 July 4, 2013 - 8:12pm | This is something for developing cities on the Frontier Worlds While listening to an NPR broadcast about President Obama's trip to Africa (NO political comments please) it mentioned that parts of Africa are very non-tech. Like only 1/3 of Africans have regular access to electricity. Now they are trying to bring those areas into the modern world. But this has some interesting benefits. One is that they can skip previous technologies and go with the most modern. So no 50 or 60 year old coal fired electrical generating plants they are going straight to cleaner gas (natural, propane, methane) burning plants. Also they are totally skipping the telephone pole and copper wire system and going straight to cell towers. According to the report there are more cell phones in Africa than in Canada and the US combined (no idea how they keep them charged). This means when construction is complete only the modern things will be there and no remnants to deal with. Things like when comparing European and US cities one notices the small streets in older European cities built when most people walked and few had horses and carts. Also next time you go into a house try to tell when it was built by counting the electrical outlets in a room. Older houses may have only outlet per room while newly built houses have two per wall since we use much electric power these days. Frontier cities are very new; depending on what timeline you use many could be less then 50 years old. This means even the poorer areas are constructed with at least access to the latest technologies and the entire city is much more uniform. Also on a planetary note, there are no areas of long established planetary tradition. Beings started in the main city and spread out to establish farms and smaller cities. They do not live in the country and move to the big city but start in the city and move out to the country. They might also tend to stay in familar groups so Dralasites, Humans, Vrusk and Yazirian ghettos where the home planet customs and language are the norm and Pan-Gal is second might be more normal (watch Copper or Gangs of New York for some ideas on this) Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 July 4, 2013 - 10:40pm | Another interesting thing to take note of. As people are waiting for starships to bring more supplies to a newer colony, people might hand craft certain items such as clothing. perhaps they might build houses or other buildings using the local materials. See the TV show "Terra Nova". It gave me a lot of ideas useable in SF. A lot of the items in a brand new colony would be built on site in between the times that Freighters come and go. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 5, 2013 - 4:03am | Will check it out. But the idea of a colony developing local crafting which then helps to achieve its identity later seems very logical. Maybe that is how the Dralasites of Inner Dramune got the idea to paint themselves. Maybe a local animal which changes color to warn predators and prey of its mood? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 July 5, 2013 - 7:00am | A lot depends on the type of colony and mind set. An ag colony is not going to wait for parts from off world to fix a harvester but someone will get into the machine shop and craft a replacement. Plus certain colonies will have a more "self sufficient" mindset, like an ag colony. Plus unless you live somewhere like alaska with 20 hours of darkness and 70 below zero temperatures where people tend to stay inside and cabin feavor develops as a side effect then you might not know that people naturally turn to crafts to stay busy and not go stir crazy. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 July 31, 2013 - 2:39pm | Ag colonies decidedly intended as such, would likely spread out faster than the port city would grow... smaller hubs would help logistics gather resources from many outposts into larger arteries aimed directly at the port or central refinery hub, even on industrial worlds. Also, after a couple centuries, the migration trend starts to invert... as outlying resource harvesting communities begin to produce a stable replacement to needed workforce, unemployed and locally unemployable individuals will feed back into admin-&-service positions in larger population centers... or take their chances off-world, often in high-risk/high-pay space jobs, like the marine and mercenary corps. 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? |
 August 31, 2013 - 11:33pm | Some interesting points brought up. A lot of these ideas are useful for fleshing our the frontier for a campaign and giving it a sense of time and place. One thing that has always struck me as odd is how slow technology seems to develop on the frontier. The 4 core races managed interstellar travel several hundred years ago but haven't really spread out or fully developed the existing frontier. Also starships really don't seem very advanced for being around as long as they have. It almost seems like a major war or catastrophe stunted the development of the frontier. Maybe the Sathar wars were much worse than described in the core books or maybe the designers had something like the blue plague in mind from the beginning. |
 September 1, 2013 - 7:24am | One thing that has always struck me as odd is how slow technology seems to develop on the frontier. The 4 core races managed interstellar travel several hundred years ago but haven't really spread out or fully developed the existing frontier. Also starships really don't seem very advanced for being around as long as they have. Ditto for me. Some of the planets have supposedly been colonized for hundreds of years. A lot of the slow growth could be contributed to the fact that they are struggling to survive in new, semi-hostile to hostile environments. Thus all effort would be going into survival and sustainablility and not a lot of time for new R&D. However, once the environement was conqurered, and the population started to grow, one would expect technological advances to start up again as more resources became available. One could look at the "current" time of the Frontier as the point where this is starting to happen. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
September 5, 2013 - 9:50am | There are several factors at work in The Frontier that stunt and regress; The struggle doesn't end with the static environmental dangers of a hostile unknown space, but continues throughout the period of negotiations for cooperative social structures between very different biological psyche. Negotiations were no doubt difficult, and comfortable association with strange biological forms was no doubt unsettling to the first colonists attempting the first cohabitation experiments. Wars, and rumors of wars, between the various factions and interspecies extremists, likely played a role in stunting and regressing early attempts at a stable infrastructure and social cooperative. Enter the outside threats, as new conflicts and conspiracies with unwelcome, and frequently even more hostile, xenos became a rising concern, new segregation and devastating wars were prevalent. The threat from "outside" in the form of pirates, xeno-agents, and unexpected migrations of more native populations... such as the Yazirian, Sathar, and Vimh... had both a positive effect as the colonials "circled the wagons" in the intriguing prose of Humans, and a negative effect by the perspective "war is never as economically rewarding as competition" which the Vrusk pragmatic philosophers intone. Finally there are several catastrophic events interwoven throughout the half millennia of Frontier history: events of both unexplained mystery and horrifying tragedy. The Blue Plague is possibly one of the most well known of these tragedies, as over a half-dozen systems are known to have been swallowed whole in the wake of the uncounted dead -- and perhaps twice as many unrecorded or unknown populations were conceivably effected... but as these uncounted colonies are only likely known as unfortunate investments in the aging databanks of corporate archives, it is unlikely a true consensus of the toll The Blue Plague had on the Frontier Sector --or how far beyond it may have spread --will ever be unanimous amongst all scientific councils. The less known tragedies are no less controversial: such as the mysterious disappearances of entire colonies, with all their structures and machines still intact, as if they simply wandered out into the wilderness in some trackless migration; or the fate of certain mass exodus colonial ships that seem to have never reached a known final destination.
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 5, 2013 - 5:04am | Spiritcoyote is back! Love the phrase: different biological psyche- interesting way to put that. On the whole I have to aggree with spirit's comments. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 5, 2013 - 12:21pm | There is a downside in long-term perspectives to starting a colony with the best tech, but it is a subjective downside... based on philosophical emphasis on the expected "good" in different socio-economic patterns and cultural expressions. The 'colonial struggle' has a bonding and unifying effect on a population's inherent identity... but of course propaganda can eventually write a history that supports any city-state's values, though a revisionist's artifice is rarely a quick and bloodless coup. Such an imagineered culture is also unlikely to have all it's gaps and facts in order. This can even be done in short order if everyone is zealous about the unifying philosophy they've signed up for. but how often can any population of sophonts be expected to have 100% consensus on a given reality... even when their cognitive architecture is actually similar in form? A city hastily created in complete isolation from it's inhabitants. made to suit the philosophy of a minority. and given to comfort the majority in placated ignorance. While this certainly is as viable as many middle eastern examples on Earth might indicate, these high-tech insta-colonies are not likely to be any more productive to populations not wealthy enough to forego accountability for luxury... as the same terrestrial examples we have today also easily imply. Port Loren is an example of a city built over many years of cohabitation and struggle, and holding an identity of unity and nobility. The luxurious moon colonies of Outer Reach. built quickly on the fattening mineral riches of the Guild Lords and Colonial Cartels that hold hard to thier locally owned powerbase, would be the example of someplace that is plesent asthetically but hollow as a true cohesive society. Consider the differences between Amman, Dubai, Surat, Sri Lanka, Hawaii, Aukland, and Abu Dahbi. The differences. it can't be stressed enough, are only subjectively good and bad... depending on how you might imagine a colonist to prioritize frontier freedoms over luxurious oblivion. protected ports over open commerce, perfected rigidity over dynamic expression, personal enterprise over sponsored opportunities. Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated... not so exaggerated for my PC, however. 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? |
