A human settlement, everywhere?

[exioce]

Was just thinking on this topic and mapping it to the real world as we know it. Unless there is an international agreement, wherever there's a spot of empty unclaimed land some nation state has raced to plant their flag on it. They'll occasionally do it when the land is not empty and unclaimed too.

In the ED universe, we have of course three competing powers, and I can't imagine that they would let all those empty systems go unclaimed. Even if we've reached past the point of scarcity to effectively unlimited resources the Feds, Imps, and Neuts would all want to plant their flag where they could as a precautionary measure.

There are physical and logistical limits, naturally - there probably aren't the people or the infrastructure for continual expansion to the ends of the galaxy, but if we as mere explorers can jury rig our ships to go far and wide, rationally we should never be able to reach further than these powers with all their resources.

I guess what I'm asking for is an in-game fiction explanation as to why the three powers have stopped expanding, why we independents can and will reach further than their immensely powerful navies. Any thoughts?

 

[Pyros]

Was just thinking on this topic and mapping it to the real world as we know it. Unless there is an international agreement, wherever there's a spot of empty unclaimed land some nation state has raced to plant their flag on it. They'll occasionally do it when the land is not empty and unclaimed too.

In the ED universe, we have of course three competing powers, and I can't imagine that they would let all those empty systems go unclaimed. Even if we've reached past the point of scarcity to effectively unlimited resources the Feds, Imps, and Neuts would all want to plant their flag where they could as a precautionary measure.

There are physical and logistical limits, naturally - there probably aren't the people or the infrastructure for continual expansion to the ends of the galaxy, but if we as mere explorers can jury rig our ships to go far and wide, rationally we should never be able to reach further than these powers with all their resources.

I guess what I'm asking for is an in-game fiction explanation as to why the three powers have stopped expanding, why we independents can and will reach further than their immensely powerful navies. Any thoughts?

Physical and logistical limits - economic limits actually. IF you spread too thin, you weaken your core - so in a state of three powers, your ability to expand is limited by your ability to expand well.

Lots of land area of Earth went "unclaimed" for quite some time. And even when claimed many of those initial claims didn't stand due to lack of actual presence. You can implicitly say that in ED universe, claims must be supported by military presence.



In the galaxy 400 billion stars... ahem.

 

[Philip Coutts]

Yup the sheer scale of space is mind boggling. I would expect that during the game we will see fairly rapid expansion with a lot of minor scuffles and potentially some major scraps when valuable commodities are discovered.

 

[exioce]

Physical and logistical limits - economic limits actually. IF you spread too thin, you weaken your core - so in a state of three powers, your ability to expand is limited by your ability to expand well.

Lots of land area of Earth went "unclaimed" for quite some time. And even when claimed many of those initial claims didn't stand due to lack of actual presence. You can implicitly say that in ED universe, claims must be supported by military presence.



In the galaxy 400 billion stars... ahem.

True, but would it not be a simple thing to send a shipful of a few mating pairs to the nearest thousand systems, and have the ships reassemble themselves into habitation and hydroponic pods? Just, y'know, so we can say we were the first there and have the evidence to prove it? What's a thousand ships and a few thousand guinea p... er, valued citizens to us when we have hundreds of thousands of ships and tens of billions of people? I know that's what those filthy Imps are thinking and us Feds can't let them get ahead of the game!

 

[exioce]

Yup the sheer scale of space is mind boggling. I would expect that during the game we will see fairly rapid expansion with a lot of minor scuffles and potentially some major scraps when valuable commodities are discovered.

I would really love the idea of colony ships sent out by the major powers to claim their uninhabited neighbour systems, and that player actions could impact the growth (destruction, even) of those colonies.

 

[insanephoton]

In some ways, there's little point in claiming a system if you don't have the means to defend it. Given that the 3 major powers are in a state of cold war and there have been hints of numerous minor powers, I imagine that they all fear overstretching themselves. Unless there is a pressing need to expand or the prize is really worth it, the major powers wouldn't bother.

If you think of the European settlement of North America, it took a long time to expand west. It only happened after the settlements on the east coast had become well established. In the same way, it might be that the major powers aren't too bothered about a few pioneers going off an settling a planet until it becomes well established.

 

[Pyros]

True, but would it not be a simple thing to send a shipful of a few mating pairs to the nearest thousand systems, and have the ships reassemble themselves into habitation and hydroponic pods? Just, y'know, so we can say we were the first there and have the evidence to prove it? What's a thousand ships and a few thousand guinea p... er, valued citizens to us when we have hundreds of thousands of ships and tens of billions of people? I know that's what those filthy Imps are thinking and us Feds can't let them get ahead of the game!

Without protection, a single "pirate" ship could transform those valued guinea p... I mean citizens into fertilizer, and no other power would acknowledge they had anything to do with the supposed pirate (except to state they have no proof that the guinea.. well.. fertilizer was ever a colony).

And when you have dozens of thousands of systems, considerable costs for supply lines and expansion, issues of independent colonies (some worlds could go rogue on their original allegiance) you must select carefully where to apply your resources.

Of course it would make sense to see systems being claimed by the different powers - and switching sides also.

 

[Hamerstein]

As I understand it, ED is set at the advent of large scale human expansion. In one of the early updates Michael Brookes explained that we'd have a core of systems that marked human expansion, surrounded by frontier systems (the kind of place that colony ships would be travelling to/inhabiting). Beyond that is the unexplored expanse of the galaxy.

While there might be many systems within the human sphere of influence that no power has colonised, there can be very good reasons for it. No inhabitable planets (terraforming is costly and time consuming, even if it exists) and the colonisation of a system by a power would have to be justified by what the system offers to the power - either strategic or economic. The sheer logistics of colonising a system would take an enormous amount of time and resources, even if there were benefits to doing so. Planting your flag somewhere isn't sufficient to retain control, it just makes you a target for other interested parties unless you have the capacity to defend what you've claimed.

The obvious game reason is if everything was already trod by humanity, there wouldn't be many exciting things for us to do when the game starts .

 

[popuptoaster]

There is also not much point sending out scouts to look for valuable resources if you already have plenty of them, things that are further away cost more to retrieve so until it becomes economically necessary then why bother?

Besides buying the information from an independent explorer who's found something interesting should be cheaper than manning your own missions and looking for yourself.

 

[Pyros]

And remember bureaucratic law #1: everything the government does, costs triple

 

[Capt. Hook]

I suppose as the maxim goes, possession is 9/10ths of the law, meaning if you stick a flag on a rock you need to hang onto it to stay yours essentially. So claiming a rock somewhere in space is yours when someone else already has a base there is pretty moot. Kinda like what might happen to all those folks who think they own slices of the moon; do you really think the Chinese or Russians or whoever would give a damn about a piece of paper when deciding where to set up their base?

Mind you, Eddie Izzard would disagree through the cunning use of flags:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6RhIx6US6Q

 

[Ayo]

New hyperspace travel technology has only just been invented that turn a journey that would have taken a week now only take a few seconds.

New settlements on the frontier are vulnerable, it takes resources to protect them.

The shear number of places beyond the frontier that could be colonised mean that even sending a ship out every week to put a settlement in each unoccupied system, it would take a long time before the distance between the core and the edge of the frontier to get noticeably further.