Apolyton CS: Civilization III: The List v1: Space Exploitation (page 2)

SPACE EXPLOITATION
-Summarized by Thread Master: Sven Milo-
Sven_Milo@village.uunet.com

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5. ALIEN INVASION    TOP

5.1) A race of aliens starts on the moon and while having the same technology they get different units. Eventually they produce a fleet of world ships and decide to pay you a visit. These aliens would be extremely hostile, with little chance of them liking you. They could appear on any foreign planet. They could also colonize a planet until its resources run out.

6. PLANETARY RESOURCES    TOP

6.1) When planet resources become depleted it becomes a desolate wasteland. All land becomes either hills or mountains and all cities shrink to size one. Only years of terraforming would make the city radius healthy enough for it to support life again. Space cities should have the ability to horde terraforming points or production.

6.2) Corporations will not be exploring the solar system for interesting data. They'll be after the valuable minerals contained in the asteroids and on the Moon. (Asteroid Mining should also be a technology; Call to Power got that much right.)

6.3) However, the mere act of dragging minerals back down the gravity well is not entirely practical, so corporations will soon begin to research Orbital Construction (which should also be a technology, leading eventually to space cities) so that orbital factories could manufacture goods from the materials gathered by mining asteroids. One could speculate that certain materials could be more easily produced in a zero-gee environment. Perhaps certain pharmaceuticals or chemicals or electronic components could be manufactured in zero gee that would be literally impossible to synthesize in Earth's gravity.

6.4) These orbital factories could soon produce at such a rate that they could adequately supply Lunar Colonies (perhaps a technology unto itself), or at least give them the boost they need to become self-sufficient.

7. HUMAN MUTATION    TOP

7.1) For that matter, by the year 3000, the term "human" might come to mean something entirely alien to our own experience. The progress of artificial intelligence, combined with new and complex modes of intelligence amplification, as well as new applications for nano-technology in the fields of medicine (specifically genetic engineering and neurology), may move the human species in whatever evolutionary direction its individuals choose for themselves.

8. THE ALPHA CENTAURI RACE    TOP

8.1) In civilization 1/2 your spaceship crashes if your palace is lost. In civilization 3 the spaceship should instead be dependent of an Interstellar Communication Center, which could be built anywhere, well hidden from the enemy. You should be able to build back-ups.

8.2) The Spaceship part concept could be incorporated with building space stations. The space stations are similarly to the spaceship made up by framework and habitation/support modules. Space stations would however have science/manufacturing components.

8.3) By the way, why have the spaceships got Solar Panels? They might be useful within the distance of Pluto, but later the Sun doesn't shine much more than any star. Nuclear reactors or fuel cells would make more sense. Another solution is to research cryogenics and freeze the colonists so they don't need too much support.

8.4) The farther into the future your technology goes, the faster you can build a ship, and the faster it will travel. You could build an expensive, slow and multi-generations ship with ~2025 technology. Or a faster fusion ship that could be smaller in ~2100. A stasis/cryo-freeze ship that needs less resources, can go much faster in ~2200. And finally you could discover teleportation, build a big machine, and beam the colonists over in a single turn.

8.5) I've always thought the space race in Civ/CivII dumb. "Let's jump straight from current (laughable) space tech. to near-light-speed interstellar transport!" Let's have a real space race.

8.5a) Getting to orbit
8.5b) Building satellites
8.5c) Exploring the moon
8.5d) Remote planetary exploration
8.5e) Better satellites
8.5f) Exploitation of lunar resources
8.5g) Gradual development of interplanetary transport technology
8.5h) Orbital industry of scale worth including
8.5i) Manned exploration of inner system
8.5j) Orbital colonization
8.5k) Way in the future, planetary colonization

8.6) I'd like to see the space race fleshed out a bit, with the First Satellite, First man in space, first moon landing, first non-terran probe, etc included. All are major monuments in history, would help out with science, and make the game exciting.

9. TELEPORTATION    TOP

9.1) The Star Trek's Concept of dematerialization and re-materialization invites many troublesome debates over the definition of self and death. A way around it would be worm hole like inter-dimensional(hyperspace) travel, but if we can have personal dimensional-travel gate system, we should already have found a way around light-speed limit.

10. SMAC/CIVILIZATION III RELATION    TOP

10.1) All games related: in a future patch, you could jump from civilization III to SMAC, carrying your nation ideology and technology. Therefor, the story of the game must connect to SMAC, meaning like the intro to SMAC, that earth is lost in fights and wars. Therefor, the unity must launched at latest 2050, and the Earth must be destroyed. Therefor, we can't move beyond that time frame.

10.2) Options for the Unity:

10.2a) Catapult: a ship using rocket fuel, catapulting by passing planets. Very cheap and fast too build. However, takes around 200 years (much more, but let's say that), with 10% of success.
10.2b) Nuclear drive: while we can't have it's "real" speed, let's say 100 years and 30% of success, cost: normal. Today technology.
10.2c) Laser-directed ship (moved by a laser beam sent by sun-orbiting satellites ). 40 years, 80% of success (nothing much to fail). Very near-at-hand technology (possible today, technically). Cost: high.
10.2d) Fusion drive: 50 years seems to be ok. 50% of success. 20-30 years from now? cost: normal.
10.2e) Cold-fusion drive: 30 years, 70% success. Futuristic technology. Cost: normal.
10.2f) Continuum-slide (pepetra momentum): a ship propelled by mach principle, a pure kinetic force. Time is around 15 years, VERY high technology stuff. Success: 70%. Cost: normal.
10.2g) Warp-drive: a ship using gravitational force to warp space around her, giving her FTL speeds. While this IS possible (magnetic fields warping managed to bring several proton over warped space to 4.2 C), a controlled field of millions of tons is very far indeed. Time: 4-5 turns. Cost: very high. Tech: max. Success: 30%.

10.3) The unity should be covered by a spectrum varying from 2030-2150 technology

10.4) If you start an SMAC game, there should be a possibility of going back from Alpha Centauri to Earth and re-establishing mankind. A returning civilization would have to terraform an intoxicated, radioactive planetary surface with an ecological system far from balance.

10.5) SMAC starts in 2100, after 40 years of voyage. So we can't go any higher than 2050 technology. The sweep-of-time, all related. We might get one colony to the moon, or Mars, but not several. Not enough to make several cities.

10.6) It would be sad if Sid Meier wanted to follow the story line that hard.

11. GAME ENDING    TOP

11.1) After colonizing some planets we find some strange ruins on some of the planets, and get alien technology, and finally, we are the first civilization to travel to another dimension

11.2) My interest in Civilization started by possibility of simulating some historic and fictional situations to see what kind of directions or policy would be most effective. It is my belief that colonizing Jupiter should be the limit for Civilization III, for I don't expect us to create a large habitat around Jupiter within 100 years

11.3) Why not make colonization of this solar system the "end-game" of civilization III and colonization of Alpha Centauri the goal of this "interim" game?

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