The Moon

[Elok]

I didn't know anyone other than George W. Bush actually thought going to the moon is still a good idea. It's a barren rock, no unique resources, too small to be terraformed into habitability...it might be useful as a mine for raw materials or something if resources on Earth run low, or as a prison camp or nuclear waste dump, but living on the moon compared to the earth...meh. Maybe Mars, but not the moon.

[Adagio]

You have no idea how the tourism industry could turn this in a gold mine

I would assume lots of people would pay tons of money to see those famous footsteps

[Elok]

Yeah, and it'll take about five years to get boring and collapse, much like support for manned space missions did once the novelty faded.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Elok
I didn't know anyone other than George W. Bush actually thought going to the moon is still a good idea. It's a barren rock, no unique resources, too small to be terraformed into habitability...it might be useful as a mine for raw materials or something if resources on Earth run low, or as a prison camp or nuclear waste dump, but living on the moon compared to the earth...meh. Maybe Mars, but not the moon.

What if you turned the moon into a giant orbital weapons platform capable of bombarding earth? Like a sort of ready-made doom star.


The capability for multiple maps could be a nice thing to include in the game, even if it is solely for mods and not used in the standard game. (which I don't think it should be)

[Shogun Gunner]

Originally posted by Adagio
You have no idea how the tourism industry could turn this in a gold mine

I would assume lots of people would pay tons of money to see those famous footsteps

Yes, to see the famous footsteps on "the moon" ... the line will stretch miles from the movie set where the moon landing was shot.

Keep AC.

[Adagio]

I don't want to argue if they actually went to the Moon or not (I'm still undecided), but that wont stop them from... ehmm... "remake" those footsteps while still calling them for the first steps on the moon

[Proteus_MST]

I´d like it to have specific moon colonies, which could be built on a moon map, but function somehow different from the normal cities on earth:

1. Their Population would be much less than those of the cities on earth (i.e. the absolute number of people living there; you could still have those colonies grow to size 20, but they would represent rather 2000 people rather than 200.000)

2. You would have a special building qeue for moon colonies. You weren´t able to build large Units (like Tank armies) as with your small population you wouldn´t b e able to find enough recruits, but other special units, like lunar rovers and the like (and of course specific lunar colony improvements (like the lunar observatory someone already mentioned and maybe some tourist facilities)

3. You would (of course ) have lunar tile improvements with a different graphics set from the normal game (and maybe somehow different functions). For example you could have Live Support Facilities (with biodomes for food, and O2 and water extractors) instead of the farms on earth, lunar mines and, different from earth, special scientific tile improvements like various forms of telescopes (which enhance the scientific output at this tile).

4. The main reason for you to have moon colonies would be science (and, to a lesser degree, tourism) so you should have future technologies, which cost a lot of science beakers to research (and make it worthwhile to build lunar colonies)

5. The first lunar colony should be expensive to build, maybe in form of a small wonder. All further colonies should be easier to construct, maybe in form of some kind of "lunar settler" (which, of course, you could only built in moon colonies

As for the Alpha Centauri - Mission. It should still be used to end the game, even if you were able to build moon or mars colonies.
As someone already ointed out, as some form of tradition

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Elok
I didn't know anyone other than George W. Bush actually thought going to the moon is still a good idea. It's a barren rock, no unique resources, too small to be terraformed into habitability...it might be useful as a mine for raw materials or something if resources on Earth run low, or as a prison camp or nuclear waste dump, but living on the moon compared to the earth...meh. Maybe Mars, but not the moon.

There's a strong interest among the international space science community in establishing a permanent scientific base there. Also, the US will have international partners in its Mars mission, which would likely benefit from a moon base. And finally, some rare materials abound on the moon, including a material that could very useful in research on fusion power. The moon cannot be a second Earth when it comes to habitability, but its economic exploitation makes sense.

The one thing that really prevents us from doing all these projects already is that any space launch is viciously expansive, and you'd require tons upon tons of material to launch what it takes to create and sustain a scientific/mining base there.

[CarnalCanaan]

Originally posted by Adagio
I don't want to argue if they actually went to the Moon or not (I'm still undecided), but that wont stop them from... ehmm... "remake" those footsteps while still calling them for the first steps on the moon

You've got it all wrong!

We DID actually go to the moon. It was the 2000 presidential election that was filmed in Hollywood.

[Max Sinister]

@Spiffor: True, rocket starts are way too expensive. However, this could change if we decided to build a spacelift / skyhook / however you call it: A thick cable (which has to be made of a special material that isn't invented yet) 100,000 miles long which is hooked to the Earth somewhere at the equator at one end. The other end will stretch into space, held in position by gravity. Spaceships could go up or down on it - and if equal masses traveled in both directions, up and down, you'd actually need not too much of energy. Yeah, why can't we build that in Civ?

[aristonico]

Just an idea....

Well, Alpha Centaury deserves a new edition (AC II)...
Why not to link both games? I mean, you finish Civ and in one way or another, your civ is moved to AC.

Just crazy thinking in a midsummer Friday midday

[DeathByTheSword]

keep AC and make SMAC2

[lajzar]

The single biggest reason for ditching AC as a victory condition is this:

Its physically impossible to get there in any sensible time period.

I ran the numbers once, and assuming conventional rocketry technology has advanced to the currently assumed physical limits of that kind of technology, along with ridiculous improvements in fuel mass : total mass ratios, we still couldn't do the one way trip in under a thousand years.

Change AC to mars and keep the mechanics broadly similar would do fine.

[Tattila the Hun]

Well, wasn't the Civ3 finish just the launch? It may infact take 1000 years to get there...

[sophist]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
A thick cable (which has to be made of a special material that isn't invented yet) 100,000 miles long which is hooked to the Earth somewhere at the equator at one end. The other end will stretch into space, held in position by gravity. Spaceships could go up or down on it - and if equal masses traveled in both directions, up and down, you'd actually need not too much of energy.

The material has been invented. They're called nanotubes. The issue isn't discovering the material but being able to manufacture it in sufficient quantities with sufficient length and quality. I believe they can manufacture a relatively small amount on the order of kilos per year of nanotubes up to a few centimeters long. They need to be able to increase that production by a few orders of magnitude and lengthen those nanotubes to roughly a meter. Then they'll be able to stitch them together.

The current wisdom is that a ribbon would be superior to a cable, as it would flutter rather than fall in case of a break.

A further advantage of this is that the parts of the space elevator/orbital tether/whatever that are beyond geosynchronous orbit (~22,500 miles) are rotating faster than than an object at that height would orbit the Earth. As a result, objects that scale the tether to those heights and are released would get flung into space like a sling shot or bolo. The only power necessary would be what it took to climb 22,500+ miles out of the Earth's gravity well, which isn't that much. The Earth's angular momentum would take care of the rest. A little known fact is that most of the energy used by rockets to get into orbit is not for going up but for going sideways and accelerating the spacecraft to orbital velocity, which, at the altitude of the space shuttle, is something like 36,000 mph.

Er... not sure how to make this on-topic ;-)