Abandoned Stars - Discussion and Poll Thread

Vote on whatever issues you want in each category...

  • -----Bait option. Ignore or vote as you like. :rolleyes: -----

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • *Tech* - single stat

    Votes: 5 16.7%
  • *Tech* - multiple fields

    Votes: 9 30.0%
  • *Tech* - branching tree

    Votes: 18 60.0%
  • ----If you like pressing options but you don't have an opinion, press this!---- :)

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • Galaxy size - ~20 stars

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • Galaxy size - 25-30 stars

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • Galaxy size - 35-45 stars

    Votes: 8 26.7%
  • Galaxy size - 50-60 stars

    Votes: 11 36.7%
  • Galaxy size - LOTS of stars!

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • :crazyeye: *** spacing option between the previous and next category ***

    Votes: 7 23.3%
  • Units - Numeric

    Votes: 13 43.3%
  • Units - Classic

    Votes: 15 50.0%
  • Elvis Presley lives again! :D

    Votes: 10 33.3%
  • Specialization - freeform, by stories only

    Votes: 11 36.7%
  • Specialization - +1 trait

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • Specialization - +2 strengths / -1 weakness

    Votes: 5 16.7%
  • Specialization - choice of +1 or +2/-1

    Votes: 14 46.7%
  • Specialization - +2 traits

    Votes: 4 13.3%

  • Total voters
    30
  • Poll closed .
If you didn't notice, I did. I'm arguing TerrisH's figures. There's something of a difference. :p
 
Oh, I wasn't disputing that, I was disputing this:
At most, a multiple-cable system would be able to handle a few million people per year

Okay, 36000 would be the Destnation point for the cars, not the counter weight, simply because it is a Stable orbit. (though an Excelent sling shot if you time it right for outbound cars). and higher, and object detached from the cable will drift away from the earth, and any lower, and they fall. simple physics. these are temporay transport getting the people to orbit, remind you. buigger, better equiped, PROPER space shipps will take them to other destnation (probly with assitance from the remaining Length to searve as a slingshot to boost their speed).

Point on Acelration. Looking at "Lifeport" I was over-esmating it. Let's go with 200 mph for starter. not very fast, but still. thaa means a trip of 7.5 days, about a week. One car can move up the cable 48 2/3 times

again, go with a spcing of 100km's apart, and 100 people per car. still comes to 1.7 million a year.

Now, just to be evil, Let's see what a MAXIUM would be. (rember, I am not considering cost, just therticals. this would require a LOT more to use.

7.5 day trip at 200km an hour, 1km spacing, 500 people per car. 36000 mile trip.
868.8 million people per year for a single cable.

of course, Logisticts for that would require 5-6 more cables, and the entire resorces of the solar system.

but the hang up is NOT the cable. It's resorces.
still, dosent' matter the end point. the fact that the planet can't be empteys into space.
still, the more crowded a planet is, the higher chance for spontanious human made disater is. be it plague or an industral polution. or a Mass extention event. hmm we are due for one by the probility. heck, Yellowstone is over due to blow.
 
Kal'thzar said:
wait wait, why are you arguing in something that has no point or relevance to the Nes at hand?
Factual information is useful regardless of the context. How often do you debate space elevators with people? You might actually learn something. :p

TerrisH said:
Okay, 36000 would be the Destnation point for the cars, not the counter weight, simply because it is a Stable orbit.
No, the counterweight would be the ideal destination. Farther out you go, the faster the cable is moving relative to Earth, and the weaker the gravitational pull. Thus the faster you are flung away from the planet, and the easier it is for you to get wherever it is you're going in deep space. It's more economical. If your objective is to fling as many people off into space as you can, this is important, as you're already wasting a whole lot of money and energy.

91,000km trip. 455 Hour (18 Days, 23 Hours) trip at 200kph (we'll presume continuous movement with no acceleration or deceleration except at the ends). 500 people per car. 1 hour to load a car(assorted baggage, supplies for the lift, other cargo, etc.). Needs a minimum of 200km distance between cars to keep them from smacking into one another at the bottom or top. Presuming it's already up and cycling when a year-long time interval is started, this means a new load of 500 people arrives every hour, or 24 times per day. 500 x 24 x 365 = 4,380,000. So you'd need 18 cables running full tilt every half hour, lifting as many people as a 747 with enough food and water to last for more than half a month (and enough space to not go insane) to beat the current human growth rate (which will only increase as time goes on and will be larger by the time any elevator is actually built). Mind you, I didn't factor in unloading, which would take just as long and slow things down more. I'd also like to point out:

equator.jpg


The number of sites for elevators that are not plagued by either earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, or hurricanes, is exceedingly small (as is the number of sites in general, really) because of how Earth's landmass is configured. So you'd need very solid bases, and possibly some floating or ocean-anchored elevators too.

So yes, you theoretically could do it. It's just incredibly impractical, and has an extremely long-range return on investment. The people who control the ability to do something like this don't think long-term (nor do people as a whole). If you were to extend their lives to the point where they could live to see the end of such a thing, they might green light it, but that just compounds the problem...

Getting a single cable up, or even a half-dozen, is totally feasible. Depopulating Earth humanely by spreading people out among the planets and stars is not (nevermind that without similar scaled efforts elsewhere [IE: Venus, Mars, etc.] there's nowhere for those people to go once they're up there, nevermind the transport system required to shuffle that many people between planets constantly...). Goes back to a quote, by our good friend Yogi Berra: "In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice, there is."

I'm willing to accept it for the principles of the NES because Erik is already invoking other blackboxes and it's a moot point. In terms of real world application though, I don't.
 
...
Symphony D. I said it was the destnation point for the CARS. not the people. Byond that, we get into the relms of planitary Travel, and the people will need proper space ships.
People take the Cars up to 36000.
cars shift the people to the Station, Car Returns to Earth for the next Load.
the People, after a Breif Stay, move to a Space ship for the Long voage between the planet/stars. Space ship then attaches to the counter-cable and use it to slingshot across the interplanitary void. or just boost out of orbit under it's own power, if the counter cable can't boost it toward it's destnation any time soon.

and the Logistics would kill. that I agree.
 
If the cars only take people to 36,000km and the station is at 91,000km, what takes people the remaining 55,000km? There's nothing valuable there to stop at. Randomly adding a second step in transit does nothing to speed it up either, in fact it only slows it down as it involves a second load/unload sequence.

It also makes no physical sense to have the system arbitrarily stop at GSO. There is absolutely no advantage. Escape Velocity is higher. Delta-v Budget is higher. Rotational speed is lower.

Take a record (wheel, disc, whatever). Mark two points on a line, one near the center, one near the edge. In a rigid object, the outer dot must go around a much greater circumference than the inner dot in the same period of time; it's going faster. An object at the counterweight would not only be farther out of Earth's gravity well, it would also be moving at a much higher velocity (admittedly the cable would drag some, but not significantly), and has the potential to reach Escape Velocity simply by being released outwards from the cable (for example, if the counterweight were to sudden detatch from the cable, it would hurtle off into space) Such is not the case at GSO where additional thrust is required. Nevermind that you if detatch from the cable at GSO, the only thing that will happen is you be in GSO (since you're moving at the same speed as the cable; if you're driving along at 60mph and you throw a tennis ball over the top of your car, it too will be moving at 60mph, and if there were a passenger, they could catch it on their side). You have to be moving parallel to the cable, outwards for it to fling you (centrifugal force, like a discus throw). You can't simply stop at an arbitrary point and do this nearly as easily; it'd be like throwing a discus from your elbow instead of your hand.

There is no advantage whatsoever to getting off at a lower altitude; in fact it only hinders your efforts. This is a simple physical fact. But we're wildly off topic, so whatever.
 
I feel very much like I'm in one of those "Behind the Scenes" things where people get to watch how something was developed, except this is before the actual NES. Fun stuff. :) With arguments over the reasons for things.

On to tech.
Erik Mesoy said:
Biotech:
  • None
Ship Armament:
  • None
Ship Defence:
  • None
Societal Rediscovery:
  • None
Technological Recovery:
  • None
Unit Redevelopment:
  • None
I'm going to stick descriptions on the various research options available, and you can name projects as you research them. You can go for an obvious name, such as "Construction", or an obscure one, such as "Honor of Muffins". Either way, you can draw your own tech tree, and I'll be interested in seeing what players come up with.


...

Your advisors enter the room, one of them carrying a holoprojector with their designs stored on it. Another one presses a button, and medical research notes shimmer into existence.
"Insert Title Here," says the first one, previously a doctor by profession, "there are two useful avenues of research and rediscovery to pursue in this field. The one is studies of human cells with an eye to growing and grafting replacement organs and prosthetics. The other is studies of pathogens and counters to these. Both would enable substantial reactivation of the related artifacts left by the Imperial Republic."
"About that," says the second one, flicking the holoprojector over to a set of graphs and tables, "I've got some studies directed specifically at reactivating as much 'stupid' stuff as we can. There are three main areas we could focus on." He holds up a finger. "First, there's a group suggesting that we reverse-engineer computer specifications and put home-designed computers on the relic ships we're left with. We'd get smart ships, and you know the pilots are still having difficulty with the fact that they need a large crew to steer, shoot, allocate power, whatnot." He holds up another finger. "Second, some of the engineers think they could get a zero-gee shipyard up and running, if you'll give them material to remake what's left of a space station, and allow use of some fighter craft for transport." Third finger. He flicks the holoprojector over to a set of sine waves and spectrum graphs. "Third and last, we've located various crashed, buried or disabled old ships of the Imperial Republic that we hope to salvage and reactivate. The pilot project earned us a basic fighter craft in sorry shape, but there's a lot of potential out there. We'd need a lot of computing power to test various transmission protocols, but we could double our fleet without needing a shipyard."
He taps a button on the holoprojector, which displays weapons schematics now, and nods to a military advisor.
"Your Rulership. Everyone has mostly agreed that if aliens were going to attack us, they'd have done it by now. However, we still need weapons if history is any guide, and at the moment, the most effective weapon our ships has is flying belly-first at the enemy and releasing everything in the cargo bay at a sort of wide spread."
(General snickers.)
"I'm serious! There's that, and ramming, and popguns. The simplest option, most closely related to popguns, is kinetic weapons. We accelerate heavy metals to high speed and fire them. If it hits an enemy ship, they suffer hull disruption. The countermeasure we can take, assuming someone else will be doing this, is to develop serious hull plating. What we've got at the moment is just enough to stop depressurization when combined with the energy fields. It's a horrible patchwork job. So that's that pair. Next is burst lasers. The plan is to fire multiple shorter shots in slightly angled directions, which will increase accuracy dramatically. Right now, we're having to manually control the focused unidirectional lasers left behind, and that means getting uncomfortably close if we want to be accurate. The correct counter to this would be force fields, which we can produce, but which are fairly primitive. We'd get a lot of value out of improving the field generators."
He pauses for breath.
"Finally, we can develop guided missiles. I'm sure I don't have to explain to you why this is an advantage. If you think our enemies will be focusing on those, I should be able to come up with some point defense mechanisms."
"While on the subject of weapons," says the next one smoothly, "the infantry we have at the moment is rather poorly armed. Legacy weapons, most of them, and not in the good sense. The few that have stupid modern arms aren't generally compatible. The early forays into standard, powerful, reliable weapons suggest that we adapt a sort of multi-rapid-fire small arms approach. Slap a generator together with an ammunition belt and multiple barrels. Make the projectiles out of the cheapest metal we have. You get my drift, I'm sure. The other option, if you think our troops can hold out a while, is to develop remote-controlled drones that we can put weapons on. So far, this is the prototype:"
He pulls a cube out of his pocket and flicks something on it. A silver disc rises from the floor, settles on the table, and spins a few times before shining beams of light in several directions.
"Children's toys are some of the most advanced things we have at the moment, since so many of them were 'stupid'. We're lucky enough that this one comes with audiovisual sensors. It's designed to check for monsters in closets and under beds. If we boosted the range and replaced the lights with lasers, it would make a good weapon."
Putting the disc in his pocket, the tinkerer steps back as yet another advisor takes command of the holoprojector. You recognize engine and generator designs rotating in the air.
"Elerium." says the advisor simply. "Not a single one of the surviving engines uses it. Without those, we can't reliably maintain power for any ship larger than a cruiser or transport."
"Spatial superiority is of vital importance if we get into any sort of conflict, and I'm sure there will be all sorts of warlike factions out there if similar conditions prevail in other systems. If we can manufacture elerium drives, we'd be able to field far larger ships."
An odd silence falls. Something's missing.
"Oh, right. Jones and his team were taken ill. They've sent you their draft papers on economics and organization. We'll leave them here with you. They look interesting, if you can coerce people into working that way."
As the various advisors shuffle out, you begin reading said papers. One discusses division of labor, proposing to improve production dramatically. The other two are both abstracts of technological reimplementations taken for granted under the Republic: the ability to communicate with anyone on the planet at any given time, and more effective factories with standardized production orders. All three look like good ideas.
 
Okay, I've made enough final decisions to present a template. Choice of traits, classic units. Template, inside [plain] tags so that you can copypaste it into a reply and still have stuff bolded, listed and whatever. Text inside curly brackets {} is to be replaced. Angle brackets <> <> denote commentary to be removed.

[B]{Faction Name Here}[/B] ( {Short Name If Applicable} )
Leader: {Optional Title}{Name} / {Player Name}
Home system: {Name Here} {number} Handwavium Gates <choose 2, 3 or 4 depending on how connected you want your starting system to be, or leave blank for a random value. One system has 1 and one system has 5.>
Attributes: {Trait} ( {Attribute} ) {Optionally, a second good trait and one negative trait}
<Make up your own traits and drawback, but I'll nerf them if you put something stupid. "Military Base, starts with a dozen Battleships" is stupid, for example. " If you didn't like the trait system, put something like "Lucky: More good events, fewer bad events" so that it's less obviously affecting the game.>
Stability: 60%
Production: 40 (40 from {Home system}), 0 banked <Production is increased through technology or investing into reactivation>
Trade: None
Travel speed: 1 gate/turn
Known systems:[indent][Home system name] (home system) producing 40/turn, maximum capacity {0} <This will be randomly determined between 60 and 90, leave it blank.>
{number} unknowns bordering {Home system} <See Home System entry for this number.>[/indent]

Army and Fleet deployment:[spoiler][B][Home System Name]: [/B] 1000 infantry, [] Scouts, [] Fighters, 1 {large ship]
<Choose 1-5 scouts and 90-50 fighters proportionally, for example 3 and 70 or 5 and 50. Roll a (six-sided) die for the large ship. If you get 1,2 or 3, you have a Cruiser. If you get 4 or 5, you have a Carrier. If you get 6, you're lucky enough to start with a functioning Ship of the Line. If you don't have a die or you're lazy, use Random.org.>
[size=1]Note: As you have no Carriers, neither your infantry nor your Fighters can travel to other systems.[/size] <Remove this note if you have a Carrier.>[/spoiler]

Researched technologies:[spoiler]Ship Defence:[list][*]None[/list]
Ship Armament:[list][*]None[/list]
Unit Redevelopment:[list][*]None[/list]
Technological Recovery:[list][*]None[/list]
Societal Rediscovery:[list][*]None[/list]
Biotech:[list][*]None[/list][/spoiler]
<You may have a starting technology as one of your traits. See research areas in previous post.>

Description: {Give a paragraph or two describing your faction.}

_____________________________________________

Phew. That should be that, though Disenfrancised and his friends will probably pick a hole in it.

Commonwealth of Interstellar Domains (CID)
Leader: President Franklin Sheridan / Symphony D.
Home System: Sol (4 Handwavium Gates)
Attributes: Industrious (Bonus Production Points and Planet Development), Diplomatic (Increased production from friendly worlds and improved Negotiation) Bureaucratic (Efficiency penalty, Planet Reactivation and Development costs twice as much)
Stability: 60%
Production: 45 (45 from Sol), 0 Banked
Trade: None
Travel Speed: 1 Gate/Turn
Known Systems:
Sol (45 production, maximum 84 (70+20%))
4 unknowns bordering Sol​
Army and Fleet Deployment: 1000 infantry, <fleet as seen above>

Researched Technologies: None

Description: CID is the result of the victory-by-default by anti-Imperial Republican forces following the Great Disappearance. Composed of several unique factions and Imperial Republican remanents, CID displays remarkable flexibility in both government and society; its origins as a diverse rebel movement have familiarized it with survivalism and democracy, and as such it makes good use of its diverse pools of talent in all possible fields, and is generally inclined to talk first and shoot later. Unfortunately, these same diverse groups, and their mutual suspicion leads to many checks and balances and distributions of power, making it more difficult to react quickly or efficiently, though the system is generally stable.

Now to explain the Production stats.
A home system normally starts out producing 40 production points (PP, or Production). Investing 3 points into a system improves production by 1. (Meaning that all-investing would get a normal planet up to 53.) This represents reactivating all the industry you can utilize, and is hence termed Planet Reactivation in the traits. It's limited by the maximum, which normally starts at 60, 70, 80 or 90.
Techs and attributes increase this maximum. Such increases represent developing ways to utilize more advanced forms of industry left behind by the Imperial Republic, and is hence termed Planet Development.

Complain away...
 
Yes.

Random image induced by stupid 10char limit:
bunnulence.jpg

(cute, innit?)
 
CID Initial Military is pegged at: 1000 Infantry, 4 Instigator class Scouts, 60 Inundator class Fighters, 1 Interdictor class Carrier. Summary is therefore:

Commonwealth of Interstellar Domains (CID)
Leader: President Franklin Sheridan / Symphony D.
Home System: Sol (4 Handwavium Gates)
Attributes: Industrious (Bonus Production Points and Planet Development), Diplomatic (Increased production from friendly worlds and improved Negotiation) Bureaucratic (Efficiency penalty, Planet Reactivation and Development costs twice as much)
Stability: 60%
Production: 45 (45 from Sol), 0 Banked
Trade: None
Travel Speed: 1 Gate/Turn
Known Systems:
Sol (45 production, maximum 84 (70+20%))
4 unknowns bordering Sol
Army and Fleet Deployment: 1000 Infantry, 4 Instigator class Scouts, 60 Inundator class Fighters, 1 Interdictor class Carrier

Researched Technologies: None

Description: CID is the result of the victory-by-default by anti-Imperial Republican forces following the Great Disappearance. Composed of several unique factions and Imperial Republican remanents, CID displays remarkable flexibility in both government and society; its origins as a diverse rebel movement have familiarized it with survivalism and democracy, and as such it makes good use of its diverse pools of talent in all possible fields, and is generally inclined to talk first and shoot later. Unfortunately, these same diverse groups, and their mutual suspicion leads to many checks and balances and distributions of power, making it more difficult to react quickly or efficiently, though the system is generally stable.
 
Expansion

To claim a system, you will have to take a capital ship (anything but scouts or fighters) with a gang of settlers and expend 10 production establishing a base. Systems claimed this way will initially have 10 production per turn.

Of course, this is best case. ;) Some worlds will have small factions of their own, or they may be overtaken by CyberPenguins trying to take advantage of the situation, not to mention possibly infected by plagues that broke out when medical machinery stopped functioning, or any one of a number of other problems. Enemy factions are easily disrupted by planetary bombardment from warships, aka "Push asteroids at them". :o Other threats may require more complex answers.

Also, the famous Sol sector:
solsector.png

It is printed on monuments throughout the inhabited worlds as a memorial of human history.
 
Lord_Iggy said:
Aww... what a cute pic...

That's an adorable star map!
Nice to have you lurking this. :king:
foolish_icarus said:
Does the presence of unobtainium shells mean we can't see the stars?
You can see the stars. Blackbox restrictions prevent me giving further information.


I have so much stuff complete that the NES may launch tomorrow. Any last-minute objections?
 
I'll join up tomorrow...and find a way to ripoff starwars I will do. At any cost I must.
 
Erik Mesoy said:
Expansion

To claim a system, you will have to take a capital ship (anything but scouts or fighters) with a gang of settlers and expend 10 production establishing a base. Systems claimed this way will initially have 10 production per turn.

Of course, this is best case. ;) Some worlds will have small factions of their own, or they may be overtaken by CyberPenguins trying to take advantage of the situation, not to mention possibly infected by plagues that broke out when medical machinery stopped functioning, or any one of a number of other problems. Enemy factions are easily disrupted by planetary bombardment from warships, aka "Push asteroids at them". :o Other threats may require more complex answers.

Also, the famous Sol sector:
solsector.png

It is printed on monuments throughout the inhabited worlds as a memorial of human history.
Well, you appear to have revealed the system with 5 stargates....

Lucky Symphony. :p
 
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