NationStates

Kreanoltha wrote:

YellowApple wrote:
Perhaps a temporary upload for reprogramming purposes would be okay. I do like the angle of considering the organics to be excessively complex, though that also reeks of the whole "humans always win because they're special for some weird and contrived reason" trope. The justifications of doing it that way are also sound.

There is no reason to think that this would work. You can not up-load a mind, edit it, and redownload it with the fixes. Brains do not work that way. The only way to change the mind that is in the brain is to edit the neurons because that's all the mind is: neurons chatting with neurons. You have to reconfigure the neurons. Based on what you're talking about doing, you would still need surgery.

That's dependent on the assumption that the neurons themselves are storing data, or that the physical connections between neurons are the actual programming. Even if those assumptions are correct, it should still be possible to go brain-in-a-vat style and utilize the brain's own mechanisms of physical axon rerouting to perform the neuron reconfiguration.

YellowApple wrote:

Kreanoltha wrote:
There is no reason to think that this would work. You can not up-load a mind, edit it, and redownload it with the fixes. Brains do not work that way. The only way to change the mind that is in the brain is to edit the neurons because that's all the mind is: neurons chatting with neurons. You have to reconfigure the neurons. Based on what you're talking about doing, you would still need surgery.

That's dependent on the assumption that the neurons themselves are storing data, or that the physical connections between neurons are the actual programming. Even if those assumptions are correct, it should still be possible to go brain-in-a-vat style and utilize the brain's own mechanisms of physical axon rerouting to perform the neuron reconfiguration.

You would have to be able to manipulate the connections between the neurons, reconfigure dendrites, and make the neurons talk to each-other through the new connection. Either way, editing an uploaded mind is not the way to do this.

Kreanoltha wrote:

YellowApple wrote:
That's dependent on the assumption that the neurons themselves are storing data, or that the physical connections between neurons are the actual programming. Even if those assumptions are correct, it should still be possible to go brain-in-a-vat style and utilize the brain's own mechanisms of physical axon rerouting to perform the neuron reconfiguration.

You would have to be able to manipulate the connections between the neurons, reconfigure dendrites, and make the neurons talk to each-other through the new connection. Either way, editing an uploaded mind is not the way to do this.

Which is why I suggested brain-in-a-vat style, since it could then use the brain to do all the reconfiguration necessary on its own. You're correct in stating that uploading a mind doesn't accomplish this, but you have what I'm saying backwards, which is that forcing the brain to rejigger itself is the way to facilitate the mind-uploading.

Not that this is all relevant anyway, since it's more fun to just drill out the brain and swap in a nice clean computer to latch onto the spinal cord and control the peripheral nervous system directly. Brains are too complicated

Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

Population is ultimately meaningless in FT, so whatever floats your boat.

I mean, I probably wouldn't go 540 quadrillion per planet, but you know what I mean.

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

Populations in the hundreds of billions aren't rare. I personally claim 131 billion sentients of various persuasions.

Personally, I think going into the multi-trillions is stretching it barring some sort of caveat (such as your race being a hive-mind of nanomachines or something.) We have FT Bravo for the multi-galatic doompires.

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

For a contrast, I still use my base nationstates population.

OMGeverynameistaken wrote:

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

Populations in the hundreds of billions aren't rare. I personally claim 131 billion sentients of various persuasions.

Personally, I think going into the multi-trillions is stretching it barring some sort of caveat (such as your race being a hive-mind of nanomachines or something.) We have FT Bravo for the multi-galatic doompires.

No we don't. They won't be accepted into it like that. If anything, FT Bravo is more restrictive.

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

That sounds sane and rational to me, so long as you have enough planets in your control for there to be a reasonable population density.

In other words, it really depends on how big of an empire you're going for. I generally stick to my in-game population, since I find it sufficiently large, but I don't have planet-wide cities or anything silly like that, so YMMV.

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

My FT population for NS purposes is the actual population listed on this account. It's part of a larger organization but that larger organization so far has never come into play on NS.

Santheres wrote:

OMGeverynameistaken wrote:Populations in the hundreds of billions aren't rare. I personally claim 131 billion sentients of various persuasions.

Personally, I think going into the multi-trillions is stretching it barring some sort of caveat (such as your race being a hive-mind of nanomachines or something.) We have FT Bravo for the multi-galatic doompires.

No we don't. They won't be accepted into it like that. If anything, FT Bravo is more restrictive.

Indeed, FT-Bravo is a training program that strives to help the less experienced players in the hope of helping them improve so that they may one day join the greater FT community. To do that, we do impose certain restrictions on the amount of systems, planets and fleet numbers that better reflect the current galactic community.

More to the current conversation, I've never bothered with giving myself a set population for my nation. Never have, even when I was played MT back when population actually DID matter. So long as you're a good player, a good writer, one that is willing to take losses and above all else COMPROMISE, then having set numbers isn't required for a functioning nation.

Etrontias wrote:Hey, I was directed here and I'd like to ask about population. I was hoping to set my population somewhere around 370 billion, but I'm really new here, so I'd like to ask, is that to much?

I don't think so.

If you do want an ecumenopolis - a planet-wide city, along the lines of Coruscant say - then that will impose a lower bound on your population, depending on exactly what the residences are like. Conversely if you like me want most of your population in a relatively small land area that will impose an upper bound, again the exact figure depends on the nature of the settlement.

Personally I now use ten times my NS figure.

EDIT: Notwithstanding such considerations, IMHO there's nothing particularly wrong in having a relatively small population that's strung out across a lot of star systems, or conversely in having a large population but still being in one's home system. It'll depend on technological development and culture.

I run my population extremely low, about 300 million instead of the 19 billion my NS pop would allow. I can quickly and easily expand my population but I do not foresee it going above a billion unless it is needed as part of a plot or some other circumstances.

So, I need some help about making a new RP. I want to make something much more character based, but where the characters are not employees of the government or military. You could say a "Civilian" RP.
Besides that, though, I really do not know what to do.

Korvos wrote:So, I need some help about making a new RP. I want to make something much more character based, but where the characters are not employees of the government or military. You could say a "Civilian" RP.
Besides that, though, I really do not know what to do.

It depends on what your goal is with this RP. Without a sense of direction, my suggestion would be a freeform RP of sorts: basically, establish some arbitrary location that's internationally accessible (a trading post perhaps?) and RP the daily lives of some ordinary-Joe civilians.

Make a cruise ship heading from one nation to another on a Grand Opening Cruise. You would control the ship as it travels from place to place and the other players would play the guests aboard the ship. Limit each to a single character and a couple back up ones. Make it a murder mystery they would have to solve as ordinary FT citizens. You can present tons of clues of which only a couple are real and see if they can guess who did it.

EDIT:

The reason for back up characters is the killer would cover his tracks by eliminating someone that gets too close to identifying him/her/it. Of course all the characters would be disposable if this is the case.

Balrogga wrote:Make a cruise ship heading from one nation to another on a Grand Opening Cruise. You would control the ship as it travels from place to place and the other players would play the guests aboard the ship. Limit each to a single character and a couple back up ones. Make it a murder mystery they would have to solve as ordinary FT citizens. You can present tons of clues of which only a couple are real and see if they can guess who did it.

Additionally, one could subvert it and make it like one of those mystery train rides that folks sign up for to pretend to be detectives.

If this idea is taken I would create a normal human who won a cruise from his company for the RP.

Really like the cruise ship idea. Well, without the murder mystery plot.
Thanks for the help, guys.

Korvos wrote:Really like the cruise ship idea. Well, without the murder mystery plot.
Thanks for the help, guys.

Let me know if/when you start that RP. I'd be interested.

YellowApple wrote:

Korvos wrote:Really like the cruise ship idea. Well, without the murder mystery plot.
Thanks for the help, guys.

Let me know if/when you start that RP. I'd be interested.

Titanic in space yeh?

I'd like to pop in too. Sounds like it might be fun.

For those interested, the RP we discussed.
http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=216603&p=12282275&sid=e3d97a71fcc3e48f6e473e5aeae42ae8#p12282275

Here's a topic that I don't think has been discussed in a while: How do you handle the differences in day and year length among the worlds of your stellar empires?

For the Imperium, the capital world of Vernii sets the standard of Imperial time, at a 26 hour day and 360.16 day year. The military and imperial-level government bureaucracies run on this standard. Vernii itself (and all habitats within the Gregor system and Free Expansion Zone) uses a modified Gregorian calendar consisting of twelve months of thirty days each and a leap day every six years. The other four systems however, have their own local time-keeping and calendars for system-level administration and business. Erewohn for instance (second most populated system in the Imperium) runs on a modified version of the French Republican Calendar, a 22 hour day, and 406 day year. This makes holidays rather interesting to keep track of. In the interest of promoting a national culture, all five planetary New Year's are celebrated on the Imperial Calendar.

Space stations and habitats are easier to keep track of at least. If they are in a system with a populated planet, they adopt whatever the local time-system is. If there is not a populated world, they use Imperial time. All military starships use Imperial, converted over into military standard (the clocks go up to 2600 hours). Civilian starships are free to use whatever time-system they want, but all administrative paperwork associated with them is done in Imperial.

Space Russia employs giant rockets to give all of its planets 24 hour days and 365 day years, because the universe is going to tick how we damn well tell it to.