Clonus Posted January 14, 2009 Report Share Posted January 14, 2009 Anarchy: While the planets (usually) have one or more governments, there are no large interstellar governments. Some worlds have colonies, while others have managed to take over a neighbouring star system, but most of the worlds are autonomous entities unto themselves because the practical problems in moving sufficient force from star to star to subdue resistance have discouraged empire-building up until this point. Military Alliance: Faced with a common threat, otherwise autonomous worlds have banded together in a military alliance for their mutual protection. Imperial Republic: One world has attained a such position of sufficient military dominance that it can dominate the other worlds in the area. While this world is more or less democratic at home, the other worlds get no, or token representation. Theogenic Alliance: Worlds are politically autonomous but united by a common religion, giving the leadership of that religion considerable influence particularly in dealing with nonbelievers and heresies. Corporate Republic: Interstellar government is run by business interests. Representatives are chosen by shareholder vote. Hereditary Monarchy: Executive authority is vested in members of a specific bloodline each of whom holds authority until death or abdication. Confederation: Each member world gets a delegate which will vote on its behalf. How the delegate is selected is up to the planetary government which need not be democratic. Federation: Representatives are selected by popular vote from each world belonging to the Federation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 14, 2009 Report Share Posted January 14, 2009 Re: How to organise space Obligatory Atomic Rocket link: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3ac.html especially http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3ac.html#terminology Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space I've tried to organize space by putting all the matter together in big clumps. It mostly works, but sometimes the clumps get close to each other and wind up spraying matter all over the place. And sometimes the clumps develop intelligence and get all uppity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space *blows raspberry and shows old man middle finger* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cancer Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space I've tried to organize space by putting all the matter together in big clumps. It mostly works' date=' but sometimes the clumps get close to each other and wind up spraying matter all over the place. And sometimes the clumps develop intelligence and get all uppity.[/quote'] What that last happens, just pull out the gluon depolarizer and bust it back down to bare ylem. Usually enough of it ends up as neutrinos that you never have to deal with it again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Man Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space *aims gluon depolarizer at L. Marcus* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
L. Marcus Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space . . . Don't think you can make me believe in you by existing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spence Posted January 16, 2009 Report Share Posted January 16, 2009 Re: How to organise space . . . Don't think you can make me believe in you by existing! Pull his finger.....go on do it! Pull his finger Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowcat1313 Posted January 17, 2009 Report Share Posted January 17, 2009 Re: How to organise space organization of space is going to depend a lot on the speed of communications, FTL commo makes for a whole different scenario than if you have to depend on courier traffic etc for information. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrine Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space Shadowcat has it right - the presence or absence of FTL communications, independent of ship/drone traffic, is the key factor. More to the point, the speed of communications vs. the speed of travel. In a situation where all communications is courier based (manned or unmanned), government will, of a necessity, be more decentralized, and/or interstellar governments will be smaller in terms of area governed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space Agreed. The maximum speed of starships and the maximum speed of communications limits the maximum size of the empire. If it takes a year for news of a rebellion on the outer marches of the empire to reach the capital (or sector capital) and another year for a fleet to travel back, this means the rebels will have two years to win the rebellion and fortify in preparation for the arrival of the imperial starfleet. The defining factor of whether a given planet was part of an empire or not is whether the time delay between the start of the rebellion and the arrival of the imperial punishment fleet is longer than the time required for the rebellious planet to manufacture enough defenses to take care of the punishment fleet. In other words: if you cannot hold on to the planet, it ain't yours. Note the off-hand reference to "sector capitals". If your communications/warship speed dictate that your empire can be no more than X parsecs wide with central control in the capital then you can obviously make your empire larger if you delegate control to a series of sub-capitals at some distance. Of course this runs the risk of an ambitious sector governor getting ideas about declaring independence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowcat1313 Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space the bigger the empire the harder it is to control, especially with long communications lags, you have to either delegate to somebody you trust as you grow your empire, or keep it small enough to be manageable. with long commo lags, raiding fleets or even single raiders can play havoc behind enemy lines. the traveller universe measures comm lag in weeks, while battletech in hours or days, depending on distance, I think Star Trek has the only instantaneous commo tech. and Babylon 5 it seems, but B5 is also jammable. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artemis_san Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space ^.^ This all assumes that your empire is not set up like the US, with a strong central government, sitting atop a territory administered by smaller, but loyal provincial governments. At that point, it wouldn't matter where any rebellion happened, the provincial government, or even the planetary government would have the first crack at putting the rbellion down, and Oh, By The Way, the provinvial government would call up the central government and inform them, so that the reinforcements can be on the way sooner. Think about it this way, notice how secessionist groups never really get going in the US? Conspiracy theories aside, the fact that the Feds are willing to come in on families and religious groups that in no way threaten the stability of the nation as a whole, shows me that on a galactic level, a rather large empire can be created through the use of a federal/state bureaucracy and power system. Now if a nation gets extremely large, like the Imperium in Traveller, the Galactic Empire in Star Wars, and such, the biggest threat is either systemic corruption in which case, the government system breaks down under its own weight, or the threat of MULTIPLE revolts in disparate areas of the empire, which strains the resources of the state. Artemis_san Laramie, WY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space This all assumes that your empire is not set up like the US' date=' with a strong central government, sitting atop a territory administered by smaller, but loyal provincial governments. At that point, it wouldn't matter where any rebellion happened, the provincial government, or even the planetary government would have the first crack at putting the rbellion down, and Oh, By The Way, the provinvial government would call up the central government and inform them, so that the reinforcements can be on the way sooner.[/quote'] Ummm, I think you are overlooking the case when the provincial government decides to rebel. It can start stockpiling military forces, while explaining (i.e., lying) to the central government that it needs the forces to deal with a (non-existent) internal rebellion. This was the evil plot in one of Poul Anderson's "Dominic Flandry" novels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 19, 2009 Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space I think Star Trek has the only instantaneous commo tech. IIRC Star Trek's subspace radio was not always instantaneous. In the ST:TOS episode "Balance of Terror", they mention that it will take several weeks for their subspace radio message to read Earth. I think that subspace messages can be sped up with "subspace relays." Which would make such relays prime targets if a sector decides to rebel. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clonus Posted January 19, 2009 Author Report Share Posted January 19, 2009 Re: How to organise space ^.^ This all assumes that your empire is not set up like the US, with a strong central government, sitting atop a territory administered by smaller, but loyal provincial governments. At that point, it wouldn't matter where any rebellion happened, the provincial government, or even the planetary government would have the first crack at putting the rbellion down, and Oh, By The Way, the provinvial government would call up the central government and inform them, so that the reinforcements can be on the way sooner. Think about it this way, notice how secessionist groups never really get going in the US? I notice that one of the bloodier wars in the last couple of centuries happened in the United States as a result of a secession attempt, just a couple of decades before railroads and telegraphy enveloped the nation. While a federal system does increase the scope of the territory you can control, the problem with a system relying on loyal provincial governments is what happens when the provincial governments stop being so loyal. The worse communication and transportation is, the more the tendency will be for inhabitants of mature provinces to develop their own distinctive sense of identity and to become more loyal to their province than to their empire. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaws Posted January 21, 2009 Report Share Posted January 21, 2009 Re: How to organise space I agree that no matter what system you use. Communication is the key. Especially with wildly different cultures, or with out one major threat to force unity out of necessity. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yansuf Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Re: How to organise space IIRC Star Trek's subspace radio was not always instantaneous. In the ST:TOS episode "Balance of Terror", they mention that it will take several weeks for their subspace radio message to read Earth. I think that subspace messages can be sped up with "subspace relays." Which would make such relays prime targets if a sector decides to rebel. But Star Trek was not consistent. In other episodes, there was not such a long time delay. It was "plot driven" in that episode. Also, that episode had several things mentioned that do not fit with the "canon." The previous war was the "Earth-Romulan War"; Enterprise was an ship of "United Earth" (that is mentioned in one other episode, the first of the ST time travel ones); and the discussion of how long the message would take was relevant to how long it would take "Federation Military Forces" to respond. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spence Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Re: How to organise space But Star Trek was not consistent. In other episodes, there was not such a long time delay. It was "plot driven" in that episode. Also, that episode had several things mentioned that do not fit with the "canon." The previous war was the "Earth-Romulan War"; Enterprise was an ship of "United Earth" (that is mentioned in one other episode, the first of the ST time travel ones); and the discussion of how long the message would take was relevant to how long it would take "Federation Military Forces" to respond. Not really.... Star Trek TOS = Cannon. Anything afterward that was controlled by Braga and Berman = Drug induced fiasco that should mostly be forgotten. But even the blind squirrel finds an occasional acorn so there are a few episodes that are not tooo bad... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyrath Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Re: How to organise space I tend to agree with Spence. But the question of what is or is not canon is a big nasty can of worms. http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Misc/Canon.html Then comes the even nastier can of worms, deciding how to analyze the evidence. http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Analysis.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vulcan Posted January 23, 2009 Report Share Posted January 23, 2009 Re: How to organise space And TOS contradicts itself in several places... not a good start for determining 'canon.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peregrine Posted January 24, 2009 Report Share Posted January 24, 2009 Re: How to organise space [NOTE: Potential cross-post to the Champions board] For fun: Take everything that has been discussed above and apply it to an interdimensional empire... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaws Posted February 5, 2009 Report Share Posted February 5, 2009 Re: How to organise space That analysis document was a great read... Good find. You must spread rep.. ugh.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artemis_san Posted February 13, 2009 Report Share Posted February 13, 2009 Re: How to organise space ^.^ Subspace signals are also vulnerable to interference. In Star Trek's "The Immunity Syndrome", the subspace signals were being basically jammed by the nearby EM backwash being thrown off by a giant space amoeba. Basically, feel free to muckity-muck with the radio as much as you like in games. As to the provinces rebelling against the central government, without using the example of the South during the Civil War (oh wait...I just did...), wasn't that the central plot behind Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series? John B. Laramie, WY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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