Sennadar Forums

Just thought it may be cool to have an ideas thread for all the cool stuff that the Subjugation universe races can build using their existing technology because I'm bored. Looking forward to seeing all the cool ideas that the people here have.

- Taste Simsense Programs combined with Food Replicators so people could at least feel like they were eating something like strawberry flavored particles instead of sand flavored ones
- Offensive Diffusers that can latch onto/be near an enemy ship so that they disable enemy power systems as well as prevent them from using any torsion weaponry

Hello World wrote:- Taste Simsense Programs combined with Food Replicators so people could at least feel like they were eating something like strawberry flavored particles instead of sand flavored ones

That right there would end civilization as we know it. One of the biggest limitations - if not the biggest - that drives both politics as well as trade is the need for people to eat real food and the fact that it has to be grown on worlds that can support life. If you don't need real food anymore, suddenly every system becomes prime territory. Your people can always build domes if the world doesn't support life and with more population you get pretty close with your neighbors pretty quickly. That is if your nation can survive the collapse of trade, change of policies and priorities and the inevitable domino effect.

Until our society became addicted to watching TV and started looking at sex as inherently evil unless you are married and want kids the human population - worldwide - was always closely tied to the amount of food it could produce. The average person never had quite enough to eat but ate enough to survive and work hard the next day. If there was more than that, consequently more children survived to grow up. If it was less, enough people starved to death to compensate. Unless society itself compensates that is the way nature is made - balance. And.. well... society seems incapable of learning from our mistakes so far. That population growth solution seems a side effect to me.

Better not introduce such a big instability to your shaky alliance right now. Better to wait until you need them busy really bad.

Oh, I've always wondered, why the need of habitable planets? If you want food, can't you grow that in domes as well? While the setup costs are certainly pretty high, after you get it running you don't have to deal with pests and illness, unpredictable weather or other random acts of nature that impact your farming efforts. A dome offers a completely controllable ecosphere after all. And food always sells, so that is a safe bet.

MartinK wrote:
That right there would end civilization as we know it. One of the biggest limitations - if not the biggest - that drives both politics as well as trade is the need for people to eat real food and the fact that it has to be grown on worlds that can support life. If you don't need real food anymore, suddenly every system becomes prime territory. Your people can always build domes if the world doesn't support life and with more population you get pretty close with your neighbors pretty quickly. That is if your nation can survive the collapse of trade, change of policies and priorities and the inevitable domino effect.

Oh, I've always wondered, why the need of habitable planets? If you want food, can't you grow that in domes as well? While the setup costs are certainly pretty high, after you get it running you don't have to deal with pests and illness, unpredictable weather or other random acts of nature that impact your farming efforts. A dome offers a completely controllable ecosphere after all. And food always sells, so that is a safe bet.

That's why I only said that the taste was replicated, not the texture, scent or anything else. After all, I'm sure that anybody would choose real strawberries over strawberry flavoured goop. Also, I would think that the elimination of a dependence on food would actually result in more money being spent on other stuff like entertainment. This would eliminate one of the main causes of war which would actually greatly stabilize the sectors.

As for the dome thing, my guess is that the initial costs may be actually greater than the cost invading/exploring to acquire a habitable planet. After all, even if you look at Earth, almost 40% (~50 million km2) of all land is used for agriculture. Even assuming that they are able to use land more efficiently in the future, have techniques for inducing crop growth, and have a population less than 7 Billion (I doubt it), that's still a whole lot of land. Furthermore, you would have to disaster proof your domes to prevent a single leak for wiping out huge swathes of land.

Hello World wrote:That's why I only said that the taste was replicated, not the texture, scent or anything else. After all, I'm sure that anybody would choose real strawberries over strawberry flavoured goop.

If something is tasty, the way it feels or smells is unimportant. People still eat even if they have a cold and can't smell anything. And texture should be easy to change. Freeze or dry that goop of yours. It's not like we have suddenly forgotten how to cook. Naturally, if I have the choice between eating some real food that is of low quality and just there to fill my stomach or some goop that tastes heavenly, why, I'll go with that tasty goop stuff.

Ah, that reminds me. House Karinne gave those rat people (Can't remember their name right now) those materializers that produce tasteless goop to stop them from being at the mercy of another unfriendly nation. Since it is worse than military MRE rations and only intended as an alternative to death by starvation it won't impact the real food market much. It will just stop that unfriendly nation from asking for unreasonable things for their food that the rat people would have to live with or face starvation. Since they clearly have a sense of taste it will work as intended. But it does not seem quite unreasonable that there is another race that doesn't have any sense of taste and for which that food out of materializers may be as good as any real food. Won't they get their hands on that materializer tech and grow stronger in terms of politics and military as a consequence?

Also, I would think that the elimination of a dependence on food would actually result in more money being spent on other stuff like entertainment. This would eliminate one of the main causes of war which would actually greatly stabilize the sectors.

Nope, quite the other way around. Trade creates wealth. If you suddenly don't have to pay for any one thing you expect to have to pay for, most people won't just run out and try to find another way to spend that money somewhere else. The total worth of goods and services exchanged will decrease. All those people that made a living on growing food, transporting and trading food, cooking food, restaurants, and people in secondary industries that depended on food like those that build and repaired the machines used to grow, transport or cook food suddenly find that they can't make a living anymore. Since food is a major part of society and it didn't get replaced by anything that offers a comparably large job market you will get a lot of desperate people that will be very angry. I doubt any nation can survive that shock.

As for the dome thing, my guess is that the initial costs may be actually greater than the cost invading/exploring to acquire a habitable planet.

Before the instant travel technology spread by the Karinne university on earth most of the biggest nations in our region of space would have to be very lucky to find a habitable planet that could be conquered safely. Usually those conquered planets belonged to other advanced nations, which lead to quite a few large wars. And in wars... there are no winners, only those who lost. Heck, even earth with its backward civilization turned out to be a very unprofitable conquest for the house that got it. So, I'd rather you didn't look at invading a habitable planet that happens to be owned already by someone else as more profitable than just building stuff. Material stuff can always be rebuild, but dead people are dead forever.

After all, even if you look at Earth, almost 40% (~50 million km2) of all land is used for agriculture. Even assuming that they are able to use land more efficiently in the future, have techniques for inducing crop growth, and have a population less than 7 Billion (I doubt it), that's still a whole lot of land. Furthermore, you would have to disaster proof your domes to prevent a single leak for wiping out huge swathes of land.

We are talking about civilizations that can go and turn planets like mars and venus into real habitable worlds in a timeframe that makes it economically possible. We aren't looking at technology that humanity has today. People who take moons and carve them out to make shipyards in there. A few domes or space stations should be child's play. Especially since they do use that technology already. After all, nobody will give up on resource rich worlds just because there is no habitable world in a system - or even a world that can be terraformed. So domes and space stations are old, old technology - reliable, efficient and safe for hundreds of years.

And if you are talking about multiple domes, that single leak of yours wouldn't even threaten much land if our current humanity was to build them. The domes we already did build next to each other usually were quite safe from that, one dome being isolated from the next one. Heck, our ships - the ones on water - use that technology already to keep a ship from sinking if it gets holed at a single location. Same principle.

MartinK wrote:
If something is tasty, the way it feels or smells is unimportant. People still eat even if they have a cold and can't smell anything. And texture should be easy to change. Freeze or dry that goop of yours. It's not like we have suddenly forgotten how to cook. Naturally, if I have the choice between eating some real food that is of low quality and just there to fill my stomach or some goop that tastes heavenly, why, I'll go with that tasty goop stuff.

Fairly certain that said "goop" would probably taste worse or at most, equal to, real food. Under that assumption, everybody should just eat those Astronaut goop meals instead of real food because it is actually a lot easier to make nutritious goop with flavoring than actually doing stuff like raising cattle/vegetables, harvesting them, and then cooking them.

MartinK wrote:
Nope, quite the other way around. Trade creates wealth. If you suddenly don't have to pay for any one thing you expect to have to pay for, most people won't just run out and try to find another way to spend that money somewhere else. The total worth of goods and services exchanged will decrease. All those people that made a living on growing food, transporting and trading food, cooking food, restaurants, and people in secondary industries that depended on food like those that build and repaired the machines used to grow, transport or cook food suddenly find that they can't make a living anymore. Since food is a major part of society and it didn't get replaced by anything that offers a comparably large job market you will get a lot of desperate people that will be very angry. I doubt any nation can survive that shock.

Even assuming that everybody will prefer flavoured goop over real food, I would still disagree. Yes, in the short term, it may cause people to lose their jobs. However, those people will eventually transition into other fields so the overall job count isn't affected in the long run. Furthermore, new job fields, like "virtual cooking/programming" may be also made (although this point may be stretching it). Also, it's actually more beneficial to trade luxury goods which are usually unique (ex: crafts, muxic, software, etc.) rather than essential goods like food which you can get anywhere (unless the food is unique to a certain location like Italian Wine).

MartinK wrote: Heck, even earth with its backward civilization turned out to be a very unprofitable conquest for the house that got it. So, I'd rather you didn't look at invading a habitable planet that happens to be owned already by someone else as more profitable than just building stuff. Material stuff can always be rebuild, but dead people are dead forever.

We are talking about civilizations that can go and turn planets like mars and venus into real habitable worlds in a timeframe that makes it economically possible. We aren't looking at technology that humanity has today. People who take moons and carve them out to make shipyards in there. A few domes or space stations should be child's play. Especially since they do use that technology already. After all, nobody will give up on resource rich worlds just because there is no habitable world in a system - or even a world that can be terraformed. So domes and space stations are old, old technology - reliable, efficient and safe for hundreds of years.

And if you are talking about multiple domes, that single leak of yours wouldn't even threaten much land if our current humanity was to build them. The domes we already did build next to each other usually were quite safe from that, one dome being isolated from the next one. Heck, our ships - the ones on water - use that technology already to keep a ship from sinking if it gets holed at a single location. Same principle.

I would hardly call Earth's case common since the only reason why the Trillanes lost so much money was because of Jason. Without him, the Trillanes would have been raking in the cash (the other "rebels" didn't do anything and Earth surrendered). And once again, it's not "a few domes or space stations," the amount of land needed would probably be greater than some continents. And growing crops this way would be really, really expensive. Most likely so expensive that the poor wouldn't even afford to buy the food/would have to blow most of their income on food. Yes, they could probably build something so large (reminder that Kosigi took centuries to built and you would need multiple Kosigi's worth of land to even support a single planet) but once again, that takes a lot of time and money.



Anyways, this is getting way off topic so I'm not going discuss this anymore. We each have our own opinions so lets just go with that.

Hello World wrote:I would hardly call Earth's case common since the only reason why the Trillanes lost so much money was because of Jason. Without him, the Trillanes would have been raking in the cash (the other "rebels" didn't do anything and Earth surrendered).

There are plenty of stories in which humans, among all kinds of different alien races in the galaxy, are supposed to be special, more intelligent, clever, hard to kill or whatever else an author can come up with. I can't quite agree with that. After all, why would humans be so very different than all the other races out there? Somehow that strikes me as the "the earth is the center of the solar system" believe of the modern times. Lucky for me, Fel never stated that and has taken care to never give any hint of that sort of thing. Naturally, if there is even one Jason who takes down the Trillanes on earth, there will have to be similar Jasons on other freshly conquered worlds. I'm sure we may even find some races who are - by evolutionary design - incapable of being the conquered without continuing to fight on.

And once again, it's not "a few domes or space stations," the amount of land needed would probably be greater than some continents. And growing crops this way would be really, really expensive. Most likely so expensive that the poor wouldn't even afford to buy the food/would have to blow most of their income on food. Yes, they could probably build something so large (reminder that Kosigi took centuries to built and you would need multiple Kosigi's worth of land to even support a single planet) but once again, that takes a lot of time and money.

So? As of right now, humans are experimenting with the concept of vertical farming. Farming on the ground in the classical style is a massive waste of space in that there is only a single layer of plants growing and thats it. The concept of flooring has been part of house construction for hundreds of years and any place where many people live close together we only see the housing stacked on each other. Vertical farming is implementing that concept in farming, adding controlled climate to enhance growing.

I would have said to start growing stuff that is expensive in those vertical farms since the start of any undertaking is always more expensive than if you already have a successful example to follow. But the last report I read was that they were growing lettuce in there.

Just as a reminder, that giant shipyard in a moon was build over centuries so that nobody notices it. The Karinne of that time were scientists foremost, they neither felt a need to build it quickly nor where there any fascinated with building lots and lots of identical ships. I also have no doubt that simply by not just using the inner surface of the moon cavern but flooring like they do on ship construction would see much, much more space usable for farming than a dozen habitable worlds could provide.

And that all just gets me wondering.. if you find a system with lots of concentrated amounts of ore that could make you tons of money, just how big and how many domes and stations would you set up there? That system will provide you with material resources for millennia, so why keep it small? Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, right?

With the large scale usage of star gates and catapults, I can see the rate of terraforming planets being increased. It was said that Mars and Venus were only changed as earth being there with the stargate, made it cost effective to achieve.

Re. Using sym-sense to cover up the fact that you are eating nutro-goop:

I see a couple possibilities.

1) The sym-sense is so good that as long as the person who recorded the memory actually enjoyed whatever they ate so does the person eating the goop. In this case I don't see even texture mattering, since the sym-sense will cover that as well. And in this case I have a hard time seeing people clamering very hard for "real food" since it is the sensory perception that would sell rather than the food. We might have a whole new industry of sensory recording artists, those who can put so much good taste into something that others want the experience.

2) The food tastes like whatever it would if the person eating the goop ate the target food. In this case I could see taste varying so much from person to person that even with sym-sense the entire exercise would be nearly pointless. Taste is perhaps the most personal of senses, what one person thinks tastes great may well be nearly inedible to someone else.

Can someone who dislikes a certain foods, learn to love, or at least tolerate it with sym-sense? If you hate some food, do a sym-sense session from someone who loves that food.

I wonder if they could print alien foods using the replicated food substitute, then set it up yo taste different via stim sense. Aliens could experiences foods they can't tolerate or would be potentially dangerous. Like how meat disagrees with Kreel, he can see what the fuss is. The thing is what if the silence taste things in a different way, apparently the simulated sense only world well if you naturally have that feature. That is why multi limbs are out I think.