This is a universe with faster than light travel and near infinite resources. There’s a homeless shelter in one of the major cities. I helped them out. Why the fuck is there a homeless shelter in a universe with FTL and near infinite resources?

I’m starting to think Fallout under Bethesda isn’t a satire and their writers are just incapable of imagining anything beyond capitalism.

  • SunriseParabellum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    FTL == post-scarcity and/or full automation

    I haven’t played the game but it looks like humans still doing mining, and the tech outside out the FTL isn’t that advanced. So I guess humans still have to perform labor to extract resources and transform them into goods, meaning you can still have a profit motive for housing construction and allocation.

    A lot of the bigger Space Opera settings are predicated on the idea of a future with good space travel but all other tech being either at modern levels or maybe even a little behind it, Star Wars, The Expanse. If every SciFi world with FTL had to be the Federation things would be boring cuz why would there be any conflict.

      • SunriseParabellum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Mostly from the Federation interacting with other civilizations that are less developed than them or have problems due to cultural or religious customs, or yah know weird science stuff. The Federation being in a galaxy of other Federation would be pretty boring, outside of the occasional space anomaly it’s mostly just be delivery shit to smaller colonies and like, I guess boring science about gamma rays or whatever.

        • iridaniotter [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          Ah yeah you’re right! You can totally make exploration dangerous and exciting though. But it would change the feel a bit for sure. If you wanna blast people with laserguns then you’re out of luck.

          • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            A lot of the things that are fun to do in Starfield wouldn’t be as fun in a star Trek game: piracy, taking down the main faction, stuff like that. I would have loved a star Trek game too but it would be a completely different vibe.

        • fox [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 year ago

          There’s plenty of interesting stories to tell without invoking aliens. The Measure Of A Man, for instance, where Data’s personhood is debated

          • SunriseParabellum [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            True, but a show of nothing but stories like that would be a bit limiting. Stories like that work as good SciFi narratives, which Trek was great at. But also, for longer running stories and overarching Space Opera plot-lines they needed to have some galactic conflict.

          • barrbaric [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Okay it’s been a while since I watched it but I recall being thoroughly disappointed with that episode. Like this is a sci-fi setting with all manner of strange alien life that has been determined to have legal rights (hence the prime directive etc), but there’s no legal definition of what does or does not constitute a legal person? Then Picard ends up “winning” the argument with what was IIRC mostly empty rhetoric.

            To be clear I don’t disagree with you, I quite liked most of Asimov’s I, Robot anthology which is mostly about interesting logic puzzles and the difficulty of creating inviolable rules.

      • marx_mentat [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        Yes but not the kind of conflict that would make a good “pew pew I’m a ship captain bopping around systems and maybe being a pirate too” game.

        Blowing up the federation in a star Trek game would not be as fun as blowing up the UC in Starfield is.

        I would also love exploring and navigating through conflicts in a star Trek game though.