Advice Thread OOC Future Tech Only

[Yalos]

By farming though, I didnt mean JUST food production. The farm system will be able to produce renwable energy, extract vital gases, and create wood. Its not just food productuon, and its not going to be en entirely agricultural based system. Im imagining that maybe 60% of the population couod be directly or indirectly involved in the agricultural sector. As I did mention, there will be a moderate industrial complex, so Im not going to be totally lackng, and since I imagine that the automated farms should be simple to operate, my agrarian citizens would have more than enough time to invent and inspire.

[The Akasha Colony]

There's always the fact not everyone is going to have replicators or atomic recompliers in their hands and therefore they need to be sustained by trade, realistically speaking this will be just about every single stellar empire excluding some truly high end ones. Intergalactic Commerce will certainly be different from International Commerce, but at the core the trade of goods and services will not stop simply because of space and abundance of raw material.

You'd only need trade if for some reason you couldn't access the resources yourself. Given how many open systems there are out there for the taking and how many systems exist in this galaxy alone, and given how small most NS FT nations are, there should be more than enough resources to go around. Star systems tend to generally have the same rough distribution of resources in relation to their age; even in one system alone we've basically mapped out every stable and useful element. Yes, you could import the resources, but why bother when you could simply claim them yourself from an uninhabited system? Politically, that's a much more reliable solution.

It also means that the labor equation is reversed: unlike the present where poor nations with big populations and low wages have a production advantage, more advanced nations with better production and more efficient resource extraction methods would have a competitive advantage in terms of industrial output as the focus shifts from blue-collar labor to white-collar overseers.

By farming though, I didnt mean JUST food production. The farm system will be able to produce renwable energy, extract vital gases, and create wood. Its not just food productuon, and its not going to be en entirely agricultural based system. Im imagining that maybe 60% of the population couod be directly or indirectly involved in the agricultural sector. As I did mention, there will be a moderate industrial complex, so Im not going to be totally lackng, and since I imagine that the automated farms should be simple to operate, my agrarian citizens would have more than enough time to invent and inspire.

All of these things are of little use for developing and maintaining space infrastructure. 'Renewable energy' is simply a term for using preexisting energy sources, including the sun, wind, and geothermal power. It is of limited utility for starships, which must operate in an environment where at best they will have only sunlight, and will not have even that when voyaging between star systems. And that is assuming of course that your systems are so efficient as to be able to practicably run on solar power. Likewise, wood and alcohol aren't particularly useful as far as space is concerned. Ethanol is a possible substitute for use in internal combustion engines but it's relatively unlikely starships are going to be running on gasoline.

The materials that tend to be useful for such endeavors, namely ceramics, metals, and composites will benefit little from a robust agricultural sector. The only real way they'd be related to the agricultural sector is if you burned ethanol or plant waste to power the actual factories, but this is not an efficient use of resources from a space, labor, or time standpoint; you'd be better off covering your fields with solar panels and wind turbines instead.



For direct comparison, the US is the world's top producer of corn and soybeans, and a significant producer of many other crops. Despite being the world's third-most populated country, it is a major exporter of food, even after so much of that agriculture is consumed by livestock, ethanol production, and other industrial processes. And yet agriculture accounts for only 1% of the economy and employs only 2-3% of the people. Proportionately, this also indicates that agriculture is not particularly profitable for the economy; 2-3% of the total population only contribute 1% to total GDP.

Now let's compare your country. You want 60% of the population involved somehow in agriculture, using farms that are presumably more efficient than those today. That's a huge percentage, on par with what the US was like at the end of the 19th century. With all these farms and all this production, what are you going to do with it? We've already talked about how exporting it probably isn't all that efficient. So internally, where is all this produce going? And if 60% of your people are involved in agriculture, that leaves only 40% left to carry the burden of services, industry, and development.

Once again, such an economy will function in that the people won't starve, but it will not be competitive or prosperous relative to others with a more conventional proportion of industry, agriculture, and services. This is why successful nations have already moved to this model and developing nations inching toward it.

[OMGeverynameistaken]

tl;dr

Space Russia is still the only producer of 12 mile long revolvers and 1:1 scale models of Vatican City. Anybody who attempts to violate our monopoly on this product will be shot with a 1:1 solid gold, scale model of Vatican City moving at .9 of c.

[Milagro]

I'm trying to come up with a map for my planet... but there is one thing I'd like to know.

Does it ALWAYS have to be cold at the "poles"? Or at least colder than the rest of the planet by a significant amount?

I'd like to have a planet that is generally warm in most places. So like the coldest regions would be like Southern Canada/Northern USA in the fall, maybe even a little warmer. Is that possible? Would it require a drastically different type of planet or star to do so?

Or, alternatively, can I have Earth like conditions and do I just have the major landmasses near the equator like Pangea or its fragments (Gondwana and Laurasia)?

[SquareDisc City]

If the axial tilt is moderate, the poles will be the coldest regions on average. But they can certainly be rather warmer than Earth's polar regions are today. There have been times in Earth's past when forest grew at the poles.

[Milagro]

If the axial tilt is moderate, the poles will be the coldest regions on average. But they can certainly be rather warmer than Earth's polar regions are today. There have been times in Earth's past when forest grew at the poles.

So, what caused the change in temperature?

Earth hasn't changed it's tilt... has it?

Or is it more likely that when that meteor hit, it kicked up a lot of stuff into the atmosphere and reduced the warmth going through?

[Estainia]

There's always the fact not everyone is going to have replicators or atomic recompliers in their hands and therefore they need to be sustained by trade, realistically speaking this will be just about every single stellar empire excluding some truly high end ones. Intergalactic Commerce will certainly be different from International Commerce, but at the core the trade of goods and services will not stop simply because of space and abundance of raw material.

You'd only need trade if for some reason you couldn't access the resources yourself. Given how many open systems there are out there for the taking and how many systems exist in this galaxy alone, and given how small most NS FT nations are, there should be more than enough resources to go around. Star systems tend to generally have the same rough distribution of resources in relation to their age; even in one system alone we've basically mapped out every stable and useful element. Yes, you could import the resources, but why bother when you could simply claim them yourself from an uninhabited system? Politically, that's a much more reliable solution.

It also means that the labor equation is reversed: unlike the present where poor nations with big populations and low wages have a production advantage, more advanced nations with better production and more efficient resource extraction methods would have a competitive advantage in terms of industrial output as the focus shifts from blue-collar labor to white-collar overseers.

By farming though, I didnt mean JUST food production. The farm system will be able to produce renwable energy, extract vital gases, and create wood. Its not just food productuon, and its not going to be en entirely agricultural based system. Im imagining that maybe 60% of the population couod be directly or indirectly involved in the agricultural sector. As I did mention, there will be a moderate industrial complex, so Im not going to be totally lackng, and since I imagine that the automated farms should be simple to operate, my agrarian citizens would have more than enough time to invent and inspire.

All of these things are of little use for developing and maintaining space infrastructure. 'Renewable energy' is simply a term for using preexisting energy sources, including the sun, wind, and geothermal power. It is of limited utility for starships, which must operate in an environment where at best they will have only sunlight, and will not have even that when voyaging between star systems. And that is assuming of course that your systems are so efficient as to be able to practicably run on solar power. Likewise, wood and alcohol aren't particularly useful as far as space is concerned. Ethanol is a possible substitute for use in internal combustion engines but it's relatively unlikely starships are going to be running on gasoline.

The materials that tend to be useful for such endeavors, namely ceramics, metals, and composites will benefit little from a robust agricultural sector. The only real way they'd be related to the agricultural sector is if you burned ethanol or plant waste to power the actual factories, but this is not an efficient use of resources from a space, labor, or time standpoint; you'd be better off covering your fields with solar panels and wind turbines instead.



For direct comparison, the US is the world's top producer of corn and soybeans, and a significant producer of many other crops. Despite being the world's third-most populated country, it is a major exporter of food, even after so much of that agriculture is consumed by livestock, ethanol production, and other industrial processes. And yet agriculture accounts for only 1% of the economy and employs only 2-3% of the people. Proportionately, this also indicates that agriculture is not particularly profitable for the economy; 2-3% of the total population only contribute 1% to total GDP.

Now let's compare your country. You want 60% of the population involved somehow in agriculture, using farms that are presumably more efficient than those today. That's a huge percentage, on par with what the US was like at the end of the 19th century. With all these farms and all this production, what are you going to do with it? We've already talked about how exporting it probably isn't all that efficient. So internally, where is all this produce going? And if 60% of your people are involved in agriculture, that leaves only 40% left to carry the burden of services, industry, and development.

Once again, such an economy will function in that the people won't starve, but it will not be competitive or prosperous relative to others with a more conventional proportion of industry, agriculture, and services. This is why successful nations have already moved to this model and developing nations inching toward it.

You trade because it stimulates your economy and your productivity. The crowning moment that decides whether you trade or not however is not based on resource but on industry. Africa has vast stores of untapped resources, but without the industry to turn them into usable products they remain impoverished beyond the point of hope.

Industry decides economics, not resources; access to resources just makes it easier to produce if you're an industrial nation.

[The Akasha Colony]

You trade because it stimulates your economy and your productivity. The crowning moment that decides whether you trade or not however is not based on resource but on industry. Africa has vast stores of untapped resources, but without the industry to turn them into usable products they remain impoverished beyond the point of hope.

Industry decides economics, not resources; access to resources just makes it easier to produce if you're an industrial nation.

But getting into space in the first place implies at least a reasonable level of industrial development on the part of the civilization that accomplished it. Thus, any space nation exploiting resources would be more like the colonial powers than the natives, as they already have the industry and simply need more material to feed their industrial expansion.

[Estainia]

You trade because it stimulates your economy and your productivity. The crowning moment that decides whether you trade or not however is not based on resource but on industry. Africa has vast stores of untapped resources, but without the industry to turn them into usable products they remain impoverished beyond the point of hope.

Industry decides economics, not resources; access to resources just makes it easier to produce if you're an industrial nation.

But getting into space in the first place implies at least a reasonable level of industrial development on the part of the civilization that accomplished it. Thus, any space nation exploiting resources would be more like the colonial powers than the natives, as they already have the industry and simply need more material to feed their industrial expansion.

Not necessarily; you're also severely overestimating the ease of harnessing interplanetary resources; it would by no means be easy without blatant handwavium.

[SquareDisc City]

So, what caused the change in temperature?

Earth hasn't changed it's tilt... has it?

Or is it more likely that when that meteor hit, it kicked up a lot of stuff into the atmosphere and reduced the warmth going through?

Well polar ice caps reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth and thus meaning the ice caps tend to stay. Conversely with no polar ice caps Earth absorbs more heat and so tends to stay ice-free. Technically Earth is still in an ice age, just in a less icy "interglacial" than the full-on ice-all-over-Canada conditions.

As for what can switch between ice age and non ice-age conditions, various factors but plate tectonics is a big one. If there isn't a polar continent or an enclosed polar sea, there can't be polar ice. (At least not on Earth, other planets may differ.) When tectonic collisions create mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas, the erosion of those mountains removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buries it in the deep oceans, cooling the planet; conversely a rise in volcanism can warm the planet. The formation of ice caps over Antarctica may be associated due to the change in ocean currents due to the Panama Isthmus closing and the Drake Passage (between South America and Antarctica) opening.

Add-on: Basically, create the planet you like. So long as you don't do anything really silly, like a terrestrial planet the size of Saturn with 60km high mountains, it should be plausible enough.

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

When will we in the real world most likely have one of the following.

- Hover capabilities (Like for hover tanks and such)
- Laser weapons beyond Point defense stuff.
- Absurdly Sharp Blades
- Nano machines capable of protecting the body from infections and such
- Any form of reasonable plasma weapons or something that mimics their look and role.
- The ability to bring the dead back to life within a reasonable time frame, if at all possible.

[Yalos]

Akasha: My ships will run off potato starch. As will my weapons. Exploding corn cannons. Oh my god, produce in space... I might actualoy just convert to ridicu tech just for this.

[The Akasha Colony]

But getting into space in the first place implies at least a reasonable level of industrial development on the part of the civilization that accomplished it. Thus, any space nation exploiting resources would be more like the colonial powers than the natives, as they already have the industry and simply need more material to feed their industrial expansion.

Not necessarily; you're also severely overestimating the ease of harnessing interplanetary resources; it would by no means be easy without blatant handwavium.

So they just imagined their starships and space travel technology out of nothing? Or they have trees that bloom into spacecraft, ready to launch? Just getting a basic manned capsule into space is no small feat. Nevermind the sort of industry needed to actually build a full starship capable of extended travel under its own power. It may not require a world that is entirely developed to first world standards, but a significant portion of it will be, and more importantly the necessary technology will have already been developed. Initial exploitation of space resources shortly after achieving spaceflight would be difficult, no doubt, but once a society has developed far enough to be constructing FTL-capable starships with some regularity and outright colonizing other worlds in other systems, which is generally considered the benchmark for most nations in FT, it seems safe to say that a rather significant level of industry has been achieved.

And any concerns about the 'ease' of harnessing space resources applies equally whether a nation imports or develops the infrastructure itself. The same procedures must be carried out, which means the exporter must tack this cost on to cover their own effort expended, or the purchasing nation can simply develop the infrastructure itself, but with the advantage of retaining full political control.

[SquareDisc City]

When will we in the real world most likely have one of the following.

- Hover capabilities (Like for hover tanks and such)
- Laser weapons beyond Point defense stuff.
- Absurdly Sharp Blades
- Nano machines capable of protecting the body from infections and such
- Any form of reasonable plasma weapons or something that mimics their look and role.
- The ability to bring the dead back to life within a reasonable time frame, if at all possible.

I don't like to give dates on future stuff, but I'll have a crack at an order, from soonest to latest.

Reviving the dead. We can do this now, inasmuch as we can save people that previously would have been considered goners. In future "dead" will be redefined to be what can't be treated by medicine.
Absurdly sharp blades. Again, there's now some stuff that's seriously sharp. I don't think it can get very much better though. A physical sword won't be cutting through a tank, for example.
Plasma weapons. The US military has researched one of a sort, the Pulsed Energy Projectile. Actually a laser, but uses plasma in doing damage.
Heavier laser weapons. No showstopper technical barriers, but I think it may be a long time before they can catch up with guns and bombs.
Medical nanomachines. For all the talk of nanotechnology, I'm not aware of ANY sci-fi style "nanobot" yet made. It's also quite plausible that genetically engineered viruses or cells, not to mention regular pharmaceuticals coupled with relatively simple slow-release nanotechnology, will be developed much earlier, leaving medical nanomachines playing serious catch-up.

[The Legion of War]

Akasha: My ships will run off potato starch. As will my weapons. Exploding corn cannons. Oh my god, produce in space... I might actualoy just convert to ridicu tech just for this.

DO EET!

Give Space Russia a run for their money in terms of loltech!

[New Tsavon]

When will we in the real world most likely have one of the following.

- Hover capabilities (Like for hover tanks and such)
- Laser weapons beyond Point defense stuff.
- Absurdly Sharp Blades
- Nano machines capable of protecting the body from infections and such
- Any form of reasonable plasma weapons or something that mimics their look and role.
- The ability to bring the dead back to life within a reasonable time frame, if at all possible.

Fucking never.

Besides maybe really sharp blades, nanomachines, and possibly directed energy weapons. 2200 for those, maybe?

[Themiclesia]

I should like expert on this issue --

My region mates have claimed that a shield of irradiated astatine, on the premise that the shield be of a solid consistency, and that the 7d orbit is filled, can withstand all projectile attack.

I have replied by saying that such a shield will be highly unstable due to the short half-life of the element, due to the disexcitement of the electrons, which will emit gamma rays, as well as the scarcity of the element. In any event, even if astatine is energised to such a degree, the electrons, though energetic, are still spread throughout a very great area (in relation to the solid nuclei).

[Milagro]

So, what caused the change in temperature?

Earth hasn't changed it's tilt... has it?

Or is it more likely that when that meteor hit, it kicked up a lot of stuff into the atmosphere and reduced the warmth going through?

Well polar ice caps reflect sunlight, cooling the Earth and thus meaning the ice caps tend to stay. Conversely with no polar ice caps Earth absorbs more heat and so tends to stay ice-free. Technically Earth is still in an ice age, just in a less icy "interglacial" than the full-on ice-all-over-Canada conditions.

As for what can switch between ice age and non ice-age conditions, various factors but plate tectonics is a big one. If there isn't a polar continent or an enclosed polar sea, there can't be polar ice. (At least not on Earth, other planets may differ.) When tectonic collisions create mountain ranges, such as the Himalayas, the erosion of those mountains removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and buries it in the deep oceans, cooling the planet; conversely a rise in volcanism can warm the planet. The formation of ice caps over Antarctica may be associated due to the change in ocean currents due to the Panama Isthmus closing and the Drake Passage (between South America and Antarctica) opening.

Add-on: Basically, create the planet you like. So long as you don't do anything really silly, like a terrestrial planet the size of Saturn with 60km high mountains, it should be plausible enough.

So... I've elected to just have no real poles. Note sure if that's a massive issue, but Earth survived when all the land mass was just Pangaea around the equator, right?

[SquareDisc City]

No material can "withstand all projectile attack"; if it's hit hard enough, it will fail.

Anyway astatine is a halogen, a group of elements not known for strong intermolecular bonding, and as mentioned it will decay into something else rapidly.

Sounds like your regionmates have just strung together a bit of technobabble. Unrealism doesn't have to be a problem, but imbalance is and if they're claiming it's indestructible I'd say that's imbalanced.

Edit:

So... I've elected to just have no real poles. Note sure if that's a massive issue, but Earth survived when all the land mass was just Pangaea around the equator, right?

No land at the poles, I assume you mean. Yeah that's reasonable. Indeed for a mostly ocean world I'd say it's normal, considering the polar regions of Earth (within the Arctic and Antarctic circles) account for just 8% of the total area.

[Themiclesia]

No material can "withstand all projectile attack"; if it's hit hard enough, it will fail.

Anyway astatine is a halogen, a group of elements not known for strong intermolecular bonding, and as mentioned it will decay into something else rapidly.

Sounds like your regionmates have just strung together a bit of technobabble. Unrealism doesn't have to be a problem, but imbalance is and if they're claiming it's indestructible I'd say that's imbalanced.

No, it's just that anything made of astatine is likely fundamentally hazardous anyway; as with iodine, it is probably fragile as a crystal and not useful as a shield. In any event, there's isn't enough of it to make any thing useful really.

I actually went ahead and calculated the orbital numbers for 7f to be filled... only find that my region mates have gone off line...

[Themiclesia]

I have thought fit to bring this issue up again.

In the event that my nation encompasses a number of systems, how should my military be oragnised? I was thinking, each planet could have its own militia, and an independent militia belongs to a system, and not to any planet in particular. So a system's militia =\= the militias of the planets. The same logic could conceivably apply to galaxies.

[Vaxon]

I have thought fit to bring this issue up again.

In the event that my nation encompasses a number of systems, how should my military be oragnised? I was thinking, each planet could have its own militia, and an independent militia belongs to a system, and not to any planet in particular. So a system's militia =\= the militias of the planets. The same logic could conceivably apply to galaxies.

Bad Idea. Multiple small militaries that govern themselves tend to be a bad idea.
My advice - have one big military, a joint one, from all of your colonies and owned planets. Take about 3% of each planet's population and throw it into your military. When you're done, depending on the territory and size you are, you'd end up with 5-10% of your population being in the military. More or less.

[SquareDisc City]

At least for the army the UPT used to have loads, one for each Type plus an Overall one. I moved it to something more centralised in large part because that's easier to develop

[The Legion of War]

I have thought fit to bring this issue up again.

In the event that my nation encompasses a number of systems, how should my military be oragnised? I was thinking, each planet could have its own militia, and an independent militia belongs to a system, and not to any planet in particular. So a system's militia =\= the militias of the planets. The same logic could conceivably apply to galaxies.

Just have a large military, divide it up to patrol/defend certain sectors/regions of your nation. Maybe planetary defence fleets, but they'd have to be smaller than the average fleet. Maybe just a moderate sized group, if you're even able to field that much (some nations might not).

Too many semi-autonomous militaries could lead to infighting and rebellion (you DID arm them with modern (for your nation) military equipment.

[The Akasha Colony]

I have thought fit to bring this issue up again.

In the event that my nation encompasses a number of systems, how should my military be oragnised? I was thinking, each planet could have its own militia, and an independent militia belongs to a system, and not to any planet in particular. So a system's militia =\= the militias of the planets. The same logic could conceivably apply to galaxies.

Bad Idea. Multiple small militaries that govern themselves tend to be a bad idea.
My advice - have one big military, a joint one, from all of your colonies and owned planets. Take about 3% of each planet's population and throw it into your military. When you're done, depending on the territory and size you are, you'd end up with 5-10% of your population being in the military. More or less.

Small regional militaries, so long as they are subordinated to the national command, are not a bad idea. That's basically the idea behind the National Guard, which remains at the disposal of state governors unless called up by the federal government for duty.