Rock beats scissors.... but scissors cut paper.......

but paper covers rock!


Make your game. Assign each unit/race their stats based on a script or an external data file. Play the game. If something is wrong, fix it.

It really isn't possible to figure out what needs balancing without the final product unless your game boils down to a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors. If you game is anything more complex, even the slightest change can offset the balance of everyone else.

It reminds me of Starcraft and Warcraft3. Everyone knew how good each race was and which units were the best against what, but after every new patch, there was about a week of complete confusion before people figured out what to do again.

Not that I want to burst your bubble, but I would like to point out that even if energy beings could exist in a cohesive form that they would never be able to interact with our dimension and time reference. Anything made out of pure energy would have to be moving at c (speed of light), which means that compared to our time frame the energy being's time would never change but remain static when compared to the time frame of physical beings. The only way that pure energy beings could move slower than the speed of light is if they were constantly under the influence of a significant gravitational field. However, to produce a strong enough gravitational field that could warp space-time to allow pure energy beings to interact in our dimension of time and space would require the presence of an extremely dense and massive amount of matter, which defeats the purpose of having a pure energy structure.

It's not my intent to cut your ideas down, I just thought I should let you know what is possible and plausible if you want your universe to have any sense of believability. The only other reason I've brought this up is because I also considered having ethereal energy beings in my sci-fi universe. However, after performing some fairly extensive research I discovered that under current scientific understanding that non-physical beings as we think of them aren't possible, and that even if non-physical beings by some loophole in science could exist that they couldn't interact with the dimensional space and time of physical beings; at least not on a level that any physical being would take notice of or recognize. I even went to the extents of proving to myself how the theory of relativity works by creating several 3d animations and simulations that illustrated the primary concepts.

Now, if your universe is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid then I guess it's not too important to make your world plausible. I just thought I'd let you know that there are other sci-fi fans like myself who are probably aware of the restrictions and improbability of pure energy beings.

Good luck with your project.

I don't want to leave on a negative note so I thought I would at least suggest this. If you do want to have energy beings and maintain plausibility in your universe then I would suggest that these beings should have at least a very basic physical structure, even if it's extremely frail, but they possess the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields. Just a thought.

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Original post by engineeredvision Anything made out of pure energy would have to be moving at c (speed of light), which means that compared to our time frame the energy being's time would never change but remain static when compared to the time frame of physical beings.

This would have two interesting implications (race design-wise):
1) They can probably see the past, present, and future.
2) They can react nearly instantaneously ("lightning quick" reflexes, so to speak [wink])

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It's not my intent to cut your ideas down, I just thought I should let you know what is possible and plausible if you want your universe to have any sense of believability.

"Believeability" and "possible" are two very different things. In many a discussion over a mathematical proof, I've heard someone say, in reference to a supposed counter-example, "I can imagine a situation where..." meaning, more or less, that such a situation is "believable". Later that discussion, after playing with equations, this believable situation is shown to be contradictory (i.e. "impossible").

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The only other reason I've brought this up is because I also considered having ethereal energy beings in my sci-fi universe.

Last I checked, "sci-fi" stood for "science fiction".

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However, after performing some fairly extensive research I discovered that under current scientific understanding that non-physical beings as we think of them aren't possible,

In the past "current scientific understanding" would have laughed at the idea of an upper limit on speed (i.e. c).

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "When current science states that something is possible it is almost certainly right. When it states that something is impossible, it is very probably wrong."

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and that even if non-physical beings by some loophole in science could exist that they couldn't interact with the dimensional space and time of physical beings;

Light does a pretty good job of interacting with the dimensional space and time of physical beings.

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at least not on a level that any physical being would take notice of or recognize.

Last I checked, I was a physical being, and the last time I got a sun burn I sure took notice, I tell you what!

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Now, if your universe is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid then I guess it's not too important to make your world plausible. I just thought I'd let you know that there are other sci-fi fans like myself who are probably aware of the restrictions and improbability of pure energy beings.

Here's some advice: Never watch a movie with a theater major.

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Original post by Way Walker This would have two interesting implications (race design-wise): 1) They can probably see the past, present, and future. 2) They can react nearly instantaneously ("lightning quick" reflexes, so to speak [wink])

Your right, if a being made of pure energy existed it seems likely that it would be able to see or experience the universe multidimensionally past, present, and future as you suggested. This is quite interesting as my brother once suggested the possibility that maybe God was in some form pure energy. Not that I'm saying this is true, but if it were then it means God's time frame would be at rest while the rest of the universe's time frame would continue to pass linearly through time.

Your also right in saying that light interacts with current time and space and physical beings, but the way it does so is on such a vast and quick scale that our biological senses (sight, sound, touch, taste, & smell) can't accurately judge photon travel time, wavelength, or amplitude in a precise manner.

I'm going to imagine a very simple scenario that shows why establishing contact with these beings would be very difficult and impractical. Let's say for the sake of simplicity that intelligent physical beings figure out that these energy beings exist even though they can't see them because they are moving at the speed of light. (I guess they could be visible somehow if their area of occupied space was several thousand miles in size so that they would be noticeable in a split second of passing.)

Anyway, let's also assume that somehow these pure energy beings have found a way to move slower than c by effecting their space-time frame through use of strong gravitational fields or otherwise. Now let's suppose that physical beings have created a device to witness feedback or interaction with the pure energy beings. This device could be a simple solar panel that the energy beings are allowed to pass through. When they pass through the device they can modify the wavelength or amplitude of their energy form somehow, thereby creating a conducting effect in the cell that iniates a response for the physical beings to witness. The response could be as simple as turning a light on and off, such as morse code. In order to minimize the gravitational effect required to slow the speed of the energy beings lets say that their speed has been reduced to 0.999 c (this still requires significant space-time manipulation btw). For the sake of this hypothetical situation we'll assume that the energy beings are aware of the communication device and know that if they activate the device twice in quick succession that they are responding with a yes or true statement.

These energy beings can modulate their properties to activate this device quick enough to send two signals 1 second apart from each other in their time frame. However, when the physical beings attempt to look at the device to see if the light flashes twice quickly they probably won't even notice because the time between the first and second flash for them could be seperated by thousands or millions of years in some cases. So what may appear to be lightning quick reflexes to them will actually be ages for physcial beings. Their actual speed is lightning fast as you suggest, but the propogation of their actions and their ability to interact with the physical world's time frame will be extremely slow from our reference frame. I think this is where a lot of confusion derives from. Any energetic effect released on an environment by these pure energy beings may simply appear as long-standing background radiation to any physical being not moving near the speed of light.

This is obviously a very simplified example and I'm sure that the energy beings that OshEcho is thinking of will have more sophisticated ways of interacting with their environment, but it should still illustrate how interaction between physical and non-physical beings would be extremely problematic.

Sorry for double posting but I just thought of some other things to consider when thinking about pure energy beings.

As a thought experiment, imagine that you are a being of light or some sort of photo-intelligent entity that travels 100,000 light years, which is the approximate diameter of the Milky Way galaxy. During your travel you will have encountered millions of stars and counteless planets. To any physical being at low velocity on a planet in the galaxy it will have seemed that your trip took 100,000 years. However, to you time is at rest, so everthing that was experienced in that 100,000 light year trip is experienced instantaneously in a single moment. At any one time for an outside observer during this trip you can instantaneously experience the trip. Now, as your speed decreases slightly less from c you begin to experience the trip over a longer period of time, say a couple seconds for instance. Eventually, as your speed is drastically reduced it will seem that your 100,000 light year trip may only have taken a couple days, weeks, or years, while those at relative rest would still have experienced the event over 100,000 years.

If it were possible for a pure energy being to drastically reduce speed to less than 0.00001 c for example so that the entity could interact with physical beings in a more manageable time-scale then the amount of gravitional distortion required to produce this scenario would have to be nearly on the scale of the distortion created by a black hole. If this were the case, any attempt that these beings made to approach another planet or even a star would cause the planet/star to collapse into the resulting space-time curvature distortion.

It seems that a probable environment for pure energy beings could actually be inside of a blackhole. The problem in this situation is that the gravitational pull of blackholes is so intense that not even light can escape past event horizon, therefore, it would be nearly impossible for other beings to reach the pure energy beings in this environment or for the pure energy beings to escape. Of course no one knows exactly what the inside of a blackhole is like or where it eventually leads, so it may be possible that their is a back door to the black hole so to speak that could allow the energy beings access to what we consider the normal space-time universe.

I still think your best bet is to create a race of physically minimalistic beings that have the ability to manipulate electromagnetic fields and energy rather than actually being composed entirely of energy without any physical form.