Future Tech Advice and Assistance Thread [O.O.C.]

[SquareDisc City]

There's been some study on that, mainly in the context of stars that readily reach hydrostatic equilibrium. When they spin fast enough the shapes become quite strange. The same would apply to a planet that's always been spinning crazy fast.

But if a planet used to be spinning slowly and its rotation is accelerated then yes, it will put tremendous stress on the lithosphere (crust and upper mantle). I'd expect major earthquakes everywhere, countless new faults forming perhaps to the point of outright fragmenting the tectonic plates, and probably volcanic activity too.The exact same would apply if you took a planet that used to spin fast and slowed it down.

Spin it faster than the speed of a low orbit around it, and it will disintegrate. Spin it faster still, and it could wipe out all life in the rest of its solar system.

[Northwest Slobovia]

What would happen if, say, there was a planet with 6 minute days like in super baby Earth.

The planet comes apart. Taking the lazy man's approximation to the truth, Wakipedia gives the period of an orbit just above the Earth as a hair over 84 minutes. Spin the planet faster than that, and it begins to shed mass, because the crust is going fast enough to escape Earth's gravity.

[SquareDisc City]

Thinking a little further.

Keep in mind I might be wrong. I probably am, there's a lot of guesswork involved. Also, I'm assuming an Earthlike geology, not a world made of iron or ice or iodine.

So how much can rock be stretched or squashed before it breaks? We can estimate this based on its strength and stiffness. Granite typically has a compressive strength of 200 MPa and a Young's modulus of 20 GPa. That means a strain of 1% would require a force equal to the compressive strength. In other words, we only need to stretch or squash granite by 1% to break it. Which we might have guessed - rock isn't exactly known for being flexible. Possibly less, if it's weaker in tension than compression. Possibly more for deeper layers of rock.

How much of a speedup would be required to make the equatorial circumference 1% longer is a little complicated to work out, but I can't think it would be much. But when that point is reached, the lithosphere will being fragmenting. How big those fragments are I'm not sure, I expect it depends on how much friction there is between the brittle upper layers of Earth and more flexible lower layers. As good a guess as any is that they'll be about as wide as they are thick. Typically 50-100 km, but more like 5 km near the ocean ridges.

So now instead of a few plates spanning thousands of kilometres, the planet has a myriad spanning mere dozens.

In the long term, and we're talking geological timescales, it gets worse. The continents aren't much of a problem, all those faults will make them earthquakey. The oceans are a different story and are going to cause the planet trouble. You see continents float, but ocean floor is actually denser than the mantle below. It can't sink straight down because it's a big lid, it can only slide down edgewise in subduction zones. Or at least that was how it worked *before* Souzara chose this planet for its experiment. Now the ocean floor has fissures everywhere - the entire thing is essentially a subduction zone. The ocean crust sinks straight, and magma rises to replace it on a colossal scale, enough to replace the entire ocean crust, 2 billion cubic kilometres. A thousand times the largest volcanic eruptions Earth has experienced since its Hadean era.

With that magma comes belchings of carbon dioxide. Most, if not all, of this will come from the destruction of limestone deposits that were in the pre-cataclysm ocean crust. How much there is thus depends on the planet. On Earth, there is more carbon locked up in limestone rocks than the *entire* mass of the atmosphere. There's also both direct emission of water vapour, and the possibility of vapourising the oceans which I haven't run the maths for.

The planet's atmosphere is thus transformed into one made mostly of carbon dioxide and water vapour, and what was formerly an Earth-like world full of life is well on course to become a second Venus.

And that's if you just speed it up a little bit. Probably not even halving the length of the day.

[Kyrusia]

The planet's atmosphere is thus transformed into one made mostly of carbon dioxide and water vapour, and what was formerly an Earth-like world full of life is well on course to become a second Venus.

Worthy of note (or perhaps just something we can all add to our Trivial Pursuit arsenal), but Venus ([2]) is, itself, speculated to undergo catastrophic subduction events (on a geological timescale as well, mind you):

On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago, followed by a decay in volcanism. Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.

[...]

The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's. The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field. Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events.

Age estimates based on crater counts indicate a young surface, in contrast to the much older surfaces of Mars, Mercury, and the Moon. For this to be the case on a planet without crustal recycling by plate tectonics requires explanation. One hypothesis is that Venus underwent some sort of global resurfacing about 300–500 million years ago that erased the evidence of older craters.

One possible explanation for this event is that it is part of a cyclic process on Venus. On Earth, plate tectonics allows heat to escape from the mantle by advection, the transport of mantle material to the surface and the return of old crust to the mantle. But Venus has no evidence of plate tectonics, so this theory states that the interior of the planet heats up (due to the decay of radioactive elements) until material in the mantle is hot enough to force its way to the surface. The subsequent resurfacing event covers most or all of the planet with lava, until the mantle is cool enough for the process to start over.

Venus. Cool planet.

[Techolvi]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

[Erythrean Thebes]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

Comparative advantage could be one incentive, also different 'localities' so to speak will likely have different degrees of access to certain resources, some of which must be far away even by advanced space travel, if the planet is an outer world for example or on the fringe of core areas. And so there is at least some logical cause for trader caravans, for example, who make rounds in the distant regions of space and can make a profit selling things to these worlds which they can only infrequently buy

[Sunset]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

Comparative advantage could be one incentive, also different 'localities' so to speak will likely have different degrees of access to certain resources, some of which must be far away even by advanced space travel, if the planet is an outer world for example or on the fringe of core areas. And so there is at least some logical cause for trader caravans, for example, who make rounds in the distant regions of space and can make a profit selling things to these worlds which they can only infrequently buy

Reasonably, the average Sol-equivalent star system will have the physical resources necessary to provide for many billions of inhabitants. I've seen estimates that Sol could, if properly managed, support a population of up to 4 -trillion- people. Of course that is properly managed and not subject to the whims of whatever despotic, militaristic, or just plain idiotic government manages to find itself in charge of that proper management. But by that notion there shouldn't really be a need for interstellar trade with a few provisions...

High Economy to Low Economy: Even in FT there are differences between the economies of various civilizations. One might still make most everything by hand or nearly so, with millions swarming over a hand-made spaceship to get it ready for a maiden flight where it might just explode. Conversely there are civilizations where entire starships are produced in assembly events measured in seconds and with precision unimaginable to bug-like claws. Whether the first would want to trade with the second is another question, but the second more likely has the industrial power to provide for both their own needs and the needs of the first, allowing it to make the investment in infrastructure needed to push itself up to the second. A less political example would be a new colony of the second or one of its allied star-states where the colony should be focusing on building up the infrastructure needed for long-term success rather than making toasters.

Luxuries: I'm talking about real luxuries here, and someone else put it better than I; Does it have a story? Part of why a particular painting might be valuable - and thus worth shipping from one world to another - is the story of the painting and the artist. Perhaps it traces its origins back through the last thousand years to Old Earth, and a particular painter during the Italian Renaissance. Or maybe that bowl was made on an alien world by the hands of a dying species, their star doomed to explode before it even came to decorate your counter. Art and luxury items with a story will be worth more and be more profitable to carry across a thousand lightyears than a mass-market toaster.

Information: Despite its best attempts, the Internet does not have universal reach in the future. Here the old saying holds true: A station wagon with a trunk full of floppy disks has more bandwidth than your 14.4 modem. Courier ships can also double as light freighters to carry both information and luxury goods to the distant places where both are in demand. A colony might need news from home, a distant capital might want to know of events between two rival powers that threaten to spill out into open war. Sometimes information might be nothing more than the design for a new and popular toaster while other times it might be the gene sequence needed to halt the spread of some terrible disease.

For my own example - Sunset - the vast majority of trade is internal. One would have to accept the slimmest of margins to try to import regular consumer goods into the Republic. Most of what we want from the outside is just that; Wants. Luxury goods and essentially those with an individual story. Information from far-off places our explorers haven't reached yet. An alien toaster. To make good money in Sunset the best bet is to set up your own factory near where the demand is, or have an existing manufacturer make the product to your specs. There might be the occasional resource needed in the form of rare elements but we don't need more nickel-iron, aluminum, helium-3, or gold. But last of all...

Peace and Prosperity: Needed or not, trade helps keep the peace. Even if one economy isn't dependent on another for some particular sector, trade between the two can help keep the peace and encourage understanding and communications between the two. Given the terrible cost of war, that is worth all the travel time and fuel bills...

[Kassaran]

The state I RP as is actually a trade-based confederation of a certain species of the same name. There's something to be said for an AI controlled civilization. In order to continue some form of Capitalism, the AI run behind the scenes a massive economic model that stimulates the growth or sustains the size of various Kassaran colonies to promote a feeling of post-scarcity. In reality there's a huge amount of actual resource trade going on but because the AI almost immediately outstripped their creators for the chance to protect them. The AI, not coming from the same mentality and limitations as their creators in turn took pity, and like the child caring for their parents in their old age and fragility the Kassaran now are somewhat controlled and protected by them in all things, left utterly unaware of the inner workings behind their supposedly servile constructs. Now, as to how the trade takes shape, there's a couple layers to it. We have the interstellar trade systems, the interplanetary trade systems, and the intercontinental trade systems.

Interstellar trade systems take the form of two different mediums, we have the Portals, also known as the Ynhyldr. These portals require direct alignment with other portals within a certain degree of accuracy. due to this, planetary rotations and dates are closely logged by constructs known as Sentinels to watch for the correct time to activate Ynhyldr. When Ynhyldr are activated, matter can be instantaneously transported to any location within the range of a few thousand light years giving the Ynhyldr a massive advantage when it comes to vital cargo transport, the only major trade-off is the margin of error that is acceptable goes down with the distance, hence why the range is limited to a few thousand lightyears. While this sounds already far as-is, Kassaran territory nears 14% of the total span of the Milky Way along the first plane, in short they accommodate less than 3% of the total area of the Milky Way, a vast swathe of land perhaps, but one still that can take literal weeks to travel across for the fastest of their vessels, in or out of the Void.

Accommodating the most common reason to avoid the use of Ynhyldr is a relatively well-stocked and managed unmanned remote vessel route along dedicated space-lanes in the depths of space. These space lanes are regularly patrolled by Dechen patrol minds and other likewise easily manned network control hubs. Federal forces tend to regulate the amount of trade going on, keeping careful count and watch to ensure all traffic is remaining orderly and on-schedule. However, this is simply for vessels using traditional FTL methods, and a newer method using something called Void-Tek allows for seemingly instantaneous travel across the vast distances involved with trans-galactic travel. There's just a few problems involved with it and it involves the amount of power and the requirements for safe travel through the Void. Smaller cargo vessels don't really carry the same urgency nor need to travel the void with such speed and purpose and so this method of travel is usually left to the interests of Federal patrol vessels, of which there are only a few that actually have this ability.

Interplanetary Trade is the most intricate part of the Kassaran trade systems, and it involves the arrival of unmanned trade vessels entering planetary orbits and their safe navigation to either space elevators linking to the surface or their actual descent through the atmosphere using specially designed gravity pads that deorbit at subsonic speeds over the course of a few hours. Space elevators are most common in the core worlds where they were initially built before Mass Reactor Drives came about, but once gravity had come under the full control of the Kassaran through the advent of the Mass Reactor Drives, this became the preferred method. this allowed for ground crews and maintenance automatons to begin servicing any damaged vessels while also quickly taking to offloading or reloading the vessel with cargo. A full-service typical pit-stop takes less than five minutes and accommodates a ship of roughly 90K GT's. That's about the size of your average large Carnival Cruise Liner today, but it's important to note the very dispersed layout and design of Kassaran vessels and their appreciation for organic designs that best facilitate such operations for the exact purpose of maximum-speed off-loading.

Intercontinental trade is actually rather mundane and either involves the usage of hypersonic shuttlecraft moving between continents and settling down at their various inertial strips that enable them to make relatively short landings in the relatively sparsely populated communes the Kassaran live within on their many worlds (since roughly their 2100's by Human standards, they've limited total world usage to less than 1%, meaning sustainable populations of 10 million or less are allowed for worlds of Earthlike size by comparison, to enable the least possible impact on local fauna and flora and to promote the research of xenobiologists and xenochemists everywhere throughout the Confederation). Additionally, the trade systems between linked continents generally involve also similarly fast land-based systems called 'Hyperloops', which operate in a similar fashion the magnetic Hyperloop, excepting their usage of runoff power from the planetary Primary Mass Reactor Drives that are often used to guide cargo craft from orbit to the surface of the planet. These massive trains are also likewise fast and use inertial dampening systems involving some reduced-size Mass Reactor Drives in order to make fast stops and quickly accelerate to cruising speed.

[The United Dominion]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

There's a few things here. First, for roleplaying purposes, a lot of people have trade just so they can interact; it's great for RP possibilities. Whether or not a nation might be self-sufficient doesn't actually mean it doesn't import, anyway. The national body isn't necessarily making the trades, local individuals and companies are. So, if a planet on the frontier could get a freighter of wheat from a core world to last them the winter, that's all well and good but what if traders from another nation can get there 1) sooner, 2) cheaper, and/or 3) with a higher quality product? Why would Jeb Freeman buy stuff from Coreworldia then?

But that's just basic goods. There are also luxury goods and things that only come from other nations. Your nation might have a great synthetic fiber that only you know how to produce - it's one of the best in the galaxy, though, so why not trade that? Yes, other nations have fibers and clothing and armor, but yours is special.

My nation is self-sufficient because I don't believe it makes sense for it not to be. We also limit trade because that fits the general characterization. However, we still have trade goods that serve a purpose. In our case, it happens that we specifically want foreign currencies for... our own purposes, but we have products like Sloar^TM to make that money. As the primary export, sloar is a meat. Again, anyone can and does have meat. But sloar quality is high, it is plentiful, it is already processed, and available in a variety of flavors. It cuts out all the effort of working with meat and is so cheap for the UD to produce and ship that it can be a bargain meat for anyone in the galaxy. And it keeps well, so I think anyone looking for cheap, delicious protein would be interested.

"Sloar - The Best Meat In the Universe"^TM

[Hittanryan]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

You can set up a FT setting any way you want, but personally I've always found post-scarcity societies rather boring. Aside from personal drama, how can anything really be at stake when everyone already has everything? In sci-fi with a military, political, and economic focus, I prefer there to be limited resources. If resources are limited, then you have all the opportunities in the world for trade and such.

War is expensive and destructive, you don't go to war unless there is another entity out there which threatens to outcompete you for resources and influence. If you have a squeaky-clean, post-scarcity, well-defended interstellar empire, the only reason this empire really needs to enter into conflict is if there's another similarly-powerful empire out there muscling it out of key resources, trade routes, political influence, technology, etc. that it needs to maintain its status as a post-scarcity society.

[Gogol Transcendancy]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

There's no such thing as true post-scarcity with less than infinite resources. Even if a nation's wealthy enough for each person to have a personal O'Neill Cylinder, they could always have a larger personal O'Neill Cylinder, as an example. In which case scarcity, and the laws of supply and demand, still apply, and comparative advantage can still be exploited.

In addition, even with near limitless resources certain goods will always have extreme value - you can't produce more original Van Gogh's, for example.

[Lubyak]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

You could make the same argument about any Empire. If Britain couldn't feed itself, how did the British Empire form? If the Japanese lacked the natural resources for development, how did they grow their Empire so much before it was defeated? If the US can't supply itself with energy domestically than how can it endure? A simple lack of resources isn't a bar to the creation of a large scale political entity, so long as you can find alternative sources for that state. It does create interesting pressure points, as it is--of course--a liability, but being incapable of autarky is not in and of itself a bar to the formation of an Empire. It could potentially lead to its downfall, but it won't stop the Empire from forming and even expanding massively. Moreover, it can always be that the polity was self-sufficient before but now, for whatever reason, is no longer so. (See, United States and oil production).

Sunset has already pointed several reasons why trade would occur, and I'd like to double down on the comparative advantage element.

Yes, it is basically a given that even the resources of a single solar system should provide all the material you could ever need for the development and spread of an empire. However, this does not mean that it wouldn't be cheaper to mine those same minerals elsewhere and ship them somewhere else. After all, different deposits of minerals are going to be of varying degrees of difficulty to extract, and if it's significantly cheaper to mine them the next system over, load them onto ships, and bring it back home, what does it matter that there's still twenty octillion tons of the resource in your local asteroid belt? It's no longer economical to mine there. Of course, the expense of that shipping and of the ship to carry it also factors in, but unless either is prohibitively expensive, the justification holds.

So far as I can tell, unless your civilisation is truly post-scarcity, there's no reason why comparative advantage is going to go away, and so long as comparative advantage exists, there is substantial justification for trade between worlds, and once there's a justification for that, there's justification for trade between worlds that belong to different states.

Furthermore, there's no reason why you can't invent a form of handwavium that is necessary to your civilisation, but as rare in space as some of our more vital resources are on earth. With the R.u.B Union, I've done that with chymetic condensates, making sources of them rare, and thus trade in them vital. The R.u.B Union is--in many ways--a neo-colonial economy. It has a defined metropole and periphery, and much of its internal shipping is bringing raw materials into the metropole from the periphery, and sending manufactured goods back out. Since I've been RPing the creation and expansion of any number of large trade routes, I presume that there's also a healthy exchange of all kinds of goods to peoples and civilisations throughout known space.

[Kassaran]

I've gone and made the Kassaran technologically regressive in spite of the technology they have at their disposal. They eventually became bored and disinterested, when their constructs outstripped their most brilliant minds and left everyone without any real thinking to do within the limitations originally made. Now they focus on the development of psionic abilities and psychic powers to gain a new perspective on how the Universe might work and they also experiment with the Void, the null-space between reality and whatever lies beyond in order to get a better feel of what they deny themselves in halting aging altogether. Many people don't realize that aging is likely going to be the first thing that goes in any technologically competent society, but that doesn't mean death will stop altogether. Space is big and a lot of accidents happen every year with automated vehicles alone. Whose to say that such massive catastrophes don't happen in advanced civilizations? To the Kassaran these sorts of crisis events are huge news because death has become an altogether foreign concept and they don't handle it well.

[Techolvi]

What does FT trade look like? After all, in many sci fi works the problem of scarcity is solved. However, I think space travel would rather increase the demand for resources, even if hyper efficient energy sources are found.

When it comes to international trade, what is the basis of trade between a giant interstellar empire and another entity. What does a interstellar empire need, that it can not provide itself? If it lacked any of these things, could it still be an empire?

For example, food, if an empire couldn't feed itself, how could it have grown so big?

You could make the same argument about any Empire. If Britain couldn't feed itself, how did the British Empire form? If the Japanese lacked the natural resources for development, how did they grow their Empire so much before it was defeated? If the US can't supply itself with energy domestically than how can it endure? A simple lack of resources isn't a bar to the creation of a large scale political entity, so long as you can find alternative sources for that state. It does create interesting pressure points, as it is--of course--a liability, but being incapable of autarky is not in and of itself a bar to the formation of an Empire. It could potentially lead to its downfall, but it won't stop the Empire from forming and even expanding massively. Moreover, it can always be that the polity was self-sufficient before but now, for whatever reason, is no longer so. (See, United States and oil production).

Sunset has already pointed several reasons why trade would occur, and I'd like to double down on the comparative advantage element.

Yes, it is basically a given that even the resources of a single solar system should provide all the material you could ever need for the development and spread of an empire. However, this does not mean that it wouldn't be cheaper to mine those same minerals elsewhere and ship them somewhere else. After all, different deposits of minerals are going to be of varying degrees of difficulty to extract, and if it's significantly cheaper to mine them the next system over, load them onto ships, and bring it back home, what does it matter that there's still twenty octillion tons of the resource in your local asteroid belt? It's no longer economical to mine there. Of course, the expense of that shipping and of the ship to carry it also factors in, but unless either is prohibitively expensive, the justification holds.

So far as I can tell, unless your civilisation is truly post-scarcity, there's no reason why comparative advantage is going to go away, and so long as comparative advantage exists, there is substantial justification for trade between worlds, and once there's a justification for that, there's justification for trade between worlds that belong to different states.

Furthermore, there's no reason why you can't invent a form of handwavium that is necessary to your civilisation, but as rare in space as some of our more vital resources are on earth. With the R.u.B Union, I've done that with chymetic condensates, making sources of them rare, and thus trade in them vital. The R.u.B Union is--in many ways--a neo-colonial economy. It has a defined metropole and periphery, and much of its internal shipping is bringing raw materials into the metropole from the periphery, and sending manufactured goods back out. Since I've been RPing the creation and expansion of any number of large trade routes, I presume that there's also a healthy exchange of all kinds of goods to peoples and civilisations throughout known space.

As far as the comparative advantage goes, I was thinking that the distances would reduce that, and but now that I think about it, I find other ways that certain nations could have advantages, especially as some mines might be richer and some planets more fertile. Of course that requires some form of free trade(or smuggling) , Also the point about art that Gogol made is a good one.

I think though establishing a comparative advantage as well as some important rare element requires cooperation in an RP setting, so I have a follow up question; how is trade usually handled in RPs?

[Techolvi]

I have a question that came-up elsewhere: What do y'all call, and how do you portray, various personal data devices (like tablets, "phones," PDAs, etc.)?

I've always been particularly fond of the sci-fi trope of a "glass-plate" personal computer or "slate"; I like the aesthetic, at least, as it can often be used to convey a degree of "sleekness" or relative technological advancement. By the same token, the implied fragility of that sort of device doesn't necessarily translate well to all sci-fi aesthetics; "ruggedized" personal electronic devices (likely an analogous outgrowth to what we have now), I imagine, would have to exist by necessity - and not simply for military purposes, but for use in technical, industrial, and in situ "engineering" fields, as well. After all, no one wants their data-slate to get cooked in the giant singularity they're confining (only for it inevitably to escape, turn the station into Swiss cheese, and be blamed on Nanotransen operatives </SS13 reference>).

Thoughts? Personal portrayals in your star-states?

I think what is best is dependent on the use, and just like now, there will be multiple options.

I am surprised that so many people use very personalized technology. I want people to be able to share their information, and for that a tablet is best. Besides using implants and such seems like the whole develop a pen that works in space as opposed to just using a pencil, taken to an extreme.

Of course for some uses, some glasses with a HUD are going to be useful, but not for everything. There would also be uses for devices worn in the arm as well as small smart phone sized handhelds.

As far as input, the Techolvi use short hand writing, as well as typing, and of course voice, which is slower. As far as gestures, not even small one's are needed. There is already a prototype of a machine that can read your brain and use that to play an arcade game.

Of course, in a movie they make choices based on what looks good. Imagine how Star Trek would look if everyone just stood there, doing everything with their mind.

[Auman]

Something I've noticed about Nationstates over the years is that excellent story arcs are often sidelined or killed altogether for various reasons... Either because a player is busy with real life or OOC disputes end up causing it to fall apart. In several instances, quite good stories have stopped short because of various factors.

For example, say an existential threat controlled by a single player is gearing up to tear the galactic heroes a new one... But then that player takes on a new job or begins school... A family emergency takes place, whatever, and they are no longer able to pursue for reasons outside of their control. We've all seen this, some of us a dozen or more times. So I have a proposal...

A proposal for a sustained, existential, threat to the civilizations of the Milky Way Galaxy. What if we, as a community, created an adaptive and open source entity that can be assumed by any player at any time to drive a plot over many months or years? What if we created a monster not owned or controlled by any single player, but the entire community? Something that isn't tied to our main nations that can be used at will by anyone to play as the villain?

I, for one, am tired of my main nation being the bad guy. I want to be the good guy for once... And I'm sure many players in this game also want to be good. In the absence of conflict, however, certain role play options are limited. Peace can be fun, but peace can also be a bit boring.

In theory, this open source villain would be community owned... All players involved in this project would feel attachment to it, but there would also be enough distance between it and their main nations that they wouldn't be compelled to "win" either.

Further, with this villain being community driven, it would be resistant to real world complications that would pull individual players away, which while understandable, can kill a story arc dead.

Tl;dr We create Big Bad Evil as a group, drive these plots forward as a community and sustain this monster for as long as possible to provide adversity that is capable of lasting for the duration.

[Torsiedelle]

Something I've noticed about Nationstates over the years is that excellent story arcs are often sidelined or killed altogether for various reasons... Either because a player is busy with real life or OOC disputes end up causing it to fall apart. In several instances, quite good stories have stopped short because of various factors.

For example, say an existential threat controlled by a single player is gearing up to tear the galactic heroes a new one... But then that player takes on a new job or begins school... A family emergency takes place, whatever, and they are no longer able to pursue for reasons outside of their control. We've all seen this, some of us a dozen or more times. So I have a proposal...

A proposal for a sustained, existential, threat to the civilizations of the Milky Way Galaxy. What if we, as a community, created an adaptive and open source entity that can be assumed by any player at any time to drive a plot over many months or years? What if we created a monster not owned or controlled by any single player, but the entire community? Something that isn't tied to our main nations that can be used at will by anyone to play as the villain?

I, for one, am tired of my main nation being the bad guy. I want to be the good guy for once... And I'm sure many players in this game also want to be good. In the absence of conflict, however, certain role play options are limited. Peace can be fun, but peace can also be a bit boring.

In theory, this open source villain would be community owned... All players involved in this project would feel attachment to it, but there would also be enough distance between it and their main nations that they wouldn't be compelled to "win" either.

Further, with this villain being community driven, it would be resistant to real world complications that would pull individual players away, which while understandable, can kill a story arc dead.

Tl;dr We create Big Bad Evil as a group, drive these plots forward as a community and sustain this monster for as long as possible to provide adversity that is capable of lasting for the duration.

I know all too well about major plots or baddies suddenly disappearing due to OOC drama or RL obligations. Sad, it is!

Anyways, this sounds like a cool idea to me. I mean, I don't know how many other people would go with it, but the idea of a sort of royalty-free villain that spans across multiple unrelated RP's could be cool.

I'm not that experienced with FT though, but that's just my opinion.

Oh! Speaking of internet stuff, what about having stations or star bases between systems, connecting with each system and each other and covering a larger area to create one large information net?

[Auman]

The real trick to the concept would be creating something adaptive enough that it can function on the fly, without any hard set canon or rules... Something that can change with the whims of each player using it. The Rethast Pathogen had that kind of adaptiveness. It was literally anything that the imagination could come up with. I always thought that was cool. The Rethast are entirely the intellectual property of Rethan though, so subverting it towards our aims would be uncool to say the least. They're his baby. But something with similar characteristics, the ability to infinitely adapt and change so that any new additions made by any player using it would fit seamlessly and realistic, that would be great... I'm immediately drawn to some sort of mutagenic nanomachine that can equally disrupt organic and mechanical structures, but I'll leave it up for debate.

Your idea for a communications network chain is a good one. It's been quite awhile since there has be an RP'd network of the kind of societal influence you suggest. Sunset mentioned earlier in his post that, in the absence of any such galaxy-spanning network, that information itself could become a tradeable commodity, which is cool... And with that concept in mind, I think there would definitely be a market for your idea. A private institution could attempt to pull it off, or you could start a thread that aims to encourage supporting it at an international level. I think it would be cool. Most of us probably have national network providers that do just that, but connecting multiple nations to a sort of galactic extranet would be a nice piece of passive fluff that could bind the community without much in the way of onerous requirements.

[Rostavykhan]

I just meant using outposts to create a network within a single state (is Tori <), but expanding it across a Galaxy would be neat. Hmm.

[Auman]

Something like an FTL cellphone tower network would be sweet, though.

[The United Dominion]

I just meant using outposts to create a network within a single state (is Tori <), but expanding it across a Galaxy would be neat. Hmm.

Really, if you just connect one node to your neighbor who you interact with regularly, and your neighbor connects just one node to one other neighbor, and so on...

Well, then, voila, you have galactic internet. Easily controlled/disrupted due to single nodes of access, but extant all the same. It's really not difficult and if anything should be considered the default. A state should have to go out of its way to remain isolated.

[Tierra Prime]

I just meant using outposts to create a network within a single state (is Tori <), but expanding it across a Galaxy would be neat. Hmm.

Really, if you just connect one node to your neighbor who you interact with regularly, and your neighbor connects just one node to one other neighbor, and so on...

Well, then, voila, you have galactic internet. Easily controlled/disrupted due to single nodes of access, but extant all the same. It's really not difficult and if anything should be considered the default. A state should have to go out of its way to remain isolated.

I went out of the way by putting myself in a cluster ten or so thousand light years away from the Milky Way. Isolation allowed me to write my own history and mould my nation into what I wanted without worrying about how that would impact others. Now that both are done, I've put an entry into my history detailing the recent discovery of an interstellar hyperlane of never before seen stability that connects to the edge of Delta. My plan is to eventually do an introduction RP in which my nation sends explorers down it. It probably connects to the edge of Delta, but I haven't developed the idea much beyond that. It could connect to any quadrant if I wanted, but previous versions of my nation have been in Delta, so that's why I chose it.

[Kyrusia]

Oh! Speaking of internet stuff, what about having stations or star bases between systems, connecting with each system and each other and covering a larger area to create one large information net?

I think there's some degree of assumption by many that this sort of... exists, without any real, overt worldbuilding - both nationally and internationally (the GalNet/GalactiNet/etc.). I can imagine it easily essentially being piggy-backed on trade stations/statites (depending on how one goes about it), as well, as a part of general national infrastructure.

As for internationally, much like Sunset said: I imagine it's spotty (and likely based on the aesthetic a player wants to attach to themselves): if one is playing a plucky, hardtack state out in the ass-end of nowhere, it sort of breaks that aesthetic if spess!news is blaring over the spess!Internet constantly, whereas if you're adopting the aesthetic of a more established polity with a pervasive, internal information regime, it'd fit almost perfectly.

I know, as for my own aesthetic, I tend to view a GalNet existing by benefit of existing international commercial infrastructure. These trade lanes (as silly as that idea can be in spess at times, it's a trope for a reason: it works for narrative flow) obviously relay information for themselves, and most players that operate them tend to allow for some means of commercial, private interaction or state-created industry to the same ends. It makes sense, at least to me, that such would serve as the proverbial "backbone(s)" of the GalNet, with networks branching off from such and arising natively elsewhere and generating connections - be it private service providers and/or nationalized information infrastructure with connectivity provisions.

Adopting this position in the view of your idea (native information networking), for example, it could easily be a matter of establishing trade relations with the nominal operator(s) of such trade lanes and simply interlinking. I can even imagine operators of these trade lanes making special provisions - if they don't already (I know some do) - for such networking as an overall aspect of their roleplaying of the setting and cooperative worldbuilding.

'Course, by the same token, I know a few folks who just assume a spess!Internet works on the same principle as spess!FTL-radio: "It's there; you just need the equivalent of a transceiver." So... You'd have to ask them as to how they view the principles behind that working.

[Sunset]

The real trick to the concept would be creating something adaptive enough that it can function on the fly, without any hard set canon or rules... Something that can change with the whims of each player using it. The Rethast Pathogen had that kind of adaptiveness. It was literally anything that the imagination could come up with. I always thought that was cool. The Rethast are entirely the intellectual property of Rethan though, so subverting it towards our aims would be uncool to say the least. They're his baby. But something with similar characteristics, the ability to infinitely adapt and change so that any new additions made by any player using it would fit seamlessly and realistic, that would be great... I'm immediately drawn to some sort of mutagenic nanomachine that can equally disrupt organic and mechanical structures, but I'll leave it up for debate.

I've considered and pondered doing something of this nature in the past and various reasons were brought up against, though I'm going to skip those for the moment... Here's my idea, and my reasons;

The enemy should be a nebulous Human Space Empire, aggressive and well-developed. The best model to me is the Galactic Empire because - despite the name - it was not truly galactic but styled itself so.

Primary Species? Human. Humans are easy to write and are familiar to us all. No particular special skill would be needed to write the Bad Guys/Aggressors because we've all been human at one point or another and there are plenty of news stories, works of popular fiction, and so forth to draw from. We'd all be familiar with their flaws and foibles as well as their strengths.

Government? Sole Dictatorship. Again, we're all familiar with them, we're all well aware of the evil they can represent.

What work would need to be done? Well, advertising, a good factbook, and some active RPs to set the example. The factbook would be very important because it wouldn't act so much as a factbook but as a resource guide, something like the Dungeon Master's Guide for those familiar with D&D. Important persons, a selection of militaria, and similar. Plus some rules for interacting with said Empire.

Rule the First: They can be beaten, but they cannot be defeated. Those who use said entity as their opponent/punching bag agree that they can beat their opponent in any individual event but they cannot beat the evil empire. Perhaps some reason will be given, perhaps not, but I for one don't want to be writing up a complex evil empire every week so that someone can defeat it the next. That's not the point; The point is, as you aptly put forward, a continuing and sustained threat.

Rule the Second: Factbook NPCs cannot be killed, imprisoned, or the like. They always escape or were not present in the first place... No killing the Emperor. Or it was the Emperor's double... Gasp. Thus the Factbook should also have a useful section on creating Evil Empire NPCs who can be defeated, killed, captured, whatever.

Rule the Third: Nebulous technology, nebulous numbers, nebulous location. The Evil Empire has tentacles everywhere but no single source of strength. Neither can their exact numbers be pinned down, and if a thousand ships show up to a grand battle in one particular star system and a single scout in the next one over... Well, that's the unknowable whims of the Admiralty. The same would need to be true of their technology. Guns go zap, missiles go boom, but again the idea is that they will be a persistent threat. Unless one is a post-Singularity civilization they will continue to be a threat.

There's more, but I'm off to Home Depot.

And yes, I do already have a nation created.

[Tannelorn]

I actually have a horrifying over villain in mind one that would maintain national character i will discuss on dischord if theres interest and it stops being crazy. One i had dabbled with on NS in 2011. The best part about it is once the initial.event is over they will always have a national character of whoever is using them.