The Fermi Paradox - sci-fi narrative strategy game with Brian Mitsoda - now on Early Access

[Joggerino]

Interesting thoughts regarding having or lacking the resources to go spacefaring.
Regarding these choices, is it possible to win the game by being a rightwing caricature, or at least avoid choosing the insane leftard choices, or are you doomed to fail if you don't have your citizens eat bugs?

You don't really get a lot of these choices. If by being a rightwing caricature you mean might makes right, authoritarian government and unifying the planet by force then forget about it. 0% chance of success.

Is there a sensible middle-ground option where we don't throw them from buildings, but also don't treat them as special and just ignore them?

That's the middle option, where you tolerate them.

 

[lightbane]

Yeah, spacefaring is tricky: You need sufficient deposits of fuel and minerals to be able to afford the industrial economy and rockets to actually launch anything into space. Which means if intelligent life arises too early, these resources haven't formed yet and they cannot into space, so their societies will consume what little there without ever being able to into space. Then if they fall and are quickly replaced because they've now made an easy niche to fill, either by the survivors or a new species (other monkeys, crows, etc.), that new attempt will find the resources already mostly gone, so they cannot into space, etc.

That gives the impression you believe all sapient races would invariably exhaust all resources in the planet, and/or that renewable energies don't work. What if such species decided to explore the oceans and their depths instead?

If by being a rightwing caricature you mean might makes right, authoritarian government and unifying the planet by force then forget about it. 0% chance of success.

So, there are only a few ways to win then, many of which are blatant propaganda.

 

[Storyfag]

I feel like I need to remind you lot that the fuel necessary for space travel is water. Plenty of that shit around. Smelting steel is possible by using electric arcs, so coal can mostly go GTFO if we go nuclear. Resource extraction could be electrically powered too, as could transportation. Fossil fuels are *nice* but not essential.

Though admittedly, without fossil fuels, it might be impossible to set up a nuclear powered electric grid and the associated industry base in the first place.

 

[Norfleet]

Smelting steel is possible by using electric arcs, so coal can mostly go GTFO if we go nuclear. Resource extraction could be electrically powered too, as could transportation. Fossil fuels are *nice* but not essential.

Though admittedly, without fossil fuels, it might be impossible to set up a nuclear powered electric grid and the associated industry base in the first place.

That is pretty much the problem, yes. Electrically powered, you say. Electrically powered by WHAT? Where are you planning to obtain the fancy nuclear fuel from? Your electrically powered mining industry? There seems to be a distinct practicality gap where you're expected to reach "nuclear power" from a position where your only power option is "manual labor". Plus, how do you plan to feed all the manual laborers? For a hint of what this is like, try playing Factorio on a map where coal and oil are turned down to nothing. Good luck!

 

[Joggerino]

Hydro has huge electricity potential, depending on the country of course. Also people used wind power for a long while now. Maybe they would use biofuels instead of fossil fuels? People would basically use what's available and cheap and adapt to their circumstances.

 

[Norfleet]

Hydro has huge electricity potential

Hydro does not have "huge" electricity potential. While it can be used to generate electricity, even a fair deal of it, it is nowhere sufficient to power an entire industrial society: More than 80% of our energy is still supplied by fossil fuel.

Maybe they would use biofuels instead of fossil fuels?

That is simply not enough. And how would they produce it? The infrastructure we have that exists to produce biofuels at all was produced using fossil fuel.

People would basically use what's available and cheap and adapt to their circumstances.

Yes, they'd use what was available, and this would essentially limit them to pre-industrial society, if not more so, since they'd also be lacking easily accessible metals, as we've already extracted most of the easily accessible metal...and without fuel, they'd be unable to effectively smelt it at scale.

 

[Storyfag]

Hydro has huge electricity potential

Hydro does not have "huge" electricity potential. While it can be used to generate electricity, even a fair deal of it, it is nowhere sufficient to power an entire industrial society: More than 80% of our energy is still supplied by fossil fuel.

You start with hydro, then you go nuclear.

 

[vortex]

The question is will the game answer this most important question. If there're so many aliens in space how come we don't see them?

 

[Storyfag]

The question is will the game answer this most important question. If there're so many aliens in space how come we don't see them?

They're gone because they didn't want to eat bugs and soy, own nothing and be happy.

 

[Norfleet]

Okay, so I actually played this, and no, you defiinitely do not have to create the "pozzed" future. I was entirely able to beat the game creating a future of brutal oppression where trannies are thrown from buildings (because selecting bad options gives you the currency you need to actually decide things), and people constantly die in horrible ways. If anything, this is probably the better way to play, because picking the "good" options results in population explosion and resource scarcity, while doing it my way resulted in "Resource scarcity in 22 trillion years", probably because people were constantly climbing to a population of a few million people before murdering each other down to a few thousand.

You do, however, want to keep them from going totally extinct, and so you PROBABLY want to reduce the destructiveness of their warring down to the point where they don't actually wipe themselves out doing it, but it's totally acceptable and even preferrable to have 99% of them die. You don't have to, in any way, give them a Utopian society. They can all live in hellish dystopias in a cruel universe where God tortures them forever. Especially since the win condition apparently involves everyone being assimilated by the Borg.

Conclusion: It's not quite as comically grimdark as 40K, but it sure as hell is bleak.

You start with hydro, then you go nuclear.

In order to build a hydroelectric dam, you need to move vast tons of concrete and steel. How do you plan to move and smelt all this? Manual labor and wood?

 

[Nutria]

I was entirely able to beat the game creating a future of brutal oppression where trannies are thrown from buildings (because selecting bad options gives you the currency you need to actually decide things)

All I want is a game where you throw trannies off buildings at exactly the same rate as everyone else, but apparently that's a luxury these days.

 

[Norfleet]

All I want is a game where you throw trannies off buildings at exactly the same rate as everyone else, but apparently that's a luxury these days.

That option exists, as it turns out, but it wasn't worth ANY points, whereas I got +20 points toss them off buildings. So, you know, CHOICES! I also got to EAT MEAT, NOT SOY, and other things. Also, I taught people to be xenophobic, it's really in this year. If this is supposed to be a pozzed game, it sure doesn't feel like it to me, every time I do the "bad" thing, I get paid for it!

 

[Storyfag]

In order to build a hydroelectric dam, you need to move vast tons of concrete and steel. How do you plan to move and smelt all this? Manual labor and wood?

Incremental steps. Start with exploiting natural waterfalls.

 

[Norfleet]

This is what people did to power things like mills. That leaves this very large gap to clear to get a hydroelectric dam. Consider: In the real world, there's a gap of about 100 years of industrialization before the first hydroelectric dam that was produced around the 1880s. That's a 100 year phase of coal-powered industrial infrastructure that must be entirely substituted using manual labor instead.

 

[jackofshadows]

Okay, so I actually played this, and no, you defiinitely do not have to create the "pozzed" future. I was entirely able to beat the game creating a future of brutal oppression where trannies are thrown from buildings (because selecting bad options gives you the currency you need to actually decide things), and people constantly die in horrible ways. If anything, this is probably the better way to play, because picking the "good" options results in population explosion and resource scarcity, while doing it my way resulted in "Resource scarcity in 22 trillion years", probably because people were constantly climbing to a population of a few million people before murdering each other down to a few thousand.

You do, however, want to keep them from going totally extinct, and so you PROBABLY want to reduce the destructiveness of their warring down to the point where they don't actually wipe themselves out doing it, but it's totally acceptable and even preferrable to have 99% of them die. You don't have to, in any way, give them a Utopian society. They can all live in hellish dystopias in a cruel universe where God tortures them forever. Especially since the win condition apparently involves everyone being assimilated by the Borg.

Conclusion: It's not quite as comically grimdark as 40K, but it sure as hell is bleak.

They didn't even properly tested this path, did they? But even if this is an actual feature, their "good" options were too repulsive for me to play further. So,

 

[Norfleet]

I did not encounter any particularly specific bugs on this path, so I guess it was as tested as any other path.

 

[Joggerino]

I did not encounter any particularly specific bugs on this path, so I guess it was as tested as any other path.

I'm amazed you reached the singularity tech level like this. My dystopian societies were completely unable to progress.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm amazed you reached the singularity tech level like this. My dystopian societies were completely unable to progress.

I've had no difficulty whatsoever progressing one-shot to Singularity even on 100% Dystopian. The only important thing is not letting them all go extinct, and preferrably avoid technological regression. Aside from that, they can murder each other as much as they want. As long as you keep their Harm potential down to below 90%, they'll be mostly fine. Don't be shy about letting most of them die, it'll be fine as long as some of them live. And EAT MEAT, not soy!

The most important thing is just to make sure you don't let them actually go extinct. Spend points only to prevent extinction, for everything else, just let it happen and get paid for it if the "good" outcome is costly, or just personally distasteful. Or for the lulz. If I'm gonna get paid $20 for letting 90% of them die, sure, why not?

 

[Joggerino]

I'm amazed you reached the singularity tech level like this. My dystopian societies were completely unable to progress.

I've had no difficulty whatsoever progressing one-shot to Singularity even on 100% Dystopian. The only important thing is not letting them all go extinct, and preferrably avoid technological regression. Aside from that, they can murder each other as much as they want. As long as you keep their Harm potential down to below 90%, they'll be mostly fine. Don't be shy about letting most of them die, it'll be fine as long as some of them live. And EAT MEAT, not soy!

The most important thing is just to make sure you don't let them actually go extinct. Spend points only to prevent extinction, for everything else, just let it happen and get paid for it if the "good" outcome is costly, or just personally distasteful. Or for the lulz. If I'm gonna get paid $20 for letting 90% of them die, sure, why not?

I did just that, and i had a completely different experience. In the end my 3 mildly utopian societies achieved singularity and ended the game while the distopian one was stuck in the navigation age or whatever it's called.

 

[Norfleet]

I think you are doing it wrong, then, or just unlucky. Or somehow managed to be bad at this game, despite it being a really trivial game.

Note that the civilizations you actually LOOK at are the ones which tend to advance, because you are clicking the butans there.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Hydro does not have "huge" electricity potential. While it can be used to generate electricity, even a fair deal of it, it is nowhere sufficient to power an entire industrial society: More than 80% of our energy is still supplied by fossil fuel.

There are nations whose primary source of power is hydro, it entirely depends on the geography of the country.

 

[Norfleet]

There are nations whose primary source of power is hydro, it entirely depends on the geography of the country.

Hydro accounts for less than 7% of the world's energy supply. And all of that was built using oil and coal-powered construction equipment using concrete and steel moved and smelted with said oil and coal. This is not going to form an acceptable substitute for powering Civilization 2.0.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

There are nations whose primary source of power is hydro, it entirely depends on the geography of the country.

Hydro accounts for less than 7% of the world's energy supply. And all of that was built using oil and coal-powered construction equipment using concrete and steel moved and smelted with said oil and coal. This is not going to form an acceptable substitute for powering Civilization 2.0.

which nation is "the world"?

 

[Norfleet]

which nation is "the world"?

I'm not sure where you're going with this. One tiny nation does not constitute world civilization.

 

[Joggerino]

I think you are doing it wrong, then, or just unlucky. Or somehow managed to be bad at this game, despite it being a really trivial game.

Note that the civilizations you actually LOOK at are the ones which tend to advance, because you are clicking the butans there.

That's pretty rude, how can you imply me being bad at this dogshit mobile game? I certainly won't babysit these losers stuck in the stone age when i have to deal with resource scarcity in my advanced civilizations. (who are rapidly advancing on their own without babysitting)