• Geek_King@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This reminds me of how in a lot of sci-fi universes, every planet the characters go down to has earth standard gravity. When in reality there would be a ton of variance, some planets would have 20% stronger, or weaker, or crushing.

    Expeditionary Force book series was a breath of fresh air, portray space battles how they probably would play out, at such long ranges you could move your ship and avoid a directed energy weapon. The books also do a great job with there being more variety in planetary conditions too. I loved that series. The audio books are fantastic, R.C. Bray does a wonderful job!

    • dariusj18@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I think many stories hand-wave this by only interacting with “M” class planets unless the story is helped by adding the additional complexity.

      • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        5 months ago

        Does M-class include the requirement of having 1.0g (or near enough)? I didn’t know that. Does that mean the federation is only made up of planets where humans don’t look daft moving around? Or maybe it has something to do with production budgets… 🤔

        • dariusj18@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Yesz M class includes having tolerable gravity. There are many things that make a class M planet, which is why they are so rare. In some sci-fi universes there are other species that populate other types of planets that are rarely interacted with because there is not direct competition or benefits.

    • Kecessa
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      5 months ago

      The Orville has that with Xelayans coming from a planet with higher gravity so they’re super strong under human conditions.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      at such long ranges you could move your ship and avoid a directed energy weapon

      But how would you know an energy weapon had fired? Wouldn’t you be constrained by the speed of light, regardless?

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              This is also an idea behind the Dark Forest Hypothesis

              I think that’s less about warp-speed weapons and more about natural resource constraints and the unpredictable nature of technological advancement causing advanced civilizations to preemptively obliterate one another.

              But yes, the only practical defense against superluminal weaponry would be to avoid getting spotted.

      • Geek_King@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yeah, you wouldn’t, but in those books, the ai of ships have random evasive movements they perform to make some shots miss.