 September 6, 2011 - 8:45am | A discussion where creatures have adapted to the frigid cold of a planet too far from its home star. They hunt by macro-infravision absorbing thermal energy from their prey to survive. Refer to: To cold to pee |
 September 12, 2011 - 1:04pm | Something on the planet needs to be able to produce sufficient thermal energy to begin with... Thermal-vents, larger creatures, oxygen or hydrogen converting ice-eaters, or something more complex and/or non-terrestrial... something non-carbon with a built in antifreeze... Hmm... Gas guzzling arboreal forests... kicking-off the ecology with petroleum based plant-life might give it a nice interesting biosphere, and the natural resource might draw interest from corporations and independents... Appended: I just read the other post... this sets up a cleche' scenario... and not a very viable one. Overlooked catch: Petroleum resources might be interesting, but to an atomic powered interstellar society with plenty of renewable energy based colonies taking the 'green approach' in the foundations of their infrastructure, petrol is rather pointless to fight over... might still happen, but is even more laughable than it is today... Overall few resources are worth fighting over in an interstellar capable society, no matter what resources they use... there are just too many options available, to make scarcity viable. This is often overlooked in Sci-fi, so feel free to over look it, just be aware scarcity based conflicts are a glaring illusion in the frontier, and players may wise up to it. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 September 14, 2011 - 2:23pm | I was reading last spring about a particular type of frog that freezes during the winter and then thaws out in the spring none the worse for wear. It seems that this frog’s cells create an abundance of a particular type of sugar that coats the cells and prevents large ice crystals from forming. I have always had an issue with cryonics but have just gone whole hog on the ‘suspension of disbelief’ route to deal with it. It would be cool to see aliens who truly could exist in the arctic circle in swimming trunks. I think it would be neat too to come up with a plausible excuse as to how cryo-sleep works in SF. But that’s just my picky side coming through. As for scarcity, I agree with the Great Spirit that when you have an entire galaxy to search in, you can find plenty of everything. But one big aspect of scarcity is ‘availability’. There may be gobs of ‘somethingonium’ across the galaxy, but if there isn’t any in your sector it may as well not exist (depending on the circumstances). The cost in resources and time to travel to get something may not be worth it. It may be more profitable for you to beat somebody up and take theirs. And again, leaving reasoning out of it, it is just human nature. I see it almost every time people cut me off in traffic. I can’t understand why they cannot wait the few seconds for me to pass by so they can pull in behind me when there isn’t another car back there for what seems like miles. Instead, they have to be the one in front. (even if they are traveling 10 mph slower than I am). Human nature. It sucks. What would Ifshnit Nature look like? |
 September 14, 2011 - 3:18pm | @ inigo Since the game has a stasis field (in KHs) and the "freeze field" which I also assume is a stasis type device designed to bring a victim to the hospital when field treatment is not going to work. Since we have Stasis fields and the freeze field is assumed to be the same tech I then assume that storage class berths on a star liner are also stasis tech. Is stasis tech ever going to be possible? DK. but at least this string of assumptions is consistent and only requires the suspension of disbelief on one tech in the setting- stasis tech rather than two: stasis tech and cryo I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 14, 2011 - 4:46pm | Stasis Fields; M-theory physics at it's quantum Energy-Field finest... Gobs of concentrated 'human nature'... Philosophically speaking all Life is made up of the same bits of psychology... still, some as-yet-unidentified gob of psychology may exist. The distribution of matter in the universe is basically even... should delirium-crystals and unoddtrytanium exist it will be found in the Asteroids, Jovian Atmospheres, Rings, Moons or in Plasmid-Foamy-Bubbles of Quantum-Dark-Matter Radiating Dark-Energy-Fluxes universally, in or around every star-system. Petrol type chemicals are pretty common... and being one of the possible methods a biome might develop a self-sustaining anti-freeze on a far-stellar terrestrial body... it is the best for the concept I could come up with. The thermal-vamps can siphon thermal-energy from the trees, without causing the trees any harm... The trees are not damaged by the cold, or the loss of the thermal energy... and may even gain pollination benefits, or find use for some waste from the ergivorous critters. Overall it is still a bitterly-cold, desolate, and hostile wasteland, marked with highly scattered copses of petrol-trees and oasis of thermal-vents... both even more hostile than the more common open ice-plains, frigid-slate tundras, shifting-ice plateaus, and frozen-methane deserts. There is still room for some variety and diversity in all climes, as rare as it might be; crystalline-cacti and slate-scrabblers, snowslugs, iceworms, fungalmice, maybe even tauntauns. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
