Ok I have to ask.......... Dont kill me..... :)

Ring worlds? Planets with rings around them? If so, yes.... they add 10% to the planets research capabilities.

No, he means like Halo....


I think. I dunno thats what I think of when ever I hear "ringworld"... BTW, if you like reading, the Halo books are amazing.

ummmm You mist be a young chap.... The book "RingWorld" was around long before Halo....

yea, if you check out my profile it says Im 16

Pick up Ringworld sometime... You will love it...

I dont think that in galciv2 you can build a ring world or a dyson sphere and thats too bad. But there is allways space empires 4 for that and maybe space empires 5 if it will ever come out.

Pick up Ringworld sometime... You will love it...

Will do! Thanks!

Yea Larry Niven and jerry Pournelle's Ringworld series, awesome. I am not sure I have read the last couple, are they worth a look, the first two blew me away - the sense of scale in the first one is amazing writing,

anyome read the riverworld trilogy by philip jose farmer? I read it a few years ago now (too many to mention) but it was amazing and i have never come across anyone else who has read them!

A long time ago I picked up the last book in the river world trilogy. Fascinating reading.

I also think that the Niven book 'Footfall' was top notch. Why don't they do a movie about that? Instead we get Independence day ... Yeesh.

I am not sure I have read the last couple, are they worth a look,

They go downhill, I'm sad to report. The last one Ringworld's Children was a only a slight improvement over the previous couple that obsessed on Rishathra.

The original was very good. Reading it gave me agoraphobia.

anyome read the riverworld trilogy by philip jose farmer? I read it a few years ago now (too many to mention) but it was amazing and i have never come across anyone else who has read them!

I read the trilogy back in the 80's.

If you like this series then you should also check out the Foundation series Link and Robot series by Isaac Asimov Link

Asimov was critised for the lack of sex and aliens in his books. Philip Jose Farmer Link may have written the first novel of sex with an alien, The Lovers, Link

Asimov is the MASTER! I also loved the 'End of Eternity'. One of the most fascinating books on time travel I have ever read!

Haven't read Riverworld but it is on my list. I have read almost everything that Asimov wrote, most of it too long ago.

For great Scifi read Peter Hamilton's Nights Dawn Trilogy and the Hyperion series by Dan Simmons.

And the topic went BAM only two posts into the thread

Lucifer's Hammer by Niven/Pournelle is a good read.

For some other really good stuff, try and get copies on Alan Dean Foster's "Icerigger" trilogy (sadly, it appears to be out of print for some years now) or some things by Vernor Vinge, like "A Fire Upon The Deep" or "Across Realtime".

But seriously, building a ring around a star would throw the game balance off just a bit, since that ring would have an inhablitable surface several orders of magnitude larger than all regular planets even on the biggest map combined. So either you would start that thing in the first few weeks of the game, just to maybe finish it a few weeks before the game ends (where yould you get the material?) or you would just have a gigantic construction site all game long.

A ring world or dyson sphere it doesnt seem soo imposibil. For material you can use asteroids fields from the system or break a low class planet or a gas planet and trasfom it in a ring world. You can order your planets to build fleet of construction ships to help you build your world in a reasonable time. It can add influence once is finished cause its a major project that impresess all other races(master race).

THe ability to destroy a star would have been nice too. You can criple an enemy by sending a special ship to his home system and make its star go supernova destroying all planets in that system. Of course after these you'll be an evil civ. Also you can have a posibility to ban this kind of weapons in the galactic council. Wouldnt that be nice!!!

You're talking about GC1 terror stars, which aren't in GC2 for schedule reasons. There was a thread on this recently.

And when you're done with the hardcore SF that takes itself too seriously at times (nothing wrong with that kind of SF, really, I just like variety) there's always Space Farce like "Illegal Aliens." If you like a touch of SF in your silliness, I recommend that one. Didn't like the last half of the book as much as the first half, but the first half had me in stitches at times.

One of the best hard-core SF books I've read is Robert Forward's Dragon's Egg. Any collaboration by Niven & Pournelle is good reading as well. For farce and a view of political correctness taken to extremes see Keith Laumer's "Retief" series.  And if you REALLY like punny reading see Piers Anthony's "Xanth" series and Robert Aspirin's "Myth" series (Myth Adventures, Hit & Myth, Another Fine Myth, etc.) I better stop here before I get long winded.

SrGalen, I agree completely with all your recomendations, loved Dragon's Egg. I also really like Robert Asprin, though I don't think his style has quite recovered from his hiatus. Actually, "Illegal Aliens" was coauthored by Phil Foglio, the guy that does most of the Myth series artwork, including the comic adaptation. In the comic adaptation, he took a great book and improved on it with a much better ending. If you haven't read the comic adaptation, go find it, or at least the 8th comic (I think it was the 8th that finished the first book). The comic lost Phil at the completion of the first book, and with that, I stuck to the books.

For that matter, my absolute favorite online comic is Phil's "Girl Genius" at www.girlgeniusonline.com. Great stuff there Comes out 3 times a week, and those other 4 days are just plain painful waiting for a new episode. Highly recommended.

If you want a slightly different Utopia, get "Starship Troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein. (No, not the movie! That's a different thing! Go sit in the corner, here's your hat!) It's relatively short, but a good read. keep in mind that the author has rather conservative views, and some parts of the book seem like a lecture, but give it a thought. You don't need to like his views, but think about it for a while.

IMO, that should be mandatory lecture in school.

If you want a slightly different Utopia, get "Starship Troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein.

I'm a 30-second bomb! 29... 28...

Hard to call it a utopia when the humans were losing the war for most of the book.

I've read the book by Heinlein. And wasn't all that impressed with it. Then again, I actually enjoyed the movie version of Starship Troopers.

Not because it was campy, but because the story took itself very seriously. And yet.. there was some cheese factor. hehe.. But I liked the extreme governmental choices that the people had to live with. And they glossed it over in the class lecture. Yet, I thought it was disturbingly plausible.

I think Armor by John Steakley is a much better, though far darker, picture of future warfare than Heinlein's novel.

Also, honestly a ringworld/dyson sphere would theoretically take so much mass, it would consume MULTIPLE star systems. Unrealistic in the extreme.