The Background Thus Far

[Mantisking]

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The Ijad view any sort of centralized government as inherently problematic, so some meaningful number of them see the Free Colonies' vision of federation as the first steps to some sort of empire. Probably because some number of Free Colonists see it that way, too.

The other questions are answered. "Stargate" was the word I was using until I found the right word.

[morganm]

Thank you for clarifying these points!

I guess I would ask that the background be slightly altered to reflect what you've said. The main reason the Ijad are opposed to Free Colonies is due to their aspirations of federation which is currently listed as almost a side reason.

Also that the word stargate be replaced with transit gate.

Whomever has the power to edit http://mobileframezero.wikia.com/wiki/Setting please take this into consideration.

Thx

[XGundam05]

Question: What is the likely-hood/feasibility of Transit Gates being shut down or dismantled? And what is the state of non-gate interstellar travel?

Also, what about small, mobile mercenary units that pretty much exist on a planet-by-planet or system-by-system basis? i.e. The Vultures in After War Gundam X. My thought is they would exist in abandoned colonies or in colonies that have had their Transit Gate shut down/dismantled (if proven feasible in the first question).

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

If a gate gets shut down, it takes weeks or months to get it running again. If its dismantled, well, it's a while space station city. That's a lot of delicious seed corn.

Interstellar, gateless travel works pretty much the same way it does now. Which is, to say, it doesn't.

Separated colonies are definitely a thing! I would only have happened in the last few years, at least if your colony 's events are taking pace in SC0245.

There's another possibility, too, which is that colonists were sent to a colony and the transit, absent a target gate, missed. They found themselves able to crawl to the planet only after a long time and by then lacked the capability to build a transit gate, perhaps due to the lack of engineers who had been eaten in the darkest times of the crawl. That could have happened any time in the last 200 years.

[CrayolaSmoker]

I Kickstarted the rules months ago but just recently (after inheriting a few cubic feet of Legos) started seriously delving into Mobile Frame Zero and it's universe. Forgive me if the following questions/observations are old hat. I anxiously await the more complete rulebook so I can better come to grips with the setting and frame building. Bricklink and/or Pick-a-Brick are gonna love me when the book comes out.

Is it possible, considering the Ijad have varying degrees of fervor regarding their religion, that some factions would take the "That which you cannot touch, you cannot control" far more literally than others? I could see where lax Ijad could interpret that to mean those within the same star system, where hard-liners may interpret it to mean only those within the same town. Assuming the Ijad fall within a bell curve, what's the general consensus on how far control should reach? And is it measured in time or by distance?

Since the Free Colony movement sprung up, has there been a concerted effort by the Solar Union to send only the most heavily vetted/indoctrinated colonists to new sites? If not, do they send a heavy military contingent and/or watchdog group to keep tabs and notify at the first sign of uprising? What's the SU equivalent of Blackwater? Likewise, is there a concerted Free Colony effort designed to infiltrate new colony development before they head out from Sol in order to convert them to the cause?

Is it too early in the timeline for a particularly forward-thinking colony to have spawned colonies of its own to nearby systems and set up a mini-Empire whose original home-base keeps sending back forever dwindling tithes to Sol while secretly having a raucous and prosperous time two systems over?

The universe as I've read it so far intrigues me in ways I've not been intrigued since first getting into 40K. Thanks for that.

[afny]

[Zero Revenge]

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Great questions and great answers!

Don't forget that the setting is designed to operate as interesting parameters, not restriction. There's a lot I'm just not mentioning because I want players to have lots of room to make stuff up.

[Mantisking]

[morganm]

I like how the setting expanded to explain how the Ijad distrust the free colonies because of their interstellar communication network and aspirations of federating under a central government. That really helps sharpen the point that the Ijad greatly distrust foreign authority and even those who seek it out.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The Solar Union is a constitutional democracy. Some people might not like that and leave for greener pastures.

[Axhead]

[addking]

Depends on conversion, I think. After all, you don't usually have to fight those who agree with you. They also are likely to live and let live those who want to be 'free' as in just one planet doing their thing. Even if the Free Colony movement 'won' and got completely away from the SU, the Ijad seemly would only have issues if the FC in turn becomes an empire/federation where you bow to those off world (or whatever distance triggers their religious aversion). Granted that's taking each position as a 'monolith' and we know they aren't.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

It really depends on your standards of success.

The SU needs infinite growth, the FCs need to become that which they hate the most, and the Ijad need everyone to never happen to run into them again. None of them are sustainable.

Huh.

Maybe empires, soft or otherwise, aren't that good at providing for people.

[aimforthetop]

I may have missed it, but I have a

Question: Can a Transit Gate be on a planetary surface? In everything I've read they have all been situated in space.

If a surface gate is a risk for environmental reasons, perhaps one could be placed on an uninhabitable planet?

Or would the wormhole/energy in the process/whatever just be too great and catastrophically destructive to the planet?

[Doldrum]

I'm not sure it is mentioned in any of the game's lore but I think many other scifi settings provide reasons why it does not work. In this game the gates are expensive build, opperate for long periods of time and to maintain. If you want to get as much as you can through a gate at one time it does not seem feasible to make one on a planet, there is more space in orbit and less forces acting on the gate (pressure, gravity etc.). The exception it seems is Stargate, but those gates are small and even the mega gate the Ancients use in the later seasons could only be deployed in space.

[Xail Jaderune]

I know its hard to understand. But the "Transit Gates" in Joshua's setting use wormholes, not exactly the same kind of wormholes you know in the TV series Stargate. But if you watched Stargate you at least grasp part of the concept of how they work in terms of travel.

Wormholes are basically paths in space itself, they theoretically exist as natural phenomena in outer space. Now after reading all the MFZ background material, it seems the version of travel being used is basically one of brute force. The transit gates are not placed at the openings of these natural doors in space, but are ripping open their own path between eachother.

Furthermore, as an example, if you wanted to go from point A, to point B and point B doesn't have a Gate... Think of it this way. You've just ripped open a pathway in space, into a vast ocean of hurricanes and deadly vortexes... you may have made a pathway for you to travel on, but that path is at the mercy of the universe. A gate at point B takes alot of that extra interference out of the equation but doesn't make it non-existent. Because remember, you're basically taking the "jaws of life" to space itself and trying to make it submit.

Joshua is right when he says how much energy it would take, and if you understand the super-science behind these "fantastic" modes of space travel, it all makes sense.

My only beef is the technology tree used in this setting. How do you get to Transit gates and only have generators and rudimentary starships. There are certain scientific breakthroughs that once discovered, tie into the completion of another breakthrough because of the Applications of that breakthrough.

For example... how do you have the Ijhad using plasma weaponry without the discovery of Fusion reactors? In order to get to Plasma weapons, you'd have to discover how to create a stable fusion reaction, contain it, harness it, and then miniaturize it. Plasma weapons require the discovery of how to contain a momentary fusion reaction and then throw it at the enemy.

My theory is that in the subsequent wars/disasters/events from present day to the formation of the Solar Union and the creation of the new calendar, caused a great deal of discoveries and technology to either be purposely forgotten or lost. And that current Solar Union Scientists are basically backtracking to figure out how make work what they already have and understand how it works so they can improve upon those theories and advance technology.

Because if this isn't the case... Then we have a very fragmented tech tree.

I plan to write some fan-fiction to explore this idea of "lost technology" as it's one of my favorite writing devices to use.

I hope this got some of you thinkin, or maybe you disagree with me entirely. Either way this had been bothering me and i couldn't hold back my opinion any longer.

... plus i'm bored as hell here on the grave shift at work.

[pasukaru76]

[Mercutio]

Also keep in mind the FTL doesn't appear to be a possibility in the Solar Century, so I'm not sure how much more advanced they can be. If interstellar transportation is limited to transit gates, then intra-system transportation doesn't need to be a whole lot more advanced than it comes across in the fiction.

As for fusion reaction--the costs for transit gate uses appears to be directly related to mass, and the mass involved in the containment of nuclear reactors is going to necessarily be much higher than the mass involved in the muscle cylinder technology that Joshua has put forward.