Well of Souls Forums

hi hi I remember a fantasy RPG in which I tried to have my character 'accidentally' introduce the concept of electrolysis so that he could gold-plate some copper coins and pass them off as the King's Gold.  The DM ruled that it could not work (!) because, in his game, electricity did not work (!!). ...

hi hi The test for me is not so much whether a gizmo is realistically possible, but whether the author has thought through how the technology will affect society... I feel like this is good advice for any world building. I remember there was a fantasy comic where the the main character discovered th...

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With a real budget, I would think something based on either Master of Orion 2, Homeworld, or both would be fitting for Outsider.

But for $15,000, I think you might be able to make Loroi chess if you've already got the rules figured out.

hi hi If we wait a billion years or two, there's like a 2% chance that Mercury will gradually be kicked out of its orbit by the pull from Jupiter. If it crashes into Mars, it won't get up to 1g, but it might create a magnetic field to block solar winds. Or if it crashes into Venus and knocks it into...

hi hi Seems like the long waiting period matches up with some people's concerns on the previous page about the shuttle being well off course from the jump point. Guess the Umiak had to swing back around. If they were laser-based training weapons, then Alex should acclimate to the Loroi weapons quick...

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I'm sure there are/will be plenty of war orphans up for adoption.

hi hi Sort of astronomy related: An experiment to detect dark matter may have detected dark energy by accident. When their detector found a number of anomalous readings that couldn't be explained by any of the dark matter hypotheses, someone found that one of the dark energy hypotheses was a good fi...

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"One cannot ever reach light speed. One cannot even approach light speed. No matter how much one accelerates, a ray of light will always be able to travel away from them at the speed of light, as though the observer were standing still."

hi hi ...Eh fair point I forgot it was depicted with accompanying ships. Probably partly didnt register just because I think its silly to chase down debris with whole formations. I imagine the squadron is there not for a single piece of debris, but to sweep the entire debris field. They blew up an e...

hi hi Well, they are at the onset of a jump zone... Another possibility is NOT to jump when the division jumps to another star. At least, if there are no bivouac units staying behind. Granted, I'm not sure how big a jump zone is, but the shuttle was moving at a racing pace right before getting disab...

hi hi I don't know what the Umiak chain of command is like, even though I suspect it is highly structured. But regardless, there's a big difference between being dispatched and wandering without orders. Also, if they want to get out of the system, they'll need to make a run at a jump point, which an...

hi hi Assuming the Loroi are able to take control of the ship, there's still the problem of what to do with it. I imagine if one little Umiak ship starts going off on its own and stops responding to communications immediately after interacting with a Loroi shuttle, they'll still be in a tight spot. ...

hi hi If Alex is not a veteran, then nobody in the TCA is. I don't know exactly what Captain Hamilton did to earn the amount of reverence he has, though if I recall correctly, we know some of that was his daring exploration. Alex and the other scout ships have jumped further away from Terra than any...

hi hi If I recall correctly, the Loroi sidearms are particle beam blaster weapons, not lasers. (which would probably have their own problem with backscatter radiation, but with their tech level of medicine, it's maybe not an issue.) Star Trek The Next Generation made a number of design choices with ...

hi hi I wouldn't put it past them to have a heads up reticle projected onto their helmet visor while the blaster is active. Since it's a beam weapon anyway, they don't even need to do any terribly difficult calculations to determine the point of impact. Not sure what Alex is going to be able to acco...

hi hi The Earthling Cruiser turned slowly and didn't have a sufficient top speed. There are definitely several opponents where the only winning move is to immediately make a dash for the gravity well and get a boost or else they get clobbered. I ended up playing Star Control 1 after I'd played the s...

hi hi Although it's a bit of a sidetrack, I'll pipe in and add my own experience. I died a lot. Right at the beginning, it took me a lot of deaths to figure out that I was supposed to approach the dot that turned out to be Sol. It also took me a long while to realize that ships had secondary attacks...

hi hi The Gaia data release 3 is supposed to have relative velocities in addition to positions. https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/data https://gea.esac.esa.int/archive/ That's awesome, thanks! Last time I looked, getting velocity data was like pulling teeth. And although it's clearly organized for...

hi hi I've tried a lot of different programs for 3d star maps, and they're usually pretty clunky. Universe Sandbox had a decent UI at least, but it was pretty limited in a lot of other ways. I wish I could find a star map program that includes velocity vectors for star systems and the ability to com...

hi hi There are a lot of ways to do it with a 3d space like Frontier Elite II. If I were to try doing something to improve FE2's map, I would try to include some form of tick mark to denote units of measurement for the Z axis, whether that's a horizontal mark, or bars of alternating bright and dim c...