Too many planets - Page 2

ColdSteel · #11 January 30th, 2001, 02:23 AM

What everyone here seems to be forgetting is one of the classic sci fi themes. That is to say, wholesale genetic alteration to fit extreme planetary conditions. Waterworld? Gillmen. Heavy gravity? Squatty musclebound fireplugs that make Arnold look like a "girly man". It is not implausible at all to me that an ancient advanced race with complete control over their genetic code could not design bodies to live in the most extreme of conditions, even on gas giants. Why limit yourselve to the current primitive world view? The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine (hmmm, seems I've heard something like this before

)

Puke · #12 January 30th, 2001, 02:31 AM

quote:
Originally posted by ColdSteel:
What everyone here seems to be forgetting is one of the classic sci fi themes. That is to say, wholesale genetic alteration to fit extreme planetary conditions. Waterworld? Gillmen. Heavy gravity? Squatty musclebound fireplugs that make Arnold look like a "girly man". It is not implausible at all to me that an ancient advanced race with complete control over their genetic code could not design bodies to live in the most extreme of conditions, even on gas giants. Why limit yourselve to the current primitive world view? The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine (hmmm, seems I've heard something like this before )

a long time ago, on a thread far far away, someone proposed a genetic modification center. it occurs to me that this would be possible within the game mechanics, but not within the current MODable text files. new empires can be created in-game that rebel from other races, and i believe that they contain a copy (not a pointer to, but a copy of) the parent race. therfore, a new race could be created with all the same properties but a different atmosphere type, and that race could replace the population on the planet with the facility on it (or convert by percentage over time) and stay as a member of the same empire. and for that matter, why not genetically breed better wariors and a specific scientist cast? oooh, the possibilities. but ANYWAY - if that feature could be implemented, it would be pretty sweet.

God Emperor · #13 January 30th, 2001, 02:54 AM

Have just replied to your other post and then found this one. To answer your question, it is quite easy to reduce the number of planets per system. Just edit your SystemType.txt file that is in the data directory. You can either just modify the Standard 1, Standard 2 and Standard 3 entries (easy) or make up new system types (a bit more involved).
I had some fun modifying Emperor Zodds Quadrant and System type files that he has uploaded into the Mods Archive.
Suggest you check it out.

I too get a bit cheesed off with the micromanagement, and sparse systems seem to help the computer players a bit (less planets for them to slowly colonise). Also, given the issue of gravity suitability not really being accounted for, less coloniseable planets makes more sense to me.

Does mean though that high tech levels take much longer to achieve...
Anyway, hope this has helped.....

God Emperor · #14 January 30th, 2001, 02:57 AM

Elwood,
I been working on sparse systems myself and have played a few games in them (and believe that the AI works a bit better too) but would be interested to see what you have developed. Would you post it into the Mods Archive? Thanks....

I take the earlier point that we could consider Ice and Rock planets to be variations of the same thing and that the Tiny - Huge descriptions only represent increments around some ideal planet size. As for Gas Giants though, I think we have to assume that some form of gravity tech has been developed to allow them to be colonised.

For my sparse systems, I think I might reduce the costs of Ice and Rock colonisation techs a bit. Will mean that the AI Gas races will get a bonus but I am happy to concede that given the way the AIresearch.txt files are configured.

Puke · #15 January 30th, 2001, 03:18 AM

quote:
Originally posted by God Emperor:
[b]Elwood,
I been working on sparse systems myself and have played a few games in them (and believe that the AI works a bit better too) but would be interested to see what you have developed. Would you post it into the Mods Archive? Thanks....

I take the earlier point that we could consider Ice and Rock planets to be variations of the same thing and that the Tiny - Huge descriptions only represent increments around some ideal planet size. As for Gas Giants though, I think we have to assume that some form of gravity tech has been developed to allow them to be colonised.
B]

modified system types files are always good. there should be a way to tweak the AI (i have not tried editing the AI scripts) to behave in the dense planet areas the same way it would in the sparse planet areas. that would certainly be a significant improvement.

this might sound silly to you, but from the picture it looks to me like the gas colony is actually floating. i guess they just have to develop the massive hot-air-baloon technology, and dont really need to lighten the gravitational forces.

Elwood Bluze · #16 January 31st, 2001, 12:06 AM

God Emperor,

I'll go ahead and post them shortly. I did make a couple of tweaks.

1) No pesky tiny moons. Or moons at all.

2) Removed Black Holes from all quadrants due to AI deficiencies.

3) Standard solar systems 1,2, and 3 have 6, 5 and 4 planets respectively.

4) Elwood's Test and Mid-Life quadrants have no storms whatsoever. I did leave destroyed stars and asteroids in there.

Give them a try; I'd curious to see what ya'll think.

------------------
Get my latest album: Elwood Bluze "Biscuits and Bullets" Not on sale anywhere!

Barnacle Bill · #17 January 31st, 2001, 09:32 PM

In the sense of what is portrayed in SE4, an ice planet is not just a terrestrial artic zone where it is like the polar regions of Earth only planet-wide. We could colonize that without a dome NOW, if we had a space ship to get there (unless you count an Eskimo igloo as a dome). That is just a rock planet with real bad conditions, in SE4 terms. An ice planet, where all planets are subdivided in rock or gas giant or ice, is a planet with tempertures near absolute 0, where substances like oxygen, CO2, hydrogen, etc... that are gases on Earth are liquids or maybe even solids. To colonize that WITH a dome will require some pretty serious tech, but is feasible. Without a dome, though, you couldn't even breath.

A gas giant has surface gravity many times what a human could tolerate, much less move around in, and atmospheric pressures like sea pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Just to colonize with a dome would take very advanced gravity control.

To change either an ice planet or a gas giant sufficiently to allow life as we know it to survive outside a dome would mean, in SE4 terms, changing it into a rock planet. That might be possible, but the cost would be much higher than atmosphere conVersion.

To genetically engineer humans sufficiently to make them capable of living without a dome in either the ice or gas giant environments would be to make them no longer life as we know it. You are talking about much more fundamental changes than just putting on gills so they can breath water, or fur & blubber so they can run with the polar bears, or beefing them up so they can live on a planet that has maybe 1.5 G gravity. By the time you got done doing it, they would not be human anymore, or able to live on Rock planets anymore either.

dmm · #18 February 1st, 2001, 09:54 PM

BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)

Barnacle Bill · #19 February 2nd, 2001, 06:37 PM

quote:
Originally posted by dmm:
BB,
I agree that humans could not live undomed on the _surface_ of gas or ice planets. But why can't they live elsewhere, floating in the atmosphere of a gas planet, or in caverns or oceans under the surface of an ice planet? Then they might only need minor, reversible genetic engineering to allow them to live there, given the right atmosphere. (Yeah, yeah, I know I'm still ignoring a lot of biology. But this is space opera, not serious sci-fi.)

If they are "floating in the atmosphere" of a gas giant, they are either in a floating dome or you have made them into something which is not "human". You are talking about pressures higher than the bottom of the oceans, and a high gravity trying to pull them deeper. They would have to be naturally buoyant like a fish or a blimp, able to tolerate the pressure, able to move without contacting the surface, etc... That is a new species, even if it has a human fore-brain.

On an ice planet, you are talking about temperatures where gases are liquid, etc... It isn't any warmer in a cave. You know, they drop liquid nitrogen on warts so they quick freeze and can be broken off. You are talking about making the entire human body able to tolerate that sort of cold. Again, by the time you get done with that the result is (a) not bilogically human or even "life as we know it", but rather an entirely different species, and (b) could not live in any other environment.

Not even in space opera do you see that degree of genetic engineering. What you see in space opera is adapting people to live in the sorts of unpleasant environments we have here on earth, again like gills & flipper feet & webbed fingers to live underwater or fur & blubber to live in the arctic w/o needing an Eskimo suit.

In SE4, people try to capture populations that breath other atmosheres so they can colonize w/o domes or atmosphere conVersion. I can see genetic engineering as something that might let you create your own. They would still be specialized to one atmosphere rather than able to breath everything. You would be making these people in a lab, not converting them from existing people, and they would be expensive, and would need to be treated in the game as a separate race. Creating people to live w/o a dome on an ice or gas giant planet would be a MUCH bigger deal than making people to breath a different gas, and therefore even more expensive.

[This message has been edited by Barnacle Bill (edited 02 February 2001).]

dmm · #20 February 2nd, 2001, 07:30 PM

OK, I think I see the main reason why we're not understanding each other. You're assuming that "undomed" means the people are totally free to walk about the planet unaided by technology. I was assuming that, domed or undomed, they are using various colonization techs to allow them to live there.

Regarding the atmospheric pressure on a gas giant: the pressure only gets huge if you go deep into the atmosphere. It is strictly a function of how much the atmosphere on top of you weighs. My colonists are smart enough not to go too deep. And, as we've been discussing in another topic, the gravitational acceleration at the outer edge of a gas giant's atmosphere is also not that large. (For Jupiter, at its equator, gravity is only 2.3x Earth's. For Neptune and Uranus, it is comparable to Earth. Source: Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, 62nd Ed., 1982) On the negative side, I was surprised to find that our solar system's gas giants are COLD. However, there have been discoveries recently of gas giants orbiting Sun-like stars at Earth-like radii, so perhaps gas giants don't _have_ to be cold either.

Regarding ice planets being way too cold, even under their surface: I was assuming that they were not a solid hunk of frozen nitrogen, but instead that they were like some of the huge moons of Jupiter and Saturn are thought to be, with a frozen surface covering a liquid (or maybe rock) interior. The interior is kept warm by volcanism induced by gravitational tides or radioactivity or pressure.