FAQ

LampreyTown This is the page for Frequently Asked Questions, particularly by new players.

Participating
Q: Who is in charge of this?

A: The Game Master, foamy.

Q: But who made this FAQ?

A: It's a wiki. Anyone can make contributions.

Q: How do I join the game?

A: Just start posting in the thread. There is no entry procedure.

Q: How long has the game been going on?

A: Including many long hiatuses, since 2009.

Q: Is it still ongoing?

A: Yes

Q: Where can I find out more?

A: In the thread summary here. It is much more comprehensive then this FAQ.

Unsolved Questions

 * Where did NotMoon come from?
 * Where was NotMoon built?
 * When was NotMoon built?
 * Why was Notmoon build?
 * Who built NotMoon?
 * What is the thing inside NotMoon for?
 * Why did we lose contact with Sol?
 * Why does Sol appear deserted?
 * Are there other artificial constructs still hiding in LampreyTown ?
 * Why are there so little habitable planets in the Goldilocks zone?
 * What are the other observed NotMoon objects in other solar systems for?
 * Why is life so rare in the galaxy?
 * Why have the Lampreys reached near a twenty-first century tech level (and in some cases much higher) so near to our arrival?

FTL and slower than light travel
Q: Maybe you can break the speed of light with this really neat trick X. Then you really don't break the speed of light.

A: There is No FTL!

'''Q: But, but... this is a really cool way...'''

A: THERE IS NO FTL!

Q: How fast is Audacity ?

A: 0.1c, with a very small variance, depending on the local environment.

Q: How do you get up to that speed?

A: By having a huge fusion engine with massive heat radiators. Then you turn it on for a couple of days.

Q: How do you slow down again?

A: By turning your engine into the direction you're going and turning it back on again. Honestly, go play some Kerbal Space Program.

NotMoon
Q: What is NotMoon ?

A: NotMoon is a satellite on a retrograde orbit around LampreyTown's gas giant L-III. It is also known as L-III-XVII.

Q: What is so special about it?

A: It is quite small, only about 11 km in diameter, however it is also very round which is unusual for such small stellar objects. Inside it is an obviously artificial construct, made of very dense materials.

Q: When did the crew notice it?

A: Embarrassingly enough, only when a Lamprey NPC pointed it out to us. Before that the crew had been entirely oblivious to its presence. This was prior to activating FakeBrain.

Q: How the hell did that happen?

A: Never skip on spot checks. The anomalous nature of NotMoon was hidden in a big list of data on other moons, and by not actually being AI's we just skipped over it.

Q: How old is NotMoon ?

A: We're not sure. There is evidence both ways and the crew is divided or undecided on the issue.

The 'crust' is old, it shows cratering and isotope patterns that are similar to the natural objects in the system. It is on an orbit that could have lasted billions of years. These points seem to indicate that it is on the order of many millions or billions of years old.

On the other hand, the observations that Sol conducted of LampreyTown did not spot NotMoon, though there was a 99.5% chance that it would have. This point seems to indicate that it is only several thousands of years old.

L-III-XVII is far too small to be able to backwalk its effects on anything with usuable precision. It could've come from anywhere. There's nothing unsual about the surface other than it's lack of cratering and overall shape. The cratering on the surface is not out of the boundaries of natural collisions.

Q: How did NotMoon get here?

A: We don't know. It could have flown here from far away, but accelerating and decellerating something of that mass is very difficult and very obvious. It could also have been constructed here, though there is no evidence of construction equipment and such to be found.

Q: What is NotMoon for?

A: We don't know either.

Q: What are we doing to find out?

A: The crew is divided over the best course of action. Some want to take more active and invasive probing methods which have better expected information yield, while others argue caution and prefer using passive methods only.

Q: What are some methods that have been used or discussed to probe NotMoon ?

A: Passive techniques: Neutrino x-raying has been done. Gravitic mapping like the NASA GRACE mission has been proposed. Furthermore there are, measurements to its magnetic field, its temperature, its electric field, using passive ground penetrating radar, and its interaction with gamma ray bursts. Then there is simply taking pictures of it.

Active techniques: Seismic measurements in-situ or via laser seismography. This is usually done by dropping something on it, or waiting for something to drop naturally onto it and then measure the resonance. Then of-course there's drilling into it.

Q: Is NotMoon unique?

A: It doesn't look like it. The Sol survey did find many NotMoon like objects, which were explained away as essentially a statistical anomaly. The presence of NotMoon like object correlates weakly with the presence of planets in the Goldilocks zone. Objects similar in shape and size to L-III-XVII (some larger, some smaller) were seen throughout the Galaxy, but they're rare. The majority of star systems have none at all. Only one was ever seen outside a stellar system.

Q: What did the Lampreys think about NotMoon?

A: They only discovered it about 22 years ago and thus the moon plays no part at all in any Lamprey religion or historic mythology. After they examined it up-close (and possibly since earlier) they hid the findings from the general public and took all sorts of secret measures to prepare for it. For example they started hiding their nuclear weapons research, but secretly started working on space defense systems and Orion type nuclear propelled spacecraft.

During the public statement that accompanied the revelation of NotMoon and the Orion, the Lamprey responspble for the Orion speculated that we were an agent of NotMoon. It is possible that they know more about alien artifacts and NotMoon in-system, for example by finding one on their planet or moons, 2001-style.

The Lampreys
Q: Do we have access to the Lamprey Internet?

A: No. That would require changes on the Lampreys side to deal with the lightspeed lag, which is on the order of ~two hours, depending on the positioning of the planets.

Q: Can we make viruses that work on Lamprey computers?

A: No, we don't have any way to make a program for their computers without first having either the full specification to one or having physical access. Once we do, our computer tech is ungodly more capable then theirs.

Q: Can we distract the Lampreys so we can sneak something onto their planet?

A: Very unlikely, unless you have a really smart way of doing so. The Lampreys have very good lasers defending their local neighborhood. Also, stealth is impossible in space, unless you can convince foamy that your method will work. Distracting them to the point of neglecting their defense is silly, they can simply assign a computer or a dedicated team to do the monitoring, while the other Lampreys worry about the day to day problems.

Q: Can we sneak something into Loam orbit?

A: Again, very unlikely. You would need to either aerobrake in their atmosphere which is very visible, or perform a retro-burn with a rocket to get into orbit. Again, this is very visible.

Q: Can we make viruses that work on Lampreys ?

A: No, a virus operates on the DNA level, and we don't have any biosamples from Loam to work with. Once we do, the sky's the limit. We can still make bacteria though, which don't need a host cell to survive. (and we have done so)

Q: Can we scrape Lamprey DNA from the Lamprey space probes?

A: Possibly, the idea has been brought up and elaborate variations (which probes? when? how exactly? how secretive should we be about it?) have been discussed. We haven't actually tried it though. If there is any Lamprey DNA on it, that would mean it will have survived decontamination procedures and the harsh space environment for years. It would probably be degraded from all that.

Q: Why can't we crack all of the Lampreys codes?

A: Those that we can break are based on our ability to solve certain mathematical problems, which the Lampreys have not yet solved in combination with our ridiculous amounts of computing power. Those that we can't are either based on mathematical problems that we can't solve either or are OTP cyphers. OTP encryption, while logistically very inconvenient, is totally unbreakable when used competently.

Q: Perhaps the Lampreys can find a way to break the light-speed barrier?

A: No. They cannot. There is no FTL.

Sol
Q: What happened at loss of contact with Sol?

A: 20 000 years into our journey Sol missed a scheduled databurst. Audacity was in semi-regular contact, checking in every ten million seconds (about 16.5 weeks or four months). Some time prior to that, we observed an increase in luminosity of the Sun which seemed to be in accordance with the Dyson swarm around the Sun folding up or being destroyed. The luminosity increase happened between transmissions, and then the next update didn't come.

This observation would have propagated by light speed, so in effect the first missed databurst was 2000 years prior to our noticing it. Thus, Sol went silent after they'd seen us leave 1800 years prior. No other messages were received after that.

Q: Was Sol the only place that humans lived?

A: No, there were 3 other colonies in nearby star systems the furthest of which was some low tens of lightyears from Sol. After LoC the Audacity attempted to contact them but was unsuccessful. Like Sol, the colonies went silent. The other colonies should be able to contact us if they felt the need to.

Q: So what happened to them?

A: We don't know. If they'd been attacked by an RKKV we certainly would have noticed.

Nomenclature and abbreviations

 * FTL: Faster Than Light. There is no such thing.
 * c: The speed of light.
 * LampreyTown : The solar system the game takes place in (mostly)
 * Loam or L-II : The Lamprey home planet
 * T: Time of the Audacity 's acceleration burn
 * T + n timeunits: n timeunits after T. T-k symmetric the other way in time.
 * Mkire-I: A probe that went past the Lamprey planet at 0.1c. Was shot at (but not hit) by Lamprey lasers.
 * RKKV: Relativistic Kinetic Kill Vehicle. A bunch of mass that has been accelerated to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light, such as 0.1c. If one of these hits your planet you'll have a very bad day.
 * LY: Light Year
 * LS: Light Second
 * mY: megaYear. A million years. Usually standard SI prefixes apply to anything.
 * NotMoon : The moon around the third planet of LampreyTown . Has some sort of very dense artificial construct inside it.
 * Sol: The sun around which Earth orbits, or more generally the whole solar system from which we left.
 * Lamp: LampreyTown 's star. Also known as Lol.
 * LoC: Loss of Contact (event). 20 000 years into the Audacity trip we lost contact with Earth.
 * Chaser : Hypothetical alien power that caused LoC
 * LB: LittleBoy . A hardy weaponised bacterium.
 * Loort cloud: LampreyTown version of the Oort cloud.
 * Word of God: Something foamy has declared to be true in the game. The only Word of God we have is that there is no FTL.
 * OOC: Out of Character. Usually used when discussing something that an actual sapient AI in a spaceship would not use as reasoning.
 * Tech Plateau: Our tech level. In the scenario it appears that there is some upper tech level that keeps the scenario in hard sci-fi. Though we aren't completely sure, the Sol system spent an astronomical amount of time, thought, energy and experiments into trying to find a way around it, and failed. See the Science Supercluster for more details.
 * VN: Von Neumann. Von Neumann machines are machines that, given time, can build replicas of themselves. Slightly more general machines are VN universal constructors, that can build copies of themselves and can also eventually build anything else that is physically realizable.
 * pVN: The Planetary VN machine. A large factory complex that we took with us. The Audacity expedition's only pVN is currently on L-III-IV.
 * aVN: Asteroid Von Neumann. Smaller, but still big Von Neumann machine that chomps on asteroids. The Audacity expedition's aVNs are currently in the asteroid belt.
 * CC: Contact coalition. The gathering of Lamprey governments and representatives that have taken it upon themselves to represent their world. Not all Lampreys get along with them.
 * FB: FakeBrain . A big construct that we've put onto one of the moons around L-III. The idea behind it was that it was supposed to house our minds. Thus the Audacity could play an unintelligent probe for a while.
 * SB: SpaceBattles.com. Forum where the thread was started.
 * SV: SufficientVelocity.com. Forum where the thread is now being run. Foamy switched over due to disappointment with the SB administrators and for better forum software on SV.
 * CLang: Constructed Language. A mathematical language we taught the Lampreys so they could communicate with the supposed automated probe Audacity.
 * AM: Anti-Matter
 * ABM: Anti-Ballistic-Missiles
 * CHON: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen. Useful stuff to use as resources.
 * GPR: Ground Penetrating Radar