Addon Discussion

[WoodMan]

I think he is just demonstrating the sort of scale, if a ringworld was in the game then that would be its scale, it would however be a single png with a transparent centre and not loads of planets stuck together [:D]

[adecoy95]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

I think he is just demonstrating the sort of scale, if a ringworld was in the game then that would be its scale, it would however be a single png with a transparent centre and not loads of planets stuck together [:D]

well, no actually, adding a bunch of planets in a big ring gives you the same effect a dyson sphere would, use your imagination!

[vonboy]

ORIGINAL: adecoy95

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

I think he is just demonstrating the sort of scale, if a ringworld was in the game then that would be its scale, it would however be a single png with a transparent centre and not loads of planets stuck together [:D]

well, no actually, adding a bunch of planets in a big ring gives you the same effect a dyson sphere would, use your imagination!

actually, thats just a ringworld. you'd have to fill the whole thing with planets for it to be more like a dyson shpere :b

[Wade1000]

THE Ringworld of Larry Niven's novel has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets.
 

Ringworld engineering
The "Ringworld" is an artificial ring about one million miles wide and approximately the diameter of Earth's orbit (which makes it about 600 million miles in circumference), encircling a Sol-type star. It rotates, providing an artificial gravity that is 99.2% as strong as Earth's gravity through the action of centrifugal force. Ringworld has a habitable flat inner surface equivalent in area to approximately three million Earth-sized planets. The majority of the surface is land interspersed with shallow, freshwater seas. On opposite sides of the ring are two large deep saltwater oceans, placed in counterbalance to one another. One of the large oceans, known as the "Great Ocean", contains one-to-one maps of all of the inhabited worlds of known space. The "Other Ocean" has many maps of a single world: the Pak Homeworld. Walls 1,000 miles tall along the edges retain the atmosphere. The Ringworld could be regarded as a thin, rotating slice of a Dyson sphere, with which it shares a number of characteristics. Niven himself thinks of the Ringworld as "an intermediate step between Dyson spheres and planets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

[vonboy]

and a solid shell dyson sphere would have a surface area equal to 550 million earths.

now THATS what i call real estate[:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: vonboy

and a solid shell dyson sphere would have a surface area equal to 550 million earths.

now THATS what i call real estate[:D]

and completely unrealistic...exactly where would you find the resources to build such a thing? to have the surface area of 550 million earths, you need the resources of 550 million earths to build it. [X(]

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: vonboy

and a solid shell dyson sphere would have a surface area equal to 550 million earths.

now THATS what i call real estate[:D]

and completely unrealistic...exactly where would you find the resources to build such a thing? to have the surface area of 550 million earths, you need the resources of 550 million earths to build it. [X(]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Todays tall buildings and other technologies would seem silly or impossible to many people of the far past. I think technology will continue to progress exponentially into our far future to advances that we can't even imagine. We can imagine alot right now.

In 'The Culture' series novels Orbitals(huge rings that orbit stars) are the most common habitat for The Culture. Ringworlds and Sphere worlds are spread here and there. Even planets are barely populated. Planets are treated as nature preserves with scientific study or backwoods type colonies with small populations.

The Culture passes on terraforming every little ball around because forming their own Orbital and Ringworlds and Sphereworlds is possible and provides HUGE amounts of custom tailored land. Maybe much like today we can choose to build upwards instead of spreading across flat land taking up all nature and agriculture.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

ORIGINAL: Shark7

One has to wonder though...can you actually grow enough food on a space station to support any significant population? And what happens as what's natural happens and the population expands?

-I think so; especially with hydroponics and other unknown future technology advances.
-More living space(stations) is built, like we do in real life with structures.

Science fiction can be about real future possibilities based on what we can imagine our current science and technology might be able to lead to based on an exponential expansion like the past shows.
Like I stated earlier, that also seems to indicate that the far future, maybe even the near future, will have science and technology that we can't even imagine yet, and we can imagine alot now.

I'm sometimes surprised that this science fiction thinking sometimes is not used among some science fiction fans.
Often in science fiction games lately they seem to be based on World War 2 or modern warfare technologies and tactics. Incremental advances in various small technologies that seem to belong squeezed within 3 to 5 years of a WW2 game instead stretched into a science fiction game of hundreds or thousands of years.

I agree with what Baleur stated earlier:

ORIGINAL: Baleur

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Wish list:population centers beyond planetary(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture):Ships,Ring Orbitals,Sphere Orbitals,Ringworlds,Sphereworlds;ability to create & destroy planets,population centers,stars;AI competently using all advances & features.

Also, if an advance/technology can be found in the game then I believe that it should eventually be able to be researched, without first finding it.

Too many space games focus on the "cheap" aspects of space. A space station, a few ships, a planet here and there with a generic random-noise star background.
I desperatly agree, i so badly want another space game that realizes space and sci-fi for what it is, and depicts it as such.

Ringworlds, dyson spheres, aging stars, forming stars, neutron stars (i was surprised to see them included in this game), proper good sci-fi.

Think of one of the most popular 4X space games, Master of Orion 2. It's science and technologies were truly amazing. Nearly each advance was like a new technological wonder that brought many changes to society and strategy and seemed to advance a civilization to a new era...nearly each advance.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

ORIGINAL: Webbco

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

The Culture passes on terraforming every little ball around because forming their own Orbital and Ringworlds and Sphereworlds is possible and provides HUGE amounts of custom tailored land.

I know it's fictional, but this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I also haven't read the novels so apologies if it's answered in there...but why spend unthinkably massive quantities of resources on creating worlds from scratch when planets are present that provide a base on which to build?

Surely it would be totally inefficient to synthesise an entire world from scratch.

I imagine these habitats constructed using a sort of combination of energy to matter conversion, exponentially self replicating nanites, and telepoters. Also, the construction method could be something we can not even imagine yet.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

ORIGINAL: tornnight

I stand by my opinion that ring worlds and dyson spheres are ridiculously impractical.

Even if you had an army of nanobots constructing one it would likely take many thousands of years to construct or longer. And for what benefit over just teraforming a barren world?

The argument that regular worlds will be considered preserves is silly when you think of the number of barren worlds out there.

Okay; but don't underestimate the word "exponential" . Exponentially self replicating nanites in conjunction with energy to matter conversion, using the star, and teleporter technology...maybe even some method we can't yet imagine.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

For a thought comparison, theorectically speaking and opinionated, an ancient village person that somehow imagined super construction beyond huts, something like modern skyscraper buildings might imagine them taking hundreds of years to construct. He could not imagine all the various tools, robotics, computers, materials, etcetera, that allows them to be built in months or a few years.

His rational might be that his hut took several days to finish thus a skyscraper that can hold thousands of his huts must take hundreds of years to construct.

Some of us could be compared to that ancient village person imagining the construction time of a Ringworld or Sphereworld/Dyson Sphere.

Some of us might rationalize, with only our current understanding or closed imagination, that those future constructions must take thousands of years to construct.
I think it could take weeks to months... using sort of future technologies like energy to matter conversion, teleportation, nanites that self replicate exponentionally using the energy to matter conversion and then link themselves and other atoms and mollecules together, etcetera.

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

Well, since its impossible according to the laws of physics for anything with mass to travel at the speed of light (no matter how advanced the civilization that builds the transport), it would have to be one hell of a big cargo ship to get all the stuff there in one go to build it in a month [;)]

The star would be used for energy to matter conversion to get unlimited building material: nanites and other molecules and atoms. This is assuming the theorectical technologies. There will be advances in our near and far future that we can not even imagine.

Think more about science fiction advances and maybe possible real life future advances. You did not even seem to take note of some of the advances I mention.

BESIDES:

Source of material
The Ringworld is described as having a mass approximately equal to the sum of all the planets in our solar system. The adventurers surmised that its construction consumed literally all the planets in that original system, down to the last asteroid and/or moon, as the Ringworld star has no other bodies in orbit. In Ringworld's Children it is additionally explained that it took the reaction mass of roughly 20 Jupiter masses to spin up the ring; thus either the combined mass of the planets of the original system was that much larger than our solar system's, or there was other source material

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld

A ringworld can be fairly thin compared to the unused surface area inside a solid sphere of a planet. That is, if you are NOT assuming the futuristic construction tools and methods I described.