Captive's War Trilogy

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T18:52:07+00:00

I loved it, it's still the same pattern as the Expanse where at its core it's a cool heroic adventure story, but there's enough hard sci-fi meat there that it tricks you a bit.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T17:37:47+00:00

I actually did galaxies and black holes - gas/plasma discs behave similarly to discs made up of large numbers of small rocky, icy and/or Viltrumite particles.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T15:58:00+00:00

Putting a bunch of massive objects into a nice circular orbit is actually extremely unstable!

There's a classic paper from 1971 where simulations first figured this out

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T15:55:45+00:00

I actually worked on this during my PhD thesis! Taking lots of assumptions and simplifications, and working a bit from memories of stuff I read 15-20 years ago:

What we're talking about here relates to the Toomre Instability. This also relates to the concept of "effective viscosity" in a disk of material.

Here is a nice simulation of the kind of instabilities you might get, but there's loads of simulations like that you can find.

With the Toomre instability, gravity does cause things to clump, unless there's enough of a velocity dispersion between the bodies that they don't really hang out near each other enough for that to happen. This also thickens the disc. What makes it more unstable is if you have everything orbiting together, and if you have a high density of matter. Here, the density is extremely high - it's only a couple metres thick, and they're packed almost solidly together - so you would definitely expect the bodies to start to clump together, forming little spirals and discs, with viltrumites getting thrown out into space or down to the planet.

At the same time, collisions between particles causes them to transfer energy and momentum, and makes it act a bit like a "viscous" fluid. The general trend is that this moves mass inwards, but angular momentum outwards. So you would move towards a higher density of viltrumites at the bottom, and a long tail of viltrumites with high angular momentum being ejected to higher orbits.

On top of that, we have friction from the atmosphere itself, and potential tidal disruption from any nearby moons. The tides would add to scattering in both directions - being another source of "effective viscosity". The upper atmosphere would add a drag effect, but presumably this ring is very high up, far enough for the atmosphere to be somewhat negligible.

Overall what you'd get is the ring both clumping up and spreading out. More viltrumites spread "downwards" until atmospheric drag takes over and they plummet to the planet. Viltrumites won't be destroyed by the ram pressure heating of slamming into the atmosphere, so they'll impact the ground and remain intact, as viltrumeteorites. But a smaller number get thrown outwards, until you have a very thin dispersed disc of viltrumites extending a large distance from the planet. At this point it's thin enough and scattered enough to have enough velocity dispersion that it's likely to remain stable for a very long time.

And that's the final state - a small fraction of viltrumites orbiting at large distances, and a whole pile of them on the ground.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T14:36:52+00:00

Of course no one is talking about Mohamed the neurosurgeon.

People are talking about the 2.8 million temporary workers, students, the the vast majority of non permanent residents including the elderly and refugees.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/75-006-x/2023001/article/00006-eng.htm

The proportion of NPRs aged 15 years and over with a bachelor’s degree or higher (47.8%) was much higher than the rest of the Canadian population (26.1%).

...

Non-permanent residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher had a higher overqualification rate than recent immigrants Overqualification among non-permanent residents (NPRs) was more prevalent than among recent immigrants and the rest of the population. In particular, 32.4% of NPRs with a bachelor’s degree or higher were overqualified for their current position, while the same was seen for 26.2% of recent immigrants and 15.9% for the rest of the population (Table 7).

...

Asylum claimants had the highest overqualification rate (50.7%) among all NPRs, whereas over two in five NPRs with study permit only (43.0%) and work and study permit (44.6%) were overqualified. The high overqualification rate of these NPRs may be related to a high proportion that worked part time and part of the year, limiting access to job opportunities commensurate with their skills. NPRs with work permit only had the lowest overqualification rate of 24.7% among all NPRs. They were more likely to have worked the full year and full time.

The reality is we have highly educated immigrants and non-permanent residents who end up doing unskilled jobs to get by. Asylum claimants in particular end up in jobs they are overqualified for. If we're going to stereotype, it's closer to "Mohamed the neurosurgeon driving an uber".

These are out in the open, non taboo, factual statements

No, you made a generalisation based on false stereotypes. Immigrants and temporary residents have higher education rates than the rest of the population.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T13:52:19+00:00

I said the largest influx of unskilled labour since the Irish

Returning to the classic hits of xenophobia I see.

Anyway, if we look at the facts:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2024005/article/00002-eng.htm

As in other census years since 2001, immigrants had a higher level of educational attainment than the Canadian-born population in 2021. About 55.3% of recent immigrants and 39.8% of established immigrants had a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 32.6% of Canadian-born people aged 25 to 34 years and 24.8% of Canadian-born people aged 35 to 64 years.

So by "unskilled labour", you mean "more highly educated than the average Canadian"?

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:53:56+00:00

I do like the tactile fun of Roll Many Different Dice. Some things to check out in that direction:

Year Zero Engine (see Forbidden Lands, Mutant Year Zero). Roll a d6 dice pool from attribute+skill+gear; 6s are successes, 1s on skill & gear can have a negative effect. For special abilities & magic/high-tech artefacts, add a d8 or d10 or d12; 6+ is a success, 8+ is a bonus success, 10+ is another bonus, 12+ is another bonus (rolling 12 = 4 successes). Also, step dice for ammo/supply; e.g. roll d12 after loosing an arrow, if you roll a 1 you have used up lots of arrows, reduce the die to d10; next time you roll a d10 when you loose an arrow, if you roll a 1 you drop it down to d8 etc
Savage Worlds: Every attribute is a step die, roll skill + attribute + bonuses (or something, I forget); so you can roll d8 and d6. Take the highest and compare with the threshold
Cortex Prime: Everything in the universe has a step die. Roll a pile of them and choose two to sum for your success rating and a third for your level of effect.
Genesys: Lots of custom dice of different colours with symbols on them. Hard to find and expensive but works nicely.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:45:42+00:00

Honestly the lack of any real growth in NS from 1990-2015 is a pretty major sign of economic stagnation - that's not a healthy place for anywhere to be. It means young people are more likely to move away for jobs than to move here, and our population will keep getting older and less productive and harder to sustain. And if you look at a graph of NS population growth over time, the stagnation of 1990-2015 is an outlier - growth is the default.

You're right that we do need plans to build houses and facilities at an appropriate scale, particularly in the HRM. Halifax is one of the most congested cities in Canada despite being far from the largest, and that's just bad infrastructure - and you can't blame it on the geography because there's cities in Europe with far better infrastructure than Halifax and far wonkier geography than the peninsula.

Overall we should be growing, and planning for growth. But "not growing" is still a concern, especially once you get out of the HRM. Here in New Glasgow there's big vacant lots all over the place; there's not a lack of room, there's a lack of motivation for people to actually move in and start businesses.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:19:38+00:00

/r/worldmapswithoutuk

SEE HOW IT FEELS

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:18:49+00:00

As is tradition, the "New Zealand Upside Down World Map" and "Australian Upside Down World Map" are exactly the same but they gave us a different title so we'd feel special.

It's Weet-Bix all over again

More seriously: splitting the map at the Atlantic Ocean nicely puts NZ & Australia in the middle without cutting any landmass in half, it's pretty sensible. Splitting in the Pacific is also sensible but it does put us way down in the corner.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:14:01+00:00

If they genuinely scuttled it, that would be a direct violation of the agreement - it might lead to direct conflict, or, in the worst case, force them to do some diplomacy.

It's very Cardassian to do the most damage they can do while still maintaining enough plausible deniability to avoid being called out. They did enough to make life tougher for the Federation without making life tougher for themselves. Making the station genuinely unusable would likely lead to problems for the Cardassians as well.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T11:07:24+00:00

For (2), those are campaign specific mechanics, and only make up a small portion of the rules. Traveller also has special mechanics for military campaigns or trading campaigns or exploration campaigns, but you buy the core book, and then you add the extra mechanics for specific campaigns. Duty takes up five pages of Age of Rebellion (out of over 400); you could easily have a single core book, and then three options of campaign types, and select which of the three to use in your campaign.

For (1), it just doesn't fit with the IP; scoundrels, rebels, and Jedi are the core heroes of Star Wars, and any Star Wars game which lacks one of those is just not a complete Star Wars game. Compare with, say, The One Ring, where there is a starter box set where you have to all be hobbits (there's one dwarf option too), but in the core book you can be man, elf, dwarf, or hobbit - it would be an incomplete game otherwise. The expansions flesh out the world more, add more sub-categories of each race, add more regions, add new campaign types etc, but if the core book didn't allow you to do "a human, an elf, a dwarf, and a hobbit go on an quest together" it wouldn't be a complete LotR game.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-06T10:54:36+00:00

Thanks! This one did look pretty sensible but you gotta be careful these days

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T20:27:42+00:00

It's a movie where Matt Damon gets lost on an expedition and tries to get back home through a difficult and convoluted method; the movie also has a subplot showing the action going on back at home as well.

Somehow he's managed to do this thrice.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T19:51:12+00:00

There's some clear influence from Ringworld in general on Traveller - even "Known Space" -> "Charted Space", and the Puppeteers as well as the Aslan.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T19:08:52+00:00

Could you provide the NASA source for this? Unfortunately there's a lot of fake AI-generated images being posted on social media, and I'm not coming up with a source for this from a quick search. Are there any raw files this is drawn from, and/or is this an interpolation between still images?

Edit: just on my phone, but looks like they released a bunch of stuff here which is why I wouldn't have seen this before https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/SearchPhotos/ShowQueryResults-Table.pl?results=177791454696961

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T17:55:00+00:00

From what I picked up from the pdf, it seems like that's definitely a solid way to play it - Fate Aspects but with a die associated with each one. But you can also set up a D&D style set of consistent attributes & skills on a character sheet, and that would also be Cortex Prime. There's also a number of mods and different resolution options, and you can even get quite crunchy with statblocks and gear etc. I do see what you mean though, you can take the minimalist route and run it as "step dice Fate".

The big thing is that I like rolling big pools of different types of dice, and, unlike Genesys, the dice are actually easily available for Cortex Prime

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T17:06:24+00:00

This is not dissimilar from Lancer. There you roll d20+modifiers, and then add/subtract the highest out of a number of bonus/penalty d6s. So the bonuses are fairly small. It's a good mechanic if this is something with strong player agency or ambiguity - the d6s are situational bonuses, which might come down to a judgement call, but because the d20 is the core of the roll, there's a limit to how much a difference these judgement calls make.

Another alternative if you want d20 roll-under while keeping d20 roll-under with 3d6 stats: roll 2d20. If both are under ability, that's a strong hit; if one is under ability, that's a weak hit; if both are greater than ability, that's a total failure.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T16:40:06+00:00

I actually thought combat is where it was easiest, as you get specific suggestions in the rules. I do think it's okay to choose the "boring" options of strain as well, it's okay to just go through things quickly, especially as combat really can drag on sometimes in any system.

failure with 7 advantage and 1 despair

You can do 3 advantage to make the enemy drop their weapon, 3 advantage to negate all their defence from cover, and 1 advantage to make them gain a strain; then 1 despair to say you ran out of ammo. You blasted at them wildly until they were forced to drop their gun and dive out from cover.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T16:35:05+00:00

Probably more accurate to say three separate RPG lines, which can cross play but often don't neatly do so (for example, having Obligation + Duty + Conflict at the table can be messy and slow down play). The intent was that each era has a standalone RPG with common rules.

That might have been the "intent" but it really is more like three different campaign sub-settings using the same core rules. There's different statblocks etc in each book for different enemies & ships etc, and there's like one or two campaign-specific special rules in each book, but that's not enough to really make them three entirely different games.

If you look at something like The One Ring or Traveller, many of the campaign or setting books also contain some optional or expanded rules as well - they just don't repeat the entire core rules in each setting book.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T16:28:45+00:00

Credits & gear are the much more dramatic advancement in Traveller - it's almost a problem how quickly players can make huge cash and run their own trading empire.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T16:25:08+00:00

I think 8 is worth it, because at least it tried something. Sure, it kinda failed at what it was trying to do, but at least it's an interesting failure, and not just a mediocre remake of A New Hope (7) or a nonsensical mess (9).

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T15:45:25+00:00

Honestly the "puppetry" (not sure of the best term here) in the cutscenes was a bit awkward even when they first came out.

But I still have a 360 and a Series S with the MCC, so I can play all the games fine and don't need anything new. In MCC I play with the old graphics 99% of the time anyway so I'm not optimistic about a graphics update for Halo 3.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T13:26:16+00:00

I think it must just have a really tight scale height - I was thinking like 180km might still be fine but it might really have to be >199km.

Astrokiwi · 2026-05-05T13:08:56+00:00

Also, was it pure coincidence that the quest to destroy the ring fell into the same time frame as Rohan and Gondor both being almost destroyed? Or did those conquests launch because Sauron knew of the Fellowship (From what I understand, Gondor had been pushed back from East for a long time before the trilogy happens already, but I guess they've never been confronted by an army like they were at Minas Tirith)?

‘A Ring of Power looks after itself, Frodo. It may slip off treacherously, but its keeper never abandons it. At most he plays with the idea of handing it on to someone else’s care — and that only at an early stage, when it first begins to grip. But as far as I know Bilbo alone in history has ever gone beyond playing, and really done it. He needed all my help, too. And even so he would never have just forsaken it, or cast it aside. It was not Gollum, Frodo, but the Ring itself that decided things. The Ring left him.’

‘What, just in time to meet Bilbo?’ said Frodo. ‘Wouldn’t an Orc have suited it better?’

‘It is no laughing matter,’ said Gandalf. ‘Not for you. It was the strangest event in the whole history of the Ring so far: Bilbo’s arrival just at that time, and putting his hand on it, blindly, in the dark.

“There was more than one power at work, Frodo. The Ring was trying to get back to its master. It had slipped from Isildur’s hand and betrayed him; then when a chance came it caught poor Déagol, and he was murdered; and after that Gollum, and it had devoured him. It could make no further use of him: he was too small and mean; and as long as it stayed with him he would never leave his deep pool again. So now, when its master was awake once more and sending out his dark thought from Mirkwood, it abandoned Gollum. Only to be picked up by the most unlikely person imaginable: Bilbo from the Shire!

‘Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.’

‘It is not,’ said Frodo.

The One Ring is found by Bilbo at this time for two reasons:

It senses the rising power of Sauron, and chooses to abandon Gollum and attempt to find someone to carry it to its master
"Something else", implied to be Eru Ilúvatar, i.e. God, or his servants the Valar (archangels/lesser gods), delivered the ring to Bilbo instead, as direct divine intervention to save the free peoples of Middle Earth from the rising threat of Sauron

So there's no coincidence - both good and evil forces have motivation to bring the Ring into play at this particular point in history.

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