The Factory Floor

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4:19 AM

"Wait, we've MOVED since 2010. How on Earth did--" "Look, some of us were just born to be champions."

9 hours later…

AndyD273

1:31 PM

@Mephistopheles Not impossible. You'd just have to bring everything you need with you.

And it kind of depends on your desired outcome

Nzall

@Mephistopheles If you say "FTL data transmission", are you talking about "faster but finite speed", or "instant communication across the galaxy through technobabble"? Because in the case of the latter, you could realistically just send an army of drone soldiers that's remote controlled.

AndyD273

Good point

Nzall

I'm wondering whether I should bother trying to fix worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/89333/… or whether I should rewrite it and ask it again

Or whether I should look at it from a different perspective

AndyD273

There was a book where an alien species was wanting to make a dyson sphere, and didn't care that the neighboring systems were they wanted to get resources from were inhabited. So they sent ships armed with grey goo nanotech, dropped it on the planets, asteroids, anything with metal, and the goo killed the people, ate all the metal, turned everthing into new ships, and flew them back to the home system.

Nzall

Essentially, is tech a tree (having something earlier due to external intervention or a rare material can allow you to skip ahead) or a web (every major advancement, if not given through good fortune, requires multiple other technologies, so having one of them faster doesn't really help all that much in advancing your tech faster)?

AndyD273

1:47 PM

@Nzall your ancestral guidance question... have you ever read the Conquerors series by Timothy Zahn?

Conquerors'

The Conquerors a trilogy of science fiction novels by American writer Timothy Zahn, published between 1994 and 1996. Set in a space opera future, the trilogy is concerned with a failed first contact that leads to an interstellar war between humanity and an alien race, the Zhirrzh (nicknamed by humans The Conquerors). Meanwhile, other alien races try to take advantage of the conflict between the two powers. == Conquerors' Pride == Conquerors' Pride, published in 1994, is the first novel in the series. The book begins with the invasion of unknown aliens who, after a brutally efficient battle, take...

Just reminded me of that a bit. Really good series

Nzall

@AndyD273 I haven't yet read that series

AndyD273

It's old, and for some reason a little hard to find...

But as to the other question, it sounds a bit like vibranium from Black Panther, so it's good that you have some firm rules on what it can do in place.

Could it give 2019 tech in 1019? Maybe? Yes? No? Kinda up to you. If they got it really early, and the ancestral guidance helped keep information from being lost, then I really don't see why it wouldn't be possible

Nzall

@AndyD273 Yeah, that is what I'm hoping for. the idea is that they got it in around 1000 BC, during the Bronze age

it starts in what is currently Limburg, in east Belgium, then rapidly spreads from there due to superior tech. The rough timeline is: Europe conquered by 500 BC, North of Africa and Middle east by 1 AD, rest of Asia and Africa by 500, Australia and the Americas by 1000 AD

AndyD273

Maybe make a bit of a timeline: "1000 BC Pactite first discovered by X tribe. It was discovered that it would make their fires hotter, and so they started working metal earlier, and their tools and weapons better, and so they conquered a huge area. 950 BC iron discovered, iron pactite tools created..."

Mephistopheles

@AndyD273 So space pirates would most likely be reduced to hot gas by a planet's defense system (mostly particle-beam weapons and sometimes the Tsar)

AndyD273

1:56 PM

@Nzall If you make your history believable, then no one will question it, especially with almost magic element X thrown into the mix.

the phrase "the knowledge of how this group made X has be lost to history" comes up a lot. The original damascus steel method for instance. Maybe it wasn't any better than modern methods, but if you could ask your ancestor how he did it, then you wouldn't have to start all over again

Nzall

@AndyD273 I've been thinking more about the magic element since then. What I've come down to now is: it's nanotech sent out by an older galactic empire as a final act of desperation in hopes of tricking other races in resurrecting them

The big problem right now is that my universe is basically Mass Effect with slightly difference races

AndyD273

@Nzall That's fine. I like the "magic is just science we don't understand" interpretation personally.

Same story as Mass Effect?

Nzall

Like, the galactic empire is essentially the Protheans, the 4 races are turians, Salarians, Asari and Humans (the council races), and the reason they vanished was an AI, i.e. the reapers

And as a final act of desperation, they sent out beams that spawned nanotech that affects each race, i.e. Ilos

So the overarching story is roughly the same

AndyD273

Eh, if you don't point it out, people probably won't notice

Nzall

Even the plan I had for the book 1 story was essentially a similar plot like Mass Effect 1, just instead of a special ops mission it's a treasure/archaeology hunt (i.e. what Liara was doing)

AndyD273

2:04 PM

if it's bothering you, throw in some twists to make it different

Nzall

yeah, I know, it's hard to be original in the current world, Hero's Journey and all hat

AndyD273

Make it your own story. There is a short fiction podcast that I listen to that has periodic events called Broken Mirror Stories, where they give a prompt that everyone has to start from. And the stories always end up completely different.

Just because your story is "like" Mass Effect, and Black Panther, and Conquerors Heritage, doesn't mean that it is those things. "there's nothing new under the sun" as the saying goes, but how you tell it is going to be different than I would, because you have different experiences and perspectives.

2 hours later…

Feeds

4:07 PM

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Population dynamics - estimating endpoints in alternative history scenarios This question aims to address the variable that need to be taken into account when it comes to estimating populations when you change events in history. It's going to need a lot of work.