Weltall, the game, not the book -- huh??

We see them using starlifting on their home star. We see them mining the resources of planets around other stars. We see them move megastructures over interstellar distances.

Yet we do not see them engage in starlifting on other stars. Why?!

Loren Pechtel wrote:Yet we do not see them engage in starlifting on other stars. Why?!

The players that were trying to expand along more traditional RTS lines were all eliminated in the early-to-mid game. The only two left in the late game went with strategies that avoided multi-system industrial infrastructure.

Wong Fei took a risk in the early game by establishing his star lifters so quickly, and the structures did alert other players to his location by occluding his home star’s light, forcing him into an early-game confrontation he didn't want. However, the star lifters also allowed him to establish a stronger late-game footing, snowballing his early game economics and playing into his overall defensive posture. Meanwhile, Sako avoided a traditional infrastructure entirely, employing what could be called a “cheese” strategy with her rush into specific, late-game tech.

There’s nothing in the book that says the players couldn't deploy star lifters in multiple systems, but the game never reached the level of late game economic saturation where those sorts of measures would become more prevalent.

He was running short on star by the end of the game. I would have established operations around the nearby stars before reaching that point because if you deplete your nearby resources before establishing new sources you'll be in big trouble.

And he would have fought the berserkers outside his system defenses, it would have been safer.

Loren Pechtel wrote:He was running short on star by the end of the game. I would have established operations around the nearby stars before reaching that point because if you deplete your nearby resources before establishing new sources you'll be in big trouble.

And he would have fought the berserkers outside his system defenses, it would have been safer.

Not really. His forces would be split up and that would allow the All-Predator to defeat them in detail (the total force might be greater, though, IMHO, not sufficiently so)

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:He was running short on star by the end of the game. I would have established operations around the nearby stars before reaching that point because if you deplete your nearby resources before establishing new sources you'll be in big trouble.

And he would have fought the berserkers outside his system defenses, it would have been safer.

Under normal conditions, Wong Fei would have eventually expanded to a second star, if for no other reason than he would want to maintain his economic advantage. However, the appearance of the All-Predator shifted the game into a desperate hold-or-die last stand.

Any attempt by Wong Fei at interstellar expansion during the attack would have either been quickly destroyed or would have required a massive investment in combat units to defend. Both options would have diluted his resources at a critical point in the game. Furthermore, even if he had established a permanent presence in more than one system beforehand, he would probably abandon them to the All-Predator with little or no fight, deciding instead to consolidate his defenses (which is clearly his preferred playstyle).

Communication delay makes micro control progressively more difficult the further an engagement takes places from a player’s avatar, but Wong Fei’s playstyle almost entirely avoided this consideration, maximizing his defender’s advantage in every engagement he fought (even when he was on the offense against Masuda). This would then be on top of his natural logistical advantage of having new units enter the fight with basically zero transit time rather than having to slog it over to a neighboring system he doesn’t really need yet.

Furthermore, Wong Fei still retained a full third of his home star’s mass around the time the All-Predator attack began to exhaust itself, which is a gargantuan amount of raw matter when you consider our sun represents over 99% percent of the solar system’s total mass. He could afford to keep turtling in the short term, especially since he knew Sako had basically no chance against him in a direct confrontation.

Jacob Holo wrote:Furthermore, Wong Fei still retained a full third of his home star’s mass around the time the All-Predator attack began to exhaust itself, which is a gargantuan amount of raw matter when you consider our sun represents over 99% percent of the solar system’s total mass. He could afford to keep turtling in the short term, especially since he knew Sako had basically no chance against him in a direct confrontation.

I took that "retain a third of the mass" with a grain of salt. First, it could just be improper phrasing of saying "third of the extractable mass" because, as the star grows dimmer, you extract less power from it to power your star lifters, so it becomes progressively more difficult to lift mass out of it. You can probably overcome it if you needed or wanted to by adding more lifters and collectors, but that requires investment and probably diverts from the military side. There are also other physical solutions to the problem which is to dump the hydrogen back onto the star but filter out almost everything else, in particular the helium. This does extend the lifetime of the star, so even a G-type star like the Sun could be extended for many billions of years past its regular 10-gigayear expiration date.

Note to humanity: let's do that.

Second, there was a passage in the book that the game developers confessed to fudging the laws of physics in the game, when they said that their star mover (was it a Shkadov Thruster?) was far more efficient than it would have been in real life. This was actually a very nice touch by the book authors, BTW. Well, this goes in the same line as the star lifters, because the star powers its own moving, so if you'd managed to get it moving that quickly, you must have had very, very good lifters. And it does seem like they managed to get to something like a 0.2 to 0.25c in almost no time. The passages on the game don't give the time accounting precisely enough, so I might be way off here.

But if it was a Shkadov Thruster, then just how did they stop? Because at turnover, you'd have the energy of that thruster being pointed in your line of movement... that is, at your opponent. So you no longer have an engine... you have a Nicoll-Dyson Laser Beam, which travels at the speed of light. The only defence against it is to not be there when it arrives, but the attacker can shift the target of the beam faster than one can move one's system -- in fact, the target can be shifted superluminally. It may not work against a dispersed target like the All-Predator (an "Aggressively Hegemonising Swarm", in Iain Bank's Culture nomenclature), but it might.

So my guess is that the game developers made it somehow impossible to create such an ultimate superweapon. I don't know if this occurred to you when you and David were writing the book, but it's implied

Anyway, I'd like to play Weltall!

ThinksMarkedly wrote:First, it could just be improper phrasing of saying "third of the extractable mass" because, as the star grows dimmer, you extract less power from it to power your star lifters, so it becomes progressively more difficult to lift mass out of it.

I don’t think the power requirements for the star lifting operation would be too large a challenge once the operation is well underway. The massive amounts of hydrogen being collected represent a logical alternative source of power for the star lifters as the process moves into its later stages. Any civilization in a position to consume their star in this manner would be swimming in fusible material.

I actually use this in a manuscript I recently turned in to Baen (a non-Gordian solo novel) where Mercury is a gas giant in the setting (the original planet was used for raw material and what's there now is a storage site for star lifted hydrogen and helium).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Second, there was a passage in the book that the game developers confessed to fudging the laws of physics in the game, when they said that their star mover (was it a Shkadov Thruster?) was far more efficient than it would have been in real life.

I actual had an array of Caplan thrusters in mind when I wrote that scene. And yes, certain aspects of the “physics” were tuned with game balance in mind, which is why Wong Fei’s stellar engine is so effective. It’s been a while since I looked at the math, but the acceleration had to be ratcheted up quite a bit to be effective from a gameplay standpoint. This is also why Wong Fei is using more than one stellar engine at the same time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:But if it was a Shkadov Thruster, then just how did they stop? Because at turnover, you'd have the energy of that thruster being pointed in your line of movement... that is, at your opponent.

Well, in this particular case, Wong Fei didn’t stop the star! He basically tossed his original star for a “fresh” one, all while wrecking the orbits of everything in Masuda’s system by sending his original star zipping by.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So you no longer have an engine... you have a Nicoll-Dyson Laser Beam, which travels at the speed of light. The only defence against it is to not be there when it arrives, but the attacker can shift the target of the beam faster than one can move one's system -- in fact, the target can be shifted superluminally.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So my guess is that the game developers made it somehow impossible to create such an ultimate superweapon. I don't know if this occurred to you when you and David were writing the book, but it's implied

Originally, David and I were going to include some interstellar “Death Star” lasers, but the more research we did, the more engineering challenges we found with focusing lasers over such huge distances. In the end, we went with interstellar mass drivers to fulfill that particular combat role for a number of reasons, including both technical and narrative ones.

Certainly, a solar-powered laser of that scale could be an effective offensive weapon (and, from a lore standpoint, would probably be within Weltall’s full catalog of options), but it also has a few problems any player would need to overcome in order to use it effectively.

The construction of anything on that scale would be a massive red flag to all other players, since they would see it occluding the star’s light very early in the construction phase. Anything on a Dyson-scale is going to plant a big bull’s eye on the back of whichever player is building it, and we can assume the other players would react accordingly with counter strategies.

Placing key structures in the shadows of stars and gas giants would prove effective, which is similar to what Wong Fei did during his attack on Masuda. Additionally, any mobile installations or ships could simply not be in easily predictable spots. The shooter needs to lead the target by a lot, after all! Planets could also be nudged a bit here or there to alter their orbits defensively. Even a small change, compounded over the light-years of beam travel time, would present formidable challenges to the attacker. The player building the Nicoll-Dyson laser is essentially providing the other players with free scouting data, which can be quite valuable (and the opposite can be true as well, as Sako demonstrated with her carefully hidden strategy).

That said, such a weapon would absolutely massacre any large macrotech structures that can’t get out of the way. I’m not sure a dedicated stellar engine would be idea for this purpose, though. I’m picturing one of those as more of a short-ranged plasma flamethrower than long-range laser sniper. On interstellar terms, of course. This goes back to the concerns David and I had when it came to focusing the beam.

Anyway, I’m just going to throw it out here that I have complete faith in Ergon to balance the game mechanics and create a fun and rewarding player experience.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Anyway, I'd like to play Weltall!

Thank you! I spent a lot of time developing this part of the B plot, and I'm happy with how it turned out. Also, talking about the game has actually made me a bit nostalgic for Masters of Orion or Sins of a Solar Empire.

Jacob Holo wrote:I don’t think the power requirements for the star lifting operation would be too large a challenge once the operation is well underway. The massive amounts of hydrogen being collected represent a logical alternative source of power for the star lifters as the process moves into its later stages. Any civilization in a position to consume their star in this manner would be swimming in fusible material.

I was thinking that if you're lifting huge quantities of hydrogen out of the star, then the star's brightness diminishes, therefore reducing the power available for the starlifters. This is noticeable even if you've consumed 10% of the mass: a star that is 0.9 solar masses, like Alpha Centauri B, is already a K-type star and only half as bright as the Sun.

However, this is something that would happen in a scale of millions of years, so the game had to necessarily fudge the laws of physics somehow to make the star become exhausted.

I actually use this in a manuscript I recently turned in to Baen (a non-Gordian solo novel) where Mercury is a gas giant in the setting (the original planet was used for raw material and what's there now is a storage site for star lifted hydrogen and helium).

That sounds... dangerous. We're less than 5 light-minutes from that, so its gravity would influence us quite a bit. Venus would have it worse!

Besides, wouldn't it be too hot to store hydrogen and helium there? Wouldn't the solar wind bake it and blow it out of the system, at least in astronomical time scales?

I actual had an array of Caplan thrusters in mind when I wrote that scene. And yes, certain aspects of the “physics” were tuned with game balance in mind, which is why Wong Fei’s stellar engine is so effective. It’s been a while since I looked at the math, but the acceleration had to be ratcheted up quite a bit to be effective from a gameplay standpoint. This is also why Wong Fei is using more than one stellar engine at the same time.

Ah, ok. Looks like the difference between a Caplan and a Shkadov thruster is what it uses as reaction: Caplan thrusters use the star's own material as reaction mass, whereas Shkadov thrusters use light. The Wikipedia page on Caplans say they would achieve an average speed of 10 parsecs per million years... so, yeah, the game's stellar engines are massively more efficient than those envisioned by Caplan.

But whether they're Caplan or Shkadov, if you turn the engine around, now you have a beam in the direction of your enemy. In one case it's EM radiation travelling at the speed of light; in the other, it's a hot plasma travelling at relativistic speeds.

Well, in this particular case, Wong Fei didn’t stop the star! He basically tossed his original star for a “fresh” one, all while wrecking the orbits of everything in Masuda’s system by sending his original star zipping by.

And if he didn't turn the engine off after passing through, then now that beam is roasting everything left behind! Never mind that it got ejected out of the system; it's only charred rock.

Originally, David and I were going to include some interstellar “Death Star” lasers, but the more research we did, the more engineering challenges we found with focusing lasers over such huge distances. In the end, we went with interstellar mass drivers to fulfill that particular combat role for a number of reasons, including both technical and narrative ones.

Well, in this case, how narrow the beam needs to be is also a matter of scale. If it is a million km in radius at the target after 10 light-years, it's still a lot of power in a very small area. Any planet found in that is going to roast. Let's say the Beam is able to send 10% of the star's power output and the planet has a 5,000 km radius (Earth is ~6400), that means the planet is receiving (5000/1,000,000)² of the 10% of the power, or 2.5 ppm of the star's power. That's still over 8 x 10^20 W (800 exawatts) for the Sun.

It's not going to look like the Death Star, neither in beam incidence nor in the resulting explosion.

Certainly, a solar-powered laser of that scale could be an effective offensive weapon (and, from a lore standpoint, would probably be within Weltall’s full catalog of options), but it also has a few problems any player would need to overcome in order to use it effectively.

The construction of anything on that scale would be a massive red flag to all other players, since they would see it occluding the star’s light very early in the construction phase. Anything on a Dyson-scale is going to plant a big bull’s eye on the back of whichever player is building it, and we can assume the other players would react accordingly with counter strategies.

Ah, very good point!

The other players did note that Wong Fei was building some megastructure around the star and probably guessed at what it was (there probably aren't many choices), but something of the scale of a Nicoll-Dyson Beam probably needs far more time and far more occlusion than the Caplan Thrusters and mass drivers.

Placing key structures in the shadows of stars and gas giants would prove effective, which is similar to what Wong Fei did during his attack on Masuda. Additionally, any mobile installations or ships could simply not be in easily predictable spots. The shooter needs to lead the target by a lot, after all! Planets could also be nudged a bit here or there to alter their orbits defensively. Even a small change, compounded over the light-years of beam travel time, would present formidable challenges to the attacker.

Agreed on small structures, especially anything that doesn't need to orbit the star (a statite), and agreed on everything relating to projectiles. But not on defending a planet against a beam with a radius of 1,000,000, or 400 radii of the planet. But the problems in creating such a beam are still present.

Not actually the case. By the time a star as massive as the Sun [actually the limit is somewhere around .5 Msun, but I'd need to look it up] is established on the main sequence, the core is bound by its self-gravitation and its structure and characteristics, including luminosity, are fixed. The envelope is entirely supported by the luminosity of the core, and has no further direct influence on its evolution - in fact, it would be fair to say that they don't interact at all, other than via the outbound radiation, until well after the star leaves the main sequence.

What that means is that it is quite possible to strip the envelope [and Nature does it] without materially affecting the luminosity. That said, you would have trouble actually stripping the Sun to a mass coordinate of .33. Or at least, trouble controlling the stripping and using the mass for anything. For one thing, as you strip away the envelope, its binding energy drops, and eventually the luminosity of the core will start expelling the remainder at higher and higher rates - in effect, a massive amplification of the solar wind. If you can't catch it as fast as it is blown off, you're going to lose all that material to space. Another issue is that before you get down to .33, you probably have entered the core, and you are dealing with engineering around an object that is _extremely_ hot, is gravitationally bound so you no longer get the buoyancy assist from the radiation moving through, and may not be particularly stable against the devices you're using to strip it. Meaning that things could suddenly get rather messy out there.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jacob Holo wrote:I don’t think the power requirements for the star lifting operation would be too large a challenge once the operation is well underway. The massive amounts of hydrogen being collected represent a logical alternative source of power for the star lifters as the process moves into its later stages. Any civilization in a position to consume their star in this manner would be swimming in fusible material.

I was thinking that if you're lifting huge quantities of hydrogen out of the star, then the star's brightness diminishes, therefore reducing the power available for the starlifters. This is noticeable even if you've consumed 10% of the mass: a star that is 0.9 solar masses, like Alpha Centauri B, is already a K-type star and only half as bright as the Sun.

However, this is something that would happen in a scale of millions of years, so the game had to necessarily fudge the laws of physics somehow to make the star become exhausted.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jacob Holo wrote:I actually use this in a manuscript I recently turned in to Baen (a non-Gordian solo novel) where Mercury is a gas giant in the setting (the original planet was used for raw material and what's there now is a storage site for star lifted hydrogen and helium).

That sounds... dangerous. We're less than 5 light-minutes from that, so its gravity would influence us quite a bit. Venus would have it worse!

The extent of the star lifting in that setting is much more mild compared to the Weltall game, so the mass of any collection body wouldn't be high enough to interfere with other planets to that extent.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Besides, wouldn't it be too hot to store hydrogen and helium there? Wouldn't the solar wind bake it and blow it out of the system, at least in astronomical time scales?

Between the gas giant's gravity well and magnetosphere (the latter of which could be tuned to a certain degree, given the planet is essentially being constructed from scratch), I think there are plenty of powerful options available to mitigate any significant loss. Furthermore, from a lore standpoint, it was meant to be a temporary depository, so loss over geological time spans would not be a major operational consideration.

Also, who said anything about Earth still being around in this setting? Most of the characters think an "earth" is a unit of surface area and live their lives on orbital rings girdling the gas giants. The main character was born on Neptune.