12-09-2024, 01:11 PM
See, I don't think this signifies much in the OA setting because the OA established history simply bypassed this era of history.
I think we're going to use up the WHOLE ten-thousand year OA timeline just getting to the nearest 100-or-so stars on "flock" migrations like this, before there's really an impetus to start making driven star-to-star "fastship" migrations.
That's the point when people start looking around and realizing there's no place they can get to that still has available resources, unless they take one of those 'fastships' and then start over at the far end. That's the point when the future of a "Flock" inside the established sphere becomes constrained or limited by prior claims on resources in every direction they might go.
So I foresee something like 10K years of very slow "nomadic" expansion, FOLLOWED by the kind of deliberate, star-focused rapid expansion that OA seems to be built around from the very beginning of its timeline.
On the other hand, even at that point the 'fastships' may never be necessary or desirable. The flocks are 'mobilis in mobili' and subject to separation by galactic orbit dynamics the same way as stars, so the forces continuing to pull them further apart from each other, once they get that 10K year start, may be sufficient that nobody ever needs a 'fastship' at all to remain in contact with fresh resources, even as they keep moving along with all their markets and suppliers.
I think we're going to use up the WHOLE ten-thousand year OA timeline just getting to the nearest 100-or-so stars on "flock" migrations like this, before there's really an impetus to start making driven star-to-star "fastship" migrations.
That's the point when people start looking around and realizing there's no place they can get to that still has available resources, unless they take one of those 'fastships' and then start over at the far end. That's the point when the future of a "Flock" inside the established sphere becomes constrained or limited by prior claims on resources in every direction they might go.
So I foresee something like 10K years of very slow "nomadic" expansion, FOLLOWED by the kind of deliberate, star-focused rapid expansion that OA seems to be built around from the very beginning of its timeline.
On the other hand, even at that point the 'fastships' may never be necessary or desirable. The flocks are 'mobilis in mobili' and subject to separation by galactic orbit dynamics the same way as stars, so the forces continuing to pull them further apart from each other, once they get that 10K year start, may be sufficient that nobody ever needs a 'fastship' at all to remain in contact with fresh resources, even as they keep moving along with all their markets and suppliers.