SciFi Worldbuilding Tropes

[Zeloria]

It’s astonishing that 120 years after War of the Worlds people still fuck up how to make alien invasion stories.

Could of gone to literally any other resource rich planet, but you just had to go to the one inhabited with nuke wielding murder apes.

You wouldn't even have to go to a planet. There are enough resource-rich asteroids in space that can be easily mined, without having to worry about angering the local monkeys.

[Chan Island]

Could of gone to literally any other resource rich planet, but you just had to go to the one inhabited with nuke wielding murder apes.

You wouldn't even have to go to a planet. There are enough resource-rich asteroids in space that can be easily mined, without having to worry about angering the local monkeys.

I mean, even if you did have to go to the Earth, why would you even bother invading. Why not just shoot it with a missle going at the speed of light, blow up the planet, and then hey presto look at all those resources now completely uncontested!

Which is one I have begun to notice- why is that sci-fi militaries still rely on regular missiles. Couldn't you strap some of those FTL engines on to one of those bad boys? Aim no space wizard flinging that out of the way or any advanced mech tanking that. At all. And it'd be cool af on the screens too.

[Heloin]

You wouldn't even have to go to a planet. There are enough resource-rich asteroids in space that can be easily mined, without having to worry about angering the local monkeys.

I mean, even if you did have to go to the Earth, why would you even bother invading. Why not just shoot it with a missle going at the speed of light, blow up the planet, and then hey presto look at all those resources now completely uncontested!

Which is one I have begun to notice- why is that sci-fi militaries still rely on regular missiles. Couldn't you strap some of those FTL engines on to one of those bad boys? Aim no space wizard flinging that out of the way or any advanced mech tanking that. At all. And it'd be cool af on the screens too.

My psyker rolls a natural 20 and throws your engine back at you.

Also I'd argue that would be a missle.

[Qhevak]

You wouldn't even have to go to a planet. There are enough resource-rich asteroids in space that can be easily mined, without having to worry about angering the local monkeys.

I mean, even if you did have to go to the Earth, why would you even bother invading. Why not just shoot it with a missle going at the speed of light, blow up the planet, and then hey presto look at all those resources now completely uncontested!

Which is one I have begun to notice- why is that sci-fi militaries still rely on regular missiles. Couldn't you strap some of those FTL engines on to one of those bad boys? Aim no space wizard flinging that out of the way or any advanced mech tanking that. At all. And it'd be cool af on the screens too.

Because if Star Wars used hyperdrives in that sense combat would be visually an incomprensible morass of random explosions from nowhere. There's books that have done that sort of combat well (like the Culture series and A Fire Upon The Deep) but most sci-fi that cares to think about the issue puts practical limitations on their FTL (e.g. not in a strong gravity well, inaccurate, can be jammed) for good reason.

The warrior's, who are either the badguys, or are just rivals to the good guy peaceful humans.

And are somehow a military superpower despite being made up entirely up of sword waving warriors, which tends to not lend very well to an effective military-industrial R&D complex.

[New yugoslavaia]

And are somehow a military superpower despite being made up entirely up of sword waving warriors, which tends to not lend very well to an effective military-industrial R&D complex.

Let's be honest. These aren't alien species.

They're fantasy races in outer space.

[Immortan Khan]

For me, something I see a ton of in Sci-Fi is either the world is so advanced that it has culturally regressed or it is dystopian, which I feel like, in most cases, is just transporting present-day cultures, trends, and ideas into a super futuristic environment. In something like Star Wars, the world feels medieval almost, like it has been taken from history and plugged into a technologically futuristic world. The Jedi are warrior-priests, which IRL kinda died out a hundred years ago, and their whole society — the temples and the ancient sites and shrines and the force and all that just seems dated to me. Even though the world seems futuristic. You see the same thing in Dune, where the whole world feels like an ancient idea in a futuristic setting. I just get that vibe.

If it isn't like that, then it is dystopian. One of my favorite and often overlooked dystopian books is Legend by Marie Lu, even though it is a YA novel the world is so well fleshed out to me. But it doesn't seem that different culturally. There are the same problems. With the same solutions. The setting may be different but the culture just feels the same.

If this is an incoherent rant, I apologize. That's kinda what I do best.

I mean Dune was specifically meant to be futuristic neo-feudalism. It can be interesting to borrow elements from past systems and apply them to future setting to see how technology could work with them or influence their development.