|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Started rereading Rendezvous with Rama last night and am just amazed at any idiot who would call Mass Effect hard science fiction. It's like a 2 year old calling anything with 4 legs a doggie...just a pure display of stunning ignorance. Well that's quite a blanket statement. It's a sliding scale. Anime > Star Wars >...> Mass Effect >...> Foundation > Apollo 13 novelization, et cetera.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 17:46 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2013 16:41 |
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Started rereading Rendezvous with Rama last night and am just amazed at any idiot who would call Mass Effect hard science fiction. It's like a 2 year old calling anything with 4 legs a doggie...just a pure display of stunning ignorance. You know, when I first was playing through ME, I was one of the people that thought it was hard sci-fi, simply because they put a lot of effort into fleshing out the universe and making it immersive - because of the sheer amount of codex entries and how every planet even had a little blurb and some data on their atmosphere. Then, as you say, I found out what hard sci-fi actually was, and you know what? I'm perfectly okay with ME being soft sci-fi. What I've learned is that I don't actually like hard sci fi and that it's not a bad thing to be soft sci fi. It's just a description of a different type of sci fi, hard sci fi isn't inherently better than soft, it's not a measure of quality. Almost everything I like about ME that makes it fantastic and wondrous would simply not be there in a hard sci fi setting, and the harder the sci fi gets, the more interesting stuff you have to cut from the story.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 17:46 |
|
|
Aristobulus posted:Almost everything I like about ME that makes it fantastic and wondrous would simply not be there in a hard sci fi setting, and the harder the sci fi gets, the more interesting stuff you have to cut from the story. That's not true at all! There's plenty of great hard science fiction that is super-imaginative and totally mind-blowing.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 17:59 |
|
|
The very concept of a galactic community, from what I've been told, is simply not going to happen in a hard sci fi setting, so I don't see how I could ever find hard sci fi as appealing as soft sci fi like ME.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:07 |
|
|
Aristobulus posted:Then, as you say, I found out what hard sci-fi actually was, and you know what? I'm perfectly okay with ME being soft sci-fi. What I've learned is that I don't actually like hard sci fi and that it's not a bad thing to be soft sci fi. It's just a description of a different type of sci fi, hard sci fi isn't inherently better than soft, it's not a measure of quality. I don't see hard vs soft sci-fi as being a black and white question anyway. They're two end points on a very large scale.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:09 |
|
|
The softer the Sci, the more techno-babble you have to work out to keep things in cohesive check. ME works because they keep things pretty simple. "EZO powers ME fields which do all the magic." Everything else is just typical Sci-Fi fare, like cybernetics and what AI.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:19 |
|
|
Hard science fiction is more than that. It's a particular type of approach to the fiction. Easiest thing to do would be just to give a quick example: There's no Sovereign scene in Hard Sci Fi Mass Effect. There's absolutely no reason for a machine to communicate with an organic. There's no reason for him to spell out his plan to some piddly human, James-Bond Villain Style. Well, I mean, other than the fact that it's awesome. But hard science fiction would approach that scene from the angle that, "what logically happens when a bio-technical machine actually gets phoned by a non-indoctrinated human", not from the angle of "what's narratively awesome for this big reveal scene?"
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:24 |
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Hard science fiction is more than that. It's a particular type of approach to the fiction. Here - is it possible for hard sci fi to have a galactic community anywhere close to being similar to Mass Effect's, or is it not? Would the aliens in hard sci fi be completely unrelateable and you'd have no Garrus, no Wrex, no Liara, no anything like that, as well? Because I was under the impression the answer to both of those is a strong, resounding "No, this would not happen". I find hard sci fi is interesting because it takes a much more realistic look at what's likely to happen and be out there, but it tends to often be much more depressing, lonely, and empty. Unless you can tell me I've just not been shown the right hard sci fi.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:29 |
|
|
Let's see... Artificial gravity - from what we know, it can't happen, but we haven't truly figured out gravity yet. Unlikely, but still not outside the realm of possibility. Works for hard sci-fi. VI/AIs/Translator Tech - all possible. Works for hard. Other intelligent life in the galaxy - Hard to say. Probably unlikely but by no means impossible. Works for hard sci-fi. But... Local FTL - fundamentally impossible. Not hard sci-fi in the strictest sense. Other lifeforms having humanoid forms - Almost certainly impossible, or at least unlikely to extreme levels. Not hard sci-fi. Other humanoid lifeforms having mammalian features like breasts, in the same place we have breasts - so unlikely it boggles the mind. Not hard sci-fi. Magic brain powers - yeah. Look, ME is not hard sci-fi. In my opinion that's a good thing, at least for the narrative they were trying to tell. Trying, mind you. They dropped the ball at the end.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:33 |
|
|
Aliens in the hardest hard science fiction tend to be truly alien, so no it's usually not possible to work directly with them. I think you would like The Mote In God's Eye, though. It's great classic hard sci-fi with an alien race (NOT a galactic civilization, but a single alien race) that's pretty cool and alien while at the same time being somewhat understandable.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:35 |
|
|
Artificial gravity is totally possible, just not in the way presented in ME.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:36 |
|
|
Also, I can't tell you how many times I rolled my eyes at "Quantum Entanglement Communicators." Entagnlement does not work like that, and never will.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:36 |
|
|
Since I've been without power for 2 weeks, can someone give me a small update of anything interesting that has transpired? Was that billboard ever bought? Any more Twitter idiocy? And most importantly, did any one write that fan fic I requested? Thanks!
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:38 |
|
|
Cbouncerrun posted:Artificial gravity is totally possible, just not in the way presented in ME. Well you can spin and effectively simulate gravity, though it would have distinct differences that would take some getting used to (for example, the Coriolis forces would cause things to happen that you wouldn't experience on Earth.) You could also be in a spaceship that is constantly accelerating enough to give you what is effectively the same thing as gravity, though the energy required for anything practical is, well, let's just say astronomical.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:39 |
|
|
ashpanash posted:though the energy required for anything practical is, well, let's just say astronomical. For todays standards, yes.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:43 |
|
|
Why would manipulating entanglement for communication be impossible? (I'm not a theoretical physicist.) Now the description given in ME2 automatically fails (they state it's a single particle being switched for a single byte of data, yet show full 2-way 3D color holograms), but I imagine it would be possible in a much more limited form.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:45 |
|
|
Single BIT of data, not BYTE. Sorry to be a pedantic nerd. I mean in theory you get enough of those entangled particles together and you can transmit a gigabyte per second or however much you need to make a hologram of Admiral Anderson. There's no limit on the number of particles, right?
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:47 |
|
|
Kasonic posted:Why would manipulating entanglement for communication be impossible? Its easy to make up a thing to make this work, IE: the entanglements allow a basic binary code, which can be used to transmit information instantly, and its fed into a Virtual Intelligence of Hackett which spits out the audio/video translation. Think of it as a "talk-to-type" that can understand tone/inflection/body movement and translate it to 1's and 0's that can be run in real time on the over side. Its not exactly outside the range of "hard" sci-fi, and is definately among the more palatable technobabble in the ME universe.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:54 |
|
|
Ok, quick lesson on entanglement. Let's say you have an entangled particle with Bob, at position A. He knows that Sue, at position B, has his entangled "twin." Somehow, these particles have been contained without causing them to lose their entangled state. So, Bob says to Sue, I'm going to read my particle's spin state at time T. You do that too, ok? Sue says ok. Bob reads spin down on his particle at time T. Sue reads her particle at time T and sees that it's spin up. They confer and agree that they got the opposite states, as predicted. The particles are no longer entangled. When Bob reads his particle at time T, Sue's particle's wavefunction collapses to the opposite state. But what Bob sees is random. He can't control whether it's spin down or spin up. He can't tell Sue to wait to see when her particle reads spin down, or spin up, because measuring his particle affects Sue's particle and breaks entanglement. Sue can't determine when Bob made a measurement because the particle does not signal that its wavefunction has collapsed. In fact, if Sue doesn't measure exactly when Bob does according to Bob's clock (not Sue's clock), then the particle is once again in a mixed state and anything Sue gets from it is random. What does this all mean? Entangled particles cannot be used as a method to send information. Einsteinian causality wins again. ashpanash fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 18:59 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:54 |
|
|
That's fascinating, thank you for taking the effort to explain it.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 18:56 |
|
|
Pineapple Salad posted:You mean the one where Illusive Man, the antagonist of ME3, is right? The one where you kill a guy for trying to control the reapers and then not five minutes later choose to control the reapers? The one where you are expected to be able to have control over the reapers despite having to die to do it (how the gently caress can Shepard control them? He's dead)? The one where Shepard basically becomes a slavemaster over the Reapers? The one where the Citadel is presumably closed off forever, leaving the people inside who are still alive to die? The one where the Mass Relays are still destroyed and the galaxy is left to starve to death? The one where Joker & Friends still abandon Shepard and crash land on a jungle planet that will either support crew members with levo DNA but leave the dextros to starve (or vice versa)? Given how Renegade Shepard at that point could possibly kill all of his friends personally from a series of renegade actions in ME3 and how you always wanted human dominance, it is not too bad for Shepard given the fact they are now above reproach from the other races out for their blood. Renegade Shepard is pro-human and given how ham fisted some of the Renegade action in ME3 are, this fits Renegade Shep well enough.\ Myrdhale posted:The Relays were the galactic infrastructure. They are what allowed for fast, efficient travel between worlds and colonies and rapid exchange of information. Even if all the homeworlds burned, if the relays were around, the galaxy could still communicate and rebuild, ship ressources where they needed to go, etc. It isn't just the homeworlds, every system by the end was completely taken over by the Reapers who made sure to blow up anything that gets caught in their way. All of the colonies are either BDZ'd or have nary a soul on the planet thanks to the reapers. But yeah, no sense of scale I can agree with. gyrobot fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 19:16 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:12 |
|
|
I have a problem with calling Mass Effect "hard scifi" when every alien speaks perfect english (out of ease into the narrative which is a completely fair thing), act like a human would act, and most of all "Humans are Special". Not to mention the titular Mass Effect Fields are completely fictional. Soft scifi is great, why feel the need to try to devalue it I wonder?
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:16 |
|
|
Nelson Mandingo posted:Not to mention the titular Mass Effect Fields are completely fictional. This isn't really fair, though, because a lot of hard science fiction contains stuff that's, well, fictional. Edit: Rendezvous at Rama has a totally bogus (and unexplained) drive technology, for instance.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:17 |
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:This isn't really fair, though, because a lot of hard science fiction contains stuff that's, well, fictional. Yes but most of them aren't named after a fictional force the story and most of the technology is designed around, is what I'm saying. Edit: Let's not forget that every alien species seems to exist and do alright at a myriad of different gravities, which is a fantastic way to permanently damage your body. Nelson Mandingo fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 19:26 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:22 |
|
|
Mayor Dave posted:hard sci-fi can be schlock (every Rama book after the first)
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:23 |
|
|
How about the way guns work in ME. A metal shard is suspended in a mass effect field which lowers its mass. The low mass allows the shard to gain a lot of speed with only a little energy. The shard leaves the barrel and the mass effect field which causes it to regain its mass but the speed remains the same. The shard then hits the target with a lot more energy than it took to accelerate it because it has more mass than it did inside the gun. In other words, the shard gains a ton of free energy out of nowhere. Needless to say that's physically impossible. Senjuro fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 19:51 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:36 |
|
|
At least they realized that if there was a way to use some sci-fi greeble to cheat and increase or decrease the mass of an object (which would be necessary for things like, say, artificial gravity in starships, or warp drives) the first thing people would do with it wouldn't be artificial gravity or warp drives, but murdering other people more efficiently. "We have discovered a new element, we call it elem-" "Whatever, can I kill people with it?"
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:41 |
|
|
gyrobot posted:Given how Renegade Shepard at that point could possibly kill all of his friends personally from a series of renegade actions in ME3 and how you always wanted human dominance, it is not too bad for Shepard given the fact they are now above reproach from the other races out for their blood. That doesn't make it a super happy ending, though, which was the entire point of my post. It might fit a Shepard who is sociopathic and has eliminated almost every single person he has worked with, but it's not happy.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:44 |
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Aliens in the hardest hard science fiction tend to be truly alien, so no it's usually not possible to work directly with them. Not to nitpick, but The Mote in God's Eye is definitely not hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi doesn't generally include inexplicable gravity well 'jump points' or magical shields that absorb energy. That being said, it's a pretty cool story with a lot of energy put into making truly 'alien' aliens.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:45 |
|
|
Mayor Dave posted:Not to nitpick, but The Mote in God's Eye is definitely not hard sci-fi. Hard sci-fi doesn't generally include inexplicable gravity well 'jump points' or magical shields that absorb energy. I thought someone might say this. Again, Hard Science Fiction can have fictional stuff in it. Rendezvous with Rama has a completely bogus drive type that does not conform to our understanding of physics at this time. Come on now. Hard science fiction can have some stuff that works beyond our current understanding of physics. Edit: Just checked my text of The Cold Equations, one of the OG hard-science fiction short stories, and it has "huge hyperspace cruisers" mentioned in passing. FTL travel <> soft science fiction Megaman's Jockstrap fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 20:02 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 19:56 |
|
|
Senjuro posted:The shard then hits the target with a lot more energy than it took to accelerate it because it has more mass than it did inside the gun. In other words, the shard gains a ton of free energy out of nowhere. Needless to say that's physically impossible. I imagine creating the Mass Effect field that lowers the shard's mass requires some energy input as well so it doesn't necessarily follow that it just gains energy out of nowhere. Where that energy comes from, however ...  , since the only thing guns seem to require (post-ME1) are heat clips and solid blocks of metal (for actual ammo), but they don't have an energy / fuel source like the space ships do. Or at least the energy source is never mentioned anywhere.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:00 |
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Single BIT of data, not BYTE. Sorry to be a pedantic nerd. Putting aside whether it's actually physically possible or not, you can do it all with a single particle. The only limit is how fast you can read the states, assuming transmission is 100% reliable. To put it another way, if you can set the state of your particle billions of billions of times per second, then you're sorted. Sure, two particles would double your throughput, but if you can change the state of one particle quickly enough, it's all you need.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:04 |
|
|
Dirty posted:Putting aside whether it's actually physically possible or not, you can do it all with a single particle. The only limit is how fast you can read the states, assuming transmission is 100% reliable. That's actually a really good point, I fell into the trap of thinking of each particle as a piece of storage and not like the register on a CPU.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:07 |
|
|
Burning Mustache posted:I imagine creating the Mass Effect field that lowers the shard's mass requires some energy input as well so it doesn't necessarily follow that it just gains energy out of nowhere. Presumably, they don't require much of a charge. The eezo deposits in a human biotic can throw people around and create miniature black holes from the energy input of the human nervous system, so the energy into eezo to gravity increase/decrease ratio must be incredibly efficient. I always figured that besides increase the mass of the projectile, the field generator in the gun zips it along the way magnets do in a railgun.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:12 |
|
|
Burning Mustache posted:I imagine creating the Mass Effect field that lowers the shard's mass requires some energy input as well so it doesn't necessarily follow that it just gains energy out of nowhere. But that just raises further problems. If it worked the way you're suggesting then putting in a lot of energy in creating the field plus a little energy to electromagnetically accelerate the shard would work just as well as simply using all the energy just to accelerate a normal shard and not have to bother with mass effect fields at all. edit: plus FTL wouldn't work at all because the energy required to make a field strong enough to break light speed would be infinite. Senjuro fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 20:19 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:14 |
|
|
Dr. Ohnoman posted:Here you go: You know, not for nothing, but this is actually an amazing video. All of this guy's vids are. He doesn't have the droning sort of nitpicky poo poo that Smudboy does and it's not insane like Red Letter. I dunno why, but I really respect what this guy tries to communicate. Edit: Then again, its better as a general 'this is what you should look out for, for good sci fi storytelling).
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:33 |
|
|
The "tasteful, understated nerd rage" guy has done more videos and while not of them are that good, they are usually worth a listen.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:45 |
|
|
GOD drat IT! How do I get an option to shoot Ashley down and say "I'm not interested in you."? Everytime I try to prove her wrong, she takes it as an advance on her. If she comes to Shepard's bedroom, I'm gonna cockblock her. Edit: This is on ME1.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:52 |
|
|
Senjuro posted:But that just raises further problems. If it worked the way you're suggesting then putting in a lot of energy in creating the field plus a little energy to electromagnetically accelerate the shard would work just as well as simply using all the energy just to accelerate a normal shard and not have to bother with mass effect fields at all. Yeah, no, you're completely right. It's never explained whether the amount of energy needed to create the Mass Effect fields is equivalent to the energy required to propel stuff conventionally. And if it isn't, it creates a bit of a problem. I mean, obviously the entire Mass Effect Fields (tm) business won't stand up to even superficial levels of scrutiny. But I thought it was quite interesting that the Codex never points out where the energy (which is required to create the current that flows through the Eezo in the guns and in turn creates the Mass Effect fields) comes from, when space ships work along the same basic principle, but they specifically do require lots of energy (in the form of Helium 3) to power their Mass Effect fields, but I guess Ambiguatron has a point when he says that even the low electric currents within a human body's nervous system can create tiny black holes that can lift (comparatively) huge objects, so lore-wise it's a bit of a non-issue if you're willing to accept the premise that the basic premise of all that stuff violates known thermodynamic principles to begin with. 
Burning Mustache fucked around with this message at May 2, 2012 around 20:57 |
| # ? May 2, 2012 20:55 |
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2013 16:41 |
|
|
BombermanX posted:GOD drat IT! How do I get an option to shoot Ashley down and say "I'm not interested in you."? Everytime I try to prove her wrong, she takes it as an advance on her. It's pretty easy to accidentally initiate a romance with her by just not being a dick and talking to her normally, unfortunately. I think the safest way to block off the romance path entirely is to shoot her down in the first conversation she has with you on alien crew mates on the ship. Taking the Renegade "You're out of line" option or whatever it's called should settle the matter. I think the Mass Effect Wiki had some details on how to avoid it, probably in one of the discussion pages about romances or Ashley, but it's a bit of a hassle to find.
|
| # ? May 2, 2012 21:06 |
|
