anyone up for another Chiron Chronicles?

[Illuminatus]

How about this:

[Illuminatus]

Anyway I doubt we could send a probe to AC system, have it return data, then assemble a selfsustaining starship carrying 70 000 people and all neccesary materials for creation of self sustaining colonies on an alien world by 2160. We cant manafacture a ship that would travel at average by 1/10 lightspeed. And further, if used as much real conditions as possible, by 2200, first colonies would probably be expanded to just two or three bases if luckly. Let alone travelling from one side of continent to another, having armies. So we need sacrifice a thing or two. I originaly meant for Planet Cult to be faction formed when two renegade colony pods followed charismatic child Cha Down through portal in monolith which mysteriously vanished after that, emerging in ruins. That would give importance to Ruins, giving them special powers that Planet Cult seeks to unlock, but so do Progenitors.

[Mellian]

okay, basing on the canon info that we know from the official background stories, info in the game (tech, datalink and etc descriptions), and so on....U.N.S. Unity was launched on 2060 from earth to Alpha Centauri which is around 4 lightyears away, hence the ship was travelling at 1 lightyear per 10 years. Unity's engines were Fusion powered, indicating that humanity on earth developed fusion power sometime before they started building Unity, which i figure took around 10-15 years, considering it is a United Nations effort, hence an international effort which a lot of important countries with aerospace tech joined in the effort. a lot of the other techs that came with Unity to AC was purposly researched and develop for colonization. I could see the world be able to build such a ship in 50-60 years from now, if we were quite determined, which the SMACverse earth was.

also, Unity didn't have exactly 70k people on the ship, hence i guess 100k colonists. also keep in mind there was actually eight colony pods, just that was unuseable due to sabotage, or exploded soon after ejecting from Unity due to sabotage.

as sending a probe and etc...i am getting the impression that they basing on the fact there a good chance there is a habitable world in alpha centauri using info acquired from powerful telescopes, which could improve considerably in the next while. heck, they are able to see the shadow of gas planets in some other nearby systems when it goes between its sun and us, using the best of telescopes now, and gas planets do help give a better idea wether there can be a habitable world or not in a particular system. so i think they sent Unity, taking the risk that there may be no planet they can colonize, or wether the planet will be perfect enough for their needs.

the colonists did find a world they can colonize, but not as good as they like due to the high nitrogen and low oxygen content in the atmosphere, lack or no fossil fuels and etc. yet, they equipment, tech and etc they started with design for an atmosphere that may not suit their needs. colonists themselves i am sure had a lot of training before they went off to AC, so they know what they ae doing, despite the factionizing and the problems they had in unity after they woke up.

as for how many bases they can establish by 2200...well that would depend on each faction, where they located and what kind of conditions and circumstances they have to deal with. also, they have the tech to extend a human life span, developed on Earth sometime before or during the contruction of Unity, which will help the survival rate of the colonies, a long with other medical tech they developed as well back on earth.

so ya...and the portal idea could work, which Cha Down found out with the help of Planet, who still collectively retain some knowledge of the Proginators from way back when they created Manifold Six / Chiron....but rather have the Caretakers on the same continent as the Cult than the Usurpers, who would probably rather take over the Cult faction than working with to find out more about the Ruins.

-mellian

[Mellian]

no one still haven't commented or suggested a name for this story

for now, i'll just call it World of Chiron, and will change if anyone can think of something better.

now i am going to create the Datalinks thread, this time with links and etc to help find stuff in the thread than requiring to go through the whole thing for information.

so for now, don't post in that thread until i remove the UNDER CONTRUCTION in the first post of it

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

Well would you send 100 000 colonists to a place where might be inhabitable planets, while the have Mars in our very own solar system. Sure, it will be hard to colonize but it is there and there won`t be a chance that 40 year journey is actually a space coffin for 100 000 people? Not mentioning lightyears away. SMACverse Earth is very determined, but still ship would not only contain colonists but tons of material used until colonies couldnt manage for themselves. It would atake in best case at least 30 years to build it, not mentioning that its sole proportion would be enormous. I would take months, in best case, to setup basic hydroponic farms, and there is material extraction from completely alien world. And in game we can see that colony pods look strangely slow, I doubt they could hold 200 mebers let alone cryofreezed 10 000, along with raw materials, equipment, food, supplies etc. If a ship traverses distances ten times slower than the light that indeed sounds like 1/10 of lightspeed.

Anyway, we could switch Caretaker/Usurper since they would most likely cooperate (in attacking me :sacred: ).
And you don`t even have an inkling what I have in mind for Cha Down and Deidre.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Mellian
no one still haven't commented or suggested a name for this story


-mellian

Ahem..

History of the end of humanity.

Humanity amongst stars.

Chiron epics.

Lords of Chiron.

Beyond Earth ( ).

Humanity away.

Last story of humanity.

etc.

Like any?

[Mellian]

Originally posted by obstructor
Well would you send 100 000 colonists to a place where might be inhabitable planets, while the have Mars in our very own solar system. Sure, it will be hard to colonize but it is there and...*snip*

well, there is no mentioning anywhere as to how they got the ship built... also doesn't mention wether they been to mars or not, but would make sense for some major nations, like USA and China, to start another space race, with mars as the target at some point...and for that to happen, they have to develop the tech and infrastructure to make it happen, which will continue to improve as other major nations not interests in seeing some of them taking control of the space around earth. I could also see UN, once they fix themselves up, establalish some presense in space moderate what is going up there between nations.... by the time the UNS Unity idea came around, the world would have enough of a foundation to make that ship a reality.

SMACverse Earth is very determined, but still ship would not only contain colonists but tons of material used until colonies couldnt manage for themselves.

also the stuff they brought is base on the idea that they start establish the ability to manage for themselves as quickly as possible. i curious how big the Unity Pods are...considering they are big enough to hold Foils and Rovers, and automated robots to plant farms and etc.

And in game we can see that colony pods look strangely slow, I doubt they could hold 200 mebers let alone cryofreezed 10 000, along with raw materials, equipment, food, supplies etc.

yes well, have to take things in the game abtractly like i doubt they would send whole, exact 10 000 people with a colony pod to go establish a base. I can see them sending some people going with the colony pod, which is a prefab start-up base like those MCVs in the Command and Conquer games or the MCV like units in the Battlezone games just not quickly established like it appears in those games. once the basics is established, rest of the folks move to the new base....as it appears in the game, they have about a year to establish a base.

there is a smac base pic somewhere on the net that shows a good example of start up-early chironian base.

Anyway, we could switch Caretaker/Usurper since they would most likely cooperate (in attacking me :sacred: ).
And you don`t even have an inkling what I have in mind for Cha Down and Deidre.

i'm sure i don't just as long the ruins ends shooting some powerful being into space, or gane control of planet and all the mindworms and other bit extreme stuff....at least not without discussing with others.

anyway, back to working on the datalinks thread....

-mellian

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Mellian



i'm sure i don't just as long the ruins ends shooting some powerful being into space, or gane control of planet and all the mindworms and other bit extreme stuff....at least not without discussing with others.

anyway, back to working on the datalinks thread....

-mellian

Haven`t even though on Ruins with that. You see, no idea...

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by obstructor
Well would you send 100 000 colonists to a place where might be inhabitable planets,

Shoot me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that 'only' 7000 colonists were on board of Unity.

I know the game indicates that 1 pop unit is 10000 people, but in the beginning of the game this number should be taken with a large grain of salt.

Also remember that the Unity crashes on Chiron's surface, thus only what was launched with the Unity Pods could be recovered. The colony pods themself were strictly for humans and light utensils. Certainly no heavy equipment could be brought down with it, and don't forget that people left Unity under emergency evacuation.

And for Obstructor's remark about possible habitable planets: I'm a bit home in exoplanet news, and it is today already possible to determine the gasses of an exoplanet's atmosphere. Last month oxygen was discovered on a jovian exoplanet.

Thus Unity wasn't a 'wild shot' then in this light. Perhaps not the amount of oxygen on Chiron could be determined, but surely the presence of it. Also, today exoplanets the mass of Saturn can be detected, and that is from Earths surface. With a dedicated spacebased telescope exoplanets a bit heavier then earth can be found in the next decade (if that mission gets off the ground, at least). And last time I checked, Chiron is heavier then earth

Hopes this helps your project.

[Mellian]

Originally posted by GeoModder Shoot me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall that 'only' 7000 colonists were on board of Unity.

I know the game indicates that 1 pop unit is 10000 people, but in the beginning of the game this number should be taken with a large grain of salt.

i seem to recall the Journey story not mentioning how many colonists there was exactly with unity, and not everyone was awaken from cryo for the majority of the story. also, if you carefully watch the SMAC intro movie, you can count a total of eight colony pods, just one of them blew up in space. i don't remember finishing reading the Journey, so may be missing some details. heck, i plan to re-read it to re-familarize with the verse.

Also remember that the Unity crashes on Chiron's surface, thus only what was launched with the Unity Pods could be recovered. The colony pods themself were strictly for humans and light utensils. Certainly no heavy equipment could be brought down with it, and don't forget that people left Unity under emergency evacuation

.

i always assumed that the Unity and Colony Pods were pre-packaged with supplies, equipment, some resources and etc before launching Unity. while we do have to take things from in the game abstractly, i do think they had what they needed to initially set up a settlement. of course, they would have been better off if unity didn't get struck by an asteroid, survived its arrival around Chiron and do things according to plan, but everything seem to have been designed and planned for emergencies, hence having Unity Pods which ejects from Unity whenever they have to evacuate the ship for some emergency reason, considering the designers and builders don't even know if Unity will even survive the trip to alpha centauri or its arrival.

oh, don't one start a default game with a base and a colony pod? if so, doesn't mean abstractly, the first factions start out with around 20 000 colonists?

-mellian

[Mellian]

Originally posted by obstructor


Haven`t even though on Ruins with that. You see, no idea...

first of all, sorry for the bad writing in that post...i typed quickly and forgot to double check it for errors, which i do that a lot...

second, just wanted to make sure to be careful with crazy ideas concerning the Ruins and other landmarks in a co-operative story.

in the Chiron Chronicles before, it started out with someone taking control of the Planetmind, hence pretty much all of the wild mindworms and etc....well, she went a bit with it, and planetmind also ended up being to sentient and human...which is something i can only imagine happen way later in the 2300s and on, basing from the background planetmind related stories when playing the game. in turn, it caused a lot of problems with other authors, especially when she doesn't talk about all the stuff she is about to do with planetmind in the story, which in turn tend to interfere with what other authors try to do with their plots.

anyway....

-mellian

[Mellian]

okay, i started reading the story...Unity had ten thousand people. sorry for the mistake...

-mellian

[GeoModder]

Originally posted by Mellian
okay, i started reading the story...Unity had ten thousand people. sorry for the mistake...

-mellian

/me acknowledges

And as for the colony supplies, those unity pods were those supplies.

[Mellian]

there was supplies in the colony pods as well.

edit after finishing re-reading journey to centauri: they also seem to have enough time to distribute as much supplies and equipment possible to each their colony pods as well.

-mellian

[GeoModder]

Yes, you're right. After all, the senior officers agreed to divide specific equipment among themselfes.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by GeoModder


And for Obstructor's remark about possible habitable planets: I'm a bit home in exoplanet news, and it is today already possible to determine the gasses of an exoplanet's atmosphere. Last month oxygen was discovered on a jovian exoplanet.

Thus Unity wasn't a 'wild shot' then in this light. Perhaps not the amount of oxygen on Chiron could be determined, but surely the presence of it. Also, today exoplanets the mass of Saturn can be detected, and that is from Earths surface. With a dedicated spacebased telescope exoplanets a bit heavier then earth can be found in the next decade (if that mission gets off the ground, at least). And last time I checked, Chiron is heavier then earth


Hopes this helps your project.

This is just a wildshot, Geo, since not mere presence of oxygen is needed for a planet to be habitable. What if it is rich with poisonous gases (ok this is stupid since we can see tha in SMAC people refer to toxic atmosphere). Is there liquid water and is it mostly water? That could be check too by next generations of telescopes but frankly I do not think we can accomplish anything big in science. Aside for m the Humane Genom Project, there were big projects that have failed. Apollo program was shut down abruptly, construction of the Supercollider has been called off simply because "discoveries that it could make would not enable any practical appliances". Recent space initiave declared by Mr Dorky is just a big laugh. I am afraid it will taked maybe 70 years to walk on Mars, not 20 or 30 . There is much talk but there is little action. If only advances in field of medicine, nanotechnology and computers could be replicated in other fields too.

BTW where did you read the exact amount of colonists Geo?

And why don`t you join us? We could use more writers.

[Mellian]

Captain Garland says in the 'Journey to Centauri' official intro story that Unity had a crew of 10 000.

of course, base on the story, over a thousand or more didn't survive the cryo sleep either because of the meteor impact, didn't survive cryo due to malfunctions caused by other things, died because of some sabotage, died due to the infighting before and during the rush to get into colony pods, and failed to get into a colony pod in time.

so not sure exactly how many people each colony pod ended up having, but it is obvious that i would be even and that many in all the pods didn't join a pod base on some ideology. i figure there is an average of 1000 to each pod, and i think for story purposes, we should avoid getting in population sizes and etc...

also, now that i know for sure each faction started with around one thousand colonists each story wise, i don't think they would be popping up bases in the same rate that seems to be shown in the game...so could be a few decades before any faction, depending on their circumstances and etc, could possibly consider plopping another base. also, depending on the faction, i don't think the whole population would be completly located in the base, as some may end up in rural/suburb areas to tend to farms, solar collectors, mines and etc...with the help of some automated hardware / robots, as some unity pods seem to indicate within the game.

anyway, i'll go post a draft of some/most of the rules and guidelines in the datalinks thread, a long with a basic structure of the setup in that thread. so please comment here once you see it.

-mellian

[GeoModder]

Believe me, Obstructor. If a astrobiologist hears about the presence of oxygen on a eartsized planet, he will shout out 'live' directly. Oxygen cannot survive long in a chemical stable atmosphere. It is washed out, disbanded, eliminated, or whatever word you wish to use.

As for the amount of colonists, I guess I remembered that number from the long-ago reading of the promotional story from Firaxis. As it turns out, Mellian seems to have readed 10000 souls on board Unity. Perhaps I mixed up with 7000 actually reaching the surface of Chiron.

And about joining: I'm sorry, nor the time, nor the writing capabilities for long stories are mine.

[Mellian]

oh and obstructor, considering the SMAC verse indicates bunch of problems during the early to mid 21st century, there could have been an armed race, re-build up of militaries and some new cold wars which, from past historical experiences, does encourage a lot of research into various things...first meant for military uses, but as with any militarty techs, they tend to spawn civilian uses as well. considering that space around earth would obviously be the next battlefield for at least some of the first nations and etc, there will be lot more research into space base stuff.

-mellian

[Sovereign]

Whoa.

A lot of science stuff. I better grab my 10 year old Physics textbook.

I'm awaiting the doors of this story to open up.

[Frankychan]

I wouldn't mind being a co-author for the Hive...but I would rather take a subordinate route than actually lead the Hive plotline.

[Illuminatus]

More writers! More writers! I would also take co-plotline for Cult, so tha Gaian-Cult plot can turn out accordingly.

[Sovereign]

...taps foot impatiently...

[Mellian]

yes yes

i seem to have this curse that whenever i try to start something, something else in life appears to end up taking up a lot of my time. will for sure try to find some time to continue stuff..

feel free for any of you to write up a draft rules and guidelines for the story, and etc.

-mellian

[Sovereign]

I will try and figure out a rough draft, and I'll post it tomorrow or by the weekend.

Then you guys can go over it and let me know what should be added, changed, or removed.

[Illuminatus]

/me gets unpatient

[GeoModder]

Well, why don't you people start writing? It's not as you have to wait 'till Mellian pops up again...

[Illuminatus]

Well must set up a basic plotline and Sovereign applied for it. I will setup basic plotline for Gaians and Cult tommorow, and if NO ONE makes the whole in next three days I will do it myself. Some people ....

[Sovereign]

Sorry, guys.

I've been swamped with work, but now that I have a lot of free time this weekend, I can get right back on working a rough draft of the rules.

Expect it posted by either tomorrow night or Sunday night at the latest.

If I don't make the deadline, you guys are free to create a lynch mob to hunt me down.

[Mart]

Originally posted by obstructor


... I am afraid it will taked maybe 70 years to walk on Mars, not 20 or 30 . There is much talk but there is little action. If only advances in field of medicine, nanotechnology and computers could be replicated in other fields too...

When world descents into maddness of competition with use of weappons of mass destruction there can be a group of international organizations, companies, firms or any like that groups understanding the danger in which humanity may find itself. What if that new international organization directs effort behind governments to find habitable planets for humankind? Let us say they start working in 1990 around and until 2040 they advance astronomy and other civilization advances and technologies in secret. Till 2040 Chiron is as much investigated as it now appears better chance for humanity than Mars - which is too close to Earth, and some countries on Earth might threaten Martian colonists. Thus Alpha Centauri is chosen. Then they cooperate with UN building "Unity". From 1990 till 2040 there are so many decades - a lot can be fit in there.

Why this organization will achieve so much till 2060? Because it will be devoted to sending people to Chiron, not concerned with public oppinion demanding bigger burgers and cheaper gasoline.