Lore Speculation: the Arda Seed and the Great War

[Arioch]

Stargates are instantaneous point-to-point travel. A ship moving through a stargate doesn't spend any time in hyperspace (at least, from the ship's point of view).

I like this idea, as there are also Stargates in the game that are way more efficient, so why use Hyperspace at all? Surely it is handy if you do not yet have gates, but if the races during the Great War were so advanced to have Super dreads, then why would have they still be using Hyperspace to get around?

Well, just because stargates exist doesn't mean there's always going to be an active stargate in every system. Especially if you're at war and your enemy can slow down your advance by destroying the gate on their end.

[silverkitty23]

But the ancient stargate (i.e. the kind they could make back when their tech was higher) doesn't require a stargate at the target system

[Arioch]

But the ancient stargate (i.e. the kind they could make back when their tech was higher) doesn't require a stargate at the target system

That's true, but it works on the same principle. It opens a portal at the target location.

[zolobolo]

But the ancient stargate (i.e. the kind they could make back when their tech was higher) doesn't require a stargate at the target system

That's true, but it works on the same principle. It opens a portal at the target location.

So the two travel methods cannot be separated from one another. But we know that the old Stargates allowed for instant travel to any destination so if this tech was available during the great war, it was either:
1. Developed by one of the known species
2. Developed by an older species (which is mostly common in such lore and I would advise against it)
3. Developed by a yet unknown race that developed together with the other races of the great war but has not been heard of since. I would prefer this as it would avoid the above cliche and give an comfortable setup for a DLC with the race and its secure home-world. Since it has been established that SOL is actually out there already, it would need to be a totally new race but I am down with this

So this yet unknown race (lets call them the Arda ) could fill in the blanks:
1. Originally created Stargates and slowly explored the whole galaxy (would be interesting that they come from the other side)
2. They were not military minded, thus they were happy to meet the emerging civilizations restricted to their own systems
3. Perfected the technology and created hyperspace nodes to allow travel for everyone fomenting trade and diplomacy - all was well
4. Queue greedy alliance of some young civilizations and since the Arda were not prepared for war, they were loosing fast - thus they have pulled the plug on the whole Hyperspace concept and consequently banished all civilizations back to their local system, thereby crippling society (based heavily on trade and interconnected computing systems at this point) and sending them back to the stone-age

[Astroth16_6]

3. Developed by a yet unknown race that developed together with the other races of the great war but has not been heard of since. I would prefer this as it would avoid the above cliche and give an comfortable setup for a DLC with the race and its secure home-world. Since it has been established that SOL is actually out there already, it would need to be a totally new race but I am down with this

I don't think having a playable race like this is a good idea, a home world accessible only by stargate seems like a huge advantage (and a nightmare for the AI to deal with). You'd essentially be playing the Antarans from MoO2.

So this yet unknown race (lets call them the Arda ) could fill in the blanks:
1. Originally created Stargates and slowly explored the whole galaxy (would be interesting that they come from the other side)
2. They were not military minded, thus they were happy to meet the emerging civilizations restricted to their own systems
3. Perfected the technology and created hyperspace nodes to allow travel for everyone fomenting trade and diplomacy - all was well
4. Queue greedy alliance of some young civilizations and since the Arda were not prepared for war, they were loosing fast - thus they have pulled the plug on the whole Hyperspace concept and consequently banished all civilizations back to their local system, thereby crippling society (based heavily on trade and interconnected computing systems at this point) and sending them back to the stone-age

It dosen't make much sense to me that a race which essentially controlled all hyperspace travel would not have options for resolving the situation other then a mutually assured destruction scenario. Maybe instead the stargates were developed by another race, opposed to the arda, during the great war.

So you'd have this race and their allies(the ashdar come to mind instantly) on one side, and the arda with theirs (Gremak etc.) on the other, with humans potentially switching sides in the middle of the war, which would explain why everybody hates them. The stargates would give the other race a big strategic advantage, which could push the arda to stop all interstellar travel in the galaxy for survival.

That opens the othe race to show up in the game as NPC's hostile to the Arda seed, so trading with one could anger the other and potentially trigger raids on your systems. So you'd have to make a choice who(if anyone) to side with. Defeating both and combining their technology could be a victory condition similar to fighting antarans in MoO2 (only if the devs make it actually difficult to do ).

[SirDamnALot]

On a silly side note: As i read the desciption of the Arda puzzle box I thought: NOPE NOPE NOPE, this is the lament configuration and they want to trick me into unleashing the hellraisers upon myself
Only with the status update I learnt that it improves morale without a catch...for now

[Arioch]

Only with the status update I learnt that it improves morale without a catch...for now

...or does it?

[zolobolo]

Haven't seen any side-effects yet...

If some of my pops would become Arda Zombies or whatnot in an end-game crisis type of event I ouwl loose my sh##t it would be that cool