08-25-2015, 11:03 PM
Sharp, you do have some good points which I'm taking into consideration for future wiki/lore updates (Trimming a lot of superfluous and dodgey science fluff, particularly in the field of biology which is an area as I've said before, was tacked on due to people constantly asking questions about it). However you really need to dial back the aggression a bit, lot of criticizing people and lore but not a lot of usable feedback to work on.
Anyway with that in mind if you were to take biology related stuff right back to the roots, what's your thoughts on depth, speaking as someone who is actually more open to criticise things.
It's established they're a iceball world species and I do like the idea of a burst metabolism, these are aspects that are important to the species. With that said. People inevitably ask "What do they breathe?", "Are they carbon based?", "Are they water based?", which seem fair enough questions, compared to "Do they utilise ATP?", "What is the exact metabolic process behind why they breathe X", which is far more specific and easily disprovable, how far down do you think answers should reasonably go within the lore. And do you have any thoughts on the correct answer for those, considering the criteria they must meet (ie. they can't be water based or they'd freeze to death), answers that don't go too far but will satisfy anyone summarily poking at them.
On the tech side of things I intend to keep them relatively confined to "Tommorow's tech", ie. no anti-gravity, no energy shields, no FTL-sensors, in fact the only major break from reality is a means to create einstein-rosen bridges (Gotta have some FTL option there, as much as I'd love to play with colony ships and colonies separated by time as well as space, it would close off too many options). Again this is a defining element of the race's design. This was a deliberate decision since the intention was to drill down into potential uses and pitfalls of tommorow's technology (Networking, robotics, augmentation). Far too many sci-fi stories instead look way out into a future filled with phlebotinium for convenience, without exploring the consequences, and ignoring that often the problem they face could be solved with technology they presumably stopped using 300 years earlier (Star Trek being the absolute worst offender in this regard while Schlock mercenary does a wonderful job of toeing a line between science, fiction, explanation and exploration of consequeces)
I also plan to chop out some of the background lore, since some of that is straight up deceptive or wrong anyway and I think yields more confusion than anything. I have a 'problem' in this regard that in the course of exploring the story through an in-game medium would reveal some important, unspoken aspects of their culture and society which'd be spoilers to simply post up front, but again people want answers to questions now and thus have been fed the "official" line that is actually covering up the full story.
Again, I havn't actually been responsible for a great deal of the wiki's maintenance for a long time and it's long overdue an official editorial, often being assembled and re-assembled by people reading lore snippets on forums or from Skype chats.
Anyway with that in mind if you were to take biology related stuff right back to the roots, what's your thoughts on depth, speaking as someone who is actually more open to criticise things.
It's established they're a iceball world species and I do like the idea of a burst metabolism, these are aspects that are important to the species. With that said. People inevitably ask "What do they breathe?", "Are they carbon based?", "Are they water based?", which seem fair enough questions, compared to "Do they utilise ATP?", "What is the exact metabolic process behind why they breathe X", which is far more specific and easily disprovable, how far down do you think answers should reasonably go within the lore. And do you have any thoughts on the correct answer for those, considering the criteria they must meet (ie. they can't be water based or they'd freeze to death), answers that don't go too far but will satisfy anyone summarily poking at them.
On the tech side of things I intend to keep them relatively confined to "Tommorow's tech", ie. no anti-gravity, no energy shields, no FTL-sensors, in fact the only major break from reality is a means to create einstein-rosen bridges (Gotta have some FTL option there, as much as I'd love to play with colony ships and colonies separated by time as well as space, it would close off too many options). Again this is a defining element of the race's design. This was a deliberate decision since the intention was to drill down into potential uses and pitfalls of tommorow's technology (Networking, robotics, augmentation). Far too many sci-fi stories instead look way out into a future filled with phlebotinium for convenience, without exploring the consequences, and ignoring that often the problem they face could be solved with technology they presumably stopped using 300 years earlier (Star Trek being the absolute worst offender in this regard while Schlock mercenary does a wonderful job of toeing a line between science, fiction, explanation and exploration of consequeces)
I also plan to chop out some of the background lore, since some of that is straight up deceptive or wrong anyway and I think yields more confusion than anything. I have a 'problem' in this regard that in the course of exploring the story through an in-game medium would reveal some important, unspoken aspects of their culture and society which'd be spoilers to simply post up front, but again people want answers to questions now and thus have been fed the "official" line that is actually covering up the full story.
Again, I havn't actually been responsible for a great deal of the wiki's maintenance for a long time and it's long overdue an official editorial, often being assembled and re-assembled by people reading lore snippets on forums or from Skype chats.