The gate builders could not possibly be K3 civilization

[samoja]

Not sure if this is still part of the lore, we all know how Egosoft treats lore, as evidenced by the fact that there is not even a separate forum section for it, but old lore stated that all the gates were built by Kardashev type 3 civilization, the lore gets convoluted from here on (no big surprise) but what i wanted to say is, the gate builders could not possibly be Kardashev 3 civilization.

At least not in the Milky Way, as evidenced by the fact there are still hundreds of billions of stars happily shining in the galaxy. Kardashev type 3 civilization is defined as a civilization that is harnessing 100% of the energy of it's home galaxy, which means they would have long since covered every single star in the Milky Way with Dyson Swarms.

Now you may argue they are using means other then Dyson Swarms to harness that energy, does not matter, the fact remains all those billions of stars are exuding energy out into space and that is simply wasted energy, there really is no way to catch that energy once it is dispersed trough hundreds of light years of interstellar space. Which means that the gate builders are not Type 3 by definition.

Far more plausible scenario would be if the gate builders were an alliance of Kardashev Type 2 civilizations. Kardashev Type 2 civilization still has immense amount of power from our perspective, and a few hundred of those, especially if they went full digital and built Matrioshka Brains (as it is implied IIRC) would be much more along the lines of what we see gate builders display, they would easily go unnoticed among billions of stars of Milky Way and yet would have enough power to casually swat any of the younger races with minuscule effort.

[Tomonor]

1. Yeah, Egosoft do tend to retcon things without a word or hint in favor of the game's balance (or out of resource constraints). That being said...

2. I think the lore of the Ancients is well laid-out. While the Ancients do reside on the type III scale, they are somewhat beyond those "baby steps" to interact with energy by physical objects. In fact, they are already in the state of sentient clouds. They no longer require such structures. We could say that by now, they ARE the universe. Their presence can be anywhere with such technology that we cannot imagine.
The only reason they left behind the Sohnen and the jumpgates was for a simple reason: to have physical control on the up-coming races/creatures/factions in case their actions would interfere with the long term plans of the Ancients. They are somewhat pacifistic, they defend the milky-way and possibly even more galaxies (War of the Outsiders), and they also want to reach K-IV type status as fast as possible to preserve the universe from heat-death.

3. Egosoft still leaves space for personal interpretation. There has to be a structure obviously, but sometimes things are not expained on purpose, to leave you thinking.

[samoja]

1. Yeah, Egosoft do tend to retcon things without a word or hint in favor of the game's balance (or out of resource constraints). That being said...

2. I think the lore of the Ancients is well laid-out. While the Ancients do reside on the type III scale, they are somewhat beyond those "baby steps" to interact with energy by physical objects. In fact, they are already in the state of sentient clouds. They no longer require such structures. We could say that by now, they ARE the universe. Their presence can be anywhere with such technology that we cannot imagine.
The only reason they left behind the Sohnen and the jumpgates was for a simple reason: to have physical control on the up-coming races/creatures/factions in case their actions would interfere with the long term plans of the Ancients. They are somewhat pacifistic, they defend the milky-way and possibly even more galaxies (War of the Outsiders), and they also want to reach K-IV type status as fast as possible to preserve the universe from heat-death.

3. Egosoft still leaves space for personal interpretation. There has to be a structure obviously, but sometimes things are not expained on purpose, to leave you thinking.

Ah, see that's what i was talking about, unless they are literal magic they are still bound by basic laws of physics, which means they need energy to do things, either way if they transcended that need they are not a K3 civilization, they are ascended beings which is totally different ballpark(and literal magic btw) so my argument still stands. Basically what i am saying is whether they use Dyson swarms or some tech we can't even imagine to harness energy the result is the same, all the stars in the Milky Way would be dark, with just low wavelength radiation(heat) being visible, if they are not doing that they are not harnessing 100% of the energy of the galaxy therefore not a K3 civilization, since K3 civilization is defined as civilization that harnesses 100% of the energy of it's home galaxy, that is one and only qualifier and the Ancients simply do not fulfill it, at least not in this Galaxy.

[Nort The Fragrent]

Physics is a weak language we use to make sense of what we think we know! It has boundaries and thus is limited to stay bound by it’s self.
The ancients clearly made use of the moments in between one tick in time to the next. A realm that is outside the Physical state, and is far larger than what we call the universe. So for us to surmise what they were capable of is futile.
The Ancients left the gate’s there purely to show us that we are stupid.

So stupid we make games that enhance our stupidity.

The reference to time is only there to help you understand the Moment, Time is nothing but a word to describe a fictional travers.
Energy is again a term to embellish the show that the ancients have put into our thinking to render us inert. A fog that stops us from understanding what really is !

To think that ES has some semblance of understanding of the ancients is laughable, They can hardly make a functioning game! We'll at least one that can satisfy my supreme intelligence.

Yes I am on the edge, A genius ? Or a nut case !

[adeine]

If you've played any of the previous games, it's pretty obvious the ancients harness the infinitely powerful energies of collision damage.

[Gimbutz]

The Ancients have spread across multiple galaxies and have harnessed the energy of at least one of them - albeit not that of the Milky Way, which is just one of the hundreds of thousands of further galaxies under their protection. Here's what the X-Encyclopedia has to say about the matter:

D-4 Type III civilisation
Defined as a civilisation which is capable of tapping the total available energy of an entire galaxy, they are rarely found even on a universal scale: even an excessively liberal estimate of their numbers throughout all known galactic clusters would not exceed one hundred. It is almost unheard-of for a single species to achieve this level of development: the process usually requires the merging into a gestalt of numerous races.

D-5 Type IV civilisation
In theory able to tap the total available energy of a galactic supercluster, no direct evidence of such a civilisation exists; however, the presence of the Outsiders offers proof that this stage of development is hypothetically possible. It is the one of the stated aims of the Ancients to achieve this level of technology.

D-6 The first races
The first of those self-aware and conscious races which would much later become the Ancients emerged in a young satellite galaxy in the Virgo cluster. Over the course of many millions of years they successfully avoided self-destruction, self-fulfilment and any number of extinction level events, and, step by step, increased their level of civilisation. They first claimed the remainder of their star system before colonising the neighbouring systems; eventually, much later, they would reach the closest galaxies of the supercluster. It was inevitable that they would encounter other race in their travels: while some of these initial contacts were violent, natural selection would yet winnow out the species best suited to survive, those who could coexist peacefully within the emerging galactic community.

Much, much later, the simple "organisation" of races would become full mutual co-existence, almost to the point of symbiosis. Finally, after some 2.5 billion years of steady co-evolution, the decision was taken to yield their individual bodies to a single substrate and effectively become one in an act known as "The Transcendence".

D-14 Of galaxies and species
One estimate puts the number of galaxies in this universe at 100 billion; these each contain an average of 100 billion stars. Given these numbers, the area of control of the Ancients - some 750,000 galaxies or 75 million billion stars - seems incomparably tiny.

[samoja]

The Ancients have spread across multiple galaxies and have harnessed the energy of at least one of them - albeit not that of the Milky Way, which is just one of the hundreds of thousands of further galaxies under their protection. Here's what the X-Encyclopedia has to say about the matter:

D-4 Type III civilisation
Defined as a civilisation which is capable of tapping the total available energy of an entire galaxy, they are rarely found even on a universal scale: even an excessively liberal estimate of their numbers throughout all known galactic clusters would not exceed one hundred. It is almost unheard-of for a single species to achieve this level of development: the process usually requires the merging into a gestalt of numerous races.

D-5 Type IV civilisation
In theory able to tap the total available energy of a galactic supercluster, no direct evidence of such a civilisation exists; however, the presence of the Outsiders offers proof that this stage of development is hypothetically possible. It is the one of the stated aims of the Ancients to achieve this level of technology.

D-6 The first races
The first of those self-aware and conscious races which would much later become the Ancients emerged in a young satellite galaxy in the Virgo cluster. Over the course of many millions of years they successfully avoided self-destruction, self-fulfilment and any number of extinction level events, and, step by step, increased their level of civilisation. They first claimed the remainder of their star system before colonising the neighbouring systems; eventually, much later, they would reach the closest galaxies of the supercluster. It was inevitable that they would encounter other race in their travels: while some of these initial contacts were violent, natural selection would yet winnow out the species best suited to survive, those who could coexist peacefully within the emerging galactic community.

Much, much later, the simple "organisation" of races would become full mutual co-existence, almost to the point of symbiosis. Finally, after some 2.5 billion years of steady co-evolution, the decision was taken to yield their individual bodies to a single substrate and effectively become one in an act known as "The Transcendence".

D-14 Of galaxies and species
One estimate puts the number of galaxies in this universe at 100 billion; these each contain an average of 100 billion stars. Given these numbers, the area of control of the Ancients - some 750,000 galaxies or 75 million billion stars - seems incomparably tiny.

Wow, that's pretty damn insane, i mean i knew Ancients were a highly advanced race but 750 000 galaxies? That's like, incomprehensibly large number of stars and planets, makes you wonder why exactly they had such trouble dealing with Xenon that they had to shut down all gates. I mean self replicating Von Neuman probes are powerful indeed but given the disparity in power levels here, using just a fraction of the energy of of one galaxy the Ancients should be able to crush Xenon easier then a human would crush an ant, even a K2 civilization can turn an entire star into a particle beam with just mirrors, a second of that intense solar radiation will sterilize pretty much anything, and you would never see it coming either.

[Phinixa]

Not completely sure but I think the reason they don't put the xenon to ashes is that the xenon are also a race. one of the primary goal of the ancients is to preserve all intelligent life. So shutting down the gate network or rerouting certain connections achieves this goal to an extent(The ancients don't care about individual lifeforms, so smaller scale war is "okay").

[samoja]

Not completely sure but I think the reason they don't put the xenon to ashes is that the xenon are also a race. one of the primary goal of the ancients is to preserve all intelligent life. So shutting down the gate network or rerouting certain connections achieves this goal to an extent(The ancients don't care about individual lifeforms, so smaller scale war is "okay").

I think that was retconned somewhat, since the first X game the Ancients realized that Xenon are not in fact a truly self aware species of AI but just self replicating drones with corrupted operating system, not much more intelligent then earliest single cell life on earth, their advancement is more due to natural selection pressure then actual scientific experimentation, but as always the lore is somewhat convoluted on that.

[Rei Ayanami]

At least not in the Milky Way, as evidenced by the fact there are still hundreds of billions of stars happily shining in the galaxy. Kardashev type 3 civilization is defined as a civilization that is harnessing 100% of the energy of it's home galaxy, which means they would have long since covered every single star in the Milky Way with Dyson Swarms.

Kardashev type 3 civilization are defined as civilizations that are able to harness the energy of an entire galaxy. But they don't have to do it, they just have to have the capabilities.
There is an important difference between being able to do it and actually doing it. K3-civs only require the ability to do it, not that it actually is done.

EDIT: Now that i look for more sources, it is somewhat vague, different authors seem have to a different understanding of what a K3-Civ is. Another source says that a K3-civ is "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy," However, that doesn't put any limits on where the civilization actually gets the amount of power from, just that it must be of similar amount of its own galaxies energy. That means that it's not neccessarily required to cover every star in the galaxy, but that alternative energy sources (subspace/hyperspace?) could also be used to get that amount of energy.

[samoja]

At least not in the Milky Way, as evidenced by the fact there are still hundreds of billions of stars happily shining in the galaxy. Kardashev type 3 civilization is defined as a civilization that is harnessing 100% of the energy of it's home galaxy, which means they would have long since covered every single star in the Milky Way with Dyson Swarms.

Kardashev type 3 civilization are defined as civilizations that are able to harness the energy of an entire galaxy. But they don't have to do it, they just have to have the capabilities.
There is an important difference between being able to do it and actually doing it. K3-civs only require the ability to do it, not that it actually is done.

EDIT: Now that i look for more sources, it is somewhat vague, different authors seem have to a different understanding of what a K3-Civ is. Another source says that a K3-civ is "a civilization in possession of energy on the scale of its own galaxy," However, that doesn't put any limits on where the civilization actually gets the amount of power from, just that it must be of similar amount of its own galaxies energy. That means that it's not neccessarily required to cover every star in the galaxy, but that alternative energy sources (subspace/hyperspace?) could also be used to get that amount of energy.

That's ok, though it does somewhat contradict their stated goal of trying to prevent heat death (just for the record heat death is no longer a leading theory on how the universe will end, not since we discovered dark energy, it is still a possibility but only if dark energy is not infinite, though it seems it has been fairly consistent since the beginning of the universe, if it is then the leading theory is something called Big Rip).

Anyway if they discovered some kind of alternate power source so much more powerful that all the energy in the territory they are controlling is peanuts then trying to prevent heat death is pretty much a non issue, since you have energy tospare. If not however then they are incredibly wasteful for not already tossing all the matter in the universe int a mega supermassive black hole for safe keeping, black holes not only release energy much, much slower then stars, and due to the square cube law bigger black holes release energy slower, meaning you have a lot more time to think about the issue, but also, and much more importantly, turning all matter in the universe into a supermassive black hole lowers the ambient temperature ofthe universe to very close to absolute zero, that makes your digital processes a lot more efficient, thousands of times more efficient in fact, the close you get to absolute zero the more efficient it gets, to the point where the ammount of energy needed to power a single light bulb for an hour could run hundreds of thousands of digital consciousnesses for years.

[Nort The Fragrent]

Having all the energy resident in a black hole is some what counter productive! You now have absolute zero temperature so your possessing is infinitely fast. Giving rise to what question is being asked of this device? And why? Who needs fast processing, when the slower more mundane is better for all. Promoting a diverse mayhem if ignorance, Lots of death, disease, hardship and worry. Who needs enlightenment? With not a question to be asked…

The Ancients are indeed clever, they are laughing at us, debating a concept we can not comprehend, let alone manage.

The xenon are what we will become, so best we join them sooner than latter. Then all this fighting can stop.

Can I play the game as an Xenon ? They have better looking ships.

[samoja]

Having all the energy resident in a black hole is some what counter productive! You now have absolute zero temperature so your possessing is infinitely fast. Giving rise to what question is being asked of this device? And why? Who needs fast processing, when the slower more mundane is better for all. Promoting a diverse mayhem if ignorance, Lots of death, disease, hardship and worry. Who needs enlightenment? With not a question to be asked…

The Ancients are indeed clever, they are laughing at us, debating a concept we can not comprehend, let alone manage.

The xenon are what we will become, so best we join them sooner than latter. Then all this fighting can stop.

Can I play the game as an Xenon ? They have better looking ships.

You don't really have to ask any questions, you just upload your organic mind into digital space and you can keep living orders of magnitude longer then the time it takes for the last star to go dark, if deleying the end of the universe is your goal it's the best solution. Here's a good video about that from my favorite futurist, though it's a bit on the long side, i would still recommend it, it's really interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qam5BkXIEhQ