Generation Ships: All you need to know
- Thread starter Sapyx
- Start date
Pretty sure it's 13
Is is an actual generation ship, or is it a Demeter-class agricultural vessel?
It's a Generation ship
I'm new to this forum stuff and the answer is probably so obvious but what is OP? Sorry if my ignorance offends.
Original post or original poster, depending on the context.
Thank you
This is an awesome reference (only just spotted it - sorry!). I'll link it into the "reference lists" section of my sticky "Best of forum" thread and probably also onto the end of my own generation ship list over here.
Nice work OP!
Nice work OP!
Thanks, wish I could tell an epic story of exploration & discovery but sadly the truth is I just sorta bumped into it. Forum looks good and i will certainly be spending some time in there
Epimetheus added (number 14), as per this recent post.
This is the first of what I expect to become a rash of new Generation Ship discoveries, with the advent of the new scanner system in version 3.3 making detecting them much easier.
This is the first of what I expect to become a rash of new Generation Ship discoveries, with the advent of the new scanner system in version 3.3 making detecting them much easier.
Spear of Hope added (number 15), as per this thread.
The Spear of Hope seems to have relied on its own fleet of "pathfinder" probes to search ahead of it for a viable target. Either it's original target was unsuitable (or had been Arrived at by an earlier generation ship and the colonists did not want any more new arrivals) or this ship was launched as an "exploration" colony ship, with no clear goal in mind when it was launched.
We also see in this ship's logs how slower-than-light and hyperspace technology worked together, because the Spear of Hope also had at least one hyperspace-capable shuttle on board; a crewman had launched from the ship in the shuttle to repair one of the pathfinders, which was "light-years away" yet only six months travel time away; the only way that could have been true was if the shuttle had FTL capability.
The Spear of Hope seems to have relied on its own fleet of "pathfinder" probes to search ahead of it for a viable target. Either it's original target was unsuitable (or had been Arrived at by an earlier generation ship and the colonists did not want any more new arrivals) or this ship was launched as an "exploration" colony ship, with no clear goal in mind when it was launched.
We also see in this ship's logs how slower-than-light and hyperspace technology worked together, because the Spear of Hope also had at least one hyperspace-capable shuttle on board; a crewman had launched from the ship in the shuttle to repair one of the pathfinders, which was "light-years away" yet only six months travel time away; the only way that could have been true was if the shuttle had FTL capability.
Great post Sapyx, very interesting 
Btw, found a typo, thought their was a 2nd one, but I can't find it now so I must of mis-read it.
How long was a typical generation ship voyage, and how far away were their destinations?
The Thetis log implies that the 300 year long voyage up to the time of the tragedy was neither unexpected not abnormal
Btw, found a typo
, thought their was a 2nd one, but I can't find it now so I must of mis-read it.How long was a typical generation ship voyage, and how far away were their destinations?
The Thetis log implies that the 300 year long voyage up to the time of the tragedy was neither unexpected not abnormal
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Maybe a little off topic, but:
I don't get why generation ships became obsolete. They are still big expensive ships. I would think they would be turned into luxury ships to live in space with and have hyperdrives added too them. They would be insanely useful. They could also potentially be turned into intergalactic ships.. Assuming you can keep them running long enough to survive and not loose power to feed plants with etc. They could always be outfited.
I haven't read this thread enough yet, but have they all been found? I've been wondering about this in relationship to raxxla hunting. If we find them all maybe we'll find clues to raxxla. Either direct or indirect ones.
It would be cool if they would make these ownable ships as the are found. Maybe they give them up for users to use later in the game and we can fly them. Or there is enough interest and they are manufactured again in some way as flying bases. Might not even need to with 70,000 of them. Maybe be enough to actually have players own the actual ships. And dear god the crew count. And loss of crew if it ever dies. Definitely have to change the way we pay for crew on those.
I don't get why generation ships became obsolete. They are still big expensive ships. I would think they would be turned into luxury ships to live in space with and have hyperdrives added too them. They would be insanely useful. They could also potentially be turned into intergalactic ships.. Assuming you can keep them running long enough to survive and not loose power to feed plants with etc. They could always be outfited.
I haven't read this thread enough yet, but have they all been found? I've been wondering about this in relationship to raxxla hunting. If we find them all maybe we'll find clues to raxxla. Either direct or indirect ones.
It would be cool if they would make these ownable ships as the are found. Maybe they give them up for users to use later in the game and we can fly them. Or there is enough interest and they are manufactured again in some way as flying bases. Might not even need to with 70,000 of them. Maybe be enough to actually have players own the actual ships. And dear god the crew count. And loss of crew if it ever dies. Definitely have to change the way we pay for crew on those.
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You say it yourself.
The ships we use currently are alot easier to control and require less of an expertise then the generation ships. The people who piloted the first generations ships were barely able to get away from earth even after they escaped they still had trouble what makes you think theyd be good for galactic travel.
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Is the 50 year /light year limit for a generation ship a known thing from within the game? How was that number derived. If it's not from the game do we have any info on known limits and definition from the games perspective?
Do we know the limit of speed of the engines they used? Or what speeds they likely travelled at?
Do we know the limit of speed of the engines they used? Or what speeds they likely travelled at?
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Generation ships became obsolete because you no longer needed a giant, kilometres-long starship to found a colony. You could found a colony using much smaller, faster hyperdrive ships, once hyperdrive tech became cheap and reliable enough for that purpose.
These generation ships are a thousand years old, give or take a couple of centuries. Any abandoned generation ships still in space will have been in space far longer than their expected lifespan; they'd have been derelict for at least a couple of hundred years. "But nothing ever rusts or corrodes in space, so they should still be as good as new" is simply not true. Microstructurally-induced metal embrittlement, for example, happens slowly to all metals over time as the crystal structure of the metal slowly rearranges itself. A thousand-year-old piece of silver that could have been easily bent and twisted a thousand years ago would just snap in half if you tried to bend it today; ask any archaeologist who has ever found a mediaeval silver coin. This metal embrittlement happens, whether there is air nor not, whether there is gravity or not, and you can't make it go away without melting the piece of metal down and re-forging it. This is just one phenomena that we know could happen; we in the 21st century simply don't know what else can go wrong to a thousand-year-old derelict starship if you try to fly it, because we don;t have any thousand-year-old starships to test it on.
Nor would anyone in 3304 really want to fly an archaic relic. If you, a 21st century citizen, found the remains of a thousand-year-old Byzantine-era sailing ship adrift in the ocean, you wouldn't think "Let's slap a diesel engine on this thing and turn it into a modern cruise ship". You'd put it in a museum, while marveling at the circumstances that allowed it to survive to the present day. Likewise, it would be far cheaper (and safer) to build yourself a brand new megaship from scratch, rather than try to retrofit a FSD onto a fragile, archaic relic that needed hundreds of crew just to fly in a straight line.
Depends what you mean by "all".
"About 70,000" were launched. We haven't found "all" of those, and we aren't going to... the vast majority of them would have Arrived safely at their destinations and would have been dismantled by the colonists, so no longer exist in the ED universe.
We don't know if we've found "all" the Generation Ships that FD have added to the game - by definition, they're "mysteries"; FD haven't told us how many were added to start with, nor if they've been adding more of them in subsequent updates. But I doubt there are any Raxxla clues hidden aboard a generation ship; I think the whole Raxxla came after generation ships became obsolete. And each ship would have been launched separately by different companies and organizations, with no overall co-ordination - so there are no clues to anything that could be gleaned from studying the distribution of them throughout the Bubble.
The 58 year travel time for the Mayflower 97 is derived from the lore established in the earlier FE2 game; much of the other lore regarding the colonization of Tau Ceti has survived the transition to ED, so it seems reasonable this lore has as well. 11 light-years in 58 years gives an average speed of 0.2 c. We don't know how long the ships spent accelerating and decelerating, but it probably wasn't the entire journey, so the average speed is a reasonable extrapolation of the actual cruising speed for the voyage.
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