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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.

@deotrims: May I suggest you read some of Neal Asher's "Polityverse" novels, or (perhaps more in your projected timeframe) "Ownerverse" novels (which are basically the forerunner to the Polity)?

I would bet my nads that you wouldn't be disappointed, and that you'd get a very good feel for where warfare is going over the next 100/200 years ...


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Also, for a more American-centric option, check out "Thirteen", by Richard K. Morgan ... it's not a "future-war" story, but there's some amazing background on the fall of the USA and the rise of various "alternative governments".


Also: "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman. Absoluite classic!!!

deotrims 16th wrote:
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?

Write a collection of short stories, or an RPG supplement, or something like that, and try to get it published? Sell it print-on-demand or on DriveThruRPG? Make a series of Youtube videos discussing it? Make a Kickstarter?

I shouldn't be one to talk. I haven't done any of these things.

deotrims 16th wrote:
where do I put it, Internet? just think of it in memory? where?

Into the trash can. That sounds harsh, but the reality is that if you don't already have a compelling use for your universe beyond "have a universe" there's no point in continuing the conversation. And yes, you might as well just scrap the idea now and save yourself from wasting time on something that's a dead end project. To make any of this at all useful you need to figure out what you want to do and then go back and create a universe that is appropriate for the task. Are you trying to tell a story suitable for a novel? What sort of story? Are you trying to develop a game and need background fiction? Do you want to make a rock album with a scifi theme? All of these goals lead you in different directions and want different things from a universe. A novel needs compelling characters and the details of ships/guns/etc exist to support the story. A game setting really cares about having weapon details that fit the game mechanics but doesn't really need characters. Etc. There's no point in worrying about irrelevant nonsense like what sort of bullets each side uses until you can answer these questions.

As for the universe itself, it's generic as hell and I don't see any ideas worth developing. You just aren't offering anything that is more interesting than the opening paragraphs of any random near-future scifi game rulebook. Unless your goal is merely to create a similar fluff chapter to go along with the rules content and justify the miniatures you need to take a step back and figure out what interesting ideas are driving your setting, besides existing for the sake of existing.


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As an example of what I mean, who cares if American guns have magic super-compact bullets? What impact does this technology have on the plot or characters? What game mechanics are related to this fact, and how is it different from just giving American guns a clip size of 200 with ammo belts instead of box magazines? Why is this such an important fact about your setting that it deserves as much prominence and word count in your description as the entire alien faction and its war with China? As far as I can see the answer is that there is no reason for it to matter, and you're getting bogged down in irrelevant details instead of providing anyone with a reason to care about your setting or story.

Yeah sort of what Peregrine is saying, you should come up with some thing that makes it exciting and interesting, like starting with the characters/races and expanding on them and evolving it in to a bigger picture with you're ideas for ships/tanks etc etc etc. But still cool idea to make your own sci fi universe, but you got a crap load of competition

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.

deotrims 16th wrote:
I know I will never have a universe that will be a well known one as every main universe is not bugging.

So? That's not the standard anyone should care about. My comments apply equally if your goal is to write a novel and sell a few copies, hardly something that is unrealistic or out of reach.

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.

That's a step better, but you're still missing the bigger picture. Why do any of these things matter? How do they fit into the story you are trying to tell? Are these "controversial projects and operations" a key part of the story, or are they just more background clutter that nobody cares about? You're spending way too much time worrying about making up technobabble weapons and not enough time on the important things: the story you're telling and the characters of that story. So far you've said nothing about any of that, and given no reason whatsoever for your universe to exist.

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.

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.

deotrims 16th wrote:

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.

Why does anybody do anything creative? Create a setting if you have something you intend to do with it (write a story, make a game, paint some pictures etc), or just because you enjoy worldbuilding. The advantage of having a purpose for your setting is to help you know what to concentrate on. Worldbuilding is a vast undertaking if you want to make your universe fleshed out and believable - after all, the real world has been 'built' by billions of people over thousands of years. One person inventing a setting can't go into anywhere near that sort of complexity, so you have to concentrate on the things that are important - and the things that are important are different depending on your purpose. The broad strokes will always be important but you only need to write the details that are going to matter.

Your setup as you've described it:
- A handful of major factions
- Details on their military capacity and technology
- Mention of who's at war with who
- Mention of their advantages against each other technologically

- No mention of any of the people (leaders, characters etc)
- No mention of anything cultural, of goals and aims
etc.

That suggests to me that you've written this more as an exercise in creating your own playground to have a war with futuristic weapons, which seems more like a world that you're setting up for some sort of game rather than for a story. If you're writing a story, a lot of the information on exactly how the guns work is extra detail that might get mentioned in a couple of lines of a novel but otherwise not really matter. What matters for a story are the characters, their personalities, motivations and abilities, the conflicts that they face. If you're going to read a fantasy/sci-fi/space opera story and really enjoy it, then you need some combination of great plot, great character and great setting. A great setting would be something different to what people have seen before, something that sets your universe apart from the others. What's different about it and why, and why should your reader care? And by that I mean something different conceptually, not just a different kind of sci-fi gun. At the moment nothing you've told us about this setting makes me think "ooh, this is different, I want to see where this goes".

deotrims 16th wrote:

Lastly then so if a do write a story about this then who should I focus it on then a tank crew? infantry squad?

That's up to you. Character building is one of the most important aspects of writing a story. Who are these people? What are they doing? What do they want? What obstacles are they facing? Are you just writing a straight-up war story (e.g. a squad of soldiers having to complete a dangerous mission), a story with a focus on the politicians/leaders (tough decisions and intrigue on who's in charge and how the war is fought), a 'save the world' sort of story (following characters who are trying to avert some sort of disaster while everybody else is busy killing each other), a story about characters where the war is a background detail (people trying to overcome some problem unrelated to the fighting, but your war is always looming there in the background)? In any story you've got plot and character. Some skew the balance more one way than the other - both can work and both can be valid. Start with either - an interesting plot, or interesting characters. If you have a plot first, then think about what sort of characters would fit into it. If you have characters first, think about what they would do in a given situation and let the plot build itself form there.

You're the one that has to answer the question of what the point of the universe is, which is what Peregrine is trying to explain. There's not one "correct" answer, but many different ones that depend on what purpose the background to the universe serves. For example, your in-depth descriptions of weapons technology and styles of fighting would suggest a background for a wargame or video game of some description. If this were the setting for a novel you'd expect much more information about people and specific characters. Peregrine's already explained this.

For example, I've recently started rewatching Game of Thrones and one of the things that series of novels does well is world-building (the TV series is, by necessity, a bit more heavy handed with this). If you break it down you notice that the characters come first, then the world is built around them. There are a bunch of incidental details along the way that enrich the world but the major parts of the setting are all there to serve the main story. So you figure out what sort of story you want to tell - in this case a massive struggle for rulership of a kingdom. Then you need a compelling history that explains why the various factions are involved and how they are allied with or pitched against one another. The important thing is the characters came first.

For something like 40k, the main requirement was a setting where battles could happen. So you don't care as much about characters. They can come later. What you need to know is how battles are fought and why, as well as what the dominant powers are in your setting, along with the scale of it. What Peregrine said about London is important here because it's one of the things that causes a problem when it comes to suspension of disbelief. If humanity has reached out to the stars the importance of nations and especially individual cities will be decreased. You also need to come up with a good reason to fight your wars and it will be quite unlikely it'll be because of any reason we currently fight wars.

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.

I think the best sci-fi has its roots in sociology or philosophy and gives us some interesting concepts or ideas to think about.

The 40k background, to take the obvious example, is interesting to me because it asks what would a galaxy wide empire be like if it was run along feudal lines, with a profusion of overlapping and competing institutions like the Third Reich. How would humans think, what would be necessary to maintain such a society etc. That gives the space battles so much more meaning.

Black Mirror would be another popular example where they take a particular societal or technological trend and extrapolate it to the extreme to make a thought provoking story.

So I would say that the best way to make a sci-fi universe is to start with a high level backdrop (which you have already and obviously put some thought into ) but then to drill down maybe to an individual colony and set of characters and start thinking about how they feel, what they think about the war, space travel, aliens, government, food etc.

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.

I think there are still some problems you're not quite grasping. One issue I have is that we're 700 years in the future but you seem to be basing everything on today's politics and nations or, even worse, historical time periods long since gone. It seems extremely unlikely to me that Great Britain, the USA, China and France all survive for that long and still retain anything like the character and attitudes they have nowadays. Just look at Britain in the last 50 years and changing attitudes towards pretty much every aspect of life.

There are quite a few details in what you're saying but they seem, for want of a better word, irrelevant. Quantity doesn't equal quality and it seems you've just thrown a whole bunch of details out there without them fitting into a wider picture at all. For example, going back to what I say above, why do nations even still exist on Earth if the human race has reached to the stars? What's the point of being British, or Chinese if there are whole planets out there settled by humans, presumably with their own customs, industries, etc? It doesn't make much sense to me as is.

Also, you seem to have fallen into the old trope of single-purpose planets, with entire worlds dedicated to one thing (mining world, fortress world, etc) That's not always bad but you do need to explain why such a thing happens, or at least describe other worlds that are more diverse.

When setting things in the comparatively near future, you may need to answer a lot of ‘whys?’.

Why are the US and U.K. at war? We’ve only done that the once, and even then the US wasn’t the US, not only after. Yes things are occasionally fraught, but as things go it’s a pretty easy going international relationship. The citizens of each seem to little issue with one another, and a poo load of common ground as the cultures continue to mingle. What Britain gives, America gives in turn, and vice versa.

For that to breakdown is quite the achievement.

Now that’s not to say ‘how dare you even suggest such a thing’, just that your readers/players/viewers will naturally want to understand such a calamitous breakdown of Bon homme.

Science Fiction is about the impact of certain technologies (science) on human society. If your story is focused on characters or plot that doesn't revolve around that, it's not science fiction, it's a fiction set in the future.

Take Anne MacCaffrey's Crystal Singer series of books. FTL travel and communication is dependent upon resonating crystals from this one single planet, but it's just a MacGuffin to give the main character an unusual job. At it's heart, it's a romance fantasy set in the future.

Now consider the webcomic series Shlock Mercenary, which is ostensibly a farce about a merc company in the future, but one that examines the implication of FTL teleportation (and how it affects war), digital consciousness transfer, Artificial Intelligence, Antimatter power supply that can make Transuranic superheavy elements but also needs those same elements to build, deep history and a cycle of extinctions of technological civilizations. It's a pretty good science fiction!

Now, none of this means you cannot (or should not) strive for a logical and consistent background of scientific developments in your setting, but none of it is necessary to writing anything about the future - some of the most famous examples of 'future' fiction like Star Trek constantly ignore the implications of technology but still manage to spin a good yarn.


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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
When setting things in the comparatively near future, you may need to answer a lot of ‘whys?’.

Indeed. Fusion power and automation should produce a post-scarcity society on Earth - why not? Confirmation of (potentially long-standing) alien civilizations should promote the unity of Terran governments - why not? FTL should be weaponized - why not?

BTW, I think crossing the galaxy in a couple months is a bad decision, it makes the galaxy seem small (Star Wars makes this mistake, but it's Space Opera). There are something like a million stars within 400 light years of our own system.

As a fellow Brit, you could do a lot worse than looking into how the 2000AD ‘Dreddiverse’ was developed.

From a frankly pretty simply original conceit, it’s grown into quite the compelling background, where any number of tales in equal number of tones can be told.

Perhaps kick off with some GW Codex Background style. Strict word limit. See if you can get across the general feel. From there, short stories. See how it feels. Is it right? Are their darlings you need to kill? Does it develop from the original idea in an organic way? Is it actually cohesive? That sort of stuff.

The 'why' thing is a very important question for any worldbuilding, whether it's a near-future sci-fi, or a high fantasy or whatever. Any decisions you make about how your setting works, then any reader (or gamer, or whatever) is going to want to know why it works that way. For it to have depth greater than surface-level, the author needs to know why something works the way it does, how it came about, what implications it has.

Like you say Britain has reverted to 18th century type politics. Why and how did it happen? How do the people feel about that? Is there dissent? Why hasn't this government been replaced with something more 'modern'? Have there been any terrible monarchs who have caused major problems by stupid uses of their power? Or conversely, is there a wise, strong monarch who actually gets things done?

First, you have to ask yourself are you trying to write sci-fi or hard sci-fi? If you are writing hard sci-fi then that is based on scientific accuracy and supposed to be believable. If you aren't writing hard sci-fi then you don't have to explain the "why technology" works, just the rule of cool is what usually matters. Think about any good scifi movie you've watched, they don't explain the science other than it just is how things are, the only reason they go in to define how something works is when it is a plot point or foreshadowing something in the future.

You are trying to fill gaps and reasons first and that isn't usually how you write. Just write, write the background out how you imagine it. Don't worry too much about the details at first, create your outline. The basics you need to answer is: Who, What, Where, and Why. You don't have to focus on how they got to where they are, just focus on answering those questions in the current world you are creating.

After you've written that, then you go through and read what you've written. That will tell you where you need to fill gaps or if you have to define why X did Y more.

As for war and reasons, historically war happens for multiple reasons and it is rarely political. Politics are what they make excuses of why war happens but it usually happens because someone has something another person wants. It could be technology, it could be for resources, or hate/fear.

I think you are asking for help too soon without first trying to give the basic outline because the original post isn't a basic outline, it is more of a summary which means you have a lot more to write. A lot of if sort of fills in spaces as you write, then go back to read it and ask yourself does it answer "Who, What, Where, and Why" for your overall universe.

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.

deotrims 16th wrote:
London is still the capitol of Britain and is where all the government is. Also Earth is a no war zone.

That still doesn't make any sense. You're talking about the average colony having a population of ~1 billion and Britain having fortress world as one of its colonies. So why would the entire government be left behind on one tiny island with a small percentage of the population instead of secured behind all those fortresses? And why would the US make a sneak attack on London when that attack would do nothing to hurt the far more powerful colonies and only succeed in starting a war? You've got this weird scale mismatch where you talk about an interplanetary civilization but then have your key event be something out of 1941.

Lastly then so if a do write a story about this then who should I focus it on then a tank crew? infantry squad?

I don't know, which one of them has a compelling story to tell? You're continuing to go about this in a completely backwards way, spending lots of time on the irrelevant background details before you've given any thought to what you have to say. First you need to figure out what the story is, even if only in broad archetypes like "revenge story" or "heist film in space", then you can write the background suited to telling that story. Right now there's no reason to believe that either of those options would be at all interesting.

also what point is there of any universe in sci fi existing then.

I've already told you this: to serve as the setting for a story/game/whatever. Star Wars exists as a setting because George Lucas wanted to splice the hero's journey archetypes onto a mix of old samurai films and classic scifi serials. He started with that concept and then built a world to hold the story. LOTR exists because Tolkein wanted to create a British "mythology". 40k exists as a parody of British scifi and culture of the era, and because the miniatures needed some background fluff. Etc. The problem is not that a setting has no point in general, it's that you've created a generic as hell scifi setting and given us no reason to care about it.

That last sentence from Peregrine is probably the most important one in this thread. It's very easy as the creator of something to get carried away with all your ideas but you need to think in terms of your audience and find something they will care about. If you look at any of the well known settings in sci-fi or fantasy you'll likely not find any where the setting was created first for its own sake. Even the 40k universe, for example, was created basically to sell miniatures and that guided a lot of its creation. The mark of a good setting is often that you can't tell why it was created in the first place because it feels organic and believable.

For example, in theory I don't have a problem with the way you've set up your universe. It's possible that the whole Britain vs USA backstory could have a good explanation that works in-universe. As described, however, it doesn't make a lot of sense, for all the reasons Peregrine points out. It's not an unsolvable problem, but it is a problem that you need to solve and explain the reasoning behind. In 40k, for example, Earth is an extremely important planet, for cultural and historical reasons, but also because it's the seat of the Emperor and if he were to die the likelihood is humanity would follow as the Astronomicon would fail. That explains why one tiny, otherwise insignificant, planet is so important. You need something similar to explain the significance of what are essentially modern day countries in an era of planetary colonisation.

Also, a quick note on scale in general. Try to be less specific with numbers where possible. You've already fallen into a very common trap lots of sci-fi writers fall foul of. You mention megacities with populations of 10 million or more. That's...not very impressive. There are 21 cities on Earth now with a population of 10 million or more according to Wikipedia. The best way to avoid these kinds of scale issues is to avoid hard and fast numbers for this sort of thing. It's enough to call them megacities and describe them as vast, sprawling complexes stretching over half a continent etc. Once you put numbers on things they usually become either less impressive or utterly absurd.

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

deotrims 16th wrote:
Ok I will stop writing lore and write a story. Then I will base the lore around that.

I thought lore and story were the same. How about Good vs Evil, not joking, but every sci fi uni verse has it. You can change the settings of the good and evil spectrum to highly good on one side, sort of good on another side, sort of evil on another side ( make up various reasons as to why this could be the case ). Etc etc

 Stormatious wrote:

deotrims 16th wrote:
Ok I will stop writing lore and write a story. Then I will base the lore around that.

I thought lore and story were the same. How about Good vs Evil, not joking, but every sci fi uni verse has it. You can change the settings of the good and evil spectrum to highly good on one side, sort of good on another side, sort of evil on another side ( make up various reasons as to why this could be the case ). Etc etc

Lore is not the same as story. The lore is the history and facts of the general setting while a story is about a specific event. It's the difference between the story in A New Hope and the details of the setting as a whole.

Slipspace wrote:

 Stormatious wrote:

deotrims 16th wrote:
Ok I will stop writing lore and write a story. Then I will base the lore around that.

I thought lore and story were the same. How about Good vs Evil, not joking, but every sci fi uni verse has it. You can change the settings of the good and evil spectrum to highly good on one side, sort of good on another side, sort of evil on another side ( make up various reasons as to why this could be the case ). Etc etc

Lore is not the same as story. The lore is the history and facts of the general setting while a story is about a specific event. It's the difference between the story in A New Hope and the details of the setting as a whole.

Well if you wanted be technical you would say lore is a story of history& facts so its a story but what ever. What about my second point i made did that give you any thoughts?

deotrims 16th wrote:
Ok I will stop writing lore and write a story. Then I will base the lore around that.

You're saying the right words, but your tone (and general pattern of posting here) is coming across as desperate bargaining. It's like MUST HAVE A SCIFI UNIVERSE is the only thing you care about, and you'll do whatever anyone tells you as long as you get to have a universe. If your attachment to your ideas is really this weak then you should probably stop and think about why you're doing this at all. And you should probably wait on investing more work until you have an idea that you believe in enough to defend against criticism.

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.

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.?

 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.

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.