Kristopher

Re: Nova? Their exectutives or their leaders still live somewhere. That somewhere is vulnerable.

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero In both cases, that pretty much covers what I was going to say.

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero Who's looking for a "challenge"?

Re: Lessons from Byzantium With with FTL, you can get some of the same effects. With ships that can make the insane speed of 1 LY / day, you're still probably talking weeks between inhabitable planets. Communcation is at the same speed. The local government is going to have to have a lot of power, especially on short-term issues.

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority There's always the chance, with a big gas giant in the life zone, that you'll get a sufficiently terrestrial satellite for life to be a real possibility.

Re: Social resolution mechanics for Hero Personally, I'm leary of things that take role-playing control of the character away from the player.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MareNostrum For when your secretive genius, urbane master villain, or retro-stylish aliens need a machine with sophistication to go with massive computing power.

Re: Hellish Weather on Other Planets Good read as usual. (Rep if I can, because you post this stuff on a regular basis.)

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority .

Re: The Singularity?

Re: The Singularity?

Re: The Singularity? It's not just accelerating technology -- it's the accelerating acceleration of technology, so that there's a point beyond which we cannot image the future. I'm not at all convinced by it.

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority So if the typical ship in a setting runs at about 1 ly/day in FTL, you'd be looking at a direct trip of 200 days, which still seems to work well for what I'm going for.

The concept of "the singularity" has gained popularity both with science fiction authors, and with futurists. There's a movement out there of people who call themselves "Singulatarians", some of whom have earned the singularity the nickname "rapture for nerds" -- for them, it's not just speculation, it's a fervent belief. However, for your setting -- gaming or fiction-writing -- there's no reason to view such a future as inevitable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_Singularity#Criticism In addition to general criticisms of the singularity concept, several critics have raised issues with Kurzweil's iconic chart. One line of criticism is that a log-log chart of this nature is inherently biased toward a straight-line result. Others identify selection bias in the points that Kurzweil chooses to use. For example, biologist PZ Myers points out that many of the early evolutionary "events" were picked arbitrarily.[24] The Economist mocked the concept with a graph extrapolating that the number of blades on a razor, which has increased over the years from one to as many as five, will increase ever-faster to infinity.[25]

Re: Solar Systems Like Ours in the Minority That's a very good estimate to know. So how big of a volume around Sol should it take to find, say, 1000 Sol-type systems?

Re: What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us? Hominids Of Unusual Intelligence? I don't think they exist.

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist Giving a "nice" state the ability to quash protest without guilt is a dangerous thing, IMO. Anyway, interesting weapons, none the less.

Re: Taser Shockwave Friend of mine who was in 1-1 Cav talked about the guys in his troop trying to find a way to wire remote-control Claymores all over the outside of the tanks in case they got into the "stuff" in an urban environment and had people trying to rush the tanks with bombs or whatnot. (Would have been right before they deployed to Iraq in GW2.)

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? Not sure where to go with that, then. I never really had any doubts about the subject until this thread. I'm just going to drop it, there's no progress to be had.

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist I don't think anyone has built one, but the only theoretical designs I'd seen were bomb-pumped.

Re: 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist "Cornershot". X-ray lasers? Has someone come up with a way to make one that isn't "pumped" by a nuclear bomb?

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? So everything is moving at "c - c"? EDIT: it was supposed to be a question, and not just based on Cancer's statement, but on the context of the discussion, and the question I was asking.

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ???

Re: Instantaneous Communications plus Time Dilation Equals ??? You're always allowed to walk away, if you're of that opinion of me. No one is forcing you to continue if the conversation is "rediculous". So far, all I've been told is that there is no answer to the basic question raised by the "train car" thought exercise.