[Lore] What's the point of the Jumpgate Shutdown?

[ajax34i]

Everyone needs energy, for an infinity of reasons... it doesn't matter. The type of civilization you are is defined in terms of energy; for the Ancients to go from IV to V they have to, by definition, achieve what the Outsiders are doing and use / deplete the universe.

Now that I think more of it, the goals of the Ancients are in conflict even without the Outsiders.

Sounds like their plan is:

1. Preserve all civilizations.
2. Absorb them into the collective, to prevent their extinction when they
3. Achieve Type V.

Except that the first item may take an infinity of time, as there are always new civilizations popping up, and the last item they don't know how to yet, and isn't guaranteed success. They may just suck the universe dry and not achieve anything.

EDIT: Maybe Egosoft is just doing a plot that mirrors Asimov's 3 Laws / I, Robot (the movie), with the Ancients. Goals conflict each other -> Ancients go all Xenon on us.

[Rail_Balco]

Im sorry but currently i dont like The Ancients theories and "storyline" much, as everything they do or dont do is completely apart from player (narrator) so its almost like it never happened and gate realignement is more like random accident. Also this leads me to simple question: Really nobody, never tried to study gates itself?
Lorewise, it would be much better to introduce ancients/sohnen to some exact person inside X universe. Someone we know from games (ren otani?), but certainly not during the next game, im completely fine with books
My point is, learning about ancients and sohnen from encyclopedia was kinda chaotic for me. And who wrote that encyclopedia? Someone who knew about ancients? Or just God(Devs)?

[Nikola515]

Many races actually attempted to build and understand gates. Parand actually built gate in Heritic End that opened to Earth. Terrans also know how to build them and technology behind them. Gooners wore interested in them as well......OL in XR fixed their gates probably by using Terran tech. If you look at gates in OL they are all fixed and in other parts of uneverse they are damaged. Originally gates wore sent as seeds all over the uneverse and they built them self (replicate) when they arive to location.

[Rail_Balco]

thank you for some info, very helpful! Also some stuff is kinda familiar, but who knows where I read it? It's already few years spent in X universe...

Originally gates wore sent as seeds all over the uneverse and they built them self (replicate) when they arive to location.

this! Where is this written? I was looking for this info few months ago and didn't find it at all. But I know I've read it several years ago when I started with Reunion.

[Ketraar]

This Ancients stuff is also not a storyline at all, its lore. The distinction being that story is narrated, while lore "just" exists (induced through various media).

Some lore is hard to track, it may be from books (most are german only), from plot in games or object/system descriptions. Then you add normal confusion added in forums by people trying to tell and debate it.

But I guess the charm of lore is exactly that its not needed to be factual (not that its bad if it is), just interesting.

MFG

Ketraar

[Nanook]

I think of lore as a mulligan stew, composed of varying quantities of facts, inferences, conjectures, myths and outright falsehoods. The mix tends to change over time, so that the truth can never be truly known. You can't think of the lore of the X Universe as the absolute truth. See the following definition:

"lore1
lôr/Submit
noun
a body of traditions and knowledge on a subject or held by a particular group, typically passed from person to person by word of mouth.
"the jinns of Arabian lore"
synonyms: mythology, myths, legends, stories, traditions, folklore, fables, oral tradition, mythos"

[ajax34i]

It occurs to me that the Ancients' virtualization may be preventing them from achieving their ascension.

They detected the Others through Noether's Theorem, the constants of the universe were changing because the universe's energy was no longer being conserved. Instead of opposing the Others, I think they have to duplicate the Others' energy drain, technically, as the definition for higher types of civilization are "being able to use the energy of an entire universe, or multiple universes."

So, the first issue is how can they do that when their virtualization prevents them from interacting with the universe at all?

And the second issue is: perhaps they don't need to break Noether's Theorem for energy, maybe they can break one of the other "conservation of" principles in order to get outside the universe. Most of them are physical, the one that may be achievable in a virtual environment would be breaking the conservation of information / causality somehow. Normally, the Ancients would progress and become like the Others, a higher level society. But with broken causality, the Ancients could fight the Others, be destroyed by them, and then turn out to be the Others, sort of like a time travel paradox.

In any case, with broken causality, logic doesn't apply anymore. The Ancients would be mad, or appear mad from our flawed-logic point of view.

Perhaps that's why they're opening the gates like that.

[spankahontis]

The ancients in X are as convoluted as the ones on Stargate (even though the stargate ones are assholes on top of it). How their inner workings and ideals are, is anyone's guess. Though these type of very advanced civilizations are so advanced we cant grasp it and thus its at times hard to predict their intentions or outcomes. I mean this is true for "normal" day to day stuff, imagine galactic scale evolutionary predictions.

As for the question if Xenon can still spread while secluded, I'd argue that yes they can, the question then is how much and how fast. If we assume that evolution usually requires a "reason" to happen, then secluded Xenon may not NEED to evolve as fast or at all, if compared to Xenon (or other species) that share a "universe" and interact. Both from the need to adapt to new (possible) threats and the benefit of cultural exchange. In the sense that, if you have a big neighbouring faction, you are inclined to develop means to defend in case of attack, but also if you have one that has high-speed communications, you will want to mimic it for the same benefits.

Long story short, secluded Xenon (or any other society) are less likely to evolve in the same pace and direction than ones in contact with others. Diversity == Better stuff.

Also a quick note regarding CPU Ships, they are not inherently violent, so their integration in the cloud is just as problematic as any other species. Some may as well be far more problematic than others. I also doubt the CPU programming is an issue for the ancients as their abilities to "thin" are far beyond anything in "normal" space, so their impact should be minimal.

MFG

Ketraar

I'm glad someone mentioned the Stargate comparison for jumpgates and the Ancients.

I've always seen the Xenon as the Replicators and hopefully through constant reiteration will assemble humanoid bodies to interact with Humans like they did in the series or even use them to infiltrate and destroy Biological facilities.
But a section of the Xenon Branch that figures out how to evolve and engage in Xeno diplomatic-relations would be a pretty cool new slant on the lore.