[General Battuta]

I think 'because it's awesome' was perfectly fine.

[jr2]

So you'll swallow subspace as possible due to as-yet-undiscovered technology (subspace drives), but not terraforming.  You insist that such technology will make whoever wields it a military superpower without knowing exactly how the technology works -- just that it must!  Cause you assume that the technology works how you preconceive it to work.

[General Battuta]

So you'll swallow subspace as possible due to as-yet-undiscovered technology (subspace drives), but not terraforming.  You insist that such technology will make whoever wields it a military superpower without knowing exactly how the technology works -- just that it must!  Cause you assume that the technology works how you preconceive it to work.

Who are you talking to and why?

[The E]

jr2, the difference is that terraforming is something that has been discussed in SciFi and real science circles for decades. We have pretty good upper and lower boundaries on the amount of effort required.

Suspension of disbelief is something very fragile. I can accept subspace jumps, but for some reason, a nation that can terraform a planet in a few centuries, terraform the Moon, AND build a supermassive fleet on top of that is just a bit too much. Call me peculiar in that regard.

[Mobius]

That's a bit exaggerated for a "nation", but surely not for a faction counting billions and billions of citizens.

I order to criticize the idea, you need to know quite a few things (time span, available technologies, how willing is the faction to do that, available resources, reasons behind that action, possible benefits, etc. etc.) and most of them haven't been mentioned. I think criticizing the idea a priori simply because at first it doesn't sound convincing is a bad approach.

On a side note, Mars was terraformed between 2100 and 2300, which is a plausible and to some degree even pessimistic time span. It is totally unrelated to both the GTA and the EA, as they emerged later: things were already that way, so the EA's only great achievement in terms of terraforming was the Moon.

[The E]

"Nation" can mean many things. Maybe "Faction" would have been the better word, but whatever. And yeah, there is a lot of stuff we don't know.

BUT.

As was discussed in the other thread, the fact that they can do stuff like encasing the moon in domes implies a lot of things about their capabilities. In short, it implies that the EA is massively ahead of the GTVA we know and love on the Kardashev scale. Such changes do not happen over night. And unless you postulate a hard-takeoff singularity (Something we have seen no indication of in established FS2 canon), there really are not that many ways to get to that level of development.

[Mobius]

FS1 canon suggests that Sol was more advanced than any other Terran system and I hardly believe FS2 canon can be of use in this debate.

The GTVA's initial difficulty at gathering enough Argon to mass produce the Prometheus indicates 's will to tell us that Sol is supposed to be superior to other systems.

Also, don't forget that this is Inferno: in INFR1 and INFA, use of Shivan technology is mentioned, and there will be more references in the next INF releases. Beam weapons, nanojumps, combat spacecraft based on their Shivan counterparts... everything indicates that whatever the EA has come out with it is the direct consequence of research on Shivan tech.

Everything will be explained, just avoid this kind of debates until the explanations are posted.

[General Battuta]

Well the big explanation didn't explain anything, so what now?

We still have the problem of the EA apparently having jumped up half a rung on the Kardashev scale. You said how they domed the Moon, but didn't explain how this doesn't allow their fleets to almost literally blot out the sun. A single one of your nanomachines seeded on an asteroid could produce thousands, maybe millions of warships given adequate time.

I'm willing to roll with magic nanotech, though realistic nanotechnology constructors behave a lot more like very industrious sperm. But if you're going to roll out an idea you have to tackle the consequences - or just say 'because it's awesome' and move along.

[Mobius]

The E, please move Battuta's post to the other thread. I created it just to prevent this one from going OT, and apparently he didn't get it.

[The E]

Split from eyecandy thread. Locked, due to there being another discussion of the subject in progress elsethread.