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Post by petrifiedwalnut on Jan 15, 2017 6:55:51 GMT
Hello, first post - I am interested in buying this game, but am having some concerns about maintaining suspension of disbelief in whether I could enjoy it. Specifically, while this game seems to pride itself (and rightfully so) in its physics, based on what little information I have been able to glean about it on the internet the same cannot be said for the game's biology.
To put this in context: I am a paleontologist. As such I am aware that the Earth has been here, and been inhabited (albeit not by sentient life) for billions of years, and has undergone a long list of colossal insults that present and foreseeable future human civilizations can only dream of. From what I have read (on TVTropes - I have not found a game manual or any other source of backstory online), the Earth is "dead" on account of objects directed into it, "weaponized climate change", and nuclear war. Earth has had all of these things happen to it in the past, just not intentionally. Despite this, life has survived, admittedly sustaining a mass extinction or five in the process, but nonetheless complex multicellular life is still here, as witness me writing on this forum and you reading it.
Now, I can imagine human technology getting to the point where we potentially could effectively destroy the planet, but to do that said technology would likely have to invoke Clarke's third law. As a result, the spacecraft of which I have seen screenshots would not look like anything that a modern civilization would build - they'd look more like the eponymous spacecraft in Rendervous with Rama, crewed by manufactured biological robots, or similarly outlandish but requiring passage through fairly hard technological singularity to achieve.
So, to put forward the question: is it important that the Earth be uninhabitable (and, relatedly, just how uninhabitable is it)? Could I enjoy this game without the constant problem that Earth is (unrealistically) desolate?
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Post by cuddlefish on Jan 15, 2017 6:58:10 GMT
It's part of the kooky backstory that justifies the ever-so-serious scenario that's all just a fancy excuse to get spaceships fighting in the solar system. The plot is... not the game's focus, or strong suit.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 15, 2017 8:10:22 GMT
In my view, with Earth being dead, people will try their best to survive, forming factions fighting for survival (not controlled by Earth), and probably the technology lag we saw in the game. (Just where are the fusion reactors, anyways?)
I have a project that focuses about what if our Earth isn't dead: Project Prosperous.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 15, 2017 8:22:49 GMT
A lot of people want to go to space, but unfortunately those are just the vocal one. Majority of people on Earth just want to stay here and die on Earth even when space is in reach SO LET GO AND FULFILL THEIR WISHES.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 15, 2017 8:36:43 GMT
And yes, if there is no trouble on Earth, people won't move out. CoaDE's cataclysm is just to force millions out of Earth. In my Prosperous project, the NESR and EAM's nuclear threat did this.
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Post by dragonkid11 on Jan 15, 2017 8:44:14 GMT
What do you know? Apparently all you need to get people in space is MURDERRRRRRR.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 15, 2017 9:00:49 GMT
The "Dead Earth" involved is the result of a whole slew of compounded catastrophes that rapidly bookended each other. But yeah it's mainly there to get a situation where crazed resource hoarding mega-states with fleets can fight.
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Post by petrifiedwalnut on Jan 15, 2017 18:43:56 GMT
Yeah; the problem, though, is that there are lots of ways to make Earth uninhabitable for people without making rendering the planet lifeless. 99% of all species that have ever existed are exinct, so there is nothing wrong with humans making their own survival on Earth impossible (although, admittedly, space is going to be more hostile than the Earth is).
Astronavigator, can you tell me more about your project? I've seen a couple of mods, one aimed at terraforming the entire solar system (which is about as plausible as Venusiforming the Earth), and one aimed at adding the Kerbal solar system to ours (neat idea...). What about the campaign, though?
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Post by thorneel on Jan 15, 2017 19:00:42 GMT
If I remember correctly, there wasn't that much nuclear weapons used ("come on, we are civilised people!"), but one side blackened the ice caps to melt them and drown the coastal regions of the other (and everyone else, but who care at this point?), and the other one replied by throwing a dinokiller in the middle of the enemy's heartlands, mostly obliterating them. Said asteroid may have been bigger and slower, though, as the original dinokiller was in retrograde orbit. I find highly unlikely that this (even with whatever else a massive war, including burning megapolis, would have) would have caused a runaway greenhouse spiral until oceans boil and Earth turns into a new Venus, and equally unlikely that it was easier to send millions upon millions in space (even with existing space elevators and infrastructure) than reversing the effect by, for example, creating massive clouds or other albedo-increasing techniques to cool Earth down. In fact, an asteroid impact would probably have more chances to cause a meteoric winter and a less deadly or definitive runaway Snowball Earth.
Which is why I suggested replacing the asteroid with a giant comet that was fragmented soon before impact, causing a series of airbursts carpet-bombing the nation (and probably a few neighbours, strategic meteoric bombardment is not yet an exact science at this point): this way, not only we get more greenhouse gas water vapour in the air, hoping it doesn't condense into albedo-increasing clouds along the way, but we also get less sun-reducing ash and the energy of impact will go more into heating the atmosphere up and less into deforming and heating the ground. Or the asteroid impact actually caused a meteoric winter and the bright politicians valiantly leading Earth's stricken polities across this crisis thought the best way to fix it was to voluntarily cause a massive global warming, whose consequences "couldn't get worse anyway", and the rest is Venus Wannabe history. I wouldn't even be surprised if that was actually what happened, but said politicians carefully edited their role out of official History in killing Earth to death once and for all.
That said, I know exactly how you feel, and generally inconsistencies in the background like that irk me very easily. However, here it didn't bother me much. First, the background is fortunately not that important, and is pretty transparent about being an excuse for a non-Earth-dominated solar system where we can throw ships at each-other in various hilarious ways. Second, the tone of the campaign is, in my opinion, just cheeky enough. It becomes increasingly clear that you work for bad people - and that you are in the joke yourself - but in a way that is never quite takes itself seriously enough that you can't laugh about it.
So from a hard-SF and consistency fan to another, don't let it bother you!
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 15, 2017 19:09:22 GMT
Yeah when you start reading about the child ice slave-mines of Saturn's rings, you start to get the comedic inference just a bit.
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Post by cuddlefish on Jan 15, 2017 20:03:12 GMT
It honestly feels very Metal Gear, in its moralizing about its own strange idea of how the world works. Taking it seriously is counterindicated.
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Post by argonbalt on Jan 15, 2017 20:48:21 GMT
It honestly feels very Metal Gear, in its moralizing about its own strange idea of how the world works. Taking it seriously is counterindicated. That depends on the Metal Gear.
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Post by petrifiedwalnut on Jan 15, 2017 23:02:41 GMT
... I find highly unlikely that this (even with whatever else a massive war, including burning megapolis, would have) would have caused a runaway greenhouse spiral until oceans boil and Earth turns into a new Venus, and equally unlikely that it was easier to send millions upon millions in space (even with existing space elevators and infrastructure) than reversing the effect by, for example, creating massive clouds or other albedo-increasing techniques to cool Earth down. In fact, an asteroid impact would probably have more chances to cause a meteoric winter and a less deadly or definitive runaway Snowball Earth. ... That said, I know exactly how you feel, and generally inconsistencies in the background like that irk me very easily. However, here it didn't bother me much. First, the background is fortunately not that important, and is pretty transparent about being an excuse for a non-Earth-dominated solar system where we can throw ships at each-other in various hilarious ways. Second, the tone of the campaign is, in my opinion, just cheeky enough. It becomes increasingly clear that you work for bad people - and that you are in the joke yourself - but in a way that is never quite takes itself seriously enough that you can't laugh about it. So from a hard-SF and consistency fan to another, don't let it bother you! I see... I suppose I will have to edit TVTropes then (this game is hardness 4, not 5.5). There isn't enough carbon dioxide on Earth outside of carbonate rocks to make it Venus-like, and adding the carbonate rock CO 2 to the atmosphere would require reliance on subduction and mantle convection, which would take a billion years or more. This game is in the same league with Attack Vector: Tactical, which is largely mundane manifesto but for the fact that the spacecraft there have FTL capability. I will have to check out the campaign on YouTube and see if it looks enjoyable enough. Meanwhile I'll check out Project: Prosperous.
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Post by The Astronomer on Jan 15, 2017 23:43:08 GMT
In fact, nobody in the game know how did the Earth die, but thanks for checking out Project Prosperous, anyways.
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Post by thorneel on Jan 15, 2017 23:51:45 GMT
... I find highly unlikely that this (even with whatever else a massive war, including burning megapolis, would have) would have caused a runaway greenhouse spiral until oceans boil and Earth turns into a new Venus, and equally unlikely that it was easier to send millions upon millions in space (even with existing space elevators and infrastructure) than reversing the effect by, for example, creating massive clouds or other albedo-increasing techniques to cool Earth down. In fact, an asteroid impact would probably have more chances to cause a meteoric winter and a less deadly or definitive runaway Snowball Earth. ... That said, I know exactly how you feel, and generally inconsistencies in the background like that irk me very easily. However, here it didn't bother me much. First, the background is fortunately not that important, and is pretty transparent about being an excuse for a non-Earth-dominated solar system where we can throw ships at each-other in various hilarious ways. Second, the tone of the campaign is, in my opinion, just cheeky enough. It becomes increasingly clear that you work for bad people - and that you are in the joke yourself - but in a way that is never quite takes itself seriously enough that you can't laugh about it. So from a hard-SF and consistency fan to another, don't let it bother you! I see... I suppose I will have to edit TVTropes then (this game is hardness 4, not 5.5). There isn't enough carbon dioxide on Earth outside of carbonate rocks to make it Venus-like, and adding the carbonate rock CO 2 to the atmosphere would require reliance on subduction and mantle convection, which would take a billion years or more. This game is in the same league with Attack Vector: Tactical, which is largely mundane manifesto but for the fact that the spacecraft there have FTL capability. I will have to check out the campaign on YouTube and see if it looks enjoyable enough. Meanwhile I'll check out Project: Prosperous. I would keep the 5.5 as it is more of a (slight) mistake than deliberately ignoring/adding an element. Also, it is probably not CO2 that Venused Earth, but massive quantities of H2O. If enough of it is blown into the atmosphere, could it create a runaway greenhouse effect? For the tone of the campaign, here is how it starts: "Welcome to your first mission, Admiral. Please pay no mind to accusations of nepotism. [...] That means that we will be needing all the commanders in the coming months, so your complete lack of experience is not a problem. [...] And finally, give my regards to your mother, Madam President. Good luck!"
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