[Spaceships] [Ultra-Tech] Building yet another Space Opera setting

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I'm a little bemused at the choice to have both gates and hyperspace, but I suppose that works. If the empire's control is based around gates, it means the best way to get away from them is to go off somewhere away from the gate network.

You didn't give a speed fore the warp drives. The default speed in spaceships for warp drives is ironically identical to the speed you gave for hyperspace. Which means the two sides have the same speed, as long as they're going from empire world to empire world.

Are you including other aliens, or just humans and precursors?

Also you always have to explain how the gates got there in the first place.

And it provides a ready made point of political intrigue; someone wants a planetary big-shot's help to build a portal system through their territory. Call up analogies with German-Ottoman negotiations in the 1800s over railroads.

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Also you always have to explain how the gates got there in the first place.

And it provides a ready made point of political intrigue; someone wants a planetary big-shot's help to build a portal system through their territory. Call up analogies with German-Ottoman negotiations in the 1800s over railroads.

I'm not sure this analogy applies. Humans covered six continents long before the invention of the railroad. Whereas FTL, in this setting, was the main means of colonization.

Related to colonization: I'm not sure how many roughly Earth-like planets to have in the Empire. I'm using "roughly Earth-like" loosely here, to include what Space calls ocean worlds, and many with marginal atmospheres. I think about 1 per few hundred cubic parsecs is consistent with current science, if I'm not leading myself astray with Google.

I think I want an Empire roughly a hundred parsecs across, maybe slightly less, that way it can be crossed in three months. So you could get several hundred significant extrasolar planets, though I think this is going to be early enough in humanity's colonization of the galaxy that a million inhabitants counts as "significant." Some rough math gives me around 5 billion humans and parahumans living outside the Sol system, whereas Space suggests Earth might support 20 billion at TL10.

This IIUC actually fits with how a lot of historic empires have worked—the major population centers can be much more densely populated than the fringes. I think the Empire might have better than a 200:1 population advantage over the Space Elves, for whatever that's worth in balance of power (perhaps not much, given strong self-replicating AI in the hands of Space Elves).