Why does one need hydrocentric to flood habitats?

[HFY]

• Fire does not work, which means engines do not work, without being air breathing.
• All moving parts must be hydrodynamic, because water resistance is 100x as impactful as air resistance.

So, just to be clear, the Habitat is not underwater.

It's in space.

The Habitat can put mechanical systems outside the water (in space) or can create "surface" portions of the structure which interface with air and are not underwater, or both, or can create any other mechanically-useful micro-climates isolated from the habitable portion of the Habitat.

Engineering the rocket to get stuff into space was probably a lot more difficult than actually doing stuff in space, where a buff gym dolphin can put on a wet-suit and bang on a thing in an atmosphere or outside in space while not needing the stuff he's banging on to work underwater.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

Those are all things the aquatic species solved before ever reaching orbit.
And in case of aquatic robots: Had solved for them before waking up.

We humans solved the bulk of life support issues just making submarines.

See:

Yes, aquatics would be used to all these constraints, so all their tech will automatically work around it (possibly by having all machines be in air-pockets). But it's just harder to engineer a complex machine to work underwater or around water, regardless of how practiced you are at it, because the technical requirements are just tougher.

I doubt they would have had alternating gravity fields to control pressure, before you reached orbit, though. Pressure underwater has a nice property of scaling at the same rate inside a structure as outside.

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So, just to be clear, the Habitat is not underwater.

It's in space.

The Habitat can put mechanical systems outside the water (in space) or can create "surface" portions of the structure which interface with air and are not underwater, or both, or can create any other mechanically-useful micro-climates isolated from the habitable portion of the Habitat.

Engineering the rocket to get stuff into space was probably a lot more difficult than actually doing stuff in space, where a buff gym dolphin can put on a wet-suit and bang on a thing in an atmosphere or outside in space while not needing the stuff he's banging on to work underwater.

"They'll just move everything with moving parts out into vacuum" isn't a demonstration of an easy solution, it's a suggestion that the problem is so hard that you'd move all machines to a place where you have to maintain them in environment suits (instead of hard hat) to work around it.

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Don't misunderstand me, I'm absolutely not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying it's more difficult, and because it's more difficult (with a bunch of new engineering problems that need to be solved), there's much more to having a flooded habitat than "just fill it with water".

At the most basic level: a habitat has to be hermetically sealed from the space outside. With an underwater habitat, the interior area has to be hermetically sealed from the machinery, as well, because so much of the necessary parts of complex machines (industrial lubricants, electricity) is hostile to water life (or vice versa).

Again: I'm not saying it can't be done. Obviously it can be done. It's just not as easy as opening a spigot and waiting until the carefully engineered artificial area is topped up with water.

So any argument that implicitly assumes the hardest part of flooding a habitat is "finding enough water" has flaws.

 

[-Marauder-]

I swear this attitude is the main reason why all empires play so very similarly. People choose a trait that's designed to do things differently, and then they go "It's unreasonable that I should have to do things differently, I want the exact same options as every other empire!"

It's such a short-sighted way of looking at things.

There's plenty of play style differences still. The whole "all Empires would play the same" isn't even an argument here, since that's still the case. One Empire is just forced to take two Ascension Perks to not have an artificial and unexplained punishment inflicted upon them when using habitats.

 

[HFY]

"They'll just move everything with moving parts out into vacuum" isn't a demonstration of an easy solution, it's a suggestion that the problem is so hard that you'd move all machines to a place where you have to maintain them in environment suits (instead of hard hat) to work around it.

No, I mean:

The Habitat can put mechanical systems outside the water (in space) or can create "surface" portions of the structure which interface with air and are not underwater, or both, or can create any other mechanically-useful micro-climates isolated from the habitable portion of the Habitat.

"Flooded" doesn't mean "everything is always underwater".

Having a surface isn't a problem -- their planetary home ocean had a surface -- and lots of equipment can function above that surface.

As someone mentioned above, all the problems with water-based environments in space would have already been solved for their space ships, which usually precede Habitats by a good span of time.

So any argument that implicitly assumes the hardest part of flooding a habitat is "finding enough water" has flaws.

Dunno about "hardest" but it is true that Habitats are implied to have a much larger volume than space ships.

So it might not be the "hardest" problem but it could be a new problem which hadn't needed solving yet.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

No, I mean:



"Flooded" doesn't mean "everything is always underwater".

Having a surface isn't a problem -- their planetary home ocean had a surface -- and lots of equipment can function above that surface.

Fair, I'm been assuming that flooded means flooded:

I am assuming that aquatics are waterbreathing, though. A lot of this wouldn't apply if they were e.g. dolphins or otters who had to live in water but didn't necessarily have to breathe it.

If they're all surface dwellers and everything will be shallow pools anyway, then 90% of the problems go away; you don't even need to deal with pressure issues due to scale; you just have separate pools connected only by air. And you no longer have to worry about engineering machines to work at everything from 1 atm to 1000 atm (which matters even if you enclose them in a very high pressure air pocket, as even the air behaves differently).

Most of that just goes away if you can treat it all as being basically 1 atm at surface level throughout.

As someone mentioned above, all the problems with water-based environments in space would have already been solved for their space ships, which usually precede Habitats by a good span of time.

It's a massive difference in scale, though.

And spaceship crews (I assume) can have very different requirements from civilians doing civilian jobs, raising children, living normal lives (unless all ships are Enterprise-like).

Ex. Humans have submarines, and submariners stay at sea for months, but that does not mean that we can just build a city at 5000ft below the ocean.

What carefully trained and carefully psychologically profiled professionals are able to tolerate for months/years at a time and what every citizen (including children, elderly, unstable, criminals, etc.) can tolerate permanently are totally different. You can cut quite a few corners and e.g. train everyone to wear special breathing apparatus outside of sleeping/eating quarters, when everyone is a professional. But in a permanent settlement, everything has to be safe enough that a small child can't injure themselves (or break something).

Dunno about "hardest" but it is true that Habitats are implied to have a much larger volume than space ships.

So it might not be the "hardest" problem but it could be a new problem which hadn't needed solving yet.

Sure, it's definitely a problem that needs to be solved. I'm just objecting to the "Everyone who can physically transport enough water (which is every empire) should be able to flood a habitat. That mean needing Hydrocentric is ridiculous and breaks my immersion!" type arguments.

It's believable that it's within the engineering capabilities of every Aquatic empire. But it's also believable that it's not (and taking Hydrocentric represents taking that extra step to actually smooth out all those engineering wrinkles). There's way more than enough wiggle room that it shouldn't break verisimilitude, whichever way the devs decided to go.

 

[HFY]

Fair, I'm been assume that flooded means flooded: If they're all surface dwellers and everything will be shallow pools anyway, then 90% of the problems go away; you don't even need to deal with pressure issues due to scale; you just have separate pools connected only by air.

A flooded basement doesn't mean that water reaches the ceiling; a flooded city doesn't mean that water reaches the top floor of every building.

But yeah if they can survive at all on a non-ocean planet, then they're probably able to breach the surface for some span of time.

It's a massive difference in scale, though.

Of course. And that brings us back to "need a LOT of water" as a limiting factor.

If they can do all the things necessary for space travel, then the limitation on Habitat scale might be the availability of a heavy resource.

Sure, it's definitely a problem that needs to be solved. I'm just objecting to the "Everyone who can physically transport enough water (which is every empire) should be able to flood a habitat. That mean needing Hydrocentric is ridiculous and breaks my immersion!" type arguments.

It's believable that it's within the engineering capabilities of every Aquatic empire. But it's also believable that it's not (and taking Hydrocentric represents taking that extra step to actually smooth out all those engineering wrinkles). There's way more than enough wiggle room that it shouldn't break verisimilitude, whichever way the devs decided to go.

Sure, that's why my proposal removes that limit (somewhat).

- Everyone with at least one Aquatic pop can build a Flooded Habitat in a system with at least one Ice Asteroid.

- If you take Hydrocentric then you can build Ice Logistics Stations which remove the limitation on location and allow you to expand Ocean worlds. Post-Ascension you could have plenty of space trait points to make your favorite species all Aquatic.

- etc.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

But yeah if they can survive at all on a non-ocean planet, then they're probably able to breach the surface for some span of time.

I'm not sure I agree with that one (or, at least, not its implications). Plenty of them (like the coral, the floating squid #12/fish #10, or the various jellyfish/slimy ones) heavily imply they're constantly submerged.

I always assumed that there was some level of environment-suit needed on non-matching environments (like human on Arrakis), and Tomb worlds' and Aquatic-on-dry/cold's 0% habitability took that to its extreme, as in: "cannot leave the specially built habitation zones or vehicles with life support, without a full isolation suit".

They could easily need inverse-scuba-gear to do that sort of traversal, which makes having the entire thing be a series of unconnected pools infeasible, at least for most settlements.

Ex.

Ocean planets, they live in the water (+20% habitability, because water is water). Tropical/continental planets, water is abundant enough that you can just set up pools of water everywhere (with locks connecting, elevator-style) as living/work areas. And desert/tundra can't support open pools, so they need to live like everyone else does on a radioactive contaminated wasteland, in full isolation.

This is just my head canon of course, but my point is that the in-game representation is compatible with "utterly dependent on being in water to live" as an interpretation of Aquatic.

Note that this still leaves the possibility of habitat filled with canals as a no-penalty option (aka, habitats are just like a near-matching [tropical, continental] world, in terms of environment). It's just that that state is different from "flooded".

But, again, that's what I think it should be: Habitats should be at +0% by default and +20% when flooded, for aquatic, instead of -20% without flooding and +0% with.

 

[HFY]

I'm not sure I agree with that one (or, at least, not its implications). Plenty of them (like the coral, the floating squid #12/fish #10, or the various jellyfish/slimy ones) heavily imply they're constantly submerged.

I always assumed that there was some level of environment-suit needed on non-matching environments (like human on Arrakis), and Tomb worlds' and Aquatic-on-dry/cold's 0% habitability took that to its extreme, as in: "cannot leave the specially built habitation zones or vehicles with life support, without a full isolation suit".

They could easily need inverse-scuba-gear to do that sort of traversal, which makes having the entire thing be a series of unconnected pools infeasible, at least for most settlements.

My take is that the increased housing usage on non-wet worlds represents big pools of water for them to occasionally submerge in, but not a constant need to be fully submerged.

You're right about the portrait implications, but some of those portraits are a bit silly -- the coral looks like it's rooted in place, which would make space exploration and planetary conquest difficult, yet clearly they can do those things.

This is just my head canon of course, but my point is that the in-game representation is compatible with "utterly dependent on being in water to live" as an interpretation of Aquatic.

Note that this still leaves the possibility of habitat filled with canals as a no-penalty option (aka, habitats are just like a near-matching [tropical, continental] world, in terms of environment). It's just that that state is different from "flooded".

But, again, that's what I think it should be: Habitats should be at +0% by default and +20% when flooded, for aquatic, instead of -20% without flooding and +0% with.

Yeah, agree about dependent on water to live, but I think that's not the same as "must be constantly submerged" -- partial submersion for many daily activities, full submersion for some span of time (sleep?), etc.