Submitted by camidon on Tue, 04/18/2006 - 10:40am

This page is dedicated to laying the ground rules for the GenE universe. During chat and wiki discussion, these are the parameters those involved have agreed upon. These "rules" are not up for debate.

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This is the NO list:

1) No FTL! This is law. The entire point of GenE is to utilize the time and distance of space crossings so Humans can evolve to fit a new destination planet. FTL defeats this premise and skirts the issue of stellar distance. Along the same lines, there is no FTL communication. All wave types travel through space at a set rate. If you want to communicate with Earth or something else, pull out your physics books and calculate the time necessary it would take for communication to cross the stellar voids.

2) No Cold Sleep. What's the point of hibernating to cross the stellar distances if the premise is to evolve over that time? PLus, cold sleep begs the question: If no one is awake to crew the ship, what happens if there's an engineering malfunction, a stellar phenomenon? just as there are issues to evolving as Humans cross space, there are just as many issues to putting Humans to sleep to cross space.

3) No Terraforming. Evolution will cause Humans to fit the destination environment upon arrival (be creative!). Therefore there is no need to plan to terraform a planet before, during, or after arrival--that's a different story. (*)

*4) No Aliens. The launch assumptions are extrapolated from current Earth happenings. As there is no alien contact to date, there won't be when the first GenE ships launch. (*)

*5) No tweaking with space-time (relates to#1). This is a linear premise with a beginning, middle, and end. So, no time travel. (*)

*6) No AI. Computers will not be sentient at launch. Robots will not have a consciousness. (*) Though this rule is only applicable at the beginning, please no HAL stories!

* indicates that this rule must only be observed during the "beginning" phase of the universe--while a generation ship is in or near the Sol system. Once a ship leaves communication contact with Earth, go wild.

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This is the Physical Details section:

A GenE ship is to be constructed out of a hollowed out asteroid.

Ships can be any physical size, support any number of crew, and be designed any way desired based on your needs for your stories (as long as the rules above are not broken).