Origin of Species in the Ooniverse

[PhantorGorth]

Easy to test. Set a course to no where and travel there with screen shots. (Without fudging it by pulling up you stick just before you jump.) Any hypothosis must explain the things we do see. I see locked down specific routes of travel. The nature of those routes, is not explained. The fact they are there and the only way you can go when your playing the game should not be ignored.

It's like drawing, draw what you see not what you think you see.
Around that which is there, feel free to embellish.

You know you can't pick in the middle of nowhere in game but I do know (I just tried it) that after miss-jumps, which leave you in the middle of nowhere along the line between the two systems, you can pick ANY world you have fuel for. If there are only routes between systems then you could only pick your original destination world or the world you came from. So my hypothesis of free but restricted by the navigation systems of your ship fits better than system to system routes only and this is evidence based and not just "draw what I think I see".

As for Gal-Drive again after trying it out myself found that you always jump to world in the new Galaxy nearest the world you started from. This also works after a miss-jump. Therefore Gal jumps are neither a tunnel based idea nor a pure vector one either.

Could one not be seen as a logical progression of the other? It's like taking a bicycle on a motorway, sure it can be done but it's dumb. A complete system is found. Do you really expect humanity to take one look at and replicate it perfectly? I admire your faith in humans, but I do not share it.

That's one hell of an assumption of what is in my head and the "faith" bit somewhat condescending. I stated a preference, nothing more, on how we got hold of jump technology. I prefer for local jumps to be developed because finding it in the local vicinity of Sol is too much of a coincidence. Where as Gal-drive technology discovery is more likely than local jump tech discovery as we would have wider area of space to search for Xeno-technology. Either developed or discovered is fine. To be absolutely honest I don't care if Gal-drive tech developed or discovered but I am more interested in if GalCop has monopoly on it or not.

Again not supported by in game experience. Gal-drive off the map. You can't.

When did I say or imply you could Gal-drive off the map? True at the time I hadn't tried Gal-drive. But a vectored approach would not do that. But now I know by trying it's not vectored but I also now know its not system to system routes either.

There in lies the problem. The assumption of control as opposed to an opportunistic usage of a higher technology. "any damn fool can pull a trigger and most people who do, cannot make a gun"

I hadn't assumed control I had suggested it as a possibility!

To clarify, I'm not having a go.

That usually means you are.

This thing we call oolite is a game and as such doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things.

Talk about stating the obvious.

If the idea draws you then cool, write it. Devils advocate is a light speciality of mine.

You are not being a devils advocate you are actually making assumption about what I think and imply I am being foolish. But then again maybe I am making assumption of what you think.

Phantor Gorth

[ClymAngus]

Oh dear, once again Clym proves the adage that ironic inflection is impossible in a text based medium, people assume I'm simply p***ing on their great-great grand mothers grave.

Back track? Na I can't be assed, not that cowardly. Clarify then? Yeah we can do that.

You know you can't pick in the middle of nowhere in game but I do know (I just tried it) that after miss-jumps, which leave you in the middle of nowhere along the line between the two systems, you can pick ANY world you have fuel for. If there are only routes between systems then you could only pick your original destination world or the world you came from. So my hypothesis of free but restrict by the navigation systems of your ship fits better than system to system routes only and this is evidence based and not just "draw what I think see".

Cool I don't misjump much. Nicely backed up with empirical evidence I stand corrected. So observation would suggest that as long as you have the fuel you could "technically" go anywhere.

As for Gal-Drive again after trying it out myself found that you always jump to world in the new Galaxy nearest the world you started from. This also works after a miss-jump. Therefore Gal jumps are neither a tunnel based idea nor a pure vector one either.

I disagree, you have illustrated the ability for a random route change during a witchjump not a Gal-jump. Technically there could be many pre-created routes OR as you say ship generated tunnels. The evidence neither proves or disproves the argument.

Could one not be seen as a logical progression of the other? It's like taking a bicycle on a motorway, sure it can be done but it's dumb. A complete system is found. Do you really expect humanity to take one look at and replicate it perfectly? I admire your faith in humans, but I do not share it.

That's one hell of an assumption of what is in my head and the "faith" bit somewhat condescending. I stated a preference nothing more on how we got hold of jump technology. I prefer for local jumps to be developed because finding it in the local vicinity of Sol is too much of a coincidence. Where as Gal-drive technology discovery is more likely than local jump tech discovery as we would have wider area of space to search for Xeno-technology. Either developed or discovered is fine. To be absolutely honest I don't care if Gal-drive tech developed or discovered but I am more interested in if GalCop has monopoly on it or not.

Condescending? Well wrapped up in a broader arrogance maybe but yeah, your out, your fighting, that's good (you stopped punctuating but that's cool, so do I when I feel slighted). Anyway ships mis-jump (it's alleged they time jump too) it is not beyond the relms of possiblity that a ship found it's way to sol. Anyway as you say not the point you care about. So, a Galcorp monopoly? I tend to think if something is found and researched by one race then the same can be done by another. Maybe there was a minor advantage to start with but given time every dictatorship upwards would be pulling them apart and building their own.

One other small thing that dissuades me from "Cat space" and "lobster space" is I noticed that in some systems you have red lobsters and in others you have blue lobsters. Given human analogues I don't think they would get along.

Again not supported by in game experience. Gal-drive off the map. You can't.

When did I say or imply you could Gal-drive off the map? True at the time I hadn't tried Gal-drive. But a vectored approach would not do that. But now I know by trying it's not vectored but I also now know its not system to system either.

Yeah, in hind sight that sounds unnecessarily unpleasant, when it was meant in more childish excitement. I apologise if that caused offence. That said the problem is the direct vector based reality of Gal-drive neither proves or disproves our arguments. They are still both perfectly plausible explanations.

There in lies the problem. The assumption of control as opposed to an opportunistic usage of a higher technology. "any damn fool can pull a trigger and most people who do, cannot make a gun"

I hadn't assumed control I had suggested it as a possibility!

Yeah, that was meant more generally, it needs inflection and looses a lot in translation. Notice I never said "your assuming" that would be the way a confrontational poster would be more likely to put it.

To clarify, I'm not having a go.

That usually means you are.

I can see how you might think that. It is of little consequence at the end of the day. If this did turn out to be a "flame war" we would be asked to take it to PM or get a slapping from those with MOD powers.

I think we are perfectly able and rational enough, to sort out this minor misunderstanding by ourselves? Hmmm? I have no wish to look like some flame troll on a Britney Spears website. Thank you very much.

This thing we call oolite is a game and as such doesn't really matter in the greater scheme of things. but you did profess an interest in logically plodding through possibilities and I do love an optimistic (and slightly scientific) flight of foolish fancy.

Talk about stating the obvious.

An acceptable retort from a man who feels himself slighted

If the idea draws you then cool, write it. Devils advocate is a light speciality of mine.

You are not being a devil advocate you are actually making assumption about what I think and imply I am being foolish. But then again maybe I am making assumption of what you think.

Phantor Gorth

foolishness on both sides sir, on both sides. Probably more mine than yours.

[DaddyHoggy]

DaddyHoggy flaps in - checks that handbags are free from heavy objects - smiles sweetly* at the two protagonists and flaps out again.

* Difficult to tell with a beak - but it's there.

Good, healthy discussion - excellent - this forum is and should remain a flame free zone.

Keep up the good work...

[ClymAngus]

Ok (sorry) backing off. I will mediate my righteous indignation.

[PhantorGorth]

Oh dear, once again Clym proves the adage that ironic inflection is impossible in a text based medium, people assume I'm simply p***ing on their great-great grand mothers grave.

Back track? Na I can't be assed, not that cowardly. Clarify then? Yeah we can do that.

I have no wish for flaming (no troll blood in my family) so I except that the way I took it wasn't what you meant. I also am very aware of this issue with the medium of text. I try to handle this as carefully as possible. This is partly why I tend to try and get agreements from others when I discuss ideas. My language can as a result be rather passive.

Cool I don't misjump much.

I hadn't before today yesterday. You are probably right to point out that I should be sure of my facts before posting.

I disagree, you have illustrated the ability for a random route change during a witchjump not a Gal-jump. Technically there could be many pre-created routes OR as you say ship generated tunnels. The evidence neither proves or disproves the argument.

Ok I start with the basic assumption that what you mean by pre-created routes: This are routes between stars that start at one star and go to another in another galaxy. Because you can Gal-jump from any star in a galaxy there must be 256 routes between each galaxy.

If I mis-jump in the starting galaxy and then escape the Thargoids using Gal-drive it would still take me to the nearest world in the next galaxy. As I jumped from a middle of nowhere location I can not be using any of those 256 pre-created routes so that kills the pre-created routes argument, I think.

As for the vector concept a jump from a particular location in one galaxy should take you to the same location in another galaxy and as the stars don't line up between galaxies (OK I haven't checked but I doubt any do and having a few wouldn't alter my argument) then you should appear in the middle of nowhere and most likely not even in the middle of route from one world to another. As this doesn't happen then the vector idea doesn't work either.

Please note in default planetinfo.plist file there is a setting to change the behaviour of the gal-drive anyway so any argument could be pointless.

Interestingly, I noticed that after a Gal-jump the destination cursor on the F6 map is still pointing to the old location from the previous galaxy. I left this and tried to local-jump to it but all it did was take me to the nearest world instead.

Yeah, in hind sight that sounds unnecessarily unpleasant, when it was meant in more childish excitement. I apologise if that caused offence.

I understand that wasn't your intent now.

Anyway ships mis-jump (it's alleged they time jump too) it is not beyond the relms of possiblity that a ship found it's way to sol.

True it is not beyond the realms of possibility. It's more the small chance of it happening that gets me. Elite already has too many things that are too artificial so I think it would be sensible not to add more.

So, a Galcorp monopoly? I tend to think if something is found and researched by one race then the same can be done by another.

Generally agreed, which is why I can see all entities being able to create local-space drive engines. Gal-drive on the other hand might be construed differently. The Gal-drive technology could be created like the Conjoiner drives in Alistair Reynold's Revelation Space series of books where the Conjoiners created a very advanced drive that others could not reverse engineer because if you tried it would explode (nuclear bombs didn't really cover it here and they weren't used as bombs as the Conjoiners had stop manufacturing them and they were too precious to use that way.) I am not suggesting anything so violent but instead the same ends could be achieved by having the all important quantum state inside the drive be lost when you open it, or some similar idea. By giving Galcorp the monopoly on the drive you can give the organisation some importance which it loses when the Gal-drive technology stops working.

One other small thing that dissuades me from "Cat space" and "lobster space" is I noticed that in some systems you have red lobsters and in others you have blue lobsters. Given human analogues I don't think they would get along.

Different races among the species. Some of which are native to the species' homeworld and others are caused by adaptation to the world they have colonized. Yes I imagine there will be racist tensions along with all the other types of tensions such as political, religious, etc. Humans suffer from this now and I can't see it changing in a thousand-ish years time either. The only difference is that Humans are only marked as "Human Colonists" but that doesn't mean there are not the same sort of differences between the Human world's.

Yeah, in hind sight that sounds unnecessarily unpleasant, when it was meant in more childish excitement. I apologise if that caused offence.

No offence taken.

If this did turn out to be a "flame war" we would be asked to take it to PM or get a slapping from those with MOD powers.

I think we are perfectly able and rational enough, to sort out this minor misunderstanding by ourselves? Hmmm? I have no wish to look like some flame troll on a Britney Spears website. Thank you very much.

Not an area I want to get in to myself so I would prefer to sort this out amicably. I apologise for any unnecessary offence I caused too.

Phantor Gorth

[PhantorGorth]

@Daddyhoggy

I have taken the lead lining out my handbag.

Phantor Gorth

[Nexus-Hex]

One of the stories I have outlined in my Magic Folder deals with exactly this issue. Origin of Species.

Since it's unlikely that I'll be writing it very soon, I'll reveal the HUGE spoiler! If you like it, then feel free to adopt it.

In the early years of the 22nd century, mankind had made great leaps in space exploration and technology and had tapped into the hyperspace realm. In those days it was all very very carefully controlled and misjumps were common, with ships disappearing on a regular basis

Ruthless corporations and varying government types fought for control of space. One such corporation was TAC Biogen, a corporation that specialised in adapting Earth lifeforms for survival on other planets. They developed hybrid lifeforms by gene splicing different genetic information from a variety of Earth's creatures.

You can probably see what's coming now...

TAC Biogen had a large fleet of seeder ships that were intended to be used to seed plant and insect life onto various explored worlds in order to make them viable for either colonisation or harvesting. TAC, however, went one step further and planned to introduce thier own cloned lifeforms to worlds that already had suitable atmospheres. They designed and built a new fleet of Deep Space Cruisers that were ostensibly hyped as seeder and exploration ships with a mission to analyse planets and introduce the appropriate small life forms.

The fleet launched in the mid 22nd century (2160s or thereabouts) with a cargo of hybrid lifeforms ready for introduction. What hadn't been made public was that half of the ships' cargo was hybrid sentient life. Felinoid, insectoid, amphibian and avian, all cross developed with humanoid DNA and creating a wide variety of phenotypes ready to introduce as civilisations. The cloning and growing process included direct learning via neural links. In theory, the cloned lifeforms could be introduced to a planet with suitable atmosphere and equipment and build a sentient civilisation with what they had to hand.

The ships spread throughout local space (Galaxy 1) rapidly, usually via deliberate misjump, introducing these life-forms everywhere. There was no pattern to it, merely the random chance that misjumping introduced.

In time these colonies thrived. They developed thier own technology and were soon spacefaring races in thier own right, accelerated by the knowledge they had been given by thier unknown benefactors. None of these races knew their true origin.

In time, humanity's main colonisation and exploration efforts reached out to the group of worlds that would come to be known as the Old Worlds. One of these worlds, Diso, was home to a felinoid race that claimed to have been there for millennia. The planet Lave was colonised first, and the colony governors there made a solid alliance with the Disans, learning about the area of space they inhabited and their history.

In the late 2480s the Federation demanded that Diso be given over to them as a human colony and the Disans be relocated to another felinoid world. Diso's rich mineral andagricultural value was to blame, but the Disans resisted the action, reluctant to leave their homeworld. The humans on Lave agreed and refused to back such an action. In 2491 The Federation retaliated in force, sending a fleet to capture Diso. The Lave colony and other human colonies in the Old Worlds region stood with the Disans and fought off the invading Federal forces. The battle was short and violent and many were lost on both sides. Eventually the colonists prevailed and the Federation retreated. The worlds in that region declared thier independence from the Federation and declared that they would stand against any such attempt to annexe worlds of the non-humanoid races by any government. They stood for independence and fair treatment to all. They formed the Far Colonies Alliance and sent envoys to every non-human world to ask them to join in a mutual defence pact. This was highly successful and many worlds joined, including a high number of human colonies who agreed with the stand the FCA was taking against the increasingly xenophobic Federation.

The Far Colonies Alliance grew, becoming one of the largest and fastest growing governments in known space. Members signed up from regions far from the Old Worlds area, including other Galaxies (as they were thought to be back then), and the name Far Colonies Alliance seemed to be outdated. A new, more galaxy-spanning name seemed apt.

The Galactic Co-operative of Worlds was born...

ironically, this is stuff that will be dealt with in the next but one story - an old DSC is found in Galaxy 3 and the whole history is discovered.

I'll be posting this stuff to my site soon, now that it's public...

Other comments:

There are millions of unpopulated worlds in the Elite universe. They just aren't shown on maps. What would be the point? The Dark Wheel showed that there were worlds in existence that were not shown on the maps. Federation and Imperial worlds are not shown either. Note that Elite shows a map of member planets, not systems - systems may contain other planets that are either not inhabited or not members of GalCop.

Humans are listed in Elite as Human /Colonials/... Thus ALL humans are colonists, originally from Earth/Federation.

Thargons (or Thargoids, to name them properly) are insectoids. Whether or not they were part of the original genetic experiments is open to debate, but I personally didn't include them. In the galaxy at large there are some native species out there, and I think the Thargoids should be one of them. Having said that, maybe they found out long ago that they were an abandoned human experiment. Maybe not though.

Galaxy 1 is indeed adjacent to the region of Sol. I have a map that shown exactly where the G1 map is in relation to Earth. Note that Achenar (home of the Empire) is actually within the boundaries of G1!

I think I went over once before what happens to the other races between the events of Elite and Frontier. If I haven't put it online publically then let me know and I'll do it. It covers what actually happens to bring GalCop crashing down and how things change so much between Elite and Frontier in more detail than the UTF stuff.

I have a second timeline document that I haven't made public, since it covers the timeline and events of my stories (including ones I have outlined but not written yet). Since my writing time is decreasing by the day, I might publish it for people to see and use if they want. I never thought that the original Unlocking the Frontier stuff would be so widely used! Thanks, guys!

Is that from a book?

[Selezen]

STUFF

Is that from a book?

Yes. One that I haven't written yet. And probably never will.

It's from a hundred or so text files in a folder on a memory stick. Just one of many unwritten Tales Of The Elite.

[another_commander]

<Waves hi at Selezen>
Welcome back mate. Always nice to see a veteran returning.

[Diziet Sma]

One that I haven't written yet. And probably never will.

That makes me sad.. I hope it someday comes to pass.

[maik]

<Waves hi at Selezen>
Welcome back mate. Always nice to see a veteran returning.

+1

Welcome back

[Selezen]

That makes me sad.. I hope it someday comes to pass.

Never say never.

And thanks for the welcome back... Like I said, I've lurked for a few years, but probably missed LOADS.

[Dr Beeb]

Here is an updated map to take on aboard the fact that Thargoid space is meant to be closer to the galactic centre than Sol:

Ooniverse Map with Species Idea v3.pdf

Phantor Gorth

Edit 25/4/2017 - fixed URL on file

I like this map. You could expand further, the octagon centered on the galactic center (the dominion of the Thargoids) and Gal Chart 5 on the arm opposing Chart 1. For each GalCop chart, the seeds (described here  ) are only twisted 256 times for the systems shown, but the chart generation could continue to give 32,768 systems per chart before the seeds repeat themselves. Perhaps each chart could be viewed as a thin GalCop-member slice through a much larger ring around the galaxy for each of the (8) arms/spurs?

Backstory: how about the Thargoids shared the galactic hyperdrive technology with high-tech worlds (or was stolen) and some of them later joined GalCop. So now the trading amongst GalCop members around the perimeter of the galaxy is a growing irritation as the Thargoids try to maintain their central witchspace lanes?

The origin of Elite's species can be found in 1980's
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Ope ... ying_game)
An Oolite expansion could consider the governments listed here
http://www.elitehomepage.org/archive/a0000020.png
and the full list of tradeable goods http://www.elitehomepage.org/archive/a0000010.png

[pleiadian]

I wrote a PHP script a while back, that sprung out of the idea of another thread I either started or participated in - it's about the repopulation of the Oolite universe. In that thread, species were proposed to inhabit the 8 regions of space.

The script could be adapted to a finalized map coming out of this thread. The script seeds 75% of the systems to the species that lives in one region, and the remaining 25% to other species at random. It pumps out a reconfigured planetinfo.plist.

To run the script you don't necessarily need a webserver, but you need the PHP interpreter. I'm not home now but later on I could post the code if anyone's interested.

I'm back btw.