Outpost2's final destiny, if you had to guess where did it end up?

[Arklon]

So once your a thousand years into the future and super "sciencey" than regular survival should be something technologically surpassed. The only large scale threat would be an Alien presence ala Mass Effect. Correct?

Setting it 1000 years in the future would be hacking too much time and the level of technology would be more beyond our comprehension than the internet would be to someone 200 years ago. I wouldn't go that far, since this is Outpost and everything needs to be backed up by science.

[dave_erald]

Okay, never seen that video before. Totally Rad, best thing that's happened to me today, and I got laid.

Side note - I want that freaking glove.



... wait, why the hell did he need a glove to type?

[Sirbomber]

Kung Fury is quite good, and the Power Glove is so bad, but we're getting off topic here.

[dave_erald]

Okay let me pose this question.

It feels to me like they should have been on that planet longer, much longer than what I assume to be less than 10 years (maybe it says some where in the official novellas or in the game itself, I honestly don't know) as the colonist size should be much higher and have a much broader base of colonists (more workers, more scientists) to mine resources, assemble and then test and launch a goddamn starship. Not to mention complete a damn skydock in space.

I'm guessing they should have been there long enough to at least birth and raise a third generation of children to mid teens by the launch window of the second Starship.

So what with mass breeding regimes say 600-700 colonists? Or would it require more time to achieve those numbers? Wait how many landed on New Terra in the first place off the first starship?
To what ends this line of questioning you ask? Not sure, I'll think of something.



Okay, so it's clear I need more numbers before I start making wild theories. Piss on it, I'm going to anyways.

Thoughts?


P.S. - Maybe total numbers, I guess, would determine if they make a starship that soars across the galaxy, or just to a neighboring planet in the local system to allow time to create two or three starships, or perhaps maybe ONE BIG ASS SHIP to ferry everyone away. I say they have large numbers, but time restrictions and ore resources, or the misinformation of resources allows two ships to be built but at two different times.

[Sirbomber]

The two characters in the novella from Earth are both in their mid-40's, and they were young when they woke up.  Counting the original colonists, that's probably time enough for 3 or 4 generations to go by (from Earth - all dead save two; their children - older and "running" the colony; their children - young and doing day-to-day grunt work; their children (maybe) - all toddlers/young children).  I'd say they've been on New Terra anywhere from 30 to 40 years by the time the game starts.

However, regarding population, keep in mind the in-game numbers may not actually match up to how many people are alive "in the story".  Also remember that the colonists split into two groups, and then both of those groups suffered a major disaster.  When the Eden lab blows, there's a comment about "half the town" being in there (and dying in the explosion).  It's possible more died during the evacuation (this could be overthinking it, but notice how the Evacuation Transports in the first mission are loaded with "Colonists", but there are still people around running your colony's structures...).  We never hear anything about any Plymouth casualties but I think it's safe to assume not everyone made it out of the unexpected volcano suddenly erupting underneath them.

[Highlander]

Frankly it'd make more sense to not have all the factions somehow end up all colonizing the exact same planet (especially with the galaxy being as huge as it is). Alcubierre warp drive is (slightly) closer to a reality than half the things in OP2, you could have the game set across multiple planets and I'd say it'd still be hard sci-fi.

Sure, one could keep them in distinct planet settings I guess and have the colonies each develop in their own different directions under various challenges.
Or randomly come into contact/dispute with the other factions somehow. (Or only in multiplayer)

Sirbomber - did you play Sins of a Solar Empire ? Good game ?

[Sirbomber]

Yeah, Sins is pretty good.  A single game can take a very long time though, especially if you're not playing on a small map.

We could say "both colonies survive and go their separate ways and meet up again later" but, as Arklon mentioned before, space is huge^*.  Unless they're both actively looking for each other, the odds of that happening without some major advances in deep-space travel are pretty low.

^{* - That means it has huge guts!}

[dave_erald]

Here's something else I just thought of

So every once and awhile I'll see things about redundancy, like "we are going to do two of the exact same thing so if one fails there is still a chance of success"

Lets say Earth had the resources to send up two or more ships, North America, Europe and Russia. Three different ships. Follow? Good. (Fine, it could also be China or Japan, racing stripes with a big Type R sticker on the side of the ship. There, happy?)

Logically the major powers of Earth are still going to communicate with each other up until the time of launch or, right until the Asteroid strikes. Things like "hey what ya buildin, where ya goin?" So the where ya goin kinda of comes down to most recent long term deep space research, giving that only one or two maybe in reach, the closest system with largest chance of success is going to be the destination of choice, ergo all three nations fly there. But, different ships, different speeds, say one arrives first, the second breaks down, and the third arrives later.

And now that I've gotten this far in the post I am not really sure where I was going... gimme a minute.

Right, so say the first ship, the Conestoga figured out where they were supposed to go and were not too far off the mark, or the system they are in had a few planets and they just landed on the wrong one. Here's where it gets interesting, maybe not enough for another full game, but this would have made for a decent expansion pack to Outpost2.

The third ship lands on an adjacent planet orbiting the New Terra sun, the Eden ship finds it, makes its way over and lands. Old ship meets new ship yada yada yada New Terra breaks apart and pieces fly towards this planet and one lands on the new planet spreading the blight. Both colonies now have to work together to get the hell out of the solar system.



Good? Good. Lets start coding a game. By which I mean you people.      ... I can't code.



...at all

[leeor_net]

Leeor/dave_erald: why would we flame you for talking theory about a game we're all here to talk about?  Go ahead and make another OP3; I won't stop you.  I will be jaded and cynical about it, however. 

Well, I just don't want anybody to think that this is the start of an Outpost 3 project and then start seeing the cynical side of things.

Good? Good. Lets start coding a game.

So moving on.

why wouldn't you just pack shit up and go to Mars?

The asteroid that hit Earth perturbed its orbit enough to destabilize the gravitational orbit of the rest of the solar system. Being as unpredictable as it was, Mars was no longer an option because 1) its orbit would now be erratic and could end up either getting way too close to the Sun or way too far away and 2) the destabilization could affect the asteroid belt causing untold havoc on all terrestrial bodies in the solar system.

Setting it 1000 years in the future would be hacking too much time and the level of technology would be more beyond our comprehension...

This is assuming, of course, that technology has progressed at all. What of the possibility of the starship just taking that long to get anywhere (which would be about right in terms of interstellar travel). But, that being the case, it wouldn't matter how much time had passed, it could have been 10 years or 10,000 years, no progress would have been made while they're still in stasis.

[lordpalandus]

In the words of Fallout Universe, "War, war never changes" and I'd like to add to that "humanity never changes either or learns anything from history".

In all likeliness, the new colony ship would fly to somewhere else, have politic strife, and 1+ new factions would erupt from it. Humanity is fairly typical; even when in a survival situation, we are more inclined to fight and bicker amongst ourselves than cooperatively work together towards a brighter and better future. I'd feel this would be inevitable as whichever colony that survived "decided" to "save the children" of the other faction (children I might add that have likely been indoctrinated from birth to wholly believe in their faction to the point where they might decide to resurrect said faction at an opportune time).

I know that is a bit cliché or trope-ish, but humanity is unfortunately fairly predictable. It is true that many humans would prefer to cooperate and work towards a brighter and better future, but most of those humans never get into power and leadership and the ones that do, prefer war, greed, destruction, and selfishness over cooperation. Would that make for a bad story? I dunno.

 

[leeor_net]

I know that is a bit cliché or trope-ish, but humanity is unfortunately fairly predictable.

You make a valid point. We are very predictable and despite my hoping/wishing we would be enlightened enough to stop repeating the same mistakes over and over and that everybody would only be interested in improving themselves (Star Trek comes to mind), humans really are just apes barely out of the jungle. Let's face it, we're very good and finding bigger and better sticks and stones to throw at each other and hit each other with.

-sigh-

Welp, that would make it easier to reboot the series or just continue the story though still there's the whole blight/savant thing from OP2 that for me is too weird. If I were to continue the story that whole thing would just be talked about as stories told by parents to their children.

Come to think of it, that right there could very well be the way that you end up with two or more factions. The ones that remember the winning side and those that remember it the other way around. Could even throw in a faction that wants to repeat the same mistakes only they think they solved the problems (reminds me a bit of Final Fantasy 6's basic story of magic, how it was lost and how the Empire is now relearning how to use it only they're doing it by killing Espers and it ultimately leads to the destruction of their world). It's a trope. It's been done 1000 times in 1000 different genres in 1000 different mediums though. Not sure how it would be different or interesting. Kind of a drab story really when I start to think about it.