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There would have to be some way to keep muscle atrophy and the like at bay, but that would be pretty awesome.
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Dec 2, 2013 18:40
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Preechr posted:There would have to be some way to keep muscle atrophy and the like at bay, but that would be pretty awesome. That Voyager episode with the evil clown has people eternally in a computer simulation. Didn't work out so well for them! Although mostly it didn't work out well because they were in a terrible TV show.
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Dec 2, 2013 18:44
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In one book, I can't remember now, but the fluid you were suspended in once a day started flowing. Sort of like one of those pools that you can swim, but it's about the length of your body and the water is pumped out the back and into the front, keeping you exactly in the middle. I think the actual swimming is just the central computer firing your muscles in a set rhythm, so you're having virtual sex or lying on a beach or watching virtual Trek (!) oblivious to the fact your body is doing a couple of kms of swimming each day. You get out on the other end of your journey and marvel at your nicely toned, and we can blast the amount of UV in there you desire so if you want, and tanned body - while all you did for the last 6 months was smoke virtual weed and watch TOS (virtual). edit: Combine it with the magic communications of Trek (traveling much faster than light, happily having real-time conversation with Starfleet back home from corners of the galaxy) and poo poo gets really, really interesting. Otherland by Tad Williams will get your blood going about what happens when VR becomes a bit more like today's Internet, being able to totally live inside a virtual world.. but the actual physical location of the participants could be anywhere in the galaxy. Starfleet's seniors could each be on a different ship, different corners of the galaxy but spend every day together doing Starfleet's work from a virtual castle or something. Perfect communications technology so it can happen at warp and the safest thing to do would be permanently warping around, invisible to the 'real world' and conducting operations in virtual facilities. Tony Montana fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 18:49
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Tony Montana posted:How does Trek even deal with G? Just magic anti-G compensators? Ok then, I guess we don't need the fluid. "Inertial dampeners" which is actually one of the more impossible technologies as far as I'm concerned. I'm willing to buy that humans could master teleportation over long distances and some sort of FTL-equal drive, but dampening the inertia of tons of mass at millions of KPH in a vacuum...
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Dec 2, 2013 18:52
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Brawnfire posted:"Inertial dampeners" which is actually one of the more impossible technologies as far as I'm concerned. I'm willing to buy that humans could master teleportation over long distances and some sort of FTL-equal drive, but dampening the inertia of tons of mass at millions of KPH in a vacuum...
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Dec 2, 2013 19:01
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Ah, but the Higgs Field. This isn't my professional field, but the way I understand it is the Higgs feild which was recently discovered by CERN is a fundamental of how physics explains how mass works. It explains how some things have mass when they shouldn't. It could be centuries from now, but perhaps one day we can manipulate this field or effect. We can manipulate mass. Then all your standard equations like inertia and momentum, even traveling at the speed of light all get quite hosed up if you can either reduce mass to zero (or near zero) or go the other way and increase it to astronomical levels. This would enable entire branches of stellar and craft engineering currently literally physically impossible. edit: this mass effect is actually the basis for much of the technology in Mass Effect. Yep, a video game by EA has better scifi than JJ Trek. It's been a long time since I nerded out with video games, but I do remember the bible or journal or whatever in Mass Effect, that would have amazing voiced descriptions of the technology and details of the galaxy and ideas.. blew modern Trek outa the park. Tony Montana fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 19:04
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Bicyclops posted:*Mudd winks at the camera* oh my god what if Q turned out to be ascended-Mudd and TNG ended on him winking picard sits down at the poker table and Mudd peeks on camera, does the  hand thing, and winksjesus Hard Clumping fucked around with this message at 19:32 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 19:28
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The ending of Mass Effect 3 was so bad that EA was forced to retcon the whole thing in a DLC. Despite this, they still managed to include a gently caress you ending to the fans anyways because the guys who lead the project are petulant babies.
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Dec 2, 2013 20:07
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Tony Montana posted:edit: this mass effect is actually the basis for much of the technology in Mass Effect. Yep, a video game by EA has better scifi than JJ Trek. It's been a long time since I nerded out with video games, but I do remember the bible or journal or whatever in Mass Effect, that would have amazing voiced descriptions of the technology and details of the galaxy and ideas.. blew modern Trek outa the park. While Mass Effect did have a fairly in-depth codex covering a bunch of the technology and other things, none of it was ever really shown to work like that in the game itself because realism is boring unless you present it really well. Biggest example I can think of is they make a pretty big deal about how their capital ships really shouldn't fire their 50 kiloton explosion railgun projectiles at a ship with a planet behind them (or really fire at all if you aren't sure you're going to hit) but throughout the third game they gleefully show entire fleets of ships firing and missing other ships with the planet the first group is supposed to be protecting right behind the second.
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Dec 2, 2013 20:32
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Trent posted:And everyone's clothes are holograms and then everything disappears and you have nine hundred naked people floating around in a gymnasium with a warp core in the middle. But it's too late. I've seen everything.
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Dec 2, 2013 20:44
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Kibayasu posted:While Mass Effect did have a fairly in-depth codex covering a bunch of the technology and other things, none of it was ever really shown to work like that in the game itself because realism is boring unless you present it really well. Biggest example I can think of is they make a pretty big deal about how their capital ships really shouldn't fire their 50 kiloton explosion railgun projectiles at a ship with a planet behind them (or really fire at all if you aren't sure you're going to hit) but throughout the third game they gleefully show entire fleets of ships firing and missing other ships with the planet the first group is supposed to be protecting right behind the second. Yes. Hence it's been a long time since I've nerded out with video games. Despite the insistence of some grubby people, they are primarily for children. *goes to watch some Star Trek, hopes for pew pew* Tony Montana fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 20:47
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Tony Montana posted:Ah, but the Higgs Field. The problem with FTL is even if you had a magic device to set your mass to 0, you would still only travel at the speed of light. Traveling past light speed would require the object to have negative mass, and it would also travel backwards through time. Traveling at the speed of light would also be the equivalent to stepping into a time machine and setting the time acceleration to infinite. Any physically quantifiable unit of time for you at the speed of light would equal an infinite period of time to an outside observer, which is problematic considering our universe seems to have a finite life-span. The speed of light is a terrible name because it implies its an arbitrary barrier which could be broken, when its not. It would be probably more accurate to call it the speed at which reality its self propagates. Light and other fundamental forces just happen to also travel this speed due to their physical properties being perfectly conducive to traveling as fast as reality allows. Interstellar travel is perfectly possible, just not in a little space boat full of apes that only live 80 years and get in exciting adventures every week. OtherworldlyInvader fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 20:48
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Kibayasu posted:While Mass Effect did have a fairly in-depth codex covering a bunch of the technology and other things, none of it was ever really shown to work like that in the game itself because realism is boring unless you present it really well. Biggest example I can think of is they make a pretty big deal about how their capital ships really shouldn't fire their 50 kiloton explosion railgun projectiles at a ship with a planet behind them (or really fire at all if you aren't sure you're going to hit) but throughout the third game they gleefully show entire fleets of ships firing and missing other ships with the planet the first group is supposed to be protecting right behind the second. There's also that whole thing about how the REAL antagonist to Mass Effect doesn't reveal itself until 5 minutes before credits roll, then the game locks you into a bunch of increasingly nonsensical options to "victory"
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Dec 2, 2013 20:48
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:The problem with FTL is even if you had a magic device to set your mass to 0, you would still only travel at the speed of light. Traveling past light speed would require the object to have negative mass, and it would also travel backwards through time. Traveling at the speed of light would also be the equivalent to stepping into a time machine and setting the time acceleration to infinite. Any physically quantifiable unit of time for you at the speed of light would equal an infinite period of time to an outside observer, which is problematic considering our universe seems to have a finite life-span. Forever War - Joe Haldeman. You've read it right? If no, go to Amazon now and get yourself an early Christmas present. You'll enjoy it, I assure you.
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Dec 2, 2013 20:55
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1st AD posted:There's also that whole thing about how the REAL antagonist to Mass Effect doesn't reveal itself until 5 minutes before credits roll Children are the real antagonist in everyone's story. It is known.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:02
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Tony Montana posted:First season and all that, finding their feet I guess. Still, Kira is a lovely loving character, she's just an annoying dick while I guess her equivalent was Riker and Riker had Rikerness on his side. This is the wrongest thing I've read on here. Kira owns hard, and if you expect her to be a Riker, your completely misunderstanding her role on the show.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:08
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*shrug* S1 E11. I dunno man, I'm new around here.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:15
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1st AD posted:The ending of Mass Effect 3 was so bad that EA was forced to retcon the whole thing in a DLC. Despite this, they still managed to include a gently caress you ending to the fans anyways because the guys who lead the project are petulant babies. I was all set to sperg out and get into the Mass Effect series because so many people had recommended it to me as some cool space opera in the same tradition as trek, but the way they dumped on it in the end was so horrible I'm glad I dodged getting invested in it.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:22
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Tony Montana posted:*shrug* *shrug* is a good way to describe the first 2 seasons. That's just how you're going to feel until you get to the good parts. Now keep your head down and dig until you see daylight.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:22
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Tighclops posted:I was all set to sperg out and get into the Mass Effect series because so many people had recommended it to me as some cool space opera in the same tradition as trek, but the way they dumped on it in the end was so horrible I'm glad I dodged getting invested in it. A bunch of us fans literally ignore the ending and just play the final DLC as if it were the endgame (mostly because it is awesome and a much better ending to the franchise and matches the tone of the games a lot better).
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Dec 2, 2013 21:25
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I just stop playing a series-run when I beat Mass Effect 2. 3 is an all-around terrible game with too few good bits to justify playing it. 
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Dec 2, 2013 21:30
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:The problem with FTL is even if you had a magic device to set your mass to 0, you would still only travel at the speed of light. Traveling past light speed would require the object to have negative mass, and it would also travel backwards through time. Traveling at the speed of light would also be the equivalent to stepping into a time machine and setting the time acceleration to infinite. Any physically quantifiable unit of time for you at the speed of light would equal an infinite period of time to an outside observer, which is problematic considering our universe seems to have a finite life-span. Well maybe. Theres still a number of serious boffins who think that Alberquerue (or whatever it is, abracadabra) warp drive idea might work, unnobtanium negative mass matter notwithstanding. That said a warp drive isn't actually FTL, its just making the distances shorter. I'm skeptical but vaugely interested to see what nasas experiments with the concept will yield. edit: Alcubierre duck monster fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 21:33
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Eh, its like Battlestar Galactica. Are you going to skip 75 episodes of Sci-Fi TV, some of it great, much of it revolutionary, because the last episode sucked? I put in 150+ hours into Mass Effect over three games and I enjoyed most of it. Did I suddenly "waste" those hours because the last 30 minutes weren't what I hoped? Only you can answer that for your own tastes, of course, but for me a weak ending doesn't invalidate the fun I had playing it or the depth of storytelling and character interactions I experienced anymore than the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi don't make The Empire Strikes Back a worse movie for me.
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Dec 2, 2013 21:34
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Citadel is worth it though despite all the dumb bullshit that happens in the last 1/3 of the game. Just play it after Rannoch and pretend that you win the war via magic.jng2058 posted:Eh, its like Battlestar Galactica. Are you going to skip 75 episodes of Sci-Fi TV, some of it great, much of it revolutionary, because the last episode sucked? I put in 150+ hours into Mass Effect over three games and I enjoyed most of it. Did I suddenly "waste" those hours because the last 30 minutes weren't what I hoped? To be frank, the original ending was so bad and deflating that yes I did feel like I invested a lot of time for nothing. It's not even remotely the same as the BSG ending because that show was on a very long downward skid and I was mentally prepared for how awful it was going to be. Mass Effect 3 tricks you by having really good set pieces and story beats mixed in with utter bullshit. 1st AD fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 21:34
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duck monster posted:This is the wrongest thing I've read on here. Kira owns hard, and if you expect her to be a Riker, your completely misunderstanding her role on the show. Nag man when I think of riker I totally think of someone who is struggling with their religion and how they will transition to a more legitimate role in their society. In fact, the first word that comes to my mind when I think of riker is"struggle".
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Dec 2, 2013 21:37
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Tony Montana posted:Ah, but the Higgs Field. It's better than TNG and Voyager and TOS and Enterprise and probably DS9 also, but don't let that stop you from taking the opportunity to specifically call out JJTrek as having dumb science.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:16
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Man if they do a new star trek series you just know they are not going to shut up about higgs fields and negative higgs phase combrumptors, higgs containment fields, higgs beams, and higgs higgs higgs. This show abuses science words for technobabble like nothing else.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:20
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duck monster posted:Man if they do a new star trek series you just know they are not going to shut up about higgs fields and negative higgs phase combrumptors, higgs containment fields, higgs beams, and higgs higgs higgs. Our shields were down and two plasma torpedoes were coming in hot. Thankfully Ensign Dickbreath just fired up an inverse higgs pulse that deflected the torpedoes back at the Klingons. Then they did the same and we played space pong until reinforcements arrived. Boop
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Dec 2, 2013 22:26
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DrNutt posted:It's better than TNG and Voyager and TOS and Enterprise and probably DS9 also, but don't let that stop you from taking the opportunity to specifically call out JJTrek as having dumb science. He was comparing it to it's contemporary because Mass Effect's attention to detail is probably inspired at least in part by the same technogeekery from TOS and TNG and so on. There are so many other way more important and more relevant things to call out JJTrek for though, I don't think they know how to degrease their camera lenses in the ME universe either.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:28
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jng2058 posted:Eh, its like Battlestar Galactica. Are you going to skip 75 episodes of Sci-Fi TV, some of it great, much of it revolutionary, because the last episode sucked? I put in 150+ hours into Mass Effect over three games and I enjoyed most of it. Did I suddenly "waste" those hours because the last 30 minutes weren't what I hoped? The idea of something being "retroactively ruined" is one of the weirdest concepts I've ever heard of. McSpanky posted:Find dead certain proof that Mary got knocked up by some guy and get back to us on that. Mary? What? Farecoal fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Dec 2, 2013 |
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Dec 2, 2013 22:29
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Yeah explaining more doesn't mean explaining better. One of my favorite bits of Mass Effect science is that biotics exist because their scientists pulled a space pirates from Metroid Prime move by exposing everything to element zero they could get their hands on.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:33
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DrNutt posted:It's better than TNG and Voyager and TOS and Enterprise and probably DS9 also, but don't let that stop you from taking the opportunity to specifically call out JJTrek as having dumb science. Ok, slowly now. Better scifi, not science. Mass Effect has better scifi than TOS? TNG.. nope, there was some cool poo poo in TNG. Ah whatever, enjoy your vidya games.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:33
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jng2058 posted:Eh, its like Battlestar Galactica. Are you going to skip 75 episodes of Sci-Fi TV, some of it great, much of it revolutionary, because the last episode sucked? I put in 150+ hours into Mass Effect over three games and I enjoyed most of it. Did I suddenly "waste" those hours because the last 30 minutes weren't what I hoped? BSG feels like it was building toward something, and it was made to seem to be building toward something; like the series was to be considered as a whole and that the creators had a larger picture to share that could only be fully appreciated in a full and final form. Then it turns out to just devolve into random crap. So yeah, in that case it feels like it was a waste of time despite the quality of any given episode.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:36
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Farecoal posted:The idea of something being "retroactively ruined" is one of the weirdest concepts I've ever heard of. Find dead certain proof that Mary got knocked up by some guy and get back to us on that.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:41
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McSpanky posted:Find dead certain proof that Mary got knocked up by some guy and get back to us on that. The true identity of "some guy" to be revealed in the final episode of Doctor Who
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Dec 2, 2013 22:44
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Tony Montana posted:Ok, slowly now. Better scifi, not science. That's not really what it meant in context with everything else you said in that post, but okay.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:46
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Thanks for letting me know what I meant.
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Dec 2, 2013 22:48
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Farecoal posted:The idea of something being "retroactively ruined" is one of the weirdest concepts I've ever heard of. Retroactively ruined might be a bit harsh to describe how I feel about series that have good starts but bad finishes. It largely depends on how well the early parts of the story stand on their own. Take the Matrix series for example. The first Matrix is still pretty enjoyable because it works as a stand alone movie. When I saw Matrix: Reloaded for the first time, I would say that it was tentatively good. That is to say that it had some problems but they would all be forgivable so long 3rd movie built on it and ended well. It's not that the Matrix: Revolutions retroactively made the 2nd movie suck... it just sucked and because it sucked, it didn't make up for the 2nd movies short comings. Matrix: Reloaded does not stand alone and needs the 3rd movie to provide a good conclusion, which it fails to do. This is more a problem with serial TV shows like BSG than it is with more episodic shows like TNG. I don't think anyone here would say that TNG sucks and was ruined by Nemesis. But BSG is one big long story that is building to something. A lot of people didn't like what it build towards and that can make it seem like the whole journey wasn't worth it.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:01
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Brawnfire posted:"Inertial dampeners" which is actually one of the more impossible technologies as far as I'm concerned. I'm willing to buy that humans could master teleportation over long distances and some sort of FTL-equal drive, but dampening the inertia of tons of mass at millions of KPH in a vacuum... If you have artificial gravity, you have inertial dampening. After all, gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable. Since inertial dampeners are supposedly an active system that analyses the ship's acceleration and counters it, it would just need to work by generating an opposing gravity field for the interior.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:14
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For the record, I have pretty orthodox opinions about Trek but I thought the Mass Effect ending was fine, especially before the extended cut, which made it substantially worse. Certainly it was better than the BSG ending, which was just as bad as people say it was.
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Dec 2, 2013 23:15
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