Why are CFTs valuable?

[iain666]

There are millions of earth like worlds in the galaxy, more than there are inhabited systems. We've found tens of thousands of them in the last 18 months.

The buckyball enthusiasts have demonstrated that there can't be two planets in the galaxy more than 48 hours apart for a ship determined to get from A to B as fast as possible (and that's being generous) - and for NPCs you could have a crew of 3 or 4 pilots flying in shifts (even if a perfect buckyball autopilot is beyond the wit of 34th century people) so it wouldn't even be testing the limits of endurance like a 20+ hour solo buckyball run.

Terraforming must be orders of magnitude more expensive in both time and resources than settling an earth like world (although I suppose if the CFT was initially free of all life then you might avoid some costs dealing with an alien biology on the off chance it was compatible enough with ours to be dangerously infectious).

So why would anyone be terraforming any more to make CFTs valuable to UC?

 

[Katejina]

My best guess would be for resources. If they can make an atmosphere breathable, tehy can bring in cheap labor and not have to worry about large-scale PPE.

 

[iain666]

What resources can be worth the effort when there's all but guaranteed to be an uninhabited ELW less than an hour away that already has a breathable atmosphere? Even if you don't know where it is yet, finding it has to be quicker and cheaper than terraforming. ELWs are a subset of HMCs so the resources are likely to be the same most of the time.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

I think factoring distance and practicality into the reward model would make it even more ambiguous to explorers.

Plus, the big question for me remains, why are gas giants so worthless?

 

[Allitnil]

I think you can only make sense of the ED economy if you assume that what we experience is highly time compressed for game play purposes. Traders think in terms of round trips per hour, bounty hunters in kills per hour. Neither of these are remotely believable. But if you think of it as an economy where hyperspace jump duration is measured in hours or even days and SC is sub-light speed then it makes much more sense. In that scenario although we game players are never more than an hour (probably rather less) from an ELW, it would be more like a few weeks for the 'real' economy.

 

[trollson]

Colonies in remote systems may be unpopular when the Thargoids (or whoever ate the Thargoids) return.

Currently we only experience "small" ships which can make those trips. Assume that as ships increase in size, travel characteristics change - capitol ships don't seem to use the same jump mechanism as playable ships? If the background economy is services by currently-unseen bulk transports (Lynx anyone?) then this would re-scale the Universe.

 

[certhas]

First of all, "earthlike" doesnt automatically mean that the life you find on the surface is in favour to humans, there can be many life-threatening dangers like big carnivores, unknown diseases, poisonous plants or animals, even the proteins could be different and poisonous or at least not digestible.
Second as Allitnil already pointed out the ed universe doesnt "run" that fast like we players do.
Third, 40 jumps is pretty far away for a profitable trade route...

Terraformed Planets on the other side have huge benefits:
theres probably already another either terraformed Planet or Earthlike in the same System, so now we have 2 habitable worlds - a lot of space for ppl to settle and the possibility for a strong economy, you can terraform the Planet to your likes - with all the plants animals and stuff from earth itself - so you dont need to adapt to any endemic lifeforms (or eradicate them)...

 

[iain666]

Second as Allitnil already pointed out the ed universe doesnt "run" that fast like we players do.
Third, 40 jumps is pretty far away for a profitable trade route...

Third only counts if you assume second. Second does make it all seem a lot more sensible, so I'll run with that. If second doesn't hold then a 40 jump trade route is something effecively much more short range and manageable than getting first class post from Bristol to Aberdeen over night (which is a route that doesn't offer free fuel top ups once a minute to be used as required...)

 

[InMemoriamSirocco]

I think ELWs are actually much more difficult to settle, because their landmasses are already occupied by an alien ecosystem. The potential for biological hazards threatening human lives is much higher than on a terraformable world where all lifeforms would be introduced and therefore safe and tested.

 

[Traveller_GG]

I want to raise 2 points:

1. TFCs are preferred because you make them just like Earth, not the approximation of an Earth-Like
2. CFT actually hurts my eyes to look at. For the love of God, could you please edit the title? [ugh] [noob]

 

[Ralph Vargr]

I think ELWs are actually much more difficult to settle, because their landmasses are already occupied by an alien ecosystem. The potential for biological hazards threatening human lives is much higher than on a terraformable world where all lifeforms would be introduced and therefore safe and tested.

Bugs, and squishies, and AAAAAARRRGH.......

 

[iain666]

2. CFT actually hurts my eyes to look at. For the love of God, could you please edit the title? [ugh] [noob]

Nope, they're definitely CFTs