Just a thought to bounce off y'all, but what if one or more generation ships actually made it to their destination with the crew still alive, and actually started a colony as planned, and were living in isolation until we stumbled across them? Could there be some gameplay to be had there? I mean, they might have not developed FSD's, but they might have made their own designs of planetary and interplanetary vehicles? A lower tech colony might be a great consumer for high tech things like progenitor cells, but a great exporter of basic minerals? They might be hostile, they could be friendly, they could be... What do you think they would be I'd love to hear your thoughts on what we might find if we ever encountered an exclave stemming from a successful generation ship colonisation mission.
What if.... A generation ship actually started a colony rather than ending in tragedy?
- Thread starter VR Jay Le Chardon
- Start date
Nice Idea, let's go with it.
Those poeple would have used the parts of theire ship to construct everything necessary to survive at first. With help of theire space-machinery they could have initialised theire own self-sustaining biome. They would have had a need for strict marriage laws to prevent incest. But are they structured totalitarian with a omnipotent leader or are they structured in councils or trades? Do they employ a strong jurisdication to keep disciplin up?
Maybe a part of the crew has founded theire own colony - but they degenerated with incestious fallacies and follow one of theire most hideous and misguided individuals in a strange kind of cult, whilst the other colony trys to keep up strict disciplin with cruel police control?
Those poeple would have used the parts of theire ship to construct everything necessary to survive at first. With help of theire space-machinery they could have initialised theire own self-sustaining biome. They would have had a need for strict marriage laws to prevent incest. But are they structured totalitarian with a omnipotent leader or are they structured in councils or trades? Do they employ a strong jurisdication to keep disciplin up?
Maybe a part of the crew has founded theire own colony - but they degenerated with incestious fallacies and follow one of theire most hideous and misguided individuals in a strange kind of cult, whilst the other colony trys to keep up strict disciplin with cruel police control?
Why do you think some of the existing systems weren't started by gen ships?
A generation ship controlled by a sentient AI intended as an immortal benevolent autocrat reached its destination and established the colony. Everybody trusted the AI for better or worse until an uprising against it split the colony into a civil war.
The AI and its supporters won the war and ousted the remaining rebels into the wilderness where they devolved into some post apocalyptic primitive societies.
The AI ruled people prospered and established high tech colonies all over the planet.
While the rebels still try to prey on the high tech colonist, they pose no threat and never truly achieved a greater civilization.
The AI, to this day, stays immortal, benevolent and the autocrat of the colonists.
Now if this world would get discovered by the bubble, it could lead to some conflict considering sentient AIs have been outlawed.
The AI ruled people prospered and established high tech colonies all over the planet.
While the rebels still try to prey on the high tech colonist, they pose no threat and never truly achieved a greater civilization.
The AI, to this day, stays immortal, benevolent and the autocrat of the colonists.
Now if this world would get discovered by the bubble, it could lead to some conflict considering sentient AIs have been outlawed.
Does the Empire count as a generation ship that was successful? Or was their beginning something other than what could be considered a Generation Ship. I figured that lotsa populated systems around the bubble had Generation Ship origins, whether it's been specifically stated as part of the lore or not.
I'm not a lore expert of course, I've just scanned the wikis at some point in the past and am certainly forgetting details to everything.
I do like the idea of a separate group of humanity that gets established with different tech and isn't a part of known humanity though, and then they're discovered and there's difficulties with the assimilation.
I'm not a lore expert of course, I've just scanned the wikis at some point in the past and am certainly forgetting details to everything.
I do like the idea of a separate group of humanity that gets established with different tech and isn't a part of known humanity though, and then they're discovered and there's difficulties with the assimilation.
AFAIK there was a post, blog, stream where someone (I think it might have been Michael Brookes way back) from FDev said that 'quite a few' generation ships had 'in all probability' arrived at their destinations safely and in years following their establishing colony/s were approached by current era envoys from one or more of the three major powers but often remained 'independent' systems or went over to the Alliance. If I remember correctly there is at least one system in the bubble that I have visited, that the GalMap blurb for the system says ''they claim to be descendants of a generation ship that originally in the mists of time settled the system''...... I may have mis-remembered.
o7
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I really like this idea of making first contact.
+1
+1
Basically this. I believe all successful sub-light colonies were brought back into the fold.
Deleted member 38366
D
I think Gameplay opportunity exists, IF....
- one of the Colony Ships stumbled onto a Singularity or fumbled with their Propulsion (mid-flight science experiments) and ended up "somewhere" more or less successfully, just much further from the planned Destination
- from there on, it (in conjunction with AI) developed into a significant Nucleus and became an independent space-faring Colony at least on a System-wide level
That'd allow to put such an oddball into an oddball place, with different technology and - barred from any Communication with the old worlds - vastly different laws & society.
At 1st contact, they might not even appear human, due to unknown Signatures and a decayed/different language.
But then, we're talking about static and dead assets that merely got some LogFiles with zero Gameplay so far.
So it'd be quite far-fetched to see heavily fleshed out ideas evolving from that.
- one of the Colony Ships stumbled onto a Singularity or fumbled with their Propulsion (mid-flight science experiments) and ended up "somewhere" more or less successfully, just much further from the planned Destination
- from there on, it (in conjunction with AI) developed into a significant Nucleus and became an independent space-faring Colony at least on a System-wide level
That'd allow to put such an oddball into an oddball place, with different technology and - barred from any Communication with the old worlds - vastly different laws & society.
At 1st contact, they might not even appear human, due to unknown Signatures and a decayed/different language.
But then, we're talking about static and dead assets that merely got some LogFiles with zero Gameplay so far.
So it'd be quite far-fetched to see heavily fleshed out ideas evolving from that.
Some of the ships made it to their destinations. But what I don't understand is that given that there was around 70,000 generation ships launched, why have we only ever found a handfull of them. With the fss scanner now you'd have thought that there would have been thousands discovered now. I genuinely don't think FDev have put many in the game.
Well that was kind of what I was wondering, and presuming the generation ships were sub-light, but almost translumial, say 0.8-0.9c, and around a thousand years from departure to now, it is a very big search zone we have. But I see no reason we couldn't stumble across old tech sublight human colonies ~700-900 LY from sol.
I've spent the morning on canonn's website going through all the generation ships, there was one in particular that I had seen my self in game, but couldnt mind its name, but reading through the lot of them there were some interesting finds. There was one of the generation ships, the Venusian, that seemed to have been caught by more modern pirate humans who enslaved the occupants, it was interesting as they mentioned these pirate ships first following them then entering supercruise, I thought supercruise was after the generation ships? There was also another one where the crew did make it down to a planet only to find the wildlife too wild for them, RIP the crew of the Phobos.
Another generation ships logs were more optimistic, it gave me hope of finding at least one exclave of generation ship colonists, coincidentally the ships name was the spear of hope. The logs we get from the datalink terminals are written from the perspective of a technician, who took a year round trip to repair/retrieve one of the few remaining long range sensor probes used to scan planets, but after completing that mission they came back to a ghost ship. Their logs continue essentially stating that the crew had, in his absence, found a viable planet and jumped onto it with a full on evacuation, five thousand people left the ship in about an hour. So the remainder of the crew made it planetside, but did their colony succeed or flounder?
And the same existential question could be asked of the lazarus expedition's numerous deployments, essentially they had a catastrophic systems failure that rendered their propulsion system inoperable and irreparable, so they cannibalised the lazarus (their generation ship) and built an unspecified number of "life ships" each of which was launched towards a different, relatively close by, habitable planet, as they were not keen on the idea of "putting all our eggs in one basket so to speak".
Meanwhile we know the atlas found a suitable planet and launched their crew at it, what became of them? The logs we read are written by a technician who was the last man onboard, given the evacuation required them to have one man onboard to launch the pods, and he having volunteered for the unenviable task of being that guy.
So of our sample size of fifteen, we know of three genaration ships that likely produced colonies, in the case of the lazarus, maybe multiple colonies, so approximately 20% managed to put their personnel on a colonizable planet. Given teh figure of 70,000 generation ships launched, that gives us hope of there being 14,000 colonies started thus. Assuming not all such settlements succeed, ala the fate of the phobos colonists, and taking that as a ratio, 1 in three attempts we know ended in misery, say one in two ended in misery, that still leaves 7,000 settlements. Yes some of them will be chewed up by superpowers, or evolved into modern independent systems, even say two thirds of those colonies reintegrated, that leaves us with ~2,700 succesful gen.ship colonies to find
If anyone ants to read more on the generation ships, I highly recommend canonn's awesome codex;
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ships/
From which I read all the logs, and referenced the four most likely/relevant to this thread story lines with an abridged version of the narrative;
https://canonn.science/codex/lazarus-expedition/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-atlas/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-spear-of-hope/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-phobos/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ships/
From which I read all the logs, and referenced the four most likely/relevant to this thread story lines with an abridged version of the narrative;
https://canonn.science/codex/lazarus-expedition/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-atlas/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-spear-of-hope/
https://canonn.science/codex/generation-ship-phobos/
It would be a great idea with a lot of gameplay and associated CG but Frontier is not developing anything cool before the end of 2020 so we can forget it for the moment.....
GOOD idea though! It does show that there is HUGE scope for story based content within the bare bones of Elite Dangerous needing only the time, resources and WILL of the developers to add-in depth. Nice one commander!
o7
I think the problem is that although the generation ships don't have supercuise ability, their engines are really powerful and propel them at speeds in normal space that our ships aren't anywhere near capable of reaching. With that being said, our slowest supercuise speed far exceeds the generation ships max speed. So with that in mind, there probably are still many generation ships out there with thriving colonies on board that we pass by without even realising they are they.
The lore doesn't really explain why we can't pick up their signals with the fss scanner though.
The lore doesn't really explain why we can't pick up their signals with the fss scanner though.
