I've started working on my SF setting again after forgetting about it for a year or so plus losing all my files. Here's a WIP of a planetary map I made today with the help of Space Engine, but most of the text etc is still very placeholder.
Kovals is a bit larger than Earth and almost twice the gravity, but tidally locked close to an M binary so that the majority of the planet is buried under ice sheets. Several hundred million years ago it was briefly inhabited by an unknown spacefaring culture, but today it is lifeless except for a few research stations investigating that period.
What are you working on, /tg/?
>>43764342
What is space engine if you don't mind me asking? Also is it a thing I need to buy to use on the computer?
>>43764425
http://en.spaceengine.org/
It's free, basically procedural universe generator. I strongly recommend using Reshade/Mastereffect with it to make it not look like ass.
>>43764450
I'm sorry to say I don't know what either of those things are, I was born in 1974.
When I was your age, the atari was considered "cool" and "the system of the future".
However I have many worlds I've created over the years, and the idea of making worlds in the way you are doing with space engine intrigues me, though my old as hell computer might not be able to use it. We'll see.
>>43764342
>Kovals is a bit larger than Earth and almost twice the gravity,
Given that surface gravity is proportional to density times radius, if radius is only slightly larger that implies density must be nearly twice as high as Earth.
The heck is it made out of?
>>43764583plot twists
>>43764620
Ohhh. Nice.
>>43764342
You might consider Universe Simulator 2. Here's a screenshot without any processing.
>>43764724
Universe *Sandbox 2, I meant.
>>43764474
I can't use it, my system doesn't meet the requirements.
>>43764342
I find that one of the useful ways to make large amounts of data easier to manage is to divide things up into wide-ranging classes. With this in mind, here is a brief list of world types I've devised over the years.
Magma Dwarf - tiny worlds close to their home stars, magma dwarfs are characterized by minimal atmosphere, large amounts of fluid magma at surface, and a scalding day side with a cold (but still pretty hot actually) night side.
Clouded worlds - solid matter worlds that have an atmosphere so thick the surface heat never escapes and the surface isn't viewable from space. The surface is a high pressure cauldron of acid, death, and heat.
Spent worlds - Worlds in which all resources have already been depleted by as much as 99%. Characterized by minimal life, decaying ecosphere, and sometimes abandoned cities or dead civilizations. Generally these worlds are created by continuous very-long-term habitation.
Irregular world - A planet that is a huge asteroid. It is usually not round, but may have atmosphere or life. Irregular worlds come in 3 sub-classes; amorphous, ovaloid, and semi-spherical.
Night world - A world characterized by brutal cold and either extremely long (weeks/months/years) or permanent night. Life forms are often savage predators, and the biomass of the world is not very great usually.
Collapsed world - A world that survived a collision, it was previously spherical, but isn't now. Usually any life that is found has been put there after the collision, as this type of world's collisions are usually massive extinction events.
Blast world - A no-access world used for nuclear and above nuclear blast-testing and weapons experimentation. Characterized by desolate, glassy plains and an abundance of radioactive minerals and decay-chain elements.
Glacier world - A sub-class of any other world, this simply indicates that the world is undergoing a long-term ice age.
>>43764474
Dude, im 88' and today i got baked with guy 72'.
We talked whole day about new tech and played some Traveller with rest of the band.
He ironically also got me in SpaceEngine to so stop acting superior and like your age has anything to do with your lack of knowledge fuck wit.
I want to make maps and edit maps on mobile. Halp !
>>43764824
The thing I said about the atari was a joke, actually.
>>43764793
Phantom world - Any other class of world, a phantom world's main difference is that it orbits at up to 99% the speed of light, usually slowing down (way down) for a varying period of time in its natural orbit cycle before it speeds up again.
Visiting world - A world the orbit of which is so long that it is only among its systems other worlds for a short period of its orbit before it is gone again for a long time (decades/centuries/milleniums).
Extinction world - A world in which a previously existing world-dominant civilization was wiped out, generally either by plague, nuclear war, meteor, or radiation.
Crystal world - A world made of gemstone rather than more normal materials a world would be made of. Characterized generally by either having no life to speak of, or very exotic life forms, and usually having some growing crystals which resemble plants and landscape, these crystals usually growing slowly over the course of years or centuries or longer.
ocean world - A life-rich (usually) world that is as much as 98% below sea-level, and has a great abundance of fluid at its surface. Generally this fluid is water, but it could be other things, and ocean worlds in which the ocean is made of things like mercury are known, but rare.
Migrating world - A world that doesn't orbit a star, floating freely in space. About 90% of the time it is barren and inhospitable. But 10% of the time it bears life of some sort, generally something exotic.
Storm Giant - A gas giant world which is riddled with one or more permanently active storms. Not all storms are permanent, but due to the conditions of the world, storms often lasts decades/centuries/longer than centuries.
Crushed world - A world that was completely smashed apart then completely back together. I would describe it as resembling a snowflake and a ninja star at the same time.
>>43765088
And finally a few more before I'm done.
Sea giant - A gas giant world, its orbit is far enough from its star that the chemicals that make it up are fluid and ice, rather than gases. As a result, even though it is technically a gas giant, as much as 98% of its mass is fluid, slush, or ice rather than gas.
Ice giant - Another freezing rim world. Ice giants are made of the same things as a normal gas giant are, but they are so far away from a star that up to 99% of their mass is chemical glaciers, chemical ice-bergs and chemical ice-pack.
Rim dwarf - Tiny, dark, deadly cold worlds at the very edge of their planetary systems. Usually barren and desolate.
Weed world - A world that was taken over by space weed! up to 99% of its biomass is space-weed plants. And by space-weed I mean exactly what you think I mean, space marijuana.
Have fun op.
>>43764342
Here's another thing I made for this a while back. It's changed a fair amount since I made this though plus I lost the source files for it and had to search the archives to find this pic, so I'll need to redo it eventually.
>>43765742
Oh wait wrong pic, it's actually not king andy jack.
>>43765765
These are systems, correct? not just 1 planet each?
>>43765814
Yes, the interior section indicates number of planets with inhabited ones colored.
>>43765840
Does space engine allow any interaction with what life appears on what worlds or how advanced it is?
>>43765881
There's some control with the editor mode, but currently the effects of life are mostly just different surface textures. I usually just filter through the catalogue of nearby stars until I find one that's close enough to what I want, and then use the editor to tweak it slightly if I need to.
If you dont mind me asking, how taxing is Space engine? Is it "Oh fuck I need a seperate hard drive to dedicate it" or "large but not ridiculous."?
Because this appears to be my jam, as I am laying down the foundations to a space opera universe.
>>43765949
It's about 900mb, everything is only generated as needed. Unless you have a Pentium 3 it will probably be useable.
>>43765986
Theres only the windows version of it currently, right?
And here's another map that I never got around to finishing after my wrist fucked up, but the setting and mechanics are fairly complete.
It's roughly early iron age, rmainly inspired by the idea of if the south slav tribes had migrated north towards finland instead of south into the Balkans, though obviously with fictional landmasses. As you would expect, it's heavily based on slavic and finnish mythology, but also a heavy dose of Appalachian folkore, as in the Silver John stories.
>>43766274
Yes, it's planned for mac and Linux eventually though
>>43766388
Well shit, I can't use it mainly due to it only being for windows. I guess I'll just have to wait. or get a new os.
Heres a few amusing plot twists for a world.
Twist 1: 1 million 300 thousand 52 years before the present, the world your civ resides on was a blast world, and a distinctive and fairly unique landscape feature of your world results from giant half melted nuclear target rock masses.
Twist 2: The "ancient ruins" the natives no longer know how to use, and which are drastically more advanced than the present technical level (centuries/thousands of years), were actually made by the natives, but an amnesia virus has made them forget how to use the ruins and forget that they built it, though people with immunity are starting to appear.
Twist 3: Due to the position of another planet in your system, 1 year out of every 10, 12, 20, or 100 years is a year-long winter of total darkness, during which life forms that can only live in total darkness and freezing cold come to the surface of the world.
Twist 4: 1 million 800 thousand years before the present, your civ was moved by a more advanced race to the present world after a world devastating disaster hit the world your civ previously resided on. The disaster'd world has recently recovered enough to be reclaimed.
Twist 4: A moon of your world moves at warp speed for 67 orbits, then moves at normal speed for 13 orbits before resuming warp speed. During the 13 orbits that are normal, the moon emits an energy force that causes all dead beings on your world to rise as undead.
Twist 5: Your world is made entirely of derelict space ships, but has existed so long they are now mostly encased in rock and soil.
Twist 5: lightning strikes make gemstone dust on your world if they hit certain landscape features.
Twist 6: Your world is meta-fictional, you are actually dreaming it aboard a space-ship, and unable to wake up for reason X.
This thing. Who knows if I will ever finish it.
Need to move the space countries around.
>>43766679
>Twist 6
CHIM?!
>>43766789
*unzips spear*
>>43766795
o yee gimme that spear milk bae.
>>43766789
Heres the double twist.
If you know how to properly use the dream system, you can do anything. Literally anything. But it is all meta-fictional, so you are still only dreaming it.
Knowing that, would you really want to wake up?
>>43766777
>nolabels
>>43766777
Did you ever decide what races populated the space countries or anything of that sort?
>>43766822
Naw, I take the blue pill.
>>43766777
Wait, was this made in Space Engine too?
Fookin' neat.
Some aliens.
The Mon'ba - A race of extremely long lived sloth like beings with hair ranging from auburn to platinum-silver. They live on average about 6,500 years, and have a culture strikingly similar to tibetan buddhism, though it is meditation and self-improvement only, it has no religious component.
The Noorl - A race that resembles yetis. They are space faring traders, warriors, and mercenaries, and have an ultra-strict caste hierarchy. Though nominally an empire and having an imperial family, consuls do most of the governing. The oldest material life form in the universe is the Noorl emperor, who is currently 2 billion 700 million years old. They are not, however, immortal, though their life span is predicted to be up to 60% of the age of the universe.
The Kal-zor-sei - A brutal race resembling a combination of a spider, a mantis, and a crab. They are unable to feel empathy, and consider defeated opponents a delicacy. As they age, their shells slowly petrify. When they are unable to move, they are burned alive and devoured by their clan. They are known for their brutality and extremely streamlined efficiency.
The Aon-yast - one of the first intelligences to appear in the universe. The Aon-yast is a gaseous life form that resembles either blue, red, or purple nebula-matter. Worlds it has conquered have atmospheres composed entirely of this gaseous matter. It speaks through telepathy and "eats" the gases dead bodies produce. It is unclear if the Aon-yast is 1 life form or several, and pieces of it have been encountered all over the universe.
The Uat - Space whales. The Uat are able to travel through space without any form of technology, only requiring tech for the very longest of trips (such as from galaxy to galaxy). They resemble sperm whales, and shed their outer layers of organic matter to shrink down some when they visit worlds, so that they can safely enter a worlds oceans. Known for being extremely precognitive.
>>43767084
some more aliens.
The Sleyragoi - A heavily mercantile race of traders, merchants, industrialists, and bankers. Though they have a few simple limbs, they are a snail/slug/conch like life form. They have genders, males don't have shells, females do. They average about 13-16 feet long and about 12-15 feet tall as adults.
The Vystach - A race that evolved from something resembling a mosquito. They are slave warriors of the Sleyragoi and subsist on a diet entirely composed of blood. They are known for having one of the top 10 deadliest martial arts in their galaxy, the martial art is called Ss'atu. Ss'atu focuses on inflicting maximum pain and injury on an opponent.
The Een'marok - An energy life form composed of light, heat, and tiny dust particulate of organic matter, about 3 to 5 percent of an individual Een'marok this dust matter. Currently engaged in an unimaginably ancient total war with the Aon-Yast, who they claim is an intruder in this dimension.
The Nikzaktar - A race that evolved from something similar to an amoeba. Each cell in a Nikzaktar's body is an individual intelligence, working in concert. Each nikzaktar considers itself a familial line. They are space faring scavengers and traders.
The Dulakchi - Another energy life form, during daytime the Dulakchi are light emitting beings of intense beauty and tranquility. During night they resemble glowing rubies. Their home planet has not had a natural disaster of any sort in 31 thousand 500 years. It is thought that their appearance varies from viewer to viewer, and unintelligent viewers (like a security cam), perceive them as invisible forms that emit blinding psychedelic radiance.
>>43766805
u kno it
>>43767396
And a final few more before I go to sleep.
The Jaisatma - Having a long, conical shell, 12 to 16 tentacle limbs, four eyes, and 5 brains, the Jaisatma are a race entirely devoted to science, which they believe can solve every problem. They evolved from something similar to a squid. This belief in science is their religion.
The Myon'thul - A race that resembles a toad and a walrus at the same time. They breathe a light brown mist out of their skin as a means of regulating temperature, and are a space faring race. They are found only in giant disc-shaped motherships, as their homeworld was annihilated, utterly, by a nuclear attack.
The Yadzoctram - A serpentine life form that resembles a cross between a boa constrictor and a lamprey. They use their immense psychic ability in lieu of any limbs, and, due to a genetic error in their eugenics-using period, they are unable to feel emotion whatsoever. They require mind energy as a dietary need, and subsist by brutally torturing their victims.
The ondo - Having evolved from something that resembles a venus flytrap. The ondo are a plant species which moves about on thousands of tiny root like limbs. They are space-faring, but only during their most basic immature state as fungus. ondo's lifespans are incalculably long and they have four life stages, Fungus - flowering plant - mobile plant - moss like non-mobile plant.
The byodnaboc - Resembling a leopard, the byodnaboc have an inherent anti-gravity quality which allows them to spend their entire lives in flight a few feet off any ground they are traveling across. They are fast, silent assassins who speak through telepathy, and consider using vocal cords vulgar.
The Ymut - Resembling a brain mass, the Ymut evolved on a freezing cold gas giant. They eat bacteria and other single celled life forms, ooze scalding fluid, have 300 tiny blue eyes, have about fifty up to 100 ft long tentacles, and their society is entirely based around strength, conquest, survival.
Been trying to get a 5e campaign going with some online friends. Schedule conflicts mean that there's only been one game so far. The setting is pretty high magic, with gods walking around in the flesh.
Here's a picture I did of the high city of the nation of Archland (players picked the name). Basically, the center of the city is dominated by a huge tower to the gods. Above the tower floats a stationary orb of marble.The setting takes a few ideas from spelljammer, mostly the ideas of crystal spheres and the phlogiston. Due to a massive fuckup by one of the gods, the marble orb is actually the planet's own crystal sphere. The world contains itself recursively. This means the world is effectively cut off from all others, because if you flew all the way out to the edge of the solar system and breached the sphere, you would find yourself back in the high city..
>>43767919
but what happens when you climb the tower and break it with a hammer
>>43768008
wrath of gods
>>43768017
dude that's chill I'm gonna do that
>>43764887
ur fucked
>>43767710
>>43767396
>>43767084
I want to figure out how to stat these, but I'm unfamiliar with any of the current sci-fi games stat models.
Please help.
>>43767919
That bit about the crystal sphere struck me as utterly fucking terrifying for some reason.
Is it the same universe on the other side of the crystal sphere, or are there infinite Archlands? Alternate yous?
The hi jinx one could come up with during a fight over royal succession are making my mouth water.
>>43771607
not the person that you are posting to, but 2 thoughts came to me.
The "outside" region suffered a universe wide disaster that wiped out 96% of all life.
or
the "outside" region suffered a reality stutter and 94-96% of all matter was destroyed.
so when the gods try to tell you "theres nothing out there", what they're really saying is that theres actually literally nothing out there.
>>43771607
It's just a circle, Anon. Get far enough on it and you come back to your starting point.
>>43771820
HOW CAN YOU KNOW FOR SURE
>>43772036
And does knowing have a heisenbergian effect of changing the situation temporarily while you know?
>>43767919this is good
>>43764342
>tfw trying to write a bullshit explanation for FTL that doesn't immediately sound like bullshit
This is literally hell.
I have the basic mechanics worked out, but trying to make it sound plausible, at least if you dont think about it very hard, is such a god damn pain in the ass.
A group of fictional super-heavy elements I made at one point. I forgot why I made them, but this thread seems like something that would be helped by them. They are arranged A-Z, and the pastebin is set to expire in 1 month.
http://pastebin.com/7WHjDKac
What's a good excuse as to why a starship's ruptured antimatter reactor would produce intense radiation in a very short radius from the crash site?
Do you think Aramid fibers would still be used in the 25th century for fabrics?
How big would you say a "fabricator" should be to make the entire thing "make sense?" I'm talking something that feels more like Dead Space and Subnautica than the replicators you'd find in Star Trek.
>>43774347
>antimatter reactor producing intense radiation
The matter/anti-matter annihilation isn't complete and absolute, some sub-atomic particles escape or are released?
In addition, short half-life superheavy elements form from these escaping particles colliding with traditional matter atomic structure?
>>43774347
>What's a good excuse as to why a starship's ruptured antimatter reactor would produce intense radiation in a very short radius from the crash site?
The process of creating the reaction requires radioactive isotopes the reactor "shears off" the block of material. The ship ruptured and the process ended but those isotopes are still giving off radiation, which has leaked into the various pools that might start forming around the ship.
>Do you think Aramid fibers would still be used in the 25th century for fabrics?
Of course they would, it's a very useful fiber to keep things from puncturing your important bits. It shouldn't be effective against military-grade weapons anymore but it'll certainly keep you from losing an arm to jagged bits of metal or an alien monster bite.
>How big would you say a "fabricator" should be to make the entire thing "make sense?" I'm talking something that feels more like Dead Space and Subnautica than the replicators you'd find in Star Trek.
They should be variable, but the smallest should be about the size of a dish washer.
>>43774347
As far as what specifically might form from the radiation goes, take a gander at the pastebin at >>43774242 and ctrl+f "debris" a few times. Those are elements that form only from the debris of disasters, explosions, etc, and could be the sort of elements you're looking for.
>>43774347
Just have your antimatter reactor work on, I don't know, uranium and anti-uranium. Pick whichever radioactive element you prefer.
>>43774571
Astorium looks perfect, thanks!
>>43774034
FTL travel is relatively fast, usually on the order of days to weeks, but the speed is variable depending on several factors.
First is the drive relative to the mass of the ship - or more specifically, the mass of the osmium consumed relative to the mass of the ship. Civilian ships generally scrape by with the bare minimum amount, but even that is extremely expensive. Military ships are obviously much more liberal with their osmium, and might travel in 2 days a route that takes 3 weeks for normal interstellar freight.
The speed also depends on the masses of the source and destination stars - travelling from a low mass to a high mass star or a high mass to a high mass is much faster than the reverse, which has the effect of concentrating normal travel around those stars.
It's also not very stealthy, since it releases a massive flash of radiation upon arrival. The radiation corresponds with the amount of osmium used, and it peaks in the xray part of the spectrum but with large amounts falling off into gamma rays and ultraviolet/visible as well. Almost all of the radiation is directed outward from the ship, but strong radiation shielding is still needed for the small fraction that isn't. Being nearby when a ship arrives tends to be very bad for health.
>>43774620
Wait, actually.
Couldn't you use whatever antimatter, say, just dumb anti-hydrogen, to annihilate toxic waste, and still get energy out of it, and getting rid of the toxic waste?
>>43774655
Fulcium might be good as well. It's so radioactive it cooks itself into dissipating vapors and its half life is only 6-7 minutes if I'm not mistaken.
As far as whats inside the reactor itself, Icelandium is an an element specifically used for warp and faster-than-warp reactor cores as a stabilizer, so that might be found as well.
If you want something very deadly, try Rhodesium. It's average surface temp is 70,000 degrees and it resembles bluish magma. I can't remember how long its half-life is but I think its less than 1 minute, though.
>>43774696
Speaking of toxic waste, a study of californium found recently that processing toxic waste with it reduces the material's amount and radioactivity quite a bit.
I forget exact specifics but I read about it in a science journal.
>>43774034
If you want a non-bullshit means of FTL and don't mind it potentially completely screwing up how your interstellar society would work, allow me to provide one!
>You can make exotic matter through particle accelerators, but it takes a fuckton of energy and finesse.
>With the right know-how, you can use this to create a small wormhole
>That wormhole has to be hauled to the target solar system at sub-light speeds
>Once both wormholes are in place, carefully syncronized robots at both ends inflate the wormhole to a more useful size by feeding it more exotic matter
This gives you FTL, but cuts your rate of expansion to sub-light anyway. Plus it provides a limit to ship sizes, especially in backwater systems that nobody would invest inflating the gate further in.
>>43774976
>>That wormhole has to be hauled to the target solar system at sub-light speeds
However, due to the usual space-time fuckery, your wormhole will be usable fast, even if it has to physically travel a hundred light years. Though specifics are hard and I'm tired.
>>43774976
>>43775063
Is "inside a wormhole" a geographic location that could be pointed to on a theoretical map of some sort, or is it a quantum location that is not a specific where or when?
>>43774696
That only makes sense if you're getting the antihydrogen for nearly free.
Presumably you're using a lot of energy and building some very expensive infrastructure to produce a tiny quantity of antihydrogen.
It would also be incredibly expensive to store for longer than a few millionths of a second.
I guess another way to look at it is that you're suggesting using the finest, rarest lamp oil harvested from endangered sea mammals to burn your garbage. Yeah, it works, but it's not very efficient.
>>43775151
sounds like it would have to be born into existence in a chamber, then, a few nanoseconds later, in the chamber with the toxic waste.
Chamber A produces the antihydrogen, which immediately travels through a pipe to chamber B, which contains the waste?
Something like that?
>>43775151
On the other hand, the original Anon talked about an antimatter reactor, we can only assume that they fixed the safety and transport issues, and have enough antimatter for whatever they need the power for.
>>43774677
Continuing this, arrival is almost always in the outer reaches of a system for several reasons. Showering an inhabited planet with a month's worth of gamma rays is not only considered to be bad manners, but also extremely dangerous for the ship because of the risk of being pulled too close to a body on arrival to accelerate into a safe orbit.
Departures depend on how much energy the ship is willing to expend. Civilian ships will usually spend a week or two accelerating out of the system at 1g before travelling to save on costs.. In principle, there's no reason a ship cant depart immediately even from a close solar orbit, but it's cheaper to use as much hydrogen as possible to escape the gravity of the star instead of osmium.
Since superluminal travel cannot be controlled in transit and is also highly affected by gravity, there are some limitations on routes and distances as well. Basically, it requires a clear shot at the destination without other stars close to the travel path to avoid, again, very unhealthy things happening to the ship.
Like it affects the speed of travel, stellar mass also affects how close a star can safely be travelled past. For example, M class stars are unlikely to cause issues unless they are directly on the route, while F and above are likely to disrupt a large area around them.
>>43775466
What if you put the gates well outside the planetary system? Like for example you put Gate A beyond pluto's orbit and Gate B beyond the rim of the destination system?
So you zip-zop-zoobidy-boop-bop your way through FTL, then you traditional-space-flight your way to destination planet?
>>43775525
Also, in space, no one can fat-shame you for eating to much pudding pops.
So put that in your zoopidy-doop-o-tron and zing-zong-jingo-tingo it.
>>43775754the space police can
>>43775785
>yfw cosby-tron 66-thousand has a malfunction and begins to act like the bad guy from the movie Demolition man
I sense a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy-tier space comedy adventure nearby, captain.
>>43775294
I don't think you get it! Antimatter takes more energy to produce than it can produce. This is basic physics type shit.
It's like a battery--there's no point in making antimatter if you're just going to use it at the very site where it's produced--why not use the first energy source directly?
Its only purpose is to efficiently transport energy from somewhere with lots of energy (say, the surface of Mercury or the sun's corona) to somewhere with very little (like a ship orbiting Pluto).
If your toxic waste is already there (in space) why not just dump it there? You could toss a million tons of nuclear waste into the sun or a distant orbit and never have ill effects. The only problem is that getting it there is dangerous, and requires even more energy.
>>43775377
Even so, you will only ever annihilate as much matter as you have antimatter (significantly less, actually). How many kilos of antimatter does it take to power the whole world at 2015 levels of consumption? Not many. So how many thousands of centuries will it take to annihilate all the spent fuel rods in the world? What else could you have accomplished with the energy wasted in your garbage reactor? How much more expensive and time consuming is it to engineer a reactor that will safely annihilate random garbage instead of pure hydrogen?
Maybe some waste products would be rendered inert by the massive energies in the reactor, but you'd probably be better off making a very efficient reactor and using a bit of the energy to power a plasma torch to incinerate that shit.
>>43775867
I wasn't saying you were wrong, merely making a comment.
Also I'm not the anon who initially mentioned this, I was just making a comment on it.
The least costly least-energy-requiring way of disposing of it is probably the best, short of just putting it somewhere on earth and leaving it there forever.
>>43775147
If you have a five dimensional map, then yes, you can point to it. Otherwise, not really.
>>43775995
So yes, races thousands of centuries ahead of earth 2015 might be able to, but most beings would not be able to.
relativity a shit
>>43775967
How are you converting the pure energy of the antimatter reaction into usable energy anyways?
Nuclear reactors convert a sustained nuclear reaction into heat that boils water to turn it into steam and turn a crank.
Somehow, it seems like it would be way more difficult to rig something like that up with antimatter.
Apparently space engine has a ship building tool now.
http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/17-1292-1
The parts are a bit limited, but it's good for basic designs.
>>43766679
>Twist 3
this seems familiar somehow
>>43766864
Yes. Most of the space countries have mostly racially homogeneous populations except for the ones that are part of the large economic/military alliance that's intended to serve as the focal point of player activity.
Aliens vary significantly in their degree of rubber foreheadness.
>>43774034
>>43774976
I just take the concept of "ships in space" and take it to it's logical conclusion.
FTL travel is done by phasing a portion of the ship (known as "dipping") into an alternate reality known as Fluid Space.
Fluid Space is a micro-sized, barren mirror of our own Universe filled with a sort of quantum foam that behaves closest to a liquid.
Given Fluid Space is .01% the size of Real Space, this translates into distances traveled being vastly increased compared to more conventional travel. For example, Alpha Centauri is 4.367 Light-Years away from Earth, but when you dip into Fluid Space the "effective" distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri is only .0004367 light-years.
Ships do not move slower in Fluid Space than Real Space, meaning a ship that can move 5% the speed of light, dipping in Fluid Space, will move fast enough to reach Alpha Centauri in .008 years, or 2.92 days.I have a feeling my math is atrocious and probably fucked up somewhere, but you get the idea.
>>43778209
If you're only partially submerging, how do you deal with the part of your ship that isn't travelling in fluid space ripping off of the part of your shit that is?
>>43778307
:^)
What are some reasonable explanations for a setting that still takes place on earth but with completely different geography?
>>43778344
>fuckhuge blindspots due to elongated design
>windows
1/10, would not sail the stars with.
>>43778307
Honestly that's one of the things I'm still trying to work out.
For now I'm assuming the "real space" half of the ship accelerates proportionally with the "fluid space" half, but that runs into quite a few problems as you're pointing out right now.
Maybe the ship submerges entirely in Fluid Space and broaches when it arrives at the destination. This provides opportunities for ships "lost" in Fluid Space or specialized types of ship that spends most of their time in Fluid Space, either as resupply or "submarines" or whatever. Early ships that utilized Fluid Space would "skip" on the surface of it, submerging and broaching constantly since the exact nature of the dimension wasn't fully understood.
>>43778207
I put this up for you.
>>43767084
>>43767396
>>43767710
you may use it or not use it at your discretion. If you need more information I'm monitoring the thread.
>>43777816
Spoiler: they are aliens, not white walkers. Unless you want them to be ayyy-walkers.
>>43778480
Sounds similar to what the Guild did in the Dune series.
>>43778480
You could use a realspace bubble idea, wherein the ship creates a field around itself that maintains a pocket of the dimension it's coming from until the translation is complete.
>>43778480
>>43778209
Nigga you better have creepy critters living in Fluid Space.
>>43778480
One way to do it might be the fluid like space from TTG.
Essentially, have an extra dimensional space made largely of some uniform element. It has a distinct up and down, and the farther down you go, the denser it gets (consequently enabling faster travel). At a certain point, the gaseous environment transitions to a liquid environment.
So you've got three tiers of travel here: Ships that skim fluid space, by flying through the cloud portion.
Ships that sail through fluid space by floating on the sea of liquid hydrogen inside it.
And submarines that slink through fluid space by going as deep as they can get.
All three options involve completely leaving real space though.
Also, for anyone considering doing >>43764342
with space engine I strongly recommend getting this: http://en.spaceengine.org/forum/17-1882-1
You export the system and parse it with that tool and it creates an html file like pic, with all the information and then some available from SE but without having to examine and copy info for every planet, plus it makes figuring out the specifics of habitability on a given planet much much easier.
Another older tool for similar stuff is stargen: http://www.eldacur.com/~brons/NerdCorner/StarGen/StarGen.html
I don't think it has been updated in about a decade, and it just gives text outputs, but it's very fast and more customizable than space engine.
>>43778574
I might say that very early models of ships that dip (maybe the specific gear that allows a ship to enter Fluid Space is called a "dip drive?" Has a ring to it) did so with special shielding since the ship materials needed for direct contact with Fluid Space weren't quite figured out yet (I'm thinking a primarily Titanium alloy) which resulted in some very expensive and horrific failures. Over time the realspace bubbles were phased out as properly plated ships were commissioned, and now they're largely a relic of history.
>>43778691
I'm liking this idea, things get denser the deeper you go, but speeds increase. Faster ships can handle greater depths, and the deeper you go the weirder the composition becomes.
Maybe the outermost layer is clear and almost indistinguishable from Realspace, which means ships have an incentive to stick around there (or occasionally surface from the second layer) to get their bearings and see where they are in Realspace.
>>43779090
You might find this helpful if you want to take a look at some things that they could be either made of or could use. >>43774242
Here's another planet I found I like. Low gravity and thin atmosphere, but it would be fine with an oxygen mask. No oceans, but some pretty big lakes away from the polar caps. With a bit of terraforming to melt some of the ice and add oxygen to the atmosphere it would probably be quite habitable, though I'm not sure of the long term effects of half gravity.
>>43779839
So you would o2 generators, slag depositors, and H2o generators. The two generators make a world have an atmosphere and rainfall. The slag depositor beams a deep-well hole down to the mantle and the core, then sends nanites out to harvest out waste metals for a radius, makes slag fluid metal, which it then pours into the mantle and core to make a world have more gravity (via the core's density increasing) and make a world's interior hotter.
>>43777702
For an earth based plant, I imagine it could in fact be a steam plant. That seems like a really bad idea for a spaceship though.
I think most theoretical antimatter rockets work by having a nozzle on one end of the reactor, and just ride the explosion to the stars.
A thermocouple, though inefficient on paper, could probably provide all the energy needed for the habitat without adding a bunch of steam plumbing. IIRC the RTGs that power our rovers and deep space probes do exactly this, but with a pellet of hot plutonium instead of a reactor.
>>43779975
I think the biggest issue here would just be thickening the atmosphere, since currently it's only 3 times as thick as mars, or about half as thick as the air on Mt. Everest. How difficult that would be is hard to say without knowing what the ice caps are made of. I assume it's mostly water ice, but it might be cold enough for significant amounts of carbon dioxide to be in them as well, like on mars. It would make things a lot easier if that is the case, and simply covering the ice caps with dark colored dust, or possibly lichens, would be enough to start melting the ice.
Assuming we are using plants/bacteria/etc to produce oxygen, my guess would 500 years or so at least for a comfortable atmosphere, but maybe less for something barely breathable. Of course, with more advanced technology, perhaps nanobots or something, it could be much faster.
I need three good planetary systems in Space Engine that contain all the things Humanity would want in a system to colonize.
Life-bearing planet with an agreeable atmosphere, dead worlds or asteroid belts that would likely provide significant mineral wealth, maybe a gas giant, the works.
>>43780731
With the filter it's not too hard to find them, just put in appropriate settings and click search, then sort the catalog by the filter column, then click each one and press f2 to open the list of bodies until you see something that looks good.
Make sure you have it set to disallow tidally locked planets, though, or you will get hundreds of half frozen terras around red dwarfs.
>>43780825
wheres this filter? these toolbars are layed out unintuitivaly
>>43780943
The catalog is the starfield button on the left toolbar, click filter settings for the filer.
>>43780997
oh cool that makes this much faster
>>43764342
Yo do you fuckers know about Astrosynthesis, the single most useful tool I've found for worldbuilding interstellar settings?
>>43780689
You could hit the poles with sonic vibrations to break them up a bit and then drop dark tone lichen dust on them.
These are not found in space engine (that I know of, I've never used it), but this is what I use for terraforming in my nation builders that feature terraforming.
o2 generator - releases o2
N2 generator - releases n2
Slag depositor - increase cores heat and density
Seed plant - fully automatic facility which takes readings, then gene-engineers plants ideal for the region they are located in. Range about 1000 miles.
Vapor Spout - releases a mix of water and co2
Tioganium comet - made of 99% pure tioganium, a form of heavy water that breaks down to release o2 and n2, as well as generally increasing moisture and putting dust in the atmosphere
Sonar canon - an area is hit with a high intensity blast of sonar, quakes result
e-RAD-icator - depletes radiation in the environment continuously but slowly for 150 years continuously.
Co2 plant - releases co2
oxygenoflorans - A specialized piece of flora that inhales chemicals and exhales o2
Nitrogenoflorans - A specialized piece of flora that inhales chemicals and exhales N2
Cull bug - Artificial illness that kills the bottom 10% of every population
Drill missile - nuclear missile that drills way down into a planet and detonates, causing several immediate volcanos in various areas of the surface.
Inhaling pipe - Inhales pollutants or inhospitable gases, breaks them down atomically, and releases their least harmful components back into the atmosphere.
most of these are artificial building sized full auto facilities. The oxygeno- and nitrogeno- florans are much more efficient than the facilities are, but they can't grow until a planet is ready to have plant life, because they require sun moisture and nutritious soil.
>>43780689
For those interested in this, here's a good article about mars: http://www.science20.com/robert_inventor/trouble_with_terraforming_mars-126407
>>43781112
No, I don't. Please tell me about it.
>>43781112
Looks interesting, does it support creating planets etc with the exact specifications you input?
>>43779839
>though I'm not sure of the long term effects of half gravity.
Nobody is.
>>43781322
That's true.
>>43781322
I hesitate to say anything definite, but my belief is that a being's bones would get thinner, weaker, and possibly longer. If it had bones that is. It would probably have numerous further effects that I'm not going to hazard a guess on.
>>43778556
By bizarre coincidence one of the races already is crab-bug people who have hyphenated name the parts of which have three letters.
They reproduce by spawning and are sequential hermaphrodites, they're born male and become female later in life. Their society also involves sitting around in mud communally. They interact peacefully with most of the rest of the galaxy and engage in trade commonly, but they find humanoid societies really awkward and so aren't found in large numbers outside of their own space.
Any tools for fantasy world building for mac or Linux? I need something that will essentially randomly generate the world for me, but allow me to make minor modifications to the geography and work out geo-political boundaries.
>>43781400
Well I suppose thats better than them seeing other humanoids as lesser species & food.
Are you interested in any of the others?
>>43781284
>>43781310
It has a generator that includes hydography percentage and what colors you want different landforms to be for individual planets.
Alternatively, if you want you can input an image file to serve as the map of the system. You can also alter atmospheric conditions of a planet, and change the percent composition of the planet's atmosphere. Right now I'm running a GURPS Suite plugin that lets you generate and edit systems and planets so that they follow GURPS space rules and specifications.
Also you can do nifty things like determine a planet or system's sphere of influence, auto generate or manually create routes between star systems, as well as filter out systems and regions based on the existence of population, or political affiliations. I'm still pretty shit at using the program, but it's already been so useful.There's a torrent for it, which is how I got it. I'll buy it when I'm not dead broke.
>>43781558
Looks pretty cool. Unfortunately I'm dead broke as well at this moment, and I would prefer to buy it, so I'll wait till I get some cash to get it.
Think I just found what I'm getting myself for my birthday.
>>43781402
Try this.
http://donjon.bin.sh/
>>43782050
I've used this before, it works pretty well. It has a sci-fi app as well, its not just fantasy.
I think it only makes one planet surface at a time, though. Been a while since I messed with it.
>>43781501
Most of them are either too psychic or a bit too fruity. Some of them are also similar to things I already had in mind, for example I already have some shelled, cephalopod like aliens, pic related.
Though I might implement an unimaginably ancient war between two non-corporeal alien races, I do like that.
>>43782197
Well I tried. I'm not sure what you mean when you say fruity, but its alright.
Do you plan on using the Aon-Yast?
>>43782197
>no binocular vision
SUCK IT ALIENS HUMANS #1
>>43783268
They're also slow and not very smart. On the plus side they're very tough, have great environmental tolerances and will eat basically anything.
They were used as the slave race by some now-gone ancient aliens several thousand years ago and ended up being left all over the place without any kind of culture or motivations of their own. Subsequently they live in and the ruins of abandoned installations which they worship religiously. They also refuse all attempts at communication and react to basically everything with open hostility.
>>43783695
Naw, negros are fast as hell.
I want to gen a few planets for a sector-wide 40k campaign. What's a good generator?
Preferably able to do a sector map and a few planetary maps.
>>43785003
What sort of sector map?
>>43785003
There's lots of resources that randomly generate star systems, but something as specific as a sector map is going to require you to do stuff yourself.
Donjon has generators that generate individual planets, or whole star systems. It also has a generator based on star wars D6 which throws out systems with a single habitable planet with a fairly detailed description.
>http://donjon.bin.sh/
>>43785003
Here is something from earlier in the thread that may help you if you want to diverge a bit from official 40k canon.
>>43764793
>>43765088
>>43765309
![917b49fe8340e8abdd5c97881985127f[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/LDjarxH.jpg "917b49fe8340e8abdd5c97881985127f[1].jpg")
>>43766679
>Twist 3: Due to the position of another planet in your system, 1 year out of every 10, 12, 20, or 100 years is a year-long winter of total darkness, during which life forms that can only live in total darkness and freezing cold come to the surface of the world.
Beautiful
>>43791129
It is only as beautiful as you make it, my friend. I post these things so you (and others) will use them.
Here are some more plot twists, now with 20% more correct number scheme.
Twist 1: The "invading aliens" are actually the same race as the players, but from millions/billions of years in future.
Twist 2: For an all-alien party, the antagonists are human-imperium.
Twist 3: one of the party members is actually orchestrating every antagonists action from behind the scenes.
Twist 4: The players were meant to die in a storyline event, but didn't, and now their superiors are out for blood.
Twist 5: The characters fell through a black hole and landed in the anime dimension. They are now all cowgirls with huge curves and dangerously scant attire.
Twist 6: The event the players have been trying to reach for all this time is actually an intergalactic "burning man" type event.
Twist 7: The characters fell through a black hole, and went from an anime dimension to a "real" dimension, and are now super serious business grimdark serious serious serious characters.
>>43791348
>twist 5
good twist
>>43774242
Besides some elements in this, what are some excellent materials to use in radiation suits? I know about lead but that seems a bit... Basic.
>>43791420
The question in my mind is; how would you stat a cowgirl?
Just for clarity I mean the "moo" ears and tail cowgirl, not the "Yee-haw" kind.
>>43791465
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_suit
>>43791465
The important thing to know is, short of some sort of energy force field blocking out the rads, you're going to get some rad exposure even with the most advanced NBC suits in the world.
So for some of these elements you're seeing, the only way traditional organic life can interact with it is through automation and robotics.
http://orteil.dashnet.org/nested
>Remmber this site
>actually find it.
Its really awsome
>>43791689
It would be awsome if this was made in a group
1-User 1 - Decide the size of universe
2-Another user decide the ratio of empty space to galaxy supercluster area
3- another user or user 1 decide the amount of galazy superclusters
4-then one user decided the same time the size of the biggest one and smallest one galazy supercluster and who they are (who they are could be a extra step or 2)
5-People decide separatedly the size of remaining galaxy superclusters, thi can be selected at a later date, the last one is auto genrated the size to fit on step 2 rule.
6-on a galaxysuper cluster that already has the size decided do step 2, 3, 4, 5 to it, a galaxy supercluster has galaxies
7-The same as 6 but a galaxy has nebulas and star systems.
8-same as 6 for star system, it has stars and planets
9-same as 6 planets have continents (or not) and non continents
10-same as 6 continents have countries and no empty space quivalent
11-countries have states and no empty space equivalent
12-states have cities and places outside of cities
13-cities have neightbours and strets
14-neightbours have streets, streets without or without neopugubrour have houses and people.
15-houses have people and items
.....
TL;DR of my setting:
The area called Titansgrove is inhabited by fearsome creatures called titans. These creatures are the malevolent descendants of Gods, Demons, Angels, and other powerful beings from out of this world. Several nomadic tribes reside in Titansgrove too, but these tend to disappear too often to write them down. Since the Titan's territory tends to fluctuate, there are no set borders between the countries. The Titans and the countries are in a constant war for territory, food and other resources. The only country unaffected by this whole ordeal is (are?) the United Isles of Emder.
I could elaborate further if people want me to
>>43774347
Err, the product of matter-antimatter annihilation is gamma rays.
Loss of containment or damage to the reactor shielding of a functioning antimatter reactor would have incredibly dire radiological consequences.
>>43793056
did you say titansgrave?
>>43793056
That is dumb as hell.
>>43793056
This might be a strange note, but I really like your forest shapes.
Are the titans massive, powerful beings that are few in number as their name would suggest? Do they have an actual society that is in active war with the other civilizations?
How exactly does that mean that the countries don't have set borders? Do they migrate? Are the cities therefore just large camps?
I have a somewhat similar, though far more limited area in my own homebrew, where giants dwell. Those live in small tribes, and whenever groups of them encroaches into the no man's land that borders the nearby country, elite teams of hunters track them down and slay them.
>>43793785
Didn't know what it was until I had already started working on the setting.
>>43793800
Could you elaborate on why it's dumb?
>>43793947
Because it's a strange concept and you're on 4chan
>>43793745
you might find this interesting. I made it years ago and I don't remember why. >>43774242
>>43793945
Some of them are gargantuan, mostly the direct offspring of two gods. Most of them are between the size of a T-rex or large bear, but there's smaller and even hivemind-compromised-of-tiny-insect varieties. Titan is basically a collective term for non-"natural" malevolent beings. Most of them are non-sapient, and many have ogre-like intelligence
Titans don't really have a society (with one exception, smart descendants of several angels that try to keep their bloodlines as pure as possible. basically nazis.) they fight each other for things like territory, but will wreak havoc on humans and other races whenever they can.
The current countries were captured with the help of physical manifestations of the benevolent gods, Rûlith, Aeruar, Teth and Aça being the most important ones. Large parts of territory have been secured for a long time, and any city on the map is not in danger. The borders however are very dangerous, since titans tend to destroy a lot of stuff there. Most of the settlements along the borders are small camps, heavily guarded farming villages and working camps in Aça. Those living along the borders are usually the poorest of people and looked down upon by the civilized people, spare for the horned tribes.
Posting my work in progress map because I very much do not want to see another worldbuilding thread die.
>>43796846
>>43794126
And yes, I did shamelessly steal some of your names a few minutes ago.
>>43796846
This is actually pretty good, I'm impressed that you managed to make a hex map look that nice.
>>43796940
Regarding titans; some of the most ancient depictions of them we have depict them as having big foreheads like neanderthals. This can be seen in greek pottery from the dark ages period 11th-9th century BC.
>tfw cant remember the name of the word generation tool I need
I remember it works by feeding in sample text, and then selecting syllable counting options etc and then generating words based on the frequency of those syllables, but I cant fucking find it now
>>43797115
Oh shit I found it buried in a subfolder in my worldbuilding folder.
Here's the link to the software, if anyone else needs it: http://www.sttmedia.com/wordcreator
Pic related is the result of using the wikipedia list of russian surnames with it set to count real syllables while generating the syllable list
I find that a great help to make worlds is to divide it into periods, this is the table I use.
0 - The universe is being put together, gods and goddesses are forming, the count of time has not started yet.
1 - The world is ready to receive life, mortal beings appear, the start of time, deities still move about in visible shapes, helping early societies to get going.
2 - Deities begin their retreat from the world of forms as societies progress towards not needing them. Mortals move from idyllic sinless states towards technology & knowledge.
3 - Deities have mostly fully withdrawn from the world of form and matter. Antiquity era societies have appeared. Rise of empires.
4 - Iron age societies. Deities still answer prayers, but miracles are becoming rare as technology and knowledge proceeds. Competing empires expand.
5 - A few large stable empires endure. old deities are passing away to be reborn in new identities. Fairly static empires jockey for colonies and wealth.
6 - old empires are collapsing as technology starts racing ahead. New empires and new states form. New deities take the forefront. Ideas and communication continue to improve life.
7 - Education has progressed far enough that decentralization has taken over some empires. Formalized industrialization begins. Miracles no longer happen and faith is being slowly replaced by reason.
8 - A few nations have full-scale industrialization, and this rockets them to the forefront as the empires that didn't modernize or couldn't because reasons shrink and collapse.
9 - Colonial states withdraw their control of their empires. Industrialization has proceeded far enough that the quality of life for the average citizen is hundreds of times better than previous eras. Religion is a matter of private feelings.
10 - Science and reason has fully supplanted deities and magic. Stable nationstates form communities rather than empires. Deities watch, but can do little and no longer exercise any direct control.
-cont-
>>43797375
11 - travel between planets and planes via tech rather than magic. New empires rise as planets conquer each other.
12 - The deities expire as the end of time approaches.
13 - The end of time. The universe ends.
>>43797281
Here's another example, this time with the same Russian sample but also finnish and Chinese samples added. Combining languages is extremely easy, and depending what you mix you can easily get something that looks very unfamiliar but is still consistent.
>>43797010
It's just my way of avoiding having to sculpt coastal lines.
>>43797375
>>43797398
I'm not sure which world are you going for here, though. Why follow the path until the universe's end? Go as far as you need to reach your preferred time and get off the ride.
Also, step 7 and out seem to completely phase out all fantasy elements, which makes one wonder why you've even bothered having steps 1-6 and 7-13 in the same setting.
>>43797672
Coastlines are really easy to do if you use the difference clouds method and smooth the result until it looks right - >>43766364 is an example of that method
>>43797707
meant
>>43797684
>>43797684
I was using "miracles" in the strict "reality defying deeds performed by deities" sense, not in the more general "its maaagiiiik~" sense. I should have been more clear.
A miracle is a miracle only when deities do it or put their power in a mortal to do it. "Magic" for me is drawing upon the private power that resides in a person's soul, and is independent from deities, devils, or anything else of that nature.
It was also more about simply making a general statement about "this is is simply -a- path", the user can get off at whatever era they want to.
>>43764342
I started work on a proper symbol set for this. The centers of the symbols will probably be used to denote what kind of facility it is, if needed. I'm not sure if scientific facilities will be a civilian marker with special markings or a different type of their own. I may also need to display the ownership of the location in some way, not sure yet.
>>43798239
forgot pic
>>43798239
This is what definitely the easiest method for marking special sites, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to distinguish them. I could use proper icons, I guess, but that would be a pain to create.
I guess the best solution is to just include some sort of naming on the map that gives a hint to the function of the site?
So, /tg/, tell me about the artifacts in your world.
I need to steal some.
>>43798531
Ascalon, a holy sword of dragon destroying. Against a dragon, any roll to hit of 15 or above is a crit. It has a holy vow inscribed however, and can -only- be used against dragons. Using it against anything else for any reason at any time invokes a divine curse on the user.
Jawbone of Bishop Adiochus - User is a level 4 cleric in addition to any other levels. St. Adiochus, an afterlife-human level 7 cleric, may appear and intervene with a slightly greater chance than usual.
Black Sphere of Karonax - Created by a lich necromancer in an attempt to harvest the essence of vampirism for study, the black sphere draws any vampire that gets near it into itself, where it houses them until the final battle at the end of time, when it explodes and releases them. This draw in is more forceful than a black hole, and twists their bodies painfully as they are sucked into it violently. It only does this to vampires, and is a harmless black sphere that appears to contain red smoke otherwise.
Chestplate of Rodard oathbreak - The user rises again as a greater wight immediately if this is worn at the time of death. Copies of this, called "chestplate of the wight" are known, but they transform the user into a normal wight rather than a greater one. The chestplate is made of black, heavily tarnished adamantine.
Alugardo's Automatic Lockpick - An early-machine artifact. Insert the lockpick, then wind the mechanism. It will then slowly gently and carefully pick the lock. It does this at rank expert. only four of these exist.
Crown of the Mandate - Given only to the most honorable kings and queens who rule the largest areas. A symbol of divine approval, lifespan gains +25%, makes physical stats at least 18 (men), mental stats at least 18 (women), allows them to use lightning bolt 7 times a year, and allows them to roll twice to resist any form of mind control, illusion, or charming.
>>43798801
At least 18 on the old D&D 1-25 scale. That part was cut off by character limit.
>>43798531alien space plague virusesjk they cant survive in humans
>>43764342
Updated: experimenting with the new symbols, and changing settlements to reflect writing. While there is a population of several thousand civilian scientists, plus the same amount if not more of support personnel, the planet is only accessible via military transports.
>>43800058
What kind of elements are found in that world's crust? Does space engine figure that out and tell you?
>>43800115
It doesn't directly, but it does give you enough information to make general guesses. Kovals has a mass about 4 times greater than earth but a diameter only 1.4 times earth's, so mostly likely very metal rich.also aliensshh
>>43800291
Also, to give an idea of scale, the most inhabited continent on the left is very roughly about the same size as Africa.
>>43800291
What sort of star is it orbiting? Does it have any volcanos? We could make an educated guess regarding what sort of heavy elements we might find (from volcanos spewing amounts out and from cosmogenic radiation) if we know this.
By heavy I mean uranium and beyond. Lanthanides and Actinides.
>>43800504
It's orbiting a red dwarf binary at about 0.1 AU, and it does have quite a few volcanos - this is one near the Mt Kohod monitoring station, but there are a number of others visible if you look closely.
>>43800774
Sadly, my knowledge of the field ends here, I'm not sure how to predict what specific elements might form.
However you might find this amusing. >>43774242
I made it a while back. Forget why. I'm leaving the thread for a bit.
This is looking out across the Red Valley site, though the mountains on the other side are below the horizon.The site is actually on top of the hundred million year old equivalent to a strategic petroleum reserve site, built by aliens using roughly the same FTL technology.nobody knows yet
>>43782050
This is amazing, just what I needed.
Thanks man
>>43798801
Red Ring of Tulzandor - The user may cast Fire Breath, Fire Ball and Cone of Fire. These spells cost nothing if they are used against a demon or devil and may be cast repeatedly. Breaks if over used.
Guitar of Thundering Doom - Each time a string is plucked, Lightning Bolt is cast. Requires levels in bard to use.
Aragvan's disastrous device - resembles a rubix cube. If all reds are on 1 side, a forest fire is summoned. If all blues are on 1 side, a typhoon is summoned. If all yellows are on 1 side, a scorching drought is summoned. If the puzzle is solved, the cube detonates like a nuclear weapon.
Demonium of Horrendous Entities - Composed by Karonax. The book gains the memories and information of demons who handle it. It drinks the users blood and gradually transforms the user into a lich, however, it never lies.
Red armor of lord Saranghul - All weight penalties drop by 1/4th, all encumber penalties drop by 1/6th, and all movement range penalties drop by 1/8th. The red armor drinks the user's blood, returning it to the user's body.
Heiser's Hammer - The weapon of the very first dwarf who ever existed. The user gains 1 level of warrior for every hair in their beard. The weapon may only be wielded in battles where death is certain, and the wielder must be a dwarf. The weapon travels with a warriors soul when they die and returns to its resting place.
bump for fuck off archive
>>43792546
you would need to each planet decide what are the animals there, the amount of each animal there, then the amount split per continents, and then countries and this goes on...
and this if you dont want to create your own animals
Just a reminder that one of the most critical strategic elements you might not have heard but should remember in any scifi setting is rhenium.
It's a heavy, rare silver-colored metal used in jet and rocket engine superalloys that are required to withstand extremely high temperatures. Despite decades of experiments we haven't created any superalloys without rhenium that are be nearly as good; the highest performance superalloys still require a few percent rhenium.
The only viable commercial source is molybdenite, an ore of molybdenum that usually has rhenium in concetrations of up to 2%. The largest reserves on Earth are in China, the US, Chile and Canada. About 50 tons of are produced yearly, 70% of which goes to jet engines.
Needless to say that an interplanetary economy without access to rhenium would we extremely difficult at best, impossible at worst. It would also be a very good idea for shipbuilding corporations and nations to recycle spacecraft and spaceplane engines.
>>43764620
Oh man, I LOLed too hard at this
>>43798484
Steal NATO or video game icons.
>>43804712
NATORI icons are fugly. Better to make your own in Adobe illustrator or Inkscape or gimp or MS paint or whatever.
>>43805102
Why did it autocorrect NATO that way. I don't even.
>>43765088
> Phantom world
> 99% speed of light.
Forget it. The forces when swinging around the star would rip apart any planet. Also remember that in elliptical orbits the object goes fastest near the star, and slowly when far away.
But it's not necessary to invoke .99c. Some scientists wonder whether there are more planets in our solar system, just with a dark surface (low albedo) and currently very far away (many times the distance of Pluto). They'd be invisible except when their extremely elliptical orbit brings them close to the sun every 50,000 years or more. Such a Migrating World would be invisible in infrared, too, because it'd be as cold as space itself, except again, when close to a sun. The 10% of life-bearing worlds you mention would need some extreme tech to be warm enough for some kind of life.
You could also have a planet that got ejected from its original system and now comes closer to another sun.
>>43805191
It's possible he's not going for hard sci-fi and is operating on Rule of Cool.
>>43778363
Continental plates keep shifting until the core cools down and hardens, so either the far past or the far future.
One hypothesis claims that the rotational axis changes suddenly once in an aeon or two. This would result in recognizable geography except for the flooding during the shift, and the ice caps would be elsewhere.
Other than that - can't think of anything. Even nuclear bombardment would have to be so massive that it'd make the planet uninhabitable long before totally changing the geography.
Oh, almost head-on impact by a Mars-sized planet. Now that worked really well a few billion years ago. Look up Theia. Turns the planet uninhabitable for a looong time and may have side effects such as creating a moon or ring.
I'm wondering how to draw up a map, but it's tough when you can't draw for shit. But that's not all I'm here for.
How do you guys plan out locations for cities and such? I'm trying to research stuff like how countries expanded and such, so that the placement of cities makes sense, but I can't really find anything like that.
>>43791488
High constitution, low dexterity, agility and intelligence.
Takes stat penalties if not milked daily.
>>43805208
Yes, I noticed while reading more of the thread. I don't have an issue with RoC or planets made of keeptogetherium. But I like to warn innocents that irresponsibly invoking .99c with one hand usually requires massive waving of the other hand.
>>43800058
What program did you use to add those symbols to the image?
>>43805375
There was a guide lying around somewhere.
Basically, anywhere where trade could go on, there will be a city. It's what cities thrive on. Unlike farm country, they can't produce their own food or materials; they just deal in trading other people's goods or working them (and then trading them), with the exception of mining towns which thrive on digging up and *then* trading their own materials.
>>43805191
>>43805208
>>43805433
Rules of physics? Hah! Logical reality? The universe must make sense? HAH! HAH I SAY!
No but seriously, my main concern is simply what is cool, interesting, and fun to do, so to a greater extent I'm going on rule of cool.
All that being said, I do like my universes to have some predictable sense-making qualities, so I'll lower the warp speed of the planet to a point that a planet could survive at. Point is its a planet that moves around at warp speed. Isn't that coooooooool guise?
>>43805191
>exotic life forms
When I said that I meant like intelligent crystals, intelligent gases, energy life forms, communal bacterial intelligences, etc.
>>43764342
>>43800058
What settings do you use in that ReShade thing to get SE to look like that?
I feel this could use some work, but seems like a good first go with this hex program.
>>43806252
Hexographer and the like are honestly the only okay map systems I've seen so far. All the rest require tablets in order to not look like utter shit.
>>43775147
It's a location in 3-dimensional space, but due to QUANTUM MATH FUCKERY, part of space is connecting to a part of space that under natural conditions it shouldn't be.
From the perspective of the ship there is no space within the wormhole at all.
>>43806278
Yeah, much easier to work on this than it was on autorealm and cartographer and this doesn't look like shit.
Rivers still hard to make, though, and I need to work on those roads, too.
>>43778445
>It's only got engines on one end of the ship
>It can only thrust in one direction
>It has to turn around to reverse direction, wasting ass-loads of fuel for no good reason and making all maneuvers take way longer than they would otherwise need to
Not suitable for anything other than shuttle-work, and it's too big for that.
>>43806303
So lets say for example that wormhole connects location A and location B, which are 100 miles from each other.
If I understand what you are saying, during travel through the wormhole, location A IS location B briefly, and then you pop out of it at B only a few fractions of a nanosecond later?
>>43806004
This will work up until the point where one of your players has any knowledge of physics whatsoever, at which point they'd call out things like planets orbiting at extremely high fractions of the speed of light as being ridiculous.
And that's fairly likely to happen since players interested in a science fiction game are at least moderately likely to have an interest in science. Obviously there's a place in science fiction for elements that are beyond the realm of conventional science, but applying "rule of cool" to stuff like orbital mechanics is stephenie meyer tier writing and is going to illicit at best eye rolling and at worst open ridicule from a lot of people.
Here is my map for a homebrew Legend of the Five Rings setting.
It only shows the major landmarks, mostly because it is supposed to encompass a fuckhuge area (the black/white strips are ~100 miles long each). Those tall hill-like things above the inland sea are supposed to represent a high desert (think about the Mojave). That weird area with the 6 rivers is in fact contiguous low mountains, that's why there are so many rivers.
>>43806447
Is there a fraction of light speed the planet can survive at?
If no, I'd probably just go in another direction and say the planet has a stealth field that is inherent to it for some reason.
Anot her issue is that planets moving at extremely high speeds will almost certainly escape the orbit of their stars and potentially the entire galaxy.
>>43806946
Well thats fair. I think at this point I'm going to change phantom planet to mean it doesn't show up on sensors for some reason, even though it is made of traditional matter and can be visited by space-craft.
>>43806946
Indeed, the fastest known object in orbit is a dwarf star orbiting a black hole, it's only 20 times faster than Earth's speed around the Sun.
http://www.space.com/20303-black-hole-star-speed-record.html
>>43807064
Like another anon said, highly eccentric orbits, low surface reflectivity and small size make planets hard to detect.
>>43808056
Sounds like Visitation Planet and Phantom Planet are sort of the same sort of thing then.
What I was meaning is; most forms of sensors cannot register a phantom planet, period. It is real and physically there, but 80 to 90% of technical sensors can't gain readings from it. Why specifically is variable to the planet.
>>43808192
"Sensors" is a vague term and there's a lot of ways to detect a massive object. Manu of the planets in the solar system can be seen (barely) with the naked eye from Earth and even small, distant objects like Pluto were detected optically from Earth with 1940s technology.
The issue is planets are generally detected by passive means. You literally look for them with optics and see them, which means in order for them to actually be impossible to detect they need to be literally invisible, which is retarded. Other types of sensors like infrared and radar can be confounded, because not everything emits a lot of IR radiation and certain materials absorb radio waves.
A planet having a surface covered in radar absorbing regolith is actually a cool idea, I like that.
>>43808740
>Radio wave absorbing sandstorm
D:
>>43808740
What if it's a planet covered in vantablack?
Is there a good program for doing your own worlds? I need a huge water world with a single visible continent.
Can you make planets in space engine?
>>43811101
>Can you make planets in space engine?
Yeah, but mostly you'll just be able to tweak a few things and hope it matches up your expectation enough.
One single big continent should be doable.
>>43811423
Eh Ok. I have to edit stuff. Ive googled it but cant find any good guides.
Any planet you can recommend for my purposes?
>>43808740
I meant to speak very generally so that it could be flexible to the various settings it might be found in. But the radar absorbing regolith idea you mention would definitely be a phantom planet.
>>43811600
Not really.
In SE, all you have to do is press escape, and you can open up the editor. There's a guide on the other, which you already found, I guess, and that's it.
FUCK OFF ARCHIVE
>>43805531
I created them and added them in Illustrator, then imported all the layers to photoshop for the final effects like glow and shadows.
>>43806215
Here's a copy of my configs - edit mastereffect.h to change them. It's mostly just a couple color filters + lens dirt + a bit of chromatic aberration.
http://www.filedropper com/shaders
>>43804167
Period 6 metals best period
Does anybody know of some list or such that contains a whole bunch of fictional metals/elements?
I know some guy linked something earlier in the thread, but I'd like to see more of stuff like that.
>>43816998
>not making your own
There's a pretty good chance of cool new elements, if we ever figure out how to break into the island of stability
>>43816998
Its found here >>43774242
Its time for another five plot twists.
Twist 1: The main villain is actually nyarlathotep in one of its mask identities. If the characters defeat it, it is forced back into azathoth, who awakens a short time later.
Twist 2: A strange beam from space hit the characters. They are slowly transforming into ponies. (yes, -those- technicolor ponies).
Twist 3: A seed accidentally brushed off the attire or belongings of a character, grows (over time) to become a threat to the entire world.
Twist 4: one of the player characters legitimately owes a sexual favor to one of the main antagonists minions.
Twist 5: Reality stuttered in the game's universe. Aliens are now "outsider" type creatures and technology became magic (even though all the same races and locations exist).
>>43818051
Twist: Half the party has facial herpesthey do irl too
>>43764342
I really dig the look of that, I can tell you have a grasp of graphic design
>>43797281
thanks for the link, that's a useful little program
>>43804167
say, do you know of any other good, useful elements or resources for use in space exploration sci-fi settings?
>>43806004
You can have your own physics and your own rules in your universe, no problem, but they need to be internally consistent. For example, magic systems in fantasy RPGs usually ignore conservation of energy and momentum. (But see The Kingkiller Chronicles for a different approach.) However, this means you may get to a point where you need one mechanism work to work and another, quite similar one, can not, and then your players will take your story/world apart. See Star Trek where last week's gizmo/effect/hull repolarization would totally wreck this week's plot if only the crew could remember it.
>>43818948
In a hard setting a few hundred years into the future, I think these would the most important elements.
>Thorium and uranium
Used for production of nuclear weapons and power generation. If fusion power is bulky and heavy, and isn't quick and easy to construct, nuclear fission power could be widely used in spacecraft and in early colonization. RTGs are small, safe and last for decades, perfect for small scale missions.
The best sources of uranium are young star systems with higher concentrations of U-235. Planets less than a few billion years old could even have natural nuclear reactors like Oklo on Earth. Th-232, on the other hand, is the most stable isotope of Thorium and doesn't need enrichment even if the system is old.
>Rhenium
As mentioned earlier, a critical element in engine parts that are required to withstand very high temperatures. On Earth, it's a byproduct of a byproduct, extracted only from a few copper mines where molybdenite is common. It's probably more common in asteroids.
>Phosphorus
A colony's biomass can't increase without certain essential elements, like phosphorus and nitrogen. Nitrogen is fixed easily via the Haber process from most extraterrestrial atmospheres. Phosphorus is more difficult. It's common in terrestrial crust and in C-type asteroids, but you need to mine lots of it. The richest source of phosphorus on Earth is phosphate rock, a problem on lifeless planets since those deposits were created partly due to an oxygen rich atmosphere.
>Helium-3
Fuel in fusion power plants. The best source is the atmosphere of a gas giant, but the regolith of an airless moon is a viable alternative, although neither extraction process is easy.
Further in the future, cleaner fusion power plants that release less neutron radiation and don't require as much shielding could be developed, like proton-boron fusion. Boron is very rare in the universe. Half of Earth's yearly supply comes from a single borax mine in Boron, California.
>>43806004
Rules and consistency aside, would a .99c planet be that cool? It'd zip through our solar system in a day or two. By the time it's detected (how???), it'd be halfway through. So how could players ever reach it? I'm too limited to see how it could be a plot device.
Unless, of course, the planet is a sun-killer aimed straight at Sol. In which case it's lights out for humanity.
>>43778480
Maybe fluid space is incredibly tumultous and has all sorts of odd lensing effects when viewing realspace from under the surface, fully 'submerging' would mean you'd easily get lost or suffer damage to your ship. The way ships do it is to submerge a portion of its hull that is substantial enough to benefit from the shortened travel time, while simultaneously having a clear view of the stars to navigate by and all the sensitive parts of the ship are above the surface?
>>43791465
I don't know if lead in its liquid form provides radiation resistance, if it does you could have suits with a layer of molten lead circulating around inside. Naturally the suits would be very bulky and would probably need cameras to see out of, but it'd eliminate the need for complex joints and gaps in lead plates. All you'd need is some sci-fi insulation and a power source that keeps the lead molten.
>>43822507
dat feel when the insulation breaks on the inside...
nevertheless, hot idea for a steampunk game.
I want to add to OP's map stuff:
You can also export Space Engine planet textures, and get back images.
Then you can use this : http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/
To have your map in any projection you want, from the Space Engine exported texture.
>>43824090
based nasa
I tried doing it with the exported textures, but equirectangular on a tidally locked planet looks like absolute shit
I'll look into that tool later.
>>43806329
Close. Basically, a Wormhole is two regular interconnected points of space. You move from point A to point B like any other time you'd move from point A to point B.
The only thing is, with a wormhole, point B, while its relation to point A remains normal, is connected to point Z instead of point C. Nothing about the nature of moving from point to point changes, just the relationship between the points is unnatural. Thus you can move things FTL from our perspective without actually going FTL - the ship never actually traveled faster than light, despite moving from the perspective of an outside observer between two points faster than should be possible. This could have weird temporal effects in some models of physics - hypothetically if you make a circuit of wormholes, you can wind up sending things backwards in time.
Basically, its a mathematical loophole in physics that they haven't been able to close. It *may* well be possible, but it will occur under conditions that we aren't sure actually will ever occur (it requires exotic matter that exists on paper but has never been documented). Basically our GM's being a dick IRL and contradicting the rules for the sake of railroading the human race.
I need help on something.
I am making a setting generator
But I have trouble with something:
What % of total universe planets should be able to be habitable by non magical related beings when the setting is scienfifically realistic?
Also what % of those planets should have beings when the setting is scientifically realistic.
Right now I am using the chance of 23 planets that are habitable (amount of pontentially habitable planets confirmed) in each 100 billion planets (amount of planets on milk way acording to wikipedia)
>>43828833
Make it 23 out of however many stars we looked at searching for planets rather than 100 billions, bud. Though I don't think our local observed space is much representative of the Milky Way's average.
>>43828993
thanks an obvious thing I fogot
>>43824090
eeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
>>43830128
Oh yeah by the way, Space Engine exports as cylindrical something. One of these two. So select like cylindrical equal-area, then open the exported file, and it'll go fine.
>>43828833
Habitable is relative anon. Exotic biochemistries could be living on Titan, hypothetically. There could be life in situations far beyond what we can currently predict - for example, there could be life on Enceladus, but only at one pole.
It all boils down to how much life you want rather than what's realistic - we still don't know enough about where life can thrive and the prevalence of live in viable habitats across space. Just choose whatever ratio of life/uninhabitable backdrop you think makes for the most interesting stories.
>>43830259
It also makes the land transparent half the time
FUCK OFF SPACE ENGINE
>>43830541
Pretty much. You could also just take the drake equation and bullshit some numbers into it if you want a more calculated approach.it's not like anyone else has better numbers to bullshit into it
>>43765840
Why is Sol III not inhabited, but Sol I and II are?
>>43774242
I hate to nitpick, but the correct verb is not 'half-lifes' but 'decays'.
>>43766467
Runs fine via wine.
>>43775867
>Antimatter takes more energy to produce than it can produce
This is wrong. The mass of the antimatter only makes up half the annihilation energy. You ALSO get energy form the normal matter you annihilate. You inherently have a system that ends with more energy than you started with when you have annihilation events. Because you are turning mass into energy.
Now, more likely than not, more than half the energy will be lost as uncaptured heat, and thus you wont be making a gain in usable energy, but you will, by definition, have more energy than your started with.
>>43832829
It's just counting the number, but if I ever remake it I will probably change it so it represents the position as well.
R.I.P
