Picking Up The Pieces Of The Space Apocalypse

[xXxAndromedaxXx]

It can already give you all even slightly unprotected information in an entire star system in a few weeks. It really doesn't need to be more useful.

I guess in my head I'm thinking that the group will have a few days at most from being given something to do to actually doing it, which would make the Net Crawler seem to be of limited use as it would be just as likely to have gotten only irrelevant information as any relevant information. . .

There are no computer chips in Space Apocalypse. All computer hardware has always been referred to as a fictional "computer core" or described in vague enough terms so as not to reveal a stunning similarity to the computer devices of 2012, which is over 200 years in the past (i.e. the cooling systems in Overheat are just called "cooling systems" because liquid nitrogen cooling will probably be obsolete by 2100 at the latest and I have no idea what could possibly come after). It is not the differences between the Computers theme and modern computer technology that should be straining your suspension of disbelief. The only reason I'm concerned with realism in fundamental physics and biology is because those are virtually guaranteed not to change no matter what new technologies we invent, and even then there's a lot of artistic license in the genen.

So what do electronics run on? There has to be some sort of processor somewhere. How do you interface with it?

((Hmmmmm. . . I think I may be turning into a hard Sci-Fi fan when it comes to computers/electronics.))

[Chamomile]

Okay, I'm writing up the OOC right now and for those who are interested in design decisions, I thought I'd explain why I went with the "favored theme" rule that I've put in there. The "favored theme" rule is a rule that lets you select one of your four themes as your favored theme, which allows you to pick one royal upgrade (10, J, Q, or K) or any two common upgrades (2-9) to start with, as opposed to the other three themes, which only give you one common upgrade. The reasoning behind this was that I wanted to be able to dictate my character's starting weapon, and I'm probably not the only one, and being forced to totally rely on drawing cards for that would be kind of lame. Plus, I wanted everyone to have at least one upgrade from each theme to start with, so that we all start out with a different and distinct set of abilities.

The problem with letting people choose any upgrade, however, was that this would lead to people snatching up a lot of the really cool and impressive upgrades at start. I thought about banning the royal or face card upgrades at chargen altogether, but someone might want their character's shtick to be "the guy with the missile launcher" and that is totally acceptable and they should not be forced to wait on a 1/44(ish) chance to finally turn up in their favor to play that character. So I invented favored themes.

Also, the game's official name will be Ashes of the Stars and the OOC should be up in a bit.

EDIT: A Babbage's calculating machine did not have anything resembling a modern processor, and it is about as far in the past as we are in the future. The details are intentionally kept vague, because it is laughably implausible to accurately predict what computer technology will be like in two hundred years. You might come up with a really interesting wild guess, but it's still almost certainly wrong. This thread stopped being hard sci-fi the second I said we could go to other star systems.

[Vulgarth1]

The way we're going with computer technology and quantum physics, I personally have no doubt all data transfer will be electrically-coded quantum particles sent between miniscule chambers that recieve the particles and then read the configuration as data on a screen. Modern-day computer chips are already as small as a third of a millimetre, and that's within fifty or so years of research.

[Chamomile]

Except that even that will likely be obsolete within a century. Question is, what is it that will have rendered it obsolete? Any answer to that question is a wild guess at best.

The OOC thread is up!