Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Oh, sure, some projects ran into trouble.

Thank goodness people took the risks anyway, or architecture would not have advanced as it did.

I think limiting your analysis to the lives of the builders is missing the point. These things were built over a period of many years, not infequently more than a generation. They remain standing today, having been maintained/improved over the certuries for the benefit of generations of people.

Now, before you get excited, I'm not comparing putting up a big church to radically altering an entire planet. At the TLs we see in the OTU, radical, fullscale terraforming would be hideously expensive and very long term for almost anybody with the resources to do it. It doesn't really compare to the cathedrals, momunmental undertakings though they were. It's several orders of magnitude past anything humans have ever built.

Does this mean terraforming of worlds like Mars or Venus would be impossible in the OTU? Nope, it's not impossible. I doubt that very many people would bother trying it, though, and I expect that even fewer would finish.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I think your assumptions about 'infinitely variable human motives' are wrong, but this isn't the time or the place for a long and dreadfully boring philosophical discussion.


It seems you like more terraforming in IYTU. I really don't give a darn if you justify this by Rule of Cool or by the idea that you have about 'infinitely variable human motives.'

What matters to me is the game. Tell us about some terraformed worlds IYTU. Since terraforming seems to be relatively common IYTU, there must be some interesting examples.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Malenfant, why didn't you include this last part of my post in your response?

You seem to have missed that I'm on the 'terraforming is a dubious proposition' end of the scale.

By cutting out the quoted section, you made it seem as if I was arguing against the position I've taken IMTU. I don't know if that was your intention, but it is a little confusing.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I don't mind when you guys cut and paste quotations, but please read the whole thing before responding. My take on this has been clear and consistent from the beginning:

I see terraforming in the TU as a very expensive, extremely long term project that's rarely undertaken, and even less often completed. Other options are usually better, faster, cheaper, and easier.

Still, there may be some unusual situations in which someone actually decides to do it and sees it through. The Ancients, who had incredible technology and resources, certainly did a lot of it.

There is no such thing as 'the right way' to interpret the OTU, and so I respect everyone's various interpretations of the game setting. What seems plausible or fun to me may seem implausible or unfun to someone else. All this is normal and good.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I reject that argument. Motives always have reasons and rationales - even if they don't make sense to others, they make sense to the people involved in them.


No, it isn't. We may not be able to follow what's going on in such a civilisation, but that doesn't mean that "anything goes". They'll be as constrained by laws of physics, chemistry and biology as we are, and as we were 5000 years ago. True, those laws may have expanded a bit as our knowledge increases, but the fundamental constraints are still there.


Well, no. Which is why civilisation as presented in the OTU is very unrealistic IMO, since it's so similar to our own.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Because it wasn't relevant to what I was saying, and I agreed with that last part? I was commenting more about the fact that people use the argument that you raised about adding more crazy stuff because crazy stuff was there already, not that you necessarily believed that yourself.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

They aren't really that much more advanced than we are. The pace of their technological advancement fits into the retarded safetech Ultra-tech category. Of course the assumption that things will continue to advance at the same rate they have been since the industrial revolution is in fact another form of those "the future will be like the present" assumptions, only one that isn't very useful for roleplaying purposes.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Haven't read the whole thread, but for me terraforming comes down to cost-benefit analysis.

As the history of the Imperium proceeds the cost-benefit of terraforming will slowly shift towards terraforming as more and more habitable worlds are taken and colonized. Likewise with the various other species who have inhabited the galaxy over the millennia. Other species may have "terraformed" a world to their particular liking: methane atmosphere, water or desert environment, colder or warmer, which is why it looks weird to human eyes.

Early in it's history I could see the Imperium or a mega-corp dropping a few chunks of ice and some O2-producing bacteria on someplace like Mars and coming back in 200 years to see what happened. Organizations like that think far enough ahead and on a scale that makes that a definite possibility, even a probability. I don't see them trying to terraform a Venus-like world in that same era. As better worlds get used up that would change. Worlds like Ganymede and eventually Venus would become viable terraforming candidates at least in some circumstances.

What would NEVER happen is the terraforming of a world when other options remain consistently more cost effective. Until a ST-esque "Genesis" technology is developed terraforming Luna, Jupiter, Mercury, etc will NEVER be more cost effective than the alternatives: Sealed planet based habitats, orbital habitats, robotic mining... etc.

I don't think that "IRL" terraforming would be QUITE as common as it seems to be in Traveller... but given the history of the galaxy and the various precursors to Humaniti it wouldn't exactly be unusual or even uncommon.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

Fair enough. I think you can see why it was a bit confusing, though.

Re: Terraforming in the OTU
 

I'm sorry that my initial posts favored that criticism. I now know that just because the base settings include quite a few impossibilities doesn't mean that players want to add any more.