You want to know what my real dream project is? I would like to create an original freespace mod which takes place in this setting. It is a setting I have been thinking about for awahile and at one point I wanted to become a professional developer just to see the dream of making it. (we've all been there) Well this is the thread of dreams, so I will indulge:
Distance causes problems. As a civilization expands, the time it takes information and capital to reach the outer edges increases. When the planet Earth was nearing the second millennium, technology all but solved the issues caused by distance. Air travel and wireless communication brought humanity closer than ever. Progress was fast and the next level of expansion was inevitable, expansion into space.
Colonies appeared in the obvious locations: the Earth's moon, Mars, various moons around Jupiter and Saturn. Humanity stayed comfortably within the solar boundary until more advanced terraforming methods were developed and more efficient material harvesting. With the artificial mutation of plants to be able to inhabit near intolerable conditions, less dependency was on the surface of planets and more placed on large integrated networks of floating spacecraft. These floating colonies grew less and less dependent on their distance from life giving planets and the sun itself. Colonies started to separate themselves in culture, dialect and national identity. This is all before the next level of human expansion took place.
Some colonies closely studied the orbit of nearby star systems. They saw opportunities to intercept these star systems, opportunities which would only be possible between thousands or even millions of years. The nearby planets and other celestial objects, were studied for material content, and environment factors at long range. They found new resources, free of synthetic pollutants and best of all it didn't need to be shared. Eventually, some colonies felt confident enough to take the leap and begin the journey to entire new star systems. These journeys, made with future generations in mind, would take hundreds of years. Though there were tragedies, many were successful.
Those that made the journeys found themselves in the midst of a terraformed paradise. They traveled to many different star systems, mostly
determined by distance This form of expansion left the once peoples of Earth isolated: delayed radio communication, no exchange of material goods and political separation. The wall of distance caused the exchange of ideas between these societies to dwindle as they became culturally separate. Over the next thousand years, the 'root' colonies which made the initial journeys to these new star systems spawned their own unique race of humans. Each race expanded further into their own star system and beyond, continuing their slow and sure cultural divide. From this point, history splits between the root colonies...
..Many years later the discovery of subspace was made on Earth, a radical invention which allowed ships to be able to travel between star systems is mere moments. An invention which would spread culture shock and so much more throughout the human inhabited galaxy.
A few things holding me back is that the ideas I have for such a mod are big in scope, roughly the size of a single blue planet installment. Something which would communicate the setting in an entertaining way with unique gameplay features and an immersive storyline. Something which would take me at least more than a year working on it, and I have been becoming increasingly more busy as the professional world tightens its grip on me. Another thing about this setting is that it has nothing to do with freespace, which I originally wanted to make a mod for when I joined HLP and as of yet have not.
