New Taiie Space Colony

[Wes]

Submission Type: space station/megastructure/RP setting
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=yamatai:new_taiie

Faction:
FM Approved Yet? Yes, by me, today
Faction requires art? Requirement temporarily waived by FM, plan to get later

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No
Contains New art? No
Previously Submitted? No

Notes: It's not nearly as large as Hoshi no Iori was, but this is Yamatai getting back into building big stuff.

 

[Fred]

I would respecfully recommend against it. I wish you might have aired something like this in faction planning first so that I could've given you more perspective without you having to go through the trouble of making a submission.

First of all, for the goal of eliminating the Taiie nebula. I'd personally would like to see this piece of RP history stay, and it wasn't just produced by a single planet - it involves the sun going hypernova and most of the system (involving many planets) being snuffed out along with it. It's also an excellent locale to use to renew ship resources using Matter Collection System; an underused ship system.

Secondly, we don't have a good track record with making megastructures interesting. I don't think this is a wise direction to head towards.

Third, it's already been established that a major spaceport was going to be established in the Bard Cluster. The idea was to use a Kodaina Minato-class Orbital Installation for that locale (whom I wanted to use as home port for my plot post thread 2+). It was already going to be established there for much the same reasons as New Taiie, so, as I see it there's some stepping on toes there. In my opinion, the Kodaina Minato is an underused space installation that sets an excellent benchmark for SARP detail-wise. It also seems to me more viscerally satisfying to use than another ring for said region.

 

[Wes]

First of all, for the goal of eliminating the Taiie nebula. I'd personally would like to see this piece of RP history stay, and it wasn't just produced by a single planet - it involves the sun going hypernova and most of the system (involving many planets) being snuffed out along with it. It's also an excellent locale to use to renew ship resources using Matter Collection System; an underused ship system.

The piece of history will still be there, just in a different form. The placement of the ring is precisely because of the resources. We would normally have to blow up a planet for these levels of resources; in this case, the planets are blown up for us already, which is convenient. The simple solution is to have the Minato there because it's sucking up matter and using it to build ring segments. The ring will take a significant time to build, so it's entirely possible that it's still in a very primitive uninhabitable form when your plot goes through the area. In short, it makes sense and it's compatible with your plot.

 

[Abwehran Commander]

Having a megastructure is all well and good, but I believe the Taiie Nebula to be a horrible place for a Bishop Ring.

In order for a Bishop Ring to function, a Star is needed to provided sunlight necessary for plants to grow and life to flourish. Taiie Nebula has no star, Taiie's star went hypernova. This means practically nothing is left in that former system except for dust, gas, and debris. In essence, a Bishop Ring is useless in that region of space.

 

[Wes]

That's a fair point, and I think the best solution would be to build the ring at the site of Taiie and then eventually bring it to some system with a nice star (maybe Tsuyosa) and set it up there at the L3 Lagrange point. The move could be done in sections if necessary.

 

[Abwehran Commander]

Sounds needlessly complicated. If you need to use the resources from the Nebula, why not transport the material to a nearby system and build the structure there?

 

[Wes]

That works too. So we have Fred's Minato starbase at the Nebula and the ring would be built at its permanent location, which will need to be determined before I change the article.

 

[Yoerik]

I like the ideas of mega-structures. It sounds pretty Halo-like, which I really enjoy. As for the Bishop Ring: A bishop ring can be revolving around a number of asteroids or planetoid too. Why not locate some decent big planetoid inside the Taiie Nebula.

Speaking of nebulas: they usually have numbers of neutron stars and white dwarfs, since not all stars collapse to form nebula's. Actually, every star around the same size as the sun becomes either an neutron star if the mass is big enough, or a white dwarf which essentially happens after a supernova in which the star collapses but a small amount remains to form a white dwarf.

In perspective, a neutron star it's temperature is around roughly 700,000 Celsius, while a white dwarf merely has a temperature of around 3,500 Celsius. I would recommend sending a station near a neutron star since it is much hotter than a white dwarf.

Anyone who doesn't believe me, I'm following a study in astronomy.

 

[Fred]

Well, for transparency, here's how it kind of went lore-wise:

The Goumon system was renamed the Kotori system. Since the Bard Cluster seemed to have been unfortunately neglected after the many fiascos that occured in the region, having one world renamed after a recent warhero and member of the imperial (Ketsurui) clan seemed like an opportunity to not only be rebirth for the Goumon system, but also the entire Bard cluster. When came the time for a new electoral campaign to name the world's next governor, Bjorn Radtke - a former-shareholder of Geshrinari Fleet Yards whom winned big when the Tamahagane Corporation 'bought' Geshrinari Yards - jockeyed to come ahead in the electoral campaign in order to further this vision.

A keystone for his campaign was endorsement from Ketsurui Kotori, whom was supposed to visit him during his campaign. Kotori and he were broke a deal which would prop Miharu Light Industries has his default go-to company for the work he planned to invest into in the coming years. Radtke wanted to win his campaign, and Kotori wished prosperity for her former crewmembers... so it seemed a good deal until events snowballed when Kotori's entourage were assailed by assassins and the Ketsurui noble made a speedy retreat offplanet.

It didn't stop Radtke from ultimately winning the election, though it wasn't the landslide victory he'd hoped for. From that point on, he pushed to turn the Kotori system into a major starport for the Bard Cluster - just without MLI's involvement since that deal fell through - and instead turned to associates at Geshrinari Yards in order to have a Minato Kodaina starbase built for the Kotori system. The Taiie nebula was already one prospective font of resources for that... though building a starbase really would've barely tapped in the nebula itself.

Building a Minato Kodaina-class orbital installation (read: orbital... as around a planet - not splat in the middle of a nebula) was already a monumental achievement. The Minato Kodaina is already pretty colossal (it takes a whopping nine months to build), but it isn't so much as a tadpole in comparison to how ridiculously colossal a Bishop Ring would be.

I'll be frank: this is kind of like hair on my soup. I was kind of slowly but surely pushing a recovery story in the region around which I play a senator to, and suddenly after years of ignoring it Himiko goes and decides that Yamatai's next ridiculously humungous station is going to be built there? Sure, I didn't advertise it very loudly except in my plot, but then again it's not like Wes said anything about it before either. Hence my peevish why now?! reaction to thi.

Honestly, if you want to build a megastructure, I don't think the Bard Cluster is the place. Himiko doesn't need to push for rebirth when rebirth was already happening. If you ask me, a Bishop Ring-style megastructure would be better established next to much more materials. The Jun system - largely nondescript and now the only point of interest in the Great Southern Nebula - is one possibility. Making the Samurai sector stronger with a Bishop Ring - especially considering the quantities of nebulas around it - looks like it'd make more sense too.

edit:
My plans for the Bard Cluster are nothing pivotally important to my plot. I was just slowly building up a backdrop and seeing the Bishop Ring suddenly crop up is just about as frustrating as slowly tending budding garden, carefully pruning it and guiding its growth... and then suddenly someone blows past obliviously in a tractor to start building a mall over my garden.

I mean, it's just a garden, but I was still carefully building it up to look nice, so it kind of draws a "GRAAAH!" reaction out of me. x_x

Then Wes goes "You can have your little garden still be around in this small green nook of my mall's parking lot... except that the garden was supposed to be the point of interest for said region. Now that there's a mall being built there, it kind of sabotages the intent at its one point of interest that really dwarfs the other along with the going ons that built up to it. It trivializes it, no matter how much Wes may think '"it's compatible" and "makes sense".

And considering how much use we squeeze out of large space stations and planets; and how we tend to actually very lightly depict them, going so far as a Bishop Ring just feels to me like an exercise in which "moderation" wasn't ever a concern.

That's where I'm coming from.

 

[Soresu]

The piece of history will still be there, just in a different form. The placement of the ring is precisely because of the resources. We would normally have to blow up a planet for these levels of resources; in this case, the planets are blown up for us already, which is convenient. The simple solution is to have the Minato there because it's sucking up matter and using it to build ring segments. The ring will take a significant time to build, so it's entirely possible that it's still in a very primitive uninhabitable form when your plot goes through the area. In short, it makes sense and it's compatible with your plot.

Not blow up a planet. Harvest from a Sun. :| Stars contain some 98% of a solar system's total mass. Which includes metallic resources, hydrogen, plasma, minute amounts of anti-matter and so on. Drawing off stellar material wouldn't exactly harm the star, however whatever platform used would need to take into account exceedingly high temperatures, radiation and the chance of solar flares.

 

[Yoerik]

Fred, just one thing: orbital is not necessarily around a planet. It can be any stationary object including suns, moons, asteroids and planetoids. In fact many mayor aster- and planetoids have their own natural moons. Ceres is known to have tentalls of small asteroids orbiting around it.

And Soresu, read what I posted above. While neutron stars are a lot smaller the standard sun, they exist of even heavier elements, because when a star nears it's supernova stage, it actually starts to fuse the hydrogen and helium into even bigger atoms. If you don't get what I mean than that's not strange. The thing mainly is that harvesting from a neutron star is even more efficient than from a normal star. And because it's much smaller than a normal sun, the megastructure doesn't have to be that big.

But before U get to any harder astrofysical stuff and all , let's say that a nebula as big as these contain hundreds of neutron stars. Just picking one shouldn't be that hard. Naming shouldn't be either, mostly it's only numbers with one capitalised letter.

If you need help figuring out how neutron stars work, don't hesitate to contact me.

Wes I really like the idea and I'm here to support you on astronomical matters. Good luck!

 

[Wes]

Please consider this submission on hold until I find a place to put it.

 

[Yoerik]

Fred, please read the article. The Star Army has been on the plan sinc the planet's destruction in YE 29. So it's nothing new and if you would be active at that time you could have stopped it then.

Now it's quite some time later so in-character and out-character the thing has basically past a few years ago.

 

[Doshii Jun]

@yoerik17, you're brand new and you don't know much about anything, including the metagame.

Your scientific perspective is appreciated. We're not all scientists here, so it's great to hear.

But next time you want to tell an almost 10-year veteran about something he could've or could not have done years ago, you should hold your tongue and listen.

 

[Wes]

Fred was the guy that destroyed the planet in the first place.

I don't really want to put the ring in a nebula like Jun but I'm open to suggestions for other places to put it. Tsuyosa still seems like the most sensible to me so far. It wouldn't make sense to have it very far from the place it's made out of/named after/in honor of.

 

[Fred]

Well, if I try to move past my initial reaction... I figure the Bishop Ring could actually replace the Minato Kodaina. Said Governor could've curried to Empress Himiko's support and most of the established backstory for the region holds out and the New Taiie article would also hold up. The Minato Kodaina was meant for the Kotori system, so, seeing the system/planet has been fleshed out a bit the "New Taiie" Bishop Ring could end up there too. It doesn't have to, but if it would it could be a good foundation to build upon.

What remains is my personal distate for the Bishop Ring, as I don't think it's a very good or RP practical kind of structure for our roleplayed universe (I consider HnI a mistake, and New Taiie just seems to repeat it even if it is on a smaller scale), and how it would be a shame not to use such a good station as the Minato Kodaina. But that's all me, and those preferences shouldn't be what keeps this submission on hold.

 

[Abwehran Commander]

To be more accurate, Fred did more than just destroy the planet.

He destroyed the entire solar system. Technically, the Hypernova would have wiped out much of life in the surrounding systems as well, but we fluffed that over due to shenanigans.

 

[Wes]

@Fred: I'd be happy to put the ring in the Kotori system and work with you to give it a unique and more detailed flavor so it's not just generic farms. It's the size of a nation so it could even be treated as a part of the planet under your governor. As for the Minato, we could always have it be present too or showcase it in another location (there's one in Hanako's World orbit that might work).

 

[Khasidel]

At one point I was also planning to try introducing a bishop ring megastructure to the setting, though my plan was going to go about it slightly differently from how you appear to want to do it Wes. Rather than create an article for the ring as a single object, I was going to design and create an article for singular ring segments; a hundred being be required to make a complete ring. Each segment station would effectively be a giant space installation capable of functioning as a separate entity if needed, and while larger than the kodaina minato not so much more so as to be completely and utterly a ridiculous prospect. Basically the size of a large asteroid or very small moon.



The above image being a rough concept for the general shape and dimensions (just substitute the m for meters to km for kilometers); the outer part of the ring opposite the settled earth-like area would have countless docking bays/ fabrication bays/ shipyards and the like. Each completed ring segment could lend its industrial capacity to completing the other segments for the ring.



In the end once you've locked 100 of them together, you'd get a complete ring.

 

[Wes]

I thought about doing it that way too, and I think it's a good idea. Though this model is for a Bishop ring as described in the Wikipedia article, right, and not the larger version Yamatai wants, right?