NationStates Jolt Archive

Anybody interested in a Steampunk earth? I would need some help to run it, but I think it could be alot of fun. I'm thinking it could take place in HG Well's universe. The Martians did not die of disease, but were defeated by humanity. Now earth has the chance to strike at Mars. There would be two races besides humanity:

The Selenites
The lunar race of Selenites is as startlingly different from anything before encountered as the Martians were when humanity first set eyes upon that alien race. These notes aim to provide a general outline of Selenite biology, with pertinent information for the casual reader. The Selenite form seems to be almost infinitely mutable, and Selenites exist in almost every size and proportion imaginable. The information given here can only be at best a broad guide to the points which most Selenites share in common with each other, although there will always be exceptions.

The Martians
These strange and alien beings originated on the red world of Mars. It is believed by some that in the distant past they looked similar to humans, and that over the millennia they have deliberately modified their own forms and physiology until their bodies are no more than vessels for their prodigious intellects. Their bodies are a large, rounded bulk, perhaps four feet across, with sixteen slender, whiplike tentacles and skin that glistens like wet leather. They build and use mechanical bodies according to their needs. Their world is dying, parched and cold, and so they attempted an invasion of Earth.

Sample Timeline After Martian Invasion
1899: October - Cavorite first manufactured at Lympne.

April 1900 - Cavor and Bedford visit the Moon. An account of this journey, The First Men in the Moon, is written shortly after, and serialised in The Strand magazine.

1901-1902 - Messages from Cavor received from the Moon.

1902: June - The War of the Worlds, the Martian Invasion of Earth.

1903 - Land Ironclads first deployed in Africa.

1904: January - The Universal Peace Conference is held in London, England. The Great Powers sign a treaty of mutual cooperation against the threat of future Martian attack and the sharing of research into Martian technology.

1905 - The Selenite War. Humans land on Moon using martian technology. Selenites take them for martians and attack. Truce declared after two years of brutal fighting, all on the moon. Selenites suffer far less causalties then Humans.

1907 - The Brennan Mono-rail first demonstrated to the Royal Society

1908 - The War of the Worlds, an account of the Martian Invasion, is published.

1914 - Mr. Alfred Butteridge demonstrates his Flying Machine in a flight from the Crystal Palace to Glasgow and back again.

1923 - The War on Mars. Scouts sent to Mars from Earth as advance guard of the Space Flotilla. Destroyed, Mars now realizes humanity can and will strike back.

I have sample techonologies and everything. Anybody interested?

The era you chose, steam has become obsolete already. Diesel is king as a very fuel efficient and powerful energy source for machinery. Well into the 1960s, one of the concerns about have nuclear engines on naval ships was "Why, we have diesel turbine engines that already are producing more power then we need." Thanks to the arms race of the cold war, we found uses for nuclear power.

But, to my original point, I think you made a Diesel-Punk game. Similar to steam punk, but it allows the humans to build tri-pods.

...four legged tri-pods! Ha ha! Fear human symmetrical design, you freaking aliens!

Not everything runs on steam:

Throughout the Martians’ time on Earth, one consistent element of their engines and machines has been the presence of green smoke or flame, and flashes of green light. A distinctive property of the cylinders as they fell to Earth was the trail of green vapour they left as they passed through our atmosphere, and as has been mentioned previously, flashes of green light and clouds of green smoke have been associated with their industrial activities. This green gas has been labelled ''viridigen''. As noted before, it has the peculiar property that, when subjected to an electric current, it undergoes expansion. It seems that the individual particles of the vapour become highly charged, repelling each other with great force, and fluorescing at the same time. A subsequent property of this relationship between the pressure of the gas and electrical charge is that when the pressure of the gas is changed, it generates an electrical charge.

This pressure change can be accomplished mechanically, for example by compressing the gas in a piston, or thermally, by heating or cooling the gas whilst holding the volume constant. The nature of the charge depends upon the nature of the pressure change. An increase in pressure generates a negative charge, whilst a decrease in pressure generates a positive charge. It appears that the Martians generally used the former method of electrical generation, heating the gas in a container of fixed volume, which, according to Boyle’s laws, increases the pressure inside that container and causes the viridigen to generate a negative charge.

Not everything runs on steam:

Throughout the Martians’ time on Earth, one consistent element of their engines and machines has been the presence of green smoke or flame, and flashes of green light. A distinctive property of the cylinders as they fell to Earth was the trail of green vapour they left as they passed through our atmosphere, and as has been mentioned previously, flashes of green light and clouds of green smoke have been associated with their industrial activities. This green gas has been labelled ''viridigen''. As noted before, it has the peculiar property that, when subjected to an electric current, it undergoes expansion. It seems that the individual particles of the vapour become highly charged, repelling each other with great force, and fluorescing at the same time. A subsequent property of this relationship between the pressure of the gas and electrical charge is that when the pressure of the gas is changed, it generates an electrical charge.

This pressure change can be accomplished mechanically, for example by compressing the gas in a piston, or thermally, by heating or cooling the gas whilst holding the volume constant. The nature of the charge depends upon the nature of the pressure change. An increase in pressure generates a negative charge, whilst a decrease in pressure generates a positive charge. It appears that the Martians generally used the former method of electrical generation, heating the gas in a container of fixed volume, which, according to Boyle’s laws, increases the pressure inside that container and causes the viridigen to generate a negative charge.

Have humans figured out the chemical structure of Viridgen? Sounds like carbon/noble gas mixture, impossible to make without 21st century level chemistry.
It probably expands and then upon it's condensing it loses it's original chemical structure and is unable to expand again, causing the need to vent it.

that IS the idea...it is a sort of fantasy world.