Lucky Jack...

Let's consider:
1) Humans came up with a *breakthrough*. Note that. What is that breaktrhough? Probably how to put the hyperfold generator inside it's own folded space *safely*. This is just a guess of mine, but it seems to be what the other races hadn't been able to do, or were not crazy enough to try because it was so dangerous.

Being able to put the projector inside the ship would allow:
* reduction of power to create the hyperfold.
* allows for a more efficent use of their power, as they can replace the energy lost in the hyper field "on site" (during transit).

Now, let's take a closer look at how that one "change" would affect the power needs, just due to geometry.
Whether the Star Gates create a tunnel between both ends, or merely a sphere as big around as the gate itself, this area is much bigger then the ship. This means it takes much more power to just create the same "density" as what a smaller sphere. It takes a lot more power to get the gate to say, the x10 density that you can use to create a smaller sphere that the hyperdrive creates around its ship.

Perhaps if you made a star gate just big enough to fit through your biggest reasonable hulls, then it too could be upgraded to be faster. More power to put into the gate on the projector (sender) end. However, the gates work in conjuction. This tells us it takes a projector on both ends to complete a "FTL" passage via star gates. Let's presume symmetry means that it takes as much power to de-phase a ship from FTL-alternate space to normal space as it takes to send it. So you have to have a star gate as big as the sender, and it has to generate as much power. Reasonable? Seems so to me.

Now, consider entropy. Nothing is immune to entropy. Is all the energy consumed in a gating devoted purely to a transition start/transition end matter with the travel? Or do you have to pack on extra energy to maintain the field intergrity along the way? If you have to pack on extra energy to maintain the field, then that would be done at the front end. Maybe this explains why the ships are so much smaller then the gates themselves? If the aliens couldn't put their own projectors inside the field, then they had to pack it with lots of extra at the start, which is devoted towards making sure the package gets to the other end intact, rather then travelling faster, but risks packages getting "lost" in trasit. The Human Self Contained Hyper-Drive, on the other hand, can generate a field for speed, and as long as their Drive continues to function, it can replace the lost field energy, continuously. Thus, almost all of its energy can be devoted to speed. Hence, why it is faster to start with, and why they can get faster as you advance in the game (better power generaton means more power to devote to speed, therefore the faster the ships get).

Let's just accept the death of the idea that the starting Star Gate tech should permit instant porting from the start of the game. Trying to create such a rationale creates a reason why the GC universe would never happen (ie, FTL drives are infinitely slower then star gates). Let's instead focus on when and how players should gain instant porting or even space-laning. When would it prevent the drag down on the bigger maps? How much trouble should it be? Should it be the all-nodal Civ style Airport system? Should it be the once discovered "instant-port anywhere in the empire" system of MoO2? Should it be a more of a tree-branch system, where you purposely connect two ends, and any facility can be connected to as many ends as you want, so long as you build the terminals? When does managing your instant travel infrastructure become as much of a pain as not having any instat port capability and having to wait forever for your newest ships from your biggest ship building worlds to reach the far flung parts of your empire?

Not that I don't have fun arguing the game-verse continuality. But it seems pointless to argue it, trying to stretch it into instant porting from the start. Remember, this is Brad's universe. If he wants us to start with instant porting tech, he'd give it to us. He hasn't. Remember, he's had, what, 10 years of player comments? Bringing it up now isn't going to change his mind. Hundreds of fans have already beaten us all to it by years and years. Now, maybe in a spin-off, you'll be able to start off as the Dreadlords. WIth just one, small, self contained, stealthed Star Base. With all the major races well established empires. So that you have to go about, rebuilding the Arnor empire, while avoiding giving yourself away, until you've grown big enough and strong enough that the races combined will not be able to stop you. That sounds like a lot of fun to me. What about you?

While the exact system or systems that GalCiv uses for FTL is not clearly stated, we can gather clues from the back story, from the game physics, and from the given improvements in FTL travel that become available during the game.

From these clues, I believe that what GalCiv uses is most likely a system where a sphere of alternative space is created around a "package" (the ship or barge being sent through a star gate or using its FTL drive). It's this sphere volume that allows "normal" matter inside to safely and conveniently get around normal physics and appear to normal reality to travel FTL. As the ships travelling FTL still have a physical presence on the game map (ie, ships "in transit" can be attacked by other ships and even space sharks), this tells us that there is some actual point of interfacing between the ship's pocket universe and normal reality. Other items can somehow interface or force a transition from FTL space to normal space. Perhaps other starships can create a higher resistance in the local space, this slowing or stopping other FTL ships. Perhaps space sharks can naturally travel between normal space and FTL space. As FLT ships update everything in their sensor range on our main map, this again supports that there is a physical interface, where the ship inside its travel envelope can sense normal reality, to some degree, outside their FTL envelope. Unlike in say, MoO1, where a ship or fleet, once it goes into FTL, is committed until it arrives at its destination.

With gates, you can have a couple of options. You have the Television Series "SG1" physics, where each gate creates a tunnel of warping space between the two points, and the gates are occupied while the package is in transit. The transit time itself can be instant, or merely very fast (ie, 100 million light-years/second). Sometimes, it's all one way travel (ie, a sending and received gate, but not back travel). Sometimes, it's merely "a door" so that things entering one side of the gate leaves the other. The Egosoft's Trading/Fighting/Adventure Space Sim Xverse uses this system: gates that form the terminal points of a "fast pass tunnel", and its always both ways and always active. Very simple. Having your gates occupied while a traveller is in transit requires that gate travel be instant or fast (so long as you want to use multiple pathing). Consider, if you only travelled 1 Light Year/second, then opening a Earth's Gate to an Andromeda Gate would keep the gate occupied for over 2 million seconds for the transit time alone. That's a long, long time. Imagine if airport runways could only be used if no other aircraft were travelling between that runway and another one? Air travel would not be a common thing if you had to wait the hours most flights take to transit from their originating runway to their destination runway. But if the transit is just a few seconds, then its just a matter of coordinating and scheduling to maximize your through-put.

Now, in GalCiv, the illustrations we have from Star Dock show that the gate is used only "momentarily". This implies that they don't need either end to be open while a traveller is in transit. So it's not an actual "tunnel" that is created between the two gates. Then what is happening? It must be a transitional effect that is placed on the ship or created around the ship's spacial volume. Easiest way to create this protected or altered volume is just make a sphere. With the GalCiv system, I presume that the gateway imparts the actual "travel" velocity by creating a wave effect. The package ship sits in it's volume of space that is carried in this wave towards the target gateway. The target gateway catches the incoming wave (acting as a receiver) and reverses the process that transitioned the ship to its special state back to reality. This would allow for an easy logical breakthough: the humans put the projector safely into their ships, creating self propelled FLT star ships. This allows ships with their system to go anyway (no need of a pre-built reciever), allows them to change where they are going on the fly (altering their carrier "wave" slightly results in them changing travel direct), and allows them to transition back to reality whenever they want (can stop anywhere along their path). It's all basic SF FTL physics. Most work on the principle that the FTL drive creates some effect around the ship allowing it to circumvent normal reality. Some put all the work on the beginning and end (ie, big energy expenditure to go FTL and to stop being FTL), and some make it more like normal earthside travel (you have to constantly expend energy to continue to move forward/overcome the normal reality's "friction" or resistance to FTL movement).

The star gate transitional system, where the star gates "transmit" and "recieves" this FTL wave, means that if you don't want to let the Drengin invasion fleet through your star gate, you just don't "receive" them. Then, they are trapped in their altered state, passing through the universe. This means that invasions can only work via sneak attacks (you have no reason to suspect that it isn't a merchant convey coming through the gate), or some form of covert action where the recieving star gate control station is taken over and then set to "receive" the invading fleet. A highly secure arrangement. The controllers of the gate only let through what they trust and thus cannot be easily invaded.

Now, the interesting thing to me is what is everyone using to instantly communicate? You have to schedule the arrivals at your gate to make sure that you don't have 2 different travelers inbound at the same time. Otherwise, I would think there would be problems. So how are they doing that? How is it that your FTL ships, going as fast as you can push matter, have instant communication with their HQ? Something is going faster then you can push (thinking) matter. Is it all using simple quantum entanglement, so you have some really busy communication centers, where everything is being relayed to comm hubs at HQ (and back) via various permanent Point To Point chains? I presume that there is some other mechanism at work, to allow for easy communication between all parties without prior exchanges of communications. However, as each turn in GC is a week, that would permit a network of a simple permanent Point to Point communication network to a central source and back out. But that means that you'd need to send a quantum communicator through to whoever you want to safely travel to in the future. So that you and they can communicate when to send through a traveller, and so they know who that traveller is (so they will 'recieve' it), and not have problems of having multiple travellers needing to be recieved at the same facility at the same time. How do you get that first link out to them? This may be why the race that gave humans the information to build a star gate sent through the specs with its receiver set to "always on". That guaranteed they'd be able to send through travellers, and those could carry quantam communicators. A new star gate would be highly secure, even set to "always on", because no one but the race that was in electromagnetic based communication with them would even know they were building a gate, let alone when it would first go online and be available to recieve. Show a new species how to build a gate, make sure it's always on, send through your merchant fleet, and once you've secured your treaties and advantageous trading prevs, then show them how to "secure" their gate. Then, you can give them other gate locations, and a few communicators to those gates, to open trade negotions with the other races. In exchange, of course, for whatever you want. Just some thoughts.

Lucky Jack, you should presume and not assume. Because when you assume, you make an .... well, you probably know the rest.

I'm not concerned with having an actual discussion, including all physics as we currently know or strongly suspect, on how to go FTL. All I'm concerned with here is the game and how and when is it appropriate to allow us, the players, instant-porting from location to location in the game. Game physics isn't concerned with the reality, or what we know. If it was, there wouldn't be any other aliens, or, if it included them, they'd be something so totally different, they could only be modelled in the game as a "dangerous" region of space where corrosive nebuli slowly drift over to encompass whatever enters its region, or a mere resource to be harvested to make other stuff (ie, research, or money) from.

There are ways to "get around normal physics". We have a particular framework that we consider normal. But change enough of the conditions, and things act very different. For instance, changing the speed being travelled or changing the scale of the material worked with, and "normal" physics no longer seems to apply. Physics still apply, because its still what happens in the physical existance, but it just doesn't seem normal or expected to us. "normal physics" generally refers to whatever set of physics people are most familiar with. With authors, or fans of SF works, you have even more physics. For instance, Star Trek physics (utilizing the warpage of space that matter and anti-matter reactions create to go FTL), or Star Wars physics (where having lots of extra life-force or bacteria or gas enables you with reality altering and mind altering abilities), etc etc etc. For our purposes here, we are talking "GalCiv physics". Not reality, not the "NASA FTL Quantum Gravity physics theory #3", and not anything else. We just need a framework that is consistant with what we know of GalCiv, and stays in agreement with it for Galciv's game as it advances.

Anyways... WHEN should we get instant-porting? Mid game? Late game? Never? What kind of fast travel should it be? Space laning (ie, x5 faster travelling time between established points), true instantaporting? Should it be variable destinations but low usage per turn, or empire wide or dedicated facilities?

The only thing I ask is that there be consistant explanations for the rules, and the changes in rules, in the game. (I tend to spot, and latch onto, convoluted inconsistancies of reasoning and that tends to detract from my enjoyment.)

I would have never guessed.

By the way:
#1, the universe isn't constantly changing. The local conditions may be changing, but the universe isn't. Well, okay, there is some evidence that the laws of physics themselves may actually be changing, but it is on such a slow scale that it would have zero impact on us as individuals, and even as a species. So, to us, the universe is constant.

#2, our study of it can be very exact. Humans just prefer to believe what they want, rather then what the evidence dictates. We are emotive beings, not logical ones.

#3, You can easily get around inconvenient physics. We do it all the time.

#3#1 Even in the dark stupid ages, most people knew the world was round. You are buying into a "make yourself feel superior" myth which holds everyone before us were idiots. SCIENCE (the collective knowledge of people) knew the world was round. Indeed, we know that the Ancient Greeks figured out how big the earth is to a remarkable degree of accuracy. The "Collective Wisdom" of Columbus's time was that Earth was too big to safely sail westward from Europe to the Orient (Far Eastern part of Asia). Columbus believed that the estimates of how big the earth was in size were wrong and overly large. Turns out, "Collective Wisdom" was very correct and Columbus was very wrong. However, Columbus did discover that the ancient lands of legend to the west did exist, and unlike the then "modern" Europe, it still had untapped resources of trees. That one fact by itself is what drove the major powers of the time to colonize the new world. The navies of the world were wood then, and they needed the best wood to make decent fighting ships. The super powers of the time were chewing through their wood much faster then they could grow it.

#3#2 Which collective wisdom? Our ancient ancestors definately thought that the privalaged could fly. Heck, they knew it, because they did it. Ballooning is an ancient form of flight that was practiced for thousands of years in the Americas, and there is some evidence that the some of ancients people in North Africa/Mediterranean did as well. When the Wright brothers decided to attack the problem of Powered Heavier-Then-Air flight, the thinking was that there wasn't enough power available to permit viable heavier then air flight at that time. And that thinking was correct for several years after the Wright Brothers first flight. Which you'd know, if you were familiar with the history of modern aeronautics. Heavier Then Air Flight (airplanes) need to generate a lot of power to be able to go fast enough to take advantage of aerodynamic lift. That power only became only available with alumnium block combustion engines. The Wright Brothers did what other aeronautic pioneers had been trying to do. However, what set the Wrights truly apart from the others were the Wrights managed to get enough of an alumium power block engine to put on their glider to add that extra bit of thrust to turn it into a self-powered flyer. As aluminum power block technology advanced, planes became truly feasible. Aliminium power blocks only became viable when we had industrial electricty. It takes a tremendus amount of power to work with with aluminum (compared to other metals, such as copper or gold). So powered flight had to await industry harnassing electricity.

#3#3 Collective Wisdom never said that the speed of sound could not be exceeded. It was well known at the time that it was exceeded all the time, even by common place objects (ie, whips). It was known that the current aeronautic engineering and construction techniques could not stand the strain of supersonic flight. That's why all the major powers of air decided to investigate how to break the sound barrier, how to control the air plane when it was going that fast, and how to survive doing so. Indeed, NASA, as well as other research organizations or branches of commercial aeronautic companies, are still researching it.

#3#4 Collective Wisdom does not say that FTL is impossible. It merely states that our conventional or traditional techniques for accelerating spaceships will not permit the reaching of seriously near light speeds, and certainly not past it. So we know that to go FTL, it will take something other then what we are doing, now.

Be very careful using the term collective wisdom. True collective wisdom tends to be based on the best knowledge and experience available, and that is how it survives to continue being the collective wisdom. Of course, it won't always be right, but it will be right for its particular circumstances extremely often. That's why its collective wisdom.

Anyways, onto things that actually matter.

Research in a game is meant to open new options. Its a small step reward structure. You play for a while, and you get the award of being able to use the new option. It's a good gaming feature, which is why it is so often included in developing strategy games. Keeps the game interesting.

I don't like any rules in a game to "change". However, I don't mind new features becoming available. IE, you get Rairoad tech in Civ, you can now create a Railroad terrain feature. Units get to move across a "Railroad" terrain feature at 0 cost. That is just a feature of the game. Some might consider that a rule change, but I don't. Railroads are always there in the game... just that you cannot build them until you get RR tech. If you played a post-apocolypse scenario in Civ, you could have some railroads already existing. You just could not build them yourself, because you just don't have the infrastructure or working knowledge to do so. In Civ, does it seem unreasonable to be able to build a railroad after getting Railroad tech? It doesn't to me. Nor does it seem unreasonable in Civ to build airports after getting flight tech. So a similar "discover" would seem logical for enabling some form of accelerated travel or even instant-porting.

Again, the question to me isn't "how" Star Dock would justify such. Indeed, SF is filled with thousands of examples to "inspire" them. It is, instead, the question: When should we gain such capabilities in the game? When would it be a good point to introduce it as a "reward" to the players? When do players really need that capability on the bigger maps (and therefore, having it, has a better GC playing experience)? I don't care if Star Dock calls it "Instant Space Warping", "Dimensional Sliding", or "Quantum Catapulting". I just care about when would be appropriate to the game, and how that could make playing the larger maps more fun. Should it be only available as a late tech, and be a empire achievement to permit instant-porting between any of your worlds? Should it be a point to point system? Should it be a map construction project so that you have to "railroad" your space tiles between your worlds? What would be more fitting to the GC game and our enjoyment?

Vicious. What about defenses against such a weapon?

WOW this post is really going places. I think there are a few of good ideas in here. But what would it take ti actually get the design team to add wormholes/stargates?

Is it that they can't get the ships to use the wormholes/stargates when the direct flight path takes longer

But what would it take ti actually get the design team to add wormholes/stargates?

Ship Alpha1 = coordinates x15 y18
Ship Alpha1 enters x15 y18
move Ship Alpha1 to x5 y2
display message "Your ship has arrived safely on the other side of the wormhole"

Thats how i did it in my sad little 2d 1 level amateur space game...

It actually takes a lot of programming to make 6 to 8 wormholes work. It can be done. Maybe they are saving it for Galciv3 or maybe they don't want to mess with making the computer civilizations use it intelligently....at any rate it would be fun.

eh what about black holes ?

Your idea is interesting, morden.

But i have to go with the wormhole theory. With the ability to create one, your species could become Gods, ultimately. To control that type of power, you could do everything from creating a superb interstellar net of wormholes, to building one in the middle of an enemy star system and leading to nowhere. I would suggest that that be the last research to be discovered, for it is perfection. (after you do all the test-reasearches on it )