Reddit mentions of Lockstep: A Novel

Love the idea of an economically based space 4x game. Been a huge fan of TI3 myself over the years, but the mechanics sometimes just get in the way of telling the stories of these space empires interacting. Always love the Hacan and their focus on trading and making money instead of conquering the galaxy and wished there was a game that would let me explore that sort of gameplay.

Interestingly enough FFG announced a supplement book for their Star Wars RPG detailing the Hutts and their homeworld of Nal Hutta which got me thinking about how a galaxy where the peaceful but ruthless Hacan would compete against an organization like the Hutts who willingly break all the rules to get ahead.

Complete side note too, but curious if you ever heard of the novel called Lock Step byKarl Schroeder. The book itself isn't that good (sorta young adult stuff) but the universe he outlines is fascinating. Basically he explores the idea of what a galaxy spanning empire would function without the old sci fi trope of 'going faster than the speed of light'. In Lock Step, every member planet of the empire voluntarily goes into hibernation for 30 year periods. During these hibernation steps, robots and other automation gather resources for trade/consumption and ships travel the great spans between stars. When everyone wakes up, its business as usual for a month, then they go into hibernation again.

Always thought a 4x game where the foundations like that are already setup, and you had to lead your company/clan/trade prince/etc to profit would be fascinating. Player turns would be essentially 'programming' their moves in advance then allowing the passage of time dictate if they were successful or not. Did those robot miners hit paydirt where you sent them out? Did your convoy successfully make it to that distant star or did non-hibernating pirates get it?

Bit off topic, but not sure where else to gush sometimes :P Quite interested in your game for sure and will be paying attention.

Thank you for the links.
The wiki one actually helped quite a bit, which is honestly a rare thing for wiki articles to do ;)

Got some more questions, if you don't mind:

Is information transfer possible between something traveling near speed of light, and something else?
Say we have a "room", and inside it a person is traveling at the speed of light, in what ways, if any, could people outside the room interact with the person inside, and vice versa?
I guess what I'm asking is: Is it possible for the traveler to detect events outside the room and/or is it possible for people outside the room to detect changes/events inside the room?

If information can't be exchanged; in the same scenario of the near lightspeed room:
Every X minutes in the travelers reference he stops, and exchanges information with people outside the room, then goes back to near lightspeed for another X minutes.
Wouldn't this effectively be a time machine? Since every time he'd stop, a much longer timeframe would've passed by outside the room?

What I'm getting at is:
If everyone is in such a room, wouldn't that effectively eliminate things like, say, processing speed for a computer? Just let it take as long as it wants, travel faster to counteract the effect?
So if an operation takes a year in "normal" time, pop into the near lightspeed room for a second, and a year will have passed outside it, but only a second for you?

And if everyone is traveling at near lightspeed, but separately? Kind of a reverse lockstep society?


Sorry if I'm being stupid, I just find the idea fascinating.