The Return of Testing Chat Thread

[adr]

But you're still assuming the STL civilization was doing all this endless expanding and got to this "unreachable" point by the time they meet the FTL civ. And that the FTL civ...wasn't just doing the same thing in their corner of the universe?

I've been assuming wankciv vs star wars, more or less, based on my skimming of the teo thread. Star Wars is very, very, very, very, very, very small compared to even the smallest wankcivs.


But, let's assume all things are equal, with the only exception of FTL. Does it actually matter? The answer may surprise you.... it does not directly matter. The only thing FTL can help with is avoiding the carrying capacity wall en-route.



Suppose both sides start with a colony ship of 100 people. The FTL side does a hyperjump and arrives on the target world in no time at all.

The STL side builds a big generation ship and slowboats it there, taking 100 years.


Does the FTL side have an advantage? No! The generation ship and the seed colony grow *simultaneously* during the STL ship's journey.

After 100 years, assuming again all other things are equal, including birth and death rate, the FTL ship's colony has a population of about 5500 on the planet.

...then the generation ship lands. Boom, the STL side *also* has a population of about 5500 on their planet, because they had all those babies shipside.

The travel time mattered as much to the generation ship inhabitants as the Earth's orbit around the sun matters to the planet inhabitants. They are both moving... but it didn't affect their lives.


(We could tilt things by saying a FTL ship is cheaper to build than a generation ship, but that's a whole different matter, it has nothing to necessarily do with speed. Though I'll grant that building a generation ship is going to be a difficult task; it has to carry its energy with it, which might give the FTL guy a head start. But on the other hand, a FTL engine might need antimatter production too or whatever, so this is just bullshit that goes whatever way you want based on made up details.)



What about war? Well, the FTL advantage here is much more clear, at least for a shooting war. If the resistance is nonviolent though, it depends on how the people think. Will they be terrorized into submission via FTL shock and awe? Depends, but this is a non-tech debate.



Which brings me to the last thing: why are you assuming hard sci fi citizens, who've lived they way they've lived, presumably happily, for like a thousand years are going to just drop everything and convert to FTLism at first sight of a starship?

They might, of course, but it isn't a given. Even if they are fascinated by the science, that doesn't mean they are willing to join your empire. Maybe they're proud nationalists who will go on general strike the first time you make demands of them... you can't break a strike with FTL engines.

[Aaron]

Man, why the fuck would you even commit to a war that will take at least, hundreds of years?

And no, the generation ship has the same amount of people as the ftl colony but all the infrastructure is aboard ship.

[Djinnkitty83]

The problem I see is that an FTL civilization is much *more* likely to be nationalist than a STL civ. The easier it is to reach/communicate with different systems, the less chance there is of distance/isolation based schisms to occur. It's harder to be nationalist when you're a few systems over, and won't find out who's won this election until the signal comes, or news-ship arrives a decade later.

[artemas]

man, good luck getting people to live out their entire lives on a tin can in space without a substantial failure rate of missions due to mutiny or psychological problems.

besides, if a colony is a hundred years away, its going to effectively be a separate state. there's no way for a central government to exert control realistically.

besides which, in those hundred years the ftl ship can make 10,000 return trips, and so have a population of 1,000,000. not including non-immigrant growth.

[adr]

And no, the generation ship has the same amount of people as the ftl colony but all the infrastructure is aboard ship.

They could land the ship and use it as the starting point for their town.

Or, you could not land at all, and stay as a space colony at the new star.

[Djinnkitty83]

2200, The Biff family lives in a podunk system, away from the more heavily populated core. Sally Biff has heard good things about employment there, so she decides to set out for a decent job in the core. She leaves. 2208, the Biff family gets a letter from Sally, dated 2204, saying she's arrived, no job yet, and apparently the modeling agency that had been spamming adverts, that she hoped to work at, went out of business thanks to lawsuits in 2198, two years before Sally even left, but she's still hopeful. 2218, after 14 years of no contact with Sally, the Biff family residence get a letter from the government, saying Sally died in a tragic hovercar accident, date of death is 2206. They had to send a request back to the Biff family's home system to verify Sally's identity, an eight year trip to both send the request and get the information back, and finally another four years to send the death notification to the Biff family.

Unfortunately the Biff family never got this letter, as in 2216, they were relocated to another system for better employment opportunities by an FTL civilization that had annexed the local STL government through popular, nationalistic revolution.

[Aaron]

And no, the generation ship has the same amount of people as the ftl colony but all the infrastructure is aboard ship.

They could land the ship and use it as the starting point for their town.

Or, you could not land at all, and stay as a space colony at the new star.

Then why even go?

[adr]

The problem I see is that an FTL civilization is much *more* likely to be nationalist than a STL civ.

The same nationalism idea can go down to local levels too.

conquering emperor: "pay taxes"

citizens: "why? you aren't one of us."

CE: "i'll kill you"

citizens: "better to die on your feet than live on your knees"

[adr]

Then why even go?

maybe you just want to get away from it all

maybe sunlight or some other resource is getting scarce so you head to a new star to have more for yourself

maybe you just randomly felt like it with no particular reason at all

[artemas]

2200, The Biff family lives in a podunk system, away from the more heavily populated core. Sally Biff has heard good things about employment there, so she decides to set out for a decent job in the core. She leaves. 2208, the Biff family gets a letter from Sally, dated 2204, saying she's arrived, no job yet, and apparently the modeling agency that had been spamming adverts, that she hoped to work at, went out of business thanks to lawsuits in 2198, two years before Sally even left, but she's still hopeful. 2218, after 14 years of no contact with Sally, the Biff family residence get a letter from the government, saying Sally died in a tragic hovercar accident, date of death is 2206. They had to send a request back to the Biff family's home system to verify Sally's identity, an eight year trip to both send the request and get the information back, and finally another four years to send the death notification to the Biff family.

Unfortunately the Biff family never got this letter, as in 2216, they were relocated to another system for better employment opportunities by an FTL civilization that had annexed the local STL government through popular, nationalistic revolution.

lol

pretty much

an stl civ would quickly lose a sense of identity with its outlying regions, and pretty quickly develop very different identities. look at this planet, where the ABCA countries are relatively the closest in culture, identity and policy, but how they're all pretty different overall. And at its worst it only took a few months to travel between them, and now an 18 hour flight. and the us still revolted. imagine if space america were literally 100 years away.

an ftl civilization will be more cohesive, more homogenous, have a stronger group identity, have greater internal mobility, and better able to adapt to any sort of crisis in The Colonies, like if the atmosphere processor on Rodin Prime were to break. An stl civ would (if it was cost effective) send a supply ship to Rodin Prime just to find that everyone would be dead. 90 years ago.

[Djinnkitty83]

The problem I see is that an FTL civilization is much *more* likely to be nationalist than a STL civ.

The same nationalism idea can go down to local levels too.

conquering emperor: "pay taxes"

citizens: "why? you aren't one of us."

CE: "i'll kill you"

citizens: "better to die on your feet than live on your knees"

So what you're saying is that the STL 'civilization' isn't a unified civilization at all, but rather a series of isolated nation-states, each restricted to what's within a few light minutes/hours of the local system? In which case you can't really claim that the STL civilization is more wanktastic than the FTL one since it isn't a coagulate entity in any meaningful way.

"Uh oh sir, the STL civilization has four thousand systems, what do we do?"
"Take over that system."
"But the rest will counter-attack!"
"Do it."
*four years later*
"Um, sire, why haven't we been attacked?"
"Because the neighboring systems only now got the message that one of them is under attack. Oh yeah, and they just found out who won the playoffs four years ago. Our spies over there show that the local government is holding debates on whether to send diplomats or relief forces over, unfortunately things are held up with it being an election year, and the local neocons have just amped up their own campaign platform after hearing the neocons here were voted out of the senate four years ago, resulting in the passing of several measures here that local authorities over there are debating whether they are required to enforce seeing as how this system is no longer technically a part of their nation and...

...long story short, we can expect a diplomatic envoy here in about four years. Wanna play some Halo?"

[adr]

man, good luck getting people to live out their entire lives on a tin can in space without a substantial failure rate of missions due to mutiny or psychological problems.

man good luck getting people to live out their entire lives on a big rock in space, spending the vast majority of the time cooped up in a little house or office

besides, if a colony is a hundred years away, its going to effectively be a separate state. there's no way for a central government to exert control realistically.

I really don't care about a central government. I've been assuming that they don't even try; any shared identity is idea based, not physical control based.

besides which, in those hundred years the ftl ship can make 10,000 return trips, and so have a population of 1,000,000. not including non-immigrant growth.

And then the point of origin is minus 1,000,000, meaning there's a net growth of zero. They aren't actually ahead, just differently distributed.

[adr]

So what you're saying is that the STL 'civilization' isn't a unified civilization at all, but rather a series of isolated nation-states, each restricted to what's within a few light minutes/hours of the local system?

Yeah, kinda like 'human civilization' today. We don't have a unified government. There's no guarantee that if you attack country X that anybody is going to be obliged counterattack you.

And if said say "I want to defeat human civilization", taking over one country probably isn't what he had in mind, regardless of the lack of world government.

[Djinnkitty83]

So what you're saying is that the STL 'civilization' isn't a unified civilization at all, but rather a series of isolated nation-states, each restricted to what's within a few light minutes/hours of the local system?

Yeah, kinda like 'human civilization' today. We don't have a unified government. There's no guarantee that if you attack country X that anybody is going to be obliged counterattack you.

And if said say "I want to defeat human civilization", taking over one country probably isn't what he had in mind, regardless of the lack of world government.

Except it's nothing at all like human civilization today, because even if there is no single world government, if any country in the world gets taken over, every other country knows about it within minutes and can start reacting. pr at least talking to each other. Not to mention, at least among the most powerful countries, military force of some sort can be brought to bear at any point in the entire planet within, at most, a week.

The closest analogy to your STL superciv would be something like the British colonies during the imperial era. And even then, they only had a delay-time of a few months at most on news and forces, as well as a tech level low enough that such delays didn't make an unreasonable difference in things. In space, you've got a delay-time of about four years, at least, and it just goes up from there, and the rest of the society/tech is moving millions of times faster than news from the capitol.

[Djinnkitty83]

Gah, more...

And if said say "I want to defeat human civilization", taking over one country probably isn't what he had in mind, regardless of the lack of world government.

Well, if he said that, took it over, and realized it's a huge group of unaffiliated STL worlds with a ten-year delay on all communication and support, he'd realize stating it was a single civilization was incorrect, and if he was still feeling imperialistic, would approach it more as a series of takeovers of small, isolated governments with no fear of retaliation from nearby systems in any practical timeframe.

What if, say, Pakistan invaded Isreal, and the US got no word of it for half a decade? And once they did, it would take them another five years to ship any troops over to Isreal's aid. And even when they got there, the relief forces are now ten years out of the loop, with no idea if Isreal fought off the invasion, or Pakistan took over, or a portal to Hell opened up and everyone's fucked, or if a popular movement of Rastafarianism swept the entire region and everyone's suddenly chill and wonderwing why the US is showing up with lots of guns.

[adr]

Well, maybe 'civilization' is the wrong word, but it just really comes back to what RogueIce and I mentioned earlier: how exactly are we defining the scenario? What is defeat and victory?

But really I think we've just about ran through the interesting things here... I mean, I could keep wanking, but meh my weiner starts to hurt if I use it too much.

[F.J. Prefect, Esq]

Empires didn't stop being empires because it took like a whole year to get within smelling distance of different territories

[RogueIce]

Well, maybe 'civilization' is the wrong word, but it just really comes back to what RogueIce and I mentioned earlier: how exactly are we defining the scenario? What is defeat and victory?

Indeed.

But really I think we've just about ran through the interesting things here...

More or less. At least this convo is better than the one with Jublet who, in addition to stacking the deck heavily in STL's favor wants to go "AND THEY INVENT FTL FTW!!!!" on top of that.

I mean, I could keep wanking, but meh my weiner starts to hurt if I use it too much.

I think that means you need to exercise it more to build up that stamina.

[Bakustra]

Empires didn't stop being empires because it took like a whole year to get within smelling distance of different territories

The only empires for which this was effectively true, the Mongol khanates, had limited political unity and lost that very quickly. Most empires have had enough infrastructure to make communication with their furthest-flung outposts inconvenient at worst, either through limited size or, in the age of imperialism, through a steady flow of ships serving as communicators. This probably places similar limits on STL space empires, depending on whether humans live at the same rate as they do currently.

[RogueIce]

Wait a minute I got into a sci-fi debate on SDN with Jub what was I thinking

[evilsoup]

you weren't

[RogueIce]

Good point. Though he just went and said something rational. I'm so confused!

[evilsoup]

I don't even know who you're talking about lol

[RogueIce]

Meh. Maybe for the best. Anyway I think I just about summed up my feelings on the whole "FTL Civ vs STL Civ" debate over on SDN, might as well share it here:

Nevermind the obvious advantage you get when you get to pretty much define your side to be the maximum of it's abilites and then pit them against an established setting that...well, likely wasn't created with the idea to maximize their capabilities in the first place. If you were, for example, to define the "FTL side" as, I don't know, soft sci-fi setting that's expanded as much as the STL side but also has the goodies like FTL, artifical gravity, hard shields, transporters and other bits of soft sci-fi goodness...well things are definately going to be different, aren't they?

[adr]

One of the things I think could help the STL empire is the other sci fi commonality of the stagnant society. If things haven't changed for 2,000 years, do you really need up to the minute news from the capital?

One argument could be that things are stagnant exactly because the central government uses its power to keep things steady, but isn't that done through a bureaucracy anyway? The local branches might do all the stabilizing work based on a shared ideology that, again, doesn't change much so they don't need quick updates.


Naturally though, this wouldn't work as a cohesive empire if something all of a sudden happened like an FTL invasion, but maybe they could keep up the illusion under other normal circumstances.