Erik Tiber

I often get nauseous if I don't eat enough.

You have a plus from me. EDIT: Based on their character's background and personality, they seem like they would make an interesting addition to the station. They seem to have a solid grasp of roleplay (especially given their past performance as a reporter) and their idea of a head's responsibilities means that they would probably do very well in the position, both ICly and OOCly. They seem like they would be receptive to criticism if they were to do something wrong.

Lockie Green has over a terrabye of pirated books, movies, and songs on her computer.

Oh, that's good to hear. What about the heart and eyes? I'd imagine that heart and eye removal surgery would be somewhat difficult.

On a related note, if someone with mechanical prosthetics were to be cloned, should the relevant limbs be removed and replaced with prosthetics, to prevent them from realizing they were a clone? Which is more unethical: a few robotic limbs or the trauma of learning they're a clone? EDIT: Now that I think of it, this is a somewhat silly question.

Is it possible to surgically remove someone's limbs, regardless of whether or not they are damaged? Also, as a side note, do you have to place someone on a table to operate on them? I'm wondering, in case I ever decide to be a traitor and want to engage in gross medical malpractice.

Oh, that's great to hear. I'm glad to see that people are aware of these issues. I'm still new here, so I didn't know if these had been brought up before, or anything like that. Extremely late edit: This is entirely what I was intending.

I'll sure be blue without you here.

I know that feel. I am aware of this. That's the exact reason why I wanted to suggest changes to this part of the lore, because it could be changed without needing to change half a dozen other pages. I personally have found that putting in certain limits can make you be more creative, if done correctly. On the other hand, placing far too many limits upon your creativity results in "No FTL, no space colonies, no space empires, not much war". Obviously that would suit nobody. However, and this is likely personal preference, I appreciate the challenge that these constraints can present. They can also give me a skeleton for my story, and give me some direction. I would say that it would largely satisfy my desire for correctness, as I've gotten better about suspending my disbelief. It rarely affects anything, like you said. However, I completely understand that the lore team is busy and this would be extremely low on their priority list, if it were even on there at all given the... considerable number of points. It would be unreasonable of me to expect otherwise. I can certainly imagine how very useful this organized wiki will be, given the trouble I had finding all the bits of lore. No thank you, I'm fine. I hope this post doesn't count as talking about it, in that sense. I don't want to come off as dismissive, I appreciate you giving me your own perspective, and informing me of the problems with implementing these. I will drop the subject, if you would like.

So why not make it a rule, if we're going to PM people about it anyway? The "no pop culture/reference" names falls under poor roleplay too, but has its own rule, since it's such a frequent occurence. I think bad AI/Borg names should get the same treatment. Also, players disregarding the name doesn't mean you don't see it every time the AI speaks. I gotta second this, if the mods expect people to not go with cliche'd names, then it is helpful if they clearly state their expectations.

Personally, I thought that all the devastation might be in place so that you could fit in the high human growth rate. The population gets killed off semi-regularly, and this, combined with the (relatively) high populations of the main Solar Union worlds, lead me to believe that this was the case. I've done similar things before when I was working for one world-building project where I somehow had to work out how the world would be destroyed. Oh this is nice to hear, certainly. Sending people into space is highly expensive, of course. I'd expect there to be huge orbital infrastructure and a bunch of space elevators in place to facilitate this emigration from Earth. Population growth can be somewhat arbitrarily set. What with population growth basically turning linear in the highest UN estimates, you could really have almost any population you want, as long as you avoid huge mega-casualties. This should also make it seem much more plausible and down-to-earth. Having more diverse influences within the Union of Sol forces should also make the setting more memorable. One of my favorite little details is how Sol Common is a mixture of informal English with elements of Mandarin. That's what actually got me interested in the lore in the first place. These ideas aren't completely original. Many of them are based on a story I read. I wanted to be somewhat cautious because this lore reminds me a lot of another story, which is actually one of my favorite sci-fi settings. In the background, there is a sort of cold war between the the Coalition (the west) and he Alliance for Equitable Global Resource Distribution (the developing world), simply known as The Eastern Alliance. The Western population loses support for the cold war, and when things reach a flash-point and the Alliance launches their ICBM's, the leaders of the Coalition attempt to surrender. Top military commanders then attempt a military coup in order to follow through with a nuclear counter strike, but they fail. Half the coalition space-force sides with the civilian government and fights the coup forces alongside alliance vessels, and the coup forces scatter, eventually leaving behind some holdouts along the frontier. Surprisingly, the Eastern Alliance isn't totalitarian, and the Western countries retain their independence, though with (temporary) arms controls and mild limits to their imports. Here's a link to one of the most relevant and definitive posts. http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/tales-of-the-war-against-the-soulless.260482/#post-10924497 I'm mainly telling you about it so that I don't take credit for their ideas or cause any misconceptions here. I also want people to know if I'm going too far and just trying to make this a copy of the "War Against the Soulless" setting. I have heard that I have a tendency to be thorough with this sort of thing, so thanks for the compliments.

So not very often then? Or atleast they never do it when I am on, which is sods law really because ERT is all I normally wanna play. >.< Well, the times that I've seen them have been very memorable. Them, and these Solar Union troopers from this one RP Revolution round. They've generally seemed sensible, no-nonsense, and well disciplined in-game. Then again, I've only been here a few weeks. How do these ERT's normally work, in terms of how they operate? I've always wondered about that, I've only ever seen them from the sidelines in-game.

These must be very useful for the lore regarding the various military forces and the chain of command, especially given how often people call ERT's. Having people in paramilitary organisations must be even better, given how NT's military forces are technically paramilitary (if I remember correctly). Hello! It's nice to finally be here.

Hello, I've read through the History of Man page and I had a few questions and suggestions. Most have to do with the lore with regards to non-western countries, the populations and casualties, etc. They're mostly nitpicks. According to projections from both the UN and the US Census Bureau, the population of the Earth will likely plateau about 10 billion in the year 2100. (Obviously stagnant population won't do for your purposes, but please bear with me here) It has been demonstrated that as a nation develops, its fertility rate falls. This results in aging and shrinking western populations. Economically, the EU is on a downward trend in terms of its share of world GDP, while the US is apparently stable for now. We've just discussed the Malthusian trap in my American Economic History class. Although Malthus' theories held true for 99% of human history, recently, the fertility rate has started to decline as the standard of living has increased, resulting in the aging and shrinking populations of the EU and Japan. The US is aging and its population growth would be negative were it not for immigration. UN and US Census Bureau estimates show that the world population will likely reach 10 billion somewhere between 2080-2100, and that at its fastest, it would probably just increase linearly. The population of the first world is currently 1.5 billion, give or take (although you may be using a different measurement). In order for them to be outnumbered by a factor of ten, there would need to be 16 billion people on Earth. Assuming you count the developed world as having 1 billion, then we would need a world population of 11 billion, almost half a century ahead of almost all predictions out there. More and more countries in Africa are stabilizing. Many nations in Asia are reaching middle-income status. However, I am very interested in the premise of a cold war between the Developed World and the Developing World. However, given that Africa, the Middle East, and much of Asia became enough of a wasteland that new states did not form for the better part of a century, I think the devastation may be overplayed. IIRC, A nuclear war between the US and USSR, involving the nuking of Europe, East Asia, and North America was predicted to kill about a third to a half of the world's population, when you factor in all the famine, chaos, and unrest caused by the war. Following the collapse of Somalia, it was only several years before a stable government formed in Somaliland, and since then regional governments have formed in Puntland and other places. Since lore writers include military personnel, you guys certainly know Afghanistan's situation better than me, and whether it is an appropriate analogue to post-nuclear Africa and Eurasia within the lore. I'd like to mention that, in general, conventional warfare rarely leads to mass depopulation in the modern age, and the casualties of terrorism campaigns are statistically insignificant when we're talking about global populations. A conflict as intense as the second world war killed "only" ~5% of the world population, which while horrific, is not enough to kill billions. The details of these limited nuclear exchanges would affect their impact. Who are the participants here? If there are two main power blocs (Presumably the Americas, Europe, Oceania, Japan, and South Korea vs the rest of Eurasia and Africa, please clarify this if possible), then why wouldn't a limited nuclear exchange escalate into a full-scale strategic exchange between the two sides? Also, the fact that these wastelands cover all of Africa implies the nuclear weapons were deployed throughout the African continent. I find this strange, because the primary combatants would likely be in Eurasia and the Americas, not Africa. The largest non-western economies would be in Asia, making them the much larger target. This implies that there has been little governance over the entire continent for quite some time. This somewhat strains my suspension of disbelief, given how such power vacuums have ended up in the past. It is somewhat doubtful that you'd see civilization collapse so thoroughly that not a single government survive, especially seeing as the vast majority of this Anti-Western coalition's production and nuclear weapons would almost certainly be in Asia, if China and India were part of this coalition. This is somewhat unfortunate given the fact that the Africans and Middle Easterners only ever form a new government when the Europeans go and establish it for them. This implies that humanity was able to grow from two billion to the tens of billions. However, given this is the future, and there would presumably be a higher standard of living, this does not seem to make quite as much sense. Agricultural output has advanced exponentially, and in the future, with genetically engineered plants and the possibility of massive arcologies, it is likely that humanity's capacity for food production would increase. The death of the vast majority of the Earth's population due to disease and starvation in a world which is more technologically advanced seems somewhat off to me. This, combined with the (relatively) extremely high population growth rates, seemed to contradict with the idea that this was a futuristic world. Obviously this is not in-my-face info that bugs me regularly during role-play, you guys are the designated lore-writers, and there are likely other users who disagree with me. I just wanted to bring up some potential issues, for you to consider (or not) at your leisure. The reason they bugged me is I really like the premise of the setting as well as many of the primary aspects, it is simply many of the details which have bothered me. The only primary aspect that bothered me was the marginalization of all the non-American, non-European countries, what with the EU pulling an economic 180, the East Asians pulling an economic 180 in the opposite direction, and the annihilation of most non-western civilization. Having raised these issues, the only suggestions I feel comfortable making are possibly using more reasonable population growth, less population fluctuation, and less annihilation of Africa and Asia. I don't feel comfortable making any suggestions regarding later lore, as that isn't what was bothering me. I don't mean any disrespect by any of this, though I may have been a bit brusque at times. I have only the utmost respect for the lore team and don't want to be bossy or anything. I'd like to know what other people think about these aspects of the back story.

That is wonderful to hear. I've never talked to a banker before. This sure is interesting.

I'm fucking dead. God damn it. It's just a flesh wound!

*raises hand* The current setting is on the wiki, here. http://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=History_of_Man Currently undergoing minor reviews, as well as getting a full timeline. How open are you to suggestions regarding the timeline? Not to be presumptive or anything, I'd just like to make a few suggestions, mainly to do with the numbers and specifics of the early timeline. However, I don't know whether making lore suggestions is socially acceptable, whether it is my place to make such suggestions, etc. I'm new to the community so I don't know about the social norms here. World-building is something of a hobby for me, so that's why I'm interested. You're the professional writer here, though. EDIT: Since I'm am member of the Sufficient Velocity forum, I have access to a bunch of experts on a variety of topics and from a variety of countries, due to the sheer size of the userbase there. I can forward questions to them if you want. For example, there's a professional stock broker, another econ student, a professional engineer (who has spent time developing a setting of his own), several lawyers and law students, a paramedic, and probably several others in the community (it's very large, several hundred active members) I don't know if you guys already have somewhere to seek advice, and I would completely understand if you don't see this as necessary. I'm just sorta eager to help.

Oh, good. I'm glad to see that you guys have managed to have a good sense of scale, something which is all too easy to lose when dealing with science fiction. I'm not a writer or anything of course (I heard that someone on the server was an author, though I forget who). It's just that a poor sense of scale is one of my own personal bugbears. I have an awful lot of those. Nice to hear. Out of curiosity, are other things in the background being overhauled? If so, what? I'm very curious about the setting, and I'm glad to hear that you guys are improving it.

Oh, thank you. Well, I didn't know that they were quite so small. I'll change my records to reflect that. They should be perfectly able to support some medical schools, what with their 155 million people, right?

Two detectives would end up stepping on each other's toes more often than not, I feel. A detective and forensics tech gives enough opportunity for teamwork and proper division of cases (when cases do happen), having three investigative characters is just overkill. I can already see the Detective and Forensics Tech stepping on each other's toes already, to be honest. Most players wouldn't know the difference at the start of all this...whenever all this starts. Do medical doctors often do autopsies? I only remember a single autopsy being done in my entire time here (though this is just a few weeks), even though I've exclusively played Medbay.

Sure thing! I'm only taking 12 credit hours anyway.

I'd like to know if there are already any canonically established worlds, which are officially part of the United Colonies of America, as well as how large the Empire is, and any other canon relating to its recent history. My character Lockie Green is originally from there, and I want to make sure that I'm abiding by the existing lore.

Oh, thanks for clearing that up. Well, it certainly can seem intuitive that these currencies would be more stable, and the mistake is pretty common. I'm not an expert myself, just a Freshman economics major, so I'm just a novice myself. In this case, the Union of Sol is a stable, long-lasting power, so the Sol Credit could be common for the exact same reason that the USD is. It may even be a type of interstellar reserve currency. In that case, if a given government is unstable and people don't feel comfortable using the local currency, the locals may just adopt the Union of Sol credit, (has happened in Somalia to a degree) or the local government might just peg their currency to the Union of Sol Credit (this is what Zimbabwe did, IIRC).

I would support something like this. I think this change could improve the role play.

Hi, this is my first post on the forum. So I was looking through the wiki looking up lore when I came across the page on the economics page. http://aurorastation.org/wiki/index.php?title=Economy I'm currently taking classes in this, so I thought I could offer some useful input. Note that I've only taken one year of classes so far, so I'm still a layman. However, we did learn basic macroeconomics and microeconomics, so I do have a good grasp of the basics. The bolded sections interested me. Historically, nations switched from gold-standard currencies to fiat currencies because gold-backed currencies frequently suffered from deflation. This is far worse than deflation, as it can seriously hurt demand and long-term growth in an economy by making debt more expensive, discouraging people from borrowing money from banks, and discouraging consumption. If loans are more expensive, then there will be less investment spending, thus less economic growth. Same with demand. If consumers expect prices to fall, they will hold off on buying goods, which will lead to more deflation in a vicious cycle. If you want to see the effects of deflation in modern times, look at Japan. Fiat currencies can work in a variety of situations, and even the Somali Shilling functioned as a fiat currency without a government for several years. Fiat currencies also make it far easier for countries to engage in monetary policy. Thus, since civilization has already recovered, I see no reason why the various governments would not return to the far superior system of fiat currencies. Also, due to the amount of energy being produced being stable, this makes the Union of Sol credit even more deflationary. The amount of energy being produced being relatively constant also implies a lack of economic growth, which conflicts with the idea that humanity is expanding. There was also some parts I found sorta questionable regarding the Earth's population explosion early in the timeline, but I have no idea how open you guys are to suggestions regarding the lore, so I don't want to step on any more toes.