Transition Between Industrial and Space Stage (or even a new stage?)

Future Game Space Stage
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Hello everyone! I have a pretty big idea i’ve been meaning to share for a while now (although this has probably been thought of already), about the transition from Industrial Stage to Space Stage. I’ve always thought that the change from Industrial to Space would be quite a leap. Since the Industrial stage would start upon the invention of industrial machinery, and would last until the invention of faster-than-light technology (correction - the Space Stage starts when the first rockets are launched).

One thing I always thought was weird about Spore, and would be even weirder in Thrive, is the fact that you went from a one-planet civilization straight to an interstellar one, skipping over the colonization of your solar system entirely. I feel as if this would be a very big part of a intelligent species history, the change from a planetary civ to an interplanetary one.

I think it would be a good idea for their to be a middle-ground between these two types of civs (Planetary and Interstellar), where before you set out to colonize other stars you first colonize your own solar system. Perhaps this could even be classified as it’s own stage (perhaps Solar Stage or Interplanetary Stage?) meant to connect Industrial and Space, similar to how Awakening connects Aware and Society, and also act as a kind-of tutorial for the Space Stage. (although the Space Stage would probably have to renamed if this happened, perhaps to the Galactic Stage?) Simply because it’s simpler, I’m going to refer to this time as a stage for the rest of this post.

This stage would most likely start when you set up your first self-sustaning colony off-world. The first part of the stage would most likely be centered around making space travel easier and much more affordable, perhaps through structures like skyhooks, Launch Loops, and space elevators on celestial bodies with sufficiently low gravity, then setting up more colonies around your solar system, and expanding your existing ones. If the colonies get big enough, they might eventually declare independence, leading to interesting things like interplanetary diplomacy and, (probably much later in the stage), warfare. Asteroid mining would also likely be a large part of the stage, as eventually it would much likely be much more economically viable than mining on planets.

Anyway, lets hop forwards in this “stage”, to when you have a large presence in your solar system, and other planets and moons have highly developed societies on them. At this point, you would probably start needing to build a megastructure around your home star, most likely a Dyson Swarm for your rapidly growing energy demands, although I think it would be interesting if you were also allowed to build other megastructures possible within known physics, like a Star Lifter for extracting heavy elements from your home star. Perhaps you could also start sending sub-lightspeed colony ships to other stars (athough concepts like Light Lag for communicating to other stars would be a difficult thing to get right).

After your civilization becomes a Kardashev 2 civilization, capable of controlling all of the energy in their solar system, you would most likely finally have the resources to research a method of faster-than-light travel, and enter the Space Stage.

Anyway, that was just a brief discussion of my idea, and I hope you like it. Please share your thoughts on it! There is a poll below if you think this shouldn’t be implemented, should be implemented or should be it’s own stage, and I’ll also leave links relating to the topics discussed. Thank you for reading through the whole post!

  • This shouldn’t be implemented.
  • This should be implemented.
  • This should be it’s own stage.

0 voters

Videos relating to topics discussed.

Dyson Spheres/Swarms -
How to Build a Dyson Sphere - The Ultimate Megastructure - YouTube

Skyhooks -
1,000km Cable to the Stars - The Skyhook - YouTube

The Kardashev Scale -
What Do Alien Civilizations Look Like? The Kardashev Scale - YouTube

Asteroid Mining -
Unlimited Resources From Space – Asteroid Mining - YouTube

Star Lifters -
Starlifting - YouTube

Launch Loops -
Launch Loops - YouTube

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The start point of the space stage has always been the first time your species makes a rocket and gets to space the first time.

3 Likes
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So humanity is in the space stage now? That doesn’t seem right to me, I would think it would your first self-sufficient interplanetary colony that would mark you as ‘space-stage’, not just a couple of short adventures.

4 Likes
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This isn’t that important because the transition between the stages are smooth. Their names may not even be explicitly stated in the final game.

3 Likes
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I know that the stage transitions are supposed to be smooth, but from what I’ve seen in other discussions before I was worrying that it would be like Spore again, jumping straight from a planetary civ to an interstellar one.

Also, I think it’s just nice if different parts of the game have their own “stage” name. I think interplanetary gameplay and interstellar gameplay might be different enough to both have different stage names. The fact that Space goes from the first rockets launched to literally becoming gods feels like quite the stretch, so it might be better to have another “stage” breaking it up, I suppose.

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I think this would be like how the multicellular stage is split into micro and macro “stages”. The space stage could be split into pre and post ftl.

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Yeah I agree, I think there at should at least be some kind of build up to being able to travel on a interstellar scale. Maybe late industrial you can start working on computer technology and rocket science and such, making small but impactful technological leaps until FTL travel is discovered

2 Likes
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We were to the Moon and back. That is enough.

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Did my post not imply I that thought going to the moon and back wasn’t enough? Anyways, everyone already made their points, and you’ve haven’t made a new one, so necroing this thread was completely unnecessary.

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yea i don’t really care

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Setting up a permanent orbital station is enough for entering space stage

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So, so many posts could have been avoided if people read the wiki.

The early space stage begins with the first space flights of the player’s species.

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Follow the guidelines please

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I try my best to make my posts coherent, but I struggle a lot with conveying ideas to other people (i think it might be one of the negatives that comes from me being autistic), so I’m really sorry if it’s not very readable :frowning:

It’s a little mean though just to necropost saying “make something readable”. Please keep in mind that small things like that can upset people :frowning:

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i see that there are some spammers deleted posts around here
i believe that might be what they were referring to

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Oh, I wasn’t aware of that. Thank you for telling me! I’m sorry for misinterpreting things so badly, @AlvinTheIdiot :frowning:

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Most of this stuff is part of the current plan for the Space stage. It makes a lot of sense to have it divided into an earlier stage of mastering space flight and logistics, and developing technology within the starting solar system, and then the full sci-fi, Star Trek-like stage after. I do think that the plan on the wiki of having only current tech (or tech just being researched) right up until being able to start colonising other planets is probably best. We would most likely be able to colonise other planets (at a relative snail’s pace) long before we could harness most of the sun’s energy, for instance. Space elevators and such could be added before that, though.

The change to space stage is intended to be gradual. We would first need to build things on the home planet to launch to space, before developing space stations and lunar/planetary colonies which could start building things for themselves. At that point, the home planet wouldn’t be as essential to progress, and we could get things where they need to be much more easily, as it wouldn’t require first getting them out of the planet’s gravity and atmosphere.

Additionally, I think the game should definitely have at least basic orbital mechanics. Realistic orbital mechanics are confusing and often counter-intuitive, so there could perhaps be a simulation of realistic orbiting, except giving the player an unrealistic amount of control, and making it much easier to change their trajectory. I’m thinking something like Kerbal Space Program with a few cheats enabled. Once scifi techs have been unlocked, then we could remove the requirements of having to circle planets, etc. The movement of spacecraft could then be similar to Spore, where to land on a planet you just move in the direction of the planet you want to get to, and then zoom down to the surface, rather than having to achieve an orbital trajectory, and controlled descent.

1 Like
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Why spend energy to not rotate around a planet when you can orbit it without doing anything forever? Also, geosynchronous orbit is the same thing as not orbiting, from the pov of the surface.

So no launch windows? Why don’t people like orbits*?

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It’s just that it’s very complicated. I spent a lot of time playing Kerbal Space Program, and very much enjoyed it, but there some problems with orbiting as a game mechanic. One of the main ones is that it is complicated to program, although I’m not sure we’d need a really detailed simulation to get the desired effect, i.e. make it realistic enough for people to learn about the science of space travel from it. It’s also often confusing, although a good UI setup could alleviate that (KSP had issues with an awkward ui for orbital manoeuvres for many years).

With current levels of technology, rocketry is difficult and unforgiving. I can’t count the number of times I launched a rocket from Kerbin, went through 10 minutes of mostly just waiting, with occasional changes in trajectory, got into the desired orbit, and then realised I’d forgotten to include a part I needed. Again, UI assistance can help a lot with these issues. I think it would be best set up so as to give the player exaggerated levels of fuel and thrust, so that they have some more leeway.

I don’t think we should confine players to having to go through all of that for the whole of the rest of the game. And I don’t think it would make sense to. If you have ftl travel, you wouldn’t need to have launch windows, or take 5 minutes or more to get into space. With basic Sci-Fi tech (I realise that’s a contradiction in terms) you could get through the atmosphere in seconds, and reach another planet in minutes (or less). When doing that, you wouldn’t be on an orbital trajectory until you slowed down to a fraction of your speed, so it wouldn’t make sense to have these calculated. It would be reasonable at that point to be able to move as if gravity wasn’t a factor at all (like in Spore, et al.). We could still have the ship orbit when not moving (under their own power), though.

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It would probably be best if this was the start of an Interplanetary stage, and once you become a Kardashev Type 2, and build a Dyson Swarm, then visit another star system, then an Interstellar stage would start, being the main part of the space stage.