Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

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SMJB
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Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

Post by SMJB »

Now, I only know what I read on Atomic Rockets, but it said:
Another FTL system that was carefully crafted in order to force a specific situation was the one created by Redmond Simonsen for the wargame StarForce: Alpha Centauri (keep in mind this is a paper-and cardboard tabletop game, not a computer game). In the game, starships or "TeleShips" are jumped or "shifted" instantaneously from one location to another several light-years away by teams of women with psionic powers. Shifting cannot be done by a machine, it has to be done by a person. The supply of psionic or "telesthetic" women is limited. There is no way to genetically engineer them, they naturally occur at the rate of one First Order Telesthetic per million females. Energy is cheap, any ore or element can be synthesized, any material good can be manufactured. So the only valuable interstellar commodity are telesthetic women.
Now, am I the only one who sees a really obvious way to double the rate of First Order Telesthetics per given population size, or is this universe supposed to be a lesbian separatist fantasy? (Not that I have a problem with that, mind. :P )
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Jub
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Re: Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

Post by Jub »

Yeah, this universe seems to be begging for children made with the DNA of two women.

Of course, the real thing is figuring out why these women have such a gift and finding out how to make it. If it exists science can dig away and find out what makes it work.
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Vehrec
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Re: Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

Post by Vehrec »

Look, you can't just genetically engineer this talent into people, and test-tube babies made from two women are too expensive and GENETICALLY ENGINEERED. :D But this wouldn't be the first time an obvious all-woman state could have existed in a fiction without the authors noticing.
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Jub
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Re: Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

Post by Jub »

Vehrec wrote:Look, you can't just genetically engineer this talent into people, and test-tube babies made from two women are too expensive and GENETICALLY ENGINEERED. :D But this wouldn't be the first time an obvious all-woman state could have existed in a fiction without the authors noticing.
Once you get test tube babies and fertility drugs to an industrial scale prices will drop, and demand for girls with this gift won't go down. So you could end up with woman hoping to have as many girls as possible because the payout for having one with this talent will be huge. This gets even crazier in third world countries where selling a gifted girl to the right family can get you set for life.

This has the effect of putting underdeveloped nations with rapidly growing populations on par with industrial powers just because each side is limited by these women. It also means that most states won't want to give these women a say in going into space or not. This creates a further incentive for the industrial states to find a way to produce these women on demand and with enough science funding they will, eventually, figure things out.
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Re: Question about StarForce: Alpha Centauri

Post by SMJB »

Vehrec wrote:Look, you can't just genetically engineer this talent into people, and test-tube babies made from two women are too expensive and GENETICALLY ENGINEERED. :D
If you can't genetically engineer it into people, that implies that either the ability is not genetic or we have no idea what the genes for it are. Given that these people would naturally have put every available resource into this, I think we can assume the former, but in either case being genetically engineered isn't going to make you less likely to be a telesthetic, assuming any sort of logic applies. Not that ova fusion counts as genetic engineering. As to expense, given the tech base of the civilization in question, that's just right out as an objection.
But this wouldn't be the first time an obvious all-woman state could have existed in a fiction without the authors noticing.
Oh? Now I'm curious.
Simon_Jester wrote:"WHERE IS YOUR MISSILEGOD NOW!?"
Starglider wrote:* Simon stared coldly across the table at the student, who had just finnished explaining the link between the certainty of young earth creation and the divinely ordained supremacy of the white race. "I am updating my P values", Simon said through thinned lips, "to a direction and degree you will find... most unfavourable."
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