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

[The Akasha Colony]

I don't mind the idea of an FTL telegraph service. I would really prefer that over some of the more common methods I see popping up. Also FTL sensors. They bother me. Do you really need to see what's going on twelve light minutes away in real time? Really?

From a practical perspective, if it could be done then yes, you would really need it.

[Rethan]

I don't mind the idea of an FTL telegraph service. I would really prefer that over some of the more common methods I see popping up. Also FTL sensors. They bother me. Do you really need to see what's going on twelve light minutes away in real time? Really?

In a combat situation almost certainly, but I've never liked when people use them as passive "I see every part of my system always" sensor grids. Not only do they make even less sense than active FTL sensors, they always struck me as a cheap way for people to be immune to any kind of surprises. Or the owners just don't know how hilariously large an area of space a star system covers.

[Feazanthia]

I don't have FTL sensors per-se, but I do tend to seed systems I own with sensor platforms at intervals of up to ten light seconds. While these platforms are passive in nature, and thus receive incoming data at the speed of light, they are equipped with entanglement comms. That being said, this detection grid typically only extends out about a light minute in a sphere around any critical objective, further sensor platforms only being dropped to cover blind spots (planetary shadows, etc) - the thought being that if an enemy drops out of FTL further than that, there will be more than enough time to mobilize a response if they're coming in at STL speeds at more than a light minute distant, even if the target is moving at relativistic speeds.

Of course, sensor platforms are still vulnerable to various countermeasure systems (destroying the platform or burning out its optics, for instance), so against a clever foe I may know that something's there, but may not have enough data until the light from the approaching target(s) hits a closer in platform or orbital telescope.


Edit: Also the idea of entanglement comm "hub" ships really appeals to me and I think I will be incorporating it into my technology base, though really you could just put such hubs aboard orbital installations or even buried deep within a planet. Entanglement is entanglement.

[The Fedral Union]

Considering that if someone has FTL... That FTL sensors wouldn't be too far off? I'd hardly call it cheap, FTL sensors are a staple of sci-fi opera most of the time.

And frankly "surprises" can be worked out , it doesn't require someone not to have FTL sensors.. Aside from the fact those surprises in the old days included ohh say a-lot of war ships, some kind of WMD or other fuckery. I reserve the right to detect someone ripping through space time and shafting physics as they near my system. It may take a bit of surprise off.. but as I said you can always work a plot out... Say you know sneaking in a spy and taking out the FTL sensor grid of that system?

It just requires one to be more inventive. In any case its no more wank than modern day early warning systems, nothing is invincible.

[Red Talons]

I use a flavor of FTL sensors that come in the form of a futuristic sonar ping... It sends off a tachyon pulse, and we watch for the results of tachyons passing through mass. It cuts the times lag down on long range detection.

It doesn't, however, tell us much of anything about what the detected object actually is... We can determine it's possible size and density... That means a ping return could be a star destroyer or a mineral rich space rock. One of these hates you and wishes you harm, the other is tasty. Gotta either wait for light lag, or get eyes closer.

Edit: It also means, like with sonar, every time it fires off a ping, everything in the area knows about it.

[Drysin]

I am currently working on an RP involving sapient programs infesting cities and causing havoc, with the government trying to eradicate them. But I am struggling to flesh out my programs, whom I have been calling the Repeaters. My general idea for them is that they hoard electronics and assemble servers for the programs to live in. While doing this they siphon of energy from the power grid and muck up the planet or systems version of the internet, earning them their own demise from the government.

Some question I have stumbled upon are what is the technical term for programs that copy themselves over and over again?

I might want to occasionally RP from the perspective of the AIs, does anyone have any tips?

Any advice for a new RPer in general?

[SquareDisc City]

Some question I have stumbled upon are what is the technical term for programs that copy themselves over and over again?

Worms. Distinguished from viruses, which require user intervention to be copied, though the term "virus" is often used more broadly.

I might want to occasionally RP from the perspective of the AIs, does anyone have any tips?

Two ways you can go about this. You can RP them much as you would human characters. That's easier, and I feel justifiable if the AIs were designed by humans (or aliens with human-like thinking) to mirror their thought processes. Or you could try and RP them as something completely different. That'll be much more of a challenge, and may make character development in the usual sense difficult or even impossible.

[The Legion of War]

...What exactly are FTL sensors?

Are they just sensors meant to detect when someone is beginning/using/finishing FTL travel? For example, if I have FTL sensors around a planet should they be able to detect when a ship exists/finished whatever form of FTL travel they have if they end up near said planet?

[Rethan]

...What exactly are FTL sensors?

Are they just sensors meant to detect when someone is beginning/using/finishing FTL travel? For example, if I have FTL sensors around a planet should they be able to detect when a ship exists/finished whatever form of FTL travel they have if they end up near said planet?

If I am fifteen light minutes away from you, it will take fifteen minutes for you to see any emissions or evidence of my ship due to light lag. If you are equipped with FTL sensors, you'll see me sooner than that. How soon is dependent on your tech base. It might be instantaneous or might be five minutes instead of fifteen.

Essentially, they are sensors which 'work' faster than light and can essentially bypass light speed lag with regards to detecting things at a distance.

[Lubyak]

...What exactly are FTL sensors?

Are they just sensors meant to detect when someone is beginning/using/finishing FTL travel? For example, if I have FTL sensors around a planet should they be able to detect when a ship exists/finished whatever form of FTL travel they have if they end up near said planet?

The sensors that people are most familiar with (radar, eyesight, etc.) suffer in FT because they propagate at the speed of light. Which of course means, if a ship sends out a radar pules it might be several minutes before it gets any useful information back to it, or worse if it's trying to track something traveling at FTL, you will learn about the thing travelling FTL by it dropping in front of an shooting you before your sensors get the ping back informing you that it exists. FTL sensors as I understand them are basically sensors that circumvent that.

[SquareDisc City]

Yes, they tend to be gadgets that detect normal goings-on in space, but without being affected by the light travel time delay; usually they're treated as instant or effectively instant. They may be "active", requiring the gadget to emit something itself that may then be detected, or "passive" with no such requirement: common I think is to have both with the active scanner providing more detailed information than the passive sensor.

[Red Talons]

The FTL sensors I operate are active only, as there is no real passive way to pick up information FTL in my opinion. That and the active method of operation I use, while technically cutting the time to sensor return in half, would still be slower than waiting to pick up emissions from the target vessel.

At ten light minutes, the pulse would net a return reading in >10 minutes. So the light emissions of the ship that just arrived will reach us before the ping return. At that point the return simply confirms the emission data we just picked up.

This is why I don't feel bad about using FTL sensors whatsoever

[Vernii]

Yea there's basically no way to do passive FTL sensors that isn't just outright magic, since by the very definition of passive sensor, the equipment is just listening for emissions. If a ship doesn't emit any particle that travels faster than light, then its not going to show up, plain and simple.

Actives on the other hand, basically require bouncing some sort of exotic particle off the target and then having it return to your sensor. Problem is, the thing with radar is that a powerful enough radar is basically a death ray, so what happens when you build a really powerful FTL sensor?

[SquareDisc City]

Yea there's basically no way to do passive FTL sensors that isn't just outright magic, since by the very definition of passive sensor, the equipment is just listening for emissions. If a ship doesn't emit any particle that travels faster than light, then its not going to show up, plain and simple.

If you claim in your concept of faster-than-light stuff that everything gives off FTL radiation, just like how everything gives off thermal radiation, then it's explained.

[Vernii]

Yea there's basically no way to do passive FTL sensors that isn't just outright magic, since by the very definition of passive sensor, the equipment is just listening for emissions. If a ship doesn't emit any particle that travels faster than light, then its not going to show up, plain and simple.

If you claim in your concept of faster-than-light stuff that everything gives off FTL radiation, just like how everything gives off thermal radiation, then it's explained.

But that's basically defining the tech base of other players, which goes rather against NS FT's RP code.

[Red Talons]

Yea there's basically no way to do passive FTL sensors that isn't just outright magic, since by the very definition of passive sensor, the equipment is just listening for emissions. If a ship doesn't emit any particle that travels faster than light, then its not going to show up, plain and simple.

Actives on the other hand, basically require bouncing some sort of exotic particle off the target and then having it return to your sensor. Problem is, the thing with radar is that a powerful enough radar is basically a death ray, so what happens when you build a really powerful FTL sensor?

Your standard aircraft radar will generally cook a man at ten feet if turned on. I used to live with a former airforce radar technician who told me horror stories of people being stupid and doing things like not properly turning off or grounding equipment and getting seriously injured or killed because of it. Modern day radar systems could technically be death-rays already, just because it can't kill a man at a hundred yards like a rifle can, doesn't mean it's not throwing out lethal doses of radiation at close range.

My FTL sensors throw off Cherenkov radiation when the pulse hit's something. If we were to fire a pulse say, at a space port, well... Probably everyone in the area just got a lethal dose of radiation, but they'll be fine if they get to a hospital... What FT civilization can't fix a simple case of radiation poisoning?

[The Chicxulub Confederacy]

So, a common thread from science fiction in alien biology is the idea that an alien race has advanced so far along in medical science that they have become dependant on various fertility treatments to treat an otherwise-low fertility, sometimes to the point where the race is said to be infertile and rely on cloning/etc.

I wanted to feature such a concept for my race, with the idea being that the rigours of interstellar travel have essentially reduced "breeding" to a complex regime of DNA recombination and essentially cloning. Is this something that's done? What shortfalls does this have other than the obvious costs?

[The Legion of War]

So, a common thread from science fiction in alien biology is the idea that an alien race has advanced so far along in medical science that they have become dependant on various fertility treatments to treat an otherwise-low fertility, sometimes to the point where the race is said to be infertile and rely on cloning/etc.

I wanted to feature such a concept for my race, with the idea being that the rigours of interstellar travel have essentially reduced "breeding" to a complex regime of DNA recombination and essentially cloning. Is this something that's done? What shortfalls does this have other than the obvious costs?

I haven't seen fertility treatments appear enough in sci-fi to consider it common. Then again, most of my sci-fi experience is movies and games.

Anyways, is the DNA of every member of the species the exact same? If so, a virus could easily wipe them out. If not, then I assume genetic variety is varied enough to avoid being eliminated so easily, but it would remain stagnant over time. It is just the same population cloning itself again and again right?

[Nazis in Space]

Cloning doesn't mean there's no mutations. Bacteria clone themselves, after all, and they mutate like crazy.

[Lubyak]

Cloning doesn't mean there's no mutations. Bacteria clone themselves, after all, and they mutate like crazy.

Bacteria can also 'trade' bits of genetic code in a kind of primitive sex. A perfect clone will have identical genetic code to whoever the donor was.

[SquareDisc City]

The DNA recombination is what makes it not cloning and ensures genetic diversity is preserved.

[The Chicxulub Confederacy]

So, a common thread from science fiction in alien biology is the idea that an alien race has advanced so far along in medical science that they have become dependant on various fertility treatments to treat an otherwise-low fertility, sometimes to the point where the race is said to be infertile and rely on cloning/etc.

I wanted to feature such a concept for my race, with the idea being that the rigours of interstellar travel have essentially reduced "breeding" to a complex regime of DNA recombination and essentially cloning. Is this something that's done? What shortfalls does this have other than the obvious costs?

I haven't seen fertility treatments appear enough in sci-fi to consider it common. Then again, most of my sci-fi experience is movies and games.

Anyways, is the DNA of every member of the species the exact same? If so, a virus could easily wipe them out. If not, then I assume genetic variety is varied enough to avoid being eliminated so easily, but it would remain stagnant over time. It is just the same population cloning itself again and again right?

It's more common in "alien" narratives for conspiracy theories and the novels they inspire, tbh.

Yes, the same population. I imagine there's still also a relatively sizable block on the species' original homeworld that doesn't travel along FTL and therefore wouldn't be infertile, but all the colony worlds would need to use this technology, or at least, the first generation would.

I haven't thought it through completely. I haven't even decided if I'm just one race yet.

[Feazanthia]

Of course, if you're that adept at genetic engineering, why not make it so that each individual could tailor their genetics - either within specific confines, or even let them go hog wild. After all, if you're no longer bothering to reproduce sexually, why bother staying a homogenous species?

[The Legion of War]

Of course, if you're that adept at genetic engineering, why not make it so that each individual could tailor their genetics - either within specific confines, or even let them go hog wild. After all, if you're no longer bothering to reproduce sexually, why bother staying a homogenous species?

BECAUSE DESIGNER BABIES ARE IMMORAL! IMMORAL I SAY! IMMORAL! Nah, I figure that an FT civilization would probably use these kinds of people as colonists when seeking to colonize new planets or soldiers to give them an upper hand.

As for going "hog wild" with your DNA... one could argue that being part of a homogeneous species may help define what a member of that nation is. For example, in the Legion THE most important defining characteristic of being part of this nation is that you are a human. The idea of an alien being part of the Legion is simply absurd to the people here.

You could say it's analogous to how some today may argue that nations are/should be identified by ethnic groups. Basically the views anti-immigration and anti-race mixing people have. (Yes I realize what that says about my nation, but it's supposed to be xenophobic.) Anyways, perhaps preserving the "purity" of the species could be a form of pride, or respect to ancestors? Just tossing ideas out there.

The DNA recombination is what makes it not cloning and ensures genetic diversity is preserved.

So the sentence...

The idea being that the rigours of interstellar travel have essentially reduced "breeding" to a complex regime of DNA recombination and essentially cloning.

Either contradicts itself (if the poster meant to say that the recombination was basically cloning) or the poster meant that the species uses both to "reproduce". If it is the latter, then why clone? Why not simply use recombination, which allows for your species to potentially adapt to some sort of plague should the need arise?

Of course, you could always use recombination in combination with the idea of "preserving the species". Things like hair colour won't make you a freak if it's different from most.

[The Chicxulub Confederacy]

Of course, if you're that adept at genetic engineering, why not make it so that each individual could tailor their genetics - either within specific confines, or even let them go hog wild. After all, if you're no longer bothering to reproduce sexually, why bother staying a homogenous species?

BECAUSE DESIGNER BABIES ARE IMMORAL! IMMORAL I SAY! IMMORAL! Nah, I figure that an FT civilization would probably use these kinds of people as colonists when seeking to colonize new planets or soldiers to give them an upper hand.

As for going "hog wild" with your DNA... one could argue that being part of a homogeneous species may help define what a member of that nation is. For example, in the Legion THE most important defining characteristic of being part of this nation is that you are a human. The idea of an alien being part of the Legion is simply absurd to the people here.

You could say it's analogous to how some today may argue that nations are/should be identified by ethnic groups. Basically the views anti-immigration and anti-race mixing people have. (Yes I realize what that says about my nation, but it's supposed to be xenophobic.) Anyways, perhaps preserving the "purity" of the species could be a form of pride, or respect to ancestors? Just tossing ideas out there.

The DNA recombination is what makes it not cloning and ensures genetic diversity is preserved.

So the sentence...

The idea being that the rigours of interstellar travel have essentially reduced "breeding" to a complex regime of DNA recombination and essentially cloning.

Either contradicts itself (if the poster meant to say that the recombination was basically cloning) or the poster meant that the species uses both to "reproduce". If it is the latter, then why clone? Why not simply use recombination, which allows for your species to potentially adapt to some sort of plague should the need arise?

Of course, you could always use recombination in combination with the idea of "preserving the species". Things like hair colour won't make you a freak if it's different from most.

It was a largely half-developed idea that expressed itself before it was ready, and for that I appologize. Recombination is the method used for reproduction. I hinted at cloning to hint very indirectly at another cultural quirk - individual immortality. The idea being that you somehow transfer your consciousness into a clone body that was generated from a sample with much longer telomere length, thereby extending your lifespan that much longer, and so on ad nauseum.