Unknown / future technologies

Future Game Space Stage
#1

Note: I wasn’t sure whether to put this in science or here but I thought that it was better here

As humans just exiting times where we used steam engines, it seems wildly insane that we could predict what is waiting for us in the world of science. Wormholes, hyper-light travel, and creating our own life are widely anticipated for the future of our own planet, but what if some things are just impossible, and there is no way around it. Taking a slightly less depressing angle my question is how will futuristic technologies play out in Thrive if we don’t know what is even in store for us? Or will it just be speculation?

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#2

I’ll be definitely disappointed if it turns out that our current understanding of physics, that there can’t be faster than light travel, is correct and there isn’t some new discovery that makes it possible.

In the space stage once you eclipse our current technological level, I’d imagine that there would be a popup saying basically “from here on out you are basically playing a scifi game with a ton of speculation, some of which isn’t scientifically possible according to current knowledge”

Basically I want to make the later space stage to be about cool scifi stuff, that is fun to speculate, with a hint of sciency handwaving thrown in to explain it. I’m a huge fan of scifi, and I’ll definitely be disappointed if Thrive can’t fulfill my wildest scifi dreams.

6 Likes
#3

DYSON SPHERE!!! DYSON SPHERE!!! DYSON SPHERE!!!

i really want a dyson sphere to be in the game.

1 Like
#4

I’m pretty sure dyson spheres have been proven to be theoretically possible.

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#5

I think they have been proven to be too. Also @hhyyrylainen sorry to put you on the spot but you seem to have the most answers or at least ideas. My question is that if (in game) faster than light travel is unlocked (without wormholes) would it use the Alcubierre Drive? Also I understand that this is very far in the future of the game I’m just curious.

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#6

It’s unknown what kind of FTL system Thrive is going to get. (wormholes, warp / alcubierre, hyperspace, etc.) An idea from an earlier thread was that each game you’d discover a random form of transport with its own ups and downs. (Maybe wormholes would require you to build a station to keep the wormhole open first, which would limit your FTL travel to and from those stations, slowing exploration down a lot, while a warp system could have accidents happen where the ship hits an obstacle, creating a constant % chance of random ships being destroyed.) This way you’ll get a bit more replay value out of it, due to the fact that you might want to use a different system this time. Then again, I forgot what the final consensus was on a system like that, and it’s 1 AM over here and I don’t feel like using the search function again.

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#7

I like the idea of light folding for FTL

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#8

I think we should use wormholes and warp at the same time,with wormholes appearing earlier but with the player having to build them first and with warp becoming available a lot later but giving the player more freedom

#9

I would like to have as many as possible different FTL methods in the game. This is a cool list of a bunch of different things:

3 Likes
#10

Why not base the FTL method of a said specie’s intelligence/brain capacity? I mean like how fast they are discovering things and have some kind of “most likely” calculator in the game that tries to automatically figure out what FTL-method that fits just your specie. Of course, there are animals out there that beat us humans to intelligence and that’s why I think it is also important to take in note how much of this brain capacity that is actually put to practical use. A specie that constantly use very much of their brain capacity may be considered over the top in their stage and this may contribute to some bonuses later in the game, for example increasing the chanse of getting a specific FTL-method.

Edit; where the specie being a bit slower get some classic let’s say the abillity to literally travel FTL. The quicker ones may get some kind of buffed version, like let’s say wormholes. It would also be cool if the calculator took into account what your specie has been focusing their general research on troughout the ages. If military has been a big concern then it’s higher chance developing wormholes, to quickly organize bigger fleets from A to B.

While more friendly specie’s that mostly used communication to influence their way trough the game may instead recieve some other kind of FTL-method that mirrors their chooses.

As an individual with computer skills mostly aimed at anonymizing people and minimal actual code-related knowledge, I don’t even know if what I mentioned is possible. I am sorry if I have proposed “mission impossible”. :slightly_smiling_face:

Latest edit: grammar.

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#11

I also believe that the mindset of the species affect what kind of technology they will discover. If they are religious, they could try to explore other planes of existence and use some kind of interdimensional drive in the late game. If they are more skeptical, they would focus on something more “tangible”, and perhaps would need more time to discover a FTL method (maybe the Alcubierre drive or the wormhole).

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#12

True, although the further and further your species selves into science fiction I think the need to scientifically verify technology will become unneeded.

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#13

Yes, this is true. I believe that it would start as hard sci-fi, and then slowly become soft sci-fi. I just meant that same technological level does not mean same technology. For example, a civilization in the Bronze Age could create some technology that we did not imagined. This technology would not be more advanced than ours, but different. I also think this also apply to FTL methods. The game could create a system of processual generation that created an alternative technology that we did not thought. Based on the current Thrive growth rate, I believe that, in the Space Stage, we will already have some advanced AI that will be able to create some hypothetical technology (without needing to explain the details, only the basics).

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#14

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.popularmechanics.com/science/amp35718463/scientists-say-physical-warp-drive-is-possible/ I wanted to post this article somewhere as a basis for hi-tech things in the game. It’s an article explaining the possibility of warp drives without exotic matter, but I read somewhere that it needed loads of power, so maybe the progression could be fusion reactors before warp drives

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#15

That looks a pretty credible thing, at least when compared to many physics crank papers that get published.
I guess that could be used as an explanation in the game for warp travel, that would be more grounded in our current understanding than an Alcubierre drive.

2 Likes
#16

I mean it could just be based off your actions throughout the game like a predator might get a special check by the FTL method chooser preventing and opening some possibilities to make the game dynamic and maybe even create some interesting challenges depending on the things the player did

#17

That seems very arbitrary. Unless you are a hive mind, surely your species is bound to have radical thinkers that can come up with non-mainstream ideas.

#18

But because those ideas are not mainsteam it would be harder to develop them

#19

I mean, social development wise, maybe? I would expect it to be little things if so: Predators in general would have more work transitioning to agriculture because of the extra work required in raising a prey animal to feed on (more awakening than space). What I could see for space stage is a species with a history of flight previously having bonuses towards operating in 3D space (since the base instincts would already there, unlike us 2D ground pounders). Just as much though, that may already be covered just by how your culture’s technology has developed? I mean, a species that tends to build heavy anyway will probably have a lot more of the requisite knowledge of how to support larger structures, one that’s semi-aquatic may not have needed near as much work into pressure hulls, ect (I’m sure there are a lot more options possible).

In the end, it would be more along the lines of “You lack the tools to make the tools to do x thing” so your radical thinkers would be focused more on the tools. All your biology and starting environment gives you options, but those options may drastically change how easy it is to get a technology, likely.

If you were looking at something like that, I guess we could look at nuclear power for humans? The usage of atom bombs left a nice collective scar on humanities psyche, and the reactor meltdowns already exasperated that, leading to higher cost on development and far stricter regulations than is strictly necessary. If the same thing happened for antimatter, or terraforming, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar series of events occur irl.

… Here’s hoping this rambling kinda acts as a response and I’m not talking past the point you’re trying to make.