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Want to see how to create a Hive City?

This is really insane. You have to play SimCity a while to realize what an accomplishment this is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTJQTc-TqpU&feature=player_embedded

Guess it was a sort of "you had to be there" thing... but simcity.

Another argument for hive cities is the real life example of Indian slums. The builds are built on top of each other and fit many thousands of people in a very small amount of land.

A MERE six million residents?

The Dallas / Fort Worth metropolitan area has more than that.

Friggin' Sim City

It is kind of small in comparison to some of the numbers you like to see the fluff throw around. Then again the numbers the fluff likes to throw around are kind of silly (in the wonderful, OTT 40k way). Just think of the heat generated by the number of bodies cited for hives, never mind waste heat from machines/vermin/sewage/etc. Given they're enclosed spaces built on top of another the energy costs associated with ventilation alone would be mind-boggling.

Hive cities in the fluff are often near continental sized cities. Imagine if the entirety of Australia was a city stacked ontop of a city stacked ontop of a city stacked ontop of a city.

Anyone here read any of the Necromunda fluff? The upper areas are regular cities, but in the lower areas they are run down giant scrap heaps full of mutation and garbage.

They also vary in shape some are built like giant towers clustered together whereas others are spread out and other just go downwards.

i imagine Hives being regular cities to start with. large buildings and all.


then they build a series of large(1/4 mile wide) supports to support platforms on which more buildings can be put.

these platforms eventually get connected to each other by bridges.

soon these platforms are like Skyscrapers made out of skyscrapers seperated by massive gorges that drop well over a mile.

Damnatus depicted a hive city as largely underground, becoming increasingly labyrinthine as they descended.

Then again, anything else would have made for a more boring setting for the movie, so Rule of Cool applies.

What Grey Templar said...

and I'm really not that impressed by the video. Game wise it might have been impressive, but in relation to the real world? No... not really... that would be like the suburban area of a hive if the fluff is to be believed.

For SimCity, it's impressive. The planning that went to it was rediculous.

For a Hive city, it's rather small.

Yeah, that might be one section-- the surface section-- of a hive city. And there'd be a few thousand of those. And then that's only the top layer.

Well, I applaud the effort that the creator of Manasanti put into making his city, even if it is more of a theoretical exorcise and would suck most of the fun out of SimCity for me. Doesn't really remind me of a 40k hive city, either. I always pictured one of those as more of a SC2k arcology, only much bigger.

BTW, did anyone else find it unintentionally funny how serious that video took itself?

Yes, I did as well, but clearly the guy who did it took simcity quite seriously given all the calculations he conducted.

I think what this thread needs is a photo from the 90's, this is an old school white dwarf pic of the lads playing necromunda...

Now if things this size were meant to be contained within a hive, and hive's scrape the outer atmosphere so space craft can dock with them.... then that's a pretty monster construct!!

Viable?? It's 40k, not much is viable! It might break the crust of the planet or throw it off orbit, but who cares!!! for the emrproor!!

Yes, that image is about right for a tiny section of a hive city.

And no, 40k isn't that stupid. Things are viable and non-viable based off of reasonable assumptions given the nature of the setting, which involves high tech construction methods and materials, very efficient power generation, and easily manufacturable (but highly bland) foodstuffs.

To be honest any modern city has elements of a hive city if it was built more than a hundred years ago. I used to live in edinburgh. Only about a fourth of the city is on surface level. Some parts of the citys current street level used to be storeys up when they were first built. Theres one street that used to be a raised road above aground level over a hundred years back. As the city has built on top of the old stuff the road became street level. You can go underground and find entire sections of streets and buildings left intact and sealed. Right back to medieval times if you go deep enough.

Also a hive city would likely never be so precisely planned. Hive cities exist today. Well micro examples of them in scale at least. Any large city with a few hundred years of history.

Melissia wrote:and easily manufacturable (but highly bland) foodstuffs.

Well, the blandness level depends on the person, especially for Soylens Viridianis

Lexx wrote:To be honest any modern city has elements of a hive city if it was built more than a hundred years ago. I used to live in edinburgh. Only about a fourth of the city is on surface level. Some parts of the citys current street level used to be storeys up when they were first built. Theres one street that used to be a raised road above aground level over a hundred years back. As the city has built on top of the old stuff the road became street level. You can go underground and find entire sections of streets and buildings left intact and sealed. Right back to medieval times if you go deep enough.

Also a hive city would likely never be so precisely planned. Hive cities exist today. Well micro examples of them in scale at least. Any large city with a few hundred years of history.

The city i live in is old and tiny and hasn't been raised at all i know because the medivil castle (or where it was) is still at the same level.
Though if you look at Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett's Discworld that is a very good example of building on top of old buildings.

Lexx wrote:To be honest any modern city has elements of a hive city if it was built more than a hundred years ago. I used to live in edinburgh. Only about a fourth of the city is on surface level. Some parts of the citys current street level used to be storeys up when they were first built. Theres one street that used to be a raised road above aground level over a hundred years back. As the city has built on top of the old stuff the road became street level. You can go underground and find entire sections of streets and buildings left intact and sealed. Right back to medieval times if you go deep enough.

Also a hive city would likely never be so precisely planned. Hive cities exist today. Well micro examples of them in scale at least. Any large city with a few hundred years of history.

There is/was a TV show called Cities of the Underworld (or something like that) and the host went all over the world showing stuff like that. its really amazing how much is below many of the really old cities all over Europe and places like Turkey, Russia, etc.

seattle has the same deal, eventhough it is only about 150 years old, tops. The entire city got leveled in a combination of a gigantic fire, and the periodic floods that come with being on a friggin salt flat. The government wanted to plan the whole city out, with elevated streets, buildings, everything, but buisnesses wanted to rebuild RIGHT THEN, and did so. For years, you had to use a ladder to get from the sidewalk to the (elevated) streets. Many pack animals and men broke bones (and necks) untill the sidewalks were rased and new storefronts built at the new "ground floor"

The descriptions in this thread remind me of Midgar from FF7.

Midgar would be classified as a small (minor) hive city, probably.

BearersOfSalvation wrote:

Melissia wrote:and easily manufacturable (but highly bland) foodstuffs.

Well, the blandness level depends on the person, especially for Soylens Viridianis

Only ONCE has rations been described as good tasting in my memory.

And that was only after Jurgen specifically cooked and spiced it up to be that way.

Let's not even get started on corpse starch rations.

i imagine the middle class sections of a hive could afford better tasting Hive rations then the slums, and the rich sections could afford "real" food.

ie: more sophisticated machinery can add flavor to rations.

Depends on which hive city you're talking about as well.

Regardless, the basic foodstuffs are all rations or native animals, the latter of which are often poisonous or otherwise dangerous (like the head-eating bat of a certain hive in Dark Heresy).

Hive cities build on themselves when you can no longer build outwards, the city can only go up from that point. This is why New York, Japan and cities Europe either have extremely tall buildings or build on top of old buildings, sometimes both.

heres your tower.

Aye, eventually there will be many of these right next to each other connected by platforms. eventually the undercity will be in near total darkness.

SaintHazard wrote:Damnatus depicted a hive city as largely underground, becoming increasingly labyrinthine as they descended.

Then again, anything else would have made for a more boring setting for the movie, so Rule of Cool applies.

That actually got released? I remember it being in production before I had a break from the hobby.