Earth that used to be

So i got me an idea for a CS based loosely on Firefly ( serenity)' setting here's my rough outline ripped and changed somewhat from Firefly's timeline my changes are in bold,note this is just a rough outline...


[sblock=Timeline]2020: Star cluster in Taurus is discovered, designated "34 Tauri (2020)". Five stars and 14 gas giants found.


2021: Recycling programs beginning to fail, global warming increasing.


2027 to 2042: Terrestrial planets found by the dozens in 34 Tauri (2020). Most are believed to be within acceptable limits for terraforming.


2027: P/2027 (White Sun) 03 showing chemical signature of Earthlike conditions. Despite reddish hue, P/2027 (White Sun) 04 showing similar conditions.


2030: It's official: Earth will lose the ability to sustain 21st century society and current population levels within 100 years.


2035: The quantum nature of gravity is deduced, allowing for rapid and unprecedented advances in gravity manipulation technologies. Creation of artificial gravity and gravity screening soon follow.


2037: Space technology development vastly accelerated by new discoveries. Due to the advent of gravity technology, terraforming can take decades instead of centuries.


2040: First theories for evacuating the Earth presented. Gravity manipulation technology along with recent jump gate technology discoveries makes evacuation plausible idea.




2042: Terraforming technology tested on Mars with positive results


2045: Terraforming of Venus, Mars and Earth's moon begun. Terraforming efforts will be abandoned within two years due to a lack of native resources.


2048: Failure of terraforming efforts in the Solar System hit home. Global morale sink to new lows as riots break out in many major cities. Earth's governments decide that fast action is required to keep society from falling into chaos. As rebuilding Earth's ecosystem no longer appears to be an option, a plan for mass exodus is proposed instead. The GEA (Global Exodus Alliance) is formed and given unlimited governmental authority and complete control over Earth's meager remaining resources as member nations cede their power to the organization. The GEA moves quickly to take control of infrastructure, police and military and most of the private sector as well, all in the name of mobilization of the greatest single endeavor in human history.


2052: Collection and storage of samples of all life on Earth begun.


2060: With plans for colonization in place, global resources mobilized, and construction of arks and ark modules on-going, the GEA makes its final move to cement control over humanity: The GEA publishes the "Articles of Alliance", a super-constitution which supersedes all other legal systems on the planet. As China and the U.S. are contributing most of the resources and much of the know-how to the Exodus Project, they take joint stewardship over the new "global government". Smaller countries are given a choice – toe the line or give up any chance of having their populations join the exodus. Results are almost immediate – unilateral capitulation of 98 percent of Earth's governments. The Alliance is born. Earth's only jump gate is place on the edge of the solar system.




2072: First Wave: Dozens of robotic terraforming ships are launched via the jump gate that has been placed on the edge of Earth's Solar System. Their targets are two planets orbiting the Verse's central sun, a white primary, dubbed "White Star" (later, simply "White Sun") by the Americans and "Bai Hu" or "White Tiger" by the Chinese.


2075-2100 First ark ships begin to depart. Priority is given to those ships populated with the ancestors of those who will act as the terraforming and construction labor force upon arrival.Loading of the ark ships is complete back on Earth. Remaining planet-side population negligible – the death rate during the years loading took place rose to near-extinction levels.


2101-2120: The final Ark ship leaves Earth orbit. All telemetry data from Earth ceases. It is assumed that remaining Earth population is 0. Some of the Robotic Ships start the building of the receiving jumpgate,while others do terraforming work.


2164 TO 2190: As the Exodus fleet arrives via the exit gate, higher resolution imaging of the Verse becomes possible. Observers discover hundreds of planets and moons, many of which appear to be terraformable. They then hold orbit around one of the planets to later be called Miranda while the tereaforming happens.


2200-2406: Terraforming and colonization happens during this time frame,along with setting up the vast communication network that will be called the "Cortex". Also during this time,the jumpgate's access codes are lost,they are needed if the gate were to be used to return to Earth.


2506: Terraforming fails on Miranda (last known location of the gate's access codes). Some settlers die. Miranda is removed from maps of habitable worlds. The war for Unification begins.


2511: Unification War ends with the defeat of the Independents.


2518: Now[/sblock]


yes i know that i didn't really do much,but like i said this is just a rough draft. My very original idea was that a jump gate network was going to be in the 'Verse,but the activation codes were lost during the unification war. But I wasn't sure how that would work out...


[sblock=Player section and rules]The players will start at level 1,normal character creation rules,along with a few occupations from the future book omitting the following : Heir. Cybernetics aren't in the setting at all,nor are non human characters,most feats will be allowed. available items to buy will be capped at a PL of 6. There is no FTL other than the jump gate[/sblock]


So what do you all think? Any tips or suggestions will be welcomed.
 

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I don't buy losing activation codes. For something that important, somebody's going to fly up and hack/replace the old security module to get it back up and running. Call the locksmith. problem solved.

You can get the same effect of shutting down the gate network, just pick something with some sci-fi plausibility.

Consider that in Firefly, it appears that the Verse is just one solar system. they're just flying around it to all the planets.

Our own solar system's pretty big, those fancy swirly color drives may not be kicking us out to Alpha Centauri, but given it's taken Voyager 30 some years to get out of the solar system, they'll be a might handy for cutting travel time to practical durations.


I'd also consider that if you're not going to deviate that much from Firefly's timeline, than just adopt that as your setting and cut to the chase.
 

I don't buy losing activation codes. For something that important, somebody's going to fly up and hack/replace the old security module to get it back up and running. Call the locksmith. problem solved.

You can get the same effect of shutting down the gate network, just pick something with some sci-fi plausibility.

Consider that in Firefly, it appears that the Verse is just one solar system. they're just flying around it to all the planets.

Our own solar system's pretty big, those fancy swirly color drives may not be kicking us out to Alpha Centauri, but given it's taken Voyager 30 some years to get out of the solar system, they'll be a might handy for cutting travel time to practical durations.


I'd also consider that if you're not going to deviate that much from Firefly's timeline, than just adopt that as your setting and cut to the chase.

Voyager still hasn't left lol, I do get what your saying and I honestly couldn't come up with something better than "we lost the codes" and i'm sure once i figure out something better I can go with a jump gate network. So if oyu have suggestions on that,toss them at me :D

One of the long term things I plan with this that at some point depending on the players,they will be involved directly in reactivating the jump gates and ushering in a new era which sounds better with a whole net work than just a gate back to Earth.
 

Voyager still hasn't left
Sorry to quibble off-topic details, but according to NASA, yes it has.

Back on topic. Here are a couple alternatives loosing the jump gate keys.:

It got blown up. Possibly on accident, possibly on purpose to stop people from coming or going.

There never was a jump gate. The colonists came on generation ships at sub-light speed. Going back to earth will likewise take generations.
 

Sorry to quibble off-topic details, but according to NASA, yes it has.

Back on topic. Here are a couple alternatives loosing the jump gate keys.:

It got blown up. Possibly on accident, possibly on purpose to stop people from coming or going.

There never was a jump gate. The colonists came on generation ships at sub-light speed. Going back to earth will likewise take generations.

Indeed. Somebody might blow up the gate to stop alliance forces from moving into their system.

Anybody with a separatist movement ideal is going to think to further isolate their holdings from the Alliance by cutting off the only means of getting to them.
 

One of the long term things I plan with this that at some point depending on the players,they will be involved directly in reactivating the jump gates and ushering in a new era which sounds better with a whole net work than just a gate back to Earth.

Fine. Then, unbeknownst to everyone, a fungus developed that eats the specific type of superconductors* used in the gates or their controls or power sources, causing the network to collapse. The resulting socio-economic disruption got too deep (possibly because the gates were not the only technology affected) before anyone could figure out what was happening, develop, and deploy a fungus-killing agent. Recovery took long enough that nobody (or very few bodies) know how the gates work to reactivate them.

Reactivating the gates then becomes a quest to find a person who knows the technology, and find a way to fix it - probably while someone who doesn't want that done is chasing the PCs, of course. Not really any different than a McGuffin chase for keys - the "keys" are now a person or book on lost technology a PC can learn from, and maybe the things you need to actually do the fixing.



*Idea stolen from Larry Niven's Ringworld, so don't tell me it isn't science-fiction-plausible enough :p
 

"It is assumed that remaining Earth population is 0." You mean the exodus ships assume that? If if you mean that literally zero, why?
The Firefly statement is that the "Earth got used up." If you have similar background, it is one thing to not be able to support 10 billion people, but you would think that once you reduce population to 1-10 million that limited resources are less of a problem.
Plus as just a general psychology thing I'd think there were some people who refused to leave Earth.

 
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Hundreds of planets in a single system? I don't know all that much about stellar mechanics but that sounds a bit implausible.
Also, why do the robots need to build a receiving jumpgate? After all they arrived in the system via jumpgate just fine.

And finally, why exactly has the terraforming of Mars, etc. failed? When you can evacuate several billion people lack of resources seems implausible.
 
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Fine. Then, unbeknownst to everyone, a fungus developed that eats the specific type of superconductors* used in the gates or their controls or power sources, causing the network to collapse. The resulting socio-economic disruption got too deep (possibly because the gates were not the only technology affected) before anyone could figure out what was happening, develop, and deploy a fungus-killing agent. Recovery took long enough that nobody (or very few bodies) know how the gates work to reactivate them.

Reactivating the gates then becomes a quest to find a person who knows the technology, and find a way to fix it - probably while someone who doesn't want that done is chasing the PCs, of course. Not really any different than a McGuffin chase for keys - the "keys" are now a person or book on lost technology a PC can learn from, and maybe the things you need to actually do the fixing.



*Idea stolen from Larry Niven's Ringworld, so don't tell me it isn't science-fiction-plausible enough :p


nice...and I can use that the Alliance created in a lab on Miranda and that's also where the way to fix it is located. So, part of the quest is finding Miranda,then finding out what that means, and so on :cool:


EDIT: In fact this could have triggered the war....
 
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Hundreds of planets in a single system? I don't know all that much about stellar mechanics but that sounds a bit implausible.

Depends what, for these purposes, is a "planet".

In Firefly, they don't really give details. The best description I've seen has it as a multiple-star system, in which each star has planets, and many of the planets have multiple moons - many of the moons and planets were of a size for terraforming. That way, getting into the tens or dozens of worlds isn't too implausible.
 
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