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General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: mosshadow on January 29, 2015, 12:39:47 pm

Title: Contacting Earth
Post by: mosshadow on January 29, 2015, 12:39:47 pm
Just wondering, why is it that the GTVA never tried to contact earth with Sublight ships or short range FTL jumps. During some of the missions command contacts you despite not being near the carrier or any other capital ship so that would imply they have FTL communications across a small area (since they don't talk between nodes). So why didnt they try sending a ship to earth with small jumps from Alpha Centauri (which is 5 light years away) or if that doesn't work they could send dozens of unmanned ships to link up a FTL communications line.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: procdrone on January 29, 2015, 12:49:21 pm
4,3 ly to be precise.

They can't jump out outside the gravity well of the star, that's the subspace drive limitation, only workaround is a jump node.... but the only one connecting to Sol was collapsed during the great war.

They could still try to contact them on the regular FTL transmissions, i bet they could have technology to send messages at that distance, light or laser, idk.

But why not? Because it is a game, and they wanted to build a setting where Sol state is unknown.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 29, 2015, 02:34:15 pm
They almost certainly have contacted Sol, but given the issues of data rate and the like for communication over that distance it's possible that they've learned very little. It's not simple to hold a conversation when you have to wait eight years for a reply.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 29, 2015, 04:35:41 pm
That's assuming that the locations connected by subspace jump nodes are linked to same time through normal space. There is no guarantee that is the case.

Clearly, all locations interconnected by jump nodes share a stable time coordinate, which allows a multi-system civilization to exist in a meaningful sense, and more importantly maintains some kind of story continuum. But the fact that intersystem nodes basically connect parts of space through a shortcut (subspace), it is just as likely that there may be a temporal shift as you travel through the node as well.

Perhaps as you travel from Sol to Delta Serpentis via the original node, you don't emerge in the "same time" as when you left Earth. You may be decades or centuries off. There's really no guarantee. This is not mentioned in the games, but I think it's entirely plausible that traveling to Alpha Centauri through the nodes may actually mean you're in a different time than Earth.


And that's assuming that you're even in the same universe. In fact, since jump nodes leading to future or especially to the past have a tendency to generate brain-imploding paradoxes, it's entirely possible that each jump node leads to a different universe altogether, just to make sure that future Terrans can't communicate with past Earth from Alpha Centauri, or vice versa...
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Lepanto on January 29, 2015, 04:52:28 pm
Just to nail this down, exactly HOW long would it take for non-subspace radio transmissions to travel back and forth between Sol and Alpha Centauri?
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 29, 2015, 05:11:44 pm
Just to nail this down, exactly HOW long would it take for non-subspace radio transmissions to travel back and forth between Sol and Alpha Centauri?

4.3 years one-way, 8.6 years to get a response...not accounting for turnaround time at the destination if they need to think about the response.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Gee1337 on January 29, 2015, 05:14:15 pm
IIRC correctly from GCSE physics lessons, radio waves essentially travel at the speed of light (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Now, I thought Alpha Centauri was actually 4.5 light years away from earth, but TheHound says its 4.3 light years. So, there is your answer for the time it takes a message to go one way!

The only other way to communicate faster than the speed of light, I imagine would involve a technology which would utilise tachyon particles, which can travel faster than light. How fast tachyons travel has not yet been measured as far as I am aware, because I think they are still a theorised exotic particle.

Spoiler:
Blue Planet touches on this in WiH Act 3 when it says that they had already had some kind of contact with earth, which gives reasons for why the Tevs started to attack Sol!

Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Lepanto on January 29, 2015, 05:23:54 pm
Thanks. So it's even more illogical that the FS2 GTVA had no clue what was going on in Sol. Another bit of canon that anyone writing a realistic-ish campaign needs a workaround for.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 29, 2015, 05:25:01 pm
That's assuming that the locations connected by subspace jump nodes are linked to same time through normal space. There is no guarantee that is the case.

Clearly, all locations interconnected by jump nodes share a stable time coordinate, which allows a multi-system civilization to exist in a meaningful sense, and more importantly maintains some kind of story continuum. But the fact that intersystem nodes basically connect parts of space through a shortcut (subspace), it is just as likely that there may be a temporal shift as you travel through the node as well.

Perhaps as you travel from Sol to Delta Serpentis via the original node, you don't emerge in the "same time" as when you left Earth. You may be decades or centuries off. There's really no guarantee. This is not mentioned in the games, but I think it's entirely plausible that traveling to Alpha Centauri through the nodes may actually mean you're in a different time than Earth.


And that's assuming that you're even in the same universe. In fact, since jump nodes leading to future or especially to the past have a tendency to generate brain-imploding paradoxes, it's entirely possible that each jump node leads to a different universe altogether, just to make sure that future Terrans can't communicate with past Earth from Alpha Centauri, or vice versa...

This is such an ugly attempt at patching the universe it's better to just leave the red herring of relativistic communications unmentioned altogether.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 29, 2015, 05:31:09 pm
IIRC correctly from GCSE physics lessons, radio waves essentially travel at the speed of light (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Now, I thought Alpha Centauri was actually 4.5 light years away from earth, but TheHound says its 4.3 light years. So, there is your answer for the time it takes a message to go one way!

The only other way to communicate faster than the speed of light, I imagine would involve a technology which would utilise tachyon particles, which can travel faster than light. How fast tachyons travel has not yet been measured as far as I am aware, because I think they are still a theorised exotic particle.

Spoiler:
Blue Planet touches on this in WiH Act 3 when it says that they had already had some kind of contact with earth, which gives reasons for why the Tevs started to attack Sol!



Radio waves travel at the speed of light because they are light. FTL communication obviously exists in the Freespace universe (your conversations with command don't have any latency, and besides you could just have a courier jump around with your messages); but it seems to follow the same rules as FTL travel: constrained to within a system or through jump nodes.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 29, 2015, 05:36:53 pm
This is such an ugly attempt at patching the universe it's better to just leave the red herring of relativistic communications unmentioned altogether.

Exactly.

That way lies madness.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mjn.mixael on January 29, 2015, 05:38:06 pm
That's assuming that the locations connected by subspace jump nodes are linked to same time through normal space. There is no guarantee that is the case.

Clearly, all locations interconnected by jump nodes share a stable time coordinate, which allows a multi-system civilization to exist in a meaningful sense, and more importantly maintains some kind of story continuum. But the fact that intersystem nodes basically connect parts of space through a shortcut (subspace), it is just as likely that there may be a temporal shift as you travel through the node as well.

Perhaps as you travel from Sol to Delta Serpentis via the original node, you don't emerge in the "same time" as when you left Earth. You may be decades or centuries off. There's really no guarantee. This is not mentioned in the games, but I think it's entirely plausible that traveling to Alpha Centauri through the nodes may actually mean you're in a different time than Earth.


And that's assuming that you're even in the same universe. In fact, since jump nodes leading to future or especially to the past have a tendency to generate brain-imploding paradoxes, it's entirely possible that each jump node leads to a different universe altogether, just to make sure that future Terrans can't communicate with past Earth from Alpha Centauri, or vice versa...

It's unfortunate that this very idea was ignored or dismissed by others... I find it fascinating. Reminds of Interstellar by Nolan. That whole (proven) concept kinda blows my brain a little bit.

PS: I knew when I saw a Herra Tohtori post it was going to be interesting... :)
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 29, 2015, 05:42:52 pm
So in an effort to find interesting tangents to this topic, I observe this: FS intrasystem jumps are, apparently, able to navigate through the entire solar system with ease. In the densest parts of globular clusters, the average distance between stars is about the same distance; so you should be able to jump continuously between hundreds or thousands of stars, as opposed to a single system. Discuss.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: procdrone on January 29, 2015, 05:46:09 pm
Well, I think that command DID contact with Sol, but kept the contact within very high level of security, so alpha 1 couldn't know it, and later, they had more to worry about, like the Shivans.

Only persons like the leader of the security council, or general assembly would be the ones to know.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: niffiwan on January 29, 2015, 05:49:50 pm
So in an effort to find interesting tangents to this topic, I observe this: FS intrasystem jumps are, apparently, able to navigate through the entire solar system with ease. In the densest parts of globular clusters, the average distance between stars is about the same distance; so you should be able to jump continuously between hundreds or thousands of stars, as opposed to a single system. Discuss.

Can habitable planets (for Terrans/Vasudans) exist in globular clusters?  Or would all infrastructure need to exist in orbit?
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mosshadow on January 29, 2015, 05:55:19 pm
Well, I think that command DID contact with Sol, but kept the contact within very high level of security, so alpha 1 couldn't know it, and later, they had more to worry about, like the Shivans.

Only persons like the leader of the security council, or general assembly would be the ones to know.

Why would they keep it secret though? Even if its a slow communication they can use it for morale and information transfer. They should be having all their universities and technical schools sending technology back and forth.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: procdrone on January 29, 2015, 05:56:55 pm
Actually i played a campaign that featured such solution :)

Well, who knows, Command tend to keep things secret, like Bosh and ETAK, they knew all along.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Gee1337 on January 29, 2015, 06:12:18 pm
IIRC correctly from GCSE physics lessons, radio waves essentially travel at the speed of light (someone please correct me if I am wrong). Now, I thought Alpha Centauri was actually 4.5 light years away from earth, but TheHound says its 4.3 light years. So, there is your answer for the time it takes a message to go one way!

The only other way to communicate faster than the speed of light, I imagine would involve a technology which would utilise tachyon particles, which can travel faster than light. How fast tachyons travel has not yet been measured as far as I am aware, because I think they are still a theorised exotic particle.

Spoiler:
Blue Planet touches on this in WiH Act 3 when it says that they had already had some kind of contact with earth, which gives reasons for why the Tevs started to attack Sol!



Radio waves travel at the speed of light because they are light. FTL communication obviously exists in the Freespace universe (your conversations with command don't have any latency, and besides you could just have a courier jump around with your messages); but it seems to follow the same rules as FTL travel: constrained to within a system or through jump nodes.

Yea I did know, but I wasn't entirely sure if my memory was accurate (it's late here in the UK.. so a coupla beers and whiskys n that...).  Yes, there is obviously ftl communication there, but I presumed that it relied on the subspace nodes which is why I didn't mention it as I felt it was covered earlier. However, we could probably do with a resident physicist to maybe shed some light on communication involving tachyon particles to see if it would be possible. If it is, then I would presume that this is a tech that the GTVA has not yet been able to implement.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BritishShivans on January 29, 2015, 06:50:05 pm
this thread is painful to read

I do wonder, however, is anyone interested in the idea of the GTVA/Sol sending each other one-way packages/status updates on each government's situation? The story idea/implications?

you know, rather than "gtva/sol have had literally no contact since earth's jump nodes got nuked" because that's dumb

i'm kinda up for the idea of earth being all "what the **** did you people do. why did capella explode" and the gtva being all "well excuuuuse us it was the shivans"
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 29, 2015, 06:57:09 pm
Can habitable planets (for Terrans/Vasudans) exist in globular clusters?  Or would all infrastructure need to exist in orbit?

No, planets would not be stable enough to support life. I think that makes the environment a bit more interesting in some ways.

i'm kinda up for the idea of earth being all "what the **** did you people do. why did capella explode" and the gtva being all "well excuuuuse us it was the shivans"

Capella's 42ly away from Earth, man.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BritishShivans on January 29, 2015, 07:12:12 pm
No, I mean like, the GTVA sends a status update right after the Capella supernova and get a angry update from Sol years later :P
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mosshadow on January 29, 2015, 07:26:34 pm
No, I mean like, the GTVA sends a status update right after the Capella supernova and get a angry update from Sol years later :P

Thats why they invaded Sol once they got the gate up. The UEF annoyed high command for decades and they want revenge. ;)


Also I have a feeling that the original game devs didn't have Wikipedia in 1998 so they didn't know that Alpha Centauri and Earth were so close.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BirdofPrey on January 29, 2015, 08:22:00 pm
Also I have a feeling that the original game devs didn't have Wikipedia in 1998 so they didn't know that Alpha Centauri and Earth were so close.
I thought that was common knowledge.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: karajorma on January 29, 2015, 09:23:30 pm
I'd expect anyone who knew enough science / sci-fi to pick the stars Freespace has to know roughly how far from us Alpha Centauri is. It's not like they just picked the most famous stars out of the sky.

Barnard's Star for instance. It's only real claim to fame is that it's the next closest star to us after the Alpha Centauri system. You can't even see it with the naked eye. And it's not the only star which appears to have been picked simply because of how close it is to us, Wolf 359 is another example. So I don't think the makers of Freespace simply picked names off a star chart. There does seem to have been some effort to pick nearby stars. With the odd exception like Polaris.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: NGTM-1R on January 29, 2015, 09:47:12 pm
So in an effort to find interesting tangents to this topic, I observe this: FS intrasystem jumps are, apparently, able to navigate through the entire solar system with ease. In the densest parts of globular clusters, the average distance between stars is about the same distance; so you should be able to jump continuously between hundreds or thousands of stars, as opposed to a single system. Discuss.

I actually strongly considered doing this in a campaign once, where a Knossos would have taken you to a glob.

Why would they keep it secret though? Even if its a slow communication they can use it for morale and information transfer.

You're assuming that the news from Earth is good. It's entirely possible there was some kind of societal collapse and that's not going to help.

There may also have been some kind of security concerns about communicating with Earth and the possibility of the Shivans detecting it and learning Earth's relative location and choosing to slowboat and destroy it anyways. After the collapse of the node to Earth, the Shivans were still powerful enough that the GTA thought they might win without the Lucifer.

If they were pursuing a "Liferaft Earth" policy they might have deliberately avoided communicating with Earth. Earth, in turn, having heard nothing since the node collapse, might have deliberately gone dark in the belief that the GTA and PVE lost and they're the only ones left.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: headdie on January 30, 2015, 12:34:36 am
I thought the whole point of the GTVA invasion is because they looked upon Sol and the UEF in particular and decided that public knowledge the UEF and its ideologies would erode support for a military solution to the shivan threat.  knowledge regarding UEF coming from communication/signal intelligence from Sol prior to the probes going through the Sol Gate.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Colonol Dekker on January 30, 2015, 12:56:47 am
Doesn't this belong in blue planet once you choose a particular fan offshoot to adhere to?

#alreadymentioneddeclassifiedtransmissionsfromSol
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Gee1337 on January 30, 2015, 02:40:11 am
I thought the whole point of the GTVA invasion is because they looked upon Sol and the UEF in particular and decided that public knowledge the UEF and its ideologies would erode support for a military solution to the shivan threat.  knowledge regarding UEF coming from communication/signal intelligence from Sol prior to the probes going through the Sol Gate.

I also thought that it was because Sol System had adapted into an independent society with the isolationism that had been forced upon them and the GTVA felt as though Sol would not fall into line upon integrating back into the GTVA, therefore seeing them as a threat to the GTVA as well as a military solution against the Shivans.

What also bugs me is why the Orestes didn't return straight to Delta Serpentis after the discovery of the Vishnans. I mean okay, they didn't want to do things like give their position or intentions away to Sol, but I would have thought that the discovery of a second "super race" would have superseeded any current GTVA agenda, as they should have recalculated what their next actions should have been.

Anyway... I think Dekker is right! I think this thread needs to be shifted to the "Blue Planet" section of the forums. I know that the OP was meant for the generic/vanilla FS2 universe, but Blue Planet was always going to become a major factor in the talking points of this thread.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: The E on January 30, 2015, 02:44:09 am
Yes, but let's talk about other interpretations besides BPs here now.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Gee1337 on January 30, 2015, 03:04:30 am
Ok The E... I will start with that!

There was actually a campaign I played late last year which was a two parter. The first part dealt with the Shivans deciding to let us be alone, then the focus turned inwards with an Earth revolt. I've forgotten the name of the campaign, but communication was actually maintained between Sol and the GTVA, as technology was shared. It meant that both sides had super destroyers in the form of heavily modified Hecate destroyers.

I'll see if I can find it now and edit this post accordingly when I do!

EDIT:- I believe the campaign was Incursion followed by Return to Sol!
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: headdie on January 30, 2015, 03:45:30 am
Yes, but let's talk about other interpretations besides BPs here now.

Sorry, forgot this wasnt in the BP board like these kinds of questions usually are.

A few possible scenarios for keeping things quiet with the population.
BP style Sol society incompatible with current social/political/military doctrine
Sol society collapses into anarchy
Sol at some point for unknown reason refuses continued contact
System wide extinction event such as an infection

anything else?
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: procdrone on January 30, 2015, 04:02:06 am
Ok The E... I will start with that!

There was actually a campaign I played late last year which was a two parter. The first part dealt with the Shivans deciding to let us be alone, then the focus turned inwards with an Earth revolt. I've forgotten the name of the campaign, but communication was actually maintained between Sol and the GTVA, as technology was shared. It meant that both sides had super destroyers in the form of heavily modified Hecate destroyers.

I'll see if I can find it now and edit this post accordingly when I do!

EDIT:- I believe the campaign was Incursion followed by Return to Sol!

I believe it was something as simple as "Return to Sol", or something like that. I mentioned that campaign earlier.

And you BP lovers, don't hijack the thread! BP is not canon!
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 06:52:30 am
That's assuming that the locations connected by subspace jump nodes are linked to same time through normal space. There is no guarantee that is the case.

Clearly, all locations interconnected by jump nodes share a stable time coordinate, which allows a multi-system civilization to exist in a meaningful sense, and more importantly maintains some kind of story continuum. But the fact that intersystem nodes basically connect parts of space through a shortcut (subspace), it is just as likely that there may be a temporal shift as you travel through the node as well.

Perhaps as you travel from Sol to Delta Serpentis via the original node, you don't emerge in the "same time" as when you left Earth. You may be decades or centuries off. There's really no guarantee. This is not mentioned in the games, but I think it's entirely plausible that traveling to Alpha Centauri through the nodes may actually mean you're in a different time than Earth.


And that's assuming that you're even in the same universe. In fact, since jump nodes leading to future or especially to the past have a tendency to generate brain-imploding paradoxes, it's entirely possible that each jump node leads to a different universe altogether, just to make sure that future Terrans can't communicate with past Earth from Alpha Centauri, or vice versa...

This is such an ugly attempt at patching the universe it's better to just leave the red herring of relativistic communications unmentioned altogether.

I actually think it's an incredible possibility that I hadn't thought about, and the closest reference I can come up with is something brought out from Old Man's War. Patches of space completely independent from each other both in space but also in time, it's an incredible sci fi setup! I absolutely love it. It brings up paradoxes on their own but that could be dealt with if you thought it through. I'm surprised here. I really am.

Doesn't mean I think it's "FS canon". Of course not. It more resembles something from Sync than FreeSpace. But Sync does exist.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 06:56:51 am
So in an effort to find interesting tangents to this topic, I observe this: FS intrasystem jumps are, apparently, able to navigate through the entire solar system with ease. In the densest parts of globular clusters, the average distance between stars is about the same distance; so you should be able to jump continuously between hundreds or thousands of stars, as opposed to a single system. Discuss.

Alpha Centauri is a collection of four stars. I had envisaged one possible mod that would deal with situations like these, where you can even add narrative tension when you have two stars *almost close enough* for simple jumps, but not *quite*. You end up having to have multiple jumps, every one less effective than the last, in a kind of attempt of trying to bridge two close islands. In such a scenario, there's always the danger of ending up in the "middle of the black ocean" so to speak, and that dread is a good source of material.

More to your point, that kind of system reminds me of Valerian and the Empire of a thousand planets.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: karajorma on January 30, 2015, 07:39:25 am
Alpha Centauri is 3 not 4 starts. Close enough though. :)


EDIT : I did have an idea once that the GTVA and Sol had tried communicating but had ****ed up in how they did it.

Probably the way that we'd think of sending out signals would be by radio since we already have radio telescopes and have already used them to send messages into space (although for some reason I've never quite understood we sent them to places thousands of light years away rather than next door). But the possibility is that technologies in the intervening years made those obsolete (for instance using message lasers for talking between Mars and Earth in pre-jump drive days is something that might have become commonplace).

Now suppose GTA technologies made radio astronomy obsolete for some reason. Maybe the GTVA tried building new radio telescopes in Alpha Centauri but Sol went with building a giant message laser. If both sides thought the other side did the same thing, they'd simply miss each other's messages and assume there was a very good reason why the other side kept so quiet. After a few months or years, they'd probably stop transmitting in case the Shivans were responsible for the other side going quiet.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BirdofPrey on January 30, 2015, 07:56:18 am
I wonder if they have the means to make a sublight interstellar craft.
It would take a couple decades, but they could have sent an expedition.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: karajorma on January 30, 2015, 08:07:45 am
Well the first Ancients cutscene does suggest that some form of interstellar travel (perhaps even FTL but still much slower than subspace) is possible.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 30, 2015, 08:27:43 am
I actually think it's an incredible possibility that I hadn't thought about, and the closest reference I can come up with is something brought out from Old Man's War. Patches of space completely independent from each other both in space but also in time, it's an incredible sci fi setup! I absolutely love it. It brings up paradoxes on their own but that could be dealt with if you thought it through. I'm surprised here. I really am.

Doesn't mean I think it's "FS canon". Of course not. It more resembles something from Sync than FreeSpace. But Sync does exist.

It's a cool idea but it's completely opposed to the stock Freespace tone. That's why it's a bad answer to the radio question; it's like using a hand grenade to kill a mosquito.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 09:07:43 am
Alpha Centauri is 3 not 4 starts. Close enough though. :)

pafffffff
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mjn.mixael on January 30, 2015, 09:38:09 am
I actually think it's an incredible possibility that I hadn't thought about, and the closest reference I can come up with is something brought out from Old Man's War. Patches of space completely independent from each other both in space but also in time, it's an incredible sci fi setup! I absolutely love it. It brings up paradoxes on their own but that could be dealt with if you thought it through. I'm surprised here. I really am.

Doesn't mean I think it's "FS canon". Of course not. It more resembles something from Sync than FreeSpace. But Sync does exist.

It's a cool idea but it's completely opposed to the stock Freespace tone. That's why it's a bad answer to the radio question; it's like using a hand grenade to kill a mosquito.

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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 10:08:40 am
Not even FreeSpace 2 adheres to "stock Freespace tone".
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BirdofPrey on January 30, 2015, 10:09:27 am
Just what IS the Freespace tone?
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 10:13:25 am
FreeSpace one: StarShip Troopers with a hint of Alien.
FreeSpace two: Lovecraft to the End.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Lorric on January 30, 2015, 10:18:39 am
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

Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Phantom Hoover on January 30, 2015, 10:24:17 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 10:36:41 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mjn.mixael on January 30, 2015, 10:40:29 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Lorric on January 30, 2015, 10:45:39 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Luis Dias on January 30, 2015, 10:55:28 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Lorric on January 30, 2015, 11:02:43 am
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: karajorma on January 30, 2015, 07:49:24 pm
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.....
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Herra Tohtori on January 31, 2015, 05:32:19 am
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...
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: headdie on January 31, 2015, 08:33:31 am
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
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: -Sara- on January 31, 2015, 01:06:47 pm
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.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: Goober5000 on January 31, 2015, 03:35:53 pm
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 (http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/01300800-talking-to-pluto-is-hard.html), and that's only 30 AU from Earth.
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: mosshadow on January 31, 2015, 03:40:13 pm
Aren't there other ways of communication though? Such as a long range laser?
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: BirdofPrey on January 31, 2015, 04:23:48 pm
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
Title: Re: Contacting Earth
Post by: -Sara- on January 31, 2015, 08:26:30 pm
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>?