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With all the Hoopla going on in the local Solor system, is it possible that other colonies grew in the outer solor syste (beyond the inner belt between mars and jupiter)

Locations on the various moons in Jovion and saturn orbits and such.

It's Rifts! Remember, the limit is your imagination! ;D

I know the books said a number a ship lefts but none were heard from again so.....

Depends on if you want the Rift Event to be centered on Earth with collateral effects on Mars and Venus, or as the center of an expanding wave that diminishes the farther out you go, or if the expansion of triggered leylines will eventually encompass Rifts Earth's galaxy/universe.

Doubtful that there are colonies in the outer solar system, it doesn't mention it in canon and considering you could use simple radio waves to communicate back to the inner belt it is highly unlikely that any colonies would go undetected.

Edit: I however remember reading something about colony ships and some successful FTL experiments in the years leading up to the GC so there could be a colony of humand a couple of dozen lightyears away.

Anthar wrote:Doubtful that there are colonies in the outer solar system, it doesn't mention it in canon and considering you could use simple radio waves to communicate back to the inner belt it is highly unlikely that any colonies would go undetected.

Edit: I however remember reading something about colony ships and some successful FTL experiments in the years leading up to the GC so there could be a colony of humand a couple of dozen lightyears away.

Ohh you mean the colony which became the Splicer Homeworld. Where their Archie-AI went insane and tried to kill everyone, even to this day.

Yeppers. The Splice Must Flow ...

TechnoGothic wrote:

Anthar wrote:Doubtful that there are colonies in the outer solar system, it doesn't mention it in canon and considering you could use simple radio waves to communicate back to the inner belt it is highly unlikely that any colonies would go undetected.

Edit: I however remember reading something about colony ships and some successful FTL experiments in the years leading up to the GC so there could be a colony of humand a couple of dozen lightyears away.

Ohh you mean the colony which became the Splicer Homeworld. Where their Archie-AI went insane and tried to kill everyone, even to this day.

Yeppers. The Splice Must Flow ...

Out of the frying pan and into the plasma jet...(wince)

Mech-Viper Prime wrote:I know the books said a number a ship lefts but none were heard from again so.....

Really? Which book, I don't seem to remember that.

IMO I've NEVER liked what MiO did to the Mars Colony. Just seems a little too much like the Containment of Earth Field...just hogwash. I've always liked the Mars Colony to have some GA folks trying to talk reason into the Earth Orbit Colonies so they could work together to head further out system, develop FTL, etc.

Dr Megaverse wrote:

Mech-Viper Prime wrote:I know the books said a number a ship lefts but none were heard from again so.....

Really? Which book, I don't seem to remember that.

IMO I've NEVER liked what MiO did to the Mars Colony. Just seems a little too much like the Containment of Earth Field...just hogwash. I've always liked the Mars Colony to have some GA folks trying to talk reason into the Earth Orbit Colonies so they could work together to head further out system, develop FTL, etc.

Good thing the GM is free to declare that the Mars Colony was reclaimed either just prior to game-time or give the PC group a reasonable chance to study the problem and arrange to reclaim it themselves.

that isn't canon, no. did a ship from pre-rifts earth go and settle another planet which would eventually become the splicers world? maybe. we can't really conclusively prove that it didn't happen. but there isn't any exceptionally strong indication that it did happen either.

personally, my opinion is that it's a different setting entirely, and is likely only connected to rifts in the sense that a random rift could theoretically open anywhere even though it's an incredibly small chance. but, that's just my opinion, and isn't really canon either.

canon for splicers is that NEXUS (the machine that i'm presuming was described as being an ARCHIE clone) probably knows, but isn't telling, and certainly humanity as a whole doesn't even know what planet they're on, or even whether it's their homeworld or a colony. they've lost their history entirely beyond a certain point. perhaps it is contained on one of the discs that they treat as a form of currency... and perhaps not.

Maybe i will work something out in that regard. I did like the style of a specific anime and even played out an SDC setting similar to said anime involving short distance jump gates and bounty hunters (not stating name for fear of breaking forum rules)

At least based on MiO, no, no outer colonies. Only the inner planets were ever settled in anyway. Radio communication with the outer colonies wouldn't necessarily be the easiest. If the outer planets colonies wanted to stay hidden it wouldn't be that difficult unless using a radio telescope to peer around the outer planets listening for radio communications. Highly directional radio communications with neither node pointed near the inner planets or low power radio would mean it would take a very, very large parabolic antenna/radio telescope to pick anything up.

I don't frankly see them trying to be that secretive.

The outer planets have much less light, so solar power is effectively worthless and are a very long voyage from the inner planets. I think MiO already mentions that for a fast ship the asteroid belt is a couple months from Earth from a near point in the belt. Jupiter is between 50-100% further from Earth than the asteroid belt is. So you are talking months to over a year depending on if Jupiter is in opposition or not from the Earth.

Awfully long way to go to try to establish a colony when the inner planets and orbitals were just getting started.

No, I can't see a single survey/science vessel and its crew setting up a colony when it all hit the pot. It takes way too much gear to get a viable colony going in a hostile environment. No way to produce the machines to make the machines to make the machines as it were. Maybe a few years or a decade or two, but not a viable on going colony. More like robinson curoso in space, hoping that the air handler doesn't run out of spare parts, the nutrient drip pumps for the aeroponic gardens don't finally pack it in, etc, etc, etc. And maybe only a few years of that before it is more like Robinson Curoso's grave in space.

Whether it can happen or not. It appears it hasbeen left open to the GM. Which is good.I see Plenty of ideas here from Politics. Multiple moon colonies and such. Sleeper ships to jupiter or even saturn wouldn't have been a bad idea. Either way. it is an intersting idea. Thank you all for your input.

azazel1024 wrote:At least based on MiO, no, no outer colonies. Only the inner planets were ever settled in anyway. Radio communication with the outer colonies wouldn't necessarily be the easiest. If the outer planets colonies wanted to stay hidden it wouldn't be that difficult unless using a radio telescope to peer around the outer planets listening for radio communications. Highly directional radio communications with neither node pointed near the inner planets or low power radio would mean it would take a very, very large parabolic antenna/radio telescope to pick anything up.

I don't frankly see them trying to be that secretive.

The outer planets have much less light, so solar power is effectively worthless and are a very long voyage from the inner planets. I think MiO already mentions that for a fast ship the asteroid belt is a couple months from Earth from a near point in the belt. Jupiter is between 50-100% further from Earth than the asteroid belt is. So you are talking months to over a year depending on if Jupiter is in opposition or not from the Earth.

Awfully long way to go to try to establish a colony when the inner planets and orbitals were just getting started.

No, I can't see a single survey/science vessel and its crew setting up a colony when it all hit the pot. It takes way too much gear to get a viable colony going in a hostile environment. No way to produce the machines to make the machines to make the machines as it were. Maybe a few years or a decade or two, but not a viable on going colony. More like robinson curoso in space, hoping that the air handler doesn't run out of spare parts, the nutrient drip pumps for the aeroponic gardens don't finally pack it in, etc, etc, etc. And maybe only a few years of that before it is more like Robinson Curoso's grave in space.

There are alternatives for energy, including nuclear particularly when you consider the upgraded level of technology with the introduction of the AtB as a full RPG rather than module add-ons to TMNT and Other Strangeness. A ship could have been sent with sufficient resources to be self-sufficient and handle enough problems to actually begin the basics of establishing a colony. Since the most likely would be from before the Crash they'd have likely had full genetic manipulation technology on board (the tech was so common the average citizen had it makes no sense it wouldn't be available on an exploratory vessel), plus the option of a factory package to be able to manufacture any damaged or destroyed parts on site since they can't hope for resupply from Earth. So there's room that one could find a single vessel having set up a colony out there using mind fissionables or depending on what it set up base on drawing power from geothermal energy (Saturn and Jupiter have some wicked energy fields a sufficiently advanced group could exploit for endless power).

Sure nuclear is an option, but if you look at the AtB bits of MiO, nuclear is extremely limited in orbit. The colonies were just getting established. It would be a lot like if in 1640 right after Jamestown had only been around for a few years if the English decided to set out across the continent to try to build a settlement by puget sound in Washington.

In the Rifts settings the colonies are better established, but even then it doesn't make a lot of sense. The outer planets, for the most part, can't provide resources that Mars, the Moon and the asteroid belt can't provide in plenty. Travel times are going to be so high that it really just doesn't make commercial sense to attempt to establish outer planet colonies while the inner planets aren't even close to being well developed commercially.

Population pressures also wouldn't for that issue.

Now an isloationist group might take that route, but it would take enormous resources, on the level of a major corporate or political entity, not a small splinter group that can come up with a couple of million credits in donations.

In AtB setting the tech level is low enough that we aren't talking just loading up a cargo ship and heading outbound to establish a colony. It would take multiple trips from many vessels to really establish the machineary and other stuff you'd need for a self supporting colony. In the Rifts setting with high technology, minturization on a much greater level, nanotech, etc you could probably do it with one of the decent sized cargo vessels that are possited in the setting, but again extremely high expense (I doubt it is also just off-the-shelf components and equipment) that would limit it to only large corporations or political entities, and they'd have no good economic or political reason to do it.

So I am not saying it COULD NOT HAPPEN. However, it doesn't make any real sense that it would have at the point that these stories are set at. If the opening of the Rifts had never happened and we are in to the 2300's or so with no apocalypse putting the kaboosh on expanding colonization in space and such forth, than sure, I'd imagine there would be colonization somewhere in the outer planets, but that didn't happen.

azazel1024 wrote:Sure nuclear is an option, but if you look at the AtB bits of MiO, nuclear is extremely limited in orbit. The colonies were just getting established. It would be a lot like if in 1640 right after Jamestown had only been around for a few years if the English decided to set out across the continent to try to build a settlement by puget sound in Washington.

In the Rifts settings the colonies are better established, but even then it doesn't make a lot of sense. The outer planets, for the most part, can't provide resources that Mars, the Moon and the asteroid belt can't provide in plenty. Travel times are going to be so high that it really just doesn't make commercial sense to attempt to establish outer planet colonies while the inner planets aren't even close to being well developed commercially.

Population pressures also wouldn't for that issue.

Now an isloationist group might take that route, but it would take enormous resources, on the level of a major corporate or political entity, not a small splinter group that can come up with a couple of million credits in donations.

In AtB setting the tech level is low enough that we aren't talking just loading up a cargo ship and heading outbound to establish a colony. It would take multiple trips from many vessels to really establish the machineary and other stuff you'd need for a self supporting colony. In the Rifts setting with high technology, minturization on a much greater level, nanotech, etc you could probably do it with one of the decent sized cargo vessels that are possited in the setting, but again extremely high expense (I doubt it is also just off-the-shelf components and equipment) that would limit it to only large corporations or political entities, and they'd have no good economic or political reason to do it.

So I am not saying it COULD NOT HAPPEN. However, it doesn't make any real sense that it would have at the point that these stories are set at. If the opening of the Rifts had never happened and we are in to the 2300's or so with no apocalypse putting the kaboosh on expanding colonization in space and such forth, than sure, I'd imagine there would be colonization somewhere in the outer planets, but that didn't happen.

I'll grant you that the original AtB modules were low-tech and it was plausible that anyone making it out to the gas giants and setting up a colony out there just wasn't going to happen given the circumstances, but with the introduction of the RPG that's totally changed. The original reason for the mutant animals was simply natural mutation due to increased exposure levels to radiation and other mutating agent for a relatively 1990s level of technology. The new reason has a ultra-advanced society that had home genetic engineering kits you could by over the counter and kids amused themselves making dangerous diseases until they went too far and unleashed one that introduced human DNA into normal animals. The new RPG requires reconsidering much of the modules based on this new information and setting modifications.

So when it comes to Pre-Crash technology they had access to a much higher level of technology for the exploratory craft and better means of survival and setting up a colony. Constructing some tailor-made organisms to take care of certain mechanical systems would certainly occur and it would diverge a bit after some generations but still be doable.

As far as nuclear goes, yes in the original module setting it's depicted as quite limited (in part because solar is so cheaply available) but it wouldn't be so in the revised and reimagined setting. Well other than at Outcast station but that's to be expected given how haphazardly it's built.

Chronicle wrote:Maybe i will work something out in that regard. I did like the style of a specific anime and even played out an SDC setting similar to said anime involving short distance jump gates and bounty hunters (not stating name for fear of breaking forum rules)

Great music too, can't forget the music!

Saitou Hajime wrote:

Chronicle wrote:Maybe i will work something out in that regard. I did like the style of a specific anime and even played out an SDC setting similar to said anime involving short distance jump gates and bounty hunters (not stating name for fear of breaking forum rules)

Great music too, can't forget the music!

hehehe

True, but even in the Rifts setting, or the revised AtB setting there just wouldn't be a compelling economic or political reason to have tried to setup colonies in the outer planets by the time of the crash or the time of the Rifts. In either scenario it is feasible (IE technologically possible), but the economic resources required would likely be an order of magnitude higher than setting up a colony in the inner planets or asteroid belt and the economic return would also probably be much lower (though maybe not an order of magnitude lower).

I think the only way you would have been colonies is if it was a dissident group that somehow managed to gather the rather large funding it would require for a seed colony. This means you are looking at probably a religously repressed goup, thank War World type situation (Jerry Pournelle) or Grayson's world (David Weber) where a well funded, but religously repressed group sets up shop as far from established civilization as possible.

Even a few centuries on this colony is likely to be a small, shoe string afair with little or no contact with the inner planet's colonies. No matter who well funded you'd need an entire major government or multination corporation with large fund raising (think the GE or Exxon of 100 years from now) to actually manage a large colonization effort. You'd also need a good back story. The colony probably would have been a single good sized ship with a small number of "choosen" settlers and packed to the gills with the equipment they'd need to survive and attempt to be self sustaining. Probably just the one seed ship, maybe with a couple of follow ons with more supplies, machinary and choosen settlers.

If you start with a couple of hundred colonists, even 300 years on, struggling to survive in a hostile and enclosed environment you probably aren't going to have more than a couple of thousand people with limited (compared to the inner colonies) tech and equipment. Space suits are hand-me-downs, space ships are colony owned (no private ships) and only a handful, domes/habitates are shared by large groups (think multifamily homes only), etc.

I wondered the samething myself . Are you thinking about a Rift in space ?
f
The moons of the outer planets could make a good to great colonies .

victor1966 wrote:I wondered the samething myself . Are you thinking about a Rift in space ?
f
The moons of the outer planets could make a good to great colonies .

Hmm, given there are rifts known to occasionally link Mars to the Earth or Moon and some Rift cities (like in Rifts: Japan) are pre-Rifts cities that is an interesting possibility. A pre-Rifts city or self-contained arcology (perhaps a sea base) ripped from earth and dumped onto one of the outer planets or moons and just barely managing to hang on or maybe even prospering some. Then you end up having to decide how much they've mutated or modified themselves to deal with these things and how they've changed as a society.

AtB doesn't have an option like that (so far as I know), only conventional space flight of some sort could make it work. Depending on how idealistic and motivated you consider things before the Crash while there's dismissal of the idea on the parts of some you can look at the billions we spend on space exploration and esoteric scientific projects (like the Hubble Space Telescope and Large Hadron Collider) and the existence of the Mars base there's no reason to think that at least one long term mission was sent off to the outer planets with the intentions of setting up a self-sustaining colony.

Scientific mission sure, long term colonization, at the stage that colonization was at in AtB and Rifts, unlikely. As I said it would be a lot like Jamestown only being a few years old, and then England up and decides to send a colonization expedition cross country out to California. A Lewis and Clark type expedition a few years after the founding of Jamestown maybe, further colonization that far out? Very doubtful.

The Mars colony both in Rifts and even more so in AtB is still in its infant stages. We aren't talking millions of people and dozens of cities scattered across the planet, we are talking a few thousand people. It really just makes no sense to have tried to colonize the outer planets through a gov't or major corporate effort at that point. If Mars was pretty well established with hundreds of thousands to millions of people or there was some compelling discovery in the outer planets I'd say a colony out there would have been persued, but nothing of the sort if mentioned or suggested.

As for a Rifted city, unless there is some kind of magical atmospheric bubble maintained around it, everyone would be D-E-A-D. For an underwater archology, probably the same. An underwater diving suit does not equal a space suit. Even an advanced under water suit. The life support requirements for more than a few minutes in space are radically different. First it is zero pressure, not hundreds to thousands of pounds of pressure it has to deal with, next you have to deal with temperatures of well under -400F in the shade and not all that warm in the sun. Even on one of the planets with a trace atmosphere sunlight temperatures aren't much better than -100F or so at Jupiter and beyond. An underwater colony also probably relies on aquaculture to provide food with limited or no aeroponic or hydroponics (probably importing any non-aquaculture products). So you'd have an underwater arcology appear that has no way of acquiring new air or water (can't crack the non-existant ocean water around you, nor purify it for drinking/wash water), no means of accessing the ice around them (if any, and they don't have the gear for icing mining in space) and no way to provide any food for the residents.

I know I am dream killer and mr. negative, but it takes a pretty fantastical explination for a rifted city either surface or underseas to have survived more than a few weeks for the underseas city and more than a few seconds for the surface city.

Honestly the "zone" and Mars/Asteroid belt settings are plenty rich without needing expansion outside of them. If you need to, it requires a lot of restructuring of the backstory behind the crash or the rifts, as in significantly more expansion to outer space than occured and a rapid need to do the expanding as in AtB it supposedly only occurs a few decades after "today" and in Rifts we are only talking about 90 years of rapid expansion to outer space when we don't have a single permenant foothold outside of a 3 person space station that could theoretically hold 6. If we launched 20 people per day in to outer space, they all stayed up there, and the birthrate from the get go contributed 1% population growth per year for the next 80 years there would be somewhere in the neigborhod of 1 million people in space. That is assuming no one came back and people started having kids right away. Oh and that 20 people could be launched per day starting just a couple of years from now. That is a big community compared to the 3 people up there today, its not so big in the grand scheme of things.

You probably are being a bit too focused on how 'impossible' it would be, since we're talking fantasy here and in fantasy the odds are broken all the time. We accept as a given that in both settings they'd had a half-dozen space stations in orbit AND both a Mars a Moon base with a population diversity sufficient to barely handle needed genetic diversity (so around 5000 of each species) and not that many decades from 'now'. It's not too hard a stretch to imagine that someone in some organization (probably the Scientologists) put together what was needed to establish a remote colony on the outer planets.

As far as rifted cities go, loss of atmosphere due to leaks I'll grant you would be an initial concern, other than for a rifted sealed environment like an aquatic city since a design able to handle a lot of atmospheres of pressure from the outside should be able to handle vacuum pressure from the inside. And again we suspend disbelief enough about it getting there to allow that they manage all the steps necessary to adapt to the new location. Given there are oceans speculated to exist on some of those moons beneath their frozen surfaces they could even have ended up in one of those locations and simply adapted from there. Perhaps only after their time spent surviving and expanding they finally opened a line to the surface to learn where they are or try and contact the outer universe and that mysterious signal draws in a PC group that's heavily outfitted to investigate it.

Yes you have to stretch things but you're already stretching things in a lot of areas, such as accepting the bases in the first place (which are all really good sized, especially in Rifts) there's no reason you can't logically handle stretching it one more. There could even be possible machine intelligences out there, an automated robot ship that was sent out with sufficient starting resources and manufacturing facilities to establish a suitable base. By the time the campaign has started the robots have reached the 'contact home to inform base is ready for occupation and further instructions, if no instructions in x amount of time launch refurbished factory ship to continue finding and establishing new bases while original base continues to expand'. So you have some benign berserker-like robots building bases for people who are long dead but could prove fantastically useful. Or the robots could have sent the signal before activating the next stage, using stored embryos or genetic data to begin an initial population supply while awaiting new colonists.

Chronicle wrote:With all the Hoopla going on in the local Solar system, is it possible that other colonies grew in the outer solar system (beyond the inner belt between mars and jupiter)

Locations on the various moons in Jovion and saturn orbits and such.

The only place to find out what had been already detailed for the rifts earth's solar system is in the Mutants in Orbit book.

If it is not in the MiO book, there is nothing to stop any speculation.

Chronicle wrote:With all the Hoopla going on in the local Solor system, is it possible that other colonies grew in the outer solor syste (beyond the inner belt between mars and jupiter)
.

no. that's impossible.