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

[Northwest Slobovia]

I'm not trying to provoke a lecture on general relativity and temporal theory, but in say, the case of a stellar black hole, nothing too large, what kind of distortion might one expect? Could a civilization around a black hole run at say, half the speed of normal time, so for every year there two years would pass elsewhere?

With enough handwavium, yes. That sometimes shows up in written SF: old or progenitor civilizations hanging out near black holes, waiting for somebody interesting (or just fresh meat) to show up.

[Northwest Slobovia]

So you think a ... ship race could work in practice?

I was leaning away from hivemind for pretty much that same purpose, not really fun to play with hiveminds.

With the symbiotes, I was actually thinking of having some sort of micro-hivemind, that is to say that a Rivi organism and the little automaton mites crawling on its surface and inside its internal cavities, preforming repairs, modifications, excavating on the surfaces of planetoids, basically doing all the fine detailed work and manipulation that a big fat Rivi cannot, would be as one, with the Rivi's intelligence just driving the little mite cyborg bots around, and without the Rivi to move them, they would just fall motionless. They might appear in a battle, bursting out of little pores to repair some damaged section of carapace, or to attack some hostile thing trying to board or otherwise invade the Rivi, or maybe you might see them in a Rivi colony, laboring away in the background, but in terms of interactions, I would think they're pretty much null. They's just disposable minions/cyborg phagocytes that serve some particular purpose and nothing else.

For actual character interactions, I was thinking more along the lines of intermediaries of other species, like perhaps wayward human colonists that might have been rescued by some wandering Rivi group and now accompany them as attendants for the express purpose of going out and speaking on their behalf, because of course the Rivi don't have spoken language the way we do, and even if they can communicate directly, I feel it would make logical sense of them to bring a human retinue in tow to engage in diplomacy, maybe a little bit of intelligence gathering (you can imagine a sentient Cruiser would have trouble blending in and gathering information covertly)

Roleplay wise, such servants would carry a good portion of any interaction with the Rhu Rivi, to be like a personal perspective to balance out the broader actions of a Rivi group or even the specific traits of one Rivi. Would that work, do you think?

I could always make little autonomous mites that could just act as walking mouthpecies for the Rivi that moves them, to act as a literal personification of the Rivi vessel for the purpose of character roleplay, if I wanted to have a Rivi converse with someone else's characters directly. I feel like that's pretty close to the tyrannid-esque temporary beings you propose.

I think a fully fleshed-out ship race would be pretty awesome, actually. A lot of it would come down to the execution, but I'm always in favor of characters interacting over the more nebulous 'My nation does X' and this would seem to me to make character interaction the front-and-center.

Why not go with both? The first would make a good introductory RP; Something along the lines of the ever-popular 'Prince X seeks a wife!' threads except that it's more 'Ship X seeks a mouthpiece!' Having both would also allow for some differences in ship personality; One might prefer to speak through another race, even if it's through a symbiotic mite in their ear, while another might prefer a more personal conversation.

If Rivi runs either, I'll send some of the Starship People to say hi. They're a variation on the theme: extreme cyborgs using starships as bodies. They do sometimes switch to other bodies, such mecha or more typical vehicles, to interact other species.

[Kyrusia]

For the sake of discussion, I'm going to ignore the "handwave can make it possible" point here, since that doesn't seem to be the angle you want here.

A solar mass black hole with an accretion disc at close to the Eddington limit, will have an inner temperature not of "a hundred kelvin," but between 10⁵ to 10⁷° Kelvin (1.799995e+8°F/9.999973e+7°C for its upper bounds), just based on a quick, Google search. At that temperature, I significantly doubt there will be anything of substantial mass not rendered to a "gaseous" form for any considerable period of time.

National Geographic covered a story related to this in 2012 that you may find interesting. They've been attributing x-ray flares detected by the Chandra observatory to asteroids orbiting in a cloud, likely ripped from nearby stars of their own, around Sagittarius A* being pulled into the BH's accretion disk. As they get pulled in, intense tidal forces rip them apart, they impact high-velocity gaseous debris and detritus in the accretion, and are subsequently vaporized, resulting in x-ray flashes. They note that "only asteroids at least 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide create flares bright enough to be seen from Earth"; note, these are being pulled in from an orbiting field approximately "160 million kilometers" out from the edge of the accretion of Sgr A*.

Now, Sgr A* is a supermassive black hole. That being said, for the sake of this not being a physics paper, you can make some logical deductions about black hole physics in general. In short: personally? I would think not, no; the forces present in the accretion - between the extreme gravitational forces drawing bodies to the black hole's hyper-surface and the Eddington-scale luminosity/temperatures - would likely simply annihilate anything in their vicinity, rendering the masses gaseous as they are drawn into the hyper-surface. It'd necessitate some significant handwavium if you wanted to have this, which is fine, but without it, I just don't find it likely anything would survive in a "solid" state actually in the accretion disc. Now, it could be orbiting the black hole at significant distance; after all, it's still just a very large body with a very large gravity, but that doesn't prohibit other bodies orbiting it (we orbit Sgr A's barycenter, after all, and there are a fair number of stars orbiting much closer as well) given appreciable distance.

Well, this throws a wrench in my plans. While a handwave assisted citadel in or near the accretion disk would be interesting, on account of how mere location would make it practically unassailable, I'm not sure I want to give the Rivi that level of technological prowess as to be able to negotiate those kinds of forces at that scale. Based on what you said, I would be best served by moving my focus away from the acretion disk to things orbiting the black hole further out, although I would personally opt for the scattered remains of systems broken up by the black hole, rather than a whole system unto itself, just for thematic purposes. Maybe I could do things like Mercury sized rocks and planetoids and other scraps a "safe" distance away from the black hole, far enough to not be immediately threatened by tidal forces and thus able to sustain permanent structures in a solid and not gaseous state. While the black hole would work as much as a deterrent as I had hoped, on account of the deterrent being to dangerous for us to hide behind, it can still serve its other purpose, which would be time dilation. Leads me to another question...

I'm not trying to provoke a lecture on general relativity and temporal theory, but in say, the case of a stellar black hole, nothing too large, what kind of distortion might one expect? Could a civilization around a black hole run at say, half the speed of normal time, so for every year there two years would pass elsewhere?

That's not an entirely simple question. You can make a broad assumption that the closer a clock gets to the event horizon of a black hole, to the external observer, the longer it appears for that clock to make one cycle, 12 to 12. This is true for any gravitional mass: a clock will tick slower the closer you are to sea level, even on earth. From the perspective of the (indestructible) clock, however, time passes normally. So, say, an external observer is watching a clock approach the event horizon; at the beginning, the clock appears to take 1 second (of the observer's time) to tick for 1 second. Then 2, then 10, then a few minutes, etc., the clock itself slowly getting dimmer and dimmer (gravitational redshift) until finally vanishing from view entirely as it traverses the event horizon (or reaches a conterminous point in spacetime with the event horizon).

The effects of time dilation due to our proximity the sun means our time moves "slower" relative to an external observer, but you're starting to delve into math above my proverbial paygrade (and personal patience ). (Where t' is dilated time: t' = t√1-V²/c² for velocity time dilation [not what we're discussing here]; gravitational time dilation: t' = t√1-2GM/rc², where G is Newtonian gravitational potential, M is the mass of the object you are near, and r is your distance from that object.) If, for narrative reasons, you want to assume some degree of noteworthy time dilation occurring due to this configuration, a subtle handwave at this point would not be untoward, I feel.

For the sake of this, we'll assume standard gravitational collapse as a means of black hole formation. That means either a) the star has lost sufficient "fuel" to maintain nucleosynthesis, or b) the star has received an injection of matter (that simultaneously does not increase its core temperature), leading to instability. Either way the result is the same: the inner temperature can no longer defeat the pull of gravity, leading to collapse. In certain instances beneath what is called the TOV limit (where a star begins with less than 15-20 solar masses, corresponding to a remnant mass of <3 solar masses), degeneracy pressure of the remnant (to put it simply: the pressure of electrons and neutrons pushing against one another) will keep the star remnant from collapsing further, leading to things like neutron stars.

If the original solar mass exceeds, say, 20 solar masses, then you get a black hole. The degeneracy pressure cannot defeat gravity, causing the remaining mass to compress below its Schwarzchild radius (the limit at which, if all mass were compressed within that radius, the escape velocity of the resulting sphere would equal the speed of light) and result in a black hole.

Note: there is in fact a limit here, as mentioned. Stars below a certain "initiation mass" will not result in black holes. IIRC, the Schwarzchild radius for the sun is something, like, 3 kilometers... And it simply lacks enough mass to compress itself to that point. Hence, the sun will never turn into a black hole; instead, it will become a white dwarf.

As to whether a planetary system can remain around a star that has gone (super)nova and resulted in a black hole... It depends on a lot of things: initial mass of the star, remaining mass of the black hole, orbital position and velocity of the planets, etc. IIRC, we've only ever found four planets orbiting pulsars (a type of neutron star and remnants of novae). That's not to say it's impossible, just unlikely, and some tenuous search of the web can lead to some conflicting answers. If we assume one approach, then a star of sufficient mass to form a black hole after it goes nova, will likely be able to retain its outer planets without the nova vaporizing them, though they will likely lose a significant percentage of their mass. I actually wouldn't worry too much about this. If you want rocky planets, you can handwave and make them chthonian (they were gas giants that, during the nova, they were stripped of their gas, leaving a rocky and metallic inner core), for example.

In short: go with Slo's recommendation.

[Petrokovia]

So, I'm in an RP where I'm controlling a Fog Ship from Arpeggio of Blue Steel that's been modified for space travel (essentially, think of a glowing sapient Space Battleship Yamato). However, seeing as it's a naval vessel, and those aren't very aerodynamic, it can't just flap wings to get out of the water.

However, ARP ships have been shown to have the ability to manipulate gravity around them via gravitons. I was wondering if I could use the explanation of generating a form of gravity well to pull the ship up out of the water and through the air to explain how she would actually get to space and fly through the air and such. This would also be used to explain how the ship would slow it's decent during reentry so as not to go too fast and overheat.

Basically, I'm skeptical whether this would actually allow the ship to be pulled out of the water, or if you'd just get some kind of tug-of-war going that would rip the ship in half.

Also regarding the fact that it's a wet navy ship in space, I've decided to put retractable weaponry on the bottom of her hull, as she's still expected to perform in water on some missions. However, I was wondering if having what's essentially a bunch of armored doors would lead to compromises in the level of protection the armor would give. If that's the case, I could handwave it with "Fog ships can change their hull via nanomaterial control so it's solid when the weapons aren't in use" but I'm curious, still, because Fog ships have been shown to lose control of their ships via lockdown, turning the ship into just a normal vessel (possible interesting plot point for the RP), and it would help to know just how much of a weakness the hatches would be compared to the hull if it didn't have any hatches for weapons (assume the hatches make perfect seals and are the same thickness as the rest of the surrounding hull).

[Rhu Rivi]

I'm not trying to provoke a lecture on general relativity and temporal theory, but in say, the case of a stellar black hole, nothing too large, what kind of distortion might one expect? Could a civilization around a black hole run at say, half the speed of normal time, so for every year there two years would pass elsewhere?

With enough handwavium, yes. That sometimes shows up in written SF: old or progenitor civilizations hanging out near black holes, waiting for somebody interesting (or just fresh meat) to show up.

Well, that's my internal debate. The Rivi do have access, in theory, to precursor technology, because they *are* precursor technology. They were created millions of years ago as military that produces and operates itself, establishing manufacturing centers and gathering all the resources needed to sustain operations on their own, fielding varied and specialized vessels in groups with carefully considerec composition, size and formation, and more or less conducting a stellar war entirely by themselves. This purpose is more or less the defining feature of Rivi motivations.

Rivi expand their colonies and spread to secure more resources only when a potential threat such as a growing nearby empire necessitates an increased force, and Rivi flee on contact and lash out violently and seemingly in a savage manner when they can been left with few forces and only one or two hive colonies to assemble more Rivi, because nothing hurts the war effort more than loosing your production centers, and so rogue pockets of surviving Rivi are enigmatic, always trying to hide away somewhere inaccessible to build their forces in safety, showing hostility towards almost all contact and scattering to preserve their forces when faced with unfavorable odds. This is unlike the Rhuan colonies, that have enough colonies and enough vessels to consider themselves secure in their position, which heavily alters their behavior and makes them act as intended under normal operation, showing very little overt hostility, relatively open to diplomatic contacts and friendly arrangements, unlikely to attack unless directly threatened and having more conventional tactics in battle, as they can be secure in the knowledge that reinforcements can be dispensed and losses replaced.

This also affects their society to quite a degree, as they have no central leader, being ruled by committee in a very loose way by the highest commanders of Rhu Rivi hives (living flagships, if you would). The authority to command them is lost to time, and so now they are driven by their hard coded directives to maintain their force, seek out strategic allies and make beneficial arrangements while always avoiding unnecessary conflict, because of course you want your military to avoid provoking a third party and opening a new front to the war. And since their masters are long dead and all of the enemies they might have once faced have similarly been lost to the march of time, the Rivi exist now as an army with no cause, no leader and no enemy.
They are, however, not inert and will react to all sorts of external conditions more or less driven by their primordial directives. I'm working right now on an introductory roleplay idea that is more or less a Rhuan queen, a new flagship, sets out to found a colony and build a hive, perhaps destroying a pirate or two in the area as they pose a security risk to the hive site, only to provoke disputes of territory with neighboring star states that might see the Rhu Rivi as encroaching outsiders, or maybe just curious powers coming to study the Rivi that seldom leave the shadow of the black hole Rhu, where the bulk of their forces are amassed, idle for all of living memory. People could try and learn about the Rivi to manipulate them into forming an alliance only to use them as pawns in some conflict of their own, or maybe people can uncover the Rivi's origin as creations of the precursors, which I'm sure would have many an alien salivating at the mouth hole at the prospect of using the Rivi like some sort of space bloodhounds to uncover lost relics and bounties of a bygone era.

But yeah, that is more or less the building I've done so far on my idea.

EDIT: Realized I forgot to make my point, got carried away

My thing is that I don't want to make the Rivi super precursor level, even if they are precursor in origin. I'll definitely have some advanced technology sprinkled in with their works, but for the most part what I want the Rivi to be is hives of living warships, with emphasis of on their nature as real spaceborn organisms, eating asteroids and making whole hives out of mechanical and organic components hybridized together. Giving the Rivi the ability to secure themselves in such insanely hostile conditions would put too much power in their... ehm, hulls. I prefer to have them scoot around in simple warp fields, pewing at passers by with plasma weapons and perhaps the odd beam weapon, and hiding behind penetrable shields and and thick layers of armoring like any plebian youngster race.

-snippage-

On the first point, I feel it would be pretty justified then for a Rhuan Citadel be run at half the 'normal' speed of time relative to the outside universe, or maybe even slower than half time. I'm kind of using it as a device for making the Rivi extremely old in origin, children of the precursors to be exact, but also making it conceivable that their society could survive to the current setting by making the time they themselves have experienced much less. I do want the Rivi to exist now more or less as they were designed, using the same technologies, and organizing themselves according to the same doctrines, even if none of them can actually remember a time when the precurors were alive, and all any of them know is their holdfast around the Rhu black hole, although I can imagine they might have gathered snippets of what would be to others ancient history, which may or may not make for fun banter in a roleplay.

As for the second point, I was imagining more other solar systems entirely, nearby to the black hole, that might have been taken apart by the gravity, resulting in a significant number of rocks, asteroids, dust and gases to just be zooming around the black hole in clumps. Basically, the same stuff as what's in the accretion disk, but before it was accreted, perhaps in a stable or semi-stable orbit further out from the black hole where it, and by extension anything on it, could survive intact but still be relatively close to the black hole and heavily affected by its gravity, hence allowing for a very significant time dilation effect a la Interstellar. It would also work to have far flung planetoids orbiting a star just be peeled off by the black hole's gravity, the way I've seen black holes and other massive partners in a binary system do to their neighboring star, just sucking off layers of gas and plasma from the outer bits of the star. It might be unlikely for planets and other objects to form stable or semi stable orbits, but hey, there's lots of theories that a number of the planetoids in our own system and even full fledged moons of some of the gas giants are just random rocks that were captured by gravity and caught in an orbit, so I figure the same concept applies here, just at a much larger scale on account of the black hole's gravity being orders of magnitude and then some greater than the gravity of a gas giant. It doesn't need to be a full fledged belt of material, just enough orbiting rocks and clumps of dust and such to sustain a civilization, that is to say provide material to build fortifications, more Rivi and offer a platform of hive colonies to be built.

[Kyrusia]

On the first point, I feel it would be pretty justified then for a Rhuan Citadel be run at half the 'normal' speed of time relative to the outside universe, or maybe even slower than half time. I'm kind of using it as a device for making the Rivi extremely old in origin, children of the precursors to be exact, but also making it conceivable that their society could survive to the current setting by making the time they themselves have experienced much less. I do want the Rivi to exist now more or less as they were designed, using the same technologies, and organizing themselves according to the same doctrines, even if none of them can actually remember a time when the precurors were alive, and all any of them know is their holdfast around the Rhu black hole, although I can imagine they might have gathered snippets of what would be to others ancient history, which may or may not make for fun banter in a roleplay.

Also gotta keep in mind what effects may exist once they leave the relative envelope of this distorted movement of spacetime. But yeah: handwave (and popular sci-fi convention) generally makes what you want par for the course, if it's what you want. Could be interesting.

As for the second point, I was imagining more other solar systems entirely, nearby to the black hole, that might have been taken apart by the gravity, resulting in a significant number of rocks, asteroids, dust and gases to just be zooming around the black hole in clumps. Basically, the same stuff as what's in the accretion disk, but before it was accreted, perhaps in a stable or semi-stable orbit further out from the black hole where it, and by extension anything on it, could survive intact but still be relatively close to the black hole and heavily affected by its gravity, hence allowing for a very significant time dilation effect a la Interstellar. It would also work to have far flung planetoids orbiting a star just be peeled off by the black hole's gravity, the way I've seen black holes and other massive partners in a binary system do to their neighboring star, just sucking off layers of gas and plasma from the outer bits of the star. It might be unlikely for planets and other objects to form stable or semi stable orbits, but hey, there's lots of theories that a number of the planetoids in our own system and even full fledged moons of some of the gas giants are just random rocks that were captured by gravity and caught in an orbit, so I figure the same concept applies here, just at a much larger scale on account of the black hole's gravity being orders of magnitude and then some greater than the gravity of a gas giant. It doesn't need to be a full fledged belt of material, just enough orbiting rocks and clumps of dust and such to sustain a civilization, that is to say provide material to build fortifications, more Rivi and offer a platform of hive colonies to be built.

I would think that'd require a super-massive black hole (like Sgr A* or Gargantua from Interstellar, which, IIRC, was a non-Schwarzchild [rotating] super-massive black hole); that's beyond a black hole of solar masses, just so you're aware, given you mentioned "case of a stellar black hole, nothing too large". I'm not absolutely certain on this (given black holes can actually wander, like rogue planets, and through other star systems), but given what you've described is essentially what NatGeo was talking about in the article I linked, it's a good place as any to start. Sgr A*'s mass is something like 4.3×10⁶M_☉, for example. Read my last paragraph, as I've revised my assessment.

And it's actually not unlikely for planets to be captured and fall into a stable orbit around a black hole, assuming significant distance relative to their mass. It's just less likely for ones present at the time it novas to survive the resulting nova. Despite all the kerfluffle about them, they're just exceptionally massive bodies. If, for example, the sun - despite the impossibility - were suddenly to just switch into a black hole right now, without a nova, we'd still orbit it like we do now... We'd just have to worry about dying off due to a lack of sunlight. We wouldn't suddenly get sucked in simply because it's a black hole.

If you're wanting to stick with a stellar mass (even a large one) as opposed to a SMBH, then I'd set about configuring a set of star systems that were naturally very close to one another, and make the star that goes nova into a black hole particularly large for its "weight class," as it were... And possibly in some manner of orbital resonance with the other stars in the clump. At least that'd be my go-to explanation to handwave it. That way you could get what you wanted easily without having, well, something 4.3×10⁶M_☉ just looming over yonder.

Or, as implied above: make the black hole wander. Who says it has to originate in that system? It can come in, gobble things up, and by happy coincidence the planets can fall into relatively stable (or not, depends on how you wanna go about it) orbits in the resulting destruction. Life then develops (or managed to survive in some places). Thinking on it further, this would likely be the easiest route, given even if it were a black hole, the original star these star systems that were orbiting near it would have been perturbed just as much by the initial star as the black hole. So yeah: I'd recommend a wandering black hole that got captured in an orbital configuration by several star systems it happened to wander near. That'd also likely result in losing a few of the stars, but some surviving, leading to a black hole-dominated binary (or other, multiple star) system. That'd also likely result in a variation of a cataclysmic variable (which normally rely on white dwarfs) - aka: the siphoning-of-stars you mentioned above.

[Rhu Rivi]

-snip-

That actually works really well for what I have in mind for the Rhu Rivi. Its settled then, Rhu is a wandering stellar black hole and rocks the Rivi are gobbling up and reforging are the remnants of usurped systems. It would be especially interesting to play with the stars caught in a binary (or trinary, etc), because some of the planets in those systems could very well be habitable to non-Rivi life, and may or may not play host to alien colonists, which in turn would give rise to the exact sort of patron client / tributary relations I've been looking to create between the Rivi and what you might call younger life. The stars would be critical, because obviously a planet orbiting a black hole, like you said, would be pretty unfriendly to especially a Terran type ecosystem and thus human colonists on account of the no sunlight thing, so other stars dancing around the black hole in a complex multibody system would be a must to justify a human colony under the auspices of the Rhu Rivi.

But yeah, thank you very much, this has been incredibly useful to my world building.

[Tierra Prime]

I have a question. If you use nanites, rejuvenation drugs, cybernetics, or similar technologies, how do they affect life expectancy and ageing among your citizens? I use nanites and rejuvination drugs, and although they keep the average person healthy for longer, they begin to lose their effectiveness around about age 60, which results in rapid ageing and death by about age 85. Some people survive for longer, but living past your late 90's is very rare. Gene therapy is common, but Tierran humans aren't far from baseline humans, so life expectancy is not too different. Cybernetics and cloning are used, but even the best replacement organs cannot stave off the physical and mental degradation caused by a life time of taking rejuvenation drugs.

I ask as I used to play these technologies straight about five or six years ago. By that I mean people would live hundreds of years without ageing. I thought that was very unrealistic, though, so I toned the affects of the technologies down quite a bit.

Bringing this forward because I think it got lost amidst the previous discussion. I'm curious as to how some of you portray expectancy and ageing in futuristic societies.

[Ella2 6]

I've been mulling over this sort of question as well, though with some differences.

I've been thinking of a biologically immortal, sleepless society lately, that is one that no longer feels the urge to sleep due to nanites, rejuvenation drugs, cybernetics, genetic engineering and the like. However, while this society no longer feels the urge to sleep it still requires sleep to survive. I've been toying with this idea of having a maximum sleep debt of ten years or so (a sleep debt is a cumulative sleep deficit which must be paid off by sleeping). And what happens in this civilisation is that people don't sleep because firstly they don't feel the urge to sleep and secondly people have trouble falling asleep as one of the side effects of technology.

However, once their maximum sleep debt is reached, the person will die. So going ten years straight or having the equivalent of ten years of sleep deficit would cause the person's brain to literally stop functioning as it tries to force itself to sleep and all these technological enhancements try to keep it awake. This causes much of the younger generation to die off very early.

To tackle this problem, scientists have created these types of sleeping pills which can allow the person to sleep for the necessary amount of hours each night, however, using these sleeping pills also has a cumulative effect on the body over very long periods of use, which causes the mind and body to begin to respond sluggishly before cells are eventually damaged and the person dies. This sort of death usually occurs at around 60-90 years of age if the person has been taking sleeping pills every night for the entirety of their lives.

So what do you guys think of this sort of world? And try not to ignore poor Tierra Prime this time.

[Sunset]

I have a question. If you use nanites, rejuvenation drugs, cybernetics, or similar technologies, how do they affect life expectancy and ageing among your citizens? I use nanites and rejuvination drugs, and although they keep the average person healthy for longer, they begin to lose their effectiveness around about age 60, which results in rapid ageing and death by about age 85. Some people survive for longer, but living past your late 90's is very rare. Gene therapy is common, but Tierran humans aren't far from baseline humans, so life expectancy is not too different. Cybernetics and cloning are used, but even the best replacement organs cannot stave off the physical and mental degradation caused by a life time of taking rejuvenation drugs.

I ask as I used to play these technologies straight about five or six years ago. By that I mean people would live hundreds of years without ageing. I thought that was very unrealistic, though, so I toned the affects of the technologies down quite a bit.

Bringing this forward because I think it got lost amidst the previous discussion. I'm curious as to how some of you portray expectancy and ageing in futuristic societies.

What's interesting is that right now that is where the average person could easily expect to live and with good health. If they treated themselves better (depending on how utopic/dystopic life is), Tierrans could skip both drugs. But to answer your question is a round-about answer and essentially it starts with that answer; Where we are right now as far as possible human longevity isn't really touching the potential. Depending on where we as a civilization go, we could easily see average human lifespans edging up on 100, 110, and further - but what is more important to the local culture? Is it extending and enhancing life? Or is it in the propagation of military and national power? Or in something else entirely? Right now, I see 'us' as focusing on the propagation and continuation of national power to the exclusion oftentimes of personal well-being. But further still, I think that we could - if we wanted - rapidly push the state of the art far into the future to where in the next 20 years we could extend the average lifespan 40. And in those next 20, another 40. Essentially we could outrun death - at least for the current generation.

As for Sunset, that's about half-true - given the current Republic timeline of 2174 and thus 156 years into 'our' collective future. It is entirely plausible that there are people in Sunset who were born before 2000, though perhaps only a slight percentage. While Sunset tries to be a futuristic extrapolation of life, I am constantly amazed by the pace at which technology progresses if we give it half a chance and it is honestly likely that with a very, very few exceptions we'll be at Republic technology levels before 2100. So half-right. Before about one year ago (that's 2173, not 2018) plausible life expectancy would have been in the 150+, with extreme cases running towards 200. Of course there are... 60'ish different species in Sunset so that's 'human average'. Aging was stretched along that, with a 100 year old looking and feeling 50.

Now... That's an entirely different answer. True immortality for the individual consciousness is widely available and one can connect to as many different Extensions as they want to inhabit. But also a lot of people have migrated to a purely digital life; A meat body requires meat resources which are many times more 'expensive' than a simulated reality. The effects of this are still something I'm exploring though, so ask again in 3-4 years.

I've been mulling over this sort of question as well, though with some differences.

I've been thinking of a biologically immortal, sleepless society lately, that is one that no longer feels the urge to sleep due to nanites, rejuvenation drugs, cybernetics, genetic engineering and the like. However, while this society no longer feels the urge to sleep it still requires sleep to survive. I've been toying with this idea of having a maximum sleep debt of ten years or so (a sleep debt is a cumulative sleep deficit which must be paid off by sleeping). And what happens in this civilisation is that people don't sleep because firstly they don't feel the urge to sleep and secondly people have trouble falling asleep as one of the side effects of technology.

However, once their maximum sleep debt is reached, the person will die. So going ten years straight or having the equivalent of ten years of sleep deficit would cause the person's brain to literally stop functioning as it tries to force itself to sleep and all these technological enhancements try to keep it awake. This causes much of the younger generation to die off very early.

To tackle this problem, scientists have created these types of sleeping pills which can allow the person to sleep for the necessary amount of hours each night, however, using these sleeping pills also has a cumulative effect on the body over very long periods of use, which causes the mind and body to begin to respond sluggishly before cells are eventually damaged and the person dies. This sort of death usually occurs at around 60-90 years of age if the person has been taking sleeping pills every night for the entirety of their lives.

So what do you guys think of this sort of world? And try not to ignore poor Tierra Prime this time.

Looks like you get a two-fer. I'd have to say that this seems... Odd. And the question would be 'why?' To me, this seems like something that would have to be forced on a (human) culture. If they have the technology to make nanites, cybernetics, etc, then they have the know-how to automate the large portion of their industry and infrastructure. Most of our increases in so-called 'individual productivity' are not increases in actual personal productivity but the addition of automation to our workforce. Things that work while we're asleep. They have no reason -not- to sleep and possibly sleep more. Are they being forced into it? Are they human? More details would be useful.

[Tierra Prime]

Bringing this forward because I think it got lost amidst the previous discussion. I'm curious as to how some of you portray expectancy and ageing in futuristic societies.

What's interesting is that right now that is where the average person could easily expect to live and with good health. If they treated themselves better (depending on how utopic/dystopic life is), Tierrans could skip both drugs. But to answer your question is a round-about answer and essentially it starts with that answer; Where we are right now as far as possible human longevity isn't really touching the potential. Depending on where we as a civilization go, we could easily see average human lifespans edging up on 100, 110, and further - but what is more important to the local culture? Is it extending and enhancing life? Or is it in the propagation of military and national power? Or in something else entirely? Right now, I see 'us' as focusing on the propagation and continuation of national power to the exclusion oftentimes of personal well-being. But further still, I think that we could - if we wanted - rapidly push the state of the art far into the future to where in the next 20 years we could extend the average lifespan 40. And in those next 20, another 40. Essentially we could outrun death - at least for the current generation.

As for Sunset, that's about half-true - given the current Republic timeline of 2174 and thus 156 years into 'our' collective future. It is entirely plausible that there are people in Sunset who were born before 2000, though perhaps only a slight percentage. While Sunset tries to be a futuristic extrapolation of life, I am constantly amazed by the pace at which technology progresses if we give it half a chance and it is honestly likely that with a very, very few exceptions we'll be at Republic technology levels before 2100. So half-right. Before about one year ago (that's 2173, not 2018) plausible life expectancy would have been in the 150+, with extreme cases running towards 200. Of course there are... 60'ish different species in Sunset so that's 'human average'. Aging was stretched along that, with a 100 year old looking and feeling 50.

Now... That's an entirely different answer. True immortality for the individual consciousness is widely available and one can connect to as many different Extensions as they want to inhabit. But also a lot of people have migrated to a purely digital life; A meat body requires meat resources which are many times more 'expensive' than a simulated reality. The effects of this are still something I'm exploring though, so ask again in 3-4 years.

The rejuvenation drugs were originally a military only thing to keep soldiers in a state of youth comparable to someone in their late 20's for as long as possible. I only recently began toying with the idea of extending them to my populace at large. Before that, nanites and gene therapy were the standard among the populace, with cybernetics and replacement organs being relatively rare, as the nanites can solve most issues before they reach the point were replacements are needed. I needed some way for my first emperor to die around the age of 80, though, so I extended the rejuvenation drugs to him. That made sense in his case, because he had been a marine. I then realised that I would need my current emperor to die around a similar age, as him living into his 100's would leave his heir doing nothing for decades. I considered having my emperor grant his heir the title of autarch (Junior emperor), but even if he was granted a military command to go along with it, he would still essentially be stuck doing nothing until his father kicks the bucket or abdicates. I then altered my emperor's backstory so that he had been a marine, meaning he too would be taking rejuvenation drugs, and would die quite young.

I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or not, but I just thought that my emperors living into their 100's and their heirs succeeding to the throne when they are in their 80's was ridiculous.

[Northwest Slobovia]

I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or not, but I just thought that my emperors living into their 100's and their heirs succeeding to the throne when they are in their 80's was ridiculous.[/align]

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

[Sunset]

I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or not, but I just thought that my emperors living into their 100's and their heirs succeeding to the throne when they are in their 80's was ridiculous.[/align]

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

You might also consider creating something of a title of 'Emperor Emeritus' where the Emperor might 'retire' before they get too old and can no longer enjoy the rest of their life but is then still technically considered the Emperor or at least 'an' Emperor if something were to happen to the others. At least to me, the title 'Emperor' suggests something of grandeur and more than a little narcissism. So to take a title that is in theory above that of 'Emperor' but essentially retiring would appeal. Emperor Suprema; Something along those lines.

Or you could just go with the notion of the title being awarded on death, which suggests a level of intrigue could be added.

[Hydraic Empire]

I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or not, but I just thought that my emperors living into their 100's and their heirs succeeding to the throne when they are in their 80's was ridiculous.[/align]

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

I like this idea, but if you want to stick with one leader, perhaps you have a law where the Emperor can only rule until a certain age (ie, 80) or when their named heir reaches a certain age (ie 30). Is you follow the second option I suggest also having a law where they must name an heir before they (the emperor) reaches an age (ie 60). This would help make transition between emperors smoother, however these namings could easily be falsified and might give interesting RP results.

[Tierra Prime]

I don't know if I'm thinking too much into this or not, but I just thought that my emperors living into their 100's and their heirs succeeding to the throne when they are in their 80's was ridiculous.[/align]

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

Joint rule is something I'm interested in including in my canon in the future. I've had an idea for a while of my emperor crowning his heir and uncle junior emperors and granting them a third of the armed forces each. My nation is surrounded by a species of hostile alien nomads, so compartmentalisation of the armed forces is a necessity. At the political level, the empire is divided into four prefectures, each of which is divided into four provinces, which are grouped around major systems. Each system is ruled by a hereditary prince, while the provinces and prefectures are ruled by governors appointed by the emperor. Prefectural and provincial governors have command of the armed forces in their territories, while princes do not.

You might also consider creating something of a title of 'Emperor Emeritus' where the Emperor might 'retire' before they get too old and can no longer enjoy the rest of their life but is then still technically considered the Emperor or at least 'an' Emperor if something were to happen to the others. At least to me, the title 'Emperor' suggests something of grandeur and more than a little narcissism. So to take a title that is in theory above that of 'Emperor' but essentially retiring would appeal. Emperor Suprema; Something along those lines.

Or you could just go with the notion of the title being awarded on death, which suggests a level of intrigue could be added.

This is a very good idea and is something I'm also willing to explore. Abdication is permitted, so there wouldn't be any issues there. The way I have my nation's succession set up at the moment, once you give up the throne, you're gone. However, I could very easily change it to take retired emperors into account. It reminds me of the Japanese system before the Meiji restoration. As the emperor at that time functioned as the high priest of the Shinto religion rather than the national leader, much of their time was devoted to overseeing the complex and tiring rituals associated with the imperial throne. Emperors would typically take the throne as children and retire into a life of luxury as teenagers. The best way for me to represent joint rule would be for my emperor to appoint his heir as autarch, and then delegate his powers to him. He would retain the title of emperor and, de jure, his authority, while being de facto in retirement. If is heir died or some other crisis presented itself, he could retake control without any issues. If noting happened, then he would fade away, granting more and more authority to his heir until he eventually dies. As his heir would already be associated with the throne, succession wouldn't be an issue.

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

I like this idea, but if you want to stick with one leader, perhaps you have a law where the Emperor can only rule until a certain age (ie, 80) or when their named heir reaches a certain age (ie 30). If you follow the second option I suggest also having a law where they must name an heir before they (the emperor) reaches an age (ie 60). This would help make transition between emperors smoother, however these namings could easily be falsified and might give interesting RP results.

According to the basic constitution I have written up, an emperor must retire if they become mentally or physically incapacitated. I haven't mentioned age other than specifying that 18 is the legal age at which an underage emperor is considered fit to rule. The emperor technically isn't required to name an heir during his lifetime either, as the succession isn't strictly hereditary. If the emperor wanted to name a promising admiral as crown prince rather than a member of his own family, that would be permitted. I get your point though, and I think it has merit. Requiring the emperor to name an heir when they reach age 80 would be a good idea. It would ensure that the crown prince possesses the education and maturity required to rule, at least in theory. Age doesn't always bring wisdom, so the skills and achievements of a potential successor will factor into the decision quite a lot. In regards to how the emperor choses his heir, he writes up a will, places it in a safe inside his quarters, and then announces his choice to the government. When he dies, the safe is opened and the will is read. It may or may not match his announcement, as he is free to change it when he likes, and can chose to keep his choice of heir secret if he wishes.

[Ordocravia]

Here is some advise for people that possess Walkers and Droids;

Always have a majorly, MAJORLY produced underling with all-purpose capabilities, like grunts, expendables to sent in by the Hordes just Before your troops. Like Stormtroopers, but better.

E.X: One of those guys is set to Surveillance and it locates an Extraterrestrial Being, It stealthily approaches it and starts analyzing it, but it attacks the Droid so the Droid Activates it's little Plasma Rifle and Blasts it to shreds.

This example showed a Droid which: Was Scouting, Was using Stealth, Was Researching for Science, that killed a being.

Also, please do not make them perfect and humungous, they are supposed to be a grunt, an Underling, something that comes in numbers and is around waist level with a certain level of decency in all sectors, you can't have a ten story tall Grunt bearing a Planet Crushing Plasma Cannon and expert knowledge of anything and everything it comes across nor should it be able to scan said thing in a fraction of a Planck Second. That is just the Epitomy of OP.

[Senkaku]

FWIW, Britain's Queen Liz II is already over 90, and she might make it to 100. If she does, Prince Chuck will be crowned in his 80s. So, it's a RL problem already.

A solution might be joint rule of an emperor and his heir(s). For example, they may be emperor and dukes. If they empire is very large, this may be needed just to run the country.

Joint rule is something I'm interested in including in my canon in the future. I've had an idea for a while of my emperor crowning his heir and uncle junior emperors and granting them a third of the armed forces each. My nation is surrounded by a species of hostile alien nomads, so compartmentalisation of the armed forces is a necessity. At the political level, the empire is divided into four prefectures, each of which is divided into four provinces, which are grouped around major systems. Each system is ruled by a hereditary prince, while the provinces and prefectures are ruled by governors appointed by the emperor. Prefectural and provincial governors have command of the armed forces in their territories, while princes do not.

Your prefectures are a larger administrative division than your provinces?

[Tierra Prime]

Joint rule is something I'm interested in including in my canon in the future. I've had an idea for a while of my emperor crowning his heir and uncle junior emperors and granting them a third of the armed forces each. My nation is surrounded by a species of hostile alien nomads, so compartmentalisation of the armed forces is a necessity. At the political level, the empire is divided into four prefectures, each of which is divided into four provinces, which are grouped around major systems. Each system is ruled by a hereditary prince, while the provinces and prefectures are ruled by governors appointed by the emperor. Prefectural and provincial governors have command of the armed forces in their territories, while princes do not.

Your prefectures are a larger administrative division than your provinces?

Is that not how things are usually done? I based it on the administrative structure of the late Roman Empire, which went from top to bottom: prefecture -> diocese -> province.

[Senkaku]

Your prefectures are a larger administrative division than your provinces?

Is that not how things are usually done? I based it on the administrative structure of the late Roman Empire, which went from top to bottom: prefecture -> diocese -> province.

Really? Didn't know that- in China it's province -> prefecture -> county, afaik.

[Tierra Prime]

Is that not how things are usually done? I based it on the administrative structure of the late Roman Empire, which went from top to bottom: prefecture -> diocese -> province.

Really? Didn't know that- in China it's province -> prefecture -> county, afaik.

Yeah, it was a later development that took place under Constantine's successors. In the early empire, the title of prefect had been given to the governor of Rome (The urban prefect), naval commanders (Fleet prefects), and the twin heads of the Praetorian Guard (The praetorian prefects). As the Praetorian Guard was so intimately associated with the emperor, the title of praetorian prefect was given to the highest imperial representatives outside of the capital. Italy itself was put underneath its own praetorian prefect, who represented the emperor in Rome, as the capital was moved to Milan in 286 to give the emperor better access to the Rhine-Danube frontier, and then Constantinople in 330 to take advantage of the riches of the east.

[Dreadful Sagittarius]

Also regarding the fact that it's a wet navy ship in space, I've decided to put retractable weaponry on the bottom of her hull, as she's still expected to perform in water on some missions. However, I was wondering if having what's essentially a bunch of armored doors would lead to compromises in the level of protection the armor would give. If that's the case, I could handwave it with "Fog ships can change their hull via nanomaterial control so it's solid when the weapons aren't in use" but I'm curious, still, because Fog ships have been shown to lose control of their ships via lockdown, turning the ship into just a normal vessel (possible interesting plot point for the RP), and it would help to know just how much of a weakness the hatches would be compared to the hull if it didn't have any hatches for weapons (assume the hatches make perfect seals and are the same thickness as the rest of the surrounding hull).

Any opening in a belt of armour is a weakness, doesn't matter if it's an airlock, a window, a sealed fighter launch tube, or a hatch for a gun battery, because to allow them to work normally means you have to accept a degree of armour that doesn't match the rest of the vessel. Don't forget, an enemy doesn't have to penetrate something like that to knock it out of order. For examples of issues where having to balance out armour protection has led to losses, look at the actions of the Royal Navy in the North Sea/Atlantic Ocean in both of the world wars. You'll see a few losses caused by ships being hit, not on the thick armour belt or the superstructure, but on the areas surrounding it, purely because you cannot have equality of protection everywhere unless you make like the Borg and make warspheres.

That said, if you're willing to handwave that with this nanomaterial, you may as well just leave the guns permanently extended. It may cause issues with the speed of the vessel in the water, but you've got a vessel capable of propelling itself at useful sublight speeds to balance that out. Plus, you'll have a great remedy to submersible combat vehicles!

Here is some advise for people that possess Walkers and Droids; (snipped for brevity)

Glad to hear it, and a belated welcome to NSFT as well! This is one of the key things in the community as a whole, and touched on with a great post by Voc just recently, and Huerdae prior to that, with it being a good approach to design your forces, be they ground, space, wet-navy, etc, as an RTS. It lets you work out what the flavour of your forces is, what they're good at, what they're not so good at, and helps you tie it in with the cultural/societal aspects of your nation. I approach the Republic's military forces as being very mobile, if somewhat light, and material-orientated due to concerns over loss of life on a large scale, which is something caused by an intra-system war they'd fought between rival planets prior to the formation of the Republic itself.

If we look at something like the 40k Imperium of Man (always one of my go-to's), we have a regime where human lives are more numerous and less valued than the equivalent of the SPEHSS AK they use, a regime where decimation and summary execution are valued as punishments because there is always more where the average guardsman came from. This is a byproduct of their society; technologically stagnant, if not regressive, inefficient, socially unequal on a level that'd have a communist heaving and simply so massive, so all encompassing, that one life or a million is just a statistic.

[Shwe Tu Colony]

So if I had a character generate an area of monumental gravitational pull such that a minute there is a year outside of the area, gravitational time dilation would affect the region with more gravity, right? So what would characters outside of the gravity field see, & what would a character inside of it see, & would an object inside of the gravity field seem to rot/crumble away quicker than an object outside of the field? Asking the last bit because I might have a character who can create a gravity field that causes gravitational time dilation, & I'm wondering if it could be weaponized by creating such a gravity field around say a ship's exterior (but otherwise keeping the gravity elsewhere the same, to prevent objects from being dragged against the ship) to destroy it by letting time age it away.

[Kyrusia]

So if I had a character generate an area of monumental gravitational pull such that a minute there is a year outside of the area, gravitational time dilation would affect the region with more gravity, right?

Very, very roughly: higher "gravitational pressure" equates to a slower flow of time relative to an external observer. Example: "It has also been calculated that due to time dilation, the core of the Earth is 2.5 years younger than the crust"^[1] as a consequence of gravitational time dilation - to say nothing on time dilation related to relative motion (velocity). Simply put: the surface of the earth has a higher gravitational potential (but lower influence of gravitational pressure) than the core; hence, the core ages more slowly due to dilation.

So what would characters outside of the gravity field see, & what would a character inside of it see, & would an object inside of the gravity field seem to rot/crumble away quicker than an object outside of the field?

Edit: Actually, I had your description backwards in my head. But no, they would not see them rot. The entity inside of the gravitational field would be moving more slowly, not the other way around. If anything, the person inside of the temporal distortion would see the external observer at an accelerated pace.

If I had to make a guess, based on similar speculation/theories involving gravitational singularities, it's likely the external observer would simply see the influenced entity cease moving - in any way.

[Greater Catarapania]

So if I had a character generate an area of monumental gravitational pull such that a minute there is a year outside of the area, gravitational time dilation would affect the region with more gravity, right? So what would characters outside of the gravity field see, & what would a character inside of it see, & would an object inside of the gravity field seem to rot/crumble away quicker than an object outside of the field? Asking the last bit because I might have a character who can create a gravity field that causes gravitational time dilation, & I'm wondering if it could be weaponized by creating such a gravity field around say a ship's exterior (but otherwise keeping the gravity elsewhere the same, to prevent objects from being dragged against the ship) to destroy it by letting time age it away.

Couple things here.

First of all, the gravity generator side is the one that goes slow. High gravity ="slow" time, low gravity ="fast" time. So it would be easier to use it to slow the enemy down, allowing the hero to outline and out maneuver them.

But the big issue would be the tidal forces. If the gravitational source is strong enough to cause noticeable time dialation, yet small enough to fit on a sub-kilometer sized ship, the tides are going to be absolutely ludicrous. Just throw it at the enemy ship, and the ship will get torn apart.

[Shwe Tu Colony]

Looks like I mixed up gravity & its effects on time a bit. Whoopsies!

Depends on the proximity to the concentration of gravitational pressure and the gravitational potential between the massive body and any object under its influence; to put it another way: higher gravity = slower time, higher gravitational potential (greater distance from the mass) = faster time. And no. As mentioned, if you want to use it this way, in the way described, the external observer would actually be experiencing time at a quicker pace relative to the person under the influence of the distorted gravity.

But still, what would the inside & outside observers see looking in or out of the time-distorted field, such as if either of them spoke or moved around? Would the person outside, who is "living" faster in comparison to the one in the field, see the person inside the field as speaking/moving slower or faster than they actually were, & vice versa? Or am I misunderstanding something? Lastly, I do agree that I'll definitely want to hand wave this, since forcing things to decay at a speed useful for combat would either need the character to manipulate the gravity of everything while keeping the targeted area the same, or make the area's mass/gravity negative, which might not be reasonable or possible.

But the big issue would be the tidal forces. If the gravitational source is strong enough to cause noticeable time dialation, yet small enough to fit on a sub-kilometer sized ship, the tides are going to be absolutely ludicrous. Just throw it at the enemy ship, and the ship will get torn apart.

The idea was that the character, through some method, would generate a protective aura around the gravitational field that would prevent any tomfoolery from happening other than the area decaying faster. But still, it would probably be more efficient to stay an ample distance away, summon the field, & watch as the ship gets destroyed.