I see where you''re going with that. Lone space traders are pretty cliched, but there have been some good games on the subject! Besides, I''m going for originality in the overall theme, not the genre. I mean, the back-stories of FPS''s are pretty cliched too, right? So why does everyone keep on making them? Because some of them are really fun to play! So...yeah.

Your idea is interesting, but a bit of a different genre. You''re talking about a futuristic management sim with analogies to the lone-space-trader cliche, while I''m just going for a space combat sim with some RPG elements thrown in.


TheThief

Parklife,

You and TheThief might find the following interesting. Actually there IS something faster than the speed of light, but it''s no known form of energy or matter. Some call it information, some call it influence, but the fact remains that whatever it is, something goes faster than the speed of light. In fact, more importantly it disproves another of Einstein''s basic tenets....locality. but I''ll let the quote explain. However, I really recommend looking up Bell''s Theorem on google.com. I''d also look up stuff on Niels Bohr, who in my opinion, was a greater genius than Einstein. (Einstein''s famous quote was, "God does not play dice with the universe" to which Niels Bohr replied, "Stop telling God what to do!"). Einstein''s theories are slowly fading while Quantum theory (backed by Bohr) is withstanding the rigors of time. Indeed, the only thing saving the Theory of relativity is that there is no matter or energy in Bell''s theorem...a technicality that has saved Relativity for the time being.

From;
http://www2.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/kenny/papers/bell.html

"In this paper I am going to discuss one of those results, called nonlocality. Its converse, locality, is the principle that an event which happens at one place can''t instantaneously affect an event someplace else. For example: if a distant star were to suddenly blow up tomorrow, the principle of locality says that there is no way we could know about this event or be affected by it until something, e.g. a light beam, had time to travel from that star to Earth. Aside from being intuitive, locality seems to be necessary for relativity theory, which predicts that no signal can propagate faster than the speed of light.
In 1935, several years after quantum mechanics had been developed, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen published a paper which showed that under certain circumstances quantum mechanics predicted a breakdown of locality. Specifically they showed that according to the theory I could put a particle in a measuring device at one location and, simply by doing that, instantly influence another particle arbitrarily far away. They refused to believe that this effect, which Einstein later called "spooky action at a distance," could really happen, and thus viewed it as evidence that quantum mechanics was incomplete.
Almost thirty years later J.S. Bell proved that the results predicted by quantum mechanics could not be explained by any theory which preserved locality. In other words, if you set up an experiment like that described by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, and you get the results predicted by quantum mechanics, then there is no way that locality could be true. Years later the experiments were done, and the predictions of quantum mechanics proved to be accurate. In short, locality is dead."

quote:

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Original post by TheThief
Your idea is interesting, but a bit of a different genre. You''re talking about a futuristic management sim with analogies to the lone-space-trader cliche, while I''m just going for a space combat sim with some RPG elements thrown in.

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Gotcha. I guess it''s hard to be truly original. After all, my "idea" isn''t really mine at all. It''s a combination of TradeWars, Civ, and an old table top game called Warp Wars.

Anyway, it sounds like you''ve got a pretty good backstory. At least you''ve avoided "it''s just that way" as an explanation for the mechanics of your universe.

Good luck and keep us posted, would ya?

PS - Apologies for my CRLFs and

in my last post...

Dauntless:

That is interesting, but a bit out of my scope.
I also just realized that my relay-travel idea is impossible too. If you have to establish contact between the two stations, you have to send a signal of some sort, and that signal can''t go the speed of light anyway, so the whole thing is pointless! Arrgh, I hate that damn theory....

TheThief

sound very good, both ideas.

its really about time someone developed an rpg-style game in that kind of setting. but how open-ended is it possible to be?

i think we then run into the infinite possibilities = infinite data problem. hdd''s aren''t quite that big yet...neighter are dev. schedules.

just a thought.
btw, if anyone wants actually implement any of this, i''d be glad to help...

Eh....which two ideas? There have been several in this thread?

And also, I''m implementing my idea, so I''m not exactly sure what you''re referring to...

TheThief

TheThief

Well, I thought the idea of non-locality would give you an idea for another means of FTL travel. Actually, your idea of relay stations would be compatible with this "spooky action at a distance". How so?

Well, the best analogy I heard goes like this. Imagine if you could saw a coin in half. You give two people each half of the coin, but you don''t know who has which side. Each person goes to the opposite ends of the universe. You then ask person A which side he has...you now instantly know what the other person has. Even more bizarre, the mere asking determines the state properties (I won''t even go into a Schroedinger''s Cat simulation here...but it''s something to think about....until you ask and find out what half of the coin person A has, it''s both and neither).

How does this relate? According to Bell''s Theory, particles have a certain "information level". As Heisenberg proved, you can''t know the position or velocity of a sub-atomic particle at the same time...the mere act of observing it causes information to be lost or gained. Well, if you could somehow extrapolate this to a macro-molecular level, by determining the "state information" of an object at one relay station, in essence, you could redefine it at another station. Think of it as teleportation rather than FTL travel if you will.

You''d have to do a little more digging to make it a more plausible, but just an idea. If you''re REALLY hardcore sci-fi, this should appeal the purists, not to mention have a more original and unique method of FTL travel.

Well, I followed your suggsetion and read up on Quantum mechanics as will as String/M-Theory. I read the text about Bell''s theory, and I remember reading something similar before. There was an experiment a while ago on teleportation, where there was an emmiter and two detectors, and I believe they actually accomplished the "Spooky Action at a distance" with electrons, where they had two entangled electrons 10 feet away from each other, and they essentially "copied" the state of the first electron onto the second one, so they became identical.

Although this is an important discovery/experiment, I''m not sure how to extrapolate something that might work for my idea of either FTL or relay(stargate-like) travel.

Basically, all the receiving relay-station needs in order to make a worm-hole, is the "frequency"(or some other similar property) of the out-going wormhole so they can make a connection. If I can figure out how to describe a device that uses entangled particles to send some sort of binary(or base-three) message, that would solve my problem! Any ideas, Dauntless?

TheThief

Hmm, the trick is making this work on the macro-level. Everyone likes to say that Quantum mechanics is just a toy, since it doesn''t really describe the "real" world. But they forget that our brains operate at the near atomic level where quantum mechanics do come into play.

I guess the simplest way to try to do this is to project a field of some sort that makes the universe see the ship as a single dualistic particle. Basically you''d disguise the ship as a QWF (Quantum Wave Function) that would be "popped" by the receiving relay station. The best analogy I''ve read for QWF is that they are like circular ripples on a pond. Since atomic particles are essentially probablity functions, the ripple is just a "best guess" as to where the particle truly is. Once you observe the particle, it changes from a ripple to a fully fledged particle. The trick is in disguising the ship in the phase entanglements that Bell proved.

Also, when you look at FTL travel in this manner it raises serious strategical issues. Since travel is now instantaneous, and reliatn upon gateways this means several things. Firstly, it could make planets very easy to defend, afterall, shutdown the gate and ther''s no way to get there. Which is great for a self-sufficient planet, but bad news for one that isn''t. Also, this is assuming a state of war already exists...what about a sneak attack? There will be no way that the defenders will have any warning of this.

If there was a way to implement instantaneous travel without relay stations, then things get even more sticky. How do you defend a planet''s surface when the invaders can drop into orbit on a planet and drop their troops as they please?

Call me a stickler for consistency, but these are the kinds of things that makes a game world GREAT. When an author/desinger doesn''t consider them it leaves a hole of incompleteness. IT requires more forethought, but I think it also makes for a much more original world. Hopefully my ideas at least sparked your imagination a little bit

Well, what you said sounds plausible enough so I''d have to be a physics major to contradict you, so I think I''ll go with your idea .

One other thing... I was also researching the Holographic principle(Here is a good desc.) and I''m thinking of a device that "sweeps out" the ship in 10-D space, and then projects it in 4-D space-time at another location(a billion miles away...). Is that possible?? Would it work?

You seem to know more about this than I do, so I''d be interested to try and actually think of a theoretical solution to FTL travel that might be possible in the future.

Of all the books I''ve read, not many actually describe something except for either "Warp-Speed" or "Hyperdrive" or some imaginary "drive" that speeds the ship significantly without distorting time, and all of them essentially contradict ''General Relativity'' VERY bluntly. Do you know of any stories that describe more realistic means of FTL travel?

Thanks for all your help!

TheThief