Aurora 4x
Fiction => C# Test Campaigns => Steve's Fiction => Aurora => Cold Sun => Topic started by: The Forbidden on February 04, 2019, 01:08:23 AM
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Damn. The solar system sure is cooling fast. Is there any lower limit to how cold it can get or will the entire solar system just end up as an array of snowballs ?
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Damn. The solar system sure is cooling fast. Is there any lower limit to how cold it can get or will the entire solar system just end up as an array of snowballs ?
No lower limit - eventually there will be ski resorts on Mercury :)
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Then you just need to be aware that 2% per year is VERY rapid cooling. At that rate, the sun will HALVE in temperature in 34 years.
Note that that is halved in Kelvin, so if Earth cools at the same pace, our expected average temperature would be -129.25 degrees celcius. After only 34 years.
Unless my math is out.
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Could there be an option to set how fast the sun heats/cools? Because this seems. . extreme? I may want to take things more slowly when I play. Or maybe I think I do, and would just find it too easy to have more time. But I'd like to have the option and discover for myself.
Also (brainstorming now) would it be possible to have a similar catastrophy but it only targets Earth? I'm thinking extreme climate change due to pollution, so you don't necessarily have to rush technologies, find a suitable planet in another solar system, etc, you can "just" relocate to Mars or distribute populations on moons and asteroid in the Solar System.
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Then you just need to be aware that 2% per year is VERY rapid cooling. At that rate, the sun will HALVE in temperature in 34 years.
Note that that is halved in Kelvin, so if Earth cools at the same pace, our expected average temperature would be -129.25 degrees celcius. After only 34 years.
Unless my math is out.
Yes, this is definitely a race to get as much population off as possible as quickly as possible (and it won't be everyone) and then see how things develop from there. I imagine that within the next five years, the nations will begin pumping greenhouse gas into Earth's atmosphere to try to hold on as long as possible. That has its limits though and is a lot more difficult under the new terraforming rules due to the planet size rules.
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Could there be an option to set how fast the sun heats/cools? Because this seems. . extreme? I may want to take things more slowly when I play. Or maybe I think I do, and would just find it too easy to have more time. But I'd like to have the option and discover for myself.
Also (brainstorming now) would it be possible to have a similar catastrophy but it only targets Earth? I'm thinking extreme climate change due to pollution, so you don't necessarily have to rush technologies, find a suitable planet in another solar system, etc, you can "just" relocate to Mars or distribute populations on moons and asteroid in the Solar System.
You can choose 1%, 2% or 3% for both heating and cooling. I know what you mean about the time. I went for 2% to create a lot of pressure, especially with a conventional start.
I've coded another disaster scenario (but not mentioned it prior to this post) where the Earth spirals inward or outward from its current orbit due to <insert your favourite technobabble reason here>.
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Could there be an option to set how fast the sun heats/cools? Because this seems. . extreme? I may want to take things more slowly when I play. Or maybe I think I do, and would just find it too easy to have more time. But I'd like to have the option and discover for myself.
Also (brainstorming now) would it be possible to have a similar catastrophy but it only targets Earth? I'm thinking extreme climate change due to pollution, so you don't necessarily have to rush technologies, find a suitable planet in another solar system, etc, you can "just" relocate to Mars or distribute populations on moons and asteroid in the Solar System.
You can choose 1%, 2% or 3% for both heating and cooling. I know what you mean about the time. I went for 2% to create a lot of pressure, especially with a conventional start.
I've coded another disaster scenario (but not mentioned it prior to this post) where the Earth spirals inward or outward from its current orbit due to <insert your favourite technobabble reason here>.
Nice. Just as an assessment, will the losses of non evacuated population be bad ? I mean, a rough idea of what percentage won't make it out, it surely won't be as catastrophic as the Commonwealth evacuation of Earth in the Trans-Newtonian campaign but still.
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Nice. Just as an assessment, will the losses of non evacuated population be bad ? I mean, a rough idea of what percentage won't make it out, it surely won't be as catastrophic as the Commonwealth evacuation of Earth in the Trans-Newtonian campaign but still.
That was very bad :) Not sure if it will be quite as catastrophic but a lot is going to depend on the proximity of available planets. I don't know how many jump points in Sol as I left it random, so it depends where they are and where they lead.
Strange as it may sound, a medium-term lifeboat option is probably Mercury. Because it is tide locked, the temperature extremes are not too harsh in either direction (not too hot now and won't be as cold later). The assumption is that for the 'too hot' tide-locked planets, everyone lives in the 'twilight zone'. For too cold, they live in the centre of the sun-facing side. The downside is limited population capacity. Another option is orbital habitats, which are more effective in C# Aurora.
I haven't mentioned yet in the report but there is also a three billion plus 'United Nations' population, which is a neutral state for colonization purposes.
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It's going to be pretty catastrophic unless Earth spends a ton of its construction capacity building Infrastructure. Having attempted to get a race conventional empire off-planet before (albeit with a significantly smaller start, RL wise) I can confirm that moving a ton of population off planet is a slow process. Especially if you dont have a convenient planet to drop them off at yet. Remember, a different planet in the same system is of no use. They will all cool as well.
And if the systems next door dont have habitable planets... well... then very few people are going to make it in the end. At the current cooling rate I guess at casualties in the 50% and up range.
Regardless, this is going to be bad. Very bad. Especially with 6 empires.
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I've coded another disaster scenario (but not mentioned it prior to this post) where the Earth spirals inward or outward from its current orbit due to <insert your favourite technobabble reason here>.
Oh this is a setup for Nemesis if ever I've seen it:
2050 : Astronomers detect an earth sized body out near the orbit of Eris. While there is initial puzzlement as to how such a large body managed to be undetected, its trajectory and speed is quickly estimated, traveling an unheard of 500 kilometers per second the body will cross the inner solar system and presumably escape into deep space. This will take less than a year due to its extreme velocity.
As more powerful eyes are trained towards "planet x", its path through the system is more carefully scrutinized, but as each day passes the predicted path gets less and less certain, finally accurate radar images confirm the anomaly.
Planet X is slowing, and its path is describing an arc far too extreme then the suns gravity should capable of producing. A new prediction is made, "planet X" will slow to approximately 30 kilometers per second, and its slowly decreasing arc will put it into orbit somewhere near the the earth.
The world panics, a new name is given to the object "Nemesis".
While thus far I have described a hypothetical body spiraling towards the sun for "insert technobabble reason" when it arrives near earths neighborhood, its position relative to earth will dictate what happens to our world as due to gravitational attraction it changes our orbit.
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That does indeed look like a pretty brutal game scenario there and one that is going to be highly dependent on finding some alternative real estate pretty soon.
Will be interested to see if China and India can come out relatively better as they can afford a lot more civilian losses before that impacts construction capacity. Interesting to see just how many terraformers they might need to combat the effects or at least slow it down and who may spend on this short term solution instead of investing in transports etc.
Can't wait to read the next update!
I assume all of the turn ticks are racing along for you?
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That does indeed look like a pretty brutal game scenario there and one that is going to be highly dependent on finding some alternative real estate pretty soon.
Will be interested to see if China and India can come out relatively better as they can afford a lot more civilian losses before that impacts construction capacity. Interesting to see just how many terraformers they might need to combat the effects or at least slow it down and who may spend on this short term solution instead of investing in transports etc.
Can't wait to read the next update!
I assume all of the turn ticks are racing along for you?
Yes, ran those five years in a few hours play, most of which was interacting with UI or write-up. Each 5-day increment is still sub-second, although there are no ships yet. A few extra shipping lines have been created during the conventional phase so once colonization begins there should be a few ships relatively quickly.
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Quick question Steve : Is that set up supposed to favor the emergence of early conflict for habitable worlds or will the different powers refrain from killing one another while the world
burn chills around them ? In which case they'll probably start building military forces (both ground and space - going to get interesting if good habitable worlds are scarce and some...uh...let's say less than friendly nations are forced to cohabit-) once the exodus is complete and they're a bit dispersed all over the place. (Reminds me that it'll be nice seeing actual interstellar warfare between nations rather than against NPRs, as usually in your Sol starts they usually duke it out in the home system, exception being the Alpha Centauri - Brazil war in Colonial Wars).
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Extinction looming in the horizon, are you going to distribute crucial technologies that'd help speed up the evacuation and colonization of planets? Even in such a extreme situation I have no doubt that nations would help each other in real life situation.
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Quick question Steve : Is that set up supposed to favor the emergence of early conflict for habitable worlds or will the different powers refrain from killing one another while the world burn chills around them ? In which case they'll probably start building military forces (both ground and space - going to get interesting if good habitable worlds are scarce and some...uh...let's say less than friendly nations are forced to cohabit-) once the exodus is complete and they're a bit dispersed all over the place. (Reminds me that it'll be nice seeing actual interstellar warfare between nations rather than against NPRs, as usually in your Sol starts they usually duke it out in the home system, exception being the Alpha Centauri - Brazil war in Colonial Wars).
At the start, all nations don't really have resources to devote to conflict. As things progress, that may change if resources are scarce. I'll see how it progresses.
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Extinction looming in the horizon, are you going to distribute crucial technologies that'd help speed up the evacuation and colonization of planets? Even in such a extreme situation I have no doubt that nations would help each other in real life situation.
I think they would help each other in situations of mutual benefit, but not for pure altruism.
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Been meaning to ask this but haven't gotten around to it. Have you activated any new spoilers during these test games?
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Been meaning to ask this but haven't gotten around to it. Have you activated any new spoilers during these test games?
Not yet. They have been on, but none were discovered. Spoilers are also on in the current game.
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Intriguing start! Fingers crossed for a Gaia world in Alpha Centauri :D
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Nice. Just as an assessment, will the losses of non evacuated population be bad ? I mean, a rough idea of what percentage won't make it out, it surely won't be as catastrophic as the Commonwealth evacuation of Earth in the Trans-Newtonian campaign but still.
Loss of non-evacuated population will be total. Not in the immediate sense, and for a while infrastructure will be able to catch the difference, but as the cooling worsens so does the difficulty of providing for everyone, until colony cost escalates beyond the nation's ability to cope with it.
At that point, mass death is certain.
Then you just need to be aware that 2% per year is VERY rapid cooling. At that rate, the sun will HALVE in temperature in 34 years.
Note that that is halved in Kelvin, so if Earth cools at the same pace, our expected average temperature would be -129.25 degrees celcius. After only 34 years.
Unless my math is out.
IIRC a body's energy emission is exponentially linked to its temperature.
That's to say, as the temperature of the body changes, the amount of energy lost by radiation changes more rapidly.
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Nice. Just as an assessment, will the losses of non evacuated population be bad ? I mean, a rough idea of what percentage won't make it out, it surely won't be as catastrophic as the Commonwealth evacuation of Earth in the Trans-Newtonian campaign but still.
Loss of non-evacuated population will be total. Not in the immediate sense, and for a while infrastructure will be able to catch the difference, but as the cooling worsens so does the difficulty of providing for everyone, until colony cost escalates beyond the nation's ability to cope with it.
At that point, mass death is certain.
Then you just need to be aware that 2% per year is VERY rapid cooling. At that rate, the sun will HALVE in temperature in 34 years.
Note that that is halved in Kelvin, so if Earth cools at the same pace, our expected average temperature would be -129.25 degrees celcius. After only 34 years.
Unless my math is out.
IIRC a body's energy emission is exponentially linked to its temperature.
That's to say, as the temperature of the body changes, the amount of energy lost by radiation changes more rapidly.
I should have phrased that better, I knew all of those who would be left behind would eventually die. What I wanted to know was a rough evaluation of how many could be shipped off world before it was too late.
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Yeah I figured it wasn't linear, I was just using linear as a best case. Also, I was lazy to look up the exact math.
Steve, let us know at what point Earth starts having >0 colony cost. I think it will be interesting to measure how long it lasts.
You may end up with a situation where your only surviving civilians are those that are on board your colony ships, looking for a new world. Although I suppose an orbital habitat will be an excellent stopgap in this particular case until you get jump drives. Plenty of industrial production and resources, no viable planets.
As for Mercury as temporary place to huddle against the cold, it doesn't have an atmosphere. That means 2.0 colony cost at best and a ton of infrastructure just to bring some population. Also, what is the population limit of Mercury?
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We will probably see all options play out as different factions try different strategies, looking forward to it.
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I should have phrased that better, I knew all of those who would be left behind would eventually die. What I wanted to know was a rough evaluation of how many could be shipped off world before it was too late.
That is really, really dependent on space lift capacity and the distance to the nearest inhabitable world with a stable star. I will note however that, however cruel, industry is more valuable than people, due to how the manufacturing and finance systems work in the game, and the rapid population growth a new colony is likely to see. Unless Steve has yet to recode the wealth system.
Rabid Cog's idea of building a large number of orbital habitat's quite clever though. Habitats after all ignore all colony costs.
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I'm wondering whether the structural shell build options become very helpful in this case. Just build a bunch with colony transport components and a tug to drag them off. No rush to move them in some cases and can use all of industry to build rather than going through the slow painful process of expanding shipyards enough.
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The minor irony, China leading the effort in Global Warming.
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Yes ! Part 2 is out ! The international terraforming effort is nice, and the ruins are definitely a surprise. (Too bad everyone will be too focused on Earth to fight over them. Trans-Newtonian campaign anyone ?) Now the great question being : will good habitable worlds be found beyond the jump points ?
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Cooperation changes the game. Nice. With the terraformers buying you a couple of extra years, you might be able to get significantly more people offworld... IF you find a habitable planet in a nearby system. Or, you know, 6 of them since that is how many empires there are.
It is quite ironic, Sol would be an amazing home system if it wasn't for the cooling sun. 0.9 sorium gas giant, venus with tons of minerals, even ruins on mars. I can see a cold, dead Sol still being exploited for resources, fuel, industry and alien artifacts for a long time to come.
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Cooperation changes the game. Nice. With the terraformers buying you a couple of extra years, you might be able to get significantly more people offworld... IF you find a habitable planet in a nearby system. Or, you know, 6 of them since that is how many empires there are.
It is quite ironic, Sol would be an amazing home system if it wasn't for the cooling sun. 0.9 sorium gas giant, venus with tons of minerals, even ruins on mars. I can see a cold, dead Sol still being exploited for resources, fuel, industry and alien artifacts for a long time to come.
Sol will probably stay filled with habitats and fuel harvester for quite a while indeed.
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If you build enough habitats Sol might well be the biggest producer, but that might only be an option if any inhabitable world is simply too far away to be reasonably settled anytime soon.
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If you see you will end up last in the race for jump points anyway maybe a stay in Sol strategy could be an option, at least until you have built up a military and decided which of the other nations jump points you like the most :)
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If you see you will end up last in the race for jump points anyway maybe a stay in Sol strategy could be an option, at least until you have built up a military and decided which of the other nations jump points you like the most :)
Or take the patrician route;
Go down with the frakking ship and take everyone with you
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If you see you will end up last in the race for jump points anyway maybe a stay in Sol strategy could be an option, at least until you have built up a military and decided which of the other nations jump points you like the most :)
Or take the patrician route;
Go down with the frakking ship and take everyone with you
That's Asian Confederacu tactics right here.
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If you see you will end up last in the race for jump points anyway maybe a stay in Sol strategy could be an option, at least until you have built up a military and decided which of the other nations jump points you like the most :)
Or take the patrician route;
Go down with the frakking ship and take everyone with you
That's Asian Confederacu tactics right here.
Yeah yeah, "muh samurai" meme and all that
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Now the big question is, will there be fight over the real estate in Alpha Centauri or will the other neighbouring systems be as promising.
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Now the big question is, will there be fight over the real estate in Alpha Centauri or will the other neighbouring systems be as promising.
I'm afraid Alpha Centauri will be fought over extensively.
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Alpha Centauri A-II looks to be the most promising for immediate colonisation. Low cost, you see, it'd be a good staging ground while B-III gets prepped with Aesthusium and an oxygen component.
Also, a tidally locked gas giant? What's going on there.
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I'm hoping that this campaign gets some blood flowing. I'm curious about particle Lance's in particular, so I hope that at least one of our friendly neighborhood superpowers decides to try them
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If they'd found a colony cost 0 world with only space for 500 million people then yeah, I think we would have seen some fistfights. As it is, nothing in Alpha Centauri screams "MUST HAVE AT ALL COSTS". If nothing else comes up this close, sure. But this was only the first jump point. There should be quite a few more if one is found on the first grav survey point (statistically speaking). In fact, with all the terraforming requirements of these planets, the empires might need to end up cooperating to terraform that 14billion capacity planet. Plenty of space for the entire Earth on there.
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The backstory for this campaign, excluding the sun cooling, is really close to the backstory for a campaign I started prepping for a while ago, but never played. Main differences were nothing really happening in South America, India getting crippled by a serious epidemic, and thus not being a faction, with Japan being the country fighting proxy wars with China in SE Asia, and being it's own faction, and the EU having an overly poor relationship with NORAD, a combined version of modern IRL NORAD and what remained of NATO after the EU's unification. Pretty funny seeing such a similar timeline.
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Fairly sure that we won't see any real fighting until the exodus from Sol is complete, besides, think about it; the first colony is founded and one tries to claim it all for himself; everyone else will bunch up on him.
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The wise polities will dump a colony on every marginally-habitable rock in Alpha Centauri while continuing to search for humanity's new 'forever' home. The short-sighted ones will plant a single colony on a ColCost 2.00 location.
The dumb ones won't start moving people off Earth yet.
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If you see you will end up last in the race for jump points anyway maybe a stay in Sol strategy could be an option, at least until you have built up a military and decided which of the other nations jump points you like the most :)
Or take the patrician route;
Go down with the frakking ship and take everyone with you
That's Asian Confederacu tactics right here.
Yeah yeah, "muh samurai" meme and all that
I was referring to another AAR made by Steve, not a meme.
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China seems to be doing pretty well so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall.
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If I were the Russians I would start moving populations to every remotely viable.rock i can. This gets excess population off Earth, plays well with the media, stakes a claim and gives legitimacy to all those new colonies being established.
Basically its a win win. If you dont find a better colony, you have a head start on colonization. If you do, you have a valid claim to access and exploit the system still.
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China seems to be doing pretty well so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall.
I have avoided naming any classes Jianghu and Jiangwei, so that may be helping :)
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China seems to be doing pretty well so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall.
I have avoided naming any classes Jianghu and Jiangwei, so that may be helping :)
China cannot escape it's fate. Cosmic forces are stacked against it !
More seriously though, I think things are going to get....interesting as terraforming gradually fails to prevent Earth's cooling and the nations scramble to get their people and industry off-world.
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Also, Steve, with the changes done to orbital habitats, are they a viable option if the nations don't find an ideal or close to ideal world in Sol's vicinity ? Further more will it be worth it to build some to continue exploiting Sol's resources after Earth either falls or is evacuated ? (Plus, it'll be interesting if one of the nation chooses to go down that path, stay in Sol and lockdown the system as the others evacuate their forces to their new capital, stealing their remaining population and industry in the home system).
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Terraformable planets with 1.0 gravity seems incredibly rare
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More seriously though, I think things are going to get....interesting as terraforming gradually fails to prevent Earth's cooling and the nations scramble to get their people and industry off-world.
Terraforming is working well so far. Earth temp is now above where it started :)
There is a limit to how that can last though before the max greenhouse factor of 3x is reached, but I think it will be a quite a few more years before Earth moves below -10C.
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Also, Steve, with the changes done to orbital habitats, are they a viable option if the nations don't find an ideal or close to ideal world in Sol's vicinity ? Further more will it be worth it to build some to continue exploiting Sol's resources after Earth either falls or is evacuated ? (Plus, it'll be interesting if one of the nation chooses to go down that path, stay in Sol and lockdown the system as the others evacuate their forces to their new capital, stealing their remaining population and industry in the home system).
They are a viable option. Brazil (I think - not at home atm) is considering going down that route.
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What I'm achingly curious about is which nation will build the first warship, and whether starting to do so will touch off a flurry of frantic militarization, and whether it will happen because someone spotted live aliens. Or maybe the ruins on Mars will cough up some super-delicious weapons tech that makes the finder think they can get an overwhelming advantage.
But, of course, above all. . . I'm waiting to see how the universe will sabotage the Chinese this time.
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I am still looking for a first test of the ground combat system :)
maybe some of the minor nations could have a clash on mars or even earth (to see about collateral damage too) with strictly low tech ground units to make things fast, easy and cheap...
ground combat seems to me the one big risk besides AI about the changes in C# ...
really curious and excited to see it :)
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China seems to be doing pretty well so far. I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall.
I have avoided naming any classes Jianghu and Jiangwei, so that may be helping :)
The Billion citizens of China thank you :)
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Pity that the game is going on hold. Was there any perceptible slowdown over the course of the game?
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Pity that the game is going on hold. Was there any perceptible slowdown over the course of the game?
Maybe a little but 1-day and 5-day increments still less than 1 second.
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What sort of weapons are the Colonial Alliance researching?
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What sort of weapons are the Colonial Alliance researching?
Lasers as they have a good EW scientist. Chinese are going Railguns and EU is researching particle beams. I think Russia is also lasers. Not at home atm so can't check India / Brazil but they are concentrating on other areas atm.
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Those captured mesons should proove handy though.
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Holy tidal-lock batman. I get that it's the most common stable energy state, but this is a little ridiculous for diversity sake. Besides, it can take billions of years for bodies to reach the tidal lock state, maybe reducing the chances a bit might be nice...
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Its crazy how nobody noticed how common tidal locking is untill you introduce a mechanic which depends on it :p
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I'm just hoping that Steve's decision to pause this game and start looking at combat AI etc is because one of those recently explored systems is not as empty as it looks.
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Tidal locking might not be as common place as thought:
https://physicsworld.com/a/exoplanets-could-avoid-tidal-locking-if-they-have-atmospheres/ (https://physicsworld.com/a/exoplanets-could-avoid-tidal-locking-if-they-have-atmospheres/)
Even a thin atmosphere can keep a planet spinning freely, giving it a day-and-night cycle like Earth’s, say astronomers in Canada and France. The result implies that many of the planets lying within the habitable zones of “dim suns” – the most common type of star – could have terrestrial-type climates.
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Will the campaign resume soon?
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The campaign will not be resuming at all, I think. Steve has moved on to other ones.