| Weasel | 10 Jul 2016 11:50 a.m. PST |
Was thinking about this the other day and came to the following conclusion as to how to decide what "box" a game falls into. If a game lacks a suppression/pinning mechanic and the hit chance of a reasonably standard grunt is around 50%, its a space adventure game. If it has pinning/suppression or lower hit chances, its more likely to be a hard scifi game.
Pointless? Sure. But everything on the internet is.
How do you distinguish? |
| Ghostrunner | 10 Jul 2016 1:05 p.m. PST |
Do the men wear full pressure suits with composite reinforcing shells and heavy helmets with integrated HUD… …and the women wear skintight jumpsuits with no helmets and stiletto space boots? |
| Weasel | 10 Jul 2016 2:42 p.m. PST |
Ahhh, the sexy jumpsuit factor :) |
| Outlaw Tor | 10 Jul 2016 4:56 p.m. PST |
Heh, sigh, everyone seems to miss the point that at that level of tech women wear skintight nano armor in various colors, most notably flesh. |
| Weasel | 10 Jul 2016 7:03 p.m. PST |
Non-form-fitting armour is soooo 2078 |
| wminsing | 11 Jul 2016 8:23 a.m. PST |
In terms of general fiction it's about how consistent the 'rules' are when it comes to breaking physics. If your super-hyper-warp-drive or hard-light-plasma-blaster functions the same way every time in the setting, it's hard(ish) sci-fi. If your super-hyper-warp-drive can't be used within 5 AU's of the sun in one chapter but a few chapters later your heroes jump to light speed straight out of the hanger of the Imperial Detention Center on the Capital World then it's space opera. -Will |
| Russ Lockwood | 11 Jul 2016 4:20 p.m. PST |
Perhaps:
Three parts tech extrapolation, one part tech wizardry is science fiction.
One part tech extrapolation, three parts tech wizardry is space opera. Then again, what is magic in one era often becomes common occurrence in another. Forget which sci-fi writer first observed that… |
| Ghostrunner | 11 Jul 2016 6:26 p.m. PST |
Arthur C Clarke Perhaps one of the greatest 'magicians' ever. |
| Zephyr1 | 11 Jul 2016 8:25 p.m. PST |
Hard sci-fi is where a ship's crew sits around in sheer boredom for months on end waiting for anything to happen… Space adventure is where everything starts happening five minutes after you begin… |
| chromedog | 13 Jul 2016 3:45 a.m. PST |
@Russ Lockwood:
It's known as "Clarke's law". To whit:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." |
takes inspiration from Doctor Who.
