Greetings, people of OA

[Rho Ophiuchi]

Backing up a bit to an earlier question:

It doesn't appear that the Rho Ophiuchi complex is currently 'owned' by any particular group or polity in the setting.

There are some passing mentions of a Rho Ophiuchi sector, but not of the system itself.

Looking at the description in Wikipedia, it looks like an interesting place with lots of possibilities in OA terms.

Hope this helps,

Todd

Rho Ophiuchi complex  is mentioned here in "Ammonite" , but it's from 20 years ago so you can basically do what you want
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45f0d075d7101

and technically Rho Ophiuchi is  mentioned in 3 other places , but that doesn't matter. you have free reign, as Todd says

"Ammonites are classified in the phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda, subclass Ammonoidea. With the notable exception of a number of bioborged and biochipped pet clades of the Psyke Genesis Superbrights of the Rho Ophiuchi Complex, ammonites have not been provolved; their brains are less developed than those of coleoid molluscs, and many suffer from faulty genome templates (stemming from poor lazurogenics by a number of amateur mesozoic enthusiasts) making them somewhat difficult to work with."




Technically yes, but making habitats protected from some of the higher temperatures might be a good idea anyway 
I think categorizing them as 'cyborgs' specifically is limiting? Bioborgs, and tweaks also might work as a description. I personally don't know enough about organic chemistry to say whether multicellular life could exist at 400 C in high pressure water, (maybe with OA tech, but I'm guessing, nobody in the present day knows if life can adapt to such an environment... yet) but... AFAIK that might be pushing a limit? there's definitely interesting possibilities for creating an artificial ecosystem in such an environment. I or someone else can ask our more knowledgeable members
do these colonists need to be humanoid? maybe they're a dolphin clade of Terragen? Mostly sentient octopi?  Bioborg tweaked whales with a hundred arms and nanofactories inside their bodies? all three? bioluminescent manta rays? swarms of kaiju-like hive minded bodies that eat the farmed extremophile ecosystems?  Aside from the tempuratures/ pressures, the trouble here is human bodies aren't so useful in an ocean obviously.



random idea: as a potential source of conflict, if you like, could be a failed terraforming effort (failures in histories are welcome!) that tries to lower the temperature to something within earth range, but displaces the initially extremophile adapted life from the original colonists. But then due to political+ technical pressures, they end the terraformation effort in favor of orbital habitats again, which are what most people live in anyway. or something else.

Hello Drashner1 and Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you for your advice - it was greatly appreciated!

If possible, is there a way to access pages of the EG on systems of about the same distance as Rho Ophiuchi (360ly from Sol)? Also, would a minor polity even be able to exist around a system like Rho Ophiuchi? I presume the system would be decently high-value due to having two B-stars in it. If a minor polity could exist, what would be the lowest plausible toposophic level capable of holding onto it (and building a basic starlifter)?

In any case, regarding colonization, I do not mind the colonists being non-humanoid, but it would be preferable if their ancestors were at some point in the past human. My thinking regarding the high temperatures was that the planet was just one of the ocean worlds that had no clear distinction between the surface and atmosphere, which could lead to a sort of "layered" colonization effort. The idea of being sort of like manta rays is a good one, as that might work in both a light liquid and an extremely compacted gas - as might a squid-type design with very large fins. A combination of this bodyplan with some humanoid components might work - with most of the body (including the exterior) being a combination cybernetic/neogen hybrid of some kind, and a small part in the interior being an actively cooled, heavily-genemodded human.

I could also envision sophonts living both at the bottom of the planetary atmosphere/ocean, and ones with a more aerodynamic bodyplan living nearer the top.

Also, what does "kaiju" mean?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

[Worldtree]

Kaiju are gigantic Japanese monsters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiju

yeah, assuming any kind of organic life can survive in those conditions,  you could absolutely have giant humans who have altered their bodies to be manta ray shaped, a bit like CM Kosemen's All tomorrows series of future humans

the layered colonization effort definitely sounds good

Here's the inner sphere star list up to 100 ly
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49fc193234b06

If possible, is there a way to access pages of the EG on systems of about the same distance as Rho Ophiuchi (360ly from Sol)? Also, would a minor polity even be able to exist around a system like Rho Ophiuchi? I presume the system would be decently high-value due to having two B-stars in it. If a minor polity could exist, what would be the lowest plausible toposophic level capable of holding onto it (and building a basic starlifter)?

starlifting
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47897e8b1947c

you are very welcome to write a minor polity- even if it were around a high value star 1000ish years from now, you don't need to write the entire history of the star system- you can write a polity that exists for a mere 500 years in a single orbital habitat if you want, whether or not it exists within, or next to some larger polity. Yes a minor polity could absolutely exist around Rho Ophiuchi (360ly from Sol). this one ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho_Ophiuchi
also, the polity can exist tangentially to some S2 or S3 who inhabits the system, uses all the important strategic resources, but doesn't actually manage the society you describe. They could still be very important locally on the modosophont/ human level while still being the equivalent of moss growing on your houses' gutter on a cosmic / Transapient politics level. (we could probably argue that most modosophont polities are like this too). Hell, you can write a whole article about a planets history from the perspective of an individual person or the y11K equivalent of a tea cup...or a story of or a gigantic high pressure ocean world being converted into a giant planetary tea cup

[Rho Ophiuchi]

Kaiju are gigantic Japanese monsters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiju

yeah, assuming any kind of organic life can survive in those conditions,  you could absolutely have giant humans who have altered their bodies to be manta ray shaped, a bit like CM Kosemen's All tomorrows series of future humans

the layered colonization effort definitely sounds good

Here's the inner sphere star list up to 100 ly
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49fc193234b06





you are very welcome to write a minor polity- even if it were around a high value star 1000ish years from now, you don't need to write the entire history of the star system- you can write a polity that exists for a mere 500 years in a single orbital habitat if you want, whether or not it exists within, or next to some larger polity.  Yes a minor polity could absolutely exist around Rho Ophiuchi (360ly from Sol).  this one ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rho_Ophiuchi
also, the polity can exist tangentially to some S2 or S3 who inhabits the system, uses all the important strategic resources, but doesn't actually manage the society you describe. They could still be very important locally on the modosophont/ human level while still being the equivalent of moss growing on your houses' gutter on a cosmic / Transapient politics level. (we could probably argue that most modosophont polities are like this too)

starlifting
https://orionsarm.com/eg-article/47897e8b1947c

Hello Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you for the advice (And thanks for the information on Kaijus, though they seem WAY too big for my purposes. I was thinking more along the lines of the size of the average giant squid.) - I will probably come back in some time once I have come up with sufficient ideas to run them by everyone again. Also, after reading the article on S2 transapients, I read that they would only be about 5 billion times better than modosophonts at uninteresting/repetitive tasks. If this is the case, than could the modosophonts basically serve in a role where they did the uninteresting/repetitive tasks while the S2 did the interesting and important stuff? Regarding this, should I continue posting my questions in this thread, or should I start a new one? If the latter, where should I put the new thread?

Also, what would be approximately the maximum population that the archailects would allow in some random system? And how fast were the fastest ships (multi-stage ships, with magbrakes) in the early federation age?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

[Worldtree]

Hello Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you for the advice (And thanks for the information on Kaijus, though they seem WAY too big for my purposes. I was thinking more along the lines of the size of the average giant squid.) - I will probably come back in some time once I have come up with sufficient ideas to run them by everyone again. Also, after reading the article on S2 transapients, I read that they would only be about 5 billion times better than modosophonts at uninteresting/repetitive tasks. If this is the case, than could the modosophonts basically serve in a role where they did the uninteresting/repetitive tasks while the S2 did the interesting and important stuff? Regarding this, should I continue posting my questions in this thread, or should I start a new one? If the latter, where should I put the new thread?

Also, what would be approximately the maximum population that the archailects would allow in some random system? And how fast were the fastest ships (multi-stage ships, with magbrakes) in the early federation age?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

1. New thread: 
"general setting discussion" is probably best if you want to start a new thread,  or encyclopedia Galactica articles once you have a few more ideas developed. 

2. sophont labor: 
yes the modosophonts could do the uninteresting tasks while the S2 does the 'interesting' tasks... or the vots/ software helpers that comprise most of the 'cheap labor' or post scarcity society could preform most of the very boring labor while modosophonts do the small bit that they choose and are capable of doing and the s2 does the "most interesting" parts and coordinates all of it... 

or the modosophonts can do most of the labor of starlifting very inefficiently , though I don't recommend that route. 

 that '5 billion' figure is a rough estimate for the amount of cognitive labor an entity could preform compared to humans, just to give folks a sense of scale. so it doesn't quite measure pure human ability, exactly. 5 billion ants.. or dogs.. are cognitively incapable of building a computer, for example. So maybe S2s are actually 5 billion times 'better' at a task, or often they just do 5 billion times more work in a given time

 you could have a small society of a thousand or 10,000 second sephirotic transapients living in the system (the nature of individuals might blur), or multiple S3's , if you want "more labor done but with as low cognitive ability as possible" so to speak
technically modosophonts and upward can alter their minds to find most tasks interesting if they choose... but you can still say they find certain tasks less worthy of doing/ boring/ too repetitive. 

3. population: 
Population-wise, depends on the clade. could number in the billions. virtuals would be highest in number. personally, I don't like writing hard population statistics in articles but a fully developed star system with megastructures could have population in the hundreds of billions, or hundreds of trillions sometimes?. I like keeping those numbers down below 1- 10 billion because that 'sounds more sparse' . but that's just me. 

the fastest transportation tech of the time would be engeneration- essentially emailing minds from one star to the next (at light speed) and growing/building the bodies onsite (if the facilities are set up). 

 but here's the expansion of some propulsion methods over time 
'Terragen Expansion'
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b6788b9bdbdf
some drive performance statistics (might be outdated?)
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49f6ffc730720

[AstroChara]

It seems you have a plan on what to do. Could you tell us more about that?

[Rho Ophiuchi]

1. New thread: 
"general setting discussion" is probably best if you want to start a new thread,  or encyclopedia Galactica articles once you have a few more ideas developed. 

2. sophont labor: 
yes the modosophonts could do the uninteresting tasks while the S2 does the 'interesting' tasks... or the vots/ software helpers that comprise most of the 'cheap labor' or post scarcity society could preform most of the very boring labor while modosophonts do the small bit that they choose and are capable of doing and the s2 does the "most interesting" parts and coordinates all of it... 

or the modosophonts can do most of the labor of starlifting very inefficiently , though I don't recommend that route. 

 that '5 billion' figure is a rough estimate for the amount of cognitive labor an entity could preform compared to humans, just to give folks a sense of scale. so it doesn't quite measure pure human ability, exactly. 5 billion ants.. or dogs.. are cognitively incapable of building a computer, for example. So maybe S2s are actually 5 billion times 'better' at a task, or often they just do 5 billion times more work in a given time

 you could have a small society of a thousand or 10,000 second sephirotic transapients living in the system (the nature of individuals might blur), or multiple S3's , if you want "more labor done but with as low cognitive ability as possible" so to speak
technically modosophonts and upward can alter their minds to find most tasks interesting if they choose... but you can still say they find certain tasks less worthy of doing/ boring/ too repetitive. 

3. population: 
Population-wise, depends on the clade. could number in the billions. virtuals would be highest in number. personally, I don't like writing hard population statistics in articles but a fully developed star system with megastructures could have population in the hundreds of billions, or hundreds of trillions sometimes?. I like keeping those numbers down below 1- 10 billion because that 'sounds more sparse' . but that's just me. 

the fastest transportation tech of the time would be engeneration- essentially emailing minds from one star to the next (at light speed) and growing/building the bodies onsite (if the facilities are set up). 

 but here's the expansion of some propulsion methods over time 
'Terragen Expansion'
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4b6788b9bdbdf
some drive performance statistics (might be outdated?)
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/49f6ffc730720

Hello Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you again for your help and time! Regarding the thread, with this advice, I will start a file on my computer to edit as needed, and ask relevant questions in the General setting discussion section (likely starting with the planning of all of the different types of sophonts to inhabit the different environments of the system). When I have enough stuff (in a long time, probably), I will see about trying to get it published.

I like the idea of having the modosophonts preforming actual intelligent labour, mainly because I would like for it to be non-autotopian-scarcity (basically where you are more or less supposed to take a few hours out of your day to do remote debugging on node 4F6709 (hex) of the starlifting array, or administer exams, or designing cities, or something similar), but where the S2 managed everything really important - the modosophonts do what they can, and save the S2 the tedium of having to do all of the rest. It certainly could, but it is too busy doing nebulous S2 things to really want to. The S2 then lets the modosophonts do whatever they want, as long as they do not challenge it. And probably no angelnet systems.

With the information about population, I am thinking about merging this idea partially with my idea from before about a society built around long lifespans - the S2 and the modosophonts basically share the common goal of living a really, really long time. The S2 thus wants to be just smart enough to know how to disassemble the star and build small conversion reactors, and the modosophonts do not want to grow too numerous, or too energy-intensive that they burn through their fuel too quickly. However, the system would still be in the "disassembly of star in progress" phase, so the modosophonts live as numerously as they can on the planets and some limited habitats, but all of the megastructures in the system are dedicated to the acquisition or storage of material.

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

[Drashner1]

Just to add to the excellent advice from Dfleymmes1134 has provided:

Given the scale of the Rho Ophiuchi system, it would be quite possible - and possibly more interesting - to have multiple polities occupying it. This could take the form of multiple independent polities with none really affiliated with the big Sephirotic Empires. Or multiple Sephirotics could all occupy different parts of the system. Or it could be some combo of this. A thing to note with OA is that the various political entities don't generally follow the traditional SF notion of entire volumes of space being the territory of a single polity. While this does happen as a side effect of all the stars in a given volume being claimed by a given polity, it is just as common for Star X to be part of Empire 1 while Star Y is part of Empire 2 and so on. Or even different planets, moons, asteroids or habitat clouds each being part of different empires within a system. The Sephirotics mainly compete with ideas rather than territory or guns, so this is generally not seen as a problem.

Note that you do not need to describe all of these polities in detail. You could just say they also exist in the system, probably with some mention of where (around which star, in some nearby nebula, etc.), but it need not be super detailed. Your main polity that you're describing here could be in a particular locale and be doing its thing while the other polities are off doing theirs. If you wished you could even make it an Asymptote System if you felt so inclined.

In terms of population - the archai do limit overall population but are generally subtle about it and there are plenty of systems with populations into the low hundreds of trillions and one or two in the quadrillion range. If you want to do a smaller population that's fine too, of course.

Finally, this system is deep in Terragen space - even though it's not in the Inner Sphere, it's very close to it - so is going to have been inhabited fora very long time and be very old. So room to add in a good bit of history if you wish (it's not required you document every event taking place over thousands of years) as well as odd cultural and historical artifacts and such.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Worldtree]

Hello Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you again for your help and time! Regarding the thread, with this advice, I will start a file on my computer to edit as needed, and ask relevant questions in the General setting discussion section (likely starting with the planning of all of the different types of sophonts to inhabit the different environments of the system). When I have enough stuff (in a long time, probably), I will see about trying to get it published.

yeah no worries about time. I and 5-15 others have been building up a rewrite of macrystis for most of the past year. Though you -can- try writing multiple articles each week (in which case editors might not be able to catch up )...You can move at the pace you want, though it's usually good to give -some- kind of response to folks within a few days to a week

[Rynn]

Welcome to the group

Seems like there's been a lot of good discussion and feedback. I'll only add a couple of points, which overlap a bit with Dfleymmes. Both are on the subject of how much work an S2 can do.

The 5 billion figure. This figure is illustrative of how many human-equivalent manhours of work a typical S2 entity can perform in an hour, all else being equal. These are important caveats, there are many tasks than an S2 can do that would take an infinite amount of time for a human to do (i.e. deriving ultratech models of the universe). The comparison only works for tasks that humans can do and even then it's an average. It also assumes a typical S2, meaning one that hasn't modified itself specifically to be better at things like this, one that isn't close to ascending, or one that has made use of hive mind tech to become multiple. Lastly "all else being equal" means that in a live experiment the five billion humans and the S2 get the same tools. In reality S2 can build significantly better tools for themselves than modos, further increasing their productivity.

Automation/Sophont labour. Automation is really good in OA, so modos don't need to be employed or have a job. Likewise an S2 doesn't need to have modos aid it, it could easily make its own vots (virtual bots, sapient but not sentient intelligent programs). With some effort it could even make "hyper-vots", capable of performing S1 or even S2 level tasks autonomously. Having said this it is entirely possible for a culture to favour using their own labour in cases where there wouldn't be a noticeable drop in productivity compared to a vot. If one person really wanted to make and serve ice cream for the community, they might be assigned that role rather than the habitat growing an ice cream bush in that area. In a system led by a transap the transap might assign tasks that could be automated, but it assigns them to modos because there is some learning potential that it thinks will be beneficial for them.

[Rho Ophiuchi]

Just to add to the excellent advice from Dfleymmes1134 has provided:

Given the scale of the Rho Ophiuchi system, it would be quite possible - and possibly more interesting - to have multiple polities occupying it. This could take the form of multiple independent polities with none really affiliated with the big Sephirotic Empires. Or multiple Sephirotics could all occupy different parts of the system. Or it could be some combo of this. A thing to note with OA is that the various political entities don't generally follow the traditional SF notion of entire volumes of space being the territory of a single polity. While this does happen as a side effect of all the stars in a given volume being claimed by a given polity, it is just as common for Star X to be part of Empire 1 while Star Y is part of Empire 2 and so on. Or even different planets, moons, asteroids or habitat clouds each being part of different empires within a system. The Sephirotics mainly compete with ideas rather than territory or guns, so this is generally not seen as a problem.

Note that you do not need to describe all of these polities in detail. You could just say they also exist in the system, probably with some mention of where (around which star, in some nearby nebula, etc.), but it need not be super detailed. Your main polity that you're describing here could be in a particular locale and be doing its thing while the other polities are off doing theirs. If you wished you could even make it an Asymptote System if you felt so inclined.

In terms of population - the archai do limit overall population but are generally subtle about it and there are plenty of systems with populations into the low hundreds of trillions and one or two in the quadrillion range. If you want to do a smaller population that's fine too, of course.

Finally, this system is deep in Terragen space - even though it's not in the Inner Sphere, it's very close to it - so is going to have been inhabited fora very long time and be very old. So room to add in a good bit of history if you wish (it's not required you document every event taking place over thousands of years) as well as odd cultural and historical artifacts and such.

Hope this helps,

Todd

Hello Drashner1,

I was essentially thinking that I would just start writing the polity at ~1700 AT when it was colonized, and just write each decade after the next, taking into account other events that were happening in the OA timeline. I actually have experience doing this - over the last year I wrote nearly a hundred thousand words describing just twenty years of the history of a single system on Fandom. Presumably this level of detail would be reduced by at least an order of magnitude.

Regarding population, when I start writing the population will probably be much lower, more like five thousand. Then, over the decades, it can grow. I wanted to know about the maximum the archai would allow so I would know when to stop the exponential growth curve. With all this in consideration I might just come back with the first century or couple of centuries of history when I am making the page, and just get it approved step-by-step. In the meantime, however, I am going to go figure out some biology stuff for the various lifeforms.

Regarding having multiple polities in the same system, I was thinking that basically the S2 would not really care what happened as long as the work it did not want to do itself got done - leading to political insurrections in various parts of the system every few decades, with periods of either prosperity or tense relations between factions in-between.

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

yeah no worries about time. I and 5-15 others have been building up a rewrite of macrystis for most of the past year. Though you -can- try writing multiple articles each week (in which case editors might not be able to catch up )...You can move at the pace you want, though it's usually good to give -some- kind of response to folks within a few days to a week

Hello Dfleymmes1134,

Thank you for the advice and support! By the way, how much should be on the system's page? Should all of the information pertaining to it be on the page, or should there be sub-pages for the planets? Should there be sub-pages for the species, but not for the planets?

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi

Welcome to the group 

Seems like there's been a lot of good discussion and feedback. I'll only add a couple of points, which overlap a bit with Dfleymmes. Both are on the subject of how much work an S2 can do.

The 5 billion figure. This figure is illustrative of how many human-equivalent manhours of work a typical S2 entity can perform in an hour, all else being equal. These are important caveats, there are many tasks than an S2 can do that would take an infinite amount of time for a human to do (i.e. deriving ultratech models of the universe). The comparison only works for tasks that humans can do and even then it's an average. It also assumes a typical S2, meaning one that hasn't modified itself specifically to be better at things like this, one that isn't close to ascending, or one that has made use of hive mind tech to become multiple. Lastly "all else being equal" means that in a live experiment the five billion humans and the S2 get the same tools. In reality S2 can build significantly better tools for themselves than modos, further increasing their productivity.

Automation/Sophont labour. Automation is really good in OA, so modos don't need to be employed or have a job. Likewise an S2 doesn't need to have modos aid it, it could easily make its own vots (virtual bots, sapient but not sentient intelligent programs). With some effort it could even make "hyper-vots", capable of performing S1 or even S2 level tasks autonomously. Having said this it is entirely possible for a culture to favour using their own labour in cases where there wouldn't be a noticeable drop in productivity compared to a vot. If one person really wanted to make and serve ice cream for the community, they might be assigned that role rather than the habitat growing an ice cream bush in that area. In a system led by a transap the transap might assign tasks that could be automated, but it assigns them to modos because there is some learning potential that it thinks will be beneficial for them.

Hello Rynn,

I am sorry I did not get to your post when I was originally posting the message (this is an edit), but I started writing my message before you posted yours, so I did not see yours until after I posted mine. Thank you for the welcome, by the way!

I was sort of thinking that the system's S2 would, in the interest of being able to save energy once the system was fully disassembled, be a S2.0 intelligence that was just smart enough to reach the S2 level. The "interesting" tasks (the ones modos could not do) would of course be done by the S2 or its "hyper-vots", but the remainder, the tasks the modos could do, it would assign to the modos, so that they would know more or less how to maintain the system, and how to not break it (hence the learning potential it thinks might be beneficial). The goal of the system would be to have something that could probably maintain itself if either the S2 or the modos abruptly vanished, long enough for either one of the modos to ascend to S2 or for the S2 to recreate the modos. However some cultural aversion to total automation would probably work in this case too, possibly in tandem with the previous idea.

Sincerely,
Rho Ophiuchi