The humans of EP become the Great Old Ones of the next iteration of the universe.

Quote from: jeff37923;650716And that is one of the biggest reasons why I can't take the game seriously, the science is more political than factual.

Once you get in orbit, you are halfway to anywhere. Plus, the solar system contains eight other planets, hundreds of moons, millions of asteroids, and billions of comets. It is raining soup out there.

?

It's raining vacuum. There's a lot of SPACE between all that "soup".

I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors? I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space. Some people don't even want Mars terraformed and are opposed to altering any natural habitat. This scarcity is largely due to ideologies, economies, resources, time, and even focus/motivation (why build a new habitat when this floating city here on Venus is just fine?). There's a huge human factor here, and it's a central concept to the theme of the game.

I still think some of Transhumanity will found colonies on Exoplanets, and eventually learn to master quantum physics and the Pandora Gates, opening up interstellar travel and exploration. I think humanity is already irrevocably altered and will embark on populating the galaxy as a new super adaptable species. Someday they may even solve the riddles of the precursors and the bracewall probes and AGI singularity apocalypses and the whole shebang. I also think the Jovian Republic will remain isolated and generations of minimally-altered humans will live and die in a Diaspora floating in space. 1000 years from the EP timeline the Transhuman explorers could bump back into the traditionalist sleepers, thinking they found a new insular species...

Quote from: trechriron;650869I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors? I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space.

Ah no you shouldn't underestimate the sheer amount of stuff out there. The asteroid Eros which has already been surveyed by the Near probe contains about 3% metal. Even a very cautious estimate suggests 20 billion tons of aluminium along with similar amounts of gold, platinum and other rarer metals.

In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.

That is just in one asteroid and not a very large one at that. There are hundreds of thousands of asteroids of similar size out there. And energy, well fortunately someone left an immense nuclear reactor just throwing out more energy than we can ever use right in the middle of the solar system. I wouldn't even worry about environmental concerns, there isn't any environment in space.

Quote from: trechriron;650869?

It's raining vacuum. There's a lot of SPACE between all that "soup".

It isn't the vacuum or the SPACE, it is the kinetic energy. That can be overcome using technology we have today with solar sails and magnetic sails.

Quote from: trechriron;650869I'm not getting where you folks are coming from. How are your theories any more sound than the authors?

We know our Science and Engineering? Sorry, but Eclipse Phase's authors may know the transhumanist genre of science fiction, but that doesn't make them knowledgeable in Science and Engineering.

Quote from: trechriron;650869I find your opinions about resources and space to be absurd. It's not just about the existence of all these planets, moons and asteroids, but also the energy and time required to convert "every available thing" into living space. Some people don't even want Mars terraformed and are opposed to altering any natural habitat. This scarcity is largely due to ideologies, economies, resources, time, and even focus/motivation (why build a new habitat when this floating city here on Venus is just fine?). There's a huge human factor here, and it's a central concept to the theme of the game.

That is part of the problem. If the human factor is so important, than why is their transhuman technology outlook ignoring the easy way of doing things? If you have the transhuman technology postulated in Eclipse Phase, then why are the people choosing to not embrace it?

Quote from: trechriron;650869I still think some of Transhumanity will found colonies on Exoplanets, and eventually learn to master quantum physics and the Pandora Gates, opening up interstellar travel and exploration. I think humanity is already irrevocably altered and will embark on populating the galaxy as a new super adaptable species. Someday they may even solve the riddles of the precursors and the bracewall probes and AGI singularity apocalypses and the whole shebang. I also think the Jovian Republic will remain isolated and generations of minimally-altered humans will live and die in a Diaspora floating in space. 1000 years from the EP timeline the Transhuman explorers could bump back into the traditionalist sleepers, thinking they found a new insular species...

If they cannot conquer and use all of the resources of the solar system, then they probably won't know fuck-all about what to do in interstellar space or another solar system.

Quote from: The Traveller;649990That's a stirring image which sounds fairly accurate. The ultimate sterility of the concept sort of gets overlooked by a lot of its proponents.

Honestly, I think the sterility of the concept is the point. It's Cyberpunk taken to the next step. Is a human with no body, or biology, still human? How much can a person fuse with technology before ceasing to be human? At least this is how I see EP, and why I like it. It reminds me of Alistair Reynolds novels. If left to it's own devices, I see Reynold's Glitterband in EP's future. In a universe of inhuman "personalities", it's the humanity of the PCs that gets explored and celebrated. If they go there, the future of EP's universe is up to the PCs to decide.

Quote from: Spike;650440This is actually discussed in the book via the Futuras and was a spectacular failure.  EP explicitely shows that trying to build a new transhuman from the ground up, like a machine, results in murderous psychosis and sociopathy for some 99% of all subjects.

Most of your other factually incorrect statements have already been addressed, but this is also factually incorrect: What you're actually referencing is an attempt to create a new generation of transhumans completely in a simulated reality where the speed of time was increased so that they would come of age in years instead of decades.

This has nothing to do with artificially splicing two genomes together, birthing the resulting child, and raising it the same way that children have always been raised.

QuoteWhat, exactly, is lacking then?

The time required to establish the industry required for extraction. The default setting is just 10 years after the Fall and the solar system is still in the process of rebuilding its industrial base.

Things are limited right now in the setting, but it's a purely short-term problem.

This, BTW, gets us back to Benoist's original question: In the absence of a fresh catastrophe, the future of Eclipse Phase is a gilded age of absurd plenty. I'd agree with those saying that Banks' Culture books are a pretty good place to start for inspiration.

Some jackass will invent a way to wirelessly resleeve as the technology becomes easier and faster and then some 12 year old hacker will Agent Smith the Solar system with beta forks.