Worst Sci-Fi Tropes

>>44047000

>Humans are the strongest race
>Humans are the weakest race

>>44047000
Sounds like a good setting rife with plot hooks.

You some kind of faggot, OP?

>There was no super ancient civilization that was super advanced and built everything xDDD

>Phaser/sonic screwdriver/other miracle macguffin gadget solves everything :DDD

>>44047008
>Humans are the average-est race

>>44047083
>Humans are the most numerous race and are everywhere.

>Humans

>>44047130
> sapients

>Alien cultures based around this one trait.

That being said, I did come across a discussion where this might be justified. It was one where humans are a disappeared precursor race, and the younger ones adopted an aspect of them they thought was more important, and generally ran with it form exaggeration, obsession, worship, and guide to life.

>>44047000
>A.I. is the problem with literally everything in the setting and is always a bad idea to create no matter what. *coughMassEffectcoughHalocough*

>>44047000
>Diverse cast of alien races and cultures
>One black guy

>>44047177
>random real-world human culture + random weird biology = interesting alien race

>>44047149
>space

>>44047248
>existing

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>>44047186
this a million times

>mankind is ONLY militarized in space
>mankind's good side is ALWAYS dwarfed by evil
>aliens are so above us that we only win because pity/Mary Sueism
shit needs to stop

>AI is always going to go crazy and kill everyone regardless of its original function
Why can't we have more of that one AI from SCP, that is just a minor dick but doesn't want to kill people? The one that slams a door in your face for a cheap jumpscare in the game, y'know? Why do they always have to turn murderhobo, even if their original purpose was to help send emails?

>>44047257
>thought

>>44047214
>Tau

>>44047186
Halo's AI problem is due to them sticking strong AI in everything. There is zero reason why Cortana was designed the way she was other than out-of-universe reasons. Marathon was even worse, where they stuck a strong AI in a ship whose sole purpose was operating doors.

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Gumption/human ingenuity/moar dakka trumps eons lead in technology.

Logical aliens can't understand luuuuve.

>>44047205
>Aliens are only background, comic relief, faceless mooks, or expendable side characters, while everyone important is human.

>>44047000
>Energy MELEE weapons (or just melee weapons in general).
>Energy firearms that are worse than ballistic ones we already have.
>Cloaking technology that somehow effortlessly hides things from all forms of detection, even infared or thermal.

>>44047101
>>Humans are the most numerous race and are everywhere.
This, actually.
>>44047000
There is nothing wrong with ancient civilizations. There IS something wrong with it when 1) There seems to be only one 2) Their relics or whatever are dickish for the sake of it 3) They're re-introduced into the setting in order to up the stakes (Starcraft, Stargate, Halo, Star Trek... not really, pretty sure the Q didn't build shit and by the time the show went off air they still hadn't found the race who spread humanoids around the cosmos), since it inevitably invalidates any kind of true conflict by reducing it into a Wheel of Time-esque clash of Space!MAGIC.

Nothing against WoT, but really most of Rand's PoV victories are him out-skilling things by virtue of being just that gud in spells and blades.

>>44047186
The thing is, it's a bad cliche but when it's a battle-heavy story the alternative is either
>AI is human like or better yet gets never used for anything without immediately getting hit with the stupid stick (Star Wars/Star Trek)
or
>AI battle machines pretty much solved everything, sooo... pretty cool, huh? (Boloverse)
Both have their place, but AI being EVUL - aside form pandering to people's innate sense of luddism - has its place in hotfixing certain cases of, if you'll excuse the term, fridge logic.
>>44047275
>>aliens are so above us that we only win because pity/Mary Sueism
I'd like to see a setting where ayliums are only around a thousand years more advanced than us at best and as stumped by the creator race as we are.
>>44047317
>Gumption/human ingenuity/moar dakka trumps eons lead in technology.
It wouldn't if all those ayys didn't all use their space magic to make >>44047337
space swords. Can't exactly fault humans for steamlolling everything.

>>44047304
Didn't the forerunner AI have similar problems?

Fuck it, everything beyond the original trilogy is shit and 343 can go fuck themselves.

>>44047370
Pretty sure any alien with space magic who would still bother with using swords are their version of the SCA.

>>44047186
Or there's always a robot uprising/humans being dicks to rowboats.

>>44047402
This is the correct answer. They shat on everything in the process of making up a new enemy to fight.

>>44047370
Don't forget when their biggest flaw is 'they're arrogant' or 'They are few and their population is dropping'.

>>44047460
>Eldar

>>44047000

>HFY wank

>>44047402
Like I've always said, Bungie gave Master Chief a respectful funeral, but 343 came, dug up the corpse, and fornicated with it.

>>44047000
>Lunar helium-3 mining
It just doesn't make any sense. I guess that's the only thing a "Bad sci-fi trope" can be, instead of just being a sci-fi trope that is tired or doesn't cater to my taste. The lunar surface contains concentrations of, at most, 50 parts per billion in the richest areas, and closer to 10 ppb in less rich areas, making extracting any useful amount of helium a monumental undertaking.

And helium-3 fusion is MUCH more difficult than deuterium and tritium fusion, and although theoretically it's aneutronic, side reactions mean you inevitably produce some tritium anyway and so you still get high-energy neutron radiation. There's basically no way to make He3 fusion reactions work with conventional technologies.

And if the various "wild card" technologies that could potentially burn Helium-3 do pan out, then they should be able to scale up to superior aneutronic reactions - such as the hydrogen-boron reaction, which is extremely difficult but should be totally aneutronic and require no exotic fuels.

So in no case is helium-3 a useful fuel.

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>Transhumanism is evil!

>>44047511
Hey, can't be a space Jesus without resurrection.

>>44047370
>1) There seems to be only one

I see no problem with this, given the vastly differing timescales of evolution, technological development, and FTL colonization of the galaxy. It's the Apes-And-Angels problem.

Complaining that there's only one galaxy-dominating civilization seems sort of like complaining that there's only one planet-dominating species on Earth; if a suitable civilization exists and there is no other yet, it will very rapidly expand to fill that niche, and nobody else will get a chance to challenge them. After all, there has to be a first spacefaring civilization.

And the chance that two such civilizations would arise simultaneously and independently (to within, like, 1000 years) is extremely small.

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>>44047370

Mankind doesn't need AI

>>44047410
>Pretty sure any alien with space magic who would still bother with using swords are their version of the SCA.
The who now?

...I want Aliens with genuine political movements and splinter factions. Also aliens who're not EITHER so atheistic they seem to never have had the concept in the first place OR mad crusaders for some cause that inevitably ends up a poorly masked way for the devs to air their grievances against their old suburban Christian communities.

>>44047460
>their population is dropping
CAN be handled okay-ish. I liked the monumental fuck-up of the Asgard, however unlikely it seems to me. Though it probably helps that they were never antagonists and therefore had no shoehorned defeat.
>arrogant
FUCK. THAT.
>>44047566
>Transhumanism will solve everything and those who oppose it in ANY way are EEEEEEEEVIIIIIL
Both Star Trek and Eclipse Phase were/are seriously retarded about this. There needs to be a middle ground between expressing support of/opposition to an idea and being a screeching zealot about it.

>>44047594
>And the chance that two such civilizations would arise simultaneously and independently (to within, like, 1000 years) is extremely small.
Imma just go ahead and say that I really liked Numenara for how it did that, despite the game itself being really bland.
>Complaining that there's only one galaxy-dominating civilization seems sort of like complaining that there's only one planet-dominating species on Earth; if a suitable civilization exists and there is no other yet, it will very rapidly expand to fill that niche, and nobody else will get a chance to challenge them. After all, there has to be a first spacefaring civilization.
Err, I wasn't quite clear. The issue is more in how there seems to be only ONE ancient race and one ancient culture, period, but let me elaborate.
1/2

>>44047470
They, at least, have a 'our souls are claimed by an evil god' problem, and the gigantic catastrophe that made them much less friendly and more paranoid of other races.

Though I don't like their reasons for not repopulating very well given their tech level and massive past orgies, and with all the shit they've been through they would be humbled and not make mistakes due to some pretentious pride. They can't even be arrogant through seniority anymore, with the killbots as old if not older coming back on the galactic scene.

>>44047186
It's even worse in Mass Effect, because apart from the big bad, every AI the player encounters that was violent was either programmed that way or only defending itself. So we get a moral shoved in our face at the last minute which contradicts all evidence.
The red and blue endings both implicitly agree that AI can't be given the benefit of the doubt under any circumstances, and the green ending completely misses the point of why AI exists in the first place. Eventually someone will build a machine to do work that no one wants to do, and we'll have the same "problem" only now everyone has Tron lines.
Or you can choose to die I guess. What, you thought you could REASON with an undefeatable foe? That never ever happens in classic sci-fi!

>>44047451
>>44047511
>Halo 6 end credit scene
>MC is crowned the hero of humanity
>camera pans to the sky
>space debris drifts across the screen
>the ruins of Forward Unto Dawn come into view
>camera moves into the ship
>MC in cryo
>life support beeping
>power running out
>Cortana looking sad before running out of power
>zoom on the life support computer
>shuts down
>closeup of MC's frozen helmet
>wreck drifts into deep space

Only way to salvage what's left of the franchise.

>>44047370
The Star Trek precursor humanoids in Star Trek aren't a big deal at all. There is practically zero remnants of their existence at all. The real "ancient civilization that left artifacts of great power just laying around" race are the Iconians and even then everyone knows about them, they only have one piece of technology that anyone wants, and were defeated by military action taken by other contemporaneous civilizations fell due to the course of time.

>>44047186
>dune
>40k

>>44047646
Where is this from?

>>44047673
>>44047594
>I see no problem with this, given the vastly differing timescales of evolution, technological development, and FTL colonization of the galaxy. It's the Apes-And-Angels problem.
Yes, but think of it as the British Empire. They used to rule the world, but neither Australia nor the US nor any other ex colony is culturally like them anymore.

In other words, I'd like to see ancient aliens split and splintered, reformed and changed, rather than just being one block until they go extinct.

Where's ancient ayylium Warring States period, essentially?
>>44047729
>The Star Trek precursor humanoids in Star Trek aren't a big deal at all. There is practically zero remnants of their existence at all. The real "ancient civilization that left artifacts of great power just laying around" race are the Iconians and even then everyone knows about them, they only have one piece of technology that anyone wants, and were defeated by military action taken by other contemporaneous civilizations fell due to the course of time.
Ye, as I said.

>>44047698
>The red and blue endings both implicitly agree that AI can't be given the benefit of the doubt under any circumstances

How so?

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>>44047746

From the extended cut of David Lynch's 1984 Dune movie.

Mankind is brutalizing the Thinking Machines, after they enslaved mankind.

>>44047746

Dune. No need for computers when you have mentats.

>>44047566
>The protagonist is the only 'natural' and 'unmodified' human left.

I hope he catches the space plague.

>>44047000
>My own personal worldview about american politics transcends time and space and imposes itself on stars far away eons from now.

>>44047769
>but neither Australia nor the US nor any other ex colony is culturally like them anymore.
There are difference but compared to actually different countries, like China, Iran or Argentina, they're very similar. Speaking the same language is just the beginning of the similarities. It's a matter of perspective, within the UK, people from Manchester would be considered to be very different from people from London, yet from an outside point of view, they're all the same.

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>>44047800

And no need for Super-Computers to navigate space, when you have Guild Navigators.

>>44047000
>artificial gravity.
And not the spinning type. No, they just have some bullshit about shit sticking to floors cause they're lazy fuckers.

god damn geo-centrists.

>>44047673
>The issue is more in how there seems to be only ONE ancient race and one ancient culture, period, but let me elaborate.

Presumably there is a whole bunch of regular xenoarcheology going on, but you only hear about the ancient civilization that colonized the entire galaxy and left superadvanced paleotechnology and the odd megastructure all over the place. It's presumably terribly rare for a planet to develop two advanced technological civilizations widely separated from each other, so if you're finding ancient advanced technology, it's most likely from colonization, which means it's probably from the galaxy-wide hegemony of the Ancient Forerunner Precursors.

One ancient culture is... less forgivable, but since every damn science fiction setting seems insistent on giving every alien race exactly one culture, and very possibly exactly one culture *ever*, at least it's consistent.

>>44047000
>space socialism is good everyone is equal comrade!
>dont make contact with the lesser species

>>44047000
>This new technology is super-awesome, but we completely fail to extrapolate how it will be used.

Anti-gravity levitating wagons being hauled by donkies.

Giant fucking robots... still have cranes and skafolding.

>>44047769
>Where's ancient ayylium Warring States period, essentially?

Mysteriously suppressed by the even more ancient Memetic Conformity Engineers, which are responsible for ensuring that every species gets exactly one civilization-wide culture for some strange purpose. They only passed over Earth recently, which is why they're now the Federation.

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>>44047908
>THE GREATER GOOD

>>44047275
>The one that slams a door in your face for a cheap jumpscare in the game, y'know?
Also the one that releases 049, 096, 106, 173 and wants you to release 682.

That's not "minor dickery"

>>44047000

>>Humans and their special "individuality" are our only hope!

>>Plot armor on the latest Heinlein ripoffs.

>>Colonies are always Dixie.

>>Evil Empires.

>>Most of Star Craft.

>large space empire is 100% heartless and evil

>>44047935
>Giant fucking robots... still have cranes and scaffolding.

We'll have cranes and scaffolding in 2100, although the scaffolding might be self-assembling programmable matter (which nonetheless still forms trusses). What would you replace them with?

>In the grimdark blackness of the 19548648 aeon, there is only the clashing of ultrapauldrons

>>44047566

Insofar as human nature is intrinsically evil, transhumanism is likewise necessarily evil.

>>44047470
see
>>44047498

>>Eldar needing to be pride-tards so the Space Nazis can keep on "winning."

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>>44048063
>he thinks 40k is HFY

>>44047337
>>Energy MELEE weapons (or just melee weapons in general).
Worked in Dune.

>>44047698

You really aren't smart enough to make the claims you have.

>>44047869
I'm okay with it when propulsion is gravity based like Mass Effect. The entire titular technology is based around mass manipulation, you'd probably work out gravity tech and implement it pretty quickly.
Odd when it's just... There. Like, aren't there other uses for this technology? Why don't we see more gravity manipulation?

>>44048086
>>He thinks 40k isn't.
>>"whores."

>>44048102
That's because Herbert actually made an actual reason why. Most settings don't bother and just have lolswordsN'axes

>>44047370
>Star Trek... not really, pretty sure the Q didn't build shit and by the time the show went off air they still hadn't found the race who spread humanoids around the cosmos
The Iconians fit the Precursor cliche far better and they do come back to fuck shit up in the MMORPG.

>>44048111
Fair question.

Mass Tech is used to enable FTL travel, create spectacular WMD's, and conquer many of the hazards of space travel.

And toothbrushes.

What's missing?

>>44048123
40k is anti-HFY. It's just that all the other races and factions are just as incompetent as humanity if not worse.

>>44048111
If you read the codex entries in Mass Effect, gravity manipulation is used for ALOT of shit. Everything from hyper-dense building materials and armor, to weapons, and even medical experimentation (although that tended to kill more people than it helped, unless you were one of the 0.5% who got Biotic powers).

>>44047000
>Modern political commentary being hamfisted into a setting where it doesn't make sense anymore

>Space military uniforms that are all form with no function

>Alien moral superiority

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>>44048111

>>44047337

Melee weapons are still viable where armor tech can be exceeded and where spaces have to be small.

Even chainswords aren't completely stupid if you're planing for killing things that don't necessarily have a mammalian response to pain (wound shock and death).

>>44047775

Control the Lovecraftian machine army or Destroy them (which was your original mission all along).

The former implies that all the Reapers were waiting for is a mortal with sufficient willpower to be used as a controlling-intelligence (belying each Reaper's AI entirely), while the latter is the option that caters to "HFY!" crowd.

>>44048200
>>moral superiority
Always awful. That's about the only thing Star Wars got somewhat right; Every race is sanctimonious bastards.

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>>44047337

>Now, guard yourself for true!

>>44048257
You mean Star Trek, right? I don't remember many aliens in Star Wars.

>Humanity wins through plot armor / luck / adaptability
>Humanity wins through a single, extremely specific trait such as "we can throw things" or "we're 10% stronger than the second strongest race in muscle mass"
>Aliens win through plot armor / luck / adaptability
>Aliens win through a single, extremely specific trait such as "we have 6 joints in our arms"
>Certain technologies are exclusive to different species and simply cannot be reverse-engineered, even if the species are at similar power/tech-levels

Your factions don't need to be hyper-unique special snowflakes to have interesting conflicts, just see all of human history.

>>44048324
>READ THE CULTURE SERIES YA FAGGOTS
Eww no. I'd rather read LegGuin's unashamed shilling.

>>44048324
>READ THE CULTURE SERIES YA FAGGOTS

>litterally MUH IMPERIALISTIC HEDONISM BUT WE'RE NOT REALLY IMPERIALISTIC WE'RE TOLERANT AND OH MY I'M GOING TO GO GET A BODY MOD AND ADD A HUNDRED EXTRA DICKS TO MY FACE
Bunch of hypocritical degenerates is what the Culture is.

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>>44048309
>I don't remember many aliens in Star Wars.

>>44048332
>>Certain technologies are exclusive to different species and simply cannot be reverse-engineered, even if the species are at similar power/tech-levels
Err. What'd be the point in that case anyway? I don't need skies from some weird classified compound material when mine do just as well and I'm just plain more skilled than the other skiing team.

>>44048324
Why? I've got one recommendation to read it from you and you insulted me.

Quite frankly I'd rather read MLP fabrication than whatever that is right now.

>>44048402
>fabrication
No autocorrect. Bad. I said fanfiction.

>>44048382
>Err. What'd be the point in that case anyway?
Equivalent power does not imply equivalent function; Terran armor may be about as effective in regards to survivability as Venusian shields or Martian countermeasures, but it'd be a good idea to try and figure out how those Venusian shields and Martian countermeasures work so that you can have the best of all worlds.

>>44048179

I'd agree if the IoM didn't always win, or get to minimize it's defeats ("always more viable planets and colonists, lol!").
I'd agree if the GeoM doesn't end up vindicated in the HH.
I'd agree if the Imperium have any actual human rival civilizations. They wouldn't need to be a strong, they'd just need to survive -bring the Interex back as Tau client state.
I'd agree if before CSM's the Dark Powers had had any truly strong alien proxies. They never did.
I'd agree if the Interex (and the novel "Legion") didn't point out how important, numerous and tasty human souls are compared to everyone else.
I'd agree if the primary antagonist to the Eldar wasn't Humanity or one it's spin-offs.
I'd agree if Humanity didn't get the last word on how everything in the galaxy works.
I'd agree if "WW2 level tech and balls can win" wasn't an accurate description of the IG.
I'd agree if there were alien Space Marines. Actual Alien SM's, not just Exarchs or whatever. Or hell, even women in some kind of "altered superhuman" role like the SM's have.

40k is HFY in a heavy skin of darkness, brutality, and cynicism -but it's still HFY.

>>44048200

>>having no idea how morality works.
>>judging the "morality" of anyone from a position of hilarious ignorance.

Keep aiming low and missing, Anon.

>>44048402
It's pretty good science fiction, although it has nothing to do with anything in this thread and I can't see why Anon thought it was relevant; I can't even blame shilling, since the author's dead. I'd recommend it as well, though.

>>44048324

I have. It's not that brilliant. It's good, but it's a dated version of Eclipse Phase at this point.

It does have a really good point about technology overwhelming the human capacity to control it and needing a solution that genuinely transcends the limits of human evolution. I'm onboard with that.

And it does make 40k look like the gutter-wallow of Rule Brittania it is, but if you can confront that you're good to go regardless.

>>44048474
Nice blog, +1 upboats lol

>>44048474
>I'd agree if "WW2 level tech and balls can win" wasn't an accurate description of the IG.
Wrong, the IG are near-future to far-future tech cloaked in WW1 to Modern Day tactics with nearly universal WW2 Aesthetics.

>I'd agree if there were alien Space Marines. Actual Alien SM's, not just Exarchs or whatever. Or hell, even women in some kind of "altered superhuman" role like the SM's have.
This is a non-point, and is pretty much cancer. Maybe the xenos just don't need their own SMs, or have their own methods for filling the role required by SM's?

>>44048350
It is an excellent setting you are missing a lot.

>>44048373
>litterally MUH IMPERIALISTIC HEDONISM BUT WE'RE NOT REALLY IMPERIALISTIC WE'RE TOLERANT AND OH MY I'M GOING TO GO GET A BODY MOD AND ADD A HUNDRED EXTRA DICKS TO MY FACE
>Bunch of hypocritical degenerates is what the Culture is.

What else you gonna do in a society that literary can have everything. They are bored and they don't want to sublime.

>>44048373
If you can not accept that insults are part of every day talk you don't belong here.

>>44048324
Why?

>>44048245
Reapers are not some misunderstood AI that just need love. Their whole purpose was to just keep working to find a final solution to the AI question and the program approached it with the cold logic of a machine. Life is preserved by harvesting the advanced civilizations and beginning anew until the program can figure out how organics and synthetics can live together forever. Their destruction or control has nothing to do with undermining AI.

Ask yourself this, who in the game wants the destruction of the Reapers, who wants to control them and who wants to fuse with them. Saren and Kai Leng sought a fusion of organic and synthetic. TIM sought to control the Reapers. All the enemies, all indoctrinated. Now who wants the destruction of the Reapers? Fucking everyone. Even Legion says now that the Geth have their independence, they'd choose oblivion over servitude to the Reapers.

I'm not a proponent of the indoctrination theory in the extent that it's Shepard that's being indoctrinated. I see the indoctrination to be happening straight to the player. Doubt it was the devs original idea, but think about it. All through the game you got people to talk to and opinions to listen to. You got a direct goal that you're working for. Then, at the end, you're alone and this kid, with vested interests, comes and tells you "Hey, how about you don't do what you've been working for the past 3 games, how about you do these other things. Because if you don't something bad might happen and you don't want that, now do you?" You got no one to turn to for guidance nor confirmation. You just have to take this AI's word for it and it's not like he has some reason to stop you from blowing him up.

>>44048559
>They are bored and they don't want to sublime.
Then they should devote themselves to highly-authoritarian virtuous imperialism for a few millennia to see what it's like.

>>44048559
>If you can not accept that insults are part of every day talk you don't belong here.
U wut?

>>44048578
(cont.)

If you choose Control, you create a god that you can't fuck with. Even Shepard says that (s)he'll make everyone behave, or else. And who doesn't want that, right? And then you got Synthesis which sure is great for you to let the Reapers win and fuck over all of existence just so you don't have to feel bad for someone possibly dying.

Now, lets look at Destroy, the "HFY!" option, as you put it. Not only has it been your goal from the beginning, but it's the only ending where Shepard doesn't die, as confirmed by the game's official guide. So what was that about Shepard dying if he destroys the Reapers, kid? Hell, in the high EMS ending Hacket says the damage was minimal and what was lost can be rebuilt. Doesn't sound like a whole race was annihilated. But ok, lets say the Geth got wiped out, so what? They knew the score and they had accepted the risks. Everyone was. They were ready to die, rather than bow down to the Reapers. You think they'd be happier to take a knee if they knew Shepard was now leading the Reapers? Or if the Reapers won and we were all cyborgs now?

>>44048474
A lot of that is wrong but I will acknowledge you make some valid points. I think the mistake here though is people trying to take 40k seriously in the first place.

>>44048324
Get the fuck out with your mass-reply bullshit

>>44047370
I'm currently writing a series where - when ayliums do happen - the aliens end up becoming our antithesis in how they approach everything.

Similar to the "humanity cannot into genocide but i can" image I posted, these aliens are super ordered and shit while mankind is 100% chaotic, to the point of simply being chaotic behavior given form.

As you can imagine, the super-sperglords can't fathom someone who doesn't play by their rules after having rules and etiquette of literally taking a shit as their only culture for millions of years. They don't even bother hiding their forces from the enemy out of "understanding" that the enemy won't out of nowhere blow the fuck out of them.

>>44048474
I don't think you understand anon, but that's alright, I don't expect everyone here to be capable of human level intelligence.

>>44048728
Interesting, but be careful to not go too heavy on it or else some spergs will go "Fuck off with your HFY bullshit!" and ruin everything when the HFY tards come in to argue with them.

>>44048549
Thanks. Please subscibe, Like, retweet, and follow my tinder, tumbler, pinterest and Ashley Madison accounts.

>>44048553
RE: IG
Massive unguided artillery use, disposable infantry, gas weapons, unreliable shit like Deathstrikes, needing the Machine Cult, "lasguns" with same hitting power as an assault rifle, forced conscription, tracked vehicles (and nothing better), "fix bayonets" -almost nothing about that is even modern, never mind actually futuristic.

That's not even getting to the Imperial Navy and them not using auto-loaders for the big guns. Or servitors. Or Skiitari.

RE: SM's
Wrong-o, because we're talking about HFY.
Space Marines, the iconic, plot-armored, big-deal-heroes of the setting are all humans.
They aren't about "the best of the best" because they don't take non-Imperials. They don't take child soldiers screened through the IG. They generally don't take people outside a chosen culture because random reasons not even based in "because their genes aren't all fucked up."
Everything 40k outside of the TT is about Space Marines first, and everyone else exists to either fellate them or make them look good by dying.

I do agree that SM's aren't actually pure HFY, but they're majority HFY. That's like claiming HALO isn't HFY either just because Spartans (the old ones anyway) got abducted and tortured as children.

>>44048728
>le "humanity is insanity" trope

>>44047205
Enterprise did this the worst way. They had one black guy, and no-one ever talked to the dude except to give him orders. Most of his lines were stuff like "Increasing speed to warp 5, sir".

But what drove it home was that Shran, the blue-skinned Andorian, referred to humans as "pinkskins", while there were a blackskin and a yellowskin sitting right there, on the bridge.

>>44048626
I'll take that, and I'll concede this: you might right.

I don't look at 40k as being the older, dumber HALO. I see shit from Lovecraft and Orwell and Robert Howard and Tolkien. I see some real fucking smart crafting carefully in the core ideas.

I see that and think "fuck, this is cool!"...and then I start to realize just how outside of the setting my perspective is. I really shouldn't care at all.

But, I'm a 1st World Nerd and this is a fixation of mine. So what's the solution?

>>44048599
Destroy makes you Hitler, you are rationalizing being Hitler.

I'll give you a point for actually sounding like you've thought it through.

>>44048829
>RE: IG

Yeah, just look at regiments like Catachans or Elysians. Total WW1-2 tactics there. Air superiority, behind enemy lines action, guerrilla warfare, aerial insertion, etc.

>Massive unguided artillery use
>disposable infantry
>gas weapons

Depends on the regiment. You're probably looking at Krieg and thinking that's what Guard. Krieg are pretty shit in their tactics even in 40k terms and take massive casualties to reach their goals.

>unreliable shit like Deathstrikes

wut?

>needing the Machine Cult

You know how many modern military devices need professional maintenance?

>"lasguns" with same hitting power as an assault rifle

With single shots vs. high rate of fire assault rifle. Also, what assault rifle blows fist sized chunks out of reinforced concrete?

>forced conscription

It's up to the planet how they recruit. On Catachan, for example, they take volunteers.

>tracked vehicles

This just in: Modern tanks are shit.

>"fix bayonets" -almost nothing about that is even modern

dank may-may, bra.

>>44048775
That makes two of us.

I accept your concession, have a nice day Anon!

>>44048934
I'd rather be Hitler that saved the galaxy from certain destruction than the dude who let the enemy win because of rowboat-Jew tears.

>>44048829
>Massive unguided artillery use,
It's cheap and effective
>disposable infantry,
When you have trillions, maybe even quadrillions of citizens to recruit from, you don't need to care that much about having super-effective soldiers when the front is -EVERYWHERE-
>gas weapons,
So?
>unreliable shit like Deathstrikes,
So? Sometimes artillery fire just doesn't cut it
>needing the Machine Cult,
"I don't understand 40k: the post"
>"lasguns" with same hitting power as an assault rifle,
Lasguns can vaporize a massive chunk of flesh, it just so happens that armor technology has advanced as well
>forced conscription,
So? When the front is -EVERYWHERE-, and the fate of your entire species is dependent on holding that line and remaining unified, personal liberties take a back seat
>tracked vehicles (and nothing better),
So? Tracked vehicles are useful, cheap and easy to produce, and don't suffer from the short comings of walkers.
>"fix bayonets"
You would rather the IG not have any bayonets at all when the Orks finnaly get over the ramparts?

-almost nothing about that is even modern, never mind actually futuristic.
Wrong, it's all very futuristic, but futuristic doesn't imply "clean" or "good".

>>44048829
>Space Marines, ... are all humans.
Wrong, they're post-humans, and that's more of an effort by GeeDubs to sell their primary line of plastic crack by making them the heroes.
>They aren't a... take non-Imperials.
Because the augmentation process is designed for humans, idiot.
>They don't ... through the IG.
Nigger, most marines become marines in their teens.
>They generally ... based in "because their genes aren't all fucked up."
Because those cultures don't breed acceptable neophytes who are willing to give up all sense of personal identity for THE EMPEROR AND THE WILL OF MAN
>Everything 40k ... look good by dying.
The Tau just made even with an entire crusade.

>>44048934
>Destroy makes you Hitler, you are rationalizing being Hitler.
>Implying Hitler did anything wrong
>Implying genocide is wrong
>Implying the giant robot space squids are people

>>44048948
To be fair, an assault rifle firing 7.62x51 or higher could probably do the same damage minus the horrible burns and blindness. And guerilla warfare has been used since the 1700s.

>>44048948
Catachans: you mean the Sylvester Stallone "we win with knives" force?
You actually recognize them as being "military"?
Elysians would be more compelling an example if a) they weren't the obvious exceptions and b) they didn't use the exact same weapons and tech.

I'm actually thinking of Cadians. Or Mordians. Or Salvar Chem-dogs. Or Penal Regiments. I could think of more, but I'm trying to do this without help.

Weapons that don't work reliably aren't weapons any actual force uses.

Weak dodge, brah. Needing a outside organization to keep your gear working is utterly unacceptable to running an army. If the Pope could force NATO to leave the field because they'd accidentally insulted a Catholic that would be the AdMech's relationship to the IoM.

LOL, yeah because that "can penetrate a meter of reinforced concrete" citation is credible. I mean, sure it's canon -like Tau feet, quad-strand crystal Eldar genetics, and bolters being less deadly than laspistols.
But sure, if you can straight-faced believe that Lasguns can blast apart concrete I'll give you that one.

Catachans also kill their first man by age 4. Catachans make _everything_ stupid. Also hollow blades filled with mercury because extra choppy.

Modern tanks are highly effective and Challenger-2's have an operational casualty rate in the single digits. The M1 isn't doing so well though the TUSK upgrade kit helps.
The More You Know!

IKR?! Why argue a point when you can pretend you have to leave so ma-ma can change your diaper?

>>44049197
>IKR?! Why argue a point when you can pretend you have to leave so ma-ma can change your diaper?
Pretending to be retarded makes you actually retarded, anon.

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>>44049197
>Weapons that don't work reliably aren't weapons any actual force uses.
That's completely wrong

>>44048814
It's more that mankind's been at strife since its inception, and the biggest other race didn't have that problem. Well, not for long enough to form a confederacy of states allied by the fact they all lost the same amount of bodies in a war with a Zerg-esque entity that mankind created.

It's long, but the ayliums won't even be a focus until way late in the series, when the various factions of mankind have been introduced and such.

>>44047000

Lots of sci-fi seems to stuggle with really bad and deep seated tropes, and reading some old 1970-ish era fiction (the cheap 50p paperback kind from a yard sale) just shows they've been around for a long time. :(

As for fairly interesting characterisation of alien races/interactions, I found 'The Dosadi Experiment' by Frank Herbert to be very interesting, not on the same scale as Dune, but interesting :)

>>44049320
The tropes are so deep-seated and hard to break away from BECAUSE they've been around so long.

That, and because breaking, subverting, or defying tropes for the sake of doing so usually results in a terrible story.

>Aliens talking down to humanity for being oh so goddamn terrible

The only time I could take this, was when those ugly, little trolls called the Ferengi were doing it. Because you knew they were full of shit, and they'd usually follow it up with some comment betraying their own smallmindedness.

But when it's played straight, it sucks. It's the author turning off the narrative, and preaching to the audience for a minute. And if you want to make the point that we're all being terrible and shit, actually make that point instead of just inserting it in there like an unwelcome dildo.

>>44048996
Who needs more said?

>>44049070
...kinda.
It's not actually very cheap, but if you're not spending that money on other things it looks that way.

Funny thing: overpopulation is a problem, not a solution. Generating uncounted trillions of subjects is not actually better than having a stable, healthy, non-Chaos-empowering population situated on planets as well defended as Cadia.

Gas doesn't work. Didn't even accomplish anything tactical in WW1. Killed a lot of guys, but didn't secure any actual objectives.

Uh, ...should I need to explain why unreliable, unstable, irreplaceable weapons are an incredible stupid idea? I won't; that would be not a little condescending.

The person who thinks I don't understand 40k won't produce an opinion about the logistics of war that I'm real concerned with.
Good job conceding the point though.

Actually in both TT and in the RPG's Lasguns rarely have better actual damage or performance than a modern 40k AR. They should produce a nice solid, bloody wound that ranks up there with a mediocre bolter hit, but nope.

See above.

Hey, so there's these people called "Eldar" and they've got tanks -actual big guns solid armor tanks- that fly. They can still crush targets, can still deliver infantry, can still take a pounding and keep going, except they fly.
So they don't need roads, don't get lost in mud, don't have treads that get blown off and need replacing, etc etc.
Ironically the "Eldar" do use walkers, but they don't use them as armor.
Oh, and Tau. Tau do floating tanks, too.

Uh, having better weapons and strategy would make bayonets a whole lot less necessary. And, feel free to say I'm wrong, but when it's time to melee an Ork the average Guardsman is gonna die. The bayonet contributes nothing.
Oh, and bayonet charges are IG.

Not that I implied or state "clean" or "good" mattered either.
The topic was "has the Imperial Guard advanced in the practice of warfare" and the answer remains: not really. They added gunships.

>>44049395
>That, and because breaking, subverting, or defying tropes for the sake of doing so usually results in a terrible story.

Probably my single biggest issue with modern sci-fi is that they're often very focused on breaking these tropes, rather than actually making a good point.

Also, if you read stuff that isn't shit, you'll notice the tropes aren't there. But yeah, if you want to read spaceships pew-pew science fiction, you're going to get buckets of shitty tropes.

>>44047566
>dude, mind uploading lmao

>>44049395
This, fuck "muh deconstruction, so postmodern"

Write an earnest rather than ironic story, god fucking damnit

>>44047177
Was this from that /tg/ setting thread a while ago?

Heritage, right? That was pretty neat, though the monkey shti they threw in the end was kind of retarded.

>>44049499
Deconstruction is fine when you actually have a good and interesting idea. It's doing things differently for the sake of being different that's a problem.

>>44049459
>Gas doesn't work. Didn't even accomplish anything tactical in WW1. Killed a lot of guys, but didn't secure any actual objectives.

Yeah, I haven't been following this discussion, but this is retarded. Just saying.

The first gas attack damn near opened up the front for the Germans, and would have if they'd had the manpower ready. Which, given the nature of WWI, is pretty impressive. Later use was less successful because countermeasures were put in place.

It didn't kill a lot of people, in the end. But damn, did it scare them. And, of course, nothing actually succeeded in breaking the stalemate, including the #1 killer of the war: Artillery.

But then again, you seem to be taking a "muh realism" approach to WH40K, so you must be pretty retarded. And autistic. Can't forget autistic.

>>44049197
>you mean the Sylvester Stallone "we win with knives" force?

Where's their massive artillery barrages, gas weapons, casualties, etc.?

>obvious exceptions

Yeah, because Harakoni Warhawks and the likes don't exist. Total one-offs.

>Weapons that don't work reliably

How is the Deathstrike unreliable?

>Needing a outside organization to keep your gear working is utterly unacceptable to running an army.

Welcome to the modern military industrial complex, brah. The world where fighters spend more time being maintained and flying. Where everything has electronics that need to be maintained by a dude with more skills than banging it against a rock until it sorts its shit out.

>LOL, yeah because that "can penetrate a meter of reinforced concrete" citation is credible.

That's been mentioned in more than a few pieces of fluff. I'd ask about your sources, but you're doing this without help.

>Catachans also kill their first man by age 4.

According to what fluff?

>Modern tanks are highly effective

But they have tracks, thus they're shit, remember?

>Why argue a point when you can pretend you have to leave so ma-ma can change your diaper?

Ok. Let us know when you get back.

>>44049540
Deconstruction has to be done for a good reason. For instance, DS9 set out to poke at the holes in TOS and TNG. It added to the universe by asking pointed questions. But take something like Scalzi's Redshirts, and it's like "herd derf have you noticed how these guys die all the time, so funny lel!"

No, Scalzi, that shit was a storytelling device from the 60's. Calm your tits.

At first I was going to use this for shit that I am writing. Then I read some of this and realized that people who use the term tropes are god awful and don't want to like my shit so I am going to go the opposite direction and go full on 60s-70s space opera.

[spoilers] it was smut anyways so like I give to shits. Though I think some of this shit I will use, like an ayylium race that's only slightly more advanced than humans. Actually- i will do that quite a lot. So thanks to >>44047869 >>44048200 and a few others I will write somethin crazy [/spoiler]

>>44047410
so fucking doing that. Society for Creative Anachronism Aliums sounds fucking fun.

>ships with the ability to travel faster than light
>shooting at each other with dinky little missiles and lasers instead of unmaking each other half a solar system away with the magical space technology propelling the ship

Ender's Game at least did that right.

>>44049101
>>Implications
>>Not knowing what Reapers actually are.

Next?

>>44049070
Space Marines.
Uh, hm. They're post-humans...how? They're actually less human and that's the whole point.
Less fear, less loyalty to family, less mercy, less empathy, etc.
The only thing they're more human is in the fact that they're literally _larger_ humans.

I don't think you realize that you've conceded my point about SM's being HFY, so think about it.

And Cadia has White Shields which are pre-teen soldiers.
It is unlikely that Cadia is unique in the use of child soldiers.
It is unlikely that Cadia is regarded as a bad place to get soldiers.
No SM chapters recruit from Cadia.
SM's are superstitious, that's one of the points of their design.

And this is why 40k's cancer is it's fans.
Not because it's bad, but because they're myopic.
You fail. You fail completely, and here's why:
The largest, most core Space Marine chapter with the zillion successor chapters that's synonymous with "I am the basic, vanilla defender of Humanity and Battle Brother of the righteous" is the Ultramarines.
The Ultramarines recruit exclusively from one of the most organized, civilized and functional parts of the entire Imperium. The place that produces some of the most healthy, educated, and functional humans in the setting.
And who become some of the best Space Marines.
Thanks for playing.

You mean the Tau who expand at a snail's pace? Who're the butt of any HFY-gasm the Eldar aren't starring in? Who fanboys howl to see exterminated and who claim the only reason why still exist is because the IoM hasn't gotten around to finishing them off?
They're comparable to Space Marines or the Imperium?

I'm sorry, I never thought of the Hrud as being that important either.

>>44049649
You can blame that on:

>futuristic weapons are unrealistic, so everyone in the future still uses guns and bombs and shit, because while we can imagine breaking the literal laws of physics, a gun that shoots a laser beam is too wild for us, because we associate it with Star Wars and other stuff that's simply not edgy enough for us.

>>44049661
>Next?
I'll bite.

Reapers left technology lying around intentionally so we'd develop in ways they knew. Effectively, Destroy ruins everything.

No more FTL, no more implants, biotics goes to shit, ships don't work, Eezo ceases to exist. It all goes out. You neuter an entire spacefaring civilization.

>>44049459
The value of the lasgun isn't in its destructive capacity, it's in the massive logistical simplification they provide.

>>44049649
At least a lot of sci fi settings get around this by making FTL travel within the vicinity of planets/suns extremely dangerous and difficult to calculate, thus making FTL weaponry only work in the middle of dead space. Pursuant to that, packing weaponry that is only useable in maybe 1/1000 space battles is is just untenable.

Plus, assuming you CAN FTL travel in-system without planet gravity and whatnot being a problem, what happen if your calculations are just a bit off? Blammo, your ship and whatever you hit are instantly destroyed. I Imagine any sort of civilization would NOT want that shit near them. With weapons, misses with weapons of that scale wouldn't be worth the risk. Hell, even hits would prove incredibly dangeroud unless the ships are, as you say, very very very far apart (at which point accuracy becomes an even greater risk, especially in system).

At scales at which FTL weaponry would be remotely viable, combat would never really take place anyways.

>>44047000
Much more benign that most of the stuff in this thread but...
> Their is an universal currency, no matter how much space trade there is.
> It's the dollar despite being centuries in the future, having one or several apocalypse or even being completely unrelated to our universe.

>>44049649
Depends entirely on the nature of the FTL drive in question.

>>44049799
>It's the dollar despite etc
Translation convention. Call a rabbit a rabbit, ya know?

>>44049799
Gotta base it all on a overarching currency, one that's basically just a summary/translation of all the myriad currencies.

Credits or bust.

>>44049913
Credit is a terrible thing to name a currency.

>>44049649
Gonna write that up. Thanks
>>44049745
Most people cannot imagine insane weapons. People know and love lasers. Just realize that this is /tg/. What we think as "bad tropes" are because we have our pallets ruined due to constantly assuming that /tg/ = what people want to read in a book, when most people would die from boredom because of how most of us would right sci-fi. Either that or we would go full GRR Martin.
Which is more readily identifiable? Really cool doom laser or limited range strange matter conversion beam? Most people on here could figure out what the second weapon does, but your average big bang watching doofus would be pissed off trying to figure out the shit behind it.

Essentially our bad tropes are considered staples because the commoner enjoys them.

tl;dr you eat too much good food- you'd rather starve than eat bad food.

>>44049799
>>44049913

I liked what ghost in the shell did with combine currency and multi currency. Mostly it's for simplicity sake but I personally would enjoy currency convolusion.

>>44049882
I guess, but it still feel wrong to me. Like a reference to modern time Earth they shouldn't know or care about.
I did say it was benign.

>>44049958
Thank you, this is a very good response.

>Everyone wears skintight bodysuits all the time

There is literally no reason to do this beyond blatant fetish insertion and "muh aesthetic"

>>44049146
Sure.

And I'm not actually arguing from ineffectiveness. That would be useless.
Clearly the IG make it work whether or not I think how they do is legit, and I don't actually have a problem with las weapons.

Is a modern anti-armor missile better than a lascannon? Probably not?
Does it matter? No.

>>44049220
I'll take your word for it.

>>44049285
Not that you have an example to offer.
Not that anyone uses anything that works by praying it'll go off at some point.

>>44049549
Yeah, definitely can't forget "autistic" as the go-to for having nothing better to say.

Thanks for elaborating on my point though as, yeah, in spite of what "might" have happened with gas it didn't.

>>44049595
You're right about Catachans, they are the exception to the rule.
As for the Warhawks, what's their regiment number again?
Because the Cadians deploy a few hundred and use tactics like I've described.
Tell me who you think the iconic IG Regiment is. Who really is "the Ultramarines" of the Imperial Guard.

Turn the key, say the prayers, nominate the spot it's aimed at, and it fires when it's good and ready. They're also unguided. Nobody real works like that.

Yeah, the Armed Forces? They provide their own mechanics. Even with privatization of supply and support functions they PMC's don't walk off the job over an insult to the Machine God they also don't bother with.

Believe what you want. If you really want "blasts through stone" S3 AP5 you can have it.

The Catachan codex? Have a look.

No, they're not "futuristic."
Maybe you should try separating criticism from observation.
You should also try separating "realistic" from "consistent."

Uh, sure. You should probably have a seat next to Space Hitler and the guy who thinks the Imperium isn't HFY while you wait.
I bet you'll make a friend.

>>44049958
>Really cool doom laser or limited range strange matter conversion beam?

>Not a Casaba-Howitzer

>>44047000
>Mars being the center for space-age humanity
Mars is way the fuck out there and doesn't even do two things that a planet should do:

1.Provide livable gravity without making everyone into a horrible mutant
2.Protect from radiation

Natural resource wise Mars also has jack shit other than water, but the delta-v cost for transporting that water is way worse than just getting water from Mars's moons.

>>44050017
>Thanks for elaborating on my point though as, yeah, in spite of what "might" have happened with gas it didn't.

That's because NOTHING did, you tard. Not even the single most effective weapon of the war. Based on your logic, artillery is a bad weapon, too.

Gas almost forced a breakthrough. That's a huge thing in WWI, and that's why they kept using it. Arguing against that fact is basically pointless, and you're just screaming a dumb opinion because you desperately want it to be true.

>>44050017
>>44049661
>>44049595
>These huge as fuck posts because someone questioned your bastion of virginity that is 40k.
40kid autism is real.

>>44049958
>but your average big bang watching doofus
doesn't read anyway so whatever. Star Wars will always be the only kind of cinematic sci-fi but literature gives us localized subspace intrusions, time-sharing hyper-intelligent fungoid sampling transects, immortal worm-emperors, the dying light of an aborted universe used as a weapon, and string resonant mega-structure multiverse doors, we aren't exactly in want of crazy shit.

>>44050013
Most are skin tight suits capable of surviving in outer space. On a space station or space ship, I'd always want to have the ability to survive accidental decompression.

Planetside, yeah, that doesn't make sense.

>>44050116
>Planetside, yeah, that doesn't make sense.
Fashion knows no sense.

>>44050116
>Most are skin tight suits capable of surviving in outer space. On a space station or space ship, I'd always want to have the ability to survive accidental decompression.
Do they really have to be skintight, though?

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>>44050013
Or maybe that's the fashion of the time.
Nowadays we have skinny jeans and skinny tank tops and other weird shit, seems like people are really into skintight stuff.
Maybe material sciences just advanced enough that we have some kind of weird super-rubber-latex-leather material that is both resistent, tight and comfortable.

>>44047000
>Cyberpunk taking place a few decades from now
>humans have unanimously decided to steamroll every piece of existing architecture and replace it with drab black skyscrapers

>>44049799
I can imagine that if there are standards for communication within a universe capable of facilitating trade, there are also standards for some form of cryptocurrency used for trade.

>>44049803
No matter how it works it's incredibly unlikely it can't somehow be weaponized.

>>44049681
Yeah I get why it's so common. There's also the fact it's often based on 1700's naval warfare, and that it's cool on some level. But it still irks me.
>At least a lot of sci fi settings get around this by making FTL travel within the vicinity of planets/suns extremely dangerous and difficult to calculate
Well that only matters for the transportation aspect, not the weaponization of the technology.
>At scales at which FTL weaponry would be remotely viable, combat would never really take place anyways.
That's kind of my point, where FTL is widely available it wouldn't be combat as much as it would be erasure.

>>44049958
I think crazy weapons like that could work well in a setting that tells a cold war/impending doom kind of story where "mutually assured destruction" is taken to a new and extreme level.

Man, I gotta read the sequels to enders game some day.

>>44050161
If they're not skin tight whatever gasses inside of them could possibly undergo rapid expansion due to lack of pressure, and the suit could pop.

Now, while such an event may please Dobson, it's not a good idea for actual use.

>>44050149
I want to see a fashion show stocked entirely by aliums now. We Humans would do it if no one else has and IU can imagine space travel capable wedding dresses and the like.

>>44050161
Look up how bulky astronaut suits are.

However, don't think of them as full suits. THink of them as undergarments instead, you can still put other things on top.

>>44050082
>1.Provide livable gravity without making everyone into a horrible mutant

How, exactly, do you know this? Because I haven't been able to find any research whatsoever on the effects of gravity between 1 ug and 1 g on life, because it's virtually impossible to replicate on Earth and there's no centrifuge on the ISS.

Given that we know exactly nothing about the dose-response curve for gravity, on what basis do you assume that Mars doesn't have good enough gravity? Or are you just memeing?

>2. Protect from radiation

Actually, it does that very well. Mars is a massive body composed of nothing but radiation shielding; if you want to be shielded from radiation, you just dig into it so there's some of that radiation shielding on top of you. There are even massive, open lava tubes providing enormous enclosed spaces pre-roofed-over with radiation shielding. You don't need much dirt on top of you before you're safe.

And if you've industrialized the Martian moons, why would you not live on Mars? Free gravity, free radiation shielding, more metals than the carbonaceous Phobos and Deimos, nitrate resources, and an atmosphere making the construction of pressurized habitats much easier. Also, possibly actual ores!

>>44049799
What if the "currency" isn't actually a real currency, just a measurement of monetary value? Knowing 10 credits means the worth of 23 Earthos is more intuitive than remembering that 23 Earthos is worth 42 Gazorpazorp Bux is worth 31.05 Space Canadian Dollars is worth etc etc

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>>44050197

>>44050161
>Do they really have to be skintight, though?

In space?

If they're not skintight, you'll swell up until they are. People expand under vacuum.

The whole point of the suit is to provide mechanical counterpressure, to keep you from expanding. (Human skin being gas-tight, as long as you've still got 1 atm of pressure pushing in on you, it doesn't matter what source it is.) If it's not skin-tight, it can't do that.

>>44050161
>Do they really have to be skintight, though?
Yes, actually. The only choices are superhero spandex kinda suits, or big bulky space suits. No in between.

>>44050188
Cyberpunk is over thirty years old now. Most hardcore architecture preservation movements are only a little older.

>>44050190
The one setting I can outright think of where people do use weapons in the same category as their FTL drives is Star Trek, of all things. They use an antimatter reaction to drive the ship, and they put antimatter in their photon torpedoes.

Of course, that setting also shows it to be trivially easy to destroy entire planets if you have access to a starship, provided the planet has no resistance.

>>44050017
>Not that you have an example to offer.
Not that anyone uses anything that works by praying it'll go off at some point.
Current armies in the western world use guns that are legendarily shitty and outclassed by weapons used 50 years ago. For example, the French use the FAMAS which has horrible sights, jams a bunch, and has a 25 round magazine when the standard for every other country is 30. Germany uses the G36 which, if you break the scope, is entirely useless because they didn't bother adding secondary sights. Don't even get me started on the Indian INSAS, which sprays oil into your eyes every time you shoot.

>>44050283
I get that most of those weapons keep getting used because of government contracts, but aren't they decent enough not to be smeared all over the media?

Also, go into more detail on the INSAS, /k/omrade.

>>44050226
How exactly are you determining the value of the credit?

>>44049712
Agreed!
Huzzah!
Yup. Totally fine with that.Great reason to use a gun and double that when you work on the scale the IG does.
Not because they punch through AR 14 like it's mesh, which they don't.
Not because they're more lethal than a bolter, which they aren't.
Lasgun's a damn good, reliable, accurate weapon.
Long as we can keep that in sight, we're good.

>>44049700
Yup.
But what is a Reaper specifically?
It's an AI program (maybe not even a true one, but whatever) created to preserve Organic life from it's habit of creating Synthetic life that inevitably wipes it out.
They're crafted into giant squid in homage to their creators the Leviathans.
The actual guts of a capital-class Reaper is core of preserved genetic material and a database of the "donating" culture.

^THAT is the crucial detail.

They aren't just flying squid. They aren't even "squid" constructs at all -recall the incomplete "human" reaper from ME 2.

Each and every capital-class Reaper is a flying, murdering, HOOOOONK-ing vault that carries the race that was harvested inside it. Indoctrination tech and AI shackling keeps it on mission.

So, let's talk Synthesis.

Synthesis blends Organic and Synthetic life by fusing Organics with some version of the hive-mind construct (everyone's a wi-fi tower/smart phone) and Synthetics with the perspective of what it's like to be Organic (hunger, lust, hate, angst, love, peace, art, genetic imperatives, etc).

It's fair to wonder what that does to sapients on a local scale -some people aren't going to take it well. Synthesis IS invasive, no denying it.

But what does it do to the Reapers? To the flying vaults of exterminated people?

It resurrects them.

Because they contain the culture that was lost, and:
a titanic wad of carefully preserved genetic material.

It neutralizes the "Reaper" bit, too.

Salarians have cloning tech sufficient to take a petrified skull and make it into a living Kakliosaur.

>>44050277
OMAC came out more than forty years ago but you're largely right.

>>44050318
>Salarians have cloning tech sufficient to take a petrified skull and make it into a living Kakliosaur.
Mass Effect was largely plausible before ME3, fuck somehow getting DNA from a rock.

>>44050314
There are a set amount of credits in existence, and they are infinitely divisible.

All money of a given currency is equivalent to all credits.

If there are currently 400,000,000,000,000 TerraDollars in circulation in the Terran Republic, and the Intra-Galactic Monetary Concil of Juehdehn have decided to cap the number of credits to exactly 1,000,000,000,000,000, then 1 TerraDollar is exactly 2.5 Credits.

Credits aren't a currecy per say, it's just a normalization of all other currencies. If the value of one currency goes down, it wont affect any other currencies since they are in relation to credits, not some galactic reserve currency.

For all practical purposes however, Credits are treated as a currency for ease of trade.

>>44050312
Take an assault rifle, make it the embodiment of shit (get it, cause it's from India?), and you have the INSAS. Probably on the top ten list of worst guns ever made, even the towelheads in Khyber Pass can steap together something more reliable than that thing.

>>44050414
*slap something together, fuck my phone

>>44050414
>shit (get it, cause it's from India?)
DESIGNATED

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>>44050410
>Intra-Galactic Monetary Concil of Juehdehn

>>44050222
>gravity
Microgravity environments have proven to not be livable for humans with most health risks really only being JUST for microgravity, but there is one universal health risk which I know for certain that Mars will pose: bone loss. People on Mars are going to have to exercise a lot to ensure they're not pissing out their bones 24/7. If you want an entire society on Mars that means that every single person there has to follow a specific lifestyle in order to keep medical costs down. The alternative to having to exercise a lot would be to build centrifuge on Mars which would be stupid since the entire point of going to a planet is NOT having to use a centrifuge.

>radiation
This also applies to the moon which takes a lot less time to ferry resources back and forth. Martian lava tubes that can easily be used for colonization can be re-purposed with Lunar lava tubes.

>>44050445
Oei Vay!

>>44050036
>oh_you.pg

>>44049978
I used to ghost write for a living, though most of it was smut. I learned that most people do not connect with the "hard sci-fi type." Granted what I wrote that actually got published I wrote as a fucking joke and got me my gig. What people want to read are usually bad tropes.

>>44050103
It was a miracle dune got into a movie AND tv series. Same with enders game. Sure people who are readers love some of the hardest sci-fi, but the problem is people are more and more drawn to the visual. I am going to be doing a visual novel, so it's going to be different. The thing for most authors and writers is you can only put in so much over the top shit before you lose your audience to a severe case of "WTF IS THIS FUCKER TALKING ABOUT" or "WHAT IS THIS SPACE TOLKIEN?" I empathize with your frustration that we don't see enough cool shit or that people have to be pandered to. Personally I have a whole list of weird concepts I will put in.

>>44050190
They are disappointing. I can't believe I read all of the speaker for the dead. My ulcer acts up every fucking time I read Xenocide. But if you can read them, you can read them.

>>44050222
Controlled black hole that you can somehow move or star that you can somehow move with heavy metals or some sort of miracle thing that eats radiation or uses it for propulsion without it touching the living quarters. This makes a massive ship yes, but it works.

>>44050318
People often forget that planet spanning empires are fucking expensive and so is equiping shock troops. The gun of the future isn't the shiny new bullshit micro photon assassin gun developed by elites for elite troops. It's an accurate rifle that can be dropped in acid, thrown into the void of space and burried in cow shit for a month and still fire developed by a space barge parts maker.
>>44050410
I fucking laughed harder than I should.

>>44050312
Keep in mind that the governments themselves can be the reason behind the problems with a weapon. The M-16 and its derivatives are still thought of as shitty weapons by many people due to the issues that plagued them when they were first adopted. The M-16 was issued without cleaning kits or instructions manuals for the troops, troops were told they didn't have to clean the rifles, cost-savings efforts led to them changing the compositions of the barrels, and they used a completely different blend of powder in the ammo then what was specified. Actual design problems in the gun were addressed a long time ago and it has been updated with several variants, but you'll still have people spouting that they're unreliable pieces of shit that will jam, break, and rust constantly. Those people are usually the same who will tell you that the AK is the best rifle ever made despite them having the exact same lifespan as an AR rifle.

>>44050451
Bone loss may actually also be a mostly microgravity-only health risk. Most of the severe bone loss in microgravity is due to the fact that you're not using your legs at all, and they're not receiving the regular jarring shocks when you walk. On Mars, you'd still have to exert some effort to stay standing all the time, and you'd still be walking around and jarring your legs. There's a huge difference between "barely exerting any stress on your bones at all" and "exerting stress on your bones 24/7, just less than on Earth."

People on Mars will have weaker bones, but there's no reason to assume they'd have bones 1/3rd as weak as on Earth just because it has only 1/3rd the gravity.

>>44050318
Synthesis is the "might be bad for someone and will mean accepting that the Reapers had some kind of right idea but FUCK IT EVERYONE'S COMING FUCKING BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!" ending.

It's undoing the Cycle.

So yeah.

Fuck Space Hitler. He was a coward.


>>44050091
Mm, circular arguments. Fun.

Nope. Sorry. "Almost forced a breakthrough" still doesn't mean "did force a breakthrough." And I guess you equating gas (obsolete, abandoned) with artillery (effective, still being employed) means I'm done here.
Thanks!
The guy I was trying to debate was a spastic ragetard. Shit was getting tiresome.

>>44050098
You are really invested in what I think. Troubling.

>>44050283
Exactly my point.
Nobody does that, except in 40k.
And I wouldn't even say that that is "bad", except that it's not "futuristic" and certainly no fucking improvement over NOT needing to do that.

Modern AR's are a compromise. The idea of what warfare would be mutated, so they did to. They're also, as >>44050312 points out about who gets to make them and why well before they're about "how well will this work."
Last I checked AK clones were what the majority of the non-NATO planet uses and I'm sure you know why.

Personally I want a BAR.

>>44047402
They did. It's in the terminals.
>343
>Halo 3
>Cortana's moments
>Guilty Spark
What?

>>44050501
>oh_you.pg

>implying Casaba-Howitzers aren't the tightest shit
DIRECTED
NUCLEAR
ENERGY
CANNON

>>44047700
Eh, I always found that sort of thing to be a ridiculous cop out as well, particularly in vidya. "Sorry guys, we fucked up so nothing you did matters." The only way to salvage a plot gone bad is to make it better. Unfortunately that is difficult and the process is unique to each plot.

>>44047451
>shat on everything
Why do so few read the terminals? They retconned shit but not as much as people exaggerate.

>>44050414
Not even the "Rhuzi?! =D

>>44047288
>poop

>>44050501
>I fucking laughed harder than I should.
Pls no bully.

>>44050451
>Lunar lava tubes.
I don't want to call you out because you prob know more than me about this, but I'm pretty sure that's not a thing.

>>44050350
No debate here; it's rule of cool -Krogan on dinosaurs.

>>44050501
>Sure people who are readers love some of the hardest sci-fi, but the problem is people are more and more drawn to the visual.

Dune is intensely visual. The problem is that the book contains a glossary that is necessary to understand why things work the way they do.

>>44050501
>speaker for the dead
Is the novel Card wanted to write and he used a re-purposed short story as a lead-up.

>>44047000
>things i don't like - the thread

>>44050516
Any bone loss at all has to be avoided if you want people to be able to travel back and forth between Earth and Mars freely.

>>44050516
>>44050615
Anons, there is a simple solution to all this; we replace all human's bones with titanium.

>>44050637
No no no you coat them with adamantium.

>>44050519
Except the gas wasn't the reason why their wasn't a breakthrough, it was the lack of reserves to exploit the hole in the lines.

And why the fuck would you want a BAR for anything other than a range toy or conversation starter?

>>44050451
>>44050516

And second,
1. We have no way of knowing whether the Moon has sufficient gravity for human colonization either.

It goes both ways. I don't know how much gravity people actually need to be healthy, but it's not a stupid sci-fi supposition to say it might be between Lunar and Martian gravity. Doesn't have to be *true*, just so long as it's *plausible.*

2. The Moon's significantly worse for colonization, because it has
>A really, really long night that means you need a *lot* of energy storage to stay going through it and keep plants alive; Mars' day/night cycle is nearly 24 hours, so you could practically just grow plants in pressurized greenhouses
>Substantially lower amounts of carbon, water, and nitrates, making it much more difficult to sustain life
>Substantially worse surface radiation doses, due to the lack of any atmosphere at all to shield radiation.
>No atmosphere, making it harder to build pressurized habitats.

>>44050676
Meh, who cares.
Done now. GG, take it easy.
Gonna go work out -yes bro, I do even lift.
Not much, but it's there.

>>44050637
You are joking, but you might not be wrong. There is a school of thought that says that we are so well adapted to earth that there is no way we can reasonably make a ship that could maintain an earth-like enviroment long enough for us to get anywhere worth going. It could be that the spacemen of the future will have to all be cyborgs with their vulnerable bits replaced by tech, or genetically modified to be better suited to deep space, just because it would be cheaper and easier than dragging enough asteroids together to make the sort of construct we would need to make deep space travel feasible for normal humans.

>>44050711
If we're going that far, why even bother with planets at all (besides for resources) and just live entirely in space?

>For this race/species women run everything while men are literal second class citizens with no rights.

It's not deep social criticism.
It's just an overdone amazon trope.

If it was merely that women were more prominent, then sure, you could make a point, but this shit is just so overplayed now that it's dumb.

>>44050013
Wasn't NASA at one point developing a literal spray on suit?

>>44050637
>titanium skeleton graveyards
That just makes Skynet's job easier.

>>44050733
>Not melting people's skeletons down to make new skeletons
Pleb

>>44050680
Much better I think to just grab a sufficiently large comet and drop it on mars, and see what happens over a few hundred years.

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>>44050013

>Doesn't know that NASA is developing exactly this because it's more efficient and lightweight than current gen space suits

>>44050729
Because for resources, basically. You will always have a need for raw mass, and planets are generally a better spot for that than, say, asteroids. For that matter, there will probably be a need for various rare materials to maintain any large space installation, which are also likely found on planets.

This is all assuming of course we can somehow get the cycle of oxygen down. if we cant we need planets for that too. Although I suppose we could crack water comets, but those would be harder to find I guess.

>>44050161
Nobody is stopping you from wearing clothes over your skin tight suit.

>>44050753
In the third sequel to 2001 we're terraforming Venus by diverting comets to hit it. I think they estimated it'd be livable in five thousand years.

>>44050615
>Any bone loss at all has to be avoided if you want people to be able to travel back and forth between Earth and Mars freely.

Can you provide any sources for how much bone loss would be expected for living under 1/3rd gee? Because if not, In My Setting it turns out to be fairly small, and easily mitigated through regular but not excessive exercise and a good diet.

Also, how freely are we talking here? People go on transatlantic flights quite rarely, and I suspect Mars/Earth transits would be still rarer due to the inherently greater expense and longer travel time.

>>44050786
NASA is also full of nerds who watched Evangelion as kids and as such have developed skinsuit fetishes.

>>44050752
>comatose patients have their skeletons repossessed

>>44050752
>not lashing together a monstrosity of titanium bones and sending it out to trample the jeweled spires of mankind

It's like you don't even want to be a mecromancer.

>>44050729
Resources, free gravity, and the ability to expand your settlement vastly more easily than having to build a new space station module.

>>44050601
Yep. Which is why Enders Game is more loved than speaker for the dead by most people. Sure Speaker for the Dead has the cool fucking AI with emotions and feelings, but people loved Enders Game because Card didn't write it for himself he wrote it for the people. When authors tend to write for themselves it usually ends up a peice of shit. When they write for fans you usually end up pretty good.

It's like a fucking world class chef. I would love to have some of their food, but fuck me I am not going to the same resturant as them because they probably have fucky taste from years of eating all sorts of high class shit.

>>44050589
Yep. Love dune, but which is easier to describe, a giant doom laser sparringly and mysteriously throughout a novel with a fun name or a ten page technical manual of said doom laser with a fucking science as shit. Sure it would be a good engineer example, but not everyone is an engineer.

>>44050575
Your example was gorgeous. The name was funny as fuck.

>>44050730
"But anon you'll never win any awards that way!"
Seriously though social criticism and shit is causing the sci-fi ghetto to be less bad New York neighborhood and more or less East Saint Louis.

>>44050730
Be more of a victim, bro. It suits you.

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>>44050830
"Just stick their brain in a jar; by the time they wake up we'll have full-body prosthesis down pat"

>>44050841
>mecromancer
Ohfuck

>>44050847
>Resources
Of course

>Free gravity
But we just established that these new humans don't need gravity to survive thanks to their augmentations.

>expanding
Yeah, but planetary settlements can't move around into new orbits.

>>44050801
>>44050729
There's a significant pychological hurdle to overcome: people who aren't around greenery get very depressed.

>>44050882
>But we just established that these new humans don't need gravity to survive thanks to their augmentations.

When did we establish that, and why? It's not enough of a bother to be worth engineering out; you just spin the ship. You don't even need a fancy torus, just a counterweight and a tether.

>>44050894
>people who aren't around greenery get very depressed.
Maybe SOME people do, but I am an ubermenschen and derive joy from concrete and steel.

Besides, it shouldn't be that hard to have hydroponic racks spread throughout the ship, and it'd go hand in hand with aquaculture.

>Ship is literally half Aquarium

>>44050283
Some weapons just have things wrong with them but that's what you're given because of reasons.

For example the MK48 light machine gun. While it's much lighter than the M60 variants it replaces I shot that thing prone and got so much fucking gas in my face it was ridiculous.

>>44050906
"It could be that the spacemen of the future will have to all be cyborgs with their vulnerable bits replaced by tech, or genetically modified to be better suited to deep space, just because it would be cheaper and easier than dragging enough asteroids together to make the sort of construct we would need to make deep space travel feasible for normal humans."

>>44050894
So we put everyone on copious amounts of antidepressants. Everything turns out alright! Except for humanity's newfound massive short-term memory loss problem.

>>44048474
>I'd agree if before CSM's the Dark Powers had had any truly strong alien proxies

Who are the Yu'Vath

>>44050552
What's wrong with the Rhuzi? If anything, it looks better than the butt ugly Uzi.

>>44050944
There's a long way between "better adapted for living in space" and "literally just a brain in a robot body with no biological needs beyond nutritional chemicals, and actually I'm not sure about the brain."

Making a human body work in microgravity is a lot closer to the latter end.

>>44050882
You can move a planet to a new orbit. But that shit aint easy. Or cheap.

>>44050919
Those are gonna be some fucky fish

>>44050894
Plants can grow in zero g and in space. it's just a bit complicated.

>>44050861
>Seriously though social criticism and shit is causing the sci-fi ghetto to be less bad New York neighborhood and more or less East Saint Louis.

I liked Egalia's Daughters. And sci-fi has always had a massive undercurrent of social criticism.

>>44050988
>implying there's anything wrong with the latter
Do we even need organic brains desu senpai?

>>44050999
>Those are gonna be some fucky fish
Even better! We can trade them with other Aquarium-ships and planet plebs as exotic delicacies/pets!

>>44051001
There's social criticism and then there's hamfisted blatant author soapboxing that detracts from, rather than adding to, the story.

>>44051036
>There's social criticism and then there's hamfisted blatant author soapboxing that detracts from, rather than adding to, the story.
heinleinwaxingpoeticaboutpolygamy.txt

>>44051001
Yeah but when it is less sci fi than social criticism it's no longer sci-fi and just a social criticism peice dressed up as sci fi.

>>44051025
Are you some sort of Rogue Trader? Holy shit. I am adding this to my shit now.

>>44051036
THIS. THIS A MILLION FUCKING TIMES.

>>44051062
>Yeah but when it is less sci fi than social criticism it's no longer sci-fi and just a social criticism peice dressed up as sci fi.

Sci-fi and speculative fiction have always been lumped together due to overlap.

>>44051062
>Are you some sort of Rogue Trader?
Individual opportunities are fickle and go as they come, but opportunity itself is always abound.

>>44050576
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_lava_tube
A quick lookup was really all you needed.

>>44051087
And trepaining had always been used until modern medicine. Just because shit's tradition doesn't mean it's good. Shit has become the cancer and it needs to be operated on.

>>44051099
Amen. Praise the Emprah and pass the Recaff. Shit I am working on now is all about that.

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>advanced space fairing race considers planets an incredibly valuable resouce

>>44051170
>And trepaining had always been used until modern medicine. Just because shit's tradition doesn't mean it's good. Shit has become the cancer and it needs to be operated on.
The point isn't about whether it being good or bad, but if you don't like social commentary in scifi have you considered that maybe you never liked scifi to begin with?

>furries

My personal space Pet Peeve is when they allow just anyone into space. Where is NASA? Where is the ESA? You shouldn't allow anyone to leave the planet if they haven't had a full background check!

>>44050870
I don't actually know what you're trying to say.

>>44050861
>Seriously though social criticism and shit is causing the sci-fi ghetto to be less bad New York neighborhood and more or less East Saint Louis.

Sci-fi has alwyas been about social criticism to some extent.
I personally don't mind when it's done well, it's just that trying to make a point about gender politics with an amazon race rarely works out, and at this point it's just an amazon trope separated from the social critique.

>>44051170
Craniotomies and craniectomies are still things doctors do.

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>hundreds of years in the future they still use combustion guns barely better than the shit we have today

this drives me up the fucking wall, if your going to make it sci-fi then make it fucking sci-fi dont take an m-4 then slap a body kit on it

>>44051192
Or maybe he likes scifi for other reaons? Like the "sci" part for example?

>>44050919
>hydroponics and aquaculture
Too much weight my nigga, we aeroponics now And for the past decade and a half from memory

>>44049614
John Scalzi is a shitty writer and a shittier human being that flooded my twitter feed with insane rants more than anything interesting or useful.

He's a meme writer that contributes nothing of any use and the only reason that he is there is because he has politics in his favor.

Modern science fiction and fantasy writing from established publishers is fucking broken.

>>44051219
>Where is NASA?
Doing studies on global warming.

>Where is the ESA?
There's an ESA?

>>44050829
>Implying this is bad

>>44049623
I was taking notes until I realized the same thing. Humanity in my setting continually lose but only survive because of the Power of the Human Spirit™ and that, by God, is why they will win.

Humanity is fucking awesome.

>>44051062

shut up sad puppy, you shit all over the Hugo awards we don't want it all over /tg/

>>44047972
though before BW Starcraft basically just made their humans side characters

Basically it was Protoss vs. Zerg, staring space hicks

>>44048205
(That would be funny if it werent explained in game that there is an universal translator for everybody)

>>44049649
Bean killed Achilles with a compact .22LR handgun.

>>44051297
Yeah, Europe and other places don't want to rely on our GPS system or waiting for either us or the Russians to get satellites up for them.

>>44051362
One supported by hundreds of govt. employees, no less.

>>44051281
>Too much weight my nigga,
>Implying weight matters when you're in space perpetually and have no need to get anywhere fast
>not just wanting to chill on the observation deck while space fish swim all around you.

>>44051297
ESA? Oh yeah. Big telecom and ecological satellite provider. Send up missions to space.

You know, like how NASA used to.

>>44048155
>>44048183
That's what I'm saying. Mass Effect put the technology everywhere.
It's weird when artificial gravity exists, and that's all it's used for.

>>44051191
fuck yea dude

especially when terraforming is something in the setting? gets me booty bothered every time

>>44051370
The Shadow series was more political thrillers with sci fi elements than it was science fiction, at least until Shadows in Flight or so. It probably made things easier on Card to keep the guns familiar; introducing compact plasma guns for example would've required all sorts of other technology be modified.

The only big sci fi departures in Ender's series before Xenocide are the Ansible and the MD Device, both of which are pretty much necessary for the story(substitute MD device with any other planet killer weapon)

>>44051388
Weight matters when you have to launch all that shit and orbital launch is expensive.

Mind you, in the sci-fi future where we're doing a lot of space stuff, orbital launch will have to be fairly cheap or we wouldn't be doing a lot of space stuff, so that doesn't necessarily apply. But you're still looking at, like, $10/kg.

>>44051372
>>44051409
Silly anons, we all know that non-anglos, non-slavs, and non-nips can't into space.

>>44051192
I am sorry but the implication that you know what I like better than I do is not only absurd but the paramount of arrogance. To say that I don't like sci fi because I don't like social critique is not within your realm or capacity as a human being.

Additionally to wit; don't assume others automatically like what you like.

>>44051233
I know but I was trying to find a better version of an archaic medical practice that isn't used today that was more suitable, but much to the shame of my mostly medical family I didn't study medical history as much I studied political theory due to wanting to go into military intelligence.

>>44051223
Fair point.

>>44051281
My fellow botanist. I wish more people would write about aeroponics.

>>44051219
...Stealing this for next peace of work. I love writing beauracracy stuff due to how much I have to deal with shit IRL.

>>44051330
I don't want to reveal too much. Humanity's '"super power" is that they do shit the hard way and actually get it to work. Everyone else is working from shit that was already established.

>>44051342
Thread asked for it with bad sci-fi tropes.

>>44051451
>inb4 von Braun
He's American, so he's an honorary anglo.

>>44050823
You're right. I don't know that much other than exercise being a requirement, which you already know about. But when I originally complained about Mars being the center of space-age society, I meant that it's just really uneconomical to put humans on a planet like Mars just for the sake of having humans on another planet. Our moon, or even other moons in the solar system are cheaper to put bases on delta-v wise, and if you want a planet that's an actual human colony Venus is actually a much better alternative to Mars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqQB0WqOahc

The gist of his argument is that Venus has more or less the same gravity as Mars. Up in the atmosphere the atmospheric pressure and temperature are fine for humans (even if it's all carbon dioxide), we can get cheap power 24/7 from the massive amount of heat that's lower in the atmosphere on Venus through Stirling generators and we can get cheap solar power outside of the atmosphere because Venus is much closer to the sun, but most importantly the reason why Mars is such a shitty candidate is because Mars is REALLY far away. It takes roughly half the time to get to Venus than it does Mars and it even costs less Delta-V.

>>44051462
*Venus has more or less the same gravity as the Earth (0.9 G). Damn it

>>44051462
Forgive me if I am not mistaken, but isn't Venus not only the most ironically named planet in the solar system but also home to like some fucking stupid shit weather.

>>44051455
>To say that I don't like sci fi because I don't like social critique is not within your realm or capacity as a human being.
Fortunately, that's what the "if" in "if you don't like" is for

>>44051448
>Weight matters when you have to launch all that shit
Like fuck are we launching anything we can avoid ever. Orbital construction all the way baby. Capture ice comets for the water.

>>44051501
If you stay a few dozen kilometers up, above the acid cloud layer, you end up in a nearly earth-like atmosphere with temperatures of only around 60 degrees celsius and fairly pleasant weather patterns.

Since Venus has no 60km tall mountains, this necessitates Zeppelin Sky Cities

>>44051539
This desu senpai.

All we need are the fish.

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>>44051501
It's actually the perfect name because Venus is hot as hell.

>>44051507
The tone of the implication in the statement hinted otherwise, granted I cannot truly know as much.

>>44051543
Sounds like a nice setting.

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>>44051593
I'm just a sucker for airships and sky pirates

If you are forced to have a humanity in your sci-fi setting how would you set them up?

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>>44051589
Build wall you stupid fucking beaner

>>44051621
Everyone except for Americans, Australians, Japanese, and SKoreans have been eradicated.
U N I T E D
S T A T E S
O F
T E R R A

>>44047275
Would it not be far more interesting to have humanity lose and become a splintered civilization, nomadic and scavenging from the other races. Playing on our much vaunted adaptability and ingenuity.

>>44051621
Humanity in my sci fi setting
>POV species, for the audience's sake
>Still a new player on the interstellar block, just discovered dark energy based technology that allows for FTL communication/travel
>Fairly insignificant except on the local scene, but then any civilization is because there aren't galaxy-spanning civilizations
>Humanity is a peaceful, Star Trek-like utopia that's slowly having to compromise its own principles for the sake of not being overwhelmed by other, more militaristic powers.

>>44051462
>Mars is too damn far away

Not necessarily. It is if you're doing a Hohmann trajectory, but somewhat more exotic technologies like magnetic sails to harness the solar wind* can get you to Mars quick enough (A couple of weeks) that it ceases to become a huge issue. (Slowing down is a problem, though, although you could put a particle beam on Phobos or Deimos to brake incoming sails.)

At that point, travel times to Venus and Mars become small enough (on the order of weeks) that it's no longer a huge issue either way.

Venus' conditions are much better for colonization, in theory, but you do have the constant hurricane-force winds to contend with at that altitude, and the fact that you're virtually unable to harness the surface for any heavy elements doesn't help. And you still have the issue of maintaining very light habitats, so they can be effectively lifted on balloons. (Also, the extremely thick atmosphere above you, even in Landis Land, imposes a very high delta-V cost due to atmospheric drag.)

Mars has the additional bonus that it may actually be feasible to build a space elevator, skyhook, or other non-rocket space launch system there, due to the lower gravity - they could actually be built with conventional materials, instead of carbon nanotube unobtanium. (Phobos poses a problem for conventional space elevators, though, because of how low it is, but there are similar systems that could be tethered directly to Phobos.)

And, of course, Mars is a great midway point to the main belt asteroids.

Venus could certainly be a nicer place to live - hell, you can make a pretty good case for Mercury, too (it has very large ice deposits at the poles, the solar power is FANTASTIC, and the temperature's actually very stable and comfortable just a little below the surface.) But I suspect that Mars is the easiest case to make.

*confusingly, these are completely unrelated to solar sails, which use sunlight's photon pressure

>>44051694
>(Phobos poses a problem for conventional space elevators, though,
How hard would it be to just deorbit Phobos?

>>44051621
We're the oldest race in the general area and also space elves, baggage included.
Which is to say we like to pretend we're on the cutting edge and super cultured when we're perfectly happy to stay fat, happy and safe on Earth/heavily developed colonies with nothing better to do than art.
Let the other races get themselves killed trying to expand so long as they don't get too big, and we patronize them.
Exceptions made for the 'crazies' and neccesarry frontiersmen.

>>44051621
The the past couple big human polities picked the losing side in big galactic wars or such, but the thing about humans is we never fucking agree with each other so despite earth's entire solar system being fucking vaporized there were still humans on the winning team and as a result humans are still around and they're fucking EVERYWHERE, like cockroaches.

>>44051656
>>44051642
>>44051684
I've combined these three.

Most of the world teams up due to Global warming and lots of people dying. Huge investment in space stuff.

Finding other aliens and knowing that people will be people and leave Earth, the government is trying it's best to make sure the right people are sent out into space. They know that there will be human populations on alien worlds and they are trying their best to keep relations good so nothing bad happens to them.

>>44051656
That's a variant on the setting I'm crafting up. Man won a Pyrrhic victory against a threat that literally recycled corpses, and in the process became a confederacy that - since there's no other threat - decides to play the "IMDABES" game with one another.

I'm the same anon talking about ayliums that get shit on because humanity doesn't play by any semblance of their rules.

>halt, human, this is territory of [alien name]! If you wish it, we will do battle. My base is here, yours can go-
>fifteen orbital bombardments later
>WHAT THE FUCK DUDE

>>44051752
Why would your aliens be stupid?

>>44051726
Insanely difficult. And incredibly wasteful, because it's a carbonaceous asteroid, rich in volatiles - an extremely valuable staging point for space-based industry.

Possibly you could find some way to wobble the cable to move it out of the way, or more likely you go for a dangling tether that's actually attached to Phobos. (It's tidally locked, so one side always faces Mars.)

>>44051752
>>halt, human, this is territory of [alien name]! If you wish it, we will do battle. My base is here, yours can go-
No offence. but that's fucking stupid at the conceptual level. It makes no sense for a race to assume another will play by its rules - especially since they've been given plenty of warning to indicate otherwise - when it has the intelligence to build a space-faring empire. That's like assuming a tiger is going to follow the Geneva convention and all it's derivatives.

>>44051752
>>44051775
What this guy said.
Most species, like us, would be developed from predators who were prey- ergo species with conflict experience.

>>44051370
On Earth. Bean killed Achilles with a .22LR hangun on Earth. The other anon was talking about space warfare between star fleets, not person-to-person fighting on planet.

>>44051656
that was kinda how my setting was set up

that there was a human populous among quite a few alien states and empires because the original human empire (which also shared its populous with an alien species due to their emperor taking control of their hivemind) died out.

One of the explorers managed to colonize a random planet but years after his death they found it was actually "Home" (aka Earth).

>>44051856
A Deepness In The Sky by Vernor Vinge

>>44051251
but in some cases that makes sense
the only reason you would need a different kind of weapon than the ones we have today is if personal defenses became so advanced that modern small-arms would no longer be able to cause any sort of damage.

>>44051775
They're not stupid, just a touch arrogant.

They basically had the fortune of being the first race to reach sentience. They met a race of silicon-based "Machines" that were extremely logical (inb4 le robot race trope), and when faced with the overwhelming technology of this First Race, were like "sure whatever we'll fight."

The Machines weren't warlike at all. They figured out how to make an internet before anything else, effectively Culture-Victory'ing their planet. The First Race were a weird mix of social and military.

The person running shit on First Contact was not playing games when some fleet showed up, said the colony she just oversaw the founding of wasn't in her right to make, and then proceeded to try impressing her with their instant translation of her language.

She was under the impression it was a trick of a human faction, at first, hence why she went straight to bombing the fuck out of it.

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>>44047000
>alien invaders want to conquer Earth, but ignore Mars and the rest of the solar system because hurr Earth has life on it

The only work which gets a pass is War of the Worlds, and that's because Mars was a dead planet and Earth is closer than Venus. And guess what, after getting BTFO on Earth, the Martians decide to go to plan B and colonize Venus, which they do and the humans on Earth hope that in the future Martians and Humans can come to an understanding.

But in all other science fiction, it's either space locusts, crazy alien religious nuts, mongolians or soviets in a weird costume, or a shallow parody of corporate culture.

And on second thought, one more work gets a pass. Hitchhiker's Guide. And that gets a pass because the aliens in question did it out of apathetic expediency.

But fuck every other alien invasion story. I don't want to hear about the aliens launching a war for water that can be found in comets. Europa has more water than all of Earth's oceans.

I am doing humanity as an obscure ass race that happened to spread out over an obscure corner of a random ass galaxy that pretty much abandoned it's home planet to become an idiocracy tier shit hole.

Humanity is rarely encountered and is shockinlgy extremely advanced when not from terra. The humans don't get into any conflict and are busy doing random trading and just generally avoiding anything that looks scary. Other alien races want to talk to them because their technology is completely homegrown and different from what other races uses. This however doesn't stop humans from being lovingly reffered to by other alien races as "magpies" "thieves" "the beige plague".

Furthermore, and more worrisome about humanity, is that many alien races consider them depraved and perverted to prudish and uptight depending on what kind of human you run into.

Basically, humanity is too varied to just consider one species. You have some humans who will help fix your warp drive some will steal a bunch of random aliens for random reasons, other humans might go camping on your planet.

and other humans will steal your fish and replace them with their weird crazy warp fish that they keep on their crazy fish tank ships.

>>44051902
The Qeng Ho from A Deepness In The Sky/A Fire Upon The Deep, by Vernor Venge

Humanity in Titan: AE

Humanity as "The super diverse guys" has been done a lot, notably in Babylon 5

>>44051897
Presumably they want to wipe out resistance first? Or even just witnesses so when the galactic council comes to make sure the space-capitalists aren't stealing from inhabited systems they can just go "yeah they were all dead when we got here, such a shame."

Everything that is forbidden by the Mundane Manifesto, really.

So casual FTL travel, time travel, space wizardry, casual interstellar transmission, and sea-space orbital mechanics.

Space is a wonderful thing. The universe is a wonderful thing. Traveling through space ask for beautiful, grandiose answer. There is so many plot to be found in those limitation. Instead most authors simply majick some space teleportation because they want a boring, predictable universe.

BTW, FTL really means time travel. Going by Special Relativity (one of the most fundamental law of the universe, that was proven right again and again and again), if you go FTL, you go backward through time. There literally is no way to go FTL and not go backward through time, in our universe at least.

>>44051869
or Star Wars

also there was a off-shoot civilization where humanity on a certain planet died off from its lack of resources leaving a bunch of advanced AI robots behind. Said robots forms a religion based on the "predecessors" and being influenced by their works, start going on a galactic conquest Romulan style.

Humanity is basically Space America, culturally, aesthetically and demographically. Everyone is white. If the setting wants to demonstrate how progressive it is, there will be a measure of ethnic diversity following American demographics.

This is okay when it actually is Space America but typically the United Space Whatever is portrayed as some sort of world (or rather galactic) government.

>>44051954
>There literally is no way to go FTL and not go backward through time, in our universe at least
Plenty of science fiction stories involve an FTL drive that doesn't actually go at FTL speeds, but simply avoids going fast at all in some way. The Alderson Drive from the CoDominium series is simply point-to-point teleportation from very specific points. The Skip Drive from Old Man's War is less specific but is also teleportation. Many series have hyperspace travel that goes through some other universe to get to different points in our universe.

Don't let present physics bind your imagination. The people of 1815 thought powered flight was impossible.

>>44050161
>>44050244
>>44050248

Think of it this way.

It has to be tight enough to artificially simulate atmospheric pressure, or large and strong enough to actually sustain a pressurized artificial atmosphere.

>>44051943
Tell me something that hasn't been done before that doesn't suck. Not everything has to be unique yo.

Also never Read any Vernor Venge so I can't refer which part of your statement you are talking about.

Don't know about which part of Titan: AE you are referring about since I haven't seen it in forever.

Loved Babylon 5 and it isn't that bad of something to base something off of.

>>44051984
>Implying there's anything wrong with this

>>44051728
that's something I haven't seen before actually.

>>44051954
>BTW, FTL really means time travel. Going by Special Relativity (one of the most fundamental law of the universe, that was proven right again and again and again), if you go FTL, you go backward through time. There literally is no way to go FTL and not go backward through time, in our universe at least.

But that becomes incorrect the moment General Relativity comes into the picture. It's actually possible to have a network of spacetime "shortcuts" which connect many different destinations without actually allowing any violations of causality.

Of course, if you start allowing FTL communication between observers moving at large relative velocities, then you do wind up with causality violations, because different observers can disagree on the order of two events separated by more distance than time - but then again, perhaps something like the Chronology Protection Conjecture comes into play and any attempt to violate causality destroys the connection.

>>44052032
Only about a third of the world's population is white, buddy.

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>>44051694
>current technology
Until we manage to make engines that can just shit out delta-v at no cost we're assuming that everything is done using Hohmann maneuvers. Martian launch windows are shitty and spread out because of how far away Mars is, while Venus launch windows allow for mistakes to be made, which will inevitably happen when you're dealing with the hardest thing for humanity to do.

>future technology
Launch windows will still be a factor when it comes to saving on travel time.
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/EV.htm
http://clowder.net/hop/railroad/EMa.htm
Venus remains the better candidate

>hurricane winds
You're right about that, you would need to tether your habitat eventually and the highest point on Venus to tether it to is still hot as hell. Still, Landis seeing Venus as a great candidate for colonization is actually because of the research NASA did for putting a probe on the Venutian surface which they deem to be doable, technology wise, in a few decades. Sending a probe down to attach a tether to a mountain would not be as monumental of a task as it seems.

>very light habitats
https://youtu.be/xqQB0WqOahc
See 13:12.

>getting off Venus
Getting off Venus would be incredibly hard, but then again when you have so much free energy from the Venutian heat it's as big of a deal to just make more rocket fuel as it would be on the energy starved Mars.

>>44047000
Check 'em.

>Honorable samurai space aliens.

>>44052017
>Plenty of science fiction stories involve an FTL drive that doesn't actually go at FTL speeds, but simply avoids going fast at all in some way.

Irrelevant. If you go from point A to point B faster than light, you go backward through time. Even if you used an Alcubierre drive, and say, traveled at 50 miles per hour in your own pocket universe. From an external point of view, you went from A to B faster than light, so you went backward through time.

This is a deep, very, very deep, law of nature. Most people can't or won't understand it, because it goes against common sense, just like Special Relativity goes against common sense.

Be it Warp, Teleportation, or any number of magical, futuristic science magic. If the distance between A to B is one light year, and you went from A to B in less than a year from the point of view of an external watcher (say, in A, or B), you traveled backward through time. This a deep, fundamental law of the universe, just like gravity, or electromagnetism.

>>44052066
>implying un-civilized sub-peoples count
>implying anybody but the west (and by the west, I mean the anglosphere + the democratic orient) will into space

>>44051621
Trying to deal with having seriously dicked up faster than light travel and the Indian spider people, the rather large chasms separating the earth into what essentially amount to floating islands, and divinely powerful Kim Jong un that naturally arose from that.

>>44052080
*not as big of a deal to just make more rocket fuel

>>44047000
It doesn't get any worse than this.