/tg/ - Traditional Games

>>77695679
>space worthy ships are rare and difficult to make
>The empire keeps a near monopoly on the few that exist to maintain their hold on the populous

>>77695679
I mean, when your best tactic involves depopulating every planet you come across from orbit, how many ships do you need?

>galaxy-spanning empire
>population numbering a few trillion at most

>>77695679
Anon... that was just the 775th scout fleet.

>>77695690
>I mean, when your best tactic involves depopulating every planet you come across from orbit, how many ships do you need?
Millions, to cover every possible attack vector.

>>77695679
The Milky way has 400 billion stars. That's 50+ stars for every person alive right now.

A planet like earth could potentially hold a population of a trillion+. This ignores megastructures.

Let's thus assume every star system being capable to keep a population of 0.25 trillion on average.

That's a solid 10^21 people living in the Galaxy. Now question is how many starships you'd need to effectively communicate between those? 10^15 seems reasonable. 1 starship per 1 million people.

>>77696059
10^23 and 10^18 sorry.

>>77696059
>earth could potentially hold a population of a trillion+
But how many could it reasonably support? Obviously difficult to measure and could easily be handwaved with future magic science

>>77696104
Vertical farming. If you make a 10 000 story building which is 1km wide you can put 10 000 square kilometres of farmland there.

That becomes possible and viable once nuclear fusion becomes a thing.

>>77695679
Which empire are you talking about?

>>77696185
You dont really need fusion for it either, though it certainly helps

Could always use Dyson swarm styled satellites to power the farms. That way you don't even need future tech, you could do it with things we have today

>>77696527
Then why is nobody doing it?

>>77696571
because the current system focuses on short term gains over anything else.

>>77695724
>>77696059
Population growth is slowing down everywhere even in Africa. Earth population will cap around 13 billion. Planet with trillion of people is complete bullshit.

>>77695724
Not all of it is inhabited. You think all the rocks in the ocean some country has claimed for themselves have people living on them?

>>77696571
Because 99% of the time "we could totally do X" ignores the fact that it's outright cheaper to do it as we have for like 20,000 years, and easier. Dyson farming would require a radical overhaul of transportation infrastructure alone. Local farming is just better for local communities, and naval shipping is adequate for the rest.

We cant even guarantee everyone on Earth gets adequate nutrition despite food wasting. Who the hell is going to write the check for this?? Who is going to build the 10,000 story farm? Im all for cool space stuff but at every juncture theres a fundamental question of "does it actually work BETTER" and "who is paying for it?"

>>77696706
It still make no sense that China is not investing on it, they are not afraid of those consequences, they faced it before without any regret.

>they fly towards each other, dock, and then swordfight

>>77696104
He's being a faggot. Earth is already suffering a mass extinction more rapid than any other in history with just under 8 billion people. Yes, if you think in terms of purely physical space the planet could fit that much. When you actually consider that nonhuman/livestock biomass is less than 5% of all large animals right now, and that sea plankton and bees are dying while phosphorous is being depleted, the situation is beyond fucked. We have so many problems we can't keep up with them and earth has no central government to tackle them all, so every nation loses out by fronting the cost on their own.

Future technologies will not help this. In fact our greatest existential risk this centuries will probably come from machine learning alongside ecological collapse.

>>77696185
Vertical farming is only efficient in terms of space. The actual yields and energy costs are fucking retarded.

>>77696657
There is no long term gain from living on an overpopulated shithole

A city like Coruscant would require like 100 other planets to sustain it and most of its locations would be a fucking shitworld where industrial gases congregate on the city floor

>>77695679
Unless your space empire has literally hundreds of inhabited planets that's very plausible. A couple of hundred ships would be more than enough to perform routine policing and deterrence without blowing a hole in the imperial budget, and if they have a functioning industrial base they should be able to ramp up numbers quickly if threats escalate.

>>77697062
>Earth is already suffering a mass extinction more rapid than any other in history with just under 8 billion people.
This is due to capitalism not population, even if the population was 2 billion shit would still be bad, even less than one billion would still have problems.

>>77696689
do you even know how big a galaxy is retard

>>77696059
But is it worthwhile to colonize all the planets? Most planets are probably barren and you need an expensive terraforming project just to make it habitable. Instead, you can do all the resource extraction automatically with drones. Even galaxy-wide empire might have just several dozens already habitable planets with population and the rest will be robot-only.

>>77695679
>sci-fi empire
>fleet numbering a few hundred ships at most


I mean, if those few hundred ships are REALLY FUCKING HUGE that wouldn't be so unreasonable.

Do you really need millions of ships if you just have 1 really fucking enormous ship that can glass planets and shit on moons?

>>77697062
Energy to yeald costs don't matter if you get effectively unlimited energy.

>>77695679

>>77697062
>The actual yields and energy costs are fucking retarded.
They really aren't.
Next thing, you gonna start shitting on hydroponics.

>>77697380
You need ships to protect your territory, a huge ship can't be everywhere, a huge ship can't protect every single industry or city from hit and run tactics or invasion.

>>77697825
Just have everything on the ships and use drones to gather materials, 'tis foolproof

>>77695679
You don't need a large navy when you have no equal to challenge you.

>>77697048
Sounds kino. Is there any kind of media product with this idea?

>>77697048
>Docking AND Fencing
L-lewd

>>77695679
Why assume that a 'sci-fi empire' is a certain size? Historical empires occupied less than a single planet. Even controlling Earth would make you the greatest empire in history.
>>77696185
>That becomes possible and viable once nuclear fusion becomes a thing.
So, never then.

>>77696571
pretty much this >>77696571
It's the same reason why only places like china are investing into nuclear/thorium and stuff. The up front cost and needed safety restrictions aren't profitable short term for greedworm companies to build them - because one of the reasons reactors are so amazing is their sheer long term efficiency and output running in the tens of decades+

>>77697062
unrestrained capitalism is what's fucking up the earth.
We're so deep down the waste train that with proper management a population double our current size could live comfortably as in middle class westerner comfortably without ruining it.

>>77697259
>This is due to capitalism not population
It's due to industrialisation and population. Capitalism is just an efficient way of industrialising societies, but the soviet union and pre- 'reform and opening up' China were massive polluters and states like Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cambodia only avoided doing the same by having completely fucked economies where they didn't produce much of anything.

>>77695679
>sending more than a few hundred of your empire’s ships to the same place

>>77698171
I don't think you understand the global interconnectivity of everything

>>77697344
Truth is it's a waste of time to "colonize" or terraform any planet that isn't nearly identical to Earth. What you want to do is just strip mine those planets directly to create thousands or millions of rotating habitats tailored specifically to whoever will be living in them, and then setting them in orbit around the sun. That way you can have millions of times the living area and population, compared to just making do with a planet of varying conditions.

>>77695686
Dune

>>77696059
>Let's thus assume every star system being capable to keep a population of 0.25 trillion on average.
Why? Even the planet we evolved on hasn't demonstrated the ability to sustain that many and we don't know how many human-habitable planets there are. We have little idea how close to Earth-like a world has to be for us to live there, how many planets in the galaxy meet those criteria, or how possible terraforming is. Could be one around almost every star, could just be Earth and nowhere else.
We also don't know how quickly we can reach other stars, nor what our odds of each colony going extinct before being able to reach the next star are. For all we know, the critical numbers might work out so that we never leave our solar system, or only colonize a handful of planets before going extinct.

>>77696904
>It still make no sense that China is not investing on it
Then maybe it's not actually nearly as practical as people say
Maybe everyone has more pressing matters
Maybe because when you start talking about things like "healthcare", "military spending", "establishing a surveillance state", "basic transportation infrastructure", "establishing a more reliable power grid", "radical innovations in cellular coverage and speed", etc., and you have one guy on the budget committee talking about how you could TOTALLY build a dyson farm out of Mercury and build a 10,000 story building if they press-gang the entire nation even harder than they already do, everyone is going to tell him to shut the fuck up and come up with a serious suggestion. China, USA, Europe don't have critical food security problems. None of them feel the juice is worth the squeeze for a vertical farm that could be seen from another province. So that leaves the places that WOULD benefit a lot from a giant vertical farm (tiny states like Israel or Singapore), and they don't have the population for it. Or places where the environment is not normally arable and they could artifically make it (parts of Africa or the ME). Except Africa can't afford something like that, and in the ME they can just trade oil, and places like Kuwait have a small population anyway.

The fact is even the communist nations are pretty content with MOST people being just comfortable enough to not rebel. China, Cuba, Soviets, North Koreans, doesn't matter. The goal isn't necessarily to make everyone's life pristine, it's just to keep the masses content so they never challenge the authority, and secure their own interests abroad so external threats don't challenge their authority. The sole truth of those in charge is that they don't want to be challenged, and they want the game set up so they won't ever be challenged by anyone other than each other in limp-wristed dick measuring contests. It doesn't matter what system it is.

>>77698319
*China, rather, DOES have a food security issue, but it's already moved to address it by buying out some of Africa's best land, which then feeds the latter issue of Africa not being able to afford this giant skyscraper farmville project since they're already selling land in bulk to China and Saudi Arabia

>>77698319
you're close to home
We're not making megafarms like that because we don't need to. We produce enough food for everyone on the planet to eat 3 times over or something ridiculous
We just have absolutely revolting amounts of food waste due to the system.
China is, however, doing something that the west is not because they have state control over a lot of things.
They're investing heavily into nuclear energy, objectively the best type of energy for humanity's future.

>>77698375
Yep and good for them. But that doesn't make megastructures any more practical in the near future despite what a lot of people seem to believe. The fact is we got enough shit on Earth, and until we reach the point it's cheaper to haul it in from somewhere else or legally required to do so, no one is going to do it. And that's actually ignoring a serious ethical and moral issue, which is that it'd almost certainly make poorer countries even MORE dependent on wealthier ones if, say, 100% of global iron was mandated to come from asteroid mining, or all food had to be made on environmentally friendly dyson farm plots, or something equally asinine. Because you can be sure that the average nation in Central Asia or South America won't be very happy that the only like 4 areas with space ports are China, US, Japan, and Europe, thus monopolizing everything to the richest places even more.

There are a ton of reasons why resource production and gathering may remain on Earth for the foreseeable future even if it is objectively more efficient to do elsewhere and concentrate (an experiment that, mind you, has never actually been done in space and thus remains an unproven concept).

I want space asteroid farming and mining to be there as much as the next person, but I really don't think it's going to be as easy and achievable as a lot of people say. Maybe it's because I grew up in the generation where "net positive" nuclear fusion was perpetually 10 years away, and mass use stem cell organ growth-->transplants were still 10 years away but would fix the global organ transplant list shortage, and all that fancy stuff still is.

>>77698529
Oh, obviously megastructures aren't remotely necessary any time soon.
It'd be another pathetic cope to keep the revolting current system zombified and alive just a little longer, like how fucking bill gates wants to flood the atmosphere with dust to reduce sunlight and stop global warming.
Just to squeeze a little more shareholder value.

Resource production wouldn't need to move off earth for hundreds of years if we play our cards right.

>>77698744
>like how fucking bill gates wants to flood the atmosphere with dust to reduce sunlight and stop global warming
Best actual suggestion i've heard of that which WASN'T sounding dumb (and also a net negative to global air quality) was to have some sorta nuclear steam-generating ship down around Antarctica or the far south pacific/atlantic/indian ocean and just generate a perpetual cloud to shade a non-insignificant chunk of the planet and just keep moving it around. It'd make things wetter due to the increased water, but its not like the planet can't handle some more humidity and theres no shortage of sea water.

>>77696059
Those assumptions are fucking absurd. Not every sun has planets that can sustain life, and a planet of the appropriate size and properties could reliably and sustainably hold no more than 1-2 billion, and that still assumes an extremely costly and lengthy terraforming process.

>>77696689
Nigger don't even know

>>77698806
or we just
transition away from mass waste and resource raping and into government run energy like thorium
shut down the orphan skinning machines because they're unnecessary and move to a system that's more sustainable.

>>77698842
Or, we just move away from allowing other non western nations from existing since they produce unholy amounts of waste

>>77697062
>Vertical farming is only efficient in terms of space. The actual yields and energy costs are fucking retarded.

Lower the energy costs. I mean the Germans used to farm pineapples back when coal was cheaper than importing.

>>77698808
Actually the number should be larger. Large space habitats can be built absolutely anywhere the raw materials exist to make them which is everywhere.

>>77698883
Tell me where the majority of the west's stuff is produced you stupid nigger.
Here's a hint
It's not in the west.

>>77695679
>story speaks of giant, fuckhuge war across multiple planets
>less soldiers deployed then during WW2
Every time

>>77697062
>A city like Coruscant would require like 100 other planets to sustain it
Interesting to note; Coruscant is directly inspired by Trantor (The Foundation series), a planet wide city that actually was supported by a constant stream of supply ships from planets dedicated to production.

When the empire collapsed Trantor went to shit. Centuries later salvagers had cleared out enough of the world city to expose large sections of the planets surface and simple farms were established to feed the planets now minuscule population.

>>77696689
>planet
Gravity weighs down your soul.

>>77698223
>What you want to do is just strip mine those planets directly
No point. Resource rich asteroids are easier to locate and mine. If we got off our asses and invested in asteroid harvesting mining on Earth would be a thing of the past.

>>77699253
I would just add to this that the logistical setup where you had dozens of 'granary worlds' and a constant cloud of cargo ships supporting Trantor was a very delicate jugular vein that needed constant protection and the resources (and I don't only mean physical resources, but things like political will and attention) that went into it was a big reason why the empire starts falling apart.

>>77695679
How big is the empire? In the Quadrail books, the Human star empire is a grand total of 5 planets, one of which is Earth itself.

>>77698244
Probably. Doesn't make it any worse an idea or answer

>>77697344
>>77698247
>>77698808
You don't colonize planets. You tear them and any nearby asteroids apart and build trillions of smaller space habitats out of their mass.
Maybe terraform one planet to act as some sort of 'system capital' but that's it.

>>77695679
>>sci-fi empire
>>fleet numbering a few hundred ships at most
Never happened
>OP
>Is a faggot

>>77699051
So by not allowing non-western nations to exist not only do you save the planet from massive pollution but you also force the rich to pay their fair share to their countrymen? Sounds pretty fucking sweet to me

>>77697885
BASED

>>77698842
>transition away from mass waste and resource raping and into government run energy like thorium
You don't need government to control the power plants for fission to be practical. You basically just need government to stop obstructing them.

>>77697943
You'd better believe it

>>77703693
Based Rosenritter chad

Science is gay and space colonization is cope for people who hate their lives. Astronauts are not heroes they’re actors who wear diapers and dream of living in mud huts on Mars like the niggers they are.

>>77697344
>>77698808
Fucking sicnce-lets.

> is it worthwhile colonizing every planet?
yes. You will always find some weird pseudo-Amish religious cult which wishes to make their own ethno-state on an unclaimed rock.

> How do you know every system will have colonisable planets?

Listen you retard why do you think I lowballed the estimate by dividing it by 4? Also why do you think I limited our solar system to just earth?

Our solar system if covered with oneil cylinders could support 10^20 people alone. Every single fucking red dwarf could support at least 10^15.

So yes depending on level of space urbanisation you could go as high as 10^35 humans alive.

I used 0.25 trillion per planet because you will have places like the solar system with 10^20 people in it and empty uncolonised places. It's basically a guessed average.

>>77705896
fucking this

>>77705896
dangerously based

>I'm going to live in a dome on the moon! Soon we'll have ships where you sleep for a hundred years and wake up in a different solar system!

Nigger you might as well fantasise about blowing up tanks with lasers you shoot from your eyes, it's about as likely to happen.

>>77705896

Eat shit Silurian, space belongs to those with heat in their blood, and adventure in their soul. Go stick to rocks in the desert.

>>77699272
Shut the fuck up, Zeek scum!