Science fiction vs. science purism

Well, yes, but a synch orbit still cannot stay stationary over any point that is not at the equator. You could still match with the day-night cycles, but you'd usually need a very awkwardly shaped orbit (such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit) and even then you still need to travel south, and cannot stay fully stationary. Technically a Molniya orbit is not synchronous, as it takes 2 orbits instead of one per day, but the same thing applied to most synchronous orbits that attempt to stay off of the equator.

Well your statement is valid as long as the satellite has no engine. You can make satellites stationary in every orbit, as long as you´re willing/able to provide the energy. Since the satellites in PA are probably not supposed to stay in orbit for the rest of their life they would be able to provide this energy till the match ends.
Nevertheless I think due to the fact that units on gas giants are mainly satellites we don´t want to have only the equator as a geostationary orbit.

I'm sorry to tell, but it looks like to me, that you are answering to something else rather then my post. I already noted twice that I know that it won't work that exact way. But I also noted (twice) that fireball-lightnings are somehow able to float though anything and expose capabilities of superconductor. They are also plasma (at least some part of them). It is still unknown how exactly such phenomena possible and how it works, but one of hypothesis that is works by very similar effect (i.e. it's riding magnetic lines). And because we still don't know it's exact internal structure I don't see why not.

Alright, but we a speaking here about sci-fi, not a suspense thriller. Best minds of sci-fi writers was using many ridiculous things taking a very far assumptions in their stories. Some of them suddenly became real (and we talk about almost every day - hey! that guy predicted cell-phones!), but most of them are just dreams. You see, people how write sci-fi about spaceships being spheric (which is idiotic for many reasons, but anyway) and battling each other for millenia due to
sub-light speed, in most cases are producing something extremely boring and dull.

I never understood people being angry for such things. I know many very good people who know nothing about computers, but they are forced to use them every day, so they are just required to make some assumptions about how they work exactly (especially taking into account general attitude of computers' people for such users). It like you can't blame prehistoric people for believing in gods of fire, thunder and whatever else.

Thanks, I know even how it operates on very low-level scope of schematics. But no, what nuke really do is just producing energy. A lot of it in small volume. Yes, there is also products of uranium decay, but they are not plasma in any case, because if nuke will fail uranium will just melt down and vaporise, without any plasma created. Nuke is nothing different from ordinary explosives and they are not producing a plasma out of nothing if blasted in space (they still produce a small amount of plasma from their own contents). Most of energy produced by nuke is spread light and heat. The "mushroom" is a dust, not a plasma too.

You're right that plasma sometimes is considered to be fourth state of matter (there is much more of them, anyway), but it still is just ionized gas. Any matter could be a gas. Einstein suggested that any matter is equal to energy and, in that case, plasma is most close to be almost energy. Fire is plasma, but not pure - it has many products of burning. Plasma is not just fire, yes. Space is filled with rarefied plasma.

Producing pure plasma is very hard problem requiring a lot of power and complex equipment (as you can't produce plasma from thin air, and if you are just ionizing gas, than you still will have non-ionized gas within it, making plasma not pure). And pure plasma is most stable and controllable. So it actually makes.

Plasma cutter is not using pure plasma. And it couldn't be long-ranged for that matter.

It's cool, but "plasma" a little bit more high-level term. If you are down to particles level than you speak about particles, not about gas or matter states. And yes, "controlling anti-matter" is much-much more slippery ground that any quantum-speculation. Because it's highly doubtable that it would be worth the risk at any times.

As I told you - you may not give this explanation to reader, but you still need it to yourself. Always. Many writers are not doing this and they are good sci-fi writers. But they don't have any long-living universes too. We are speaking about game and film industry here, where you produce IP for making a lot of games, books and films.

Very strange definition. Sci-fi is based on actual science technology, always, but it may not follow it completely or may go beyond that is known now. I don't understand why use negative word for describing what is called sci-fi. Actually, I believe that "technobabble" is just "bad sci-fi", i.e. complete nonsense (like spheric ships, for instance).

Actually special relativity theory forbids passing information with speed faster than light, which actually happens in case of teleportation, wormholes or hyperspace (i.e. strictly speaking, it's forbidden too). But, hopefully special relativity theory is not "complete" theory and it just doesn't touch such things, cause they fall out of original problem setup. For possible explanation of teleportation or wormholes you should refer to M-theory (string-theory successor), which is unprovable by design (a paradise for sci-fi!).

That's called "realism". I mean, if you try to avoid anything that could not be possible at least somehow, than you trying to produce some most probable forecast for known science for ages beyond. You are playing Nostradamus, in other words. Good luck with that one, but that's not a Sci-fi. I.e. good sci-fi is not just that. Good sci-fi doesn't care about realism (to some extent).

What it really care about is internal logic and nothing else.

I hate them for what spacesimulators are now. But I can't refuse it's popularity.

Yes, but when Lucas was asked "In your movie lazers are particles, this is idiotic!" he answered (in my reword/translation) "This is not lazers, this is plasma guns with lazer ignition. But main heroes are warriors, not scientists, so for them it's easier to call them 'lazers'". Yes, liquid vacuum problem still remains, but again - it was made just to make spacebattles familiar to people. So I don't actually understands how it supports your point.

Yeap, SW has liquid vacuum space and it's not explained. It's an axiom for SW. But everything else is going in line with that, so it's perfectly fine. And as opposite example, X-series games are also using liquid vacuum, but they have some very wrong implemented parts of inertia, leading to weird results. If you are doing liquid vacuum - call it an axiom and just stick with it, and you'll be fine.

Yeap. But film never says "hey guys, it's not real!". And you don't believe how much people don't know about what space flight really are.

That is not hard-SF, that is what is called "social fiction" based on situation when interstellar travel is expensive, people are dumb and evil. Dystopias are from same genre.
And interstellar travel if perfectly good and economically viable. Just look at our need for "rare earth metals" and how much of them in asteroid belt. The more our civilization will grow the more our need for resources will be. And when you have mining operations, you have support and shops and other things. Earth need resources, colonies need food.

There is also a problem of overpopulation. If there would be efficient and reliable transportation - half of our population will be on board in no time, that's for sure. And you can't just throw away half of population - that's a working hands flying away! There is also a possibility for secret military efforts of said corporations.

Hard-SF is about science popularization. It's about playing around paradoxes or interesting questions. And it's almost dead as genre, as most of paradoxes and "interesting" questions in science are extremely complex for an ordinary reader. It never was about realism or restrictions (in most cases of known hard-SF there is such restrictions, yes, but there is not so much known hard-SF examples out there. Most of them are social or psychological fiction). Fantasy - it's not based on anything and do not explain anything (like Warhammer or Might&Magic universe) and "normal SF" - when you just don't care too much about realism, but you have some logic within (like Homeworld 1/Cataclysm universe, which was than broken by further series).

It's not so far from reality actually, They just called qubits "cores" to let it go without explanation what the hell this qubits are and all this quantum theory. If you have quantum computer with 1024 qubit processor you may break 1024bit RSA in one moment, if you have billions qubit processor - you may break billion-bit RSA in one moment. Everything is fine. Where did you get that computer and why you have more computing power than all the universe may ever have - that's another question, but that's your fiction assumption.

Most people are ok with "ls -la" or "nmap" as hacking attempt, so they are just perfectly ok with quantum computers. They heard about that, they know that it is some "extremely powerful computer" and they are just happy with that. And if even one of this people would say "hey, that's cool! I want to work on such computers" and will actually dive in (he will be disappointed, of course, but we won't get back anyway) - you're done a great job. SW made many people look into space with hope, that's no different.

[skipped all other, sorry, I can't spend two hours on one reply. Translating all this is hard for me (and reading my translation is hard for you, probably =)). But I've read all that, I swear]

TL;DR Here:

You see, we have one point common. A writer just don't need to care too much about realism to make awesome, but he still need to keep internal logic. Awesome is not realism, yes

The difference is that I say "hey, you don't need to be ashame to put your weird explanation on public. As long as you have proper logic - you're fine. If people would actually believe that it's real, there is nothing bad in this" (there was a joke about Jesus Christ doing that, but I removed it. That's just too much religious fanatics around nowadays =)).

You say "If you are can't produce any 'realistic' to some point explanation, that you should never publish it, no matter how internally logical it is. At least until you made a giant sign on a front page/frame 'This is BS!!!'. As the worst thing you may do is to make people believe in your crap."

My final point is - if you won't publish your crap explanation, people with come with their own. And it just could be a god.

Even if it does have an engine, it'd require a LOT of energy just to stay up for a little bit. This is a case of gameplay > realism, here, as satellites moving is pretty much needed.

Let's see...

Fireball lightning isn't quantum locked, AFAIK, nor moves in straight line. It's floating, yes, but it may simply be because it's hot.
If it's not exactly that, then it's not quantum locking. Quantum locking is a name given to a precise phenomenon. If it's not quantum locking, then it shouldn't be called quantum locking.
Just saying that it 'rides magnetic lines' could be fine I guess, but then there are gameplay problems : how to make magnetic fields easily visible, and how to make obvious that those weapons can only work there? We don't want players to be faced with invisible conditions. Just asking, there may be fine answers to that.
Suspension of disbelief is important in all genres, being it SF, thrillers or anything else. Having a doctor saving someone from hypoglycaemia with insulin or a character surviving two bullets in the heart would be as jarring as FTL by just putting moar engines.
You can have great space opera without even breaking light speed. I'd suggest you Revelation Space and the sequels (there are some boring bits and the end could have been better, but not because it's slower than light). In fact, I did write a STL interestellar story, and I sure intend to write more. After all, millennia aren't that long if humans vanquished ageing.
As I said, limitations can drive creativity. Look at poetry, for example. It uses complicated rules, but the most beautiful poetry works are often following them, instead of just writing free text.
Many (soft-)SF writers do avoid those problems, though, by having causal FTL and whatnot. Nothing wrong with that. But the good ones avoid directly contradiction what we know, and generally they do it by avoiding explaining why it works altogether. Look at the new BSG show, for example. They have cool-looking FTL jumps, for example. But it's never explained how it actually works. And it works.
If you don't understand why people get angry when they see something stated that they know is bulldust, then I don't know what to add.
Sure, many people don't know how computers work. But a story about them wouldn't have to either. It would simply show that computers can be used to do stuff, not delve into how processors work.
Nukes produce a lot of energy. Nukes in thin air (say, Earth's surface atmosphere) transmit most of this energy to said thin air. Thin air is heated to the point it turns into plasma. And boïng, expanding plasma ball (I didn't talk about mushrooms, the mushroom is for later).
Plasma is easy to produce. Heat anything enough, it will turn into plasma (well, anything constituted of atoms). Storing it once it's hyperheated and keeping it like that, on the other hand, is generally harder. It's more or less trying to store a thermonuclear explosion, or a piece of the Sun (which is quite the same thing).
Plasma cutters use plasma, even if they don't use only that. And they would make for fine melee weapons (though I heard at least one game used this idea already). Plasma-cutter-wielding giant battle robots, now that has some potential.
I talked about 'plasma beam' because it would be more of a nuclear explosion oriented enough to form a beam. As explained above, nuclear explosions do produce plasma (a little bit in vacuum as there is only the nuke itself to be turned into plasma, more in thin air as there is said thin air to be turned as well). So you do have a plasma beam in the end. Kind of like a one-shot, more powerful and thus longer-ranged plasma cutter.
Annual production of antimatter has been multiplied by a hundred of millions last years, and we now know how to produce stable antimatter traps that can store it for weeks. At the speed at which this technology is evolving, we will soon (read : in a few decades) have small enough antimatter traps and high enough antimatter production to be able to create antimatter-triggered fusion bombs (you only need a tiny little bit for that). Some are even trying to develop passive antimatter traps, somehow trapping antimatter atoms into normal matter crystals.
If you want your work to be coherent, you need explanation on how things work, not why they work. If something can produce mass, then you need to determine under which conditions it produces mass, so it will always function consistently. You don't need to tell it in the work itself, but you indeed have to do it to avoid inconsistencies. OTOH, you don't need to make explanations on why it works, unless it is somehow important as a plot point or for some other part of the work. If FTL allows you to jump from A to B, you need to determine when and where it can work, what it needs to work, maybe also what is needed to build such jump engine, but you don't need to explain if it bends space-time to create a wormhole or if it hacks the Universe to change the PosXYZ vector[3] of the ship. Unless everything is actually happening in the Matrix and the ability to hack it is actually important.
I didn't invent this definition of technobabble, it's the one I heard being used the most. People tend to see technobabble as a negative thing, because it was misused so much by bad and even sometimes good SF writers (I'm looking at you, Star Trek). But when well-done, it's actually a quite useful tool. Simply, as for any tool, it has to be used correctly and for the right job.
IIRC, relativity (don't remember if it's special or general) says that FTL = time travel. It doesn't rule out the existence of wormholes, but both ends don't have to be at the same moment. What relativity does say, though, is that light speed if the limit : the more you accelerate, the more you are closing to light speed compared to the outside world. But that's kind of a thread subject by itself and this post is already far too long.
Skipping lines for clarity is for the weak.
Let's note that even if relativity isn't a complete theory, it still has been proved by experience to an incredible degree of precision. So even if it's indeed not complete, the new theory will have to explain the same phenomena (like, c is the speed limit).
Don't confuse realism and believability. "We can't go further than c" is realist. "We can go further than c thanks to this incredibly complex and strange-looking hyperspace drive that was invented in the XXIXe century" is believable.
Trying to foresee the future is one branch of (mostly hard-)SF, but hardly the only one. More generally, SF is about 'what if?' It can be "what if things continue like that, what will be the future," It can be "what if aliens arrive tomorrow?" or even "what if aliens arrived yesterday?" "what if computers were invented at the XIXe century?" "what if we never invented transistors?" "what if people were living in a world with no oceans?" "what if human-like beings lived in the far future, when the last stars are dying?" "what if space was as fluid as water, people could wield lightsabres and blasters, and an evil galactic empire tried to crush the Resistance?"... It's not just about trying to predict the future, far from it.
Try to think about the original trilogy only. Forget the midichlorians. Forget the submarine space-shooters that followed. Forget the sprawling extended universe. The actual movies, looked at by themselves, were actually really good.
And more important, forget what George Lucas could have said. Someone should tell him to shut up. The original movies probably turned that good because both other people and unforeseen difficulties forced him to change many things. Sometimes, a piece of work can stand apart from its author. Be it because it was partly accidental, because the author had a singular access of genius or some other reason.
If a book with interstellar ships, biological powered armours, transhumans and planetwide terraforming isn't science-fiction for you, I don't see what to add.
Rare earth materials can be found in immense quantities in our own solar system, no need to go and get things from other systems for a long, long time. And when this time will come, there isn't even a need to send people there, only automated mining rigs.
Overpopulation won't be solved by interstellar travel either. Interplanetary travel is already so absurdly hard that we couldn't even send one person to the closest planet. Seriously, people don't get how stupidly, insanely difficult it is. Let me explain it this way : one superpower managed to send a few people to our satellite with a massive national effort. Another superpower simply didn't manage it. So sending enough people to other stars to prevent overpopulation, well... Let's just say that if we have something powerful enough to make those travels so cheap, then overpopulation may well be a minor point compared to what it would do to mankind. Things like, I don't know, blowing stars up a dime a dozen to be conservative...
Two billion qbit NSA computer? Tomorrow? Last time I checked, we were faaaaaaar from having this kind of stuff. Also, as the power of a quantum computer is 2^(number of qbits), this kind of computer would probably simulate the Universe with ease... Now if you'll excuse me, I have to use my 3d printer to create a few kg of antimatter, my water heater is almost out of fuel.
We agree that it's not realism but consistency that is important. Though I have to insist on the importance of believability as well, consistency is so important because it's necessary for believability.
OTOH, we disagree on what it causes : as we assume that something is like reality unless noted (the human-looking people, for example, also think and act like humans, meaning that out-of-character moments will be as bad as in, say, a thriller than in SW). So if people see a scientific-looking explanation, they will assume that this Universe works like ours, and that this science based on ours. So if they see something false, they will think "that's bulldust" instead of "here, things works differently". And unfortunately, many people do see when something is false, or see it when someone else points it out for them.
Also, I have to insist on the fact that explaining why things work this way is not always necessary, and should be limited for the above reason, for the same reason that a war story don't explain the chemical reactions that propel bullets from rifles.
Religious fanatics? Yeah, those guys. If it can reassure you, anti-religious are just as bad - and where I live, even more numerous. It's hard to be an agnostic today, you feel like a still alive collateral damage...
I don't say "if you can't produce any 'realistic' explanation" but "if you can't produce any "believable" explanation. The difference is important. And I add that if no explanation is necessary, then don't bother making the effort and taking the risk of it not working and turning people off.
And if people come up with their own explanations, then it's the best that can happen! It's their explanation, so they are happy with it. The explanation of one wouldn't work with some other people, but it's not you who gave it, so the other people aren't bothered with it, and may have their own, different explanation. And while they're busy coming up with their own explanation, they will build on your work instead of tearing it apart because of something unbelievable.

I'm going to go with, because space is amazingly vast, and as OrangeKnight said, movement between planets is achieved by and large to be using pretty stable low tech solutions.

Under the galactic war part of the game we will be fighting across a galaxy. The war could have been raging for a couple of billion years and not made its way to all of the galaxies we have discovered today - to better illustrate scale ill refer to one of my favourite posters

http://www.vidiani.com/maps/space_m...the_Universe_from_the_national_geographic.jpg

The way I see it the players are fighting along the front line of expanding influence in the universe. In each match the warring factions have just arrived into a new solar system and fighting for ownership of it. The same thing is happening on a larger scale with a Galactic War game, various factions have just arrived in a new galaxy having traveled what would be hundreds of thousands if not millions of lightyears (under the tech displayed in the trailer such trips would have taken a LONG time) and are waring over new territory whilst the ruined vestages of galaxies lie in their distant wake, thousands of light years and millions of years past.

As for the speed of building up bases and units, well that is the sci fi stretch/gameplay poetic licence aspect. Though I guess a justification would be that the nano machine 3d printer type tech has been the result of a nessesary advancement of speedy construction to prepare for fighting in newly discovered solarsystems. A tech which has been honed to mirror shine over the war spanning thousands or millions of years.

Agreed, I guess I was trying to suggest is that it didnt seem a jarring concept within the bounds of PA to have satellites in stationary orbits. Considering that we can have stationary orbits over the equator, and close to fuctionally having stationary orbits them away from the equator - it didnt seem a sci fi level of stretch in order to explain it, more a gameplay level of potetic licence over reality : D

Keeping a 10t satellite directly above an pole in 35.7 km height requires about 5.5% of the thrust you need to let an 5t tank hover above the surface of the earth. [1.9 kN vs. 34.9 kN]

Yes, that's also how I see it for PA. I was specifically thinking about TA and Supcom here ; Core Prime or the Earth should have been totally covered by heavy defences, with this kind of fast-deployment tech, and probably only attackable with slow-moving, massive warfleets from other systems.
The only explanation I could imagine is that those fast-deployed installations aren't meant to work for a long time, so they begin to fall apart after a few hours or a few days. You could keep repairing them, but I guess that resources aren't infinite either, it's just an approximation for gameplay reasons on a short time scale. And I'd guess that Commander themselves have to undergo maintenance work, so it can't work non-stop to maintain it either. But all this was never even hinted in the games themselves.

OTOH, PA can indeed avoid those problems thanks to the procedural generation system, and having Commanders fighting for new systems each time, to rise their influence in the sector (the fiction behind 'influence' being 'entire star system turned into a factory to throw slow-moving, massive warfleets around against other factory systems')

I'd like to just drop in the one thing that bothered me about SupCom, and that was almost all the explosions were boring white glows. Someone on the forums tried to shut down my requests for something colourful, fiery and awesome by snarking "oh yeah, future vehicles will use petrochemical fuels and lubricants just so they'll look good when they explode". Well, **** you, it's a scifi game, I want fiery explosions, not boring white glares.

FA's death effects were pretty lackluster. The weapon impact effects were pretty sweet.

From memory, Sup2 did a complete flip: death effects were pretty sweet, and weapon impacts were just white blobs (though I am of the belief that was done so that console kiddies could actually see that things were being shot on their poor TVs, which is rather sensible).

For PA, I'd like to see interesting explosions, but not crazy unique ones for each and every unit and structure. Spalling, and things being thrown off are good. Dramatic death animations, and things overloading and shooting lightning everywhere are not (well, they can be amazing if done very conservatively).

I would love to see the return of TA planes being utterly smashed like glass.

Nothing like having nukes just disintegrate a base like a flash, rather then the long winded effects of SupCom.

Why would robots care about the mushroom cloud? just get the explosion and flames on ASAP so I can focus on rebuilding.

What I'd hope to see is different death animations depending on how much damage the unit took in the last instants. For example, a light bot killed by an anti-heavy shell would explode more violently than one killed by another light bot. Something like a 'light' explosion where the unit wreck is mostly intact, a bigger one with possibly parts flying around, and maybe a complete disintegration (just a brief flash without parts flying) if the unit is killed by something particularly violent like a direct nuke hit.

While we're at it, if there are parts and particles flying from exploding units, it would be sweet if the direction they flew depended on how much and from where the unit took the last damages. In the above example, the parts would all fly in the opposite direction from the anti-heavy shell, but just randomly fly around if killed by the other light bot.

Though I could live without all that and simply having one death animation per unit.

Really, you giving me hard times to keep references for what I've said. Also, I have a bad feeling that you are not really reading what I'm saying, as you are repeating things that I've said or giving arguments I already predicted and answered.

It's nor hot, nor cold (there is facts of people surviving the contact, or ball exploding on contact with conductor (including man), or just melting though metal, or just floating though metal and man without any visible effect). We don't know it's internal structure, we don't even know if it's completely plasma. Actually, it's simplier to say what we know about it rather than what we don't know. It's a mystery just near your house.

Explanation "it's hot" most ridiculous from what I've heard. It's not a balloon.

Two most popular explanations (both based on fact that fireballs sometimes are floating though complex structures avoiding collisions with objects):
1. It's based on some kind of gravity neutral particle (existence of which is nor proven, nor disproven. Actually, we still don't know exactly what gravity is). Taking Einstein's generic relativity theory meaning of gravity it start to make sense why it's then avoiding objects - it just moves in straight line in non-Euclid geometry (i.e. without falling to gravity wells), which is projected as non-straight line into Euclid geometry. As any object creates 4-dimensional space curvature, than it looks like it avoiding objects. But if it's straight line is pointed on object anyway, than it will crash into it anyway.

2. It's based on some kind of magnetic neutral phenomena (like superconductivity), so it avoids any magnetic field distortions (which are, generally, objects, including man). This explanation has much more holes than previous, but generally considered more believable
because current particle's theory doesn't know any gravity-neutral particles (and complete "theory of everything" (i.e. explanation of gravity and magnetism though some common mechanics) is yet to be defined). One of possible explanations why it's floating and why it's moving - it's quantum locked (cause it's internal structure is not known, it's supposed that it's not ideally superconductor, which also makes sense taking into account it's sudden instability).

"Quantum locking" term refers to a few completely different phenomena (and set is different taking different physics traditions, in different nations). I heard that term as just 'being stuck in potential well' alias for sub-atom particles (i.e. electron being quantum locked to it's orbit). So, well, it's not so well-defined term as you think.

But, you are right in one thing. The phrase "quantum lock" will instantly recall that video you talk about in memory of man seen it. I.e. disc floating over magnet. Planet is magnet? Right. Disc is plasma. Hmm... Is plasma superconductor? Well, probably. Sooo...

1. "Riding magnetic lines" - it's just what quantum lock is.
2. We may just have magnetic planets. That's enough. Let's say our effect is just too strong to be distorted by magnetic anomalies. And you just can't build that tank on non-magnetic planet (and probably if you trying to send it to non magnetic planet game may just warn you "Some of you units can't operate of target planets"). This all should be done anyway, as it was already said, that there would be planet-type specific units and buildings.

3. You see? If we have "riding magnetic lines", that we instantly got question "what is magnetic line, in which direction, why projectile can fly not only along this lines"? And now you have problems with that part. "Quantum lock" is just making right image and player would have no more questions - if he has magnetic planet, he can use quantum-lock-based tank. All fine. In two words we just have bypassed huge theoretical explanation.

You see, I'm also using "just don't say anything if you can't get up with recognizable or simple explanation". I'm just making emphasis on making things interesting, simple and recognizable.

I don't like movies and never watch them. But you, on other hand, should probably be hating them more that anything and planning to destroy Hollywood, at least.

"Space opera" is well-defined genre which is actually a "fairy tale", but with robots and blasters, instead of dragons and princess.

You know, "relativity" is not just theory. It's a generic description of everything around. If you vanquished ageing, that it just the same as you made a FTL. FTL allows you to preserve same acting parties during full story, no ageing allows you the same thing.

Right, but limitations should have their own limits or they would destroy your creativity. If you have one great idea, but it somehow leading to wrong and inconsistent theory using rules and facts for our reality, than crap our reality and make your own rules.

Well, right, but saying that plasma disc may float in magnetic field is not contradiction to anything. Question was about name for that phenomena choosing and I'm insisting that quantum-lock is just the right term exactly due to it's popularity. You are insisting on opposite.

If you write a story that require a huge specialized context to understand it, than you are writing a story for very limited amount of people. Real mastery is to write a story for masses without making it dumb, which is art of storytelling, but not world-building.

If you are building a world, you don't care about storytelling - you have no story, only some main actors and key events. But you establishing a set of rules and facts for further storytelling. And that's when you need to explain not only "how to achieve some phenomena", but also "why this phenomena is possible and how it works" (you see, that's a different "how"s).

You are repeating what I've just said. Why? Yeap, but nukes != plasma. Heated air = plasma. And I still don't understand why you are misusing 'thin air' term.

Again, I already replied to that. It would be non-pure plasma - with non-ionized parts. It's not plasma you want.

Storing it once it's hyperheated and keeping it like that, on the other hand, is generally harder.

Right, and it's only possible (as well as any manipulation) in very-very pure plasma. That's why for tokomak research required a very rare helium isotope.

Right, but again, I said that it won't work as long-ranged (Dead Space you are referring actually uses it as long-ranged weapon, which is weird. But it's ok for horror-fps). That's because your plasma strike will just spread apart in one moment and will lose it's heat very fast. For making a somewhat prolonged plasma presence (like in nuke, for, example, 10 seconds) you need a huge amount of energy.

And works only in atmosphere! In lower levels of it, so no aircraft guns, sorry. And yes - your point - why you need plasma if you have a nuke?

Right. Bombs are simple. You just take your trap, you just propel it into enemy and run-run-run!! Trap breaks and boom. A bit more tricky for more useful purposes. Should I remind you that Germany recently decided to suspend all their nuclear reactors due to their high danger? And nuclear energy is much-much safer that antimatter one. In case of nuclear plant explosion, you would have only a few cities uninhabittable for centures. In case of antimatter plant explosion, you would have no more problems with uninhabittable space.

Again - you're speaking about a storytelling. I already said (twice) that this is, imo, different thing from world-building. And most of movies and books are made without strong setting.

Right, but relativity (that was special one, general is about trying to be "complete theory of all", i.e. it's about gravity) is based on very simple principles of Newtonic inertial systems. It just extends them. And that simple principles define speed as momentary translation on momentary time (i.e. a derivative dx/dt). And in case of wormhole for 3d-space you are making huge leap in space in very short time. That is, teleportation in relativity point-of-view is infinite speed, which is much better that C. And, which is worse, you may relay information faster that it would travel by conventional means, breaking things completely. But yes, if you just say that actually you travel a very little space, but though 4th dimension, than you're fine. But relativity don't know about that (it don't know about many other things, including spin-swapping relay which is faster that light), that's why it's called "special".

...? I lost track of this one.

I'm not trying to disprove relativity. I'm not insane =). It's just matter of fact, that it's not describing (as any other useful physics theory) everything. It's targeted on specific problem and solves it with precision. You just don't need to be surprised when it suddenly doesn't work in field outside of original problem - it's not supposed to.

Nope. I mean, unless I know how this "incredibly complex and strange-looking hyperspace drive" operating, or seen enough fact of it working, I don't believe in it. But I'm still interesting in story, anyway, so I just don't care (as most of people, IMO). But don't expect me citing any crazy SF in scientific conference, just in case I would ever end up there.

Well, that is, we have a "term problem". In Russian there is many terms for sci-fi sub-genres. Like "realism" is science fiction in your terms too, it's not "mainstream" (which is not-fiction), but it's hardly restricted in terms of possible things. "Science SF" and "Real science SF" is oriented on scientific problems highlight, like paradoxes. "Social fiction" is about highlighting social problems in imaginable environments. And soon.

Sometimes this genres intersect, producing something like "realistic social fiction".

It's a story. I'm speaking about world.

Hm. He is one of the most resilient person in entertainment industry, so it's quite unwise to call him dumb =). Maybe he's not a good writer, but most probably he's a good producer.

See above, I'm operating on somewhat more wide varienty of definitions. So, it's fiction, but not science-fiction. Having blasters, transhumans and terraforming doesn't make it science finction. From what you describe it's oriented on social conflicts, so it's social fiction (most of sci-fi in your general meaning is social fiction, as most of stories are about people, not about technologies).

Communism builders also thought that way. And they've failed. The more you have the more you need, that's a law of life and our world.

I generally don't understand you. You are speaking about sci-fi and then suddenly switching back to reality. Yeap, currently overpopulation can't be solved by interstellar travel. But in age when we would reach asteroid belt and will have enough resources to build a huge full-autocycle autonomous colonization ship (or will create some kind of statis technology), overpopulation would be top one priority problem.

How much people do you think really know about what exactly is quantum computer and how it operates. And how exactly it is "so much powerful"? You see, you need to know algorithms theory and a good share of general physics to understand that. Very few countries are given this education as general (Russia is one of them, but soon it won't be true anymore =(). So most of people just knew that there is some quantum computers and they are cool. And they actually believe that specops are omnipowered, right.

Well, in most cases they see universe which is not like our. Like, with wormholes near earth, or hyperspace/dimension sling (teleportation is more possible, but it has some generic philosophic questions of consciousness transfer) (there is general problem of accessing higher level dimension world from lower level dimension world - you have no tools. It quite possible that it is impossible).

Story, right. Again, PA won't have much story, but it should have a good setting, otherwise it would have nothing =).

In Russia there is more religious fanatics nowadays, than otherwise =( But yes, both sides are from the same medal, as always.

And I just don't believe that there is people which would turn off from that. I'm still playing in space-simulators with liquid space. I'm not happy and I'm telling that this is bad decision from both gameplay and storywise points. But most developers fear that if they will make "real physics" then this will turn off many people unfamiliar with such mechanics. And they are right.

Well, right, but this explanations may be something you don't want. Like, you have some future plans for some trick, but you'll be forced to reconsider them as most people believe that this trick isn't possible due to some guy come in with "believable" explanation far from your original idea (and that's how it happens - actually, ideas are few). If you'll still carry on with your plans, that you'll ruin and image of your world in people heads, so they will feel it as inconsistent, which is just the same as it would be actually inconsistent.

So it's better not to take chances, unless you don't really have full image yourself. In that case explanations/speculations from fans are actually cool thing, as they could be a source and inspiration for further development. But again, it's not about universe building.

Oh for goodness sake, these posts are becoming pretty ridiculous. Just because someone on the forums posts an essay on what they perceive to be the implementation of a fictional futuristic weapon based on uncertain science, it doesn't mean the lore-writers for PA will even bother using it. Besides, when making up futuristic tech, it's better to be vague about the implementation, especially because you are not a physicist. You are a game developer.

Look at the new Battlestar Galactica. Did they ever explain what a DRADIS was and how it worked? Or how their FTL drive was implemented? On the harder end of the fictional spectrum, Star Trek was also vague, despite the abundance of technical terms (which was, in fact, less random technobabble than people seem to realize). How does a phaser work? What about warp drive?

The point is that none of these things is remotely necessary when it comes to writing game lore. Sure you want to sprinkle some facts in to enhance the believability, but go too far and suddenly you have to explain away abounding discrepancies in your writing.

I think many of us here are fairly knowledgeable about computers, and how often do we cringe when TV shows and movies show us a "hacking" scene.

Keep it simple, and you'll get more believability out of it than if you try to explain every little detail.


Also, don't omnislash when you're debating on forums. It's messy, hard to follow, and doesn't prove anything. <3 <3

You learn something new every day. Today I learned a new bit of internet slang.

Sylvesterink is right, sometimes less is more, if you browbeat the audience with a tonne of technical facts it looks all the more silly when they notice discrepancies. I've found that the most believable/immersive sci fi will have the audience make a few logical 'leaps of faith' and then expand on the implications of that sci fi tech.

As long as there aren’t too many leaps of faith then the suspension of disbelief isn’t broken and people remain immersed. By contrast over explaining things will work against that immersion. Because being a sci fi, it isn’t fact (no matter how much fact is worked into it) and forcing the audience to scrutinise too closely is going to break the suspension of disbelief.

I kind of liked the ridiculous over the top explosions and effects: giant mushroom clouds, lightning going everywhere, explosions kicking up wreckage. Set off enough fire works and it's a party.

Midichlorians in star wars.

By trying to pin down an explanation to what the force was supposed to be they ended up turning perfectly reasonable space magic into the live cultures in yogurt. And in doing so, they made it dumb.

DAMN STRAIGHT. I was thinking of that example, but decided against it given the levels of inconsistencies in star wars that basically make it space fantasy.

But yes definitely. That is a perfect example of how over explaining can utterly ruin things. Particularly if the explanation is proximate one rather than an "ultimate" one, thus adding a layer of valueless depth.

And then you have sci-fi like Doctor Who, which says "To hell with explanations!" and proceeds to give you a time traveling police box piloted by an alien who fights against pepper pots that shoot instakill lasers and can download the entirety of the internet in about 5 seconds.

Because the writers weren't shooting for realism. They were shooting for AWESOME!

Really, guys, why you are even bother to post in topic you dislike so much. Unless you noticed, that's not a topic about 'Realism vs. Awesome'. Topic doesn't say that and it says correct thing.

If you so much tldrs than here very short explanation what is going on:
That's a topic about term-choosing while building worlds (that includes unit concepts). And we both are standing on different sides of "not too much explanations".

My point is "You shouldn't care too much about your explanations scientific correctness. And it's better to use familiar for generic reader terms and phenomena even if they are not exactly matching your usecase".

thorneel's point is: "You should care about your explanations scientific correctness and if you can't provide correct explanation, you should explicitly state that your universe is different. And in any case you should avoid misusing well-known scientific terms".

That's it, not "awesome vs. realism" thing. Yeap, a little bit sidetracked into nukes, relativity and fireball-lightnings, but that's all fun too.

So, please, stop this off-topic.