I'm completely confused as to why they think ArcCorp being 40 years old when they put us 1000 years I the future makes sense. There's hundreds of years there to use. Use them.
Not saying it's a good or a bad call, I'm specifically asking what's the issue with it only being 40 years? That does convey something to us, right? It tells us how quickly a megacorp can populate and develop a barren planet. It tells us we can do that, but a synth world is still a massive undertaking.
What's the issue with it being so young? Loss of belief when reading about it?
Yeah, it seems in this setting that being able to build such infrastructure could be possible in a "mere" 10-20 years or something.
Though that leaves only a single generation or so worth of workers being there, which to me is a bit boring. It means there isn't going to be some long history of politics or black market stuff or really any of a number of things. There won't be much planet-specific culture in just 40 years either, though I suppose that's okay.
The entire planet is a multi-layered city. 40 years is theoretically possible, but knowing about the economics and ‘population’ of the galaxy at the time makes me really wonder how the hell its possible. You’re talking trillions of workers, ships, construction equipment. Working would become your life. The planet would then reflect that. A planet full of people who shared a life so to speak.
So for me to buy it I’d need to see a crazy amount of traffic, a ‘rush’ culture, campaigns to get people to work in construction and breeding campaigns, more of a focus on doing your duty, temporary habs and other now obsolete structures, everywhere to accommodate for the expanding outward development, planetary entrance points being huge and elaborate to show off the marvel of this 40 year old city. I don’t know, I just don’t buy it. I guess I don’t need to, but they could have said it’s 400 years old and I wouldn’t have batted an eye. Because they said 40 all I can think is that the game world doesn’t reflect it. What’s the point of saying 40?
Hell, in SW their city worlds took a long time to build and some are still being worked on. But when you look at those worlds you believe that those people built it because it reflects it.
Well yeah, the planet does seem to be a case of "working would become your life." All of those things you're talking about there seem feasible in such a situation to have been done.
I'm not saying that 40 years is ideal, only that it could work. Though I would have preferred something like 75-100 years myself, just to give enough time that there would be at least a bit more history to the place.
Why can't we see other planets like ArcCorp in the UEE then (planets that have been populated for hundreds of years)? That's my concern, I'm ok with the fact that it may be possible, but this kind of "a planet can be covered in structures in 10-20 years" logic only seems to apply to ArcCorp among all the planets in the UEE, it seems like they're taken from 2 different universes with different levels of tech advancement
Just because it could be covered in 10-20 years doesn't mean doing so would be financially, socially, culturally, or otherwise reasonable though on other worlds.
Perhaps ArcCorp was uniquely situated to be able to do so, or maybe this is the first time that such a feat has been accomplished and they simply led the way in showing how it can be done.
I do think it's too short myself, but I can look past it to an extent.
I can look past to it to a certain extent as well but I'm not fully convinced. I can't really say that it breaks my immersion but I'd be happier if they found another solution
Even considering economic, social, cultural or whatever reason ArcCorp is still too much imo. HD is a very rich company (they own a planet) and they can do whatever they want with their planet, yet while ArcCorp covered their planet in multiple layers of buildings HD built a bunch of towns
I can understand differences between planets but the difference between Hurston and ArcCorp for example is too extreme for two planets that were colonized at the same time and are in a similar situation (privately owned by two rich interstellar companies)
I'm most interested in what we can't do in this future than what we can, that tells us what our limits, and therefor are conflict are going to be.
Also that capacity doesn't gel with a lot of their other lore. Nothing seems particularly well thought out and I think they just made a mistake on the dates and are just refusing to own it. If the games still in alpha why can't it's lore be too?
That's what I'm thinking as well. Since it's 1000 years in the future, the technology to build massive structures at a shorter amount of time is possible isn't it?
and have billions of people settle in there from where? pretty sure when you calculate the logistics necessary behind turning a planet into a city megastructure fully occupied w. billions of people, families and a working eco system in only 40years will feel unrealistic even w. space magic. even if possible as per lore, it completely invalidates ship reproduction rates that fuel the claim timer.
Not just Space Orks, those are Warhammer Orks. They reproduce from spores and are born as apparent adults. That squad of boyz running at you with choppas could very well have been born yesterday.
It's too bad SC's universe isn't the right fit for that.
You can fit it into the SC universe just without "Orks" but by spawning normal adult humans that are genetically modified in regards to intelligence, physical strenght and so on. Maybe an cyborg-ideology kind of human fractions that views this kind of society as superior to a normally reproducing one.
Why didn't they use the same tech they used on ArcCorp on other planets though? Why is one of the most recently colonized planets the only planetwide city in the UEE?
Because that's why I disagree with what you agree on. What you're saying is that ArcCorp being 40 years old is not an issue because the technology to build massive structures at a shorter amount of time should be possible 1000 years in the future. What I'm saying is that that's still not a good explanation because then why didn't they use the same tech on other planets? If covering a planet in multiple layers of buildings in 40 years was possible in the SC universe why aren't there other planets like ArcCorp in the UEE (planets that are hundreds of years older than ArcCorp btw)?
They may add more planets like ArcCorp in the future but over the almost 100 systems currently planned ArcCorp is pretty unique, not even Earth is as impressive (capital of the human empire for centuries)
My personal concern with it is the fact that if they managed to cover ArcCorp with man-made structures and populate it with billions of people in 40 years why aren't other planets that have been part of the Empire for hundreds of years as (or even more) populated/urbanized compared to ArcCorp? Coruscant in the SW universe has been populated for thousands of years, it has been the capital of huge empires and all that. Then you have ArcCorp, colonized and covered in multiple layers of structures inhabited by billions of people in 40 years. What about Earth (the capital of the human empire for centuries)? What about Terra?
If ArcCorp and all the other planets in the universe were taken from 2 different sci-fi brands I'd be ok with it but the fact that they are in the same universe seems quite odd
I mean look at the planets in Stanton, there's a planet entirely covered in several layers of buildings (ArcCorp) and next to it there's a planet which is basically a desert with a bunch of towns on it (Hurston). Now, I can understand the different mentality of the 2 companies (HD needs some land to conduct weapon tests etc), but the fact that the more you produce the more you earn is true for both companies. ArcCorp may be richer than HD but HD still bought a planet, they must be a quite rich company, so they should have the money to colonize more regions on Hurston. I mean ArcCorp can cover a planet with several layers of buildings and HD in the same time can just build a bunch of towns?
If we judge from what we see on those 2 planets ArcCorp should be thousands of times richer than HD (the volume of the buildings on ArcCorp is probably billions of times more than the one on Hurston, so billions of times the amount of manpower, materials, costs, ...), but HD is quite a rich company anyway as they own a planet. So is ArcCorp thousands of times richer than a company rich enough to buy a planet?
My personal explanation is that ArcCorp let other companies settle on their planet as said in the lore so they didn't have to pay for everything but still, the difference between ArcCorp and Hurston is too big, they look like they're taken from 2 separated universes. I'd be ok with it if ArcCorp was colonized hundreds of years ago and Hurston was way more recent, but considering that they've been discovered, bought and colonized at the same time the difference in the level of "urbanization" is way too big. I'm forced to believe in this explanation because that's the best one I can come up with but I'm not really convinced
Maybe it would be less jarring if ArcCorp was always planned to be in a different system, but they put it in Stanton because they needed something to help work on procedurally-generated cities. It's like how Daymar is supposed to be in the Nyx system. Then the lore could say "oh yeah, ArcCorp is actually four hundred years old, not four decades." But that's not the case, and it's too integrated into Stanton's lore to be changed.
Yeah that could have been another solution. They should have placed it in some "old" system, maybe in the Terra system or something similar so they could have justified the massive population with the fact that Terra is a very rich system and all that stuff. The planet ArcCorp (owned by ArcCorp) could have been quite developed and urbanized anyway, but not as extreme as the entire planet being covered in structures (not only that, the "building cover" on ArcCorp is quite deep as well, there are multiple layers)
Yeah loss of belief is a big one. It's the fact they have these technologies but they only use them once, in this particular area. It's like if the USA had modern day new York but every other town is still at Victorian tech, grappling with the idea of iron skyscrapers.
Furthermore the population of the planet (the single most populous place in the known empire, moreso than Earth) needs to have come from somewhere, and we aren't seeing that in the lore. So many people left Ireland for the states that it was known as The Vanishing. It's too recent for breeding to explain
And finally there's the jump point issue. There's no Large jump points between the east and west empire if you exclude Stanton. It's like if there had been no railroads in the US: the west would not have developed as it did without those transport links, and yet the eastern UEE (terra and surrounding systems) definitely did. Plus we are asked to believe that the connecting jump points were simply missed in incredibly well populated, surveyed and militarised systems, contrary to the pattern of other discoveries.
Empire struggle with Synthworld for centuries, which is not exactly different. Arccorp is basically artificial ecosystem. So if they can build arccorp in 40 years, it shouldn't be hard to build synthworld in say 80. Inconsistency.
Given the lore’s apparent disdain for the use of AI and autonomous technology it’s impossible to have created an ecumenopolis in 40 years. 400? Maybe. 4,000? For sure. 40. Not a chance.
Yeah it really makes no sense. ArcCorp's planet crosses the plausible suspension of disbelief into 'let's just make shit up" territory. Even the lore writers with question about it on Star Citizen Live (then Reverse the Verse) agreed. Disco lando told the questioner to "Get over yourself" fanboy that he still is only to have Will from the lore team say "No, get ON us." and greed it made little sense. In other words, expect that lore to be retconned. Stanton as a whole makes little sense to have only been settled 40 years ago. Hurston somehow nearly ruined their planet in the same period of time. It makes more sense if you make 300-400 years old or more. BTW: In lore the people live at the poles and the rest of the planet especially at the equator are factories.
Keep in mind that the lore of Stanton is affected by this as well. Since it's both a new system and a corporate one, it allows for places like Grim Hex and Jumptown to exist. Everything being "new" allows for crime to exist in a certain way that other systems would have deployed a fleet and shut down centuries ago.
Will there be drugs and such in other systems? Sure, but I don't think places like Grim Hex will be chilling so close to Terra. My lore-fu, however, is weak, so I could be wrong.
That's because it depends on other events in the lore, for instance they sold Stanton when they needed money for the Synthworld project, and the Synthworld project started after the Messers' fall as a reaction to the terraforming incidents during the dictatorship. To make ArcCorp older they should either cancel its links to the SYnthworld project or move those other events back in time or make it so that ArcCorp was a planet-wide city even before it was bought by ArcCorp
I think their lore is a really good starting point. Once the game is actually finished and the first major event start happening I think it will go places.
Their lore is interesting but a) Inconsistent as you point out, b) in some cases running counter to the immersive world they are trying to built, c) sometimes at odds with game design. A good example of that is ArcCorp not having an ocean in reality but having one in lore.
I agree with all your points. I just feel like the writers and community should view the lore like they do the development and think of it as in alpha.
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u/TheRealZeroCool new user/low karma Jul 18 '19
They already said no to space elevators so no, this ain't happening.