Xaiver Trasen is Problematic - Timelines are Broken

[PTiberiusM]

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Timeline

"2346: NanoTrasen is officially founded by Xavier Trasen, who is at the time 47 years old."

And then a few lines later:

"2443: Xavier Trasen dies at the age of 97, and his daughter Miranda Trasen takes over as the new CEO of NanoTrasen at 30 years of age."

So, the issue is that it is 97 years between the founding of NT and Xavier's death. Which would make him 144 years old at the time of his death... and Miranda conceived when he was 114! Future medicine aside, this probably needs to be re-worked. Maybe have Miranda be an heir to an heir between Xavier and her? Jeff Trasen? Billy? I don't care, but it seems more likely to make Miranda his granddaughter.

And while this is the issue I want to highlight the most, overall the timelines have some major problems when compared with the other pages:

1. "2346: ... It has a net worth rivalling that of Einstein Engines, the original 'mega-corporation', as it has developed advanced medical technology."
   1. NT starts off as a fantastically wealthy firm by creating incredible medical technology. It rivals the only major interstellar manufacturer through medical tech. Zeng-Hu? More like Zeng-Who. Zeng got a 314 year head start on NT, and NT launches into besting them AND rivaling the most powerful company around at the time?
   2. Maybe this can be re-worked into a believable ascent for Zeng-Hu into the "Medical Technology Leader" most people consider them as? Hard to believe people would think that if they have spent all of NT's existence playing second-fiddle.
2. "2425: NanoTrasen wins a contract with the Sol Alliance to construct the first "Bluespace Gates", which quickly replace Warp Gates and allow travel between entire star systems in a matter of minutes or hours... NanoTrasen becomes the leader in both medical research, and a titan of energy."
   1. Seems like Zeng, even with all that cooperation, still not the leader in medical tech.
   2. Canonwise, per the Starmap, there are only 4 pairs of Bluespace gates in existence. The wording here implies they are all over the Orion Spur.
   3. The statement on how this adjusts the speed is... quite odd. There isn't a clearly defined speed for warp, bluespace drives, and bluespace gates. But the in-game minutes between Odin and Aurora of the various shuttles seems to imply that the bluespace gates are hundreds of times faster than the bluespace drives.
      1. If Odin and Aurora were as far apart as Sol and Pluto, that is 4-6 light hours. The arrivals shuttle takes 60 seconds to get to the Aurora. That puts the drives of the shuttle at 240-340 times lightspeed.
      2. The scale on the Starmap suggests that Sol and Konyang are 17 lightyears apart. I'll save you all the math, but that means the arrivals shuttle could make that distance in 17-26 days.
      3. The longest distance that has a marked Bluespace Gate pair is Tau Ceti to Perispolis at 32 lightyears. To have that covered in "hours", let's assume 2 hours to be literally plural, means that the Bluespace Gates would have to be 140,160 times the speed of light, or between 390 and 584 times faster than the arrivals shuttle. And we know that is the short end of the stick because it also says it could be covered in "minutes" as well.
   4. The absolutely insane speed capable of the Bluespace Gates seems to line up, lore wise, with only having a few pairs of them around the galaxy. I mean, it makes sense that these massive gates are turbo-hella fast compared to a shuttle drives. People would cryo if they were on a bluespace drive ship on short little hops, use the gates to cover the big distances.
3. "2147: Biesel is discovered in Tau Ceti by Sol Alliance probes... With the trip expected to take months with current warp travel technology, it is considered a one-way trip for the colonists."
   1. But wait a second, warp drives are capable of covering the gap from Sol to Tau Ceti in "months". If we assumed it took 11 months (the max number of months before you would call it a year, 335 days to keep the math simple, this would also show the absolute slowest warp can go) that would place warp drives at 9.8 times the speed of light. If you assume 60 days (two months, the minimum number of months to be plural, the fastest warp could go) would be 54.8 times the speed of light.
   2. Was the discovery of Bluespace such that you would now have basic shuttles moving people 4 times faster than a colonial warp drive, and even that gets blown away by Bluespace gates that only charge you 20 credits to pass through?!
   3. The Bluespace page says that a drive can do 100-1000 times the speed of light. That makes it between 2-100 times better than a warp drive. With all the math we have done, that makes sense...
      1. Until you look at the "Ships and Station"s page. If a freighter costs as much as a "high-end" car and a bluespace drive costs twice as much as the ship, the total cost could be well over 900,000 credits. ($100,000 car today x 3 for the dollar to credit conversion x 3 for the cost of the ship and the drive). But I could have the same thing for only 450,000 with a warp drive. And NT only charges 20 credits to go thousands of times faster through a bluespace gate?
      2. These prices and price differences in performance are too odd. Why would someone pay half as much (warp ship compared to bluespace ship) but get a product that is ultimately 2-100 times worse in quality? Warp ships should be around the price of a modern day used car (about 50 times cheaper, or 18,000 credits, or $6,000). You can't use "newness of Bluespace" as an excuse, its been 37 years since the gates got retrofit. Plenty of time to build vast fleets of Bluespace-drive having ships. And why wouldn't I want a warp ship? Warp to a gate, jump to a new system in hours, warp to the other gate, jump again. I have a 300 year old technology in my used-car-priced ship and I still got to Sol from Tau Ceti in maybe a day for 40 credits/~$13? Interstellar travel is priced like a toll booth and not international airfare?
      3. Also, no pair of gates between Sol and Tau Ceti? I mean, I get the issue of the relationship between Sol Alliance and the Republic of Biesel, but the warp-to-bluespace gate retrofit happened 27 years prior to the Republic forming. I find it hard to believe Sol wouldn't have a gate between it and one of its most prosperous colonies. Maybe Einstein Engines was encourage to shut the gate down by the Sol government in an attempt to punish growing independence concerns in Tau Ceti? Either add a gate pair or have a reason for the gate to have been shutdown.

In summary, the various timelines across the wiki create a bunch of odd situations when compared with the pages describing various technologies and events. There are some more like this, but I wanted to start a discussion before trying to dig into all of them. The suggestion: Fix these weird little glitches all over the place in the timeline.

Edited March 22, 2020 by PTiberiusM

[Chada1]

This'd probably go in the lore canonization forum instead of here but amazing catch, this has been on the wiki for 6+ years without being noticed by anyone ?

PS: Mods will shift the thread around fir you if I'm right so don't worry about that.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Chada1

[PTiberiusM]

Yeah, sorry about that, I just didn't want to add anything to the lore stuff cause it looked like people pitching new stuff and mine is mostly me nitpicking. But yeah, glad to have found this stuff. I just was going through everything story wise and found my head getting scratched too often.

[BoryaTheSlayer]

I believe that this forum works as well. In any case.
1) The timeline is a bit borked, I admit, largely because the NanoTrasen page that has the Trasen family tree says that Xavier was born in 2346. I will try to fix this in a bit after consulting others.

2) 

Quote

The Zeng-Hu stuff

Actually, from Zeng-Hu's page: 

 "This proved instrumental during the colonization efforts of Mars and Luna. However, the success was relatively short-lived, as the economic hardships of the mid-22nd century hit the company hard. While never completely disappearing, the company was overshadowed by the rise of other corporations edging in on the field of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Zeng-Hu stayed in the background for years, though their continual innovations allowed them to stay somewhat competitive."

I don't know what you're talking about, chief. This pretty much explains why the headstart doesn't matter that much. NanoTrasen specializes in genetics, and the advances genetics could also be considered advances in medical technology. While Zeng-Hu is the boss in the field of pharmaceuticals and just widely biological/botanical areas. It also is the leader in Medical technology. They pioneered cryogenics, cloning... I mean, I suppose I can add a sentence that literally says "Zeng-Hu is the leader when it comes to medical technology" but I think it's already pretty clear that they are.

3) 

Quote

All that stuff about bluespace and warp

Bluespace and warp is the stuff that drives our universe because without them most things would not be possible. We are already working on defining them a bit so it's not all confusing so this is all being worked on already. But please don't look into that stuff too much it's borderline magic lmfao. Also, there's no gate between Sol and Tau Ceti because they're literally right next to each other. The systems, even in real life, are very close to each other.

3) 

Quote

The Economy stuff

I'm scared of economy and I'll consult my lore colleagues on this, can't say much here.

[Skull132]

Just to shove my 2c in here. I still do not necessarily understand nor see the need for warp drives to exist. Just another under-explored muguffin to escape away from Bluespace because "Bluespace bad and silly" or some shit, in my opinion. Similar comments exist about bluespace gates, though less so.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Great points. Multiple devs over multiple periods and departments handling individual timelines kept it messy.

Warp drives are not a mcguffin. They showed the evolution of ftl and provide the crux of NTs rise to power. NT monopolized bluespace and immediately made warp obsolete right when all its rivals and the SA hedged all their bets and investment on warp.

Xavier was meant to be old when he had miranda. He had crazy priviledge for NTs medical breakthroughs. And he had a young wife with the same.

 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Marlon Phoenix

[PTiberiusM]

5 hours ago, Marlon Phoenix said:

Xavier was meant to be old when he had miranda. He had crazy priviledge for NTs medical breakthroughs. And he had a young wife with the same.

I totally like that. Just change his death age to 144 and problem solved. I mean, it makes NT look much more impressive.

16 hours ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

Actually, from Zeng-Hu's page: 

 "... the company was overshadowed by the rise of other corporations edging in on the field of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Zeng-Hu stayed in the background for years, though their continual innovations allowed them to stay somewhat competitive."

And then you said:

16 hours ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

While Zeng-Hu is the boss in the field of pharmaceuticals and just widely biological/botanical areas. It also is the leader in Medical technology. They pioneered cryogenics, cloning... I mean, I suppose I can add a sentence that literally says "Zeng-Hu is the leader when it comes to medical technology" but I think it's already pretty clear that they are.

You bring up my point perfectly. You are talking about how you see Zeng-Hu as the "Leader of BioTech/Medicine/Pharmaceuticals" but the Zeng-Hu page specifically says they are not the leader anymore. I want the Zeng-Hu page to match up with people's vision of them. Whatever reason that needs to be cooked up, but make it so that Zeng-Hu is never losing out to NT. Talk about how they got that fucking sweet Skrell Tech and passed NT, hence why NT is pivoting to Bluespace, Phoron, and Tesla engines. It's not a bad idea to say "NT was the biotech megagod, then Zeng got that gooey Skrell tech, passed them up, good thing NT had that Bluespace Ace"

12 hours ago, Skull132 said:

Just to shove my 2c in here. I still do not necessarily understand nor see the need for warp drives to exist. Just another under-explored muguffin to escape away from Bluespace because "Bluespace bad and silly" or some shit, in my opinion. Similar comments exist about bluespace gates, though less so.

No man! Warp is great for all the reasons Marlon had. It shows the progress, and also how NT is kicking Einsteins ass. My primary issue with it is that the pricing difference between warp and Bluespace seems off. Warp should actually still be popular amongst private citizens and the like, because it can be used for short trips, maybe just intra-stellar travel. And people would only use Bluespace for issues of speed and distance. Like the difference between a roadtrip and getting a plane flight. Make the gates much more expensive, talk about how Bluespace Liners are a thing that are saving Einstein because they are licensing drives from NT, so they are still a major shipbuilder. Lots of room to have Warp and Bluespace in the same universe, it just doesn't make economic sense right now because in a universe with Bluespace, warp is the cheap technology

16 hours ago, BoryaTheSlayer said:

Also, there's no gate between Sol and Tau Ceti because they're literally right next to each other. The systems, even in real life, are very close to each other.

But they aren't dough. IRL it is 12 LY, but on the starmap it looks like about 9LY. If the Arrivals shuttle drive is typical, and my assumption about the Aurora being on an asteroid in the far reaches of Tau Ceti, it would take 9-14 days to get between Sol and Tau Ceti using a Bluespace drive. But if I could go Tau Ceti-Konyang and Konyang-Sol through the marked gates on the map in maybe just 4-5 hours, I would never make a direct trip via Bluespace Drive when the Gates are faster. But, why would there be a gate to Konyang and not one to Tau Ceti? Tau Ceti and Eridani were and are too important for the Sol Alliance to not have a gate pair between them. Konyang is new, Tau Ceti is one of the oldest human colonies, Konyang's own page on the wiki is about how its basically been a pain in the ass for the Sol Alliance to hang on to.

If there was a Bluespace gate between Sol and Konyang, shouldn't it read "And with the development of the Bluespace gate system, the Sol Alliance military tightened its grasp on the far reaches of its domain, now able to deploy fleets with an incredible swiftness. The Coalition of Colonies fear that this brings the Sol Alliance to their very doorstep, re-igniting the possibility of open warfare to claim what the Sol Alliance sees as its own."? Hey, even creates a situation around the Coalition resisting the development of Bluespace gates in their territory, backdoor traitor systems trying to get NT to build one on the downlow for them, Coalition resisters openly funded more terrorism against NT to try and stop this. Man, that could make all kinds of cool events and stories to be played on the station.

[Scheveningen]

Assuming my post is still relevant to this to even necrobump (tbf this was posted in discord chat just now): I'm supportive of any change that helps fix the continuity. It's a little silly that Miranda was effectively conceived around the time Xavier was 114. Impressive as that may be, of course, this is Moses-tier continuity.

[Desven]

bump again, I had this same issue a few weeks ago when I re-read the tree and all for the NT family. I don't mind Miranda being his daughter, just have older sons before her that didn't inherit the company for X reason.