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THIS PART IS AN EDIT / I have written a short story on the Dakka fiction and the thread is called sci fi universe short story. It is updated with short stories about the universe roughly once a week- week and a half, and the posts about the tech/vehicles and questions about the story once every day to two days.







Ok so how would I go about making a sci fi universe. I've got an idea about what it is with a few bits definite like capitol ships and tanks but where do I put it, Internet? just think of it in memory? where?

Its a little believable, but basic setting is (still haven't worked out date for definite) 2700 and humanity is still in countries but has met aliens and some countries have been invaded and others have invaded but earth still remains a human controlled zone. Britain (reality never would happen but they were the only country to rule a whole continent and the have an empire that's total land mass would cover 95% of the moon), America and China are the most powerful countries/ empires in the part of the galaxy that its set in ( somewhere between a quarter to a third).

Britain and America are at war for the last 3 earth years and are entering the fourth. China is a war with an alien race kinda based of 40k tau but without the weabu part more of just the armour look and heavy use of AI. still very powerful companies that supply weapons like today and I've tried to make things like this realistic like some weapons that would be great just aren't used for expense of them.

Weapons are lots more advanced than now but missile defence has advance so much that its 500x more cost exient to use WWII like artillery where the projectiles can be traced. Britain is the leading laser rifle tech shortly followed by China and America uses Assault rifles but for the space of 1 bullet it has 5 shots due to cool fold up bullet tech so a 25 sho mag is 125 shot. Slug weapons like America's if just states to a laser gun are much better in rate of fire and just about better in power but logistically lasers are better as each mag holds 200 rounds and an infantryman can carry ten and they recharge when not in use.

Capitol ships for the big players are all built by goverment and around 1-1.2km long. smaller ships and weaker nations are just from companies like BAE systems. Ships have to use broadsides a lot as you can't fire solid rounds without the force shooting your ship in another direction unless you have a rediculously expensive non recoil system in place, Newtons 1st law, and turreted weapons aren't as powerful. Britain prefers battle ship builds but America prefers a more carrier build but both have dedicated carriers and all other sorts of vessels. orbitol strikes also aren't often viable because all it takes is for a shot to go 0.000001 degree of corse and you might kill your general on the ground due to the distance.

FTL comes from warp drives and it takes 2 months with a standard civilain warp dirve to cross the known parts of the galaxy but military ones are better. After 1 week of travel for civilian ships you have to exit to avoid a melt down of the drive so lots of pirates use the drop of points to raid ships so there are agreements in place form all nations including waring ones to try to stop this.


So I'd like tips on how to improve and if anything else is wanted to be added like tanks which I have thought of just haven't posted just ask and if I haven't thoght I'll ask . if anyone wants pictures of my idea's I can post them but my drawing skills aren't the best but hey ho. Lastly where do I put it.


Main bits of inspiration and 40k, star wars, cool tanks, an excuse for a sci fi universe not using missiles other than artillery guns look cool and common sense in vehicle design.

I know I will never have a universe that will be a well known one as every main universe is not bugging. I just want a warfare believable wise one. As for something when someone said what affect does those bullet things have its that in larger battles American troops run out of ammo to fast, are a logistical nightmare compared to laser weapons and thus in the first 2 years of the war they lost ground at an exceptional rate but are now moving to laser guns in larger war zones but for small skirmishes keep the projectile weapons. This loss of ground caused some very controversial projects and operations such as carpet bombing whole cities and bombing London during Remembrance Day and thus Allies have turned away from them a bit.

I will probably post pictures of the vehicles next. My drawing is crap but hopefully I can make it good enough for people to understand what I mean.

Finally I'm not aiming for a universe that will make 1 Billion like star wars or what ever I just want one in which warfare is believable and how they got to that point in time is not all that out of the norm. You could see a slight possability of that happening unlike 40K for instance. Lastly if I do get minature made (I'm not spending the 100,000 you need to start that) it would be amazing and I would consult people for basic functions, whatworks well, what doesn't so that it would be as balanced and what ever as possible. But as I said thet wasn't the point of why i made it.

I saw a few comments saying write a story about it. I'm a bad writer for stories but I can write lore books and things like that and leave it up to others to think of their own people and stories in universe.

Also, in a universe with FTL travel and settled planets why does anyone give a about London? It's like trying to tell a story about WWII where the focus of the story of the fight against the Nazis is a guy in some random small town in the US being arrested for driving while drunk. It's just a scale mismatch that throws out any sense of plausibility.

London is still the capitol of Britain and is where all the government is. Also Earth is a no war zone.


Lastly then so if a do write a story about this then who should I focus it on then a tank crew? infantry squad? also what point is there of any universe in sci fi existing then. if you can't answer that last question then stop saying this shouldn't exist. I don't care if I'm criticised constructively but if its just because you don't like it then leave.

ok I see how I've messed up in the way of no culture or character.

I'll think of who the main character/ focus will be but I think I have an idea.

As for culture
Britain is early 1700 where the parliament is the most powerful but the monarch is still ridiculously powerful and uses the power. It varies from planet to planet from Arcadia (named after the Greek fortress city) being the greatest fortress world as in the warp there are storms and you can't go through and one splits the galaxy in half and has one gap in it where this planet is, to mining worlds that are based off 1950 Welsh coal mining villages . Most of Britain loves the empire and invading places with a recent victory being taking over France. They are very proud of the military and empire and hold parades a bit like North Korea but in celebration of the army not trying to square up to someone.

America is still attempting to be the police of the Quadrant but have partially given up on that as more nations are able to police themselves. They are still very proud of the homeland (America today) and thus the colonies are mistreated a little which leads to small scale rebellions which is why they still use conventional fire arms as they often don't have to worry about logistics as much. Their government is fundamentally flawed because they have a system which is far to complicated as each section such as agriculture has effectively got its own government. This often leads to long times sometimes up to a decade with problems just being ignored as the government is squabbling further exacerbating the problem of the colonies. They have erased the second amendment and are one of the most anti civilian gun countries there are.

As for china I'm a little stumped on whether they have scrapped communism and are the most anti communist nation or they are communist to the core. Please help with that one.

I'm thinking of smaller players that will gradually become a bigger threat as time goes on as well.


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Slipspace wrote:
Trying not to be harsh, but there's nothing that compelling about your universe at the moment. I'd also suggest you try to concentrate a bit more on your spelling and grammar. It's been pretty poor in this thread so far and when you're trying to create a believable setting things like that matter a lot.

Yes I know, sorry about that but I'm quite dyslexic. I can read easily enough, but spelling and Grammar are difficult and sometimes I can't think of the right way to spell words like friend.

Ok, so going of what everyone is saying I'll write a semi hard sci-fi quite a bit of science for things like there can't be projectile weapons on space ships but I won't specify that sort of stuff its a rule of cool with a bit of reason.

Going from everyone's advice I'll focus on why. I will also rewrite fluff if needed. Lastly can people tell me if an idea is stupid and how to make it better but for a reason, not just you don't see how a country can last 700 years into the future even if it has already survived 2000 years like Britain and China.

It will be a setting like 40k not a story with clear goodies and baddies like star wars.

Who
the 2 main players will be Britain and America with China and the Vlash Immortal Empire (the race China's at war with) being the side shows. lastly other races/ nations will be mentioned as little things maybe just a trade alliance.

What
the start of the 4th year of the American Britain war (wars almost always aren't named until after they end) and the 15th year of the Chinese Vlash war (which is more like the 100 years war as in being lots of smaller wars close enough together just to be called one big war). Most planets are dedicated to a multiple of things with only a few exceptions like the planet only being formed of salt or in a very strategic place like Arcadia. the average planet would have around 100 megacities with a population of 10 million plus and then a few farming places with mining colonies either on asteroids nearby or on the planet. The rest of the planet being strictly controlled national parks or area to be used for city building.

Why- the setting
America and Britain are at war due to increasing tensions and isolationism from Britain. Britain also having a very strong pride for the expansion of their empire and the need for more resources without having to wait 50 years for newly settled worlds to become viable. America sensing this and being allies with the recently invaded Peoples republic of France decided to launch an almost Pearl Harbour attack. This caused war to be declared quite obviously.

Why- the culture
Britain- entered 1700 like government as there were a string of government failures due to decisions being made just to stay in power and not for the people. Having a more powerful monarchy was thought to mean that decisions like this would be blocked by the monarch as they won't have to fight to stay in power but instead only make decisions for the people. It was also made very clear though that the people can vote the monarch out if he is abusing the power.

America- they started to expand quicker than laws and the government could catch up and so it was decided that each region of space should have its own council that could make any law it wanted as long as it didn't interfere with any laws set up by the senate. This still proved inadequate though so each section of the government eg. tax sector, agriculture should be able to vote between itself and then work up the stages of government having to be passed by each section to make it up to the next. America being America decided that once the big rules for the working of Government were written they couldn't be changed no mater how stupid they were.

China- now just called China is an Extremely anti communist nation as in 2350 the people a rebelled along with half the army against the loyalist resulting in a 20 year civil war. The rebellion was caused by centuries of oppression from the government and finally the people had enough. In honour of this and a realisation that communism it flawed and just stupid they turned against it and when they met the Vlash who were ridiculously communist and having lots of rare resources needed war broke out.





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Some countries like Britain or any other mentioned above ones have taken over/ annexed or made deals with other alien nations making them multi species or other nations like Russia who were a little unlucky got annexed (bit ironic don't you think) and made part of alien nations. the strongest nation is usually the one that ends up coming out as the one that has just gained a few systems.

it isn't uncommon to see a species fighting for one of their home worlds original countries against their own species who are part of a human nation to sum up.

Ok I will stop writing lore and write a story. Then I will base the lore around that.

I looked out into space through one of the holowindows. Not really windows, just a screen with a camera on the outside of the ship. Nobody was particularly happy as the job we had to do was a horrible one. I was known as Black 16 to my superiors but as Jake to my friends. I was a FB- 17-Chimera pilot aboard the HMS Executor, a Nebula class battleship. We have been assigned to the Zark system and to reclaim the rebellious planet of Zark III. The start of the assault was all good and with better than expected results. Then we reached the capitol city, that's where the progress stalled. In the end it was decided that it was too costly to retake it and so the Executor was tasked with destroying the city through orbital bombardment. It is a slow and terrible process where laser batteries shoot hundreds of lasers down the surface to destroy anything standing. In doing this we have killed an estimated 29 million civilians. Up here all we can do is imagine the horror that the people on the surface are going through. We can see little flashes flicker on the planet not all to disimilar from fairy lights. While they are in agony watching their world fall apart we just gaze down at the like a god controlling what will happen to them.

 Stormatious wrote:

deotrims 16th wrote:
I looked out into space through one of the holowindows. Not really windows, just a screen with a camera on the outside of the ship. Nobody was particularly happy as the job we had to do was a horrible one. I was known as Black 16 to my superiors but as Jake to my friends. I was a FB- 17-Chimera pilot aboard the HMS Executor, a Nebula class battleship. We have been assigned to the Zark system and to reclaim the rebellious planet of Zark III. The start of the assault was all good and with better than expected results. Then we reached the capitol city, that's where the progress stalled. In the end it was decided that it was too costly to retake it and so the Executor was tasked with destroying the city through orbital bombardment. It is a slow and terrible process where laser batteries shoot hundreds of lasers down the surface to destroy anything standing. In doing this we have killed an estimated 29 million civilians. Up here all we can do is imagine the horror that the people on the surface are going through. We can see little flashes flicker on the planet not all to disimilar from fairy lights. While they are in agony watching their world fall apart we just gaze down at the like a god controlling what will happen to them.

Lookin good, mabey you should detail what things are and mean and why in between explaining what you are doing.?

Yes in-between each part I'm drawing a picture, maybe not the best but I'll explain things and Hopefully between the three things people will understand.

I'm not the best at drawing in the world and these are only quick sketches but the main part of the image is the Nebula class battleship. It has 32 heavy turreted laser canons 16 of which are visible on the top and 100 medium cannons. 4 gun decks for powerful broadside as turreted cannons have a drastically lower power than broadside weapons. Also included are 100 missile defence systems that work by super heating the detonator in the warhead prematurely setting it of. Finally it has 500 fighter defence flack cannons, 20 anti capitol ship missiles and a store of 20 FB-17-jaguars for bombing raids and 64 f-4 -spitfires named in honour of the most popular fighter ever (or the pilots said that at least).


You can see 2 spitfires on a patrol and the city being bombarded.

Black was the name given to bomber pilots and white to fighter pilots.

Nebula's can only carry a few land vehicles and troops if nessesary so dedicated assault ships are required. Also off pic there is a small fleet of escort ships to defend against hit and run and fighters as Battleships are primarily anti captiol ships and can't hold of a prolonged fighter/bomber attack but can defend against small ones.

No windows on the large ships as these are vunerable only camera's and hollo screens.

Fighters have windows as for dogfights visibility is key but only at the front and the rest is a 360 holo display. Dogfights used as missile defence is too strong (except if missile reaches target in under 1 second) unless you use missiles that cost more than the fighter you are shooting down.



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 Stormatious wrote:

deotrims 16th wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:

deotrims 16th wrote:
I looked out into space through one of the holowindows. Not really windows, just a screen with a camera on the outside of the ship. Nobody was particularly happy as the job we had to do was a horrible one. I was known as Black 16 to my superiors but as Jake to my friends. I was a FB- 17-Chimera pilot aboard the HMS Executor, a Nebula class battleship. We have been assigned to the Zark system and to reclaim the rebellious planet of Zark III. The start of the assault was all good and with better than expected results. Then we reached the capitol city, that's where the progress stalled. In the end it was decided that it was too costly to retake it and so the Executor was tasked with destroying the city through orbital bombardment. It is a slow and terrible process where laser batteries shoot hundreds of lasers down the surface to destroy anything standing. In doing this we have killed an estimated 29 million civilians. Up here all we can do is imagine the horror that the people on the surface are going through. We can see little flashes flicker on the planet not all to disimilar from fairy lights. While they are in agony watching their world fall apart we just gaze down at the like a god controlling what will happen to them.

Lookin good, mabey you should detail what things are and mean and why in between explaining what you are doing.?

Yes in-between each part I'm drawing a picture, maybe not the best but I'll explain things and Hopefully between the three things people will understand.

Yeah well its detailed so that's good id say, but maybe im wrong but it seems for e.g " We have been assigned to the Zark system and to reclaim the rebellious planet of Zark III. The start of the assault was all good and with better than expected results. " its like out of no where you randomly mention a battle that i was not even a little-bit aware of?

Edit - never mind, im just reading it wrong i think.

It just sets the sceen and shows the kind of jobs and the power of the ships. A bit like the first fight in fury it doesn't really impact the story later on it just sets the sceen and lets you know what's going on.

 Peregrine wrote:
Yeah, just going to echo what I said about desperate bargaining. You make a post accepting the idea of a story-first approach, and an hour later you have your first story bit posted? That says to me that you aren't really thinking about what you're doing and trying to come up with your best work possible, you're just scrambling to get something posted as fast as possible before anyone can take your universe away. Stop worrying so much about getting approval from everyone else and do the best work you can.

Also, now you're introducing mass murder of civilians. That's not a bad thing if it fits the story idea, but it really forces some constraints. Why are your space-British soldiers happy to indiscriminately slaughter millions of their fellow citizens with nothing more than a "meh, that kind of sucks"? Why do the citizens of space-Britain accept a government that does this and not use their power to vote out the abusive monarch? How does this not immediately send all of the other planets into open rebellion, begging the US to come protect them from the murderous tyrant? These questions can be answered in 40k, where it's a totalitarian theocracy and the entire population is brainwashed into absolute loyalty to every word that space-Jesus commands, but can space-Britain answer them in any plausible way while still being something that is recognizable as British?

I was starting to write parts of the entry earlier than that and this is the draft piece not the finished product. Have you ever seen a writers draft. NO! they are always not that good which is why they are a draft and not ever published until they have sometimes been re-written. I have been thinking of this universe for months just with my dyslexia I find it hard to put the idea down covering everything or it making sense. My history teacher always said that if I could just speak then I world have got 100% for my GCSE's but I had to write which is the problem. that's why I didn't just write it all out in one large chunk. I'm very bad at formatting things from my head into words on paper but I know exactly what I want to say just not how to say it. Lastly 1 paragraph in an hour. most writers can do 3-4 times that much in 1 hour.

Then with that mass murder I'm writing the next part which explains that.

Just in case you haven't realised I'm writing this on paper then uploading it to Dakka and answering and reading any comments.


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With the planet finally under British control after 10 months we just had to wait to assign military presence and defence for Zark III. This was a boring task and a lot of off world builders came for the rebuilding projects. The old ruins of the capitol city were taken apart and the area given up to nature and a new capitol city was chosen. Under normal conditions this would never had been needed as a longer time would have been acceptable and higher casualties of soldiers but in this time of war against America if the civilian deaths of an Orbital bombardment are almost twice as high as the soldiers casualty rate its acceptable as soldiers are more crucial to the war effort a grizzly thought but the troops that might have died if the assault happened were protecting a system that if lost would have caused even higher casualty rates. Its all worked out by some poor guy who has to add up the probability of deaths. After 6 months of the rebuilding we were told that we were needed else where and that the planet only needed a very minor military presence.

Our new destination was Velzia a Earth like planet in the Goloka system. It was Right on the Front between British and American space, in other words a bomb waiting to go off. To reach Velzia we would have to go through Warp space, and the journey would take 2 months of warp travel plus another week and a day of real space travel. During this time we would be drilled within an inch of our life and have to stop any pirate threats to merchants we encountered. These checks would be conducted every week when the Executor dropped out of warp for the warp drive to cool down to stop the whole ship exploding. It is about a day until we can travel again so my space wing protected by a wing of spitfires would go on long range patrols to try to find anything but we were traveling along a fairly busy route where police presence is strong and so most pirate go somewhere else along another trade route.

Reading comments I will describe all the stuff on the explanation page (not the story) with the picture and gloss over any tech unless its very important to story.

I was out on patrol one day when a light started flashing quickly followed by a message to us on the comms. The message was one we hadn't had before ever. We were about to save a ship from a pirate attack. Looking down at my sensory we saw a small fleets worth of little red dots on the screen. We headed off. Looking out into the black expanse it all seemed so peaceful, like nothing could ever be wrong or dangerous or- I have to pay attention to the mission. Soon we could see tiny flashing lights slowly getting bigger and bigger until they stopped. Then fireballs were erupting all around us.

"loose formation. Swerve around so its harder to be trac---"


The squadron leaders comms cut out and behind me a tiny field of debris in the vast emptyness was all that was left of him. I was now in charge.

"All fighters, destroy the flak cannons. My wing, go and hit the critical systems." I shouted into the reciever.

gonna write whole story first before any other posts

Hi I've written a short story in this universe in the dakka fictions section. Just letting you know. Threads called Sci-fi universe short story.

 The Power Cosmic wrote:
The post describing the ships is a lot better, spelling and punctuation-wise, than the previous one, so good job getting better at that. Keep it up!

Now, a bit of analysis and some questions. For these, they seem to be excerpts in a technical manual or rulebook, so I'm judging them based on that assumption. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

1) You say the Retribution has 2 gun decks, but fail to tell us anything about those guns other than that they're more powerful that turbolasers. Why are the so much more powerful, and why would any ship have tubrolasers at all?

2) Immediately after saying how the guns are more powerful than turbolasers, you state there are 450 of them on the ship. This is very contradictory and jarring for the reader. If the plan is to have details about how the various guns differ, there's no need for the parenthetical statement about how the gun decks are more powerful than turbolasers.

3) What does mph mean in space? It's a weird measurement, especially when there is faster-than-light travel. Is the top speed taking warp travel into account? Is the top speed their cruising speed outside of warp travel?

4) What does a class 7 warp drive mean compared to class 8? Do the different countries use different drives, or are they all uniform technology from a 3rd party?

5) This is my ignorance showing, but does a turning cycle mean it takes that long to turn the ship 180 degrees?

6) Talking about weapon inaccuracy in science fiction seems strange to me. Fighting with space-based battle cruisers and turbolasers isn't like shooting cannons in the roaring waves of the ocean. You would think lasers are pretty accurate since they travel at the speed of light and all. Are there systems aboard ships to fool targeting computers? Also this would seem to preclude the use of fighters and bombers if the space between the two ships is filled with gunfire from lasers and missiles and stuff. I sure wouldn't want to fly one there.

Keep writing. The best way to get better is to do it more and more.

I will update all these answers on the other thread. Turning circle is a full 360 degrees though as this isn't only limited to that sci fi.

Answered your questions.

 easypeasylemonsquezy wrote:
Brandon Sanderson's Course on fantasy and sci-fi professional writing may be of some use.

Its more about professional writing but there is quite a bit about world building and other factors in his lectures, they're all available on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4ZDBOc2tX8&list=PLH3mK1NZn9QqOSj3ObrP3xL8tEJQ12-vL

Thanks.

Just in general I will probably update the other thread already mentioned once every two days.