Babylon 5 crossover recs and ideas.
Kevral
Active member
I don't know much about StarCraft so can't really comment on the effect it would have but wouldn't the shadows pretty much do as they pleas in StarCraft?
And as powerful as the Shadow Omegas are they're not enough to turn the tide of the war if that's the aim of the story and unless they can access and navigate slipsspace they're in big trouble as a resource for the UNSC.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
If you read the EU, then SC2 makes more sense (hell, I had a friend that would let me borrow his Starcraft books, they're generally a damn good ride with few exceptions). In the books that I've read that had the Protoss and Zerg in them, there is an air of mystery in the entire Zerg/Protoss conflict. This gets further implications with the entire 'Preserver series' where a human archeologist has a Protoss Preserver hitchhiking in his brain due to events outside their control (Preservers are the equivalent of the Kahli(sp?) historians, but with the added bonus of experiencing history from the eyes of those that witnessed it, with the three exceptions being the creator of the Khala (the species-wide pseudo hivemind/psionic internet) itself, those that died before/when cut off of the Khala (although the Dark Templar developed memory crystals as an alternative), and those who become Archons (because they literally burn themselves from existence due to how the process worked), the former of which implies something is afoot with said Protoss).I confess, more than once I've toyed with the idea of IOST'ing a Shadow world or two into Starcraft. Though I would add that if I wrote this story I'd be mostly ignoring the Starcraft 2 games and storyline. Because I think they're a damn disgrace.
Another idea I had a while back would involve throwing in some Advance Omega Destoyers (aka Shadow Omegas) into Halo.
Battle of Circinius IV Force add: Omega-Xs (Halo/Babylon 5)
The UNSC forces over the planet Circinius IV receive some very unusual reinforcements in the form of five Earthforce Advanced Omega Destroyers (Babylon 5 franchise). The Advanced Omegas and UNSC force will cooperate with each other against the Covenant attackers and attempt to drive off or...www.frozenincarbonite.org
Somewhat off topic question. Lets say an ISOT situation with another Earth. And this Earth is in the Periphery near the Taurian Concordat. Would the Concordat and the Periphery hate them on principle or adopt a wait and see approach?
I’m saying that with the cultural attitudes of the Star League towards the Periphery, it would be unrealistic for it to not become that in fact, even if that wasn’t the official line.
They'd likely conquer them for the reasources and the fact its a garden world in the Periphery, and if the inhabitants didn't like it, nuke them into submission, the world is more important than the people.
Just because they were wronged doesn't make them nice people, and an "Earth" in the Periphery is a hugely valuable asset, population be damned.
The Periphery states mostly just want to be left alone, I think. They might feel it wise to keep an eye and make sure Earth doesn’t get any ideas about founding its own Star League, but other than that, they’d see it as a weird primitive backwater that doesn’t have any Lostech caches or other things of value.
As in the EA got put into the BT'verse? Would they also come with their territories?
Yes, but even then they barely rank in terms of size compared to a Periphery state. Tauron Concordiat would likely have an equal if not greater population size.
Most definately so. The EA was a 'young' state and most of its colonies barely made populations in the double digit millions. The Taurians probably outnumber them just by the systems in the Hyades cluster.
Oh, I'm sure the populations are MUCH smaller.
It'll be weird for the EA once they realize aliens aren't a thing anymore. Though, once people realize that you don't have to screw with BT's traditional jump core and that 'EA-Terra' has a different FTL tech...I can see a LOT of pressure being brought to bear. If it's been a few years since the EA/Minbari War...the EA fleet will be starting to get a bit massive.
It'll be VERY hard for a periphery nation to just step in and take over. Course, EA also brings a way for EVERYONE to unshackle from Comstar as well. The butterflies will quickly cause avalanches.
... *sighs* It should not be assumed EA ftl tech works in the BattleTech universe. I know this is commonly handwaved away, but BattleTech is a very special duck compared to most other SF universes and that core difference regarding their FTL should be taken into account in any crossover.
Again, there's the old SF adage, you can have two of three: relativity, causality, and FTL. Most settings, including B5, throw out relativity in favor of causality and ftl. This is because these two are the least impactful to human brain logic and relativity is much harder to grasp.
BattleTech instead chooses relativity and ftl, throwing out causality. Effect can, and does, come before cause in BattleTech, and in fact Jump Drives explicity work this way. However the other limits of BattleTech technology make it so that it is not an exploitable feature in universe.
However, what this means is that any ftl based on the exsistence of causality and the suspension of relativity, like B5's system, should either simply not work or have MASSIVE unexpected results... like ships arriving before they depart, ftl communications signals from the future arriving whenever they feel like, ships arriving at a location thinking they'd only travelled days and it was actually decades, etc.
While I normally am all for the assumption of tech working within other universes, that is when they functionally share core assumptions regarding ftl. IE, Trek, Wars, and B5 all throw out relativity while keeping causality, so their tech should be generally cross compatable. But BT, due to those changed assumptions, does need to be handled differently.
Again, there's the old SF adage, you can have two of three: relativity, causality, and FTL. Most settings, including B5, throw out relativity in favor of causality and ftl. This is because these two are the least impactful to human brain logic and relativity is much harder to grasp.
BattleTech instead chooses relativity and ftl, throwing out causality. Effect can, and does, come before cause in BattleTech, and in fact Jump Drives explicity work this way. However the other limits of BattleTech technology make it so that it is not an exploitable feature in universe.
However, what this means is that any ftl based on the exsistence of causality and the suspension of relativity, like B5's system, should either simply not work or have MASSIVE unexpected results... like ships arriving before they depart, ftl communications signals from the future arriving whenever they feel like, ships arriving at a location thinking they'd only travelled days and it was actually decades, etc.
While I normally am all for the assumption of tech working within other universes, that is when they functionally share core assumptions regarding ftl. IE, Trek, Wars, and B5 all throw out relativity while keeping causality, so their tech should be generally cross compatable. But BT, due to those changed assumptions, does need to be handled differently.
I never assume that texh doesn't work unless the question of crossovers specifically states it does.
Even if EA ships still get to abuse hyperspace there are no other jump gates aside from those in EA space. So...not a huge advantage aside from the tactical flexibility of not needing a static jump point
Are you sure that's what it's doing?
I haven't really heard a convincing explanation on this point. For all I know, the E wave propagating ahead of a jump is a decay effect of something propagating at FTL speed to punch the hyperspace path the JumpShip takes.
Per what I've read the detectable hyperspace decay wave gets to the target system seconds before the Jump Drive is even turned on to initiate the Jump. This means that the effect of the jump is happening before the erstwhile cause has happened. Further, we know relativity is explicitly a thing in BattleTech as there are published advanced rules for simulating ship to ship combat at relativistic speeds* and the rulebooks state that otherwise ship to ship combat should be assumed to be taking place at non-relativistic speeds.
‐---------
* Ok, in fairness the official rules for warships fighting each other at relativistic speeds is, basically: "Get two paper shredders and put both record sheets in at the same time, the one that is shredded first "loses"." Emphasizing that a the ships don't fight like that and that in fights at those speeds everyone loses...
Can uhhh someone explain this old adage to me like I have the intelligence of a Dog? It's for a friend.
JasonSanjo
Your Overlord and Jester
Basically, in relativity as you approach the speed of light time slows down. And if you were hypothetically to go faster than light whilst remaining in a three-dimensional universe time's flow would reverse for you, effectively causing you to travel backwards in time (Pop culture example: Christopher Reeve Superman).
In short, if you use FTL to travel from point A to point B and then back to point A, you would arrive at point A before you left point A in the first place. And if you then stick around and temporally "catch up" and, say, fire your antimatter cannon at your "younger" self (or otherwise interfere) you would break causality and create a time paradox (which could have all sorts of nasty consequences, depending on the universe). Another example would be using FTL to send information from the future to the past, also breaking causality in some form or other.
Some SF universes get around this issue by using FTL methods that don't actually allow FTL travel whilst remaining in the three-dimensional universe, but instead utilize various workarounds. Prime examples include space folding (Macross, Robotech, et al), hyperspace (Stargate, et al), "wormholes" (Stargate, et al) and arguably spacewarp (Star Trek, et al). And then there are some universes that simply do away with relativity entirely, directly or indirectly stating that the Theory of Relativity is in some way incorrect.
Knowledgeispower
Ah I love the smell of missile spam in the morning
Honestly any earth being isoted into BT would have the major problem of anyone actually finding them since exploration is rare post ACW. Any other variables of which earth and the like have to account for that and have to have a valid way how they're discovered
Unless said Earth starts sending out explorer ships that inadvertently pokes the nearby powers and this then clues everyone in that they are there.