As you can infer by the title, this topic is dedicated to discussing the current limit of 15 megastructures present in Sector A1-0.
In recent times, the megastructure limit has already changed from what it used to be, with it being informally removed for smaller megastructures like O’Neill Cylinders, Stanford Tori and Bishop Rings, or for megastructures like Dyson Swarms that are too essential for many civilizations to be limited so much. Therefore, me and Qwert thought it would be appropriate to actually have a proper discussion about changing or maintaining the megastructure limit, so that everyone could voice their opinions and proposals, allowing us to reach a decision the majority of roleplayers agree on through a vote at the end of the discussion.
Here are the proposals me and Qwert had in mind:
We maintain a megastructure limit, either the current one of 15 or a larger one, but only apply it to megastructures that require exotic material to construct, such as neutronium, magmatter, and other kinds of similar matter. Generally speaking, this would limit megastructures such as Bank’s Orbitals, Dyson Spheres, Ringworlds and Topopoli, while giving total freedom for megastructures that don’t need such materials.
We remove the limit entirely. This would of course give everyone far greater freedom and room for creativity, as well as allowing canonically older or more technologically advanced nations to make their infrastructure match their character. Roleplayers themselves will then be given the responsibility of acting fairly, and not arming themselves with a trillion death stars. The fact that there is no limit doesn’t remove the necessity of making things make canonical sense after all.
However, don’t feel afraid to voice your own ideas, proposals and concerns. After all, isn’t that what discussion topics are made for? ;]
I’m against removing the limit entirely, but I get the reasoning for granting some people more than others. Here’s my proposal:
We don’t apply a limit to megastructures that don’t need exotic materials (although there’d have to be some sort of clarification as to what that covers), but we keep a megastructure limit for ones using exotic materials. However, we don’t have one limit, but rather a limit based on age (quick ex: older than 500 thousand years gets you 25 megastructures, 500 thousand - 250 thousand gets you 20, 250 thousand - present gets you 15). Note that that isn’t the exact breakdown I’m proposing, but just an example. I’m firmly against the (exotic materials) megastructure limit going above 25
Option one seems good, but would a material that isn’t readily available one place but is readily available in another place be considered exotic in the place where it’s readily available? (I assume not)
Tying writing choices and IC lore like your nation’s age to purely OOC rules-based matters like the megastructure limit will just restrict the writing freedom of roleplayers with younger nations relative to those with older ones, as well as strongly encourage people to min-max by making their RP nations older than they otherwise would be for the specific purpose of avoiding the lowered megastructure cap. If any kind of megastructure limit is to be applied, then it needs to apply to everything equally in order to avoid exerting undesirable influence on how people write their A1-0 nations’ lore.
Iv always wondered, do ships get to a cirtian size and get classed as a mega structures?
And if we apply option one, do ships made using exotic materials count as mega structures? Like, we can’t just have nations mass produce smaller ships made of exotic materials to get around a mega structure limit.
The limit should stay mostly untouched. 15 or lower is a nice number. If we remove the limit entirely the power gap between nations will only grow, and for rp purposes we want to have most nations at a similar power limit. Separating smaller megastructures like habitation structures (O’Neil cylinders and similar) could work as they don’t have too much effect on the power limit and offer more options for rp, like a entirely spaceborne civilization. But things like dyson swarms and spheres and structures of similar caliber should definitely stay regulated, wouldn’t even be against the limit for those being slightly lowered to accommodate for smaller structures no longer being counted but that isn’t too necessary.
Since I haven’t actually stated my position on any of the main points of discussion raised by this thread, I think that it would be a good idea to do that now.
Firstly, I do not find Dyson swarms to be a structure type that deserves to be classified as a megastructure. A Dyson swarm is, at its core, a large concentration of otherwise generic satellites, and including it in the definition of “megastructure” would broaden said definition beyond the point of reasonability.
Secondly, I do not presently see a need for a hard cap on megastructures. Pacifica does not currently have comparable OOC rules caps for roughly equivalent things like aircraft carriers or nuclear weapons, while attempts to implement caps for Aurora have largely stalled out due to strong difficulties with managing definitions as they pertain to proposed rules. Self-regulation of power-spiking things by requiring adequate justification for their being possessed by the roleplay nations in question works fine for Aurora and works sort-of-fine for Pacifica, and I’m not sure that having the megastructures rule gives benefits that outweigh the additional bureaucratic overhead that it brings.
Lastly, I would like to request that anybody who helped draft the original megastructures capping rule provide an explanation for the initial rationale behind its creation and subsequent implementation. I believe that it would be helpful for the ongoing discussion to be able to understand why the rule is/was necessary and to allow for an evaluation of whether any circumstances that necessitated its implementation still apply now.
I’ve slept on the issue, and I think I’m of the opinion that the megastructures limit can be abolished. To my knowledge, we haven’t had any real issues with people overusing or abusing megastructures, and the only issue regarding the rule I can think of was the issue of whether Pelinai had to use megastructure slots for their archailects. So, the only real issue we’ve had with it is that it’s caused confusion and inconvenience for other rpers. for this reason, I think we can trust the community of A1-0 at least to be reasonable with their worldbuildings and don’t see the need for hard caps for this (especially considering we don’t have hard caps for anything else besides FTL speed.)
We are all really good about self-moderation so the megastructure limit can be safely abolished. If someone comes around and has like a megastructure in every system, we can, of course, deal with that as it violates the verisimilitude of A1-0. Overall though, we should be fine removing the limit.
Skidaddle skidoodle doo, the stars are but a noodle!
When did A1-0 become a Stellaris min-maxing game? I mean really… How would lifting the cap add any additional value in RPs? The way I see it, the hard cap is there to ensure balance, because as the planetary limit has shown, people will actually min-max the living hell out of planets and claim it to be reasonable because the old star nations’ ages. Sure A1-0 can be seen as self-regulatory, but if we drop this rule, I can totally see balancing issues in the future. See examples down below:
Newcomer claims to be a million years old star nation that now emerges with high tier tech and megastructure in every system. Thus, this new star nation popping out of nowhere completely shifts the power balance. Community doesn’t engage and newcomer is shunned in a way. Thus creating frictions within said community.
People add megastructure out of the blue just to keep up relative power balance compared to other star nation. Thus creating a storyless power scaling race mainly driven by OOC pride.
Megastructures become the essence of star nations and less so their characteristics, which I believe to be a downgrade. Like I said, this isn’t Stellaris, but a collaborative storytelling project.
I may sound like a true veteran, but for me A1-0 was always a bit more focused on emerging powers. A1-0 RP has never had the essence of showcasing tech and more so having star nations interact with each other. All I see is just people wishing to add fluff to their star nations, because they can and mostly use it to brag in OOC Discord discussion and possibly make power tier ranks incomprehensible. Aspects which I fear will potentially increase toxicity in the community as we divulge into power scaling debates instead of actual proper collaborative storytelling projects that have always been at the centre of Sector A1-0 as a RP setting.
The freedom to RP shouldn’t cause the freedom to disparity.
But overall, I can see myself agreeing to @Galaxiel’s first rule suggestion as the term of megastructure holds many semantics. Though of course I must beg the question if ships couldn’t use neutronium armour in that case?
Actual hot take: We should limit the age of star nations to ensure power balance lmao