Beyond Alpha Centauri::::::::Discussion Thread 8

[Lonestar]

Posted.

[Mr. President]

You had navigation problems, Lonestar? You should try driving in Melbourne.

The roads are engineered so that there is exactly one way to get from any one point to any other point. Many of the roads are shared with facsimiles of streetcars ("trams" in the local dialect) which drive very slowly and are really nothing more than moving roadblocks. You are allowed to park on almost all streets, including the one called "Burwood Highway". Several streets downtown have a rule that you may only turn right from the left lane.

[Lonestar]

That sounds nightmarish.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Lonestar
I'm a Cyrptologic Technician(Maintenance) who does secret and dubiously constitutional stuff for the Navy.

I'm currently waiting for my ship to return from deployment, so my schedule is something like this now:

0730- Muster

0800-0900 Pick up trash, empty trashcans

0900-1145 Nap, read book

1200 Muster

1215-1445 Nap, read book.

1300( Friday's only) go home

1500 Muster, go home.

Sounds like very important work if you ask me... Nah, I'm sure that your duty is important for whuppin' terrorist a**. I'm seriously thinking about going Air Force for after-school income and to try and stop terrorists in the world...but maybe i'm just being idealistic.

Mr. Prez-are you serious about your roadways? It sounds like your civil engineers were smoking crack and doodling when they were designing your roadways.

And I thought our roadway policies were weird.

[Mr. President]

If crack was all they were smoking, I'd be glad already!

It's like the Labyrinth with buses instead of minotaurs. Still not quite enough to make me hate driving in the abstract, though.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Mr. President

It's like the Labyrinth with buses instead of minotaurs. Still not quite enough to make me hate driving in the abstract, though.

Hey, I've been meaning to ask you something Mr. Prez. Do you know where they get all the cool quotes for the Magic cards? Is there a pool where they get them? I kinda want to make a list of cool quotes that's why....

[Mr. President]

Hmm. I'm not sure if there's one specific site for that.

There's a German-hosted, English-language site called Magic: the Database at www.jura.uni-tuebingen.de/~zxmsj04/magic . It has all the old-school cards and the expansions up to Urza's Legacy or something like that; it has an entry for each card that includes its flavor text.

Essential Magic, www.essentialmagic.com , has the best search function of any Magic website I've encountered. It's got big images of the cards, too - good for reading flavor text!

Beyond those, I haven't really seen any place that would have all the quotations. I'll keep looking, though.

[Lonestar]

Originally posted by Frankychan


Sounds like very important work if you ask me... Nah, I'm sure that your duty is important for whuppin' terrorist a**. I'm seriously thinking about going Air Force for after-school income and to try and stop terrorists in the world...but maybe i'm just being idealistic.

In addition, the Navy spent 500k of your tax dollars training me.

[Sovereign]

Hello all,


I would like to clarify the record on several things.

First, my new power reactors aren't black holes or singularities as Lonestar suggested in his post.

They're Quantum reactors based on the Alpha Centauri ones with the capacity to be improved or enhanced in future "game years" as the technology is mastered.

The PoM tests its first singularity drive in Lonestar's post.

If I remember correctly, Alpha Centauri scales power in 4 levels.

Fission ===> Fusion ===> Quantum ===> Singularity

Essentially, Singularity drives are several orders of magnitude more powerful and generate way more power than the Quantum reactors that I'm testing.


I hate to be like Mellian, but could we keep the technologies at least at pace and realistic?

The UA's new Quantum reactor is brand new, and it generates 10 times more power than the usual anti-matter reactor. Keep in mind it's a "unrefined" and "un-improved" design, much like a prototype.

The PoM singularity reactor seems to generate 100 or 1000 times the power of an anti-matter reactor.

See my point?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if we keep trying to one up each other, we would end up building Terror Stars like in GalCiv by the end of summer. Then wipe everything out


....rant mode off....

Any word on the next post, Silence?

Franky, good luck with your finals!


Laters.

[Frankychan]

Originally posted by Sovereign
Hello all,

...

I hate to be like Mellian, but could we keep the technologies at least at pace and realistic?

...

Any word on the next post, Silence?

Franky, good luck with your finals!


Laters.

You sound like Mr. President. (No offense to both of you!)

Thanks for clarifying things. I was thinking that if you had singularity reactors, it would put things into a different perspective.

Oh yeah, thanks...I'll need all the luck I can get. I'll post after I'm through with finals, seeing as how I've been spending a lot of time at my university's library.

Good luck on your finals too everyone!

But if you don't have finals.......Ooooo, I'll give you such a smack!

[Mr. President]

I must admit I was a little perturbed by the sudden appearance of singularity reactors. There's really no need for anyone to try and out-do anyone else, since, as I tried to explain to Mellian several times, this is a story-writing activity like the Spartan Chronicles and not a competitive game-type situation.

I've noticed just a hint of competitiveness creeping into posts on a couple of occasions, mostly concerning energy production and ship speeds. I'd like to suggest that you'll have more fun writing Beyond Alpha Centauri if you don't walk this path.

And if "ubertech", as they say in some parts of the multiverse, is really your thing . . . well, there's always the NationStates forum.

[Mr. President]

Originally posted by Frankychan

I'll post after I'm through with finals, seeing as how I've been spending a lot of time at my university's library.

Good luck on your finals too everyone!

But if you don't have finals.......Ooooo, I'll give you such a smack!

You'll be fine. It's never as bad as you think. I'm always convinced I'm gonna fail, but I never do.

I do have finals, but not for about four weeks. I gotta study!

[Silence]

I just got done with my final tonight, so sometime tommorow or Thursday.

[Lonestar]

Sovereign, I thought you went to an Engineering school?

fission-fusion-antimatter-Quantum Singularity.

Therefore, I was forced to conclude that the UA had indeed gone ahead with a singularity drive.

This was something posted a llllllllllooooonnnggg time ago by both of us in BAC. For some reason you think quantum != singularity. Same thing, different names.

I was intended in my next post to make a reference that the Harbringer returned to Beta Hydri under it's matter/antimatter reactors, and a corollary that Protectorate structual engineering (because the Dosi won't hand over forcefield tech) isn't up to the task of repeated and/or prolonged speeds provided by the Sin power plant.

I also have only Sin capable ships, both of which are going through some very exhuastive trials. I posted that with the intentional parallal drawn with the first Nuclear surface ship, the Long Beach, the biggest American surface combatant built since WW2. par of the reason was because the reactor took up so much damn space. Same applies to the Harbringer and Thunderer.

By the way, I've been wirting the histories with a an intention of the author living in a rival Human Empire at the time, be it UA, Peacekeeper, or whatever. Lord Protector Ian is about to do some nasty stuff.

[GeneralTacticus]

Lonestar: I make no comment on how things work in the real world, but in SMAC, 'Quantum Reactors' have nothing to do with Singularities; they generate power by somehow splitting light.