NationStates Jolt Archive

I hope this is in the right area...

Okay, so here is my Tech Level problem.

My nation is based on another planet - 21 planets in fact - so that puts it in FT, but that's about as FT as it gets, because I do not have a FT society - they all drive modern cars, use modern mass-transit, live in modern homes, etc etc.

The only FT aspect is the fact that they don't live on Earth, but the government uses FT technology such as spacecraft that can be used as MT aircraft so they can go to other nations that are MT without an FT-style landing strip.

So basically I'm MT with an FT twist. What do you think?

My nation is based on another planet - 21 planets in fact21 very sparsely populated planets, I take it. That works out to about 130 million people per planet... a little more than the population of Japan. Personally, I'd rethink this whole multi-planet concept.

The only FT aspect is the fact that they don't live on Earth, but the government uses FT technology such as spacecraft that can be used as MT aircraft so they can go to other nations that are MT without an FT-style landing strip.It's more than that. First of all, it's almost impossible to have the society that you're describing. If you're galavanting between star systems, you aren't going to have Mustang Fastbacks on the homeland. That's just too big a gap in technologies.

Secondly, as I mentioned, you must be spanning several star systems. The idea of having 21 habitable planets around a single star is enough to make a cosmologist weep. Travelling between planets won't be like hopping from Earth to the Moon. Simply going from Earth to Mars is at least a six month proposition, to say nothing of leaving one star and travelling to another. This means that you don't just need spacedy ships, but you'll need FTL or near-FTL abilities.

And we both know what that means: you are solidly future tech.

I guess I'll just scrap the whole planet idea and have my huge country on Earth then. :headbang:

Or I'll be one planet, close to Earth. I really want my nation to be on another planet, but have a MT society. It's tricky, but I don't want a full fledged FT nation.

I think if you were to be on a planet other than earth, it isn't necessarily FT. It could be what would be on earth MT, just an alternate history system.

So my population could be natives of the planet already? As in they didn't originate from Earth, so I could still be MT/PMT? If my planet is close to Earth, I could still realistically visit it without having to have some uber technology because in MT space travel is possible. Right?

There's nothing wrong with being from another planet and being MT. It will make interaction difficult, as you'll have no way to deal directly with people from Earth, save the aforementioned spacedy ships.

I suppose you could have the ships be relics from a former age that you know longer know how to build and simply have figured out how to operate.

I consider the Jovian Empire to be PMT, though perhaps bordering on FT. It has interplantary spaceships, and can easily reach Earth, but it doesn't have interstellar travel yet.

From what I know of II's mores, easy interplanetary travel is FT.

I always thought it was whether or not you could exceed the speed of light. By that definition, I'm not FT.

I started out with a similar concept for Sandeya, and I found a simple solution. How about you are future-tech, but it's a third-world country? That way, you can interact with other FT nations, but your average citizen leads an MT lifestyle.

Or you can do what I do. Have a nation that is based on earth, but an area of earth which doesn't exist in real life. Basically, if you look at our region map, we're on a new continent kind of shoved in somewhere.

Excellent solution. My nation is made up of four large continents, I suppose they could be on a piece of Earth that doesn't exist in real life, because that's what many nations have done anyway.

21 very sparsely populated planets, I take it. That works out to about 130 million people per planet... a little more than the population of Japan. Personally, I'd rethink this whole multi-planet concept.

It's more than that. First of all, it's almost impossible to have the society that you're describing. If you're galavanting between star systems, you aren't going to have Mustang Fastbacks on the homeland. That's just too big a gap in technologies.

Secondly, as I mentioned, you must be spanning several star systems. The idea of having 21 habitable planets around a single star is enough to make a cosmologist weep. Travelling between planets won't be like hopping from Earth to the Moon. Simply going from Earth to Mars is at least a six month proposition, to say nothing of leaving one star and travelling to another. This means that you don't just need spacedy ships, but you'll need FTL or near-FTL abilities.

And we both know what that means: you are solidly future tech.




Give me a break. This is A GAME. A game where we design our nations, our worlds according to our own grand design. As far as I can tell the laws of reality don't exist here. I see many nations defy the laws of reality. Espeically FT nations. I don't see the problem mixing tech levels like that.

Kurona for example is a nation with some modern things, but mostly past tech. They have some modern wepons like automatics, but no cars, electricity, etc.

I mean who said you had to fall into one tech level. I thought this was a free-style game. And frankley I like the idea maraque has. Here is an idea, debug the anachronistic problems through economic story telling. I mean you could say your economy has gone down since you came to the planet, or something like that.

FTL travel is almost unarguably FT, but it's important to note that the range of FT is as wide as the range from past to post-modern technology. "FT" in NationStates, more than anything, seems to mean "capable of faster-than-light travel (without relativistic effects in play)." However, the tendency to call it a single technology level is, in my opinion, erroneous. There are FT nations as unadvanced as Maraque's initial proposition, more MT than anything else, and as advanced as clans of extra-dimensional godlike beings commanding fleets of neigh-indestructable temporal warships.

I would say that the best technology level to affiliate with is generally the one which your military capabilities are most comparable to. In NationStates, the "ignore" lines drawn between technology levels are meant primarily to protect nations from attacks they could not possibly hope to counter by virtue of the massive disconnect between weapons and defense capabilities. This is, quite reasonably, to avoid power-hungry players from becoming ultra-FT empires and crushing underfoot people who want to play with more realistic technology. While nations built around less traditional concepts may have difficulty finding a community in NS where they can play freely and fairly, I would not discourage them from trying. Xanthal exists between PMT and FT, and I have been immensely satisfied playing at my present technology level.

Give me a break. This is A GAME.Dude... he asked for opinions and I gave him mine. Don't jump on my back because you disagree.

Sheej...



In NationStates, the "ignore" lines drawn between technology levels are meant primarily to protect nations from attacks they could not possibly hope to counter by virtue of the massive disconnect between weapons and defense capabilities.Typically, yeah. Of course, if someone focuses more on social interaction than war, tech levels are largely irrelevent, at least as far as ignoring goes.

21 very sparsely populated planets, I take it. That works out to about 130 million people per planet... a little more than the population of Japan. Personally, I'd rethink this whole multi-planet concept.

If they're evenly, distributed, yes, but what if there's just one (or a few) "main" worlds, which have most of the total population, and the other planets all have significantly lower populations than this because they're fairly new colonies and/or not very hospitable?
Also, do we actually know that the 'people' concerned are humans, or at least roughly human-sized? If they're significantly larger than human then they might have had to begun expanding onto other worlds whilst still at what humans would consider a relatively low population density. Or they might be obligate carnivores, and therefore need more space per person for raising food than would probably be the case for comparably-sized omnivores or herbivores... Or they might be beings with group-minds, so that each "individual" who's counted in the UN's census is actually a whole 'hive' rather than just a single body...

Well the thing behind the 21 planets was I was using my 20 puppets as separate planets, most of which have 500m-2.5b populations. Of course my main nations population is the only one that matters, but the 21 planet thing was used as a storyline for my nation... er, empire, OOCly. ICly I would just use Maraque, of course.

But I scrapped the whole 21 planet idea. I'll probably just do what was suggested earlier - have my nation placed somewhere on a piece of Earth that doesn't exist in RL.