot of exploration is performed by advanced (at the time) Robots. On a remote half habitable planet, during a advance terraforming project a group of these robots stumble on to a ruined subterainean alien structure, perhaps a crashed spaceship. The robots are programed to explore the site if no life forms are present. Inside, one of the robots interfaces with an ancient computer core housing the personality of a long dead alien being. These aliens were fleeing an ememy who had exterminated thier race, and destroyed all record of thier existance (possibly for comitting some terrible crime of thier own), leaving just this one lost space ship. On board are thousands of patern traces, ready to be downloaded in to advanced cybernetic body prosphesis. Because the ship was downed before reaching its destination, the patterns have remained in storage, but now they are freed.
The robotic bodies imediately available are much less advanced than the culture is used too, but they are put to work building more suitable vessels. The culture has little knowledge of fundamental sciences such as electronics, or lubricant plumbing, just as we do not know how the pyramids were built. As such thier early technology will be low quality, and quite crude. Later however, they will be able to make impressivly advanced ships and structures.

This gives three alien culture and a human culture, four in total. Civ III only realy allows five cultures in total, so I think I'll save one.

possibilites for its aplication are;
An extra alien culture, to be added at a later date.
Or a second divergent culture of one of the races already included. For instance perhaps at the begining of the third age humans split in to two main factions, those who wish to remain fundamentaly human, and those who want to take full advantage of cybernetic and biological advances to perfect the human race. for the first two eras these two cultures would have similar pop heads, leaderheads, buildings and city graphics, but at the start of the third age, they would become two seperate cultures with different city and pophead graphics. The leaderheads could reflect this trend, becoming more outlandish. It would be important however to establish flavours for these two factions right from the begining, with the more radical sect favouring governments such as conjoiner council, and the traditionalists keeping to colonial leage or imperial republic.

Animation of the units is proceeding as planned, so far the shuttle is almost done, Next will either be the worker drones or the settler shuttle. see the next post for a full list of the first two eras ships.

 

[Grey Fox]

What's the current planned races?

 

[Smoking mirror]

Here is the final list of ground units. from left to right;

first column;
Automated worker pods, require no pop points, but are expensive to produce. 1/1/1
Settler shuttle, requires two pop points and may be able to carry out limited worker actions, such as build relay network (roads), or build solar collectors (irrigation) 1/1/1
Shuttle group, 2/1/2
second column;
Defender sattelites, I may also make a self destruct animation for a variant "mine" type sattlelite. Generaly used for deffence or artillery (3)1/2/1
Armed freighter, (need a better name) strong early attacking unit, may need a special resource to build 3/2/1
Dropship, weaker than the freighter, but has the ability to enslave enemy units, using them to make automated worker pods (or perhaps a special retro fitted craft that I'll make later) 3/1/1
third column;
War barges, lots of attacking power but weak on deffence and slow 5/1/1
Weapon carriers, mainly just a powered shell for a large weapon, such as a particle beam or rail gun. Second era artillery (6)1/1/1
Warhawks, the first attempt at making an all out warship 3/3/2
fourth column;
Corvettes, good fast attack craft 4/1/2
Gunboats, (or sharpshooters) armed with two longrange heavy weapons, beware of stacks (4)2/4/1
Condor cruiser, expensive, but good for attacking entrenched enemies or escort 5/3/1
fith column;
Cobra destroyer, new breed of ship with advanced armour and systems 5/2/3
Medium cruiser, advanced attack ship 6/2/1
Heavy cruiser, good solid defender 3/5/1

I'll probably also include a couple of missile units, but I can probably find these already made.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Umm.. so far the planned races are; The aqautic aliens from the large world with dense atmosphere, the inteligent parasitic invertebrates with insectoid/lobster hosts and the robotic puppets of a bodiless culture. May change some of them, need more background and concept art.

once the ground units are done, I'll move on to the interstellar ships.