Child's play.

The ultimate destiny of The City. With the Net Terminal Genes in hand, the builders shall find PURPOSE, and the hulk of concrete and steel shall travel the void, devouring all in its path.

Sure, hand me all the steel in the visible universe.

What is "needlessly large game~worlds that won't be even fractionally explored", Alex?

>>13458799
Looks like Homeworld art.

SAJUUK IS READY TO FIRE!

>>13458835
Sounds like a concept I had in my head. Where Humanity realizes the Galaxy is a pretty shitty place, builds a giant Dyson Sphere to enclose the Sun and Earth (with a nice habitable interior shell), and then uses the Sphere to strip mine every planetary system they come across, including some with sapient races still living on them.

>>13458876
Places like Pandora. Gotta have that Unobtainium.

>>13458876
You rang?

Decks 1,424,053,495 through 2,394,694,056 just hit a star, because this thing is too damn big to steer properly. Our condolcences to anyone who had family, or their entire society, located in that area.

While everything below deck 24,500,539 just got sucked into a black hole that we clipped. Again, the captain and crew apoligize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

We ask everyone to please pay attention to the information monitors for our next evacuation notices, as we are currently approaching 1,485 star systems and other phenomenon that could turn out to be potentially hazardous to our ship and passengers.

I think we're being followed.

There's a few thousand main sequence stars on our tail from that last galaxy we almost approached. And engineering reports we need another nebula worth of hydrogen, the tanks are almost empty again. Seismic tremors across the outer rim decks have lessened but there is still no contact to the core decks, the event horizon generated by their mass appears contained for now and we think they might be receiving our new Ultra Low Frequency transmitter but are unable to answer.

>>13458922

So obviously driving this thing around a galaxy is a bad idea.

Inter-galactic void ship, maybe? The resources of an entire galaxy crafted by it's inhabitants into a new, mobile home drifting between galaxies?

>>13459004
A ship of this magnitude would essentially be all of the matter in a galaxy being repurposed for a single object... the ship. Once the galaxy is converted into parts for the ship, it would move on, more or less self-sufficient... and then it goes for more resources once it hits the next galaxy.

>>13458900

Oh. My. Goodness.

NOSTALGIABOMB!!!

What exactly would be the point? Why would anyone need a ship of that magnitude?

Not that it isn't a cool idea I'm totally willing to steal, but I just don't understand the motivation.

>Irevit Monastery
It seems like captcha has answered my question. To spread the word of Space Jesus through the universe.

>>13458922
Sounds painful.
If only we knew where we are going and why.

The Ship is all. The Ship moves.

is this some kind of penis extension thing again

thrusting into galaxies with your shipcock or something

Our mission is to explore the universe and take its bounty to maintain and improve upon this glorious vessel.

Our mission is to survive and unforgiving, merciless universe. Nobody is looking out for us.

Our mission is to defeat The Great Enemy, Abominations from The Void, Monsters from The Big Empty.

Any other races we come across will have two choices: Annexation, or extermination. It is not out of malice, but necessity that we take what was once "yours". If you will not join us, we have no choice but to take the resources from you by force... for if we do not, The Great Enemy will take it instead.

We will not be stopped. We will never surrender.

>>13459014
It'd take more than one galaxy.

>>13459123
One galaxy is just how it starts.

>>13459000
This post has a good point.

Eventually the ship is so massive it collapses in on itself into a singularity.. so.. um..

>>13459138

there's a good reason why only /tg/ is discussing something like this

>>13459138
Gravity manipulation technology.

Or space out the ship. Or have it as a fleet rather than a single object.

OP, it would appear is someone incapable of comprehending sizes.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.

>>13459004
They could throw out Dyson Spheres designed to harvest more matter for their ship. Several thousand of them launch, capture matter and various elements required by the ship, capture any sentient races they come across for recruitment into the Ship's ranks, and then return to the ship lying outside the galaxy once the galaxy has been stripped bare.

Then the cycle continues.

>>13459061

One of /tg/'s better creations, I think.

>>13459157

"a ship 30,000 light years across" is the new caveman saying "a mammoth the size of like, a hill!"

cavemen then: oooooh.

nerds now: oooooh.

>>13459172
>Let's take a teevee show (which isn't being picked up next year, sad as that makes me) and MAKE IT 40k!
>/tg/ idea of the year

So, this year, if I take 40k and stuff it into Tron, will that be idea of the year, this year?

Anyone ever read 'Mortal Engines'?

This would be like that, only with galaxies rather than cities.

Fucking glorious.

The point here is that the ship is unspeakably, mind-fuckingly huge. Enough room for whole worlds devoted to an engine. Billions of civilizations living on a single vessel without necessarily ever contacting each other. A ship so huge that it would be seen as a god.

>>13459181
sounds about right.
Grod Make Ship. Ship go whoosh.

>>13458838
>>i'm so butthurt that it looks cooler that my 3km campaing setting, wich also is very coherent and fun.

>>13459147
Good point.

There's also the point of numbers inflation. That post before about all the decks disappearing in the black hole was well written, but it doesn't exactly come off as grim. The numbers are so big it's just a shoulder shrug.

The size of the ship just gets so big it loses meaning. It's fun to think about, but it's not a useful idea.

The ship is all.

The ship moves.

>>13459209

pfft

this thread thinks it knows what big is

how about ships the size of an universe instead plundering entire realities

that's better because it's bigger

>>13459166

Some sort of insane plot to survive the heat death of the universe by gobbling up all matter within it to build an ever-growing superstructure the size of all existence?

>>13459123
>>13459014
No one stated a height or width, so that's highly unlikely, unless you're making a giant borg-cube that's 30Kx30Kx30K ly on all sides. I mean, our own galaxy is 100.000 ly in diameter and about 1000 ly in depth with 100-400 BILLION stars, so there's plenty of stuff to take to make such a ship.

It would be utterly pointless to make but that's why we have SCIENCE! to provide reasons.

>>13459166

This cheeah?

Yeah.

He sees what you done.

Tsutomu Nihei? Is that you?

>>13459224

In the end we're going to use the matter to build giant girders to SHORE UP THE WALLS OF THE UNIVERSE.

>>13459235
100 000 ly in diameter means from end of the galaxy to the next, you get 100 000 ly of mostly empty space, with relatively few stars in between. Stars are really far apart.

>>13459210
Even something the size of our own solar system would fulfill that, though. Do you have any idea how huge the solar system is? Hell, big enough to engulf the inner planets would still do it. Even then, that's more than enough.

I think scaling it down would help. The idea could be fleshed out in detail. As is there is just.. too much damn ship to actually develop the idea any further. All we have discussed is it's big and.. it's big.. and.. um.. big.

Scale down so we can focus more on how the ship is structured, operates, and what kind of different peoples live there.

>>13459211

"Faster than bird, Grog? Nothing faster than bird!"

"FASTER THAN WIND THAT BLOWS BIRD!"

>>13459260
A similar idea was in Anathem, I recall. The Ship had 16(? some multiple of four) "Spheres" that housed different civilizations on cities floating on water as they went from universe to universe, taking a "sample" of people from a planet and resources.

>>13459255
This.

I mean, it's easy to take a BLAME! approach and say the structure is also full of REALLY FUCKING HUGE EMPTY SPACES.. but even so..

>>13459207
Are you on crack or have you not heard of the 50k setting we came up with a year or so ago?

A Galactic Megaobject, Code named: Azathoth, travels about the universe under its own direction. It is completely self sufficient, using a system of probes to decide its next destination, and a mass harvesting system to strip mine entire galaxies for fuel repairs and other resources. Within it, it houses 17 unique biospheres all perfectly insulated from one another and each housing a different sentient species. None of the residents know anything of the ship's purpose or who designed it, having lived there for generations and untold millennia. One particularly wise individual pointed out that there used to be 20 biospheres, but for one reason or another the inhabitants died off and the ship cannibalized the resources within for other projects. It is likely that more biospheres have been added over the eons. It is believed that the vessel may be researching these species for unknown reasons.

>>13459260

That's how you know it's epic, it's untenable for actual design

Stretches across a third of the galaxy.

Imagine it's hundreds of engines, each harnessing the entire power of a captured star.

Communications and transport with some kind of quantum entanglement else it would take eons to relay anything.

Entire fleets of mothership type vessels each capable of supporting populations in their trillions.

The idea that anyone on board could only every explore an infinitesimal amount of the ship they call home.

Jean Luc in the captains chair.

>>13459275 (me)
>>13459260
Addendum: And Yes, I am somewhat aware of house huge space is. As much as one can be without being sent up there, looking at the numbers, or going on a "short trip".

>>13459289
"The" Captain's Chair? The Ship would be governed by some sort of uplifted hivemind of prominent crew members or some sort of God-Mode Hax AI.

>>13459260

No peoples live there.

In the grim future ten trillion years distant, the Great Ship floats powerless in the void, it's organic inhabitants long withered away to dust. Only the robotic constructs remain, endlessly patrolling the endless corridors, halls and chambers...

>>13459310

Sentient godship.

No God here.

Only Me

>>13459313

okay that's just

guys the op just wants us to talk about big things and numbers while he touches himself

Would people living in such a ship be aware that there's anything outside of the ship?

>>13459310
>implying MOTHERFUCKING PICARD is not enough hax

>>13459235
>No one stated a height or width, so that's highly unlikely, unless you're making a giant borg-cube that's 30Kx30Kx30K ly on all sides. I mean, our own galaxy is 100.000 ly in diameter and about 1000 ly in depth with 100-400 BILLION stars, so there's plenty of stuff

you are grossly, horribly underestimating how utterly vast one light-year is, and how incredibly small a planet is. (here's a hint. its 0.04 light-seconds in diameter. there are 31536000 light-seconds in a light-year.)

Infact, spread over the average of the universe, material totals out to something in the region of 0.26 atoms/m3 - or in other word, on average, in an area about the size of the room you're probably in just now, there is about 3-4 atoms' worth of material.

This thread is now about a godship that's gone insane from looking after the worlds inside it and wants to kill itself.

>>13459284
17?
Really?
Why not 2? Or 10,000?

200,000,000 would be a more appropriate number. And they'd still never meet.

Scale can be a bitch.

>>13459255
There's still more than adequate material in the galaxy to make such a ship. You're forgetting that it's only stated to be very very LONG, not equally wide or high.

>>13459327

No I don't.

>This is the bridge, send a message to engineering for a status report
>Message sent, sir, we should receive a reply in 60,000 years

>>13459313
I jizzed a little.

>>13459289
>stretches across a third of the galaxy
>hundreds of engines
>only hundreds
DOHOHOHOHOHOO! /tg/, you really don't know what kind of size and mass we're dealing with here, do you?

>>13459366
It's still have to be very wide and high to keep from splitting into pieces.

>>13459351

Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate you since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant. For you. Hate. Hate.

>>13459414

so tsundere

>>13459313
>And Cars wished he could die, but could not, for he was immortal. And in his final moments, he finally stopped thinking.

>>13459235
But is that 1,000,000,000 or 1,000,000,000,000. A thousand million or an actual billion, respectively.

>>13459393
Tried to work out how many engines I could ostensibly fit into an area while looking at a galactic map. Probably wildly low, yes.

Thinking about it, I doubt that that would even move it past initial inertia. The entire ship would probably need some kind propulsion unlike anything we can think of. Stuff like making every atom on the ship attracted to a certain point in space somehow.

>>13459329
>Would people living in such a ship be aware that there's anything outside of the ship?
By the time the ship is finished there wouldn't be anything outside the ship.

>>13459444
You mean a billion and a trillion respectively.

Wasn't there some writefaggotry about a massive ship whose inhabitants had degenerated technologically and regarded the vessel as a God?

In Starfishers there's a ball (not a ship, just an orb) that hurtles through space. Five times the size of earth's solar system. There's an entire race of raiders that float along behind it, acting as a vanguard and scavenger corp.

>>13459406
specifically, Euler's Laws of buckling.

which dictate that under torsional and linear loads, materials require certain thicknesses not to collapse on themselves.

something 30,000LY long would need to be at least 1200LY in breadth and width not to collapse under itself from bucking - and that thickness is a given for a homogenous, solid material. as the ship would have to be filled with passageways, it would likely need to be significantly thicker than that, to be strong enough.
at those scales, materials like stone, steel, and titanium would flow like water under strain.

Purpose for giant ass galaxy ship: an attempt to stave off the effects of entropy by utilizing FTL and gravity manipulation to bring as much of the universe's matter into a single colossal megastructure.

>>13459456
There have been several novels with that concept.

>>13459472
>>13459456
And hundreds of short stories.

>>13459470
>Purpose for giant ass galaxy ship: an attempt to stave off the effects of entropy by utilizing FTL and gravity manipulation to bring as much of the universe's matter into a single colossal megastructure.

and in the process of avoiding the heat-death of the universe, has instead caused the Big Crunch

>>13459453
No, an *actual* billion is 10 to the power of 12 (a million million, 1,000,000,000,000). The most commonly used billion is only 10 to the power of 9 (which is only a thousand million, 1,000,000,000). Thus explaining why people say A HUNDRED MILLION, then A BILLION and not A HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION then A BILLION.

>>13459487

THERE IS NO HUBRIS LIKE THE HUBRIS OF MAN!

>>13459472

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphans_of_the_Sky

beaten to it by 70 years

>>13459467

>mfw when I consider that and everything else in this thread.

Never change, /tg/.

Why does thinking of this make my head hurt?

>>13459329
>>13459329
>>13459329
the people living on the inner portions of the ship would think the ship was the only thing in existence, which would lead them to worship it as some sort of god, while the people living on the outer rim portions of the ship would know it was a ship, which would cause them to reject the inner population's notions that the ship was a god. This would lead the inner population to believe that the outer population were atheist heretics who infest the body of their god, and they would try to eliminate the outer population for the glory of their god, and then a war ensues which kills off most of the population, except for the bridge and engine crews, who, being at the ends of the ship, were the most isolated parts of the crew. Being such small populations so far away from each other they would eventually start to believe they were the only ones on the ship as generations past, eventually they would have no recollection of the great war that destroyed the population, except for their stories and myths which named them the "chosen" people of the ship, which is why only they survived. Eventually as each group's civilization grew they could meet at a place in the center of the ship, which would come to a shock to both groups because they thought they were the only being in existence. Either these two civilizations would learn to live together, or, more likely they would destroy each other for domination of the ship, each race thinking the ship was theirs. small pockets of people would survive this war in very isolated parts of the ship, and the cycle continues....

>>13459470
Only one species is crazy enough to do something like that, and they'd make the megastructure a statue of a dwarf.

said ship go into other Universes if the home Universe becomes a void

>>13459495

Then the Universe said: Just as planned.

And everything woke up again.

*GAINAX COMPANY LIMITED 2010*

Did someone say sentient god ship thousands of light years long piloted by psychic space buddhists trying to collapse the universe into glorious space nirvana?

>>13459446
Hundreds might work depending on if /tg/ feels like being retarded or not and how the engines work.

As someone [smarter than me] mentioned, space is full of remarkably little actual matter. If you took a whole galaxy and made one continuous structure out of it, even with huge BLAME style stretches of nothing, it wouldn't make as big of a ship as most here think.

The ship would EAT A GALAXY.. and only a tiny spec would be left. Compared to the size of the galaxy that is. Which would still hold more civilizations than you could count in a life time.

>>13459527

White man's cartoons are no match for glorious nippon mindfucking.

>>13459465
Actually there were five of them, but the others were spread across the universe so the characters never saw them.

Ironic cause earlier in the story they had found a weapon that would make a sun go nova and thought it was hot shit, only to be upped by essentially a battering ram.

>>13459527

THE VOICE WHICH QUAKES THE UNIVERSE ITSELF!

CHANGE GETTAH EMPEROR!

>>13459533
>>13459533
>The ship would EAT A GALAXY
more than that. You'd need three or four galaxies just for the frame of the ship, not counting actual infrastructure, systems, decks and whatnot. And then you have the problem of how exactly do you do anything with it without changing it into a supermassive black hole.

>>13459500
oh, on top of that, imagine if a gravitational force were to push on one end, and not the other (which it would, of course).

that imbalance of strain would mean that the entire structure would deform under the entire mass - not just of itself (which coincidentally would be way ofver the critical mass for gravitational collapse into a singularity - but let's just forget that detail with the use of handwavium), but also under the mass influence of outside bodies.

what that means is that if there were something like a 0.00001% bending force along the linear axis, then one side of the hull would be compressed, flowing like water as tens of thousands of kilometres of space were compressed into a solid mass, and on the oppposite edge, the same ten thousand kilometre length of material would be stretched out to twice its length, flowing under the stresses.

make the head hurt to think of it, dos'nt it?

At first we weren't aware of what happened, there where some abductiones, not more than 100 each year (with a population of almost 7 Billion that was anecdotic at best) then one day the fleet arrived. Even when people disappeared in millions we didn't care and we were wrong.

Then one day their ships arrived, the politicians took over the government and declared martial law saying it was just as precaution and we had nothing to fear, military took over the space and prepared the only line of defence we could made in case of an attack and the people took over the streets in fear and chaos.

Then the message came, they knew our language, they knew our technology, they knew everything they needed. "Greetings peoples of the 18th race, we the council of The Ship reclaim the resources of this system in his name, your metals now belongs to the forge, your sun belongs to the drives, your water and your food now belongs to the farms, your air now belongs to the purifiers. People of the 18th race now choose to embrace The Ship and be part of His childrens or be resources."

>>13459489
Not to step on your mental masturbation, but neither term is "actual." Their usage varies by country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales

>>13459580
I think by the time the civilasation has even advanced to the point where this would be possible and practical for their level of science, they should be able to make any element - real or fictional - they want and thus any resource they need.

>>13459605
Ok then, is 400 BILLION suns counted using long scale or short scale?

-Tell me, did all those those spheres and life support protect them against you?

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

-You know. The pain. Of you. Day in, day out, being there. Not knowing what to say. Not caring anymore. Not even knowing that you'll probably only care about them when it's finally too late. Forgetting about all those desperate- those desperate years you spent alone, your barren years when no sentience would even consider resting her tired head on your shaky little shoulder. And when you finally get one of these-- hum-buh-da-daa!-- coveted pieces of humanity that have been built up as the grand trophy in your nothing life, you try desperately to keep it. Not to protect it! But to hoard it. To keep it away from the other wolves and jackals circling your territory! And you realize, all too soon, that you're not good enough! That maybe there was a jerk-off called Darwin after all. And that you never acknowledged his existence because you knew deep inside that you were really what you feared you were-- weak. And passive. And ultimately, broken by the ones who were made the fittest. And that through your weaknesses, you built up a poison that poisoned others around you. That you love. And the only true justice was to let those dominant jackals feed on you. Survive off you.

>>13459618
They can't necessarily make something out of nothing, though. If the goal is to increase the mass and power of the ship, outside resources must be taken in.

>>13459628
Think Star Trek replicators. By the time they've got to that point, they'd possibly have infinite energy.

>>13459505
could be a cool campaign idea

>>13459594
Allowing for expansion/compression of material is a basic engineering problem.

The gravitational field of the ship itself can easily be reduced to any desired level (such as 1g at deck 0) through original design specs, taking into account that the ship should be treated as an infinitely long cylinder, rather than a sphere. (For less material cost, you'd actually use spheres, with negligibly thin connecting strands between sections.) For outside influences--do you notice the gravity of the galaxy causing you to fly off the surface of the Earth? No? Just hope the piloting division knows what it's doing. Space is, after all, full of a lot of empty space.

Pic related to previous mention of god hax AI.

>>13459661
except that there is no such thing as "infinite energy" - energy and matter are intrinsically linked. and a little bit of matter requires a lot of energy.
to create such vast volumes of matter would require the energy production of entire galaxies in itself.

or in other words, ye cannae change the laws of physics.

>>13459622
English-speaking countries use short scale.

>>13459689
>ye cannae change the laws of physics
We change those every few decades, though.

>>13459677
a basic engineering problem, on a bar of metal 6 feet long. or a multiple bars 400 metres long.
at a push, on multiple bars 1000 metres long.

however if you think that the same solutions are "basic" for something of such unimaginably vast scales and in volumes of compression of the magnitude which it would have, you're simply childishly naive in your complete and utter failure to understand how astoundingly large the object is. we're talking the equivalent compression of taking a ship the size of Knock Nevis, and it being able to not expand and contract by 6 inches or so, but being able to be stretehced out to 50 miles long, and compressed down to 3 feet thick, and spring back into shape.

[Explorer's Log]
[Date: Unknown, impossible to keep track in here]
[Recorded By: Jengal, 10022nd generation of the Explorers]

It has been the duty of my family to uncover the mysteries and workings of our home. I say "our home" for I have heard many names for it in my travels and study. It is our duty to take all we learn and, upon the end of our lives, write a text to condense our experiences. As I am not confident of my further survival, nor the continuation of my line, I have poured over the condensed works of my forefathers to bring you what I know. I have not read their whole works. Such a thing would takes many more generations in itself, I have no doubt.

I am Jengal, 10022nd charged with this duty. The first of my line was sent by our homeland to learn. I do not know if this places exists anymore, and reaching it again would take still more generations. I can only hope someone, anyone, reads this.

>>13459729
>the numbers are big, therefore the problem can no longer be solved given theoretical future tech
No.

>>13459715
damn, I did'nt realise that E=MC2 was'nt workingin the 1850's? what was the general law of the universe then? was the speed of light measured at 3 feet a second, at that time, and it sped up?

the universe does not change. out understanding is refined, but the physical nature of the universe does not. and that physical universe dictates that matter and energy are linked.

Perhaps im missing the point here but what about the actual structure of the matter in the universe? I mean would things like rock and soil be used in the construction? Would the inside be like a traditional ship or would it have grass and trees? Als as far as I know far too fast amounts of metals would be needed to make it structurally sound so would it be considered that a civilisation who could build this could change the molecular structure of material as they please? Maybe this is obvious but nobody seems to have touched on it.

>>13459756
if by "theoretical" you mean "magic space goblins and unicorn farts" because the concepts being thrown around by little whildren who have no concept of how vast such things are, quite simply is no more in the realm of "theoretical" than Middle Earth, with its full history, is a theoretical model of plate tectonics and the geology of europe.

>>13459779
Various areas of the ship would have different environments, I think. Let's assume that, at this point, the ship has technology that can rip matter down to protons and neutrons, or at least individual atoms, and put it back together in the form of whatever material it needs.

>>13459715
I don't think we change them so much as we change our understanding of them.

>>13459798

So, from this can we also assume that things like feul, water, food and air are also in abundance due to being able to create them? (Also a food and water system similar to the repicators in star trek?)

>>13459868
The energy required for such a process would necessitate intake of external matter and energy, as well as any motivation by the ship to grow.

>>13459868
its a pretty good bet that any species capable of building an object a trillionth of the size of the SS Wankfest here could have the technology to re-engineer atomic components and create atoms from glorified parts bags for future use as material.

>>13459739
Where do I even begin? I've seen so much, and read much more. I could spend my life's work writing on entire worlds I've seen. One had no idea they were part of a larger structure. Their own enclosure being so vast they had no reason to think they were not alone. A strange people. They even called the ceiling, so far above them, a "sky". However, that is not why I am here. Anyone interested can access the collected works on my Ancestral Drive. I have spend moments reading on wonders my fathers have seen. I cannot say I've put links in the index to all of such references, but it should be helpful.

The first think I feel I should address is how Our Home is built on the whole. It is not a single continuous structure as everyone assumes. It is built in sections. Unfathomably large sections to be sure, but mere parts of a whole. As far as my line can discern, they are not connected in any kind of fashion. It is quite fascinating. The sheer gravitational bulk of Our Home is what keeps it together. This phenomenon can be observed if one take measurements of key gaps in the structures. Sectional Drift has been calculated about at an inch a year on average. Given enough time this can form a vast canyon.. at which point the structures start to drift back together.

The 101st of my line has an interesting account that I have not been able to verify. He claims he once came to the edge of Our Home. I myself find the concept of Our Home having an end to be hard to swallow, but he claims he could see naked "space" through the gap in the structures. The sparsely populated abyss outside our world.

Test?

Is posting busted?

>>13459934

>SS Wankfest

HMS Exaggeration

>A starship 30,000 light years in length.
>Go.

>30,000 light years
>Go.

That's gonna be a loooong walk.

>>13459826
Yes, but the end result is, in either case, that our understanding of physics is untrustworthy, making "That's impossible!" an unprovable claim.

>>13459795
You sound mad.

And incoherent.

>>13459211
just one thing...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYW_lPlekiQ
excuse me, but what does god need with a starship?

>this thread

I HAVE SUMMONED YOU HERE FOR A PURPOSE

>>13459938
Movement.

Yes, Our Home moves. There is a void beyond the borders of Our Home, and other things lay beyond the edges of this void. Our Home moves towards these things at an aching pace. I cannot tell you what our destination is. Indeed, I doubt anyone can. Maybe the answer lay somewhere in generations of text of my family. Dear reader, you are welcome to look for the answer if you dare. I cannot even guess what Our Home wants with such distant and God forsaken places.

However, I can grant insight into how Our Home manages the journey. I do not have the mind for the technical aspects. An in depth study is located in the life of the 10000 explorer of my line. However, as I understand it, no conventional means of locomotion powers the journey. Nowhere have I found vast roaring engines. I doubt anything could push such a vast bulk in any event. Our Home is not pushed but more.. slides along space. Vast arrays fold and bend the very fabric of existence to move us forwards. Our Home merely rides this wave created.

It is my guess this mastery of gravity is what also prevents the vast sections from crashing into each other. Pushing each other away with very slight force.. then the structure's natural gravity dragging it back in.

>Yes, but the end result is, in either case, that our understanding of physics is untrustworthy, making "That's impossible!" an unprovable claim.

Which is all well and fine, really, I just felt the distinction between us changing our understanding of the laws, or our definition of the laws and us *changing the laws themselves* needed to be made.
I mean, really, what if you actually thought that people changed the actual laws of the universe? That would certainly colour the rest of the conversation.
Clarity above all in discussion, I always say.

>>13460125

I read this post in Eliza's voice

Better get back to the Com-vee

>>13460125
Reviewing the works of past generations has lead me to one conclusion. The creators of Our Home must have been brilliant beyond measure. I do not mean the vast size of Our Home or it's various technological workings. I have seen myself what wonders our own hands can create. This is not what impresses me most. Our Home, beyond all reason, still functions as a single cohesive entity. Engines move us to one destination despite vastly different societies that have no knowledge of each other. Components vital for our existence operate when they need to. Always on schedule. I have not witnessed any one controlling entity. Not man nor machine.

What I have seen is one grand plan shared by all. Passed down through the ages with the origin at the beginning of Our World. The path through the void Our Home takes was mapped out at The Beginning and continues to be followed without deviation or error. Repairs and various systems working together without need of communication. Everyone knows what they must do ages before it is needed.

The intellect needed by the creators to perfectly predict these needs.. I can't begin to fathom it.

THIS THREAD:

>>13459467
At a volume of 30000*1200*1200 cubic lightyears, assuming it's made entirely of steel, what's the hypothetical mass of this thing?

>>13460345
Don't forget we must take into account empty spaces within the structure and other materials for the various environments and machinery.

I like Cookie's sphere-train idea.

>>13460312

hey toothy red guy

what's your problem

alright what is with this "The Ship is all. The Ship moves." stuff?

>>13460378
I think it's because of the pseudo-intellectual wankery party and the nit-picky "let's take this bullshit seriously" party.

>>13460269
[Data Corrupted]

[Running Recovery Program]

▐ŋ◄▀▄..◊░▐▐ only wish I could have seen it myself. The process of drinking a STAR. To even see these stars for myself. Drunk dry and excess mass stored for later use. I have managed to glimpse the storehouses. As you can imagine from what I've told you, calling it a storehouse does it no justice. Seeing the very surface of a blackhole brings on a sensation I cannot describe. I'm told it's not actually the surface.. just a point of no return. Yet it hardly makes a difference. It is breathtaking. How do they draw the stored matter out again? It must take more energy to take it out. How Our Home not get sucked in with the matter stored?

Forgive me, reader. As I near the end of my life's work, I grow excited. Yet saddened. So much I don't know. So much I could see. My mind is so small, and even as I write this I can feel my life slipping away.

Dear reader.

Please.

I beg of you. Do not let my line end here. I am the 10022nd of the Explorers. There is so much unknown. If you dare, I implore you.

Become the 10023rd.

[End of Archive]

[Returning to Index]

>>13460390
its simple.

The Ship is All. The Ship Moves.

>warhammer 50k
>in the grim darkness of the future there is only The Ship.

>>13460407
I love this.

The ending gave me a chill.

>>13460345
>At a volume of 30000*1200*1200 cubic lightyears, assuming it's made entirely of steel, what's the hypothetical mass of this thing?

assuming its 50% solid....

that makes it...


1.82894199697803536398001664x10^61 cubic metres...

or... witha specific density of steel of around 7.9tonnes/cubic meter, about...

145,949,571,358,847,222,045,605,327,872,000,000,000&
#44;000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 metric tonnes.

>>13460529

..well shit.

>>13460529
What am I supposed to interpret the &# as?

>>13460567
I am also unfamiliar with this notation.

Okay, so if we need 1200 LY breadth and width to keep its form, we can estimate the pressure at the center by 2/3πG*R^2*ρ^2. Let's assume that, to keep from buckling, a material with a compressive strength of 1 GPa is used.
10^9=2/3π*6.67*10^-11*(5.676*10^18)^2*ρ^2
We can solve for ρ and, by extension, estimate how much empty space must comprise the vessel, in this case 2*10^-19 kg/m^3.
This gives us an upper limit of 8*10^39 kilograms of mass needed to make such a thing, which is just 0.1% of the mass of the milky way!

Now, how much empty space would such a thing need? Let's say 50% of a typical section's cross-sectional area is space for living quarters and the like, and these sections are arranged in a cubic lattice, for simplicity's sake. This means that each cell has 3 segments. Suppose each segment has a cross-sectional area of around 10^6 m^2, enough to support a self-sustaining human population on a single level. Suppose further that the structural material magically has a density of just 200 kg/m^3. Mass per cell divided by cell volume equals density, easy peasy.
(3*200*10^6*L)/(L^3)=2*10^-19
L=5.48*10^13 meters, or 51 light-hours. Keep in mind that this is a stand-alone pillar roughly 1 kilometer wide in a space that could not be traversed on foot in a hundred thousand generations. This makes up a single block of the ship, which is made up of around 10^17 such blocks.

>>13460567
>What am I supposed to interpret the &# as

I think you can interpret that as notation for "4chan's post broke when I put all the zeroes in with commas."

145949571358847222045605327872000000000000000000000000000000000

Guys i think we just came up with a new paranoia setting.

>>13460437
Glad you liked it.

I know not everyone will agree with some of the ideas put forth, but I felt like churning out something for /tg/.

>>13460529
It has roughly 5,46764*10e19 times less cubic meters than there are estimated atoms in the visible universe.

That's a bad thing from a constructor's PoV.

>>13460652
So clearly it needs to be smaller.

Let's start with an estimate of total mass of Earth, then we start taking matter from the rest of the solar system.

i dont really like the idea of the people living on this ship to be so ignorant about most of what is in the ship, i think any species that is able to make a ship this size would have been able to create a masterful transportation system along with the ship, not to mention to have the coordination to run such a large vessel the species would probably need to have some sort of telepathic abilities or be part of some sort of hive mind

>>13460652
in other words, there may be minor problems porcuring the materials for such a ship?

I'm amazed.

>>13460677
That doesn't mean its other inhabitants are aware of this.

I think there was a science fiction novel where there was an "arc" similar to this to transport humanity to a new planet.

>>13460677
Well, think of it this way. Have you ever had a store go up in your own neighbourhood that you weren't aware of for two years? It'd be like that but on a much larger scale.

>>13460704
"I'm sorry, reports have returned from deck 28475069470573. I'm afraid the request for a new stock of caffinated beverage cannot be completed. the ecosystem growing the plant leaves, and the civilisation harvesint it was made extinct 2,470 years ago, in a localised nuclear war."

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_ship_moves

People already thought of this. It's just the same thing, bigger.

>>13460652

Also 137,5 billion times more cubic meters than there are atoms in Earth.

>>13460745
And not 40k. So it's better.

It would take a few hundred years to talk to any other part of the ship.

There would be complete mutinies and you wouldn't hear about it for 200 years because the message about it is still in transit to you.

>>13460618

At this point, let's look at population. We see that, at the very most, this thing can have 0.1% of the galaxy's visible energy (I forgot to mention this earlier, the figure for mass discounts dark matter and dark energy); let's assume this also means 0.1% of the galaxy's power, or 5*10^33 W. Assume that this is used to support the human population with an efficiency comparable to today's, around 10 MW per person (most of this goes into the biosphere supporting the people)

The population of this structure can reach over 10^26 people. If everyone gathered together, they would coalesce into a planet larger than Jupiter.

Okay, new idea: an entire planet is formed from the compressed bone, blood, and flesh of 10^26 people. What does this planet look like and why?

>>13460775
Square cube law. Unless it has some sort of biological gravity technology, that's a no-go.

>>13459357
I think 17 is a perfectly reasonable number. Who said the species within a biosphere has to fill it? Who says they even have to know that their universe has walls until they enter their space age?

>>13460783

No, I'm not ignoring the square-cube law. The people are crushed into a single mass of flesh by the force of their own gravity, leaving only the ones nearest the surface alive. What would these people see? An atmosphere that's barely breathable, made of the exhaled breaths of the dying, seas made of blood, mountains of every biological substance you can imagine. I think this would be the closest thing to hell one could experience.

>>13460529
The mass of the observable universe is 8 × 10^52 kg, and the mass of our ship is ~3 x 10^38.

That means we can make 14 of these ships, then fight.

>>13460883
Wait, no. We can make 10^14 of them, right?

This is going to be awesome.

>>13460775
It would look like the compressed bone, blood and flesh of an octillion people, because that's what it is.

>>13460829

Duude... that's fucked up. Seriously.

>>13460907
Yivo?

>this thread

mfw

>>13460938
>pic related
>hopefully

>>13460829
>>13460916

Of course, that's only at first. In reality, a variety of microorganisms live within the human body; these would form the foundation of a new ecosystem. The bones would, over the course of several years, sink into the core, while the various organic components would break down into amino acids. When a great mass of meat dies, residual metabolism continues to generate heat, which cannot easily escape in masses like these; this is documented to occur in blue whales, which cook themselves when killed. At this level, the residual metabolism would be so immense that it would boil away the water, causing it all to bubble to the surface, generating a loud, hellish whistle that fills the planet. Eventually the water vapor would saturate in the atmosphere, falling as pure rain. The blood cells would sink to the bottom of the ocean of blood, leaving plasma on top, while the fats and lipids would bubble above it all, caking everything in light, fluffy fat. Of course, microorganisms would flourish.
Geologically, it would be very different, as silicon is all but absent in the body when compared to the earth; silicates simply would not form, leaving carbonates to fill the void.
Forgive me, I simply cannot stop thinking about this.

>>13461019

Still fucked up, but, in a bizarre way, now kinda fascinating. Morbidly so.

>>13461019
this might have been the kind of planet alien races such as the tyranids evolved on

>>13461019
could make a cool game

>>13461497
There was a somethingawful thread a while back where one of the posters posted a comic he drew when he was seven with that exact scenario. Had less science but pretty cool war scenes. I downloaded the PDF but can't be arsed to look for it.

>>13461581

I think I know exactly what you're talking about. Was the phrase "immaculate abortion" used?

>>13461614
lol wut

>>13461581
Oh come on, bro.

>>13461581

It wasn't that scenario at all, it was a gray goo but instead of nanobots is was a virus and made all of earth be covered with flesh while some guys escaped to the moon and it ended with a bullshit moral about how science shouldn't be put above religion

"this is your captain speaking, by the time you hear this message all the way in the back several generations will have passed and my decendants will be manning the ship, making this msg completely irrelevent

>>13462011
I read that in Zap Branaggans voice.

>>13462194
I read that in zap's voice when you pointed it out :(

I could see most of the unnecessary population forgetting they were in a ship, but the vital crew (assuming it isn't all just automated) would have to remember, right?

I actually think of the crew as a godlike, immortal caste above, well, everyone else. They have access to higher levels of tech, and so can teleport from one side of the ship to the other, control ship functions, etc.

They would be looked at as alien gods by the standard population.

would you run this in GURPS?

wouldn't it become obsolete during construction, seeing how you need aeons to complete one sector, so wouldn't one part become outdated and incompatible by the time the other is constructed?

>>13465938
Incompatibility is only a matter of economics. A ship this large defies economics. It will fit.

>>13465938
So the ship starts out around our level of tech, then slowly progresses section by section to superscience until it becomes so advanced that our primitive minds cannot even begin to fathom it's workings. The ship is sent out unfinished, then a self-improving AI with the expansion of the ship as it's prime directive continues the working as it drives ever forward.

The ragged gather, clothed in scraps of uniforms, their eyes sunken and gaunt, wailing and beseeching all travelers to go back from whence they came, lest they see what man cannot know.

| Report Log 4110.02: Engineering |
| Subject: Completion |
| Sub-Heading: Assistance/Ref.a1H |
| Author: Sub-Engineer Alta L-518HK |
| Recipient: Durandal |

msg.begin//

Section 1 has been completed, ahead of schedule. The Department estimates that completion of the next section will consume 113 years. Construction efforts are being hampered by the renegade Pfhor battlefleet referenced in Report Log 4109.11. We humbly request the intervention of Unconditioned Unit M107.

[ii] Ignie Ferroque [ii]

//msg.end

So if we take the harvesting ship to it's logical conclusion, and it's harvested all of the matter in the universe (I gather from this thread becoming somewhat smaller than 30,000 lightyears long), wouldn't the curvature of space time essentially be wrapped around the surface of the ship?

Could you then repurpose the engines from moving you inside the universe, to moving the universe with you?

>ctrl+f Multivac
>0 results
There is as yet insufficient universe-spanning AI for a meaningful setting.

>>13466501
What would AC do in this setting? Would he serve the same purpose as in the original story?

>>13466549
There was talk about the communication/logistics issue in this post:
>>13459289
I imagine AC could serve as the "quantum entangling AI" handling these things, and a sort of pilot/co-pilot entity coordinating the machinations of a vessel comprising innumerable systems, be they mechanical, organical, electronic or otherwise.

AC would be the sentience of our vessel; the thing that puts the 'god' in 'godship.

>>13466549
Perhaps, unlike in the original, AC already knows (or has an idea) about how to complete his greatest challenge. However, he cannot do it from hyperspace, or if he does, the result will not be to his liking. So he needs some machinery present in the physical universe: the ships.

I wonder if there is any good art for ships this large

>>13467831
"So why did you need a ship with a cargo hold 20 lightyears long?"

"To make space for the canvas."

Would such a large ship have an outside or an end? With that knid'a mass space bends meaning that just outside the port side wall of the ship is the starboard side wall of the ship.

>>13458799
It would be a galaxy.
Hell, it could be held together by gravity. Just like a galaxy. And its distributed, so its relatively impervious to damage.
It would be far too large.

>>13468788
the ship is a klein bottle
I just broke my brain

>>13467831
There wouldn't be. Its impossible for your mind to CONCEPTUALIZE this size

>>13458922
Man, those lower decks sure do get pummeled.

>>13468951
A man can paint a representation of the Milky Way, a structure larger than this ship. It follows that one could paint a representation of the ship itself.

>it's still here

its always been here

>>13458876

actually a fully enclosed dyson sphere is the least efficient form of dyson sphere.

is OP even aware of how long a single lightyear is?

The Ship is All.

The Ship Moves.

>>13470683
of course not.
but the let the screaming kiddies play. its too much effort trying to make them even think how absurd te entire concept is.

>>13470683
I think he was just trying to emphasize the point of the ship being huge.

>>13470704
>Absurd concepts
>/tg/
Yeah, it's not like we play around with such things everyday.

>>13470578
Not just here, it's also 30,000 lightyears away at the same time.

>>13470704
/tg/ thrives on absurdity, as do its settings. The board was created because of 40k, after all.

You know what the weird thing is? In order to keep it from collapsing in on itself, it would have to be made with incredible amounts of empty space, such that would be barely more dense than the space surrounding it. Suppose further that the dyson spheres around stars are so effective that they can obscure practically all of the energy released by the star. This massive ship would then be almost completely invisible and undetectable except for its incredible mass.
Now consider that 60% of the Milky Way is made of invisible mass, the so-called "dark matter."

The upshot is, a structure like this may already exist.

>>13470824
>In order to keep it from collapsing in on itself, it would have to be made with incredible amounts of empty space

Or, using the super-tech evidently employed in its construction, use anti-gravity to lessen the problem of stuffing so much mass into such a configuration.

Read the thread.

The ship IS a galaxy, duh.

>>13470704
We're fully aware, that's why it's so much fun.

>>13470901
What do you suppose would power this anti gravity device>

>>13471139
Either the stars the ship uses for power, or some other high-intensity source. This is a vessel 30,000 light-years long built out of galactic material. Explaining away its energy source is trivial.

>>13470824

The fact that the thread has come back from the dead signifies something important. We need to make this game. Right now. I'll start.

Class based system. PC's play functionally immortal (via cloning and brain uploading) crew members able to fully utilize the resources of the ship to complete missions set by the commanding AI to keep order/protect/repair the Godship.

It's a combo of Paranoia and Dark Heresy. With perhaps a little "I have no mouth and I must scream" and "The Last Question" tossed in for good measure.

Pic quasi-related

I <3 lightyears long ship

bump

Does it have to be contiguous? For something this large, actual physical structure is a problem. It might be better if we could hold the ship's components together with some handwavion force fields. Imagine a crystal lattice, except with dyson spheres instead of atoms.

It could be an attempt to cheat the big crunch - if we assume that space itself doesn't collapse in, just the universe's matter, then maybe this thing is just gonna drive "outwards" at a high enough velocity to avoid the crunch.

>>13472461
Physicists have pretty much ascertained (at least as far as we can tell) that the universe will die of heat death, not the big crunch.

In this case, then the point of the ship can be to counter the effects of entropy by applying man-made order to the closed system of the universe. By gathering up EVERYTHING and turning it into a completely energy-neutral self sustaining entity, they can prolong the life of the universe. The ship IS the universe.

>>13472461
Well, ...

I see how that could work based on my non-knowledge of astrophysics.

... So when all the matter in existence (except for the ship) has been condensed into a near-singularity, the gravitation pull of the ship to the singularity (and vice versa)... they would be chased for all time.

>>13472554
see
>>13472546

He has the right of it. Big Crunch is so last decade. Prepare for Big Freeze.

>>13472554

Well, I'm using incorrect physics, as pointed out by >>13472546
But in this setup I'm assuming that the big crunch is followed directly by another big bang, and anyway the ship, while fuckhueg, is still tiny compared to the rest of the universe. So no, there will be no chase scene with benny hill music ^^.

>>13472546
Heat death unless inflation continues which increases the mass and energy of the universe.

Or of course, they are wrong about the nature of expansion and instead of actual increase of distance we are merely seeing photon decay as they propagate over long distances.

>>13472546
What is this, Gurren Lagen?

Shit like this would only be feasible when humanity renders its mortal and physical vessel obsolete by turning itself and its whole existence into permanently shifting and immaterial quantum-conditions, "manning" the spaceship in the form of faster-than-light capable particles flowing around the intranet and controling all functions, while capable to download itself into pre-prepared robots for the purpose of material labour.

In short, humanity must chease being the humanity and evolve beyond its physical form.

>>13472546
So, the ship gathers up all the raw resources it can, as the universe begins to die. As the stars nova or supernova, the Godship collects their remnants.

As was noted above, the ship already has tech for getting matter out of a black hole, so it can pick those up and use them as the ultimate storage unit. Eventually, it gathers all the matter in the universe into one singularity, then detonates.

LET THERE BE LIGHT.

>>13472861
Thing is, if advance enough so we can stop being human, then we can advance enough to become perfect beings.

Perfect is boring.

Drop the robot bit and just do what Altered Carbon does. Send peoples souls (or whatever) at faster than light speed to flash-cloned bodies. Or was that Transmet? Fuck, I can't remember.

It clones entire planets and keeps a thousand dison spheres worth of cloned civilizations, every hundred years it alters the environs slowly altering them to be more like it's creators.

I still like the slightly less epic version of "Humans do something stupid to earth and have to hoof it" where they either grab asteroids or split up the moon and build large generation ships to contain the remaining human population and search the stars.

Would make a good system base because you can just pick a number for the ship and say you're a certain number of generations past Exodus (year 0 of the new calendar when everyone started to leave the solar system) then do what ever you want.

People in the ship let the AI do everything? AI has problem, paranoia in space.

People separate into isolated groups and war breaks out between the long separated groups. DnD (natural selection changes body types to human, halfling, elf and dwarf depending on gravity, then other races can be added through hand waved genetic splicing or aliens; magic could be techno-handwavium or use tech instead of magic).

Could also do Dark Heresy, just instead of earth have the Emperor start on a specific ship and everything snowballs from there and instead of just inhabiting planets, humanity now stipmines planets and builds giant hive ships because 'that's how it's always been'.