A question of lore

[Cody]

... both imply that the inhabitants of the Eight came from elsewhere.

By inhabitants, you/they mean human colonials? Or all inhabitants?

[Cholmondely]

... both imply that the inhabitants of the Eight came from elsewhere.

By inhabitants, you/they mean human colonials? Or all inhabitants?

I'd thought human colonials. Some of the respondents on the GS thread have a wider view of things. We may need some radically different designs for GS's though...

[Redspear]

The two well-developed versions of the lore - Selezen's & Cim's - both imply that the inhabitants of the Eight came from elsewhere. Neither seem to discuss the GS's - but Selezen's views would have been historically tinged by his wish to incorporate Frontier

From what I recall of Selezen's accounts, I think you're right.
As for cim, his approach seemed to be to look at the game data (populations, stellar distances etc.) and 'reverse-engineer' his way back to a probable origin. This required numerous assumptions which he was well aware of and indeed spelled out.

So, in summary:
- it's at least 500 years in the future even with extremely favourable assumptions. 3-5 thousand or so seems more plausible to me. The original Elite timescale of 3100ish isn't completely impossible with extremely fast and focused population growth, but seems unlikely.
- colonisation is not currently going on and probably hasn't been for a while
- all systems have been colonised (or had native life, but that's in a bit of the notes I haven't tidied up yet)
- populations are now fairly strongly controlled by one means or another
- terraforming has made all systems inhabitable (and may well have been the limiting factor on colonisation speed)

My approach is to look at the 'known' dates and fit from there.

So rather than say the populations are likely too large and well established for it to be the year 3100ish (assumption being that colonisation occured at something approximating a recognisable rate)...

I'd say that we 'know' that it was 3100ish and so the colonisation 'must' have occured faster than might be conventionally expected (assumption being that the 'known' date can be trusted).

Neither is truly 'correct' as both make their assumptions but I prefer the questions that the second approach brings up.

Was there cloning? Advanced development? Test-tube 'births'?... By 3100(ish) who knows?
Perhaps these questions are less frustrating for me than for some as I simultaneously feel no need for them to be answered.

I prefer that the primary source lore, that I read way back when, needn't be retro-fitted to match a more mathematically probable model.
Sometimes the most probable outcome by common consensus isn't what actually happens.

[cim]

I went in the end for "Human Colonials" came from elsewhere, hence the name, everyone else was native to the Eight.

[Cody]

Hello guv'nor - still lurking, I see!


Somewhere in the Eight, there's a derelict generation ship which fell through a chrono-synclastic infundibulum, and dumped its passengers on the nearest planet of this strange pocket universe. Thus arrived the first human colonials, who quickly spread throughout the Eight.

[Redspear]

How about LightMach? How might that make any sense at all?

Well, famously there's Mach 1 or the speed of sound, so we might presume that Light Mach 1 would be the speed of light. Not only would that make steering rather tricky but there's another important difference.

It's 'Mach 1' and not '1 Mach' because the speed of sound is affected by the medium through which it is travelling. The speed of light on the other hand is regarded as a constant. So even the 0.08 LM canonically associated with the orbital shuttle would be blistering to say the least - in fact, 'blistering' would actually be an understatement for a change...

Hyperspace jumps on the other hand (sans wormholes, which would be crazy when you think about it - up to 7 light years in a straight line without hitting anything) would need to be much faster than even 1 LM or each jump would take years.

So just what the hell were they (be it DB, IB or RH) thinking?

I never played the BBC version but... wasn't the torus jump near instantaneous? I know on the spectrum it wasn't; much, much faster than standard ship speed of course and the only ship you'd see using it was the Cobra III (as the player ship).

So is the torus drive (especially as originally implemented) a semi-accurate candidate for Light Mach?

[Cody]

So just what the hell were they (be it DB, IB or RH) thinking?

Now there's a very good question!

[Cody]

Have we covered AG (artificial gravity)? In my "game in the head", I've always thought AG must exist aboard ship.
Is it perhaps a product of the mysterious (gravitic?) drives which use no fuel?

[Disembodied]

Have we covered AG (artificial gravity)? In my "game in the head", I've always thought AG must exist aboard ship.
Is it perhaps a product of the mysterious (gravitic?) drives which use no fuel?

Same for me. The drive is reactionless and is sensitive to gravitic fields (hence, masslocks), so I assume it bends, pulls, or otherwise warps spacetime. If you can do that it's not much of a stretch to conjure an internal artificial gravity field as a useful side effect.

The stations, though, probably use rotational gravity. The stations have to rotate, to even out the heating and cooling effects of solar radiation, so rather than having to variously counteract and augment the rotational effects (and presumably build dozens of potentially quite large gravity generators all over the station), it's much more economical to use rotation to create differing gravity zones from the core out to the edge to accommodate all tastes.

[Cody]

Would a ship's AG (powered by this gravitic drive) work deep in the gravity well of a planet?

[Old Murgh]

Would a ship's AG (powered by this gravitic drive) work deep in the gravity well of a planet?

Surely not deep down. At a point of decreasing distance to a planetary body, the contents of a commander's coffee cup would become confused, and eventually, briefly, an internal zero-G environment is formed, until the magnetic forces of the planet takes over and the coffee finds a new gravitational master. A wee ship's AG is only designed to rule in space.

[Cody]

That would be my thinking too, Murgh. In which case, would seat harnesses (five-point) be de rigueur for pilots?

[Old Murgh]

That would be my thinking too, Murgh. In which case, would seat harnesses (five-point) be de rigueur for pilots?

It should be, certainly for the surface-to-space craft, and probably also for those little daredevils that frequently skim atmospheres.
Well, there are probably plenty of good reasons to have accessible harnesses.

[Cholmondely]

How about LightMach? How might that make any sense at all?

Been reading about percent proof for gin/wine/etc. It was originally to do with flammability (the burn test): alcoholic stuff that still burned was "above proof", that which didn't burn was "below proof". Then came the gunpowder method which gave a number (but varied with the gunpowder - different grain sizes, etc.). Then the specific gravity method. Etcetera, etcetera.

I don't see that LightMach has to make that much sense.... unless the Witchspace Lobsters have a definitive party-line on it... and they are after you...

[Cody]

So you're sitting in the cockpit of your starship, cruising through a "safe" system, your favourite music pouring out of the 64-point surround sound, looking forward to a drink in the station bar. How are you dressed? In spacer's leathers with a blaster on your hip like Northwest Smith? Or maybe in a jumpsuit, or even in a pressure suit with helmet to hand in case your ship springs a leak?