How do you like your sci-fi settings anon? Does yours have the

>>45045676
There are no aliens. There is evidence of aliens having existed in many places. Mostly big monoliths. People assumed that that something was culling them before they got too advanced but it was more likely that only the primitive shit was surviving the ravages of deep time.

Then the mega structures started to be discovered. Then people started to worry that these didn't represent the height of their accomplishments so much toys left behind from their infancy.

There are not earth like planets. Terraforming is an inexact art and you get something sort of earthish at the end. Sort of.

Mostly you have to rebuild complex animals from the ground up to survive in the exotic environment.

Exploration happened because the A.I. encouraged humanity to leave. They basically designed ways for us to leave and offered incentives and manipulated all of the media to instil a pioneer spirit in much of the population.

They sent the automated terraforming fleets out first.

Nobody quite knows why they did this. Possibly they got sick of our bullshit, possibly they saw that just living on one island was going to doom us sooner or later.

There are a dozen or more 2nd gen homeworlds. There are about a hundred colonies from each of them.

The A.I., or pieces of it, came with us.

First dozen colonies were set up using sleeper ships because 500 years in space is boring as fuck.

After FTL was discovered the next wave of colonisations happened a lot quicker. Its about 700 years since the first ark ships set out.

The only humans left in the Sol system tend to be in the majority off of Earth and on the off-world colonies. The only people on Old Earth tend to be pilgrims, tourists and historians.

>>45045676
Love me some space opera with all kinds of aliens.

Tried writing one, but didn't get to far past the initial ideas.

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>>45045676

I like a setting that knows what it is and embraces it. Space fantasy/opera is great, so is hard sci-fi. It's when a setting doesn't know what it's trying to do that it annoys me.

My current setting is 2080.

Most of humanity remains on Earth in nation-states and lives much as they do now, though the general standard of living is higher, while communication and education is far more available.

Outside of Earth's atmosphere, the Terran Commonwealth is a cooperative organization that at first was little more then a way for different spaced-based national exploration programs and companies to agree to standards and coordinate but became far more.

While human exploration of the solar system was still in it's early years in 2060 a massive object was detected approaching the solar system. The size of Earth's moon and decelerating from .7c, it was 'chasing' smaller objects that arrived in 2067.

The smaller objects were ark ships, crammed with the survivors of an alien race. They warned us that the larger object would bring death and destruction, and would arrive in ten years.

Many of Earth's nations panicked, while others endlessly debated how to respond. Weaponry in space was massively regulated by treaty and while some robust exploration and mining ships could fight, if needed, humanity had no warships.

The commonwealth became an international compromise to militarize space, armed ships but forbidden to ever interfere with the politics of earth or operate within the atmosphere. A desperate building program, fed by technology provided by the Arkbound and human improvisation, provided the first clumsy ships for the Arrival of the massive object in 2077.

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>>45046161
The object decelerated into a stable orbit just outside Mars in the inner solar system and unfolded into a massive ring structure before forming a stable 'bridge' with another gate light-years distant.

The first things that emerged from the gate were three more massive, moon sized objects, folded to travel though the gate. Within months they had unfolded themselves and begun accelerating out of the solar system on course to Tau Ceti, Epilon Irendi and Wolf 359.

It's unknown if the gate builders are some kind of old AI directed to build infrastructure and long forgotten by their dead creators or some mysterious, old and powerful race. They don't respond to communications and show signs of tremendous age, even the 'new' gates that travel though the network to expand it.

We do know that they aren't what the Arkbound were running from. The swarm of ships that emerged from the gate were tiny and impossibly crude beside the graceful, invulnerable gate. Opportunistic beast that jumped though every new gate in an attempt to claim what lies beyond before anyone else can.

They smashed the SpaceX station in the belt and the Terran Commonwealth's primary Mars base on Demos before they came to try and subjugate Earth, the siege lasted more then two years before humanity's first battleships emerged from their hidden shipyards in the belt and drove them back out of the gate.

We own Sol again. The Arkbound are settling on Mars. Our attempts to terraform it haven't amounted to much yet, but they like things colder and lighter then humans anyway.

It's time to send our own ships though the gate. To find where the Swarm came from and make sure they won't be back, and to see for ourselves what is out there.

>>45045676
Everyone race involved is in a first-contact phase with each other. All of them are fidgety and are abit far from initiating diplomacy. Locked in a stalemate they are tuckered in and obrserving each other.

The tech is pretty much in the "low setting" with FTL had just became a thing recently, although some races have some advances the other does not.

Weaponry are majorly projectile based, space suits are similar to what we have today just with armor plating. Ship to ship combat are primarily missile based with no shielding, so everyone in hesitant in starting space combat.

The ships themselves looks low tier, with little plate armor, solar panels and fuck huge engines.

All the races are in their early colonization point so one has any clear planetary advantage,

>>45045676
>Earth is an overpopulated shithole.
>No alien civilizations, but there is alien life, typically primitive
>10 planets have been colonized so far, there is no terraforming. If the atmosphere isn't perfect (and it never is) the colonists have to use breathing masks or worse.
>Humanity built vonneuman probes to find colonizable planets and map the galaxy for them, they're all connected to the Astronomy Network using FTL comms
>FTL comms are not instant but faster than FTL transportation
>Once a colonizable planet has been identified, it's the Colony and Exploration organization, a corrupt arm of the UN, sends a survey team, that spends a year verifying the planet can support a colony
>If successful, the Colony Charter is formed and auctioned off
>Colony charters are often crowd funded by potential colonists pretty much selling everything they have to buy a seat
>This money is used to rent the FTL tug, the colony ship itself and all the colony gear and future supply drops
>Colonists determine leadership and colonization stages before leaving. This takes place on Mars
>According to the small print, the colony charter lasts 100 years, after which, the colony falls under UN jurisdiction. No colony has reached their 100 years yet so no one knows if the UN will do it.

>>45045676
Just imagine if Mars hadn't been so small or just so far away from Sol. Imagine a solar system with two life supporting planets, possibly even seeding each other with carbon life by asteroid impacts during their formation at the dawn of the solar system. Two worlds formed in impossible odds. Two neighboring worlds each supporting life both based on carbon with comparable DNA.

Imagine not only looking up at the sky and seeing another blue dot instead of an orange one, but when man invents the radio and turns it on- he hears something else speaking.

>>45046683
chances of another planet also having DNA, even if its in the same solar system, would be neigh impossible

Also the chances that two civilizations would be active at just the right time period they could actually discover eachother would be equally small

>>45046683
God damn it, anon, now you've got me wanting to write this setting. I don't have the time for that!

>>45046746
It's literally just Another Earth

>>45045676
Semihard space opera with a VERY limited amount of species, but an abundance of different cultures in every species.
No council, no overarching government. Some national and international colonies, with the oldest/largest ones being independent (politically).

>>45046822
>Implying that a second Earth with a completely different evolutionary path would not be interesting as fuck given all the crazy shit that came to be in Earth's own history.

>>45046732
The fact it's so unlikely is part of why the concept is so interesting. It's a fantastical idea.

>>45046897
>All those extinction events.

>>45046908
>And that children is how Mars came to be inhabited by sentient analogues of terrestrial Mantis Shrimp.

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>>45046683
Can two planets share the same orbit?

Each at opposite sides of the sun, following the same path, but not being able to know about each other except through hypothetical gravitational analysis until they send out probes because the sun is always in the way?

Or is this a gravitational impossibility?

>>45046897
The movie, Another Earth

>>45046935
That was the counter-Earth theory.

>>45046161
>I like a setting that knows what it is and embraces it.
This.
>>45046683
Pretty good pitch. I especially like that radically different stories could be produced depending on what point in history the story is set in.

>>45046935
IIRC it's doable but not super stable.
More stable would be to have the two planets orbit each other and orbit the sun together.

>>45046954
What I was thinking of was that Mars was just a bit closer to the sun and had a larger mass. It'd be colder, but life could certainly survive on it if it just wasn't so far away and damn tiny.

>>45046961
>closer to the sun
>It'd be colder

care to explain that one?

>>45046949
The wikipage has some neat stuff. Thanks.

>>45046961
>share the same orbit
>now they don't
Make up your mind.

>>45046975
I mean closer to the sun than its current orbit. Currently Mars is "my balls just fell off and shattered from the impact" cold thanks to lacking geothermal activity and being too far away. But if it was closer and had geothermal activity (that would also generate a magnetic field to keep out those filthy radiation deathrays) it would still be colder than Earth, but able to support life.

>>45046996
I'm still not seeing it.

You're saying that if it was closer to the heat source than Earth and had more internal heat source it would be cooler than Earth.

I don't think the magnetosphere blocks heat.

>>45047164
He's saying it would be closer than Mars currently is, but still further away than Earth.

>>45047206
It would still be warmer than Earth I imagine.

>>45047224
What?

>>45045676
Lots of Aliums, let's emphasis on humans as the center of the setting (they might not even be present), and an emphasis on the importance of ship combat

>>45046935
>>45046954
The configuration is an unstable equilibrium. If those 3 bodies were the only thing in the universe and the orbit and velocity were EXACTLY correct, it would be stable. However, if it is off by even a few mm/s, or has other planets, then it is unstable and will "rapidly" cause either a collision or ejecting one body into space.

However, it is possible for planets to share the same orbit in the L4/L5 position.

>>45047366
I wonder what such a L4/L5 co orbit would look like in the wobble of the star

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>>45047619
Sum up the gravitational vectors and you'll find out. It should be about equal to the pull of a single planet due to part of the pull being cancelled out.

>>45045676
I like my settings semi-hard like my penis. Like pic related: Infinity the Game
>Year 2200
>FTL still impossible but wormholes are here and there.
>First colony that was lost somewhere in the 21st century has recently been found
>They're butthurt because they've been isolated for about 150 years
>USA/EU/Russia are non-existant...Which means they are the legacy of those nations
>After colony was lost, those nation states went belly when they defaulted on the loans
>Since then, other planets have been semi-colonized
>There's also an ever-present AI in (literally) first-worlds
>Degenerates distrust it; move off-planet to giant ships and become space gypsies
>Humanity still fights occasionally
>OHSHITWTFBBQ aliens invade through a wormhole
>Tears humanity a new one when they make planetfall
>Turns out it's a scouting party
>Still fucked everyone up
So now there's an uneasy peace while everyone shits their pants at alien reinforcements arriving while also watching their back. Secondary powers want to move up in the world while PanO and YuJing both try to be in the top spot.

>>45045676
Terraforming all day erryday

Hmm let's see

Aliens?
Most likely

Terraforming?
Only used in case said planet is dead and lifeless and has no history of its society what so ever

>>45046683
>Mars is Terra sized and it's in Terra's L4 position (with Terra being in Mars' L5 position)
>Luna has been captured in the stable equilibrium between Terra, Mars, and Sol

>>45047779
>>45047831
It'd probably be easier and faster to genetically modify Earth species for alien environments rather than custom tailor environments for Earth species.

>>45048152
If you find a sterile environment and dump a bunch of primitive life there you are changing the environment.

I'm a fan of terraforming and colony bubbles, but no aliens.

Incredibly strong criminal factions are always great in space too.

>>45048152
Easierest: find a planet that doesn't have life on land at all, colonize it with Earth stuff right away.

>>45048202
>incredibly strong
idk, I hate this. It's like they're always their own government, with their own army, territory and stuff, but the normal governments do nothing about it ever, and are perfectly content letting them pilfer through their stuff and citizen. Meanwhile, the NSA does a bit of spying on friendlies and gets shat on.

Giant aliums everywhere. Went full Macross and fantasy, there are big animal people and assorted multicolored people everywhere.

Humans are like Rodent sized John Carters, imagine the damage a fully animatronic Barbie doll as dense as 5-10 iron weight could do.

Human niche is being too small to be considered a threat, so they're having an easier time establishing embassies and the like on other planets. I stole a bit from Fallout, sort of, and made the internet we have now, with Future!Google and Sorta!Facebook and Redditchan Daily, being our main contribution. Most aliens used their computer networks like we used to, for Universities and Defense only, but we have lots of companies willing to pay to get their opinions and likes.

No space empires. Even if you had instant communication, which only a few psychic races with their own issues have, the distance is too grand to keep one going. You have alliances and standards, but trying to run a planet from another planet isn't happening.

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we build crazy solar system nao!

>>45045676
Far too large and complicated to be affected by player actions. Changing or saving the world is for fantasy.

>>45049701
less efficient than a naturally occurring dyson ring /10

>>45049918
true dat! But good luck constructing a dyson ring (let alone a dyson sphere)

>>45050073
I've always wondered, would atmosphere collect near the poles (or anywhere besides the equator) in a dyson sphere? Is the solution to just have multiple, overlapping dyson rings rotating a different angles?

>>45050239
Quite honestly, I think that creating a dyson sphere requires technology so far beyond our own (if at all possible) that any question regarding the details of a dyson sphere becomes nothing but an elaborate guessing game of hypothetical situations.

>>45048431
Just like how the pilgrims migrated on the mayflower away from the British only to later get taxed upon

>>45050895
But they're not pilgrims getting away from persecution and then complaining about getting taxed like the other citizens.

They're basically multinational corporations that gain most of their income from shady/illegal shit. They don't migrate places, they just follow established colonies and set up their usual shops. And then they always mysteriously end up as strong as regular governments, with their own starfleets and armies and shit, but never move up. Or never get taken down.

>>45045676
I tried to come up with a typical high sci-fi space opera with intelligent alien humanoids and the like but I eventualy dialed it back because it was too generic and 'wishy washy' for my liking (though my current setting is stll very generic).
Now its set about 500 years in the future and humanity has expanded into a sphere of space roughly 300ly in diameter with the invention of the warp drive (the generic star trek space-time bendy one). Though 'habitable' planets are common enough (ones that are somewhat simmilar to earth after extensive terraformation, like Mars), 'earth like' planets are not with only 12 planets so far having been discovered that can support human life with minimal bio/cybernetic modifications made to the colonists.
For the majority of the expantion period humanity was controlled by an informal federation, but disagreements over taxation, supplys, work, representation (all the usual stuff) caused human space to fracture into several smaller governments after a short war.
A new war is set to potentialy start after the discovery of the 13th earth like planet (the only earth like planet to have been discovered after the war), notable because it has alien ruins on it, the only evidence thus far of inteligent alien life.
Appart from the afforementioned warp drive and a bit of psuedoscience passingly simmilar to the 'mass effect' (allowing sheilds, artificial gravity ect to exsist) I try to keep it as hard sci-fi as possible.

>>45045676
There's a Solar Federation based on Earth, Venus, and Mars with working/research colonies on Jupiter's moons. Venetians are a race of giant humanoids, and the Martians are just green people (for that pulp feel). There are Cyborgs as advanced as people, but not physically intimidating. Now that I think of it it's pretty much Not!Bladerunner at a civilization level. There's a fusion culture of East Asian and Western spiritual belief that's a bit more subtle I think, as to not make it a weeb paradise. Sometimes I take out the Venetian and Martians when I want to keep it a bit more realistic. I try to add more edge to the slums in a kind of Escape From New York kind of way.

>>45045676
No aliens, but AIs have become sentient and are socially accepted in all nations, with some relegating them servants, and others giving them full citizenship status

Earth is the only habitable planet, all others must be terraformed before they can be lived on

FTL travel is accomplished via transdimensional travel through the non-temporal 11th dimension. Before this was accomplished via dark matter but now manufactured particles are able to accomplish this

History is this: humans expanded to the solar system, there was a collapse as communication was lost over time and independence wars broke out, humans colonized extrasolar systems, large conflict over the integration of AI tech in humanity, pro-AI side won, invention of interdimensional travel, mass expansion/rediscovery of lost colonies

As for weaponry, there are plasma and laser weaponry. Plasma has bullets that are coated in a thermoreactive coating that encases a nuclear plasma bullet which is fired out of a railgun device in a rifle/pistol/cannon/whatever you are firing it out of. Lasers fire out a straight beam of light and are used more as artillery or aerial bombardment than mobile weapons.

Also there are mechs (which sorta act as land tanks and come in three varities) the three tiers of mechs are: powered armors, weapon platforms (think AMPs from Avatar), and gundam-sized "real mechs"

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>>45045676
I'm a pretty big >MUH REALISM guy, but I try to stretch the truth a bit when it comes to video games.

Like, if I'm putting aliens and stuff in my setting, I try not to go for the "LOL, THEY'RE SPIDER GIRLS" route, but instead I go for something a bit more researched and deliberate.

>Try to make advanced alien species bipedal, and four limbed, with human-like hands
>I do this because I genuinely believe this is how most sentient, space-faring creatures would evolve to look like, similar to humans

>Try my best not to make them Not!Romans, or Not!Chinese
>I'll try to reason around a little, like "Oh, they once had a nuclear war in their history, so naturally, they have a near-superstitious level of suspicion towards those that use nuclear energy for warfare."
>I'll make sure not to add too many races, because I, personally, don't believe there'd be more than 7 to 8 sentient races all sharing the same galaxy
>I try to limit the races you see in my campaigns to maybe 2 or 3 max

As for terraforming, it almost never happens, unless it's a government funded experiment, or unless a wealthy, private corporation tries to make a breakthrough with terraforming technology.

>It's just not as cheap, or as quick as an artificial space station
>Besides, it'd be much, much easier to simply find a planet with the right conditions to build upon from there.
>Process is simple, as explorers calculate the range of planets within the "Goldilocks" parameters, the government sets out a large expedition to colonize it
>Sometimes, there'll already be native life forms on it; simple lizards, fish, ferns, etc. >From that point on, scientists genetically engineer the native flora and fauna (and sometimes introduce foreign creatures and plants) in order to "mass-produce" vibrant, healthy, biodiverse worlds.
>Entire process may take anywhere between 1 billion laborers, scientists, civil engineers, and androids, and the actual project may last anywhere from 10 to 40 years.

1/X

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>>45053967
Space travel is pretty realistic, but since it'd literally take thousands of years to travel from A to B, I implemented a "jump" system, in which massive space zones within a solar system are designated for ships going in and out of warp.

>Pretty much just called "gates", but it actually far more resembles a dock, in space
>Massive, humongous wads of metal and lights floating around space. Practically the size of a small city.
>This is where people can fabricate artificial wormholes that bend space so that you significantly shorten the length of your trip
>"Gates" can only send ships to other gates. Without a receiving gate, your ship can't go anywhere.
>Think of it like drawing a circle on one end of a strip of paper, and then drawing a triangle on the other end. Then fold that strip of paper in half so that the circle is touching the triangle.
>The circle, in this case, represents the "gate" you're at, and the triangle represents the "gate" you're warping to
>These space docks have a reputation for being tourist traps, but they also have a large, rampant underground scene
>If you want to buy something illegal, you'd have a really good chance of finding it at the space dock

The ships themselves are pretty straight forward.

>Other races may do it differently, but Earth likes to shoot a simple, modular rocket into orbit, where it is retrieved by a nearby space station for upgrades.
>It's literally just a tube of fuel and a booster right now
>Then, at the space station, they take advantage of the low gravity environment to weld on metal infrastructure that would weight hundreds of tons on Earth
>Most ships have fusion powered propulsion systems with large, comfortable interiors and lots of fail safes
>"Anti-grav" is reserved for the military and rich people, and even then, it's not really "Anti-gravity"
>It's just a complicated, well designed system of pressure stabilizers and magnet pads that nearly captures the real sensation of gravity on Earth

2/x

>>45054246
>It takes about a month for the simple, cheap rocket to become a full fledged ship
>They weld on lights, armor, boosters, rooms, control decks, AI's, and all kinds of exciting crap
>They also make very liberal use of drones
>Since ships are so large, and since their voyages can last several months, a ship must be as autonomous as possible
>This is why almost all Earth ships are loaded with hundreds of automatic, self-repairing "smart" drones; each with a specific task
>There are decoy drones, which are filled with overheating fusion reactors to simulate the mothership's heat signature
>There are repair drones, which help to repair any damage to the ship, and work to maintain the interior of the ship as well
>There are salvage drones, for collecting debris to use as raw materials for repairs
>There are builder drones, whose sole jobs are to just make more drones
>There are drones for all sorts of jobs. You name it, and it probably exists.
>However, the drones have their job made easier, simply because ships are almost constantly being rotated within docks for repairs and maintenance
>A well trained captain knows NEVER to take their ship too far from civilization...Unless they're expeditioning, or unless they're warships

I'm actually getting pretty tired, and I don't think anyone's reading this, so I think I'm going to stop posting. But it feels good finally telling someone about all this. I've always been a pretty big fan of sci-fi.

3/x

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>tfw no Culture setting