The case against Earth

[Marcel]

"Welcome to Earth, home of the hamburger!" *Will Smith kicks the alien in the head* Actually, there's something else about our homeworld that we take for granted. Think about how rare it must be for a habitable planet to have a moon with the exact apparent size as its star. I think that people will come from parsecs away to see a total solar eclipse with their naked eyes!

[TonySpike]

diederick76 wrote:
Destroying the Earth by something easy like they did in FFE is going to look cheap, which imo is worse than a low-res Earth, which people will appreciate for the effort, I think. I know I will.If you're going to turn Earth into Trantor the marketplace and amount of traffic should reflect that, since otherwise it wouldn't be realistic. In the stories, Trantor had ~40 billion inhabitants. I think that is an extremely low figure for a global city, considering the 6 billion the real Earth has. Also most will be very poor. But even then, the amount of traffic and goods to be traded in Sol would be so staggeringly high, that trading there will be by far the easiest way of getting rich, which I think would negatively affect gameplay.Please don't flood the place. Earth is considerably more intersting with Amsterdam than without. Believe me.
yeah i agree ..that was a shitty move by braben to destroy the greatest planet in the galaxy ,.......everywhere needs an amsterdam lol

[Przemyslav]

Hm, if there are so many opinions what should be done to Earth, why not put some kind of 'Starting Menu' where player could choose various options about his starting place, Solar System's past (so he can actually choose what history fit's him best - pwnage of Earth or the way it is now, maybe even another options like Mars terraformed or not, colonization of Saturn's or Jupiter's moons etc...) etc.I think it shouldn't be that hard to implement, right? And everybody would be happy. And yes, for those random-liking purists - there would be an option to set all the things randomly and start playing without choosing anything.What do you think about that?

[trumpet]

Cavefish wrote:
Frontier solved this problem by making Earth an unrecognizable mudball while the terraformed Mars was the new place to be. I think we should do something similar. I say we blow it up.
that's not true! Ole Fronts did a pretty nifty job... I remember the first time I pulled out of 'abe link' and gazed down upon a blob of green that kind of looked like Australia and low and behold... there was Sydney... which I was living in!!!it blew my mind...I vote keep Earth and keep it well.

[ElectricSkies]

For maximum flavor/dev work ratio I would vote for the "Earth is a reconstructed historical landmark/tourist location" explanation—with no extra work it explains everything about the Earth just the way it is—the lack of human habitation, the terrain not being quite accurate sometimes. I'm sure that with some more work a more interesting scenario can be created.
Przemyslav wrote:
Hm, if there are so many opinions what should be done to Earth, why not put some kind of 'Starting Menu' where player could choose various options about his starting place, Solar System's past (so he can actually choose what history fit's him best - pwnage of Earth or the way it is now, maybe even another options like Mars terraformed or not, colonization of Saturn's or Jupiter's moons etc...) etc.I think it shouldn't be that hard to implement, right? And everybody would be happy. And yes, for those random-liking purists - there would be an option to set all the things randomly and start playing without choosing anything.
Er, the more options there are, the more content devs have to implement (and test!), and a shrinking fraction of players who will see each option. It really is "that hard." Plus, a coherent, compelling game universe comes from a solidly established backstory, not a series of options for a backstory. And if we wanted to cater to people who wanted random starts, then we would give them actual random starts by starting them at a random station in the galaxy.

[s2odan]

We could certainly change Earth a little, but Like ElectricSkies mentioned, we won't ever have a user option that lets you choose its settings, not when anyone can open a text file and change Earth's basic conditions ;)Im thinking perhaps: 1. Flood.2. Ice-Age.3. Climate change has turned it into a Desert4. Tropical paradise (what we have now)Either of those 4 are very simple to do. We could even add craters and say there was a war or something, or meteor impact...

[Przemyslav]

Yeah, you are probably right about the additional content to implement and I must admit that maybe I was thinking too much, ElectricSkies.
ElectricSkies wrote:
And if we wanted to cater to people who wanted random starts, then we would give them actual random starts by starting them at a random station in the galaxy.
This option should be there already in my opinion for anyone interested :)But like s2odan wrote, those 4 options for Earth should be fair enough and not too much dev/test-intensive
s2odan wrote:
We could certainly change Earth a little, but Like ElectricSkies mentioned, we won't ever have a user option that lets you choose its settings, not when anyone can open a text file and change Earth's basic conditions
Yep, anyone can who has even basic knowledge about changing this kind of stuff and not everyone has such a knowledge. There are surely people who can't change this thing themselves, so it would be very appreciated to have those 4 options you wrote considered when Pioneer reached next milestone (beta maybe?)

[s2odan]

Quote:
those 4 options for Earth should be fair enough and not too much dev/test-intensive
Oh no what I meant was we would pick one option and just go with it... As Electric skies mentioned, it may seem trivial but adding an extra option that can change Earth requires quite a bit of code and would not produce any real meaningful results over a simple config edit made by the User. And at the moment that time can be better spent in other areas.
Quote:
There are surely people who can't change this thing themselves, so it would be very appreciated to have those 4 options you wrote considered when Pioneer reached next milestone (beta maybe?)
By that time everything would have been properly documented, so even those that struggle would be able to find the information in the 'manual' or wiki or whatever.

[Przemyslav]

Oh, I see now what you meant.Yes, that seems good. You convinced me

[ollobrain]

im sure that someone will be working away on earth over time.

[Geraldine]

s2odan wrote:
what was the name of the High tech world set up by Hari Seldon on the edge of the galaxy?
Sorry, a bit late with the answer here s2odan. Only just re-read this whole thread, the planet was Terminus and was the home of the First Foundation.