The Galnet article begs the question are there occupied generation ships out there waiting to be found?
Generation Ship Thetis found
- Thread starter Rhaider
- Start date
Nevermind the occupied generation ships*, where is this: "most of them arrived and settled on a distant world"?
Can this world be found in-game currently? Has it been and I just don't know? Did David really mean "a" distant world, and not "distant worlds", plural?
Might one of the permit locked systems out there perhaps be one colonised by a generation ship?
There's an undiscovered human faction out there, isn't there? Perhaps even living in harmony with, or subjugated by Thargoids/Guardians....time to let the old imaginations run riot again.
*Not really, finding a manned generation ship would be cool too, of course.
Can this world be found in-game currently? Has it been and I just don't know? Did David really mean "a" distant world, and not "distant worlds", plural?
Might one of the permit locked systems out there perhaps be one colonised by a generation ship?
There's an undiscovered human faction out there, isn't there? Perhaps even living in harmony with, or subjugated by Thargoids/Guardians....time to let the old imaginations run riot again.
*Not really, finding a manned generation ship would be cool too, of course.
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I interpreted that to mean each ship found a world, just not the same one.
Strictly speaking, every ELW planet in the Bubble is a "distant world", in the frame of reference of Earth.
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I would assume many worlds, as the gen ships found so far are not all heading in the same direction.
Ozric
Volunteer Moderator
A lot of the systems in the bubble. A lot of the first ones colonised nearby systems to Sol and then spread out from there. As time went by and advances in technology were made and so the generation ships could travel further quicker and so were sent on longer journeys. Then with the advent of the FSD the rest of the bubble could be colonised more easily. Distance is relative
I had guessed that some portion of the populated systems inside the bubble were first settled by such generation ships. Those which successfully arrived setup up living and making their way on these new worlds. The actual Generation ship hulls they traveled in, hundreds of years ago, could well be long disassembled or re-used on the new homeworld. Today all we see is the more modern starports and outposts in those systems, which were constructed there by the more recent ancestors of those original voyagers.
No - most of them arrived and settled on a distant world. Much as the settlement from Europe by the numerous vessels that followed Columbus to settle the US, and later the wagon trains across the US. They took big risks, but most arrived successfully. Nevertheless we are still finding the odd shipwreck from that period that didn't make it.
If they only lost some of their population, the rest would work for their lives to repair/recover if possible and so get to their destination. It is those where they all died (for whatever reason) that we can still find.
Is it possible that there are any lost colonies out in space - generations ships that lost contact with the rest of humanity but managed to settle somewhere? Presumably they'd have to be FSD equipped as any colonies in the bubble would be found.
There could be some Generation Ships that, over time, developed their own FTL and settled much further away than their original target. We may not have found them yet...
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Possible but it seems unlikely. Depends on the failure mode (and whether FDEV decided to make it happen). Humanity was in contact with the gen ships as they traveled (see galnet post above), they weren't fire and forget planet seeding bullets. So any ship that's lost is one that has suffered a significant failure of some sort.
None of them have FSDs since that was invented long after the last gen ship so any 'lost colony' would be in the bubble and fairly close to Sol. It's hard to envision how they'd survive without being discovered.
I guess there could be other colonies out there though. Like groups trying to set up their own utopia somewhere, or religious fanatics who set off into the void equipped with some sort of FTL. They could easily become disconnected with civilisation in such scenarios. A similar thing could happen to Colonia if there was some sort of collapse of civilisation either out there or in the bubble.
Lost colonies are quite likely - but in the current state they would be locked behind inhabitable non landable planets. At most we could find a beacon or the remains of their ship in orbit.
This is what I'm interested in. I have no interest in dead ships.
This I agree with. I fully expect the expansion of landable ELW's will come with it the discovery of previously unknown colonies. A bit jarring from a gameplay immersion perspective of why weren't they there before but ultimately you just have to suspend belief to make way for the realities of game development.
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No - most of them arrived and settled on a distant world. Much as the settlement from Europe by the numerous vessels that followed Columbus to settle the US, and later the wagon trains across the US. They took big risks, but most arrived successfully. Nevertheless we are still finding the odd shipwreck from that period that didn't make it.
If they only lost some of their population, the rest would work for their lives to repair/recover if possible and so get to their destination. It is those where they all died (for whatever reason) that we can still find.
Now I want to know if there'd be any existing space stations in the bubble that are built from the remains of one of the successful generation ships...? With space construction, I'd think it would be the sensible thing to do, to convert and adapt what you've got rather than break down, scrap, and construct from scratch....
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At that time, colonists would have little use for a space station for ships that did not exists. The ship would rather be thoroughly dismantled to recycle its materials.
But surely it would serve as a spaceborn base of operations for the colonization project? Would they really take it all apart over time and bother transporting it to the planet and recycling all of it when they can just use the planet's resources for much cheaper? It'd be far easier to leave the ship orbiting the planet, surely? If so, where's it go throughout the centuries? Look at how much junk is floating around Earth nowadays in a mere, what, half a century of space exploration?
All in all I'd fully expect to find out some of the space stations we see in the human bubble were once generation ships that have been adapted, upgraded, converted, and gradually rebuilt as time has gone by. Maybe that's even the hidden lore behind one of the kinds of large space station types we can see in the game?
Plus, we have Jaques as proof that a space station with engines (and a supermassive intra-galactic FSD) is pretty much a generation ship.
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But surely it would serve as a spaceborn base of operations for the colonization project? Would they really take it all apart over time and bother transporting it to the planet and recycling all of it when they can just use the planet's resources for much cheaper? It'd be far easier to leave the ship orbiting the planet, surely? If so, where's it go throughout the centuries? Look at how much junk is floating around Earth nowadays in a mere, what, half a century of space exploration?
All in all I'd fully expect to find out some of the space stations we see in the human bubble were once generation ships that have been adapted, upgraded, converted, and gradually rebuilt as time has gone by. Maybe that's even the hidden lore behind one of the kinds of large space station types we can see in the game?
Plus, we have Jaques as proof that a space station with engines (and a supermassive intra-galactic FSD) is pretty much a generation ship.
To use planetary resources you have to set up mining, processing and industrial facilities first - but to set up the facilities you need the resources first. Ops! That's why you need to dismantle the ship: to use its resources for a jumpstart.
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