Author Topic: Contacting Earth  (Read 9564 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Not even FreeSpace 2 adheres to "stock Freespace tone".

 

Offline BirdofPrey

  • 28
  • Help! I see GIMP in my sleep
Just what IS the Freespace tone?
The Great War ended 30 years ago.
Our elders tell stories of a glorious civilization; of people with myths of humanity everlasting, who hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear.

In testing: Radar Icons

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
FreeSpace one: StarShip Troopers with a hint of Alien.
FreeSpace two: Lovecraft to the End.

 

Offline Lorric

  • 212
FreeSpace one: StarShip Troopers with a hint of Alien.
Now look what you've done. I've got this vision of the bug attack on the fortress from Starship Troopers with the bugs replaced with Shivans... :lol:

I'm also imagining playing Freespace with this in the background now... :D


 
And all of the hundreds of fan mods and stories that have been written and/or made over the last decade all adhere to "stock Freespace tone"? Or, do you really think they have to? I, for one, encourage new ideas and new stories to try out. Especially nuclear options that have the potential to inspire countless other new ideas by breaking away from what we've done for ten years.

I don't see the point in shackling yourself to the Freespace universe at all if you're going to be doing something that drastic.
The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
There are quite a number of reasons why you would want to bring up a whole cloth of baggage into your "new thing". One of them might be that you want to subvert expectations. Other might be that you want to unravel other facets to the "universe" that weren't apparent in the original but are somehow "lurking beneath". The "grenade" idea of blowing spacetime in the nodes is a further development on the idea of how we are incredibly insignificant in the wider history of the universe, and that aspect was part and parcel of the "Freespace tone". At least in the second.

I brought up "Old Man's War" for a reason. I don't want to spoil the book, read it.

 

Offline mjn.mixael

  • Cutscene Master
  • 212
  • Chopped liver
    • Steam
    • Twitter
And all of the hundreds of fan mods and stories that have been written and/or made over the last decade all adhere to "stock Freespace tone"? Or, do you really think they have to? I, for one, encourage new ideas and new stories to try out. Especially nuclear options that have the potential to inspire countless other new ideas by breaking away from what we've done for ten years.

I don't see the point in shackling yourself to the Freespace universe at all if you're going to be doing something that drastic.
*yawn* Whatever dude.

Perhaps I like the characters and basic setting? What if I wanted to like follow Bosch's journey in a "down the rabbit hole", 'Alice in Wonderland' style. I could see the time differential stuff being a great asset to disorient the characters, maybe the player.. who knows? I'm just saying that it's an interesting idea to tinker with and someone may find it inspiring! Don't discount an idea completely for the entire community just because it doesn't fit your personal version of Freespace tone or whatever.
Cutscene Upgrade Project - Mainhall Remakes - Between the Ashes
Youtube Channel - P3D Model Box
Between the Ashes is looking for committed testers, PM me for details.
Freespace Upgrade Project See what's happening.

 

Offline Lorric

  • 212
There are quite a number of reasons why you would want to bring up a whole cloth of baggage into your "new thing". One of them might be that you want to subvert expectations. Other might be that you want to unravel other facets to the "universe" that weren't apparent in the original but are somehow "lurking beneath". The "grenade" idea of blowing spacetime in the nodes is a further development on the idea of how we are incredibly insignificant in the wider history of the universe, and that aspect was part and parcel of the "Freespace tone". At least in the second.

I brought up "Old Man's War" for a reason. I don't want to spoil the book, read it.
You could just put your own stamp on it, kind of like with that Another Great War campaign. Or an alternate universe thing.

And the book, I'll certainly second that, along with the sequels.

 

Offline Luis Dias

  • 211
Of course you can. My point is that you can also use FreeSpace universe to do it, and that doing so is not an idiotic exercise, much to the contrary.

 

Offline Lorric

  • 212
Of course you can. My point is that you can also use FreeSpace universe to do it, and that doing so is not an idiotic exercise, much to the contrary.
I agree. And I know what you were getting at with Old Man's War too. It's certainly an interesting direction to imagine going in.

 

Offline karajorma

  • King Louie - Jungle VIP
  • Administrator
  • 214
    • Karajorma's Freespace FAQ
Well the idea of nodes being from different times does suffer from one problem, how come no one else has noticed Capella has gone supernova? Capella would have to be the star furthest forwards in time or someone at one of the other nodes would have noticed it was gone.

On the other hand if you decide that is true and make it part of the reason the Shivans blew up Capella.....
Karajorma's Freespace FAQ. It's almost like asking me yourself.

[ Diaspora ] - [ Seeds Of Rebellion ] - [ Mind Games ]

 

Offline Herra Tohtori

  • The Academic
  • 211
  • Bad command or file name
People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint - it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff...

Time differences only cause paradoxes if things are stuck on linear path from past to future. This is sort of like the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics. Things can happen differently, and all the differences branch out into their own time line.

It really is kind of a neat way to avoid paradoxes altogether. It would still enable screwy stuff like meddling with a past.  Let's say you took a trip from Earth to Delta Serpentis, and it turns out you're in 4,000 BCE (Earth time). If you could send a sub-light ship to Earth, you could introduce miraculous technology, pretend to be gods, and build some pyramids while you're at it just to screw with future generations. But it wouldn't really change the history of the GTVA because that history is already happened, and cannot be changed. You would massively change the future of the past-Earth that branches out to a new, unforeseen direction.

If that were the case I would expect them to have some sort of Prime Directive against this sort of stuff happening, but as we all know, starship commanders are known to ignore or circumvent the Prime Directive in certain circumstances.


The node network allows a stellar civilization like the GTVA to have continuity and fast communications, but it could mean the locations connected to the network belong to arbitrary time-lines. But, it doesn't necessarily preclude systems in the node network from being close to each other in the "galactic time" and you might still be able to effectively communicate with other system - like between Alpha Centauri and Earth - if the differences between the time-lines are small enough. In fact, all the time-lines should be reasonably close to each other, otherwise there would be noticeable differences in star locations and whatnot.

An interesting result of this kind of system would be that if a node is destabilized and then re-established by whatever means, it may connect to a different time line. Maybe ancient aliens have the ability to pick and choose which time line they want to connect to...
There are three things that last forever: Abort, Retry, Fail - and the greatest of these is Fail.

  

Offline headdie

  • i don't use punctuation lol
  • 212
  • Lawful Neutral with a Chaotic outook
    • Minecraft
    • Skype
    • Twitter
    • Headdie on Deviant Art
and if shivan mastery of subspace allows them to move between time/space reference points then a small spacial territory would potentially have near infinite occupation.  would also allow then to select corresponding tech levels to respond to different threats and to bypass navigation difficulties experienced by races limited to a singular point of reference
Minister of Interstellar Affairs Sol Union - Retired
quote General Battuta - "FRED is canon!"
Contact me at [email protected]
My Release Thread, Old Release Thread, Celestial Objects Thread, My rubbish attempts at art

 

Offline -Sara-

  • 29
I always stuck with a pseudo-scientific explanation: The massive subspace node collapse made an impenetrable void which corrupts any and all kinds of communication.
Currently playing: real life.

"Paying bills, working, this game called real life is so much fun!" - Said nobody ever.

 

Offline Goober5000

  • HLP Loremaster
  • 214
    • Goober5000 Productions
Re radio communication...

Something that not many people consider is that it's really hard to send radio over long distances.  Look at all the trouble we have communicating with New Horizons, and that's only 30 AU from Earth.

 
Aren't there other ways of communication though? Such as a long range laser?

 

Offline BirdofPrey

  • 28
  • Help! I see GIMP in my sleep
Do bear in mind the size of its antenna is limited.
If it were of comparable size to the ground stations, it would be much less difficult.

Granted if the GVA isn't using radio as much anymore they might lack the large ground stations on both ends.  They may not have decided to build radio telescopes in any of the systems near Sol
The Great War ended 30 years ago.
Our elders tell stories of a glorious civilization; of people with myths of humanity everlasting, who hurled themselves into the void of space with no fear.

In testing: Radar Icons

 

Offline -Sara-

  • 29
Also, who's to say that they didn't already make contact with Earth and have genuine reasons to not inform the public because of <insert bad news here>?
Currently playing: real life.

"Paying bills, working, this game called real life is so much fun!" - Said nobody ever.