Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

The real advantage compound bow is that the cams allow the mechanical tension in the system to drop off at full draw, this allows any given archer to handle a heavier bow than they might otherwise be able to handle and to hold the bow at full draw longer without as much fatigue.

Not having used a compound bow I don't know how true that is or isn't. However, that is not what I was addressing. I was addressing the ability to construct one out of the materials available on Chaos and how useful it would be in the daily life and combat situations on Chaos.

The only time I saw two archers demonstrate the use of a longbow and compound bow in a combat situation the longbow archer was able to get more shots away with accuracy than the compound bow archer was.

However, I suspect the telling point is where the wikipedia article on compound bows talks about the higher-technology construction. Most compound bows are made from aluminum or magnesium alloys or carbon fiber or fiberglass - none of which are available on Chaos. Neither are polyethylene strings.

The only metals clearly stated as being available on Chaos are copper, bog iron, gold, silver, lead, and nickel which severely limits the types of metalic things you can make. How that affects the quality of the metal strings you'd have available is another issue.

You are actually missing the real advantage of a compound bow, either a normal bow or or crossbow.

The main advantage of a normal bow over a crossbow is the speed of use. While crossbows gave higher power and were easier to use with less training they were slower to load and more cumbersome to carry and use.

There are hand cranked/lever crossbows that with practice, can come very close to the fire rate of a standard bow. The crank does not require the use of the stirrup to draw it

True, but you need to keep in mind the economy of Chaos and the availability of the materials as well. A car made out of solid titanium would be better than the current steel cars, but would it be worth the cost to make it?

Crossbows use some metal components, but the ones on Chaos are often hardwood where we would use metal or cast iron simply because there is no readily available steel as a general rule. Some Heroes are introducing ways to make small quantities of low quality steel that's better than the iron they have, but the tech just is not there.

If they are at a Medieval Europe level of tech, it ought to be there.

Just not possible if you do not have the proper source materials to do it with. What was available on Earth is not what was available on Chaos.

Bog iron is very different to iron ore in its properties and what you can do with it. Also, there is no coal on Chaos and there is no iron ore until after Kyle makes the deal to have some placed there by Mac to replace the Stishovite quartz being removed. Chaos is not a normal planet, but was created by a bunch of meteor smacking together.

edit to add: What was done on Earth from iron ore is not what can be done from bog iron.

If any steel at all is made,

And that is the main failure point right there. Bog iron is available in low quantities. However, in Shiloh some iron ore is made available. In some of my stories I do have the Hero introducing the use of high carbon sand to to improve the carbon content of the iron used to make swords.

I'm not sure of how far apart they are, but the high carbon steel you need is a long way from the bog iron that's available. - commonly goethite (FeO(OH)) - - not many carbon atoms in that lot.

Until the Nickel is found and identified in Shiloh it's not recognized or used, so only the few trained at Shiloh would use it to improve the iron to make some steel.

Also no furnaces of any sort while some Heroes are introducing hotter kilns and the like, I don't see quality steel being available, and it it was it would be worth a huge fortune to make it or something from it.

Ordinary forging with a coal forge will turn any iron into at least low-grade steel.

Where are you going to find the coal in the first place?

I'd have to check to be sure, but I'm pretty sure coal is not a naturally occurring material on Chaos. That's why everyone has wood fires.

For the record, the thousands of armed troops in the wars that were killed; leaves unsaid just how those troops were armed if iron is that rare.

In the stories Lazlo wrote he mentions the wide spread use of wood and boiled leather for armor, and the widespread use of spears, bows and arrows with only the richer officers having swords, also many people had swords made from hardwood or used clubs. While their equivalent of the middle class had metal table knives many of the poorer people used knives made from hardwood. Bone knives are also common. Most household items made out of metal were made from copper or pewter, so I'd guess some of the knives may have been pewter as well.

NB: I don't think Lazlo went into too much detail as to what was and what wasn't made of iron or steel or their quality beyond stating bog iron was the only iron around and the steel was low rare and low quality due to the lack of suitable ways of making steel.

I did open the gates a bit for more advancements when I got Lazlo to agree to allow Kyle to do the deal with Mac in Shiloh where they took away the stishovite and gave him iron ore and other ores in it's place. Add in Kyle and Al teaching a few people how to make steel by increasing the carbon content with high carbon sands and the like as well as the forge welding techniques, the improvement of steel is now happening on Chaos. Thus, if you set your story a few years after Shiloh you should have access to some limited quantities of better quality steel at Shiloh and the places where Al has been at work. However, you'll still be limited to cast or hammered metal construction.

You could always do a time travel story and have someone go back to the middle ages where they either have a compound bow or make one.

it makes no sense that they would not be able to make steel from it.

It makes sense. Per canon, the blacksmiths and metal workers do not know how to improve the quality of the bog iron.

Just because the people of Earth knew how to do something during our Middle Ages, doesn't mean the knowledge is available on Chaos.

Just because the people of Earth knew how to do something during our Middle Ages, doesn't mean the knowledge is available on Chaos.

It has been mentioned in the stories that Chaos got a large part of its population from Medieval Europe. Present day Chaosians may have lost the knowledge of how to make steel, but some of the original inhabitants most certainly would have known.

got a large part of its population from Medieval Europe

Yes the Powers that Be made Chaos and transferred entire villages to Chaos. I vaguely recall that they also modified the inhabitants' memories' to eliminate certain knowledge about technology and suppress inventiveness.

Just because the people of Earth knew how to do something during our Middle Ages, doesn't mean the knowledge is available on Chaos.

Part of some of the more recent stories is for a few of the Heroes to introduce ways of improving steel etc. to various places on Chaos on their visits. However, iron and metal products are very expensive and anything made from an improved steel would be very expensive. The costs would be akin to people wanting to buy titanium products today instead of plain steel variants.

Yes I have been reading those stories. The Heroes' are gradually improving technology and educating the Chaosians.

That sounds very much like the descriptions of Chaos to me.

Facts are irrelevant in light of that, but stop with the attempts of rewriting actual history and science please.

Except one minor detail - you know how to do something, presuming you have the materials to do so. If those materials DO NOT EXIST where you are, then all your knowledge is worth ... nothing. Not unless you can come up with an acceptable substitute. And that may not be possible.

Last time I looked, the Chaos novels all happen to contain one pretty important tag. Science Fiction. Not fantasy, which you would see in a magic-using universe, just as a point of reference. And that means that since Chaos is NOT Terra, was NOT formed the way Terra was formed, is NOT kept that way by an advanced civilization, then just because you can rub two sticks together on Terra and create a multi-folded steel sword HERE does NOT mean that you can do the same thing THERE.

I have no doubt that you are quite capable of surviving on Terra should the fecal matter hit the rotary oscillating device. Many of us who have gone through appropriate service branch survival training, and who also happen to be handy with primitive tools, are as well. You're not that one of a kind bird that the only way to catch is unique up on him. (Yeah, that's my pun of the day.)

You're making multiple flawed arguments without realizing the fatal flaw in them. You presume that those medieval Europeans that were first stuck on Chaos actually were smart enough to know how to do what you propose. Think about this - you're planning on grabbing a bunch of people. Do you get the big town, where if everyone goes missing, there's bound to be an investigation, even if it turns up nothing? Or do you grab the small, isolated place - maybe a family here, a family there, at best a collection of huts with some half-trained blacksmith who knows how to make a horseshoe, but has no further metal working skill than that, because he never HAD to learn it. Did you ever bother to consider, in all your posts and arguments, that perhaps the reason the natives had never done what you say they HAD to do is that no one that was transplanted actually knew HOW to do it?

Last time I looked, the Chaos novels all happen to contain one pretty important tag. Science Fiction.

One tenant of good 'Science Fiction' is that it follows the laws of physics while perhaps using imaginative or creative (impossible by our current level of tech) technology to circumvent those laws. It does not ignore those laws. Light speed limit? No problem! Star Gates, warp drives, hyperspace - whatever floats the author's boat, but the author must realize that one cannot simply use a straight Newtonian drive to accelerate past light speed. Same for Inertia. It exists. Deal with it. Inertia dampers or whatever.

On Chaos so many scientific facts are ignored as if they do not exist that the DiD universe should be considered pure Fantasy. For a planet to be low in iron because it was created by asteroids crashing together is silly, (How do you think the earth was created? "Carl, put your hand down.") unless the Super-Aliens hand-crafted Chaos with carefully selected stony asteroids - and I do not recall that. I've not read anything that suggests Chaos is a giant planet, which it would need to be to have gravity similar to earth with it's lower overall mass (stone vs. iron). Chaos' sun is earthlike, so it will send out a constant stream of deadly solar radiation. If Chaos lacks iron, there is nothing there to generate and maintain Van-Allen belts, which would make Chaos unable to support life - except perhaps for some radiation-hardened microbes. For Chaos to be somewhat Earth-sized and habitable with normal gravity while still lacking iron, then it has to be completely hand-crafted by super powerful aliens. Those aliens would have needed to provide Chaos with an artificial Van-Allen shield to protect its life from solar radiation and an artificial gravity generator at it's core to boost gravity to acceptable Earthlike levels. That vapor cloud will be stripped away by the solar wind unless it is artificially maintained & renewed - and I think it is a stretch to assume a vapor cloud will be enough to protect from solar radiation.

Considering that at least a couple of DiD stories refer to Chaos indigenous life (even non-human intelligence), I cannot reconcile that with a completely artificial world. If Evolution of life occurred on Chaos, then I have to assume the rest of the planet also evolved naturally. This conflicts with the DiD Canon stating that Chaos was terraformed. It does not state that Chaos was artificially created from scratch. This leads me to conclude that Chaos must have a liquid iron core & active plate tectonics. We have an example of a planet without a molten core right next door - Mars. It lacks a radiation belt and is dead for all practical purposes. So, either Chaos exists as described in Canon in a universe ruled by physics with much more alien tech on the planet than is stated in the Canon, or it is magic. Thus my argument that the Science Fiction label is incorrect.

One more small point, if the aliens can create something that specifically suppresses gunpowder without interfering with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics everywhere else on Chaos, then they are Gods & not aliens and it is magic - not science.

I freely admit I came to the DiD universe late, and by then the majority of the Universe rules etc were established. Since then I did get permission to fiddle with the edges a little and I did gather all of the rules together to make it easier to understand them.

Here's how the situation with Chaos as a planet :

1. Some aliens found a planet sized object that was a collection of a bunch of meteorites or asteroids or whatever circling a sun.

2. The aliens transformed it to be like a normal planet.

3. They placed an energy field around the new planet to keep most harmful radiation out (not fully defined) and to inhibit certain types of chemical reactions (which is why gunpowder doesn't explode). This field keeps the planetary surface temperature fairly stable despite there being no molten core to it.

4. The aliens gathered a bunch of humans from Earth, played with their minds a little, and placed them on the planet. They also placed some endangered Earth species on the planet. They may have even obtain specimens on fauna from an earlier period to place on the new planet. (Want a few Cornish Pixies anyone?)

5. Some other aliens have crash landed on the planet at times as well (see Dragon Dilemma).

6. For some unknown reason there is no natural iron ore (although some unnatural iron ore is now available - happened in Shiloh with permission of Lazlo), and the most common metal is copper. Pewter is also available, so that suggest some lead and tin is around in reasonable quantities. Large quantities of taenite (a nickel and iron compound) are on the planet but only recently identified as a usable metal (see Shiloh). There is gold and silver as well.

7. There is no moon, but there are tides - damned if I know why, but they were put there by Lazlo before my time.

8. Transport to and from the planet is mostly via teleportation devices.

9. There is some sort of time warping effect in place which I don't understand at all, beyond the effect it is stated to have.

If anyone needs answers beyond this and what's in the Book of Rules (which is more focused on the people side of things), then they need to get themselves to Crossroads and ask the AIs or the aliens there.

Ernest, your summary of the Canon actually makes my point. What's my point? DiD is Fantasy. Too many points in the Canon contradict known physics, and it is stated that Earth, Cassandra, Crossroads & Chaos are all in the same universe. The laws of space & time are consistent everywhere in the universe. If Lazlo had simply stated or implied that they were in parallel universes or dimensions then all problems could be resolved with the statement that each had different laws of physics. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, planetary formation (a planet sized pile of asteroid rubble IS a planet. Gravity will pull all the pieces into a spherical shape. Subsequent bombardment will heat & melt everything together. Gravity will pull the heavier elements to the core. etc. etc.) A protostar lacking iron in its planetary accretion disk becomes possible. and the unexplainable issues with time flow are resolved - not ignored. The current Canon for DiD contains too many "we don't know how or why" elements to be SciFi in my opinion.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy most DiD stories. I just have issues with some of the more blatant problems with the Canon. DiD DOES NOT take place in an Einsteinian/Hawkings Universe.

The laws of space & time are consistent everywhere in the universe.

Really?

Have we been everywhere in the universe to know that this is true, or is this purely supposition based upon the limited observations we have of the universe?

Our solar system is basically a pimple on the ass of the whole universe. How many black holes have we sent actual probes into, to measure what happens at the event horizon? Oh, wait - I know the answer to that. ZERO.

We have a lot of theories, and we sort of HOPE the laws of space and time are consistent, but we really don't know.

based upon the limited observations we have of the universe?

Well, actually, we have a shitload of observations from the very beginnings of astronomy reaching out hundreds of millions of light years. It all seems to work the same way. Physicists discover new things every year, and some of those are yet to be fully understood. The Grand Unified Theory is still out of reach, but nothing suggests that Einstein, Hawking & even Newton were dead wrong. In the details, maybe, but the general Theories stand up to observation everywhere we look - and modern telescopes can look a damn long way into space. To claim, as you suggest, that observational scientific data is meaningless is irrelevant and a bit ludicrous. It sounds like something a right-wing anti-science bible thumper would spew.

Despite the amount of observational data gathered, we have probably seen less than 5% of what there is to observe. Stating what we believe to be true as true everywhere in the universe is a leap of faith based on assumption.

Despite the amount of observational data gathered, we have probably seen less than 5% of what there is to observe. Stating what we believe to be true as true everywhere in the universe is a leap of faith based on assumption.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2015/10/are-the-laws-of-physics-really-universal/

I've felt water coming out of my kitchen tap. It's wet. I've also felt the water in the Atlantic, Pacific & Indian oceans. It was wet too. So was all the water I've felt coming out of my taps & showers in Europe, Canada & Mexico and every other place I've ever lived or visited. I suppose there could be some water somewhere on Earth that is not wet. I know I've only observed a small percent of all the Earth's water. How silly of me to assume it's all wet. It would be presumptuous of me to assume the water on Europa is wet. That's a whole different world. (moon, actually.) The point is that we may not have observed every little corner of the Universe, but we haven't confined our observations to the hall closet, so to speak. In every direction we look and as far as we can look (currently about 11 billion light years, which is also 11 billion years into the past, the four fundamental forces of physics behave the same. Dark Energy & Dark Matter, while invisible & undetectable, is still observable by it's effect on ordinary matter. In other words, we do not have to see it to know it is there. We do not have to lay our hands on every drop of water on Earth to know it is wet, and we do not have to observe every inch of the Universe to know that the laws are constant. There is not some galaxy somewhere that does not obey the same gravitational constant than ours does, or where electromagnetism behaves fundamentally different.

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2000/11/01/on-earth-as-in-the-heavens

As I said - What we know is true is true until we encounter something new that proves what we know is not true everywhere.

Your entire post regarding water is wet proves that what we know is true, is true; at least until we encounter a situation where water is not wet. Highly unlikely in that specific case.

But we weren't talking about water. What was being addressed is the laws of the universe. There are many locations in our universe that are not known to us and in some of those places, the laws of the universe as we know them may not be true.

Is there a place in our universe where the law of gravity does not apply as we know it. I doubt it, but I can't prove that there is no such place. So until we know that what we believe is true is true throughout the universe, we need to keep an open mind.

Even worse, since we can't go back in time to observe / test how those processes worked in the distant past, we can't draw any new conclusions.

Actually, astronomers do it every day. When we observe a galaxy billions of light years distant, we are also looking billions of years into the past because the light we see today left that galaxy billions of years ago. You should read the articles I linked in my earlier post.

No, that is not the way it works.

To use your concept, the law of mediocrity is always true, until we encounter something that invalidates it.

All I am saying is there may be something in the universe that invalidates the law of mediocrity.

The assumption you have been referring to is formally known as the law of mediocrity. That law states that the basic laws of physics are the same everywhere and everywhen.

In an earlier post, you stated the above. I accepted what you said rather than research what the law of mediocrity meant. What I have been able to find does not support your statement that the basic laws of physics are the same everywhere and every when or your claim that the existence of science depends on the law of mediocrity remaining true.

If you are discussing something other than what I found, you will have to provide a link. What I found is:

The mediocrity principle is the philosophical notion that "if an item is drawn at random from one of several sets or categories, it's likelier to come from the most numerous category than from any one of the less numerous categories".[1] The principle has been taken to suggest that there is nothing very unusual about the evolution of the Solar System, Earth's history, the evolution of biological complexity, human evolution, or any one nation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediocrity_principle

But we weren't talking about water. What was being addressed is the laws of the universe. There are many locations in our universe that are not known to us and in some of those places, the laws of the universe as we know them may not be true.

I think you & I have very different ideas about what the laws of Physics are. They aren't really laws, but are the four fundamental forces that govern how everything in the universe works. Scientists argue about the details of how and why those four forces work, and they are constantly discovering new details about those forces. No scientist argues that those forces do not exist, and no scientist anywhere argues that there is a corner of the universe where they do not work or work differently. That's not to say there are not some crackpot woo-woo ideas floating around out there, but they are nothing more than that. I'm not going to try to discuss that. I am not the dumbfuck whisperer. I cannot prove that gods, unicorns and fairies do not exist either. It's not my job to prove they do not. That claim rests on the shoulders of those making the claim. Let's see some evidence - specifically a paper or papers by respected scientists that have been published in a scientific peer reviewed journal that proposes and provides observations that the fundamental forces of nature are not constant in the universe. I'm sensing a very strong anti-science sentiment from some people in this thread.

I'd further argue the review process is severely corrupted.

I was once part of a working party trying to address this very issue. There was no agreement - some members didn't even accept that the peer review process was broken - and nothing was accomplished :(

AJ

peer review process

is a system where by the majority can proclaim they're right, even when they're wrong.

Science and medicine is littered with incidents where all of the experts were sure something was a certain way and decried anyone who said otherwise, until their noses got firmly shoved into the reality of them being wrong.

Science and medicine is littered with incidents where all of the experts were sure something was a certain way and decried anyone who said otherwise, until their noses got firmly shoved into the reality of them being wrong.

Yes, and occasionally there is a discovery that revolutionizes humanity's view of the universe. Galileo. Einstein. Hawkings. The revelation that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and many had feathers. There are plenty more. The thing is, once the evidence was presented & it was proven to be real, the scientific community accepted it and moved forward. The idea that the four forces of nature apply everywhere equally is not just some unfounded idea from the past like the earth being the center of the universe. Newton was right, as far as he went, but his theories did not explain everything that scientists observed. Einstein's work goes on to explain much more, but it does not invalidate Newton. It builds on it. Same for Hawkings work. Modern Cosmology is based on over 100 years of observations and measurements. New ideas are slow to get accepted, but that is a good thing. Exceptional claims require exceptional proof. Of course, there are those for whom no amount of evidence or proof is good enough if the conclusion contradicts their personal world view. There's a con-man in Arkansas named Ken Ham getting rich pandering to people with that world view. A scientific theory is not a wild-assed guess.

The thing is, once the evidence was presented & it was proven to be real, the scientific community accepted it and moved forward.

That is actually not true in many cases. Since you mentioned dinosaurs having feathers:

Nowadays, some scientists believe that all dinosaurs came from a single feathered ancestor and that every species had feathers, or at least tiny proto-feathers.

Other scientists want to see a lot more evidence before jumping to this conclusion, and believe that scales were the norm, with feathers in just a few groups.

https://owlcation.com/stem/dinosaurs-with-feathers-or-scales

The scientific community is split between those who are ready to accept a new idea with a reasonable amount of proof and those who will never accept the idea regardless of how much proof is presented.

The decision for the scientific community to move forward is based on the distribution of its members between these 2 basic position. Those who never believe will always resist.

Modern Cosmology is based on over 100 years of observations and measurements.

And they're still finding new things, so to say anything is not possible based on current observations is wrong. Tomorrow, next week, or next century they may find something to say different. No one knows what new discovery is out there. The top scientists often say something can not be so, and provide the mathematics etc. to prove they're right, and then get slapped in the face by a new discovery.

Modern Cosmology is based on over 100 years of observations and measurements.

Last time I checked, the universe is either (a) 6,000ish years old, if you're a creationist or (b) about 13.8 BILLION years old, and either way, the approximate size of the universe is 91 BILLION light years in diameter. We've sent men 240,000 miles from the planet, with our furthest space probe about 11.7 billion miles - 11.7 x 10 to the 9th miles. (I'm not sure how to express scientific notation in text with superscript.)

Anyway, the universe is 5.5 x 10 to the 23rd miles - or more than 47 trillion times the space we've actually physically explored. That's pretty much why I don't consider what someone says is a 'universal constant' when measured on this insignificant (except to us) small blue dot to be established fact.

Last time I checked, the universe is either (a) 6,000ish years old, if you're a creationist

One of these days I get interested enough to research which idiotic fool calculated that BS figure, because it's not supported by any of the Bible scriptures. The Bible says God created the Heavens and the Earth in seven days, yet neither existed when God started, thus a day as accounted for by a single rotation of Earth can't be part of it since God was working for days before that happened the first time. This it's possible a single Day for God can be what we call 2 billion years of our time, or any other figure God wanted. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, they just use different values for the duration of a day.

This it's possible a single Day for God can be what we call 2 billion years of our time, or any other figure God wanted. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive, they just use different values for the duration of a day.

I actually have heard what you suggest before, and I personally agree with it. I may be incorrect in this, but it's my understanding this figure effectively comes from the Jewish calendar. I would also suspect that most of this comes from attempting to explain something to people who simply had no way of understanding or grasping it.

I am not what one could call anti-science. What I have a problem with is people who close their minds to the point that they say something like "that" can never happen.

Stating what we believe to be true as true everywhere in the universe is a leap of faith based on assumption.

On a personal level I've no problem with that basic premise. However, if you study the history of science you'll soon see it has far more cases where the scientists have said, "Based on what we've observed this is the situation," then a few years later they come back to says, "What we said before is wrong, this is now our understanding of the situation." It's very rare for the first statement to stay unchanged over time.

This is all understandable, but it does leave me not willing to accept blanket statements about what is what in the universe when they acknowledge they only no such a very small amount of it. At this point in time, and I expect this to be true for a long time after I pass on as well, no real scientist can say with a 100% surety that something they currently believe to be the case is always that case for the entire universe. The closest they can get to that is to agree liquid water feels wet.

Much of what we accept as daily facts of modern day scientific life were spoken of as magic and fantasy only a few generations ago. Go back a few hundred years and see how they react if you 'flick a bic.'

The closest they can get to that is to agree liquid water feels wet.

Does it still feel wet if you can walk on it? Any Christians care to pray to their supreme triumvirate for the answer? ;)

AJ

Does it still feel wet if you can walk on it? Any Christians care to pray to their supreme triumvirate for the answer? ;)

According to the Bible Jesus was wearing sandles when he walked on the water, so he wouldn't have felt it, anyway.

BTW: If you're a Christian who follows the teachings of the Bible there is no triumviate, but that's something the Papists teach that's not in the Bible. There's a lot the Papists teach that's not in the Bible, but it all goes back to what they did to help get more people into the church and under their control. - - if you want to say anything further on this it should be a totally different thread of its own.

if you want to say anything further on this it should be a totally different thread of its own.

Just trying to inject some light-heartedness.

Personally I don't have any strong opinions about the injection of steel into the DiD universe. Switch Blayde can do it any time he wants by making his Lincoln Steele a Hero ;)

My vote would be for the stories to be classed as Fantasy rather than Science Fiction. And considering the misogynistic premise, it's surprising the quality of authors and stories it's managed to attract.

I'm very interested in the discussion on the assumptions and laws of science and their immutability. I have a dog in this fight in real life.

AJ

I'm very interested in the discussion on the assumptions and laws of science and their immutability.

I've no issue with that. My comment you quoted was a note to start a new thread if anyone wanted to continue with the religious aspect raised in the post I replied to, that's all.

Does it still feel wet if you can walk on it?

Well, I can say that solid water tends to feel hard and cold when you walk on it.

glad you agree with me.

BK, I wasn't trying to say they didn't have any steel, just that what little steel they have is low quality due to being low in carbon. That's why it's so expensive, as there's so little and it takes ages to get enough to make enough of anything with it. That's why some of the Heroes are now in the process of introducing ways to improves the carbon content and the upgrade the quality of the steel while evening out the carbon through the metal via hammering and folding plus forge welding.

OH! By which definition? Go out on the Web and you will find that there are many different definitions of "Science Fiction". I like the following definition (and take note of actual or imagined science):

Imagined science is the basis of science fiction, not imagined physics. Imagined physics (magic) is the basis of Fantasy. Too much bad science, or inconsistent science in a story can get in the way of the storytelling if the reader has at least a high school education in the sciences.

A particularly egregious actual example (to me) is of a particular author who equipped his interstellar spacecraft with a hyperdrive for travelling above light speed and a 'normal space' below light speed drive for travel in close to planets. He had the hyperdrive fail between star systems & was forced to make a four light year journey to the next nearest inhabited star using the sub-light engines - a journey of a few months!

I consider the term sub-light engine in those cases to refer to a method of faster than light travel that is slower than their main method of going FTL and for that reason it's normally used by that society for short trips (less than a light-year).

That's fine, if it works for you, except that the prefix sub means below. If an author chooses to redefine the English language, then it needs to be noted.

Can this be done or that? What I really enjoy is taking some time and visiting Chaos as a Hero goes on a mission and seeing the friends he makes.

As a result of the discussions in this thread I'm revising the information in the Rule Book.

If you've read my DiD stories you'll notice I focus on the people and the society, as that's what I find interesting in it. Crazy as it seems, I'm writing no sex stories in a universe purpose built for a lot of sex action.

I believe I have read yours. I'm not running down a good sex scene in the right context but it's the context that's intriguing.

What exactly makes a scientist? There has been numerous discoveries made by people without a PhD. It's a bit shortsighted and arrogant to assume only a 'degreed' person is capable of advancing and understanding any given venue of science.

Who the fuck suggested that? The Scientific Method does not give a rat's ass about who makes an initial discovery or observation, or who proposes a new Hypothesis. It's all bullshit until that first person's claim is verified by others. Remember Cold Fusion?

Here's the scientific method:

Steps of the Scientific Method

•Make an Observation. Scientists are naturally curious about the world. ...

•Form a Question. After making an interesting observation, a scientific mind itches to find out more about it. ...

•Form a Hypothesis. ...

•Conduct an Experiment. ...

•Analyse the Data and Draw a Conclusion.

After all that, if the last two steps confirm the first three, then the one who started the process will publish their findings & research. Then others will read the paper & try to repeat everything. Either they will get the same results, or they will not. If not, they start looking for why their results are different from the original. It can take a while before everyone agrees whether or not a new idea or observation is valid. And remember that these are humans with human egos. If some researcher has championed a particular position for years, then evidence comes along that differs, they will disagree & argue - even in the face of strong evidence. Sometimes they never give up their personal position. They eventually become minority voices in their field.

Amateur astronomers make discoveries all the time with their backyard telescopes. Most new comets are found by amateurs.

That my friend is the harsh reality. Dead are the days of science not beholden to task masters.

You are absolutely correct. These days only the science that is politically correct can see the light of day.

Just think what kind of resistance and social circle backlash a scientist will face if they go against the '97%' of scientists who support the global warming thing. I say global warming because the phrase 'climate change' is purposely vague. The climate changes all the time.

Read this fairly long article about how 'scientists/mathematicians' went about a controversial new paper:

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

And then try to tell me that all scientists are about the scientific method.

There have been many more instances where politically-incorrect research has been suppressed by vested interests or zealots. I can think of a couple of studies showing that Glyphosate increases the risk of cancer, but Monsanto mobilised the tanks and got the studies wrongly 'discredited'. And there was a Canadian study correlating autism risk with injections. Again that one was discredited, despite there being nothing untoward about the study's methodology.

AJ

we as a planet cannot sustain the course we are on.

"The Earth is just too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in it." - Robert Heinlein