SDNW5 Preliminary Discussion Thread

[KhorneFlakes]

What if the Screworlders froze the Hellenes after they've been set on fire? What would the Bastians do? What would the Chamarrans do?

[Panzersharkcat]

Start a flame in your hearts? Or maybe just applaud at the sheer audacity.

[OmegaChief]

By the same logic the Authority would have to get involved to protect thier Kitty trade partners...

Oh hey, this is how wars escalate.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes.

See, this is why I thought trade routes were a good idea!

[Esquire]

I'm not sure I like all this talk of being set on fire and frozen. Still, it's always nice to see diplomacy working exactly as it does in real life.

[OmegaChief]

They really are Simon, it gives everyone Allies In A Can as well as complicates who can fight each other without loosing big chunks of GDP.

Also lets us exploit trade sanctions and threats for potentially non-violent conflict resolution or economic warfare!

[Akhlut]

I mean, what slightly annoys me about that is that I don't get why, and I also don't like the idea of "we hold all our potential friends and allies in contempt" as a starting place for diplomacy. Being full of arrogance and hate as a nation only works if it's played for laughs, as Aklhut is sort of doing for the Greys (or seems so to me).

Hey, we're perfectly willing to be fr...er...acquaintances with other nations! If they show us the respect we're due! It's not our fault we've had space flight since humans thought there were four elements and that magic men lived on mountain tops! Hell, there are still humans who think that (looking at you, Hellenic Confederacy)!

[Esquire]

We don't think that. we know it. The finest dialectical arguments our philosophers can devise prove it!

[Simon_Jester]

Also, [points to esper academy] there ARE magic men on mountain tops! Well, some of them.

You're just jealous that none of them are yours...

[Darkevilme]

Well. OOB numbers are up.

Also I wonder if the Umerians use the project that created the Chamarrans as a case study for "How not to do science.".

As an aside:
The researchers kept logs and backups of their data at a remote location. So there's still archives on the original project. Umeria and the Holy empire are most likely to have copies of the database due to being boffins and somewhat originating from the same nation that created the project respectively.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Wow...again I miss a lot...I have quite a few discussions to jump into:

1: The Navy/Army ratio: Arcadia concentrates on the Navy, but that is a side effect of us being Space Sweden. We aren't going to invade anyone unless they attack us first. Thus the Navy gets first dibs on the GDP.

2: Backup Mods: I could do it, but I don't know if I am well known enough to work it. Plus I may have less time over the summer (School is taking back the laptops, so I have to get a new one).

3: Map: I'm fine waiting on that, considering the only trade route I have is with Bastian. (Don't count the Stellar Nation ally thing considering they are going to be in my territory regardlessly).

4: Allies/Trade Route War: Well, if Bastian jumps in, that would mean that Space Sweden will be dragged into the war too (most likely kicking and screaming ). Same goes for the Stellar Nation. And of course there is always the still open slot of 'Arcadian Adversary' to worry about.

[Simon_Jester]

Uh, guys? Let's not just assume automatically that EVERY nation who trades with another nation has a treaty of alliance with that nation, or will fight a war to save that nation from a beating. There IS such a thing as neutral shipping, and with a decent web of trade, having every trade route act as an alliance would probably end up with everyone at war with everyone, including themselves.

[OmegaChief]

Sure! But they act as great potential hooks to become involved in various stories and plots though.

[Panzersharkcat]

That's also why I said I would try to end things peacefully. Being set on fire is also bad for business.

[Simon_Jester]

[modhat on]

[sniffles]

This... this is everything I'd hoped for!



[modhat off]

[Akhlut]

Edited in the glorious military of the Hegemony. Cower, pitiful beasts!

[Beowulf]

I'd volunteer for secondary mod, but I'm not sure how many people would go along with that.

[TronPaul]

Nation Name: GSN Space Nation

The GSN was originally founded by open source evangelicals, software pirates, and hardware hackers. The morals and beliefs of the original founders have survived to the present day, though some of them have been warped over time. There is little to no full copyright protections recognized by the GSN besides open source or creative commons license derivatives and patent protections are almost nonexistent. As a result of this the GSN has become a home (or haven as some nations would describe it) for the manufacturers of knock offs. Software development remains a core part of the GSN identity and many software foundations' home offices are within the GSN.

Does this sound good? I wanted to make an open source, hacker nation, but I couldn't come up with much besides that until Scottish Ninja suggested that I imitate China and make knock offs with my lack of copyright and patent protection. I still need to design a government and go more in depth on the people and economy, but I'd like to do something like this.

A question about hyperwave: Would hyperwave be able to provide something like the internet between nations/sectors? A lot of what I would like my nation to do would involve some sort of inter-sector internet or networking.

[Panzersharkcat]

It sounds good. You'd probably get along pretty well with the Bastian Empire. They're not that big on IP either.

[OmegaChief]

A question about hyperwave: Would hyperwave be able to provide something like the internet between nations/sectors? A lot of what I would like my nation to do would involve some sort of inter-sector internet or networking.

I'm pretty sure there's an extranet of some description, which may or may not be full of Capellens taking fiction far too seriously on forums.

[Simon_Jester]

Nation Name: GSN Space Nation

The GSN was originally founded by open source evangelicals, software pirates, and hardware hackers. The morals and beliefs of the original founders have survived to the present day, though some of them have been warped over time. There is little to no full copyright protections recognized by the GSN besides open source or creative commons license derivatives and patent protections are almost nonexistent. As a result of this the GSN has become a home (or haven as some nations would describe it) for the manufacturers of knock offs. Software development remains a core part of the GSN identity and many software foundations' home offices are within the GSN.

Does this sound good? I wanted to make an open source, hacker nation, but I couldn't come up with much besides that until Scottish Ninja suggested that I imitate China and make knock offs with my lack of copyright and patent protection. I still need to design a government and go more in depth on the people and economy, but I'd like to do something like this.

In and of itself, this sounds like a micronation idea- the sort of thing that a relatively small nation does to jump-start its own economy by taking up a niche role in the larger galactic civilization, as purveyors of information.

If you want a macronation, I think you need a little more... diversity than "we're open source fanatics." Something that makes broader, more affirmative statements about how the culture works and what kind of foreign policy it has on issues other than that one-note. I'm sure you could construct some kind of cybertopia around the core premise, though.

Also, what does GSN stand for? Let me guess: "GSN Space Nation."

A question about hyperwave: Would hyperwave be able to provide something like the internet between nations/sectors? A lot of what I would like my nation to do would involve some sort of inter-sector internet or networking.

Hm.

The way I choose to imagine it in the 'Simonverse' (the non-binding set of assumptions about how things work I make as a player, with my modhat very firmly taken off of my head, purely so I can write my own posts), that would be really difficult: you'd have hellacious latency problems, and compensating with raw bandwidth would require pretty impressive equipment.

You can blissfully ignore everything I just said, though, because that's "Simonverse," not "SDNW5 rules." In SDNW4, we had a guy named Siege play a nation which had instantaneous, high-bandwidth FTL communications, allowing things like godlike AIs whose computer facilities were distributed across multiple sectors of space. I never criticized that once, because the game was richer for Siege's Solarian submesonics existing.

The way I figure it, hyperwave is the modern galaxy's equivalent of radio: mature technology that everyone understands and that even relatively primitive nations can build the equipment to work with. Something more sophisticated (which, in the 'Simonverse' version, would be required to act as backbones for an interstellar Internet) is possible but would probably be less widely available to Second Galaxy and Third Galaxy nations.

[Rabid]

In my interpretation, Hyperwave is pretty much instantaneous at the scale of a Sector. Roughly the same timescales as today's internet : ping times of around 1000-3000 millisecond - not ideal for playing Counter-Strike, but enough for a decently fast SectorNet.

Farther, it may take longer. I'd say the propagation time increase exponentially with the range - like one sector away, it takes only a dozen seconds, whereas a dozen sectors away it start taking a few dozen minutes, etc...

Also, I think Hyperspace Shoals may impact the quality/speed of hyperwave transmissions.


I also choose to think that Warp-gates (at least in the territories of the Stellar Nation..) can act as HyperWave relays, shortening hyperwave-transmission times between them.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. See, on my end, since I picture hyperwave as working very much like radio, in the 'Simonverse' transmission times scale linearly with distance- if nothing else, because the idea that sending a message from A to C can take longer than sending it from A to B to C, when A, B, and C all lie in a straight line... that makes my brain hurt.

But, again, this is ignorable. The 'Rabidverse' need not match the 'Simonverse,' and if we ever bump heads over some issue about the details we can hash it out ourselves, no problem.

[Darkevilme]

The idea that the time delay increases nonlinearly with distance seems to indicate a system where hyperwaves slow down over distance. Perhaps from some kind of friction from the subspace medium. though why that results in signals decelerating rather than weakening is probably something that will give Simon brain ache like when i tried to explain the Chamarran beam cannon technology and inadvertently did horrible things to relativity.

All non linear time delay means is you use a bucket brigade of signal relays to maintain minimum transmission lag though. So infrastructure.

Personally I'm going to run with the idea of real time communication inside my empire and at most one sector away from my border or near a friendly warp gate...otherwise it's ftl fax.

[TronPaul]

In and of itself, this sounds like a micronation idea- the sort of thing that a relatively small nation does to jump-start its own economy by taking up a niche role in the larger galactic civilization, as purveyors of information.

If you want a macronation, I think you need a little more... diversity than "we're open source fanatics." Something that makes broader, more affirmative statements about how the culture works and what kind of foreign policy it has on issues other than that one-note. I'm sure you could construct some kind of cybertopia around the core premise, though.

Yea, I realize that what I have now isn't macronation material, though I'd like to do a macronation. Just wanted to know that I'm on the right track for doing one of these. I'll be looking through more of this thread to get some ideas of stances to take on foreign policy and go more in depth on the government and culture of the GSN. When I get that sorted out and on here I'd like a roll for my NCP's, until then consider me a micronation.

Also, what does GSN stand for? Let me guess: "GSN Space Nation."

But of course! What Stallman fearing open source concept nation wouldn't have a recursive name?