The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
Science Fiction has no obligation to be Science Simulation. What you're describing above would be simulation. One of the major rules of any fiction, including games, is the willing suspension of disbelief. If you can't get past the fact that the 'science' is BS, it might be you're blurring the lines between an RPG and a simulation. Of course most science fiction is BS, writers (books, movies, or otherwise) are normally story tellers first and astrophysicists second (or, more likely, not at all).
I am quite able to willingly suspend my disbelief, but there are limits.
Some of the things that are Sci-Fi tropes that were deliberately not on my list:
Light sabres (no idea how these things would work or why they are in the Star Wars universe but hey why not)
Warp Drives (we might do this somehow some day)
Star Gates, Tunnels in the Sky (Robert Heinlen)
Beam Weapons (again no idea how this could work but maybe)
Force Shields
Cloaking Devices
and on it goes. Speculation is fine in speculative fiction (to use another term) but if you are going to use magic call it that. Jedi mind tricks are magic, Vulcan mind melds are magic, and trying to justify anything on the basis of needing water (except in a local sense in a desert) are dumb. Hydrogen and Oxygen are just to common in the Universe to use that in 'space opera'.
The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
Science Fiction has no obligation to be Science Simulation. What you're describing above would be simulation. One of the major rules of any fiction, including games, is the willing suspension of disbelief. If you can't get past the fact that the 'science' is BS, it might be you're blurring the lines between an RPG and a simulation. Of course most science fiction is BS, writers (books, movies, or otherwise) are normally story tellers first and astrophysicists second (or, more likely, not at all).
I am quite able to willingly suspend my disbelief, but there are limits.
Some of the things that are Sci-Fi tropes that were deliberately not on my list:
Light sabres (no idea how these things would work or why they are in the Star Wars universe but hey why not)
Warp Drives (we might do this somehow some day)
Star Gates, Tunnels in the Sky (Robert Heinlen)
Beam Weapons (again no idea how this could work but maybe)
Force Shields
Cloaking Devices
and on it goes. Speculation is fine in speculative fiction (to use another term) but if you are going to use magic call it that. Jedi mind tricks are magic, Vulcan mind melds are magic, and trying to justify anything on the basis of needing water (except in a local sense in a desert) are dumb. Hydrogen and Oxygen are just to common in the Universe to use that in 'space opera'.
Likewise I can suspend disbelief: -
Light sabres look cool and are not immersion breaking so I can live with them.
Warp drives are theoretically possible (although the existence of negative energy remains an unknown). Unfortunately they are practically impossible for a number of reasons, not least the impossibility of sending a signal to change the front of the warped space time "wave" at faster than the speed of light and, therefore, no possible way of stopping, ever.
Again, wormholes are theoretically possible but require unproven physical phenomenon, and would require more energy than our sun produces in its lifetime.. so again practically impossible.
Beam weapons are possible but impractical due to LOS issues.
Again Force shields are possible.
Cloaking devices could simply bend light around an object, currently possible on a minute scale.
But I accept that these devices are required for the likes of multiple planet space operas, and I can accept that they are theoretically possible.
The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
This is not being overly critical of the gaming industry because it is true of films TV shows and books too.
A list of phony "magic" tropes:
Life Signs detectors , tell me exactly what are they detecting?
Star Trek style transporters, how could anything disassemble a living creature and reassemble it somewhere else?
Unobtanium, the Periodic Table has no gaps, so do not event new elements that could not exist.
Demonic possesion, Vampires etc. Fantasy not futuristic, not science.
Breeding between alien species and humans.
Floating mountains.
Space battles with no real distance effects (things look smaller at a distance)
no consideration of time dilation due to relativity effects.
On and on, Kerbal Space Program is about it for realistic space games.
Life sign detectors are presumably listening for stuff like heartbeat and breathing if they are portable, larger systems that are setup also register movement and heat. It isn't really that far fetched to register a heartbeat, the hard thing is to pinpoint it but it is still far from impossible.
The transporter is a bit fuzzy though, in theory it works and it has been done with single fotons but it would be easier to just copy you where you are needed. It also sets makes some meta physical questions like if there actually is a soul....
And yeah, you cant make new actual elements (unless they have a gigant mass and somehow stay stable) but you can add rare isotops (heavy water is still water but far rarer than regular water) and chemicl compounds. Unless we are speaking dark matter and anti matter of course.
As for breeding with humans it would be possible of closely genetical siblings, Twileks in SW are probably genetically modified humans and that should work. A horse and a dunkey can breed as well as a tiger and a lion. Most hybrids tend to be sterile though but not all (certain Ligers aren't).
I can't explain how a mountain could fly unless you use extreme magnetism but it might be possible to conquer gravity, maybe you can manipulate Higgs bozones or something.
The last 2 is just bad movie logics and effects, in the last case there is of course the possibility that Einsteins theory is wrong, Tesla thought so and he did consider the possibility himself during his last years.
My point anyways is that it is as hard to predict the future, if you look on older predictions they tend to be silly. Some stuff are impossible, others take a lot longer and in some cases it either goes way faster or was impossible to predict from the beginning.
A wise man once said: the future is like the bum of a baboom, Colorfull with lots of s#it.
Life signs detectors in these tales can distinguish between 'intelligent' life and 'non-intelligent' life kind of hard to do that from a heart beat, particularly when you can do it from 100,000 km away through vacuum and space ship walls.
It is a photon not a foton, and a single particle is a whole different thing than a living creature which must be assembled just so to preserve life, memory etc.
Heavy water is heavy because the Hydrogen in it is from uncommon or rare isotopes. It is still water, it still breaks down into Hydrogen and Oxygen in the same ratio and still behaves exactly the same chemically.
As to cross species breeding, the examples you use are all from closely related species on earth with over 95% of their DNA identical. Alien species may not even have DNA as their genetic material and even if they do would have nothing in common with any earth species. Think breeding mushrooms with chimpanzees and extrapolate, not tigers and lions. This also covers your parasite examples.
As for relativity, back at the beginning of the twentieth century debate was viable. Today, if you use GPS you are relying on relativity. We may come up some day with something that supersedes relativity but it will have to account for everything relativity accounts for including time dilation.
Finally anything that includes discussion of a soul is either religion or fantasy, it is not science.
If you presented a description of modern life in 2015 as fiction to a well educated person from 200 years ago I wonder how many of the things we enjoy today they would insist are impossible just like you did here.
Well we can have different opinions and that is fine.
But you state 'Do you realize how many times established "facts" of science have been determined wrong? '
Do you?Because for me the answer is not very often. Over time theories change, but usually by incorporating new data into a larger picture, as relativity did with Newtonian mechanics. But aside from philogiston, which was postulated and never considered a fact I can think of none.
If
different opinions are ok then I don't know what the purpose of your objection
is
I'm not keeping a list or anything, but here's a couple:
Nothing can live in the Dead Sea, they found something living there
Silicon based life forms.
And you shouldn't be ok with warp engines, because at the time they were
imagined for Star Trek it's wasn't something scientifically hypothisized.
Coincidentally someone did announce the theory the same year they said it was
invented in the Star Trek time line though . . . only about 20 years later.
There is nothing special about right now. We aren't the masters of knowledge of
our universe.
For Unobtainium did they say it was an element? Even then, couldn't it have
been element 119? That forms into an unusually light crystalline structure when
solid. I know, totally bazaar, kind of like ice . . .
If
they stopped to explain every bit of science behind things in shows or games I
think it would get pretty boring quick.
For
me if they say something unscientific in a show, I accept it. It’s when the
logic behind the made up science doesn’t add up that I get peeved. Like Ninja
zombies in Walking Dead. Stopped
watching the show mid episode once because of stupidity like that.
Well we can have different opinions and that is fine.
But you state 'Do you realize how many times established "facts" of science have been determined wrong? '
Do you?Because for me the answer is not very often. Over time theories change, but usually by incorporating new data into a larger picture, as relativity did with Newtonian mechanics. But aside from philogiston, which was postulated and never considered a fact I can think of none.
If
different opinions are ok then I don't know what the purpose of your objection
is
I'm not keeping a list or anything, but here's a couple:
Nothing can live in the Dead Sea, they found something living there
Silicon based life forms.
And you shouldn't be ok with warp engines, because at the time they were
imagined for Star Trek it's wasn't something scientifically hypothisized.
Coincidentally someone did announce the theory the same year they said it was
invented in the Star Trek time line though . . . only about 20 years later.
There is nothing special about right now. We aren't the masters of knowledge of
our universe.
For Unobtainium did they say it was an element? Even then, couldn't it have
been element 119? That forms into an unusually light crystalline structure when
solid. I know, totally bazaar, kind of like ice . . .
If
they stopped to explain every bit of science behind things in shows or games I
think it would get pretty boring quick.
For
me if they say something unscientific in a show, I accept it. It’s when the
logic behind the made up science doesn’t add up that I get peeved. Like Ninja
zombies in Walking Dead. Stopped
watching the show mid episode once because of stupidity like that.
Personally I would have just answered his quote with: The Luminiferous Ether would like to have a word with you.
Well we can have different opinions and that is fine.
But you state 'Do you realize how many times established "facts" of science have been determined wrong? '
Do you?Because for me the answer is not very often. Over time theories change, but usually by incorporating new data into a larger picture, as relativity did with Newtonian mechanics. But aside from philogiston, which was postulated and never considered a fact I can think of none.
Personally I would have just answered his quote with: The Luminiferous Ether would like to have a word with you.
The Luminiferous Ether like Philogiston was postulated and never considered a fact. It was proposed in the mid eighteenth century and never got wide acceptance among contemporary physicists (but it was very popular in England). The idea was in deep trouble by 1887 and abandoned entirely in the early twentieth century. So no, no facts over turned here just a postulate investigated for a while and then dismissed.
If you are looking for something a bit more 'hard sci-fi' and not Fantasy in the Future kinda stuff might I suggest taking a look at the RPG After Reset? They are quite serious in shaping their game in a semi realistic way.
It is still being developed but it might be something to keep an eye on.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
'the only way he could nail it any better is if he used a cross.'
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
Well we can have different opinions and that is fine.
But you state 'Do you realize how many times established "facts" of science have been determined wrong? '
Do you?Because for me the answer is not very often. Over time theories change, but usually by incorporating new data into a larger picture, as relativity did with Newtonian mechanics. But aside from philogiston, which was postulated and never considered a fact I can think of none.
If
different opinions are ok then I don't know what the purpose of your objection
is
I'm not keeping a list or anything, but here's a couple:
Nothing can live in the Dead Sea, they found something living there
Silicon based life forms.
And you shouldn't be ok with warp engines, because at the time they were
imagined for Star Trek it's wasn't something scientifically hypothisized.
Coincidentally someone did announce the theory the same year they said it was
invented in the Star Trek time line though . . . only about 20 years later.
There is nothing special about right now. We aren't the masters of knowledge of
our universe.
For Unobtainium did they say it was an element? Even then, couldn't it have
been element 119? That forms into an unusually light crystalline structure when
solid. I know, totally bazaar, kind of like ice . . .
If
they stopped to explain every bit of science behind things in shows or games I
think it would get pretty boring quick.
For
me if they say something unscientific in a show, I accept it. It’s when the
logic behind the made up science doesn’t add up that I get peeved. Like Ninja
zombies in Walking Dead. Stopped
watching the show mid episode once because of stupidity like that.
LOL, the
sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic
aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it,
though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present. That has been known for 2000 years at least and is still true. A swing and another miss.
And yes Jame Cameron did call Unobtanium an element and went on to describe it at length.
Element 119 is Ununennium, if it is ever synthesized it will be an alkali metal like Lithium, Sodium and Potassium and is expected to have an atomic weight of 315. It will have a half life of under 20 μs, that is it will be gone in well under a second. So no mountains of it, no mining, just an artifact produced in something much larger than the Large Hadron Collider.
Mass effect trilogy so far has been one of the best I have ever played. Before that there were Activision's Battlezone (my first game that I ever played) and its' sequel, Battlezone II (by Pandemic). I'd suggest checking out if you can find the original Battlezone disc somewhere and get it to run on; I think I've seen it for free in the only BZ community existing in this day, since it's long since been given up on. BZ1 and 2 both are games that make still chills go down my spine, especially when I see the old cinematics.
Anarchy Online, Ryzom, and i bet if you searched steam, you would find a bunch more. Apparently, people like fantasy rather then, sci fi. It is not that way with movies though, there are a crap ton of sci fi movies, but very few fantasy movies, and the few that are there, even fewer are actually any good. It prolly has to do with the fact that pen and paper DND, basically started the RPG computer games, so the people who make the games liked that better, and then the whale hunters just figured it would make more money.
If you are looking for something a bit more 'hard sci-fi' and not Fantasy in the Future kinda stuff might I suggest taking a look at the RPG After Reset? They are quite serious in shaping their game in a semi realistic way.
It is still being developed but it might be something to keep an eye on.
/Cheers, Lahnmir
I think one of the frustrations with this site is people always recommending games that aren't even playable yet.....Its like "Hey this game is in alpha and should be released by 2020!"...Instead of just giving us a good solid game we can play right now we get what might be instead of what is.
Even those sci-fi games you do find always seem rather limited in scope or imagination. Only Mass Effect or Fallout have come close to scratching my itch. I do love Star Wars but I consider it fantasy in space... heroes journey, space-wizards, no real attempt to explain technology.
I like Deus Ex (the new one) and Dishonored (although it is more steampunk than sci-fi). I think Deus Ex Human Evolution has a lot of freedom in how to beat a level, and incorporated enough sci-fi ideas. Its scope, of course, is not as large as Mass Effect (i do like ME 2 quite a bit) but it does not have to be.
In fact, i like Deus Ex's game play much better just because you don't need to kill everything straight up.
LOL, the
sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic
aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it,
though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present.
That has been known for 2000 years at least and is still true. A swing
and another miss.
They had science in 1936 I'm pretty sure. And they just discovered those microbes process carbon in a way we never new about before.
I don't know how old you are, I'm guessing not very, but I remember news about a discovery of life in the dead sea. Obviously it wasn't the first . . . I'm not that old, but it was a new discovery against their previous beliefs.
LOL, the
sea is called "dead" because its high salinity prevents macroscopic
aquatic organisms, such as fish and aquatic plants, from living in it,
though minuscule quantities of bacteria and microbial fungi are present.
That has been known for 2000 years at least and is still true. A swing
and another miss.
They had science in 1936 I'm pretty sure. And they just discovered those microbes process carbon in a way we never new about before.
I don't know how old you are, I'm guessing not very, but I remember news about a discovery of life in the dead sea. Obviously it wasn't the first . . . I'm not that old, but it was a new discovery against their previous beliefs.
Well your guess is dead wrong. I am over 60 and during my varied working life spent over 15 years in research laboratories.
Yes new discoveries are made but that in no way invalidates what I said. These fungi are very interesting but they are not the only life present in the Dead Sea and despite whatever you gleaned from Eviator Nevo et al this has been known for a long time.
The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
This is not being overly critical of the gaming industry because it is true of films TV shows and books too.
A list of phony "magic" tropes:
Life Signs detectors , tell me exactly what are they detecting?
Star Trek style transporters, how could anything disassemble a living creature and reassemble it somewhere else?
Unobtanium, the Periodic Table has no gaps, so do not event new elements that could not exist.
Demonic possesion, Vampires etc. Fantasy not futuristic, not science.
Breeding between alien species and humans.
Floating mountains.
Space battles with no real distance effects (things look smaller at a distance)
no consideration of time dilation due to relativity effects.
On and on, Kerbal Space Program is about it for realistic space games.
The whole hipster tropes concept is really just a system to ruin any enjoyment.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
This is not being overly critical of the gaming industry because it is true of films TV shows and books too.
A list of phony "magic" tropes:
Life Signs detectors , tell me exactly what are they detecting?
Star Trek style transporters, how could anything disassemble a living creature and reassemble it somewhere else?
Unobtanium, the Periodic Table has no gaps, so do not event new elements that could not exist.
Demonic possesion, Vampires etc. Fantasy not futuristic, not science.
Breeding between alien species and humans.
Floating mountains.
Space battles with no real distance effects (things look smaller at a distance)
no consideration of time dilation due to relativity effects.
On and on, Kerbal Space Program is about it for realistic space games.
The whole hipster tropes concept is really just a system to ruin any enjoyment.
Demonic possession and ghosts...possible Energy and unexplained occurances...in the past flight was thought to be fantasy
Floating mountains are possible, but the amount of engery required is crazy. Superconductors are used to countering Casimir force and causes an object to repel other objects and thus float.
Time dilation only occurs when the reference and the object are not both in motion relative to each other.
The problem with "futuristic" set anything is that it usually is not at all futuristic. What we get is a pastiche of fantasy elements with a veneer of phony technology.
This is not being overly critical of the gaming industry because it is true of films TV shows and books too.
A list of phony "magic" tropes:
Life Signs detectors , tell me exactly what are they detecting?
Star Trek style transporters, how could anything disassemble a living creature and reassemble it somewhere else?
Unobtanium, the Periodic Table has no gaps, so do not event new elements that could not exist.
Demonic possesion, Vampires etc. Fantasy not futuristic, not science.
Breeding between alien species and humans.
Floating mountains.
Space battles with no real distance effects (things look smaller at a distance)
no consideration of time dilation due to relativity effects.
On and on, Kerbal Space Program is about it for realistic space games.
The whole hipster tropes concept is really just a system to ruin any enjoyment.
Demonic possession and ghosts...possible Energy and unexplained occurances...in the past flight was thought to be fantasy
Floating mountains are possible, but the amount of engery required is crazy. Superconductors are used to countering Casimir force and causes an object to repel other objects and thus float.
Time dilation only occurs when the reference and the object are not both in motion relative to each other.
<sigh> So much fail in one post.
No a quantum tunneling event is in no way a teleport. It is like saying: "see an orange that means Brazil Nuts are possible" (BTW Brazils are seeds not nuts).
Life Signs detectors?? Citation required, I have no idea what you are on about here. The test is put two dummies of the correct mass and thermal profiles and a human behind three identical sheets of opaque material and have a detector tell me which is the human.
"new elements" are, from time to time, being produced but as I have previously stated some where above, they are predicted there atomic weights and isotopes are also predicted as are there half-life's and breakdown products. They are all extremely short lived (half-life's measured in micro seconds). That is why we do not see them in nature.
Flight was never thought to be fantasy, powered flight maybe, but as there have been birds bats and butterflies flight has always been known to be possible. As for powered flight Leonardo Da Vinci is known to have worked on ideas, the Icarus legend suggests the greeks thought it possible etc. This is another "the earth is flat" fallacy.
Time dilation is a difference of elapsed time
between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to
each other or differently situated from a gravitational mass or masses. NOT as you state. It is an observed phenomenon and is used in GPS systems.
Demons, Ghosts? Please take your medication.
On floating mountains, this would be some sort of anti-gravity. While it may be possible to do something like anti-gravity some time in the future it will have nothing to do with the Casimir effect. The Casimir effect is a tiny force that was predicted in quantum theory but has nothing to do with floating anything as it is an attractive force.
For all those linking bad science and distortions of real science. Just because there is an article on the Internet or a plaque on a building does not make it true.
Oh and BTW, "The Dead Sea" has had a number of names: East Sea, Salt Sea, Lake Asphaltites. It is not at all clear that the current English name has anything to do with the sea being lifeless., it may have been named the "Sea of Death" because of its periodic red algal blooms (the last was in 1980).
@craftseeker Are you saying that things we can imagine that have come to fruition are ok, but ones that haven't yet are nonsense? Seems like the you are considering now as the apex of human discovery. Especially the life sign scanner, that really just seems like a matter of time for sensors to improve and the inteligence to recognize what is detected. Seems like you would have laughed at thermal imaging. They also found microbes recently in an "alien Antarctic lake". Finding thse scientists are hopefull to find life on some other planets and moons in our solar system. Still saying there haven't been any recent discoveries?
And if they didn't find any life in the dead sea until last century (not the 2000 years you stated) wouldn't that be a good indicator of where it's name comes from? Or is it named after the nearby country of Dead?
@craftseeker Are you saying that things we can imagine that have come to fruition are ok, but ones that haven't yet are nonsense? Seems like the you are considering now as the apex of human discovery. Especially the life sign scanner, that really just seems like a matter of time for sensors to improve and the inteligence to recognize what is detected. Seems like you would have laughed at thermal imaging. They also found microbes recently in an "alien Antarctic lake". Finding thse scientists are hopefull to find life on some other planets and moons in our solar system. Still saying there haven't been any recent discoveries?
And if they didn't find any life in the dead sea until last century (not the 2000 years you stated) wouldn't that be a good indicator of where it's name comes from? Or is it named after the nearby country of Dead?
And one last final word . . .
Carbon Nanotubes
.... and what is it that those "life signs detectors" are detecting? Sorry it is just mysticism pretending to be something else. There are no life signs other than the obvious, heat, breathing etc. Even the electrical emissions of the brain and nerves are so small that they could not be usefully detected at a distance, particularly with so many other sources of electromagnetic emissions.
No you are some how hoping in a "soul" detector, or something that reads an aura at a distance, both religious ideas not scientific ones.
... and back to "The Dead Sea", that is an English name you might notice, probably given by an Englishman. It is also a name that had no usage prior to the First Crusade and probably very little, if any, until the last couple of centuries (I am not an Arab scholar so I do not know).
Also you should really go and look at that 1936 paper. They went there to classify and identify the life forms in the lake, not to see if there were any. So even English scientists knew that there was life there prior to 1936.
Finally a word for you graphene! (even better than the two words you used).
Some of you guys want to literal and exact Science in games, which is ok, but will be boring by itself most of the time. And you forget what sci-fi stand for, its fiction, in other words fantasy. So do you prefer games based entirely on science? Cus I definately prefer sci-fi games with humor, fantasy and charm on top of the science. Think about the earlier sci-fi book authors, not the later fantasy one. All of them were using the science(some of them more then others), but none of this boks are about space actualy. Space is just the background.
Comments
Some of the things that are Sci-Fi tropes that were deliberately not on my list:
- Light sabres (no idea how these things would work or why they are in the Star Wars universe but hey why not)
- Warp Drives (we might do this somehow some day)
- Star Gates, Tunnels in the Sky (Robert Heinlen)
- Beam Weapons (again no idea how this could work but maybe)
- Force Shields
- Cloaking Devices
and on it goes. Speculation is fine in speculative fiction (to use another term) but if you are going to use magic call it that. Jedi mind tricks are magic, Vulcan mind melds are magic, and trying to justify anything on the basis of needing water (except in a local sense in a desert) are dumb. Hydrogen and Oxygen are just to common in the Universe to use that in 'space opera'.- Light sabres look cool and are not immersion breaking so I can live with them.
- Warp drives are theoretically possible (although the existence of negative energy remains an unknown). Unfortunately they are practically impossible for a number of reasons, not least the impossibility of sending a signal to change the front of the warped space time "wave" at faster than the speed of light and, therefore, no possible way of stopping, ever.
- Again, wormholes are theoretically possible but require unproven physical phenomenon, and would require more energy than our sun produces in its lifetime.. so again practically impossible.
- Beam weapons are possible but impractical due to LOS issues.
- Again Force shields are possible.
- Cloaking devices could simply bend light around an object, currently possible on a minute scale.
But I accept that these devices are required for the likes of multiple planet space operas, and I can accept that they are theoretically possible.If different opinions are ok then I don't know what the purpose of your objection is
I'm not keeping a list or anything, but here's a couple:
Nothing can live in the Dead Sea, they found something living there
Silicon based life forms.
And you shouldn't be ok with warp engines, because at the time they were imagined for Star Trek it's wasn't something scientifically hypothisized. Coincidentally someone did announce the theory the same year they said it was invented in the Star Trek time line though . . . only about 20 years later.
There is nothing special about right now. We aren't the masters of knowledge of our universe.
For Unobtainium did they say it was an element? Even then, couldn't it have been element 119? That forms into an unusually light crystalline structure when solid. I know, totally bazaar, kind of like ice . . .
If they stopped to explain every bit of science behind things in shows or games I think it would get pretty boring quick.
For me if they say something unscientific in a show, I accept it. It’s when the logic behind the made up science doesn’t add up that I get peeved. Like Ninja zombies in Walking Dead. Stopped watching the show mid episode once because of stupidity like that.
If you are looking for something a bit more 'hard sci-fi' and not Fantasy in the Future kinda stuff might I suggest taking a look at the RPG After Reset? They are quite serious in shaping their game in a semi realistic way.
It is still being developed but it might be something to keep an eye on.
/Cheers,
Lahnmir
Kyleran on yours sincerely
'But there are many. You can play them entirely solo, and even offline. Also, you are wrong by default.'
Ikcin in response to yours sincerely debating whether or not single-player offline MMOs exist...
'This does not apply just to ED but SC or any other game. What they will get is Rebirth/X4, likely prettier but equally underwhelming and pointless.
It is incredibly difficult to design some meaningfull leg content that would fit a space ship game - simply because it is not a leg game.
It is just huge resource waste....'
Gdemami absolutely not being an armchair developer
And yes Jame Cameron did call Unobtanium an element and went on to describe it at length.
Element 119 is Ununennium, if it is ever synthesized it will be an alkali metal like Lithium, Sodium and Potassium and is expected to have an atomic weight of 315. It will have a half life of under 20 μs, that is it will be gone in well under a second. So no mountains of it, no mining, just an artifact produced in something much larger than the Large Hadron Collider.
I like Deus Ex (the new one) and Dishonored (although it is more steampunk than sci-fi). I think Deus Ex Human Evolution has a lot of freedom in how to beat a level, and incorporated enough sci-fi ideas. Its scope, of course, is not as large as Mass Effect (i do like ME 2 quite a bit) but it does not have to be.
In fact, i like Deus Ex's game play much better just because you don't need to kill everything straight up.
Couldn't find a ice web page to quote, but https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=1-QUAQAAIAAJ&q=first+discovery+of+life+in+the+dead+sea&dq=first+discovery+of+life+in+the+dead+sea&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIro6Xtc-WyAIVBhaUCh0NUQdN
They had science in 1936 I'm pretty sure. And they just discovered those microbes process carbon in a way we never new about before.
I don't know how old you are, I'm guessing not very, but I remember news about a discovery of life in the dead sea. Obviously it wasn't the first . . . I'm not that old, but it was a new discovery against their previous beliefs.
Yes new discoveries are made but that in no way invalidates what I said. These fungi are very interesting but they are not the only life present in the Dead Sea and despite whatever you gleaned from Eviator Nevo et al this has been known for a long time.
Whenever you wear your oh-so-srs face, you've temporarily forgotten how to play.
The whole hipster tropes concept is really just a system to ruin any enjoyment.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
You stay sassy!
A teleport in a sense has been made already. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2049048.stm
Life signs detector for humans exists. All life on earth puts off electrical fields, heat, and chemicals. there are prodes that can detect these.
New elements are still being found..http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/28/world/europe/new-chemical-element/index.html
Demonic possession and ghosts...possible Energy and unexplained occurances...in the past flight was thought to be fantasy
Floating mountains are possible, but the amount of engery required is crazy. Superconductors are used to countering Casimir force and causes an object to repel other objects and thus float.
Time dilation only occurs when the reference and the object are not both in motion relative to each other.
No a quantum tunneling event is in no way a teleport. It is like saying: "see an orange that means Brazil Nuts are possible" (BTW Brazils are seeds not nuts).
Life Signs detectors?? Citation required, I have no idea what you are on about here. The test is put two dummies of the correct mass and thermal profiles and a human behind three identical sheets of opaque material and have a detector tell me which is the human.
"new elements" are, from time to time, being produced but as I have previously stated some where above, they are predicted there atomic weights and isotopes are also predicted as are there half-life's and breakdown products. They are all extremely short lived (half-life's measured in micro seconds). That is why we do not see them in nature.
Flight was never thought to be fantasy, powered flight maybe, but as there have been birds bats and butterflies flight has always been known to be possible. As for powered flight Leonardo Da Vinci is known to have worked on ideas, the Icarus legend suggests the greeks thought it possible etc. This is another "the earth is flat" fallacy.
Time dilation is a difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from a gravitational mass or masses. NOT as you state. It is an observed phenomenon and is used in GPS systems.
Demons, Ghosts? Please take your medication.
On floating mountains, this would be some sort of anti-gravity. While it may be possible to do something like anti-gravity some time in the future it will have nothing to do with the Casimir effect. The Casimir effect is a tiny force that was predicted in quantum theory but has nothing to do with floating anything as it is an attractive force.
Oh and BTW, "The Dead Sea" has had a number of names: East Sea, Salt Sea, Lake Asphaltites. It is not at all clear that the current English name has anything to do with the sea being lifeless., it may have been named the "Sea of Death" because of its periodic red algal blooms (the last was in 1980).
Especially the life sign scanner, that really just seems like a matter of time for sensors to improve and the inteligence to recognize what is detected. Seems like you would have laughed at thermal imaging.
They also found microbes recently in an "alien Antarctic lake". Finding thse scientists are hopefull to find life on some other planets and moons in our solar system.
Still saying there haven't been any recent discoveries?
And if they didn't find any life in the dead sea until last century (not the 2000 years you stated) wouldn't that be a good indicator of where it's name comes from? Or is it named after the nearby country of Dead?
And one last final word . . .
Carbon Nanotubes
Sorry it is just mysticism pretending to be something else. There are no life signs other than the obvious, heat, breathing etc. Even the electrical emissions of the brain and nerves are so small that they could not be usefully detected at a distance, particularly with so many other sources of electromagnetic emissions.
No you are some how hoping in a "soul" detector, or something that reads an aura at a distance, both religious ideas not scientific ones.
... and back to "The Dead Sea", that is an English name you might notice, probably given by an Englishman. It is also a name that had no usage prior to the First Crusade and probably very little, if any, until the last couple of centuries (I am not an Arab scholar so I do not know).
Also you should really go and look at that 1936 paper. They went there to classify and identify the life forms in the lake, not to see if there were any. So even English scientists knew that there was life there prior to 1936.
Finally a word for you graphene! (even better than the two words you used).
Think about the earlier sci-fi book authors, not the later fantasy one. All of them were using the science(some of them more then others), but none of this boks are about space actualy. Space is just the background.