Colonies

8/ Is there a rogue state/planet, or an opposition to the USFP?
9/ Is the USFP democratic?
10/ As a matter of fact, what exactly is the USFP?

1/ Approximately how many colonies, under the USFP? Are we looking at the 10s or the 1000s?
2/ How many of these are human colonies? (if not all, as per my initial understanding)

The numbers will grow during the Artemis timeline. In the early parts of the timeline there are about 10 human colonies and 6-8 allied alien races. Near the end of the timeline there will be 500+ human colonies and 50+ allied alien races. Late in the timeline terraforming technology will point to a future with tens of thousands of human colonies.

3/ Is there a communication system among all colonies? A galactic network of sorts?

Yes, there is a galactic internet supported by civilian faster-then-light Ansible communications. This works much like our current internet, with private individuals and corporations subscribing to ASPs (Ansible Service Providers). The Ansible network is quite fast, but not instantaneous. While improving technology allows bandwidth increases over the years, the ultimate speed of Ansible is limited to about 100x the speed of light.

There is also a military communications network supported by Ultrawave technology. This gets faster and faster as technology improves. Early in the timeline Ultrawave is only a little bit faster than Ansible, but late in the timeline the TSN has high-priority Ultrawave channels that are hundreds of times faster than Ansible.

4/ How well supported at the colonies? Are they funded, resupplied, supervised by the USFP (or another authority) or are they all independant?

This is a great question. It will point to the political difference between the Humans and the Ximni.

A few human colonies are government supported. A human colony gets government support if either of these conditions exist:

1) The colony is in an area that has military value.
2) or the colony's location is valuable to a corporation that makes a lot of political contributions (e.g. 23rd century Halliburton) so the government pays their bills.

Other than that, human colonies are supported in these four ways:
1) A private corporation funds them directly.
2) A human religious sect (Mormons, Shi'ah Muslims, Baptists, Hindi, Sunni Muslims, Catholics, Ashkenazi Jews, etc.) funds them.
3) An eccentric philanthropist quadrillionare gives them a blank check.
4) The colony conducts a constant stream of fundraisers (imagine the PBS or NPR colony asking for money).
5) The colony is self-supporting, left to fend for itself or die off. In practice human colonies will frequently die off because they do not receive enough political advertising or support from wealthy corporate sponsors.

The Ximni will be the opposite of the humans. The Ximni homeworld has recovered from a nuclear apocalypse so they are obsessed with expanding to other stars to preserve their species. They don't care how high their taxes are, they must expant as all costs. 100% of their colonies have full government support.

5/ Does terraforming exist?

Yes. Early in the timeline it will be pretty pathetic, taking centuries to produce a habitable environment. But later it will be done in a few hours.

6/ Is there a universal language among the colonies?

Short answer: no. Long answer, as I write this most Artemis players are English speakers. In the 21st century many old languages are dying off, but the strongest languages (Spanish, German, Mandarin, Russian, French, Greek, Japanese, Italian, English, et. al.) will go on for millenia.

I personally plan to publish my mission scripts in as many of the above languages as possible.

8/ Is there a rogue state/planet, or an opposition to the USFP?

Throughout the USFP timeline there will be numerous minor rogue states. The big dispute will be the Unakalhai Uprising, a full-blown human-against-human civil war.

9/ Is the USFP democratic?

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: ALL of the intelligent races are democratic in their own ways. The Kralkeans are a democratic theocracy, believing the gods have decreed that they are superior to the non-believers and should rule the galaxy. The Torgoths are a peace-loving liberal democracy, following a war-mongering parliament that knows the voters will vote them out if there is ever a moment when they are not at war with someone . . . anyone. The Arvonians are a parliamentary democracy with a figurehead Royal Family that they love very much. The Arvonians leave all the hard decisions up to a super-intelligent computer whose name translates to "The Supreme Understander."

The Skaraans are completely different, leaving all of their political and military decisions up to the boards of directors of variouns "War Corporations." The Skarrans are democratic inasmuch as the number of shares you hold in a corporation dictates your vote in who that corporation attacks and what technologies it researches and develops.

When the Ximni are released, they will be a democracy with a fanatical mission of expanding their species across the galaxy. They will be at once very aggressive and very compassionate, in the end simply wishing they could thrive without hurting anyone. They will seldom get their wish.

10/ As a matter of fact, what exactly is the USFP?

Years ago someone called the USFP "The United Space Faring Planets." It's a naive but beautiful name that evokes a hodge-podge of hard working species trying to forge their place in the galaxy. I like it.

So the USFP is a coalition of intelligent races working together to explore and colonize the galaxy. They all have starships, but the humans are the only species with an interstellar navy, thus the TSN exists as the predominant military force in the galaxy. But there are many factions hoping to manipulate the TSN for their own purposes, so every TSN captain must be on the alert for alien (or human) forces trying to corrupt the ship's crew.

These are great answers. Thanks! I will probably have more questions / comments later on.

For now, regarding the Ansible network: it seems to me that 100x the speed of light feels a bit slow. In order for the theory of "stars closer to each other made FTL useless for aliens" to work, the USFP's territory is probably something in the area of 10,000 LY x 7,000 LY. This means that communication from one end to another could take up to 100 years. Kinda sucky if you got the wrong number.

I'd love to be able to come up with a communications method that has no distance barrier, yet makes sense. Thing is - to me, if you can exchange data, you can exchange mass. Unless (insert clever communications method here).

horacius.moreau said:

the USFP's territory is probably something in the area of 10,000 LY x 7,000 LY. This means that communication from one end to another could take up to 100 years. Kinda sucky if you got the wrong number.

Suppose we go with your numbers but make the ansible 100x faster?

That means the longest civilian communication, from one furthest frontier to the other, takes a year. Between major commerce centers it takes days or weeks at most. I think that would be good for an adventure universe.

Mike_Substelny
That means the longest civilian communication (...) takes a year. Between major commerce centers it takes days or weeks at most.

This is reminiscent of renaissance communications. It does bring an interesting, adventurous aspect to space travel. I like that.

Regarding TSN comms, perhaps their own network could be completely different. I like how the Ximni came up with jump technology that the USFP don't really understand. While we can't reproduce the technology itself, we understand it enough to replicate the effect with ridiculously small amounts of energy. Just enough to allow a stream of data to travel. This would allow for near-instantaneous communications throughout the galaxy, but using "nodes" that have a tremendous cost in energy and even more titanic cost in manufacturing. Hence it being used by the TSN only.

Ansible. Is that an actual term or did you just steal it from Card. It is a good name regardless I am just curious.

And for the node idea. I like it. There would be times that type of communication is necessary but not always or even most of the time. But occasionally for a lot of money and energy it could be done.

Ohh. looked it up. Le Guin hmmm. Cool. Ansible. I like it.

Ok. Nodes. I like the idea of being able to send instantaneous messages however at the cost of a lot of energy and money. Keeps supply limited so it isn't abused however it does allow for he necessary communication in maintaining an empire.

Yes, LeGuin coined the term ansible. It might be an anagram of the word lesbian, but that's not a discussion for these forums. Card and other sci-fi authors have used ansible enough that it's part of the standard sci-fi lexicon now.

I can see instantaneous messages being developed lat in the Artemis timeline. But in the early wars it will be more frontier like - - - no matter how dire the situation, no amount of energy will allow a frontier captain to call for help instantaneously.