Destroying moon is a bad idea

[emprimaker]

IMO you should find some other way to disable the ship when it makes the first jump. The idea that whatever people who designed the ship can't work out it's safe operating zone, or don't care, is not good for the rest of the game.

[Random Task]

BermudaTri a écrit :

But the story leading up to Ixion is so poorly planned, downright in-ex-plicable...

Back to Ixion: the Tiqqun has an untested warp drive. Send in the monkeys! Make a tiny ship, warp it from one space station to another. Did it work? Did the space stations get exploded? Are the monkeys inside out? No? Great! Move onto larger jumps. Supposedly, the entire solar system is colonized, so there's no reason not to gradually ramp up the power and hop around the entire system a bunch while looking for side effects. Then, you send a probe. A satellite whose sole purpose is to beep back and say "I arrived". Try it at 1 light year away, then 2 light years, then...

Not knowing anything about how this engine operates a space station may be the smallest level of "miniaturisation" they're capable of. It's actually easier to build a steam engine for a locomotive than to build a microscopic one, for example.
The same goes for the distances. Maybe it can only jump between stars and can't go 1 LY.
So if it must be very large and if you activate it you are either going nowhere or to another star system then it only makes sense that you bring a self supporting platform since you may not be coming back.

There are a lot of unknowns here. We don't even know why the moon "explodes" and there could be any number of twists to explain it from some kind of sabotage to another party doing experiments on the moon that had a bad reaction to the proximity of the drive when activated.

[BermudaTri]

Random Task a écrit :

Not knowing anything about how this engine operates a space station

Gonna stop you riiight there, just for a sec. It's not about what the audience knows, it's about what the audience can expect the characters to know.

Random Task a écrit :

It's actually easier to build a steam engine for a locomotive than to build a microscopic one, for example.

This comment boggles my mind. Literally every steam engine design had a tabletop prototype that engineers used to show off to other engineers at the pub.

Random Task a écrit :

The same goes for the distances. Maybe it can only jump between stars and can't go 1 LY.
So if it must be very large and if you activate it you are either going nowhere or to another star system then it only makes sense that you bring a self supporting platform since you may not be coming back.

This almost makes sense, but waiting 4.2 years for a signal to come back is still cheaper and more practical than throwing together a half-baked colony with no food or oxygen supply on 1/4 of the total real estate and telling the manager to have fun.

Random Task a écrit :

There are a lot of unknowns here. We don't even know why the moon "explodes" and there could be any number of twists to explain it from some kind of sabotage to another party doing experiments on the moon that had a bad reaction to the proximity of the drive when activated.

not-Elon is literally waxing poetic about how it's time for humanity to move on from Earth and how the unworthy will be abandoned. It's Lysanderoth AF.

[Random Task]

BermudaTri a écrit :

Gonna stop you riiight there, just for a sec. It's not about what the audience knows, it's about what the audience can expect the characters to know.

Some members of the audience can stand to suspend their disbelieve for a moment. We have a demo. Simmer down.

BermudaTri a écrit :

This comment boggles my mind. Literally every steam engine design had a tabletop prototype that engineers used to show off to other engineers at the pub.

That's because you apparently did not actually read my entire comment. They key part of which was the word "microscopic". If you don't like engines then look at computers. At one point computers filled up entire floors of buildings in order to carry out very basic functions. They had less computing power than the phones that fit into our pockets now. What is the smallest size this engine can be produced and still function with the level of technology available in this game? I don't know, but it's possible that "space station sized" is the answer and "probe sized" is a level of miniaturisation they aren't capable of producing.

BermudaTri a écrit :

This almost makes sense, but waiting 4.2 years for a signal to come back is still cheaper and more practical than throwing together a half-baked colony with no food or oxygen supply on 1/4 of the total real estate and telling the manager to have fun.

Assuming someone less risk adverse doesn't develop comparable technology and go steal your engine while you're waiting.

BermudaTri a écrit :

not-Elon is literally waxing poetic about how it's time for humanity to move on from Earth and how the unworthy will be abandoned. It's Lysanderoth AF.

Yeah, CEOs and marketing departments can get a little crazy.

[emprimaker]

BermudaTri a écrit :

Seska Larafey a écrit :

Perhaps they need the Moon as somekind of Walls you see on Air Carriers when they start their Planes.

That's a cool idea. I like that idea in terms of sci-fi engineering.

But the story leading up to Ixion is so poorly planned, downright in-ex-plicable...

Okay, first, you can't compare to Homeworld. Homeworld is gold, and its system actually worked. All the engineers and scientists in Homeworld were right, and even so they packed the ship with everything a colony needs at the beginning just in case they accidentally warped to the middle of nowhere. The only mistake made by the scientists was not knowing about a 100,000 year old treaty against space jumping.

Back to Ixion: the Tiqqun has an untested warp drive. Send in the monkeys! Make a tiny ship, warp it from one space station to another. Did it work? Did the space stations get exploded? Are the monkeys inside out? No? Great! Move onto larger jumps. Supposedly, the entire solar system is colonized, so there's no reason not to gradually ramp up the power and hop around the entire system a bunch while looking for side effects. Then, you send a probe. A satellite whose sole purpose is to beep back and say "I arrived". Try it at 1 light year away, then 2 light years, then...

You get the picture. The amount of testing and engineering that got skipped in the name of plot throws the game's claim to "gritty realistic sci fi" out the window. Gritty realism doesn't wing it with a trillion-dollar space station.

And from a writing perspective, it's such an easy fix too! In Seveneves the moon explodes and humanity faces the same kind of crisis, but the moon exploding is never explained. It doesn't need to be explained either. Here is a ship, dodge rocks, save humanity. I don't care about the Elon Musk expy. I don't care that he's evil, I have a real life Elon Musk to deal with and he's evil too.

You would think a game billing itself as "Frostpunk in space" would have found the time to write a better story than this, or learned that no explanation at all is much more engaging than a cheap 'rich man with stupid haircut is evil'.

Yes.

[emprimaker]

Count Cocofang a écrit :

Dude, have you seen what was going on with the first planes, cars or even bikes?

Even though there has been immense scientific progress since then, shit can hit the fan when something completely new and experimental is taken on the road.

Physics are a fickle mistress, miss one little thing and it goes under. Not to mention, the one common theme you can observe throughout human history and progress is basically "do first, understand later".

A super FTL engine going tits up for some reason is far from inconceivable.

You make a valid point but at this stage of development you are not talking about a crazy inventor in his garage.
With something that big, every politician would want to get her or his two cents in so there would be safeguards put into the system. Like adding a deadman switch to trains so that if the engineer dies the train won't continue to be powered. In this case it would be more like a mass shut off.

[emprimaker]

BermudaTri a écrit :

But the story leading up to Ixion is so poorly planned, downright in-ex-plicable...

Back to Ixion: the Tiqqun has an untested warp drive. Send in the monkeys! Make a tiny ship, warp it from one space station to another. Did it work? Did the space stations get exploded? Are the monkeys inside out? No? Great! Move onto larger jumps. Supposedly, the entire solar system is colonized, so there's no reason not to gradually ramp up the power and hop around the entire system a bunch while looking for side effects. Then, you send a probe. A satellite whose sole purpose is to beep back and say "I arrived". Try it at 1 light year away, then 2 light years, then...

This is the way a machine this big and important would be built. Every politician would be lobbing for a test program exactly like this. Once even a whif of any problem associated with a nearby mass and there would be a near by mass shut off regulator added in.
There would also be engineers, scientists, managers and sundry infiltrated into the crew to ensure that surprises would be nearly impossible.

[BermudaTri]

Random Task a écrit :

That's because you apparently did not actually read my entire comment. They key part of which was the word "microscopic". If you don't like engines then look at computers. At one point computers filled up entire floors of buildings in order to carry out very basic functions. They had less computing power than the phones that fit into our pockets now. What is the smallest size this engine can be produced and still function with the level of technology available in this game? I don't know, but it's possible that "space station sized" is the answer and "probe sized" is a level of miniaturisation they aren't capable of producing.

You still tried to defend this with "no one could make a *tiny* steam engine first", and I will laugh until you go back, edit your comment, and pretend you never said it. Moving onto computers, that's a better analogy until you think about it for more than 10 seconds. Computers are advanced, but their core concept can still be demonstrated on your fingers. It was shown, very early on, that computing did not cause explosions.

You may not believe it, but universities would've been more cautious about computers if they had a chance of causing explosions.

Let's skip the bad anologies and move onto the good analogy: nuclear fission. Radioactivity is documented in 1896, its cause (elements breaking down into smaller elements) discovered in 1900. Literally that same year Ernest Rutherford figured out the amount of energy being given off over time and pointed out that if you released it all at once you'd have a dangerous bomb on your hands. Five years later, E=mc^2 is written to describe exactly how much.

To recap: scientists, especially physicists, are smart enough to spot bombs 5 years before equations describing them are written and more than 30 years before the first experiments are conducted.

I would also be fascinated to hear how you think a trillion-dollar space engine was conceived and built without a single test of its core concept, or how its core concept was discovered without, say, blowing up the planet that discovered it instantly.

[XANi]

@bermudatri and yet we still had nuke experiments that had WAY higher yield than predicted (like Castle Bravo), not everything can be predicted and even with safety margin ♥♥♥♥ can happen.

It's cool scene and completely fits what "Not-A-Elon-Musk" corporate leader would want for PR

[Bawkdragon]

Prehaps the reason the moon exploded was not the engine but a dark forest style weapon that targets civilization, that invent ftl before they can become a threat.

[veryinky]

Corporation making a mistake costing the lives of millions due to bad science has considerable precedent. Lead was widely acknowledged to be bad for health but Standard Oil and GM thought that tiny amounts would be safe in Ethyl Lead additive for gasoline. Turns out the safe amount of lead is 0.

As for the Ixion's jump drive, they might have known it couldn't be operated near a gravity well but miscalculated how "deep" is safe. Or given that the moon explosion was somewhere on the surface not a direct line from the Ixion to the middle of the Moon, there might have been a second drive under construction at a surface base and that one activated too due to some then unknown quirk of physics.

I really doubt that the corporation would intentionally blow up the moon.

[ploedman]

I'm fine with destroying the moon, as long it makes seens storywise.

[Ryan Blade]

I mean the space program is filled with tested devices and vehicle not working due to unforeseen issues. I remember the Challenger accident, and that was a vehicle that worked previously and a small thing out of tolerance caused a cascade of failures. They even made a movie about a big space failure, Apollo 13.

This is all with a government in charge that is actually concerned about safety and not a corporation that is concerned about profits.

[Doctor Zalgo]

veryinky a écrit :

I really doubt that the corporation would intentionally blow up the moon.

It was meant to be visible from earth so it could happen at the climax of the CEO's speech, it was a PR stunt gone wrong.

[Doctor Zalgo]

ryanblade a écrit :

This is all with a government in charge that is actually concerned about safety and not a corporation that is concerned about profits.

The CEO actually makes a talking point of how they moved faster than any country or corporation ever could.

In a way, it reminds me of Ol' Musky and his refusal to put LiDAR sensors on Tesla's because he thinks visuals should be just fine.

Ego overriding logical thinking.