Generation Ships: All you need to know

Sapyx

Sapyx
A generation ship travelling at 0.2c, travelling the 114 LYs distance and arriving at Lave in 2752, would have launched in 2179, which is entirely feasible. It does seem likely to me that Lave, as an "early" and popular destination, would have been the target of several generation ships. As I stated in my OP, with 70,000 launches, there simply aren't enough ELWs to go around.

What do I mean by "early"? "Old lore" (dating from FE2) states that the Lave bubble was a remote outpost, colonized long before surrounding stars - not entirely like a third-millennium version of Colonia. The region is called the "Old Worlds" because they were amongst the earliest colonies. Given that Achenar was colonized in the 2200s, 2752 does not sound "early" to me.

"Stealing a generation ship" is kind of like stealing an oil tanker: sounds lucrative in theory, but much more difficult in practice. The Venusian is one generation ship we know of that met with foul play from outside; they didn't steal it, simply raided it for slaves (and presumably other salvageables) and abandoned the hulk in place. If you wanted a megaship, it would be cheaper - and more reliable - to do what Jaque did, and simply fit a hyperdrive onto a space station.
 
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Mishkazz

M
hello...thanks

Frontier puzzles like Thargoids; Hiding images inside audio logs is, lets say... is extreme to say the least... Therefore who is to say what are the limits to solving any ED puzzle...?
Granted; "Generation Ship" are not fleshed out enough to actually go anywhere (At least at first glance)... Never-the-less, they are set puzzle pieces in the game to find.... So far 15 abandoned Gen Ships are account for... (Yes that maybe all of them)

In my opinion RAXXLA is not in the game as of yet.... However it stand to reason to be the perfect paid content (Exploring a New Galaxy) for the late 2020 release....
Regardless of RAXXLA, the new codex gives us a location of the "The Dark Wheels" main ship/operation.... Behind the 8 moon of a Gas giant... hence that has to be in the game....

Yes LAVE was the starting point for ELITE in the first game and the introduction to the "Dark Wheel".... at some point they acquired a "Mega/station Ship" and went off somewhere...?
What we do know is that a LAVE colony ship arrived 2752 +/- Yes a fair question ACHENAR in 2200 i have no answer... Yes the time line is in question....

Given there are 50,000 + plus Orbital Stations in the game, none of which are abandoned not even to Thargoid's.... Yet there are claimed 70,000 Gen Ships in the game that all where abandon on settled worlds, stripped for parts, crashed, lost etc....
It is more plausible that settle world used there Gen ships as orbital stations (hence the term) , repaired, converted, upgraded over time....
Ergo, if we cut off the front shield of a Gen ship, then the 2 rings, spokes, cargo rack & motors is a close enough match to the silhouette in the Codex.... To at-least question what type of station that is...

For the sake of the chat i am going to name the Generation rocket motor/engines after you "SAPYX mark 1 rockets" given it is your "speed maths" that we are working with... (Hope that's Cool)....
It is a five cone slow burner booster rocket quite common due to excellent fuel / power ratio... That may run on methane gas for further slow burn.... Given 3000 colonialist on a ship... farting/etc.... This could mean after sling shooting out of the system to a slow long term acceleration that could last decades +...

We know that they cant simple stop... but they could however course correct, even sling shot, forage on moons & rocks....

We also know that the SAPYX mark 1 rockets could be multi-rigged as per the Generation ship ATLAS who has 3 SAPYX mark 1 rockets with 15 booster cones.... Add to this, these excellent rockets are still in service today on the Nick Tagney Mega-freighters....

The point of all this is narrowing down travelling time into a more suitable model.... currently .19 of a Ly or 6 years = 1ly... are we say ATLAS travelled for 2 years per 1ly...?
Yes it depends on the mass ratio to your rockets... Never-the-less currently the distance answer is minimum 278ly ?

cheer Stu
 

Assimilator1

Assimilator1
Sapyx
Re
How many generation ships were launched?
The official answer is "about 70,000". Personally, I find this number difficult to accept (for reasons outlined below), but both Drew Wagar and the devs in FD have quoted this number, so I suppose it must be accepted as canon. If production peaked in the 26th century, then I would estimate that about 50,000 starships would have been launched in that 100-year period. That's an average of 1.36 launches per day. The industrial output required to build, fit out and launch so many giant starships must have been prodigious.

I think an output of 1.36 gen ships per day is an unrealistic amount. Maybe this has been covered before, but.....

How about that peak production came much earlier?, seeing as their was (apparently) an urgent need to leave Earth then it seems plausible they would have ramped up production (relatively) quickly & early.
So perhaps near max production was achieved from about 2200 & was sustained until about the 2650s (or even slightly later), then a rapid drop off as reliable hyperdrives made them obsolete. So rather than the production curve looking like a power graph from a 21st century petrol internal combustion engine, it looks more like the torque curve of a turbo diesel ICE from the same era, if you follow me ;).

In which case, if we make an assumption that 95% of the 70,000 was made during that 450 yr period (so 66,500) that would work out to about 148/yr, ~12/mth & ~3/week, much more feasible! :)

Btw, the technician on the Spear of hope was a her ;)
 
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zimms

zimms
Sapyx said:
Yes, and adding that one will require a major re-write of the chapter on "will we find a live one?". :LOL:

Will get to doing that later tonight.
Click to expand...

Well, so far we've only found some audio logs, just like with all the others. We only know the crew was still alive when they recorded these. :p

(I know there's also the distress signal. ;) )
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
As I mentioned in the thread about the Golconda: all the other Gen Ship logs give an indication of the reason for the ship's abandoned state; the last log entry is usually from a final survivor, reporting the death or otherwise departure of everyone else aboard. With the Golconda, we don't have that... yet. So, the logical presumption would be that there's still a nearly-full complement of people on board.

I have also classified the Golconda mission as a "failure", even though everyone is (apparently) still alive onboard, because the whole point of launching these ships was to found colonies on other planets, and the Golconda crew's ancestors chose not to do so when they eventually Arrived, and the logs indicate a current lack of desire to ever do so; they wish to remain indefinitely on board a starship that was ultimately not designed for that purpose.
 

Assimilator1

Assimilator1
Nearly all are still alive ;) (6 died due to the virus). No worries on the update :).

TBH, to me it makes no sense they'd want to stay on a ship, regardless of the generations they've had living there, they are still homo sapiens and so have some desire, for sunlight & free space to name just 2 criteria. I totally get that they might want to remain isolated from the rest of humanity, but why not just settle down on an ELW outside of the bubble? Their not far from the edge of it now, of course getting to just the edge will take them sometime in their ship!
And true an ELW outside the bubble is no guarantee of no contact, but neither is staying coped up in an ancient obsolete (slow) ship!
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
I'm most interested to see if they keep the Golconda in orbit in Upaniklis, once the crew is evacuated (as will seem likely the case) to whichever base they get given. Either way, I will keep the entry in the OP.
 

EDanaII

EDanaII
Assimilator1 said:
TBH, to me it makes no sense they'd want to stay on a ship, regardless of the generations they've had living there, they are still homo sapiens and so have some desire, for sunlight & free space to name just 2 criteria. I totally get that they might want to remain isolated from the rest of humanity, but why not just settle down on an ELW outside of the bubble? Their not far from the edge of it now, of course getting to just the edge will take them sometime in their ship!
And true an ELW outside the bubble is no guarantee of no contact, but neither is staying coped up in an ancient obsolete (slow) ship!
Click to expand...

That's because their "desire" to stay on board is not based on any kind of reality. It's based on Elite's desire to explain away game-play. :) We ain't got space-legs, so, 'you can't board her, Commanders. Don't even think about it; they want nothing to do with you.'
 

bigcee75

bigcee75
Sin Alarma said:
Is it worth looking for other missing generation ships? were there more missing gen ships? or these 16 are all?
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Theres been no confirmation from frontier on how many are out there discoverable(i wish they would) I was the CMDR who discovered the Generation Ship Demeter without even looking for one, just got lucky. Most have listening posts usually 3 that help triangulate their position so if you come across one scan it, you never know, you might find the 17th
 
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