How do you explain it?
 

Ever wonder what the odds would be of a hand full of space capable races all with about the same level of technology discovering the existence of warp points at the same time. In addition the warp point network only includes races from the above group.

How do you explain it?



One explanation for the simultaneous discover of warp points is that some type of stellar event (like a nova) caused the network of warp points to become charged with energy that is slowing bleeding off as a visible glow. The now blue glowing vortexes of twisted space that were previously invisible are now clearly visible to all races at roughly the same time.


What about the races being at equivalent technological advancement?

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Races on average will discover advances at around the same time. It's just for ease of programming that that happens.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I was looking for more of a plausible pseudo science explanation to a rather improbable set of coincidental events that is the basic starting scenario of Space Empires.


The theory that “races will develop technology at a similar rate” implies that for any two races to be at the same tech level that would have had to have started at about the same time in the past. Another lose end that needs explaining.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

The odds would be greatly against it, in the absence of a common origin for the races. It is a fairly common theme (or plot device) in science fiction. Even Star Trek pulled that one out at one point, in TNG.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Well the game explanation is simple: for play balance.

In SE:III and likely in the upcoming SE:V, players are able to choose their starting techs, which helps eliminate the problem of all the races having the same tech. You can use a good start with 100,000 research points to achieve the same sort of thing in SE:IV.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I explained it quite nicely in the back story for the STM. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Ever see 2001:A Space Oddesey? Remember the monoliths that released new knowledge every time human evolution hit certain milestones. Maybe something along those lines?

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Yes, most 4X games start with the common theme of a number of races starting galactic conquest from an equal footing. I was asking about back-story theories that would account for the basic 4X theme that the game is designed around. What a member of one of the races in the game might theories to rationalize their reality?

Examples:
“Aliens did it!” - An advance race is secretly keeping all prewarp point aware races within their warp point networks at a status quo level of development.
or
“The gods did it!” - Beings with the power to alter reality, arranged a series of improbable events to take place for their personal amusement or for some type power struggle that is beyond comprehension.

Or
Atrocities’s (summarized by me.)
“The Cleansing” - 99% of all inhabited systems are cleansed in a great war leaving only a few backwater colony systems inhabited. Existing space capable technology is rendered unusable by a weapon used to end the Great War. The warp point network is an artifact created before the conclusion of the Great War.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I doubt it is possibly at all. Another species could have a totally different opinion on life. Maybe totally different ethics, maybe research in another way, devoted to religion or something totally unknown to us. I doubt another species will be anything like us. Most Sci-Fi`s, like Star Trek and Babylon 5 are utterly wrong. The chance that multiple species encounter each other, they are all the same size and have the same technology (i.e. metal alloys), and even follow a certain logic or ethic is not plausibel. Another species could, and most probably will follow a different path than the humans did.
Think, it took mankind thousands and thousands of years to evolve into what we are now. There are many path`s to follow.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Oh yeah, and keep in mind, another species may not even see the need for "development" or "technology" at all. A society, if formed, may be based around things we cant even imagine, not necesarrily something like religon, like or advancements.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Technology is the end result of any intelligent race being put in a difficult situation and surviving.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Interstellar contact. The prime directive (Don't help anyone) is irrelevant, people will learn from each other anyway. Diplomats, Pirates, and other tradesmen will spread the technology around.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Not just TNG pulled that off, look at Enterprise; they start out with - of all things - missiles while the other races have particle beam weapons, much faster warp drives, large empires, very large ships..... The Vulcans even have tractor beams as opposed to Enterprises (of all possible things..... geez.....) grapple cannon. Romulans already used cloaking devices and advanced minefields, etc.

I think it is too much of a coincidence, too; I think it'd be better if, like in SEIII, you'll be able to select your starting techs in SEV.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I really hope SEV's modding options are flexible enough to allow us to mod in pre-space or early-space "primitives" that advanced players can either "uplift" or exploit.

There was a long thread about it a few years back, and even a prototype mod (primitive proportions mod IIRC- and great fun it was too.)

Can't be arsed to find the thread myself, but I believe a forum search for "yub yub" should locate it fairly accurately.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Greetings,

Purely scientifically, you all forgot something very important: Our dear friend Albert Einstein discovered it more than 80 years ago and it was spoken out by someone I can't remember his name.

Time flows at different pace for each system because those systems go to a different speed (i.e.: Relativity theory). In theory, a system in a galaxy moving 10 times faster than our galacy will flow 10 times slower than us (A vehicle moving at speed of light will see the people around it frozen.)

So, Sol III (us) could see 2000 years pass by while planet X in another galazy could see 1 million years pass during that same Sol III 2000 years.

It makes all those silly sci-fi movie and television show quite archaic. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Of course, Star Trek universe is all in the same Galaxy, so the time is almost all the same. But what about the galaxies at the edge of the universe that travel 2000 times faster than our galaxy? One year here is 2000 years there. Imagine the progress of the last 100 years (wireless, nuclear, etc) here are nothing compared to the progress an identical society could make in 200,000 years. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Thank you

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Yes, Science Fiction is fiction, something that not true. Those of us who are steeped in it may forget that from time to time, but every SF story requires some suspension of disbelief. That doesn’t have to take away from the tale, if the rest of the story is told well. At first, “warp”, “teleporters” and “communicators” were used by Roddenbery merely to keep the story line going. Even if warp is technically impossible (or too expensive in real energy to ever use), the ability to move around quickly is an ancient story-telling device. Magic carpet anyone?

As far as game balance, some games work well when everyone starts from ground zero; other games work when differing research and traits exist. What I enjoyed about the Civ 3 traits was that they could be toggled on or off depending on my mood, which was normally off. When I want to play an "underdog" scenario in SEIV I can, but don't have to every time. I hope the same option exists in SEV.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

The whole point of the transporters was that it was not possible to make the effects for landing the Enterprise, so yes it was a story device. Then they went and had a story where Sulu nearly freezes to death because the transporters wouldn't work. They couldn't use a shuttle because no one on the writing staff had thought of one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Jestak, what you're saying is right, but I think you made one mistake - you exaggerated the time distortion immensely. If, for example, I move at 5kph, and a bus passes me at 50kph, would time in the bus be moving 10 times faster? OK, I agree with you, if another galaxy rotates 10x faster than ours, they will experience a time distortion discrepancy (err..... OK, sure, right) but not so big as what you described.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Greetings,

You are right about the time distortion. I was just giving an example, but chose it badly.

Regarding a previous post about energy, I think it was one MIT or CALTECH graduate who calculated that to move the Enterprise (In TNG) at speed of light - 1% for 1 minutes, it would take all the energy of the earth sun burning for about one full month. So it is not impossible in theory.

One scientist classified civilizations in 3 categories:
- Category 1 civilization will harness all the energy of the planet. That means mainly: solar, wind, fosil, all mechanic energies that I can't name, nuclear, lava, tectonic energies.
- Category 2 civilization will harness all the energy a solar system will produce. That means category one plus harnessing the sun energy and taping directly into it and the planet gravitational movements energy.
- Category 3 civilization will harness all the energy of the galaxy. It is category 1,2 and a whole bunch of energy types that I don't understand at all...hehe

Currently, we are not even at level 1. We are at level zero.

Thank you

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Somebody added a "Type 4" to that list, a civilization which can utilize the energy of multiple galaxies. In theory, true lightspeed travel or FTL travel would only be efficient energy-wise for a Type 4 civilization.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Sounds to me like the kind of twaddle a scifi writer would come out with- Asimov or Clarke from the sound of it.

Why would you *want* to harness all the energy of a galaxy, or a solar system, or a planet? If we could harness all of Earth's energy, we would have thousands of times more energy than we had any clue what to do with. Perhaps we could fire a laser beam and blow up a neighbouring planet/solar system/galaxy or something. And how do you define *all* the energy on a planet anyway? If you have covered the entire planet in solar panels to harness *all* of the sun's rays, where are we going to put the wind farms to harness *all* the wind power? (which is just converted solar energy anyway) What level of energy conversion efficiency must we achieve to qualify for this arbitrary categorisation? 10%? 50%? 100%?

Theoretically, we have the technology to 'harness' all of Earth's uranium deposits right now (just dig up all the uranium and build lots and lots of power stations), but we haven't used it *all* until there's none left and we'd be idiots to do it all in one go. And why stop at Uranium? Energy can be derived from any matter- must we bleed every atom completely dry? Besides, there are useful things Earth's energy could be doing that don't directly involve us- like growing trees and sustaining our ecosystem for instance.

Similar problems apply to the supposed category 2 and 3 civilisations. And even if, for some absurd reason, humanity did want to harness every single scrap of Earth/Sol/MW's energy, who's to say that any other sentient species would have such an appetite? And even after reading the foundation series, I'm still not convinced by the prospect of an entire-galaxy-spanning civilisation either, which kind of rules out #3. It's just too damn big- it would be a real bugger to administer.

So all in all, a very narrow and somewhat pointless statement, imho. No offence to Jestak though, that's at least the second of your comments in this thread shot down- sorry dude.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Greetings and no offense, but you have twisted the idea of "time dilation" horribly out of shape. It is in no way linear as you suggest.

Here's a calculator

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Asian culture was once unconcerned with "advancement". They thought that the natural order was static - that it was <b>wrong</b> to change.

Gives me the willies...

Re: How do you explain it?
 

It's not linear, but that's irrelavant; that's one perspective. Another, equally valid perspective is that time flows slowly here and faster there. It's a variation on the twin paradox. From our perspective, their clocks are slow; from their perspective, our clocks are slow.

Perhaps we are the most advanced civilization there is! All others are in different frames of reference, and, due to the "magic" of relativity, are advancing more slowly than we are in our frame! Of course, that would be equally true of all other civilizations from their frame.... Oooh... Headache....

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Back to WP explanations. Possibly it's an alternative universe, and warp points are an inherent part of its physics. And probably traditional (for us) interstellar travel is theoreticaly impossible there.

In perfectly explains why Aaron rejected to implement intersystem movement at speed of light in se5 - he has arrived from that universe recently (his saucer was last seen about 20 years ago) and this kind of movement is a wild nonsense for him.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

"Time isn't made out of lines, it is made out of circles. That is why clocks are round." -Caboose

Further reference details at:
http://www.redvsblue.com/archive/download.php/?id=607

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Greetings,

Indeed, the time distorsion is not linear. I was just simplifying too much. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Concerning other comments:
"Sounds to me like the kind of twaddle a scifi writer would come out with- Asimov or Clarke from the sound of it. "

Nope, it came from a very serious scientific community. First time I read about it, it was in Discovery magazine then I made some more researches on the web. It is a simple classification. There are others, but this one is the most known and it is done in relation with energy consumption. I am not a physicist or futurologist. Just a simple engineer. hehe

"Why would you *want* to harness all the energy of a galaxy, or a solar system, or a planet? If we could harness all of Earth's energy, we would have thousands of times more energy than we had any clue what to do with."

Not really. Our knowledge of the universe and fundamental physic is far beyond our technological knowledge. Only the energy of the earth will be far from suficient in a distant futur. I gave as an example the Star Trek Enterprise. In theory, a ship like that one would deplete the earth energy in a very few time.

I am not offensed at all. Just that I can't put here the whole "Energy classification" thing. It was more to point out to some people to fin some reading. I underestimated the people by simplifying too much. Anyway, next time I'll have more scientific rigor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Thank you

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Asimov wrote and published over 400 books in his lifetime, including textbooks on mathematics, science and physics. I would hardly describe his life's body of work as "twaddle". There is nothing wrong with inventing hypothetical technology in the context of telling a story.

He also hated the term 'scifi', preferring science fiction, or S.F. for short.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I've nothing against Asimov, I do have criticisms of his work, but on the whole I like his stuff a lot. If you don't believe me, just go to http://www.dogscoff.co.uk/fiction and click "influences".

Absolutely. I have been known to do it myself from time to time. I might not be published, and as I clearly state in the "influences" page I directed you to just now* I wouldn't put myself on the same level as Asimov, but I *was* including myself in the the collective term "scifi writers" when I referred to their (and therefore my own) output as "twaddle".

Because let's face it, it is. No matter how much fun it is to write and to read, and how cleverly researched, and how often a writer gets lucky and actually predicts or inspires something, scifi is nothing but telling tall tales with a little fancy guesswork mixed in.

However, I digress. The point I was trying to get across was that the "classification of civilisations" thing posted earlier has nothing to do with "inventing hypothetical technology". It doesn't describe a technology at all, it's just an arbitrary and largely meaningless statement that sounds to me like it was just made up by someone or other because it sounds a bit cool and a bit scientific and a bit like the three laws or robotics and a bit like the Drake equation, despite the fact that it is waaaaaaaaaay too vague to have any basis in actual science.

Too bad, I like 'scifi', or better yet, 'sciffy'. Sorry Mr Asimov http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif


*EDIT: The bit in italics is actually stated in a different part of the same site. Click "Courier" to read it, instead of "influences". Read the courier stories while you're there=-)

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Exactly, so why would you ever do that? By the time you have that kind of technology, you'd (hopefully) have sources of energy that don't require you to bleed your homeworld completely dry in a matter of years for the sake of delivering a few red-shirts to their grisly deaths around the galaxy.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

I see at least one wonderful use of this sort of "bleeding the homeworld dry" plan: wouldn't that be a powerful incentive to get that colonisation programme up and running? In SEIV, it is so easy to find settlers, but it might be a bit harder to convince the Terrans to travel to the magnificient, frozen planet of Tergiverse IV, especially if they have to stay twenty years in a spaceship to get there.

Therefore, the destruction of the homeworld is the key to a successful expansion to nearby stellar systems, so long as you do focus on spreading all the settlers a lot: if they all went to the same planet, you would have to repeat the whole process from scratch.

Don't you just love being a slightly manipulative Overlord, who *has* to convince those mindless sl... your fellow citizens that you are doing all those things for their good? And the thankless masses try to kill you, as a reward for all your years of benevolent rule. Tsk.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

You know, one of the reasons I love this board so much is the fact that you guys never cease outdoing one another with such beautifully machiavellian megalomania. It really makes me proud to be a power-crazed dictator.

Thankyou Alneyan, thankyou.

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Hidjra (ar.) - massive exodus of terrans from Earth in XXII century due to a cataclysm caused by a black hole placed into the Earth's core. See: "Hyperion"(Simmons), "Dying Earth" b. I-XXXII (Silen).

Those damn scifi writers stole all our ideas before we even make them up!

Re: How do you explain it?
 

The Empire of Enforced Entropy... bleeds every last microjoule out of every last atom before moving on...

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Not necessarily (and I'm not talking about linearity vs. nonlinearity of the time effect).

See the article "Miconceptions about the Big Bang" at

http://www.sciam.com/print_version.c...2383414B7F0147

This kind of stuff makes my head hurt, but as near as I can make out, it goes something like this: In an Earth-type bang (e.g. a grenade explosion) the shrapnel "expands" into pre-existing space. The cosmic Big Bang, on the other hand, was an "explosion" of space itself, and all the galaxies are basically just along for the ride. This means that a distant galaxy can "recede" from us at greater than the speed of light, an apparent contradiction to Relativity. I'm no physicist, but my guess is this means "time" in those distant galaxies is pretty much the same as it is here (although of course what we "now" see in the visible distant galaxies actually happened long ago).

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Gamma rays are a handy mechanism for pushing that huge reset button on all local civilizations. :-)

http://www.jrmooneyham.com/ctctgam.html

You would not even need a total extinction event, just one that returned all the races to the stone age and left a few interesting ruins behind.
--
TAZ

Re: How do you explain it?
 

Forget about the gamma ray burster threat, worry aobut the bad webpage coloing effect!

Ow, my eyes...

Re: How do you explain it?
 

You just had to say that to make me look, didn't you?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif I am blinded for the rest of the day now.