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[Devastator]

Well, why would new worlds not have their own experts? If not how things work now, about things that were invented later (contributing to the whole "humanity gon' get weird up in here, dog").

Because you aren't born knowing stuff, and in a universe I'd like to play, things don't work perfectly every damn time, like they do in ER.

But don't worry about it, because you totally are spending decades exploring the new universe's physics, along with holding rotating multi-year long training groups for your colonists, with each one being different from the large masses of other universes you are intending to colonize simultaneously.

It's one of the things I mean by having to choose between high-effort low volume colonizations and low-effort high volume colonizations.  It just doesn't make any sense to be able to do both of them easily.  But you can do both of them, because it's the only way that 'humanity is gonna get weird' makes any sense in, and it's the natural outgrowth of ER's culture of eternal success.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Wait, what?
Given a few hundred thousand years, a lot of shit could happen, hell, even a few hundred.
Also, don't gimme any o' that bullshit about things working perfectly in ER, there's a reason we have those X-9 incidents.

[Devastator]

Also, don't gimme any o' that bullshit about things working perfectly in ER, there's a reason we have those X-9 incidents.

Which one mattered, again?

[syvarris]

Angle-9?

Also, we're sending AI across.  Multiple types, in fact.  Why would we need to train colonists?  The AI have vast databases of knowledge, and the humans are just there because we need to send humans for some reason.

[Devastator]

Angle-9?

You'd think.. but all that changed is that Steve didn't win the game by wishing without player involvement.  Oh, and won the war instantly.  Net plus.

Also, we're sending AI across.  Multiple types, in fact.  Why would we need to train colonists?  The AI have vast databases of knowledge, and the humans are just there because we need to send humans for some reason.

Same difference.  Your AI should suffer from similar limitations as the colonists, albeit with different conditions.  You gotta create it, you gotta program it, you gotta build it, and if you screw it up it doesn't work.  Same as a colonization effort, you either go high-effort low volume or low-effort high volume, albeit with different numbers.  Resources spent on an AI are resources spent not doing something else.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

That one time when a team was exploring crates and shit fucketh uppethed, stopping them from gaining a potentially incredibly useful AI?
That other time something called the altered wars happened?
That other time the mad hatter program helped an ancient god get into our world?
That other time someone started testing too much and locked us off from ever getting our teleporting guns?

[Devastator]

That one time when a team was exploring crates and shit fucketh uppethed, stopping them from gaining a potentially incredibly useful AI?
That other time something called the altered wars happened?
That other time the mad hatter program helped an ancient god get into our world?
That other time someone started testing too much and locked us off from ever getting our teleporting guns?

1. That doesn't seem to be preventing you from just making your own.
2. The altered wars happened.  They didn't prevent Steve from running his own rebellion, or limited his supply of super-scientists, or meant you inhabit a galaxy with limited resources.  The major effect was 'there's an end-boss'
3. I don't remember this, is this what happened with the Lurker, or is it something else?
4. Considering you're teleporting between universes now, I'm not sure how this really mattered.  Besides, it's not like you have freaking functional nanotech or anything.

[Egan_BW]

Dev doesn't like that things don't affect other things except for in the ways they do which don't matter because they don't change the fact that the game is how it is.
That is, Dev wants a game that is both internally consistent and changes over time in real, game-affecting ways.

[Devastator]

That is, Dev wants a game that is both internally consistent and changes over time in real, game-affecting ways.

Please note that 'we have bigger guns now' isn't really a change, IMO.  Some long-term plans would be good too, but can't really happen with a large playerbase.

Anyway, I've said enough.  I'm off.

[Kedly]

Honestly, there probably would be a period of societal and technological collapse and restructuring, but humanity would likely survive it, and create new technology suited to the new universe

[piecewise]

I don't really see how. We, in our current world, have uber-specialized humans and vastly different cultures. It doesn't mean limitless resources, it just means a long established time to make things and do things.  And it really doesn't imply those things because we're mass producing colonies and it's entirely possible for high powered tech to be automated but not well understood. Thats the entire idea of 40k isn't it? A  bunch of religious zealots using tech they barely understand?

Not to mention you have the fact that the players will not be given access to high tech gear. Bounty hunters and mercs don't get access to tactical nukes. So even if a robot man comes from some super high tech collective, he himself will not have access to it.

Yeah, that's my point exactly.  You get a free lunch.  You get to not understand the high powered tech that your society is based on, but still get to live.  You get to mass-produce a million individual designs.  You get to have the uber-specialized humans without the three million years of humanity and two billion years of eukaryotic life.

But it's all right because you aren't getting high-tech gear.  Because, you know, that isn't a relative or subjective term.

Dev I hate to say it but thats what society is. Society is about being a small unthinking cog in a machine with a narrow understanding of the greater whole. You do one small, specialized job and rely on others to do the rest. That is what modern society is.

Or am I to believe you understand every piece of technology and science you use right now? Can you understand and operate the satellite networks, air planes, and nuclear power plants? Did you lay the lines for your internet? Print the chips for your computer? Harvest the Rare Earth minerals for your hard drive or touch screen?

Honestly Dev, what the hell do you want? Do you want a game where I drop a man naked in the woods and then after five minutes of blind wandering I shoot him in the head and declare the game over? Because no matter what I do you seem angry with it. You always have some complaint. And this one seems....like, what the hell do you want me to do? And whats weirder is that it's not like this wasn't the case before. ER inmates got access to all sorts of things they didn't understand for absolutely free. Space suits full of high tech perfect insulators, shuttles to get them around, stasis pods to keep them fresh, regeneration to keep them alive, robot bodies to fix what regeneration couldn't.

But now the fact that someone might start as a spider is a problem? I fail to see how thats "Hyper-specialized" when that spider can be literally anything and gains no bonuses besides maybe to tap dancing and halloween costumes. Some guy from the future heph technodrome is not gonna get +4 Aux just for farting into reality. he's gonna get a backstory related to his origin and stats that he chooses.  Hell, if anything they have far less because those suits and shuttles and robo bodies and resuscitation aren't free and aren't guaranteed. 

Is your dream ER one where we're still on earth attempting to start a fire with sticks and wearing animal fur? What the fuck do you want dev?

Yeah, that's my point exactly.  You get a free lunch.  You get to not understand the high powered tech that your society is based on, but still get to live.  You get to mass-produce a million individual designs.  You get to have the uber-specialized humans without the three million years of humanity and two billion years of eukaryotic life.

But it's all right because you aren't getting high-tech gear.  Because, you know, that isn't a relative or subjective term.

Without using google, or wikipedia, or other resources beyond what you personally have memorized, how much can you really tell us about how, precisely, a microchip is made? what about oil drilling? and what about the internet archetecture of southeast asia? the flight principals of VTOL jets?

there's a lot of our current society that you don't have to fully understand to use proficiently.

* Devastator resists the urge to prattle about those examples just to show off..

So, how long do all those things last if nobody understands it?  Especially in ER's case, where the people who made it aren't here, and the techniques and technologies used to make it don't function in the new universe?  What happens if your microchip is leaky due to subtle quantum effects?  How do you troubleshoot that sort of issue?

I mean hell, in cave-verse siphons and pipes may not work properly.

I don't remember the size of the Coloumb, electrons travel from negative to positive, and 1/2 of the square root of two.

Why is it so hard to accept that OTHER people understand it? Just because our characters don't doesn't mean that no one does. And just because technology exists and is in use one place doesn't mean it exists and is in use somewhere else. You see a lot of pharmacological factories in deepest africa? A lot of highways in antartica? A lot of particle colliders in the middle east? And yet people in those areas still benefit from things done using those technologies.

That is, Dev wants a game that is both internally consistent and changes over time in real, game-affecting ways.

Please note that 'we have bigger guns now' isn't really a change, IMO.  Some long-term plans would be good too, but can't really happen with a large playerbase.

Anyway, I've said enough.  I'm off.

...Something  a player did is ending the game YEARS earlier than I planned and is radically changed the state of the universe. We lost space magic, characters respec'd, empires crumbled.

Are you annoyed that the game continued? That we kept doing missions? That the game didn't become freeroam or that EXO and UNCON people got new weapons to pick up the slack? What should I have done? Should I have just told a huge portion of our players "Well, I know you wanna keep playing but too bad! All that work was for nothing! You all have to use rifles now!" 

At some point I do things for the sake of the game and the sake of the players. An internally consistent world with major game changing events doesn't mean shit if 40 players quit because you fucked them over and removed what they liked about the game. It's not worth it. And stuff like this just makes me tired.

No more turns for tonight, I don't really feel like it.   

[Empiricist]

Huh. I always figured that if PW ever got pissed off, he'd act as if nothing's wrong and then a few days later abnormally happy while talking about having a nice new coat while the source of the aggravation mysteriously stops posting. Guess I was wrong.

[Egan_BW]

Could still happen.

[Nunzillor]

Removed.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Keep in mind, there's, like, big chunks of his moral compass are warring at about the same time, he wants to keep everyone happy, and he hates the idea that someone might have a bad time because of him, and that is horrendous if you encouner someone who seemingly can't be pleased because you want to help them but it's so hard to find anything to do.
Or it could just be frustration borne from confusion.