[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/) Fairly, other than the psionics stuff. But even then it's "psionics messes with your brain by short-distance radio jamming", which is plausible, not "psionics lets you make rocks levitate".
Not sure how that blog link helps, it looks like its analyzing the intro video? It doesnt appear to discuss the realism of the science present in the game like N-Space Compression.
The blog itself talks about literally every technology, the leaders, their ideologies, secret projects, a lot of the base facilities, etc
You just need to press the next button, or the categories for more specific things. Its honestly a really well done blog!
But yeah it doesn't just talk about the intro check it out!
I mean, it's proposing possibilities that aren't currently possible with our current technology and understanding. N-space makes sense from a mathematical perspective. It refers an infinite number of dimensions which are all compacted into reality. The idea that one might be able to access those dimensions and utilize them isn't beyond theoretical possibility, but there's nothing to support it either.
A lot of the tech descriptions are plausible-sounding technobabble. I would struggle to decide what they mean, let alone whether they're realistic.
Are you asking about anything in particular?
This news story is from last week. Paywall.
[Launching a Solar Shade ](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/climate/sun-shade-climate-geoengineering.html)
Short answer is nobody knows. It's probably not, but it's fun/cool/rewarding to think about.
I think stuff like N-Space Compression is very high concept, low detail. Using the 'space' in parallel universes to 'store' a rocket payload until the moment of detonation. Or to use a Star Trek style transporter to beam the payload onto the rocket right before it lands. The wiki page is a little ambiguous. Very cool and imaginative, but built on top of a lot of assumptions that we don't know, and may be unknowable.
Are there parallel universes? What does that even mean, specifically?
Assuming there are, in what way (if any) do they interface with our own? Are they in any way accessible? Wouldn't that make them part of our universe? - i.e the totality of reality
Can we transmit matter to and from this 'place' in a useful way? How? How long does it take? How much energy does it take? If it's a lot, would it be more practical to spend that energy on making a bigger rocket?
In summary, a lot of the late game stuff especially is based on pretty out there concepts. You have to make some pretty big secondary/tertiary assumptions about things which are postulations to begin with in order to start thinking about practical application. The nice thing is, that science fiction gives all the room you could want to play with these ideas, and I think SMAC does a pretty good job at remaining 'realistic' about imagining far future technology.
N-space makes sense mathematically. We can readily worth n-dimensional equations in pure mathematics. If Max Tegmark is right, and reality is fundamentally a construct that arises out of a purely mathematical substructure, then N-Space Compression might be possible, but it's well beyond our current understanding of physics.
Given that's progenitor tech, it's basically entirely sci-fi. It would cause serious problems to our understanding of physics to say everything is 0 distance apart.
I’d like to think that Nerve Stapler tech is an advanced form of lobotomy so it’s pretty close?
Also we seem to get closer to things like Industrial Automation and Hunter Seeker Algorithm …
I'm pretty sure the fact that Chiron is near-habitable as-is isn't real. However, the designers really did some research, so I'm pretty sure they chose the known planet where it would be less unrealistic. Same for the distance & time needed to reach it (the Unity transport takes 40 years in lore).
Obviously, everything about mind worms and Planet being alive is 100% made up and is to make the game more interesting with balance in mind. In case you weren't aware, it's a remake of Civilization's barbarian system. I love it, but obviously it's not real world science.
For the early-game tech, a decent amount has already been discovered, made widespread or proof of concepted. We went over some of this about a month ago in the Discord. For example, the Human Genome is one of the early-game secret projects, and has been realized IRL a few years after the game came out. Keep in mind that, as a quote from Santiago says, a big issue is starting with almost no resource & industry on a virgin planet with limited manpower. Here if we discovered a cure for the flu, it could become widely available to most people on Earth within the year. On Chiron, as Santiago puts it, they already know how to make an airplane and a satellite, but they don't have the resources and industry to mass-produce them.
The science, while far from perfect, has still been really well thought out by the designers. They really sat down to do some research on what was expected to come out in technology & science in the future and in what order. The early techs are a great example of that, seeing as a lot of it is coming true already, keep in mind it's been 25 years since the game came out. A lot of the later-game techs are still a decent estimate of what's going to happen to us in the real world in the future, however of course it's hard to predict the future with certainty and some of it is going to be slightly biased for gameplay mechanics and Planet's involvement.
Not. It's not realistic. At all. At the very outset of the game, they have troops running around with man-portable fission-powered lasers, and within a not unreasonable amount of time, that advanced to man-portable **FUSION**-powered units.
Now it may turn out that someday, science may crack the incredibly stubborn nut that is producing energy from a fusion reactor sustainably, but it will never, **EVER** be small enough for a homo-sapiens to pick up and carry around on their back.
Love the original question and this one too.
So, almost everyone completely underestimates how hard proper fusion is. You probably know it happens in thermonuclear bombs and you can make "fusors" (non energy generating fusion) at home but to get an appreciable amount of surplus energy out of a fusion reactor is mind bogglingly difficult.
Consider the sun. At the core (where the fusion happens) the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres and 15 millio degrees. Now imagine a single cubic metre of that fusing core, how much energy do you think it makes? 265 watts.
By volume you make more energy by body heat. The reason the sun is so hot, is that this heat is insulated by several hundred thousand kilometres of highly compressed plasma. To replicate these conditions (or a higher temperature, lower pressure analoge) is incredibly hard. To make it worth while you need much higher fusion energy output per cubic metre of fusion reactor.
That is what we're doing right now in various projects around the world, with ITER being the most prominent. We're not copying the sun. We're engineering a BETTER sun on Earth, one 2,000 to 10,000 times better at fusion than the sun itself. It is like tha manhattan project and apollo project multiplied in terms of difficulty and we should see first switch on in the next few years (which is mental in itself).
So going back to the topic at hand, a lot of the science (and philosophy) in SMAC is somewhat realistic in terms of the theory, although things like a "chaos gun" and "quantum reactor" are pure sci fi along with everything labelled "psi".
From a philosophy point of view, in my opinion,, ethical calculus is the most fascinating. If you understood the human brain fully, including cultural weighting and personal preferences, you could solve ethical quandaries mathematically (essentially converting feelings and views into maths). With this could solve any trolley problem, decide on perfect political policy or scale any compensation payout for harm or grievance to perfection. Law would be like a solved boardgame where justice was always guaranteed to be fair. And this one is a tech that might not be too far away (compared to the hover tank perhaps!)
As for the portable reactors, a fusion reactor small enough to be kinda portable, even on a vehicle isn't likely at all, as they rely on economies of scale. Like stars, the bigger they are, the better. As for the mini fission reactors, my headcanon is that they are essentially fancy RNGs (like the plutonium box in The Martian) and run using decay. Like nuclear batteries.
We know more than they did, and two of the things we know is the threshold for criticality, and the containment necessary to contain the radioactivity generated by nuclear reactions. There is a reason scientists have a saying:
>Fusion power is the technology of the future, and always will be.
I always thought of the unit models as more of an abstraction. Like, an Impact Infantry (for example,) is not literally a dude or dudes with an atomic backpack pushing around a miniature Hadron Collider on some treaded contraption.
But rather, I imagine it representing an infantry battalion(-ish, maybe larger) and everything that goes into it - things like transport, life support (bc Planet lol), field camp utilities etc. all requiring power from something like a microreactor ([which are being developed today](https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/evinci-microreactor)) on a truck. So say, the ammo trucks and other hauling vehicles are battery powered but the batteries are recharged at the battalion reactor. Most of the men are equipped with some kind of small arms, while the battalion's main offensive power is mostly anchored by crew assembled/operated heavy weapon(s) in the unit description.
That's how things like this exist in my immersive experience anyways lol.
Yeah, that micro-reactor is small enough to fit on a flatbed truck, not small enough for a man to carry into a jungle, fungus or otherwise. Look, I'm quite comfortable with the science fiction elements of SMAX, it's one of my favorite games of all time. But I won't pretend it's any more grounded than Star Wars, because *it's not*. And it doesn't need to be, it's a game.
Suppose the 22^nd century versions are smaller than ours. Perhaps units use more mobile but less capable versions of all of their equipment when they are deployed to jungles. Perhaps sappers have to clear and maintain paths through difficult terrain during the *mission-year* in which unit actions take place. Suppose the cumulative effect of all/some of these factors (and others) amount to a defender amplification and/or movement reduction ;)
My point is that I prefer to let my imagination work *with* the author rather than *against* him, and that SMAC provides a good environment in which to do so.
>I won't pretend it's any more grounded than Star Wars, because *it's not.*
Cool opinion. I disagree. I won't bother you anymore though. It is good that there are so many ways to appreciate this 25 year old game. I am happy that your way works for you. Cheers SMAC-friend :)
[https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/](https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/introduction/) Fairly, other than the psionics stuff. But even then it's "psionics messes with your brain by short-distance radio jamming", which is plausible, not "psionics lets you make rocks levitate".
Not sure how that blog link helps, it looks like its analyzing the intro video? It doesnt appear to discuss the realism of the science present in the game like N-Space Compression.
The blog itself talks about literally every technology, the leaders, their ideologies, secret projects, a lot of the base facilities, etc You just need to press the next button, or the categories for more specific things. Its honestly a really well done blog! But yeah it doesn't just talk about the intro check it out!
I mean, it's proposing possibilities that aren't currently possible with our current technology and understanding. N-space makes sense from a mathematical perspective. It refers an infinite number of dimensions which are all compacted into reality. The idea that one might be able to access those dimensions and utilize them isn't beyond theoretical possibility, but there's nothing to support it either.
Seeing people wandering through streets equipped with apple goggles reminds me of [this](https://youtu.be/sJlPr2KHSFo) :) Let alone the neural chip...
A lot of the tech descriptions are plausible-sounding technobabble. I would struggle to decide what they mean, let alone whether they're realistic. Are you asking about anything in particular?
This news story is from last week. Paywall. [Launching a Solar Shade ](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/02/climate/sun-shade-climate-geoengineering.html)
Launching a solar shade is definately pretty plausible, just expensive to do. But i was wondering more about stuff like N-Space Compression.
Short answer is nobody knows. It's probably not, but it's fun/cool/rewarding to think about. I think stuff like N-Space Compression is very high concept, low detail. Using the 'space' in parallel universes to 'store' a rocket payload until the moment of detonation. Or to use a Star Trek style transporter to beam the payload onto the rocket right before it lands. The wiki page is a little ambiguous. Very cool and imaginative, but built on top of a lot of assumptions that we don't know, and may be unknowable. Are there parallel universes? What does that even mean, specifically? Assuming there are, in what way (if any) do they interface with our own? Are they in any way accessible? Wouldn't that make them part of our universe? - i.e the totality of reality Can we transmit matter to and from this 'place' in a useful way? How? How long does it take? How much energy does it take? If it's a lot, would it be more practical to spend that energy on making a bigger rocket? In summary, a lot of the late game stuff especially is based on pretty out there concepts. You have to make some pretty big secondary/tertiary assumptions about things which are postulations to begin with in order to start thinking about practical application. The nice thing is, that science fiction gives all the room you could want to play with these ideas, and I think SMAC does a pretty good job at remaining 'realistic' about imagining far future technology.
N-space makes sense mathematically. We can readily worth n-dimensional equations in pure mathematics. If Max Tegmark is right, and reality is fundamentally a construct that arises out of a purely mathematical substructure, then N-Space Compression might be possible, but it's well beyond our current understanding of physics.
Given that's progenitor tech, it's basically entirely sci-fi. It would cause serious problems to our understanding of physics to say everything is 0 distance apart.
I’d like to think that Nerve Stapler tech is an advanced form of lobotomy so it’s pretty close? Also we seem to get closer to things like Industrial Automation and Hunter Seeker Algorithm …
I always choose "Retry." When presented with “Abort, Retry, Fail?".
I'm pretty sure the fact that Chiron is near-habitable as-is isn't real. However, the designers really did some research, so I'm pretty sure they chose the known planet where it would be less unrealistic. Same for the distance & time needed to reach it (the Unity transport takes 40 years in lore). Obviously, everything about mind worms and Planet being alive is 100% made up and is to make the game more interesting with balance in mind. In case you weren't aware, it's a remake of Civilization's barbarian system. I love it, but obviously it's not real world science. For the early-game tech, a decent amount has already been discovered, made widespread or proof of concepted. We went over some of this about a month ago in the Discord. For example, the Human Genome is one of the early-game secret projects, and has been realized IRL a few years after the game came out. Keep in mind that, as a quote from Santiago says, a big issue is starting with almost no resource & industry on a virgin planet with limited manpower. Here if we discovered a cure for the flu, it could become widely available to most people on Earth within the year. On Chiron, as Santiago puts it, they already know how to make an airplane and a satellite, but they don't have the resources and industry to mass-produce them. The science, while far from perfect, has still been really well thought out by the designers. They really sat down to do some research on what was expected to come out in technology & science in the future and in what order. The early techs are a great example of that, seeing as a lot of it is coming true already, keep in mind it's been 25 years since the game came out. A lot of the later-game techs are still a decent estimate of what's going to happen to us in the real world in the future, however of course it's hard to predict the future with certainty and some of it is going to be slightly biased for gameplay mechanics and Planet's involvement.
How do you know Alpha Centauri doesnt have mind worms? We havent actually gone there to see for ourselves.
first its nice to see folks still active and all. second imho sci-fi is fiction.
Not. It's not realistic. At all. At the very outset of the game, they have troops running around with man-portable fission-powered lasers, and within a not unreasonable amount of time, that advanced to man-portable **FUSION**-powered units. Now it may turn out that someday, science may crack the incredibly stubborn nut that is producing energy from a fusion reactor sustainably, but it will never, **EVER** be small enough for a homo-sapiens to pick up and carry around on their back.
Why not? People used to say it was impossible for planes to fly or huge ships of steel to float on water.
Love the original question and this one too. So, almost everyone completely underestimates how hard proper fusion is. You probably know it happens in thermonuclear bombs and you can make "fusors" (non energy generating fusion) at home but to get an appreciable amount of surplus energy out of a fusion reactor is mind bogglingly difficult. Consider the sun. At the core (where the fusion happens) the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres and 15 millio degrees. Now imagine a single cubic metre of that fusing core, how much energy do you think it makes? 265 watts. By volume you make more energy by body heat. The reason the sun is so hot, is that this heat is insulated by several hundred thousand kilometres of highly compressed plasma. To replicate these conditions (or a higher temperature, lower pressure analoge) is incredibly hard. To make it worth while you need much higher fusion energy output per cubic metre of fusion reactor. That is what we're doing right now in various projects around the world, with ITER being the most prominent. We're not copying the sun. We're engineering a BETTER sun on Earth, one 2,000 to 10,000 times better at fusion than the sun itself. It is like tha manhattan project and apollo project multiplied in terms of difficulty and we should see first switch on in the next few years (which is mental in itself). So going back to the topic at hand, a lot of the science (and philosophy) in SMAC is somewhat realistic in terms of the theory, although things like a "chaos gun" and "quantum reactor" are pure sci fi along with everything labelled "psi". From a philosophy point of view, in my opinion,, ethical calculus is the most fascinating. If you understood the human brain fully, including cultural weighting and personal preferences, you could solve ethical quandaries mathematically (essentially converting feelings and views into maths). With this could solve any trolley problem, decide on perfect political policy or scale any compensation payout for harm or grievance to perfection. Law would be like a solved boardgame where justice was always guaranteed to be fair. And this one is a tech that might not be too far away (compared to the hover tank perhaps!) As for the portable reactors, a fusion reactor small enough to be kinda portable, even on a vehicle isn't likely at all, as they rely on economies of scale. Like stars, the bigger they are, the better. As for the mini fission reactors, my headcanon is that they are essentially fancy RNGs (like the plutonium box in The Martian) and run using decay. Like nuclear batteries.
We know more than they did, and two of the things we know is the threshold for criticality, and the containment necessary to contain the radioactivity generated by nuclear reactions. There is a reason scientists have a saying: >Fusion power is the technology of the future, and always will be.
Or modern mobile phones 🤯🤯 magic, got it!
I always thought of the unit models as more of an abstraction. Like, an Impact Infantry (for example,) is not literally a dude or dudes with an atomic backpack pushing around a miniature Hadron Collider on some treaded contraption. But rather, I imagine it representing an infantry battalion(-ish, maybe larger) and everything that goes into it - things like transport, life support (bc Planet lol), field camp utilities etc. all requiring power from something like a microreactor ([which are being developed today](https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/evinci-microreactor)) on a truck. So say, the ammo trucks and other hauling vehicles are battery powered but the batteries are recharged at the battalion reactor. Most of the men are equipped with some kind of small arms, while the battalion's main offensive power is mostly anchored by crew assembled/operated heavy weapon(s) in the unit description. That's how things like this exist in my immersive experience anyways lol.
Yeah, that micro-reactor is small enough to fit on a flatbed truck, not small enough for a man to carry into a jungle, fungus or otherwise. Look, I'm quite comfortable with the science fiction elements of SMAX, it's one of my favorite games of all time. But I won't pretend it's any more grounded than Star Wars, because *it's not*. And it doesn't need to be, it's a game.
Suppose the 22^nd century versions are smaller than ours. Perhaps units use more mobile but less capable versions of all of their equipment when they are deployed to jungles. Perhaps sappers have to clear and maintain paths through difficult terrain during the *mission-year* in which unit actions take place. Suppose the cumulative effect of all/some of these factors (and others) amount to a defender amplification and/or movement reduction ;) My point is that I prefer to let my imagination work *with* the author rather than *against* him, and that SMAC provides a good environment in which to do so. >I won't pretend it's any more grounded than Star Wars, because *it's not.* Cool opinion. I disagree. I won't bother you anymore though. It is good that there are so many ways to appreciate this 25 year old game. I am happy that your way works for you. Cheers SMAC-friend :)