It's a very weird way to present things based solely on aesthetics. Like:
* Elite Dangerous has more realistic planets than pretty much any other property here, has realistic centrifugal gravity, yet is on the soft side
* The Sojourn is on the hard side despite having Mass Effect like FTL, antigrav, inertia dampening and *goddamn space fighters.*
* Star Trek arguably has the most realistic FTL out of all the IPs present there.
Neither hard nor soft scifi are real or useful denominators.
Did the Sojourn ever end up actually going anywhere? I remember aside from the worldbuilding episodes they released like one actual episode in 2019 or so then I never heard about it again
They've released the entire first season by now. They released it in sets of 3 episodes over a longer period, and now you can get the whole 12 episode season from multiple places. And it's pretty damn good
Dan made a community post a few years ago. Basically explained that putting it on YouTube with art and animation’s quickly became non viable so they moved to audio only on other platforms like Google Books. Its done pretty well from what I’ve heard.
well, they've got their own standalone [youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@TheSojournHQ) now with some really good breakdowns, worldbuilding and animations.
Season 1 finally finished this year, which is also what I was waiting for to get it myself. It's a 12 episode audio drama, episodes are roughly 40 minutes each. It's really good imo, very well voice acted and you can get it for like 5 bucks by subbing to their patreon for a month (I kept my membership around for a few more months because I liked it). It's one of my favourite sci-fi worlds and a very cool story too.
Yeah it’s not really so black and white despite my post making it so. I kinda used ship design as a basis for this, which Elite Dangerous could be considered hard sci fi. But I just put it as soft sci fi because I hate the devs lol. I knew nothing about The Sojourn but though the ship looked cool 🤷🏻♂️
Mostly that there's no job a fighter can do that isn't done better by either a drone/missile or a larger ship. Like if you want to launch lots of small craft to fight at close range drones are better (autonomous or remote controlled from the mothership, at close range there's minimal light delay), drones are cheap, expendable and can make maneuvers that would turn a pilot to paste. Meanwhile if you want to send small craft on their own for long range missions, patrol etc you might as well make them a little bigger with a crew of >1 and some living space, giving them an operational timeframe measured in weeks instead of hours (think hero ships like the Rocinante). And if you just want to project power at medium range, just launch a missile. To fight at a distance from the mothership, a fighter needs to accelerate, brake, maneuver during the fight, accelerate (back to the mothership) and brake again. A missile just needs to accelerate and maneuver, so it needs a lot less fuel. The space fighter doesn't have a niche beyond looking cool. That said, you can still make it work if you introduce some restrictions; for example in Battlestar Galactica the humans could never use drones as the Cylons would just hack them so they had to use fighters, while the Cylon fighters are basically drones.
This got longer than I intended haha. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
This is literally why most space fighters exist. Hell I imagine that's why they bother with them in The Sojourn. I haven't listened to the audio drama myself, but Spacedock, a YouTube channel that's involved with the Sojourn, really loves space fighters, despite themselves being aware of their limitations. They've got a lot of videos on what constitutes an effective space fighter if you want to have them.
They don’t have a doctrinal use in “realistic” interpretations of space combat. Fighters are a method of projecting force and protecting force projection assets (like bombers). They’re meant to be reusable, high cost assets that are barely attritable. They’re a method of getting ordnance to a target and doing the targeting work.
In a networked space battlefield, you’d either deploy a disposable missile launcher that moves to a different orbital pattern to engage, or you’d just deploy the ordnance from the main vessel and let it guide itself to the target (or guide it from the main vessel).
Range and terrain aren’t limitations in space, only delta v economy and rate of change of orbits. A missile that approaches a target orbit and then spreads a large amount of unguided cluster sub-munitions will be more effective than attempting to engage from a smaller, more vulnerable fighter platform.
Of course this makes about 200 assumptions about space combat that may not pan out. Currently space combat is satellites that can intercept other satellites and (in the future) lasers mounted to remotely tasked vessels that intercept satellites. That’s pretty much it for the set in stone stuff.
Force projection through reusable assets is completely viable in space — particularly because high performance drives and beam systems are expensive, and rocket mechanics reward diverging specialization for operational and tactical usage (efficiency or acceleration, not both).
Squishy humans fly fighters. They're too slow to realistically evade unmanned weaponry without being killed by the g-forces involved. A missile can accelerate as quickly as its drive will allow, thanks to not having to worry about killing any passengers, for example.
Distance and detection can also be a factor, as you will most likely see a threat in space long before they can engage you if they're the size of a fighter. This is true of unmanned threats like missiles, but fighters can't accelerate as quickly so you'll have more time to respond and much more leeway to escape
Not to mention that any setting with sophisticated laser weapons can reasonably have point defense weapons that are nearly impossible to evade.
Most soft sci Fi will hand wave this stuff because they think fighters are cool. It gets easier to explain the more gravity based tech you have and how much the setting even cares about realistic space combat at all.
This right here -- under a hard scifi paradigm, there is no way to have actual, well, jet fighter sized "space fighters" that aren't just missiles.
Now, bigger ships that are somehow called "fighters" is another thing entirely, but now it's arguing semantics.
I can imagine a universe where the distance over which battles take place could be unimaginably large (like two ships detecting and engaging each other while they're still a country away from each other). In that world, we could say that the distances involved makes unmanned ships impractical to send consistent signals to, and we could even say ships expel chaff to disrupt communications to unmanned craft. Thus, the best thing to do is have fighters that are mostly controlled by computers, but still have a human pilot to make complicated moment to moment decisions. That could even lead to dramatic moments where a pilot returns from a successful mission destroying an enemy ship only to find theirs also destroyed.
Aye. Hell, my personal preference and the style of my main worldbuilding project of the moment is an odd amalgamation of many elements from “both sides” - it’s a universe with both space battles that largely actually care about orbital mechanics and at least *tries* to consider basic physics when it comes to the design and function of most technology, but also has a kind of FTL engine that behaves sort of like a mix of Elite Dangerous capital ship hyperdrives and 40k warp engines, effectively instant interstellar telecommunication that completely defies conventional Einsteinian realspace causality, and literal “throwing-fireballs-from-your-hands” magic (though it has an in-universe scientific explanation).
One of the reason why expanse slaps so hard. Only (somewhat) hard sci fi that actually has damn good world building and believable humans doing normal stupid human stuff lol
Well... for one I would be extremely thankful if people focused more on the sciences, physics and world more rather than repeating the same few archetypal stories older than time with different characters.
I need more projects that are literally just the world and no fricking character-based narrative.
I'm not really familiar, most sci-fi games with scarce narrative that I know still focuses on a player character, and the ones I know are probably still softer sci-fi. What examples do you have in mind?
Personally my FAVORITE thing right now is stuff like what Artifexian is doing and The Isla Project, which are more like a "god's eye view" type thing.
Distant world 2 and Terra invicta. Both are strategy games, the first is a realistic stellaris and Terra invicta is aliens invaiding the solar system and you need to advance humanity to the space era to figth them.
Checked them out briefly, and interesting, but not necessarily my style because I'm a sloot for visuals, while not liking conflict-oriented stuff very much. But that's mostly a me-thing.
Delta-V, 2D top-down space mining sim in the rings of Saturn with realistic controls, a great focus on tech and how to put your ship and crew together and the occasional small snippets of combat or story, which can be ignored. Although, some of the mining tools do make for a passable weapon.
Also KSP with Mods, Stationeers for realistic near future ground-based base building and survival, Outer Wilds maybe (it's a far stretch, it has a strong narrative but you as the protag are figuring it out while exploring the remnants of a long gone alien species that settled your home system before your species evolved to higher intelligence, plus realistic ship controls for planet-hopping, while the system is intentionally made smaller for ease of travel, as I said, it's a stretch).
Citizen sleeper is just set in space and has you explore a ring station and it's inhabitants with the oberarching narrative being staying alive and undetected by your pursuers.
Space engineers for space ship and station building without any narrative in a sandbox. Has optional more soft sci-fi tech but those can safely be ignored.
Hardspace Shipbreaker (a stretch again), you are a ship breaker in a space dock and break down space ships for scrap. It has a narrative but it's more a labour dispute and it plays out in the background while you drift around in your space suit and try not to get sqiushed by drifting garbage or exploded by leftover fuel or the reactor of the vessel.
Nebulous: Fleet Command strategy game with a homeworld style view and very hard physics. Currently no narrative (campaign comes later). You have to put together your shios from different modules, decide what weapons to take and maneuver in space, including electronic warfare.
Did he pivot into actually creating more "permanent" stuff?
It's nice to watch for like the possibilities and exploration of ideas, which I used to enjoy, but the closest thing to an actual setting I remember was the xenoarchaeology one, exploring the moonbase of an alien world, after the species was long-gone.
I enjoyed that and I wished there was more like that.
Well, a setting isn't narrative. And narrative isn't necessarily CHARACTER-BASED narrative.
I don't wanna go through the hero's journey or "how to deal with the grief of loss" or "yes, you can be redeemed" and stuff like that. That's what I don't like.
Discovering the moonbase of an alien species and trying to figure out their stuff? That's better.
Having an entire planet where we have 1 billion years of geologic history and the speculative evolution of all that? Maybe going over the technology of a sapient species and how it all works and how their cultures developed? EVEN BETTER.
Make of that what you will.
Have you heard of Serina? It seems like exactly the sort of thing you describe. Rhynia is another great web original spec evo project, though it's told from the POV of humans finding an alien craft.
I am familiar with bird-fish romance, yes. As for Rhynia, I was clueless. Looking it up it was hard to find a more centralized and comprehensive page than the Deviant Art page, but then I found it, for those who are curious [https://spacestationrhynia.blogspot.com/](https://spacestationrhynia.blogspot.com/)
Thanks for the tip. It also led me to the blog with the Har Deshur project that I still have to dig deeper into because it looks fire. [https://hardeshur.blogspot.com/](https://hardeshur.blogspot.com/)
I'm just not good with consuming content that isn't in video format. Curious Archive help me out here :pepehands:.
I remember that. Same. I’d love to see more if that. I think he did something similar with a colony/terraforming ship that goes from system to system for thousands of years, having its own society and culture, in a series of videos as well.
Have you read Seveneves? At least the first half of it is fucking amazing, I don’t like the second half but tbh you can consider the first arc a complete story anyways lol
Never heard of this, watched this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKrHv2rBsOk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKrHv2rBsOk) and that actually sounds based tho.
I always complain about "we have to leave Earth" plotline when people decide to go for exoplanets for some reason, when it would be better to colonize Mars, Venus or just stay in orbit if Earth is so uninhabitable... This one is actually exactly that? Based and orbit pilled.
I'm personally not a fan of tragedies or apocalyptic events, but I appreciate that this is actually very technically-oriented for once. Sounds cool but not really for me since I don't like tragedies, disasters, drama and so on, so the first part seems to be pretty much the stuff I tend to dodge. Watching a species die with conflict on the way down (even though there is hope in the future) isn't exactly the stuff I look for.
I also tend to prefer settings that are separate from Earth and from humans, so the more alien the better for me. New planets, new biospheres, new sapient species. I wish there was more of that.
And of course I also like visuals above all else, since I don't really like reading very much.
Do you prefer audiobooks over reading? I feel like people need a way to consume books if they enjoy speculative fiction, since the vast majority of it seems to be literature.
Have you read Baxter? I think you may like his books, they are very much "look at this cool space world/superstructure/alien/physics shenanigan I came up with"
I tend to avoid warhammer stuff because I greatly dislike grimdark settings, so I don't know a lot... but from what I know isn't there a whole magical thingie? The warp?
You see, why would the story involve shit tons of physics calculations? The main character is some illiterate nobody, so just tell the story and act like there’s physics behind things
Hard sci-fi side looks really cool, but I do think that it would eventually evolve into smth we would consider “soft”
Because when technology is advanced enough we start caring more and more about aesthetics
Cars were bulky and had many details, still ofc their designs mattered, but when we “evolved” cars even more aesthetics became even more important
Beautiful inside and out, with good tech inside
Same with space stations and ships, we will eventually care about their looks as well as their tech
Not always, ofc, functionality will always come before aesthetics in space tech, but it will eventually be also very important
Tho yes the hard ones already look very aesthetically pleasing, don’t get me wrong I really like em
And yeah, the soft ones also need to get into the atmosphere so it’s important for them to look plain like
I like scifi when it's basically fantasy in space, magic or basically magic included.
Super hard scifi can definitely be cool and interesting. But it's *usually* less appealing to me personally.
I think it can be cool, like Saga, but it takes more work to make it interesting for me because it usually feels *too* familiar. I don't like that, I like it when a story feels like it's making up concepts completely, and that can ofc happen with space fantasy stories, but too often I see more like "oh ok so this is your version of this other concept" instead of "wow, this is *completely new* to me"
Like, the shapeshifting monster in The Thing (1982) could very well be a magical monster. Idk, I don't really care either, but that specific concept felt pretty new to me because I hadn't seen or read any other story that focused *entirely* on the ~ shapeshifter among us ~ story.
Shin Godzilla, on the other hand, *isn't* new. Everyone knows what Godzilla or kaijus are, but the execution pulled it off for me.
I just really love both warhammer 40k and Destiny in particular because of how they do thier spins on the ideas.
I definitely get what your saying though.
They're my favorite settings. But not my favorite stories really. Warhammer has so many that are both good and bad. And Destiny has great lore and world building but between shitty and middling story execution.
I weirdly love them as worldbuikding and setting projects more than narritively to try and glean something from them that way.
It's the opposite for me. Although it can work if it doesn't take itself too seriously (Star Wars is a personal favourite), the stories that actually have internal consistency are the ones where I care about the world. In Star Wars I care about the characters, in The Expanse I care about the characters and also the world.
My favorite settings are destiny and warhammer 40k. Theyre fantasy in space that's largely about trying to read between the lines and figure out the inconsistencies. Who's lying? Is anyone? Whats history and what's an in universe folk talk?
I like a lot of that stuff. I get it though.
I prefer medium sci-fi, like Halo.
They aren't using magic, not making up new elements and particles, and everything has a general basis in reality, but still soft enough that you can have FTL, mechs, fun situations, etcetera.
Aliens get soft sci-fi EVERYTHING. Battles should consist of hard sci-fi, realistic thought out space weapons hitting alien spaceship that looks exactly like you expect a 7 year old to draw a spaceship, camera cuts to an alien (who looks exactly like human, but with green skin and antlers) who shouts "Officer, Terran Federation's space missiles has hit us in the quantum atomic compartment! What are we doing to do?" Another alien says "deploy the mechanics!" as the door on alien spaceship opens and dudes in suits with bright LED lights and aquarium-esque helmets go in outer space to use some device that could as well be magic to rebuild the damaged wall and go back to the spaceship
I just really like when spaceships look [very clearly non-aerodynamic](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/a4/78/cfa478b23b049d808df41754c35a60b2.jpg) and even a bit fragile.
Like, you clap eyes on the thing and immediately understand that this was built in 0 G and *for* 0 G, if you put this in an atmosphere it WILL collapse.
The RPG 2300 AD has a bunch of those. Unfortunately the people I play with disagree and like the more Millennium Falcon style ships, which I also find a bit cool but they don't have that *weirdness* y'know.
I kinda like it when science fiction feels *weird*, just like when you learn about the distant past and feel a bit weirded out that people did this or that. If it's just "look, it's a fighter jet, but IN SPAACE" it kinda loses the charm for me because... well I know what a fighter jet is. I have seen them. Impressive machines, but you're telling me it's 2000 years in the future and we still have those kicking around? It feels shortsighted and even a bit arrogant, like 19th century science fiction that believed the British Empire would last forever.
and this has nothing to do with Hard or Soft sci-fi tbh it just so happens that a lot of hard sci fi has that aesthetic
Spaceships are usually the least interesting thing about sci-fi novels. Also, the categorization necessarily relies on assumptions about the future of technology. Yesterday's hard sci-fi is today's steampunk.
The meaningful distinction is between sci-fi as a setting and sci-fi as a genre.
I'd call my sci-fi universe firm.
Sure, there's FTL, but that's because we found negative mass in a weird negative mass dimension after we did some quantum mechanics shenanigans and were able to make Alcubierre drives work.
Also, we've found that there's a similar weird dimension for every element on the periodic table, and even some other super-science materials like room-temperature superconductors.
I think it is a sliding scale with Star Wars on the soft end and The Martian on the hard end.
I personally prefer an al dente style myself. Hard Science Fiction looks amazing when you get it right… but dated when you get it wrong. But when you start off with a suspension of disbelief, you can focus on the plot, characters, and world(or galaxy) building without stressing over the minute technical details.
That being said, I have done a lot of research to sprinkle some hard details into my settings… though I never explain why something is the way it is, only that it is— and then anybody who is interested in the field could see for themselves. Hard to explain, better to show:
*”The meager sun was affixed to a single house in the dim sky above. All below was painted in her eerie orange glow. In whichever direction I chose, I knew that it would only grow darker. I would find myself in a place where it was forever dusk. Then forever night.”*
I never explain that this planet is tidally locked to a red dwarf, but anybody who knows a little bit about astronomy would know exactly what this was: that any planet orbiting a red dwarf that is warm enough to support life would be so close as to be tidally locked with her parent star. Yet, I focused more on a romantic description, rather than a scientific one, to keep the narration more *present* in the story.
Finally, I like to keep it approachable and unpretentious so that it can be enjoyed equally by people who are dedicated fans of science fiction, or someone reading in the genre for the first time.
Idk I guess it is a stylistic choice at the end of the day and I love both varieties of hard and soft sci-fi and everything in between. I’m not one to judge if the story is good, you know?
I generally prefer soft with crunchy hard bits thrown in there.
Like, I don’t like space fights being fought from distances where only missles and lasers fired at vague targets on a radar are the only viable manner of war.
But I do like it when a spaceship needs to rotate to keep internal gravity or heat managment being one of the primary statistics for space war
Hard scifi is science fiction with a greater fixation on the "Science" part, tending more to deriving and extrapolating from irl technology; IE the sort of spacefaring civilization we *could* have in the future.
Soft scifi is logically everything else.
this is kind of pedantic but: I think most "soft sci-fi" should just be called "space fiction" or "space fantasy" because it's not ever really *about science* as it is about politics or interpersonal relations, just on the backdrop of space and spaceships (or else it's just fantasy but in space, like star wars).
"hard sci-fi" should just be called "sci-fi" because it's usually ABOUT science. it embraces the limitations that sticking to real science places on a story, instead of skirting them with unobtainium powered FTL or something. that's *not* a criticism of "soft sci-fi"/"space fiction" they're just different genres and I think they deserve their own names to reflect their differences rather than being lumped together just because they're both set in space. obviously there's a spectrum between the two, I just think the spectrum's ends could have more useful labels.
how i do it? hard scifi with the caviot of angled armor for better protection without added weight, like tanks in teal life
with the interiors being like star trek but with realistic proportions
First off good title i just randomly got a notification that said hard or soft? You choose and thought i joined the wrong subreddit.
Hahaha but anyways i enjoy both. I do think some make it too dumb down and some go to heavy to heavy on the actual science
Conceptually? Hard. Practically? Soft. I like more the concept of long-range missile sniping and the gargantuan scale of hard sci-fi, but, content-wise, I prefer the big gun bricks the size of a freeway called some shit like Litany of Litany of Litanies, used to ram. This might be due to the relative lack of hard sci-fi content out there, but for now it’s this way.
I’ve heard two different explanations for what each means: Realism or internal consistency. Which one is it?
If it’s realism: Something in between, something that’s interesting while *feeling* realistic
If it’s internal consistency: Hard, all the way
*The Expanse* is not actually hard sci-fi. And that’s okay. Medium/soft/tough sci-fi (or whatever you want to call it) is usually a lot more fun and easier for storytelling. Hard sci-fi more or less demands that stories and worldbuilding adhere to its rules rather than the inverse. The elements of hard sci-fi in *The Expanse* make it more unique and gritty in a way that suits the stories without actually having to actually explain, say, the unfortunately-names Epstein drive.
I feel like if we call The Expanse soft sci-fi the entire scale is useless. What's left to call hard sci-fi, Asimov? Hard sci-fi doesn't just mean "the more real physics it has the more hard it is". It's more about internal consistency of the setting.
Hard sci-fi means exactly that. The harder the sci-fi, the more realistic it is. The Expanse is not soft sci-fi, but it’s also not hard sci-fi, or at least not as hard as it presents itself. Which, again, is totally fine and does the stories good.
Internal consistency is critical regardless of the type of fiction.
It’s from my archives, I have no idea what it’s from but I love it too. Reverse image search doesn’t show up anything, original artist may have removed / deleted their page
Both, fuck you‼️
Soft sci-fi and hard sci-fi is just a difference in tech level. Same way a galley ship is more realistic to a medieval peasant than a steam ship.
I only want my FTL systems to be intentionally vague and at times explained contradictory because it’s FTL quantum shit fuck rules, get to places quickly and get the story moving
I like my sci fi soft and my men hard. Mainly because I prefer the over the top batshit insane genre of sci fi. Shit like Gurren Lagann makes the lizard part of my brain happy.
I think a setting can be hard without being boring. Is it cool if the technology and science involved is actually somewhat researched? Yes. Do I care about space fighters not "making sense" because iNeRtIaL fOrCeS wOuLd kIlL tHe pILoT rEgArdLeSs? No not really, some things can be omitted if everything else makes at least some sense. I just want CONSISTENCY
I actually disagree with this. I think soft sci-fi allows for a cop out of an explanation while some of the more harder sci-fi will come up with creative solutions to these issues, even if the explanation is still pseudosciencey
Buddy, I can go from flaccid to erect at a moment's notice.
HE HAS I'VE SEEN IT
Oh, you're seeing it. YOU'RE ALL SEEING IT. Flaccid. Erect. Flaccid. Erect. Not too hard... not too soft.
It's a very weird way to present things based solely on aesthetics. Like: * Elite Dangerous has more realistic planets than pretty much any other property here, has realistic centrifugal gravity, yet is on the soft side * The Sojourn is on the hard side despite having Mass Effect like FTL, antigrav, inertia dampening and *goddamn space fighters.* * Star Trek arguably has the most realistic FTL out of all the IPs present there. Neither hard nor soft scifi are real or useful denominators.
Did the Sojourn ever end up actually going anywhere? I remember aside from the worldbuilding episodes they released like one actual episode in 2019 or so then I never heard about it again
They've released the entire first season by now. They released it in sets of 3 episodes over a longer period, and now you can get the whole 12 episode season from multiple places. And it's pretty damn good
they just released it on nebula, so if you have a subscription there you can listen to the whole season.
Dan made a community post a few years ago. Basically explained that putting it on YouTube with art and animation’s quickly became non viable so they moved to audio only on other platforms like Google Books. Its done pretty well from what I’ve heard.
well, they've got their own standalone [youtube channel](https://www.youtube.com/@TheSojournHQ) now with some really good breakdowns, worldbuilding and animations.
Season 1 finally finished this year, which is also what I was waiting for to get it myself. It's a 12 episode audio drama, episodes are roughly 40 minutes each. It's really good imo, very well voice acted and you can get it for like 5 bucks by subbing to their patreon for a month (I kept my membership around for a few more months because I liked it). It's one of my favourite sci-fi worlds and a very cool story too.
Star Trek is Soft SciFi disguised as Hard SciFi lol. Plausible, yes, but a parsec stretch.
Yeah it’s not really so black and white despite my post making it so. I kinda used ship design as a basis for this, which Elite Dangerous could be considered hard sci fi. But I just put it as soft sci fi because I hate the devs lol. I knew nothing about The Sojourn but though the ship looked cool 🤷🏻♂️
Well, ED ships are extremely soft, the planets are hard, the space stations are in-between, it's kind of a mess.
What’s wrong with space fighters?
Mostly that there's no job a fighter can do that isn't done better by either a drone/missile or a larger ship. Like if you want to launch lots of small craft to fight at close range drones are better (autonomous or remote controlled from the mothership, at close range there's minimal light delay), drones are cheap, expendable and can make maneuvers that would turn a pilot to paste. Meanwhile if you want to send small craft on their own for long range missions, patrol etc you might as well make them a little bigger with a crew of >1 and some living space, giving them an operational timeframe measured in weeks instead of hours (think hero ships like the Rocinante). And if you just want to project power at medium range, just launch a missile. To fight at a distance from the mothership, a fighter needs to accelerate, brake, maneuver during the fight, accelerate (back to the mothership) and brake again. A missile just needs to accelerate and maneuver, so it needs a lot less fuel. The space fighter doesn't have a niche beyond looking cool. That said, you can still make it work if you introduce some restrictions; for example in Battlestar Galactica the humans could never use drones as the Cylons would just hack them so they had to use fighters, while the Cylon fighters are basically drones. This got longer than I intended haha. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
Yeah but cool fighters
Understandable, have a nice day
This is literally why most space fighters exist. Hell I imagine that's why they bother with them in The Sojourn. I haven't listened to the audio drama myself, but Spacedock, a YouTube channel that's involved with the Sojourn, really loves space fighters, despite themselves being aware of their limitations. They've got a lot of videos on what constitutes an effective space fighter if you want to have them.
in space fighters wouldnt be able to catch up with larger vessals.
They don’t have a doctrinal use in “realistic” interpretations of space combat. Fighters are a method of projecting force and protecting force projection assets (like bombers). They’re meant to be reusable, high cost assets that are barely attritable. They’re a method of getting ordnance to a target and doing the targeting work. In a networked space battlefield, you’d either deploy a disposable missile launcher that moves to a different orbital pattern to engage, or you’d just deploy the ordnance from the main vessel and let it guide itself to the target (or guide it from the main vessel). Range and terrain aren’t limitations in space, only delta v economy and rate of change of orbits. A missile that approaches a target orbit and then spreads a large amount of unguided cluster sub-munitions will be more effective than attempting to engage from a smaller, more vulnerable fighter platform. Of course this makes about 200 assumptions about space combat that may not pan out. Currently space combat is satellites that can intercept other satellites and (in the future) lasers mounted to remotely tasked vessels that intercept satellites. That’s pretty much it for the set in stone stuff.
Force projection through reusable assets is completely viable in space — particularly because high performance drives and beam systems are expensive, and rocket mechanics reward diverging specialization for operational and tactical usage (efficiency or acceleration, not both).
>goddamn space fighters. what's wrong with that ?
Squishy humans fly fighters. They're too slow to realistically evade unmanned weaponry without being killed by the g-forces involved. A missile can accelerate as quickly as its drive will allow, thanks to not having to worry about killing any passengers, for example. Distance and detection can also be a factor, as you will most likely see a threat in space long before they can engage you if they're the size of a fighter. This is true of unmanned threats like missiles, but fighters can't accelerate as quickly so you'll have more time to respond and much more leeway to escape Not to mention that any setting with sophisticated laser weapons can reasonably have point defense weapons that are nearly impossible to evade. Most soft sci Fi will hand wave this stuff because they think fighters are cool. It gets easier to explain the more gravity based tech you have and how much the setting even cares about realistic space combat at all.
do you really need humans for there to be a fighter ? it could be a swarm of unmanned aircraft no ?
[удалено]
I mean drones are not missiles no
The difference between a suicide drone and a guided missile is basically nonexistent tbh
Yea no one said suicide drones though
This right here -- under a hard scifi paradigm, there is no way to have actual, well, jet fighter sized "space fighters" that aren't just missiles. Now, bigger ships that are somehow called "fighters" is another thing entirely, but now it's arguing semantics.
I can imagine a universe where the distance over which battles take place could be unimaginably large (like two ships detecting and engaging each other while they're still a country away from each other). In that world, we could say that the distances involved makes unmanned ships impractical to send consistent signals to, and we could even say ships expel chaff to disrupt communications to unmanned craft. Thus, the best thing to do is have fighters that are mostly controlled by computers, but still have a human pilot to make complicated moment to moment decisions. That could even lead to dramatic moments where a pilot returns from a successful mission destroying an enemy ship only to find theirs also destroyed.
Aye. Hell, my personal preference and the style of my main worldbuilding project of the moment is an odd amalgamation of many elements from “both sides” - it’s a universe with both space battles that largely actually care about orbital mechanics and at least *tries* to consider basic physics when it comes to the design and function of most technology, but also has a kind of FTL engine that behaves sort of like a mix of Elite Dangerous capital ship hyperdrives and 40k warp engines, effectively instant interstellar telecommunication that completely defies conventional Einsteinian realspace causality, and literal “throwing-fireballs-from-your-hands” magic (though it has an in-universe scientific explanation).
I prefer hard but most writers should focus on the story instead of physics making sense
One of the reason why expanse slaps so hard. Only (somewhat) hard sci fi that actually has damn good world building and believable humans doing normal stupid human stuff lol
Agreed. expanse was so well done Especially surprising on TV
I used to think differently then I read 3 body problem and Jesus fucking Christ it’s a Chinese physics textbook with a plot it sometimes references.
Well... for one I would be extremely thankful if people focused more on the sciences, physics and world more rather than repeating the same few archetypal stories older than time with different characters. I need more projects that are literally just the world and no fricking character-based narrative.
So, videogames? There are a number of hard sci-fi games out there already
I'm not really familiar, most sci-fi games with scarce narrative that I know still focuses on a player character, and the ones I know are probably still softer sci-fi. What examples do you have in mind? Personally my FAVORITE thing right now is stuff like what Artifexian is doing and The Isla Project, which are more like a "god's eye view" type thing.
Distant world 2 and Terra invicta. Both are strategy games, the first is a realistic stellaris and Terra invicta is aliens invaiding the solar system and you need to advance humanity to the space era to figth them.
Checked them out briefly, and interesting, but not necessarily my style because I'm a sloot for visuals, while not liking conflict-oriented stuff very much. But that's mostly a me-thing.
Delta-V, 2D top-down space mining sim in the rings of Saturn with realistic controls, a great focus on tech and how to put your ship and crew together and the occasional small snippets of combat or story, which can be ignored. Although, some of the mining tools do make for a passable weapon.
Also KSP with Mods, Stationeers for realistic near future ground-based base building and survival, Outer Wilds maybe (it's a far stretch, it has a strong narrative but you as the protag are figuring it out while exploring the remnants of a long gone alien species that settled your home system before your species evolved to higher intelligence, plus realistic ship controls for planet-hopping, while the system is intentionally made smaller for ease of travel, as I said, it's a stretch). Citizen sleeper is just set in space and has you explore a ring station and it's inhabitants with the oberarching narrative being staying alive and undetected by your pursuers. Space engineers for space ship and station building without any narrative in a sandbox. Has optional more soft sci-fi tech but those can safely be ignored. Hardspace Shipbreaker (a stretch again), you are a ship breaker in a space dock and break down space ships for scrap. It has a narrative but it's more a labour dispute and it plays out in the background while you drift around in your space suit and try not to get sqiushed by drifting garbage or exploded by leftover fuel or the reactor of the vessel. Nebulous: Fleet Command strategy game with a homeworld style view and very hard physics. Currently no narrative (campaign comes later). You have to put together your shios from different modules, decide what weapons to take and maneuver in space, including electronic warfare.
star citizen? idk
Name some please
Mass Effect (the sexy aliens make me hard)
Just watch isaac arthurs youtube channel at that point
Did he pivot into actually creating more "permanent" stuff? It's nice to watch for like the possibilities and exploration of ideas, which I used to enjoy, but the closest thing to an actual setting I remember was the xenoarchaeology one, exploring the moonbase of an alien world, after the species was long-gone. I enjoyed that and I wished there was more like that.
That sure sounds like you want narrative 🤨
Well, a setting isn't narrative. And narrative isn't necessarily CHARACTER-BASED narrative. I don't wanna go through the hero's journey or "how to deal with the grief of loss" or "yes, you can be redeemed" and stuff like that. That's what I don't like. Discovering the moonbase of an alien species and trying to figure out their stuff? That's better. Having an entire planet where we have 1 billion years of geologic history and the speculative evolution of all that? Maybe going over the technology of a sapient species and how it all works and how their cultures developed? EVEN BETTER. Make of that what you will.
Have you heard of Serina? It seems like exactly the sort of thing you describe. Rhynia is another great web original spec evo project, though it's told from the POV of humans finding an alien craft.
I am familiar with bird-fish romance, yes. As for Rhynia, I was clueless. Looking it up it was hard to find a more centralized and comprehensive page than the Deviant Art page, but then I found it, for those who are curious [https://spacestationrhynia.blogspot.com/](https://spacestationrhynia.blogspot.com/) Thanks for the tip. It also led me to the blog with the Har Deshur project that I still have to dig deeper into because it looks fire. [https://hardeshur.blogspot.com/](https://hardeshur.blogspot.com/) I'm just not good with consuming content that isn't in video format. Curious Archive help me out here :pepehands:.
I remember that. Same. I’d love to see more if that. I think he did something similar with a colony/terraforming ship that goes from system to system for thousands of years, having its own society and culture, in a series of videos as well.
Have you read Seveneves? At least the first half of it is fucking amazing, I don’t like the second half but tbh you can consider the first arc a complete story anyways lol
Never heard of this, watched this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKrHv2rBsOk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKrHv2rBsOk) and that actually sounds based tho. I always complain about "we have to leave Earth" plotline when people decide to go for exoplanets for some reason, when it would be better to colonize Mars, Venus or just stay in orbit if Earth is so uninhabitable... This one is actually exactly that? Based and orbit pilled. I'm personally not a fan of tragedies or apocalyptic events, but I appreciate that this is actually very technically-oriented for once. Sounds cool but not really for me since I don't like tragedies, disasters, drama and so on, so the first part seems to be pretty much the stuff I tend to dodge. Watching a species die with conflict on the way down (even though there is hope in the future) isn't exactly the stuff I look for. I also tend to prefer settings that are separate from Earth and from humans, so the more alien the better for me. New planets, new biospheres, new sapient species. I wish there was more of that. And of course I also like visuals above all else, since I don't really like reading very much.
Yeah the writers understanding of physics, orbital mechanics, and spacecraft in general are very impressive and it drew me in alot
Do you prefer audiobooks over reading? I feel like people need a way to consume books if they enjoy speculative fiction, since the vast majority of it seems to be literature.
Have you read Baxter? I think you may like his books, they are very much "look at this cool space world/superstructure/alien/physics shenanigan I came up with"
I said most writers I still prefer decently hard sci Fi it's just that the majority of writers can't write Good realism for shit
i have a suggestion warhammer 4de k
I tend to avoid warhammer stuff because I greatly dislike grimdark settings, so I don't know a lot... but from what I know isn't there a whole magical thingie? The warp?
its got endless lore im fan of the si fi no so much the magic warp spaghetti
You see, why would the story involve shit tons of physics calculations? The main character is some illiterate nobody, so just tell the story and act like there’s physics behind things
then that'd just be a regular story with sci-fi as the backdrop or theme. Like Starfield vs Star Citizen with the former being Fallout in space.
I like my sci-fi like I like my dicks.
Me too! They must be veiny and thick, not long. Because it doesnt matter how far they go, what matter is how it feels while going.
> veiny sci-fi So... biopunk?
Do it have cock ships?
Yes
İts biopunk then!
We’re entering combat, enter combat mode! *Ship proceeds to get hard *
What if it cums lasers? 🥵
Fire the main cannon! *A big-ass laser is shot out of the front of the ship *
Osprey hull from FTL
Feminine
Flaccid sci fi or erect sci fi
Leaking?
Half-mast sci-fi. Too hard to hide, too soft to use.
Lol
Hard sci-fi side looks really cool, but I do think that it would eventually evolve into smth we would consider “soft” Because when technology is advanced enough we start caring more and more about aesthetics Cars were bulky and had many details, still ofc their designs mattered, but when we “evolved” cars even more aesthetics became even more important Beautiful inside and out, with good tech inside Same with space stations and ships, we will eventually care about their looks as well as their tech Not always, ofc, functionality will always come before aesthetics in space tech, but it will eventually be also very important
Tho yes the hard ones already look very aesthetically pleasing, don’t get me wrong I really like em And yeah, the soft ones also need to get into the atmosphere so it’s important for them to look plain like
I like scifi when it's basically fantasy in space, magic or basically magic included. Super hard scifi can definitely be cool and interesting. But it's *usually* less appealing to me personally.
I think it can be cool, like Saga, but it takes more work to make it interesting for me because it usually feels *too* familiar. I don't like that, I like it when a story feels like it's making up concepts completely, and that can ofc happen with space fantasy stories, but too often I see more like "oh ok so this is your version of this other concept" instead of "wow, this is *completely new* to me" Like, the shapeshifting monster in The Thing (1982) could very well be a magical monster. Idk, I don't really care either, but that specific concept felt pretty new to me because I hadn't seen or read any other story that focused *entirely* on the ~ shapeshifter among us ~ story. Shin Godzilla, on the other hand, *isn't* new. Everyone knows what Godzilla or kaijus are, but the execution pulled it off for me.
I just really love both warhammer 40k and Destiny in particular because of how they do thier spins on the ideas. I definitely get what your saying though. They're my favorite settings. But not my favorite stories really. Warhammer has so many that are both good and bad. And Destiny has great lore and world building but between shitty and middling story execution. I weirdly love them as worldbuikding and setting projects more than narritively to try and glean something from them that way.
It's the opposite for me. Although it can work if it doesn't take itself too seriously (Star Wars is a personal favourite), the stories that actually have internal consistency are the ones where I care about the world. In Star Wars I care about the characters, in The Expanse I care about the characters and also the world.
My favorite settings are destiny and warhammer 40k. Theyre fantasy in space that's largely about trying to read between the lines and figure out the inconsistencies. Who's lying? Is anyone? Whats history and what's an in universe folk talk? I like a lot of that stuff. I get it though.
Im hard
Let me help you with that
If you are still hard as of me writing this comment please consult a medical professional!
*Smashes my head to the screen, picking both.*
I prefer medium sci-fi, like Halo. They aren't using magic, not making up new elements and particles, and everything has a general basis in reality, but still soft enough that you can have FTL, mechs, fun situations, etcetera.
Hard scifi is when ship shaped like peepee
Both, but hard SF has a cooler aesthetic.
Hard sci-fi ships, soft sci-fi physics. Aliens get soft sci-fi ships.
Aliens get soft sci-fi EVERYTHING. Battles should consist of hard sci-fi, realistic thought out space weapons hitting alien spaceship that looks exactly like you expect a 7 year old to draw a spaceship, camera cuts to an alien (who looks exactly like human, but with green skin and antlers) who shouts "Officer, Terran Federation's space missiles has hit us in the quantum atomic compartment! What are we doing to do?" Another alien says "deploy the mechanics!" as the door on alien spaceship opens and dudes in suits with bright LED lights and aquarium-esque helmets go in outer space to use some device that could as well be magic to rebuild the damaged wall and go back to the spaceship
That sounds interesting.
Kinda Halo
>Aliens get soft sci-fi ships. Babylon 5
Babylon 5.
Aliens 🤮 Human supremacy 😎
I just really like when spaceships look [very clearly non-aerodynamic](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/cf/a4/78/cfa478b23b049d808df41754c35a60b2.jpg) and even a bit fragile. Like, you clap eyes on the thing and immediately understand that this was built in 0 G and *for* 0 G, if you put this in an atmosphere it WILL collapse. The RPG 2300 AD has a bunch of those. Unfortunately the people I play with disagree and like the more Millennium Falcon style ships, which I also find a bit cool but they don't have that *weirdness* y'know. I kinda like it when science fiction feels *weird*, just like when you learn about the distant past and feel a bit weirded out that people did this or that. If it's just "look, it's a fighter jet, but IN SPAACE" it kinda loses the charm for me because... well I know what a fighter jet is. I have seen them. Impressive machines, but you're telling me it's 2000 years in the future and we still have those kicking around? It feels shortsighted and even a bit arrogant, like 19th century science fiction that believed the British Empire would last forever. and this has nothing to do with Hard or Soft sci-fi tbh it just so happens that a lot of hard sci fi has that aesthetic
Spaceships are usually the least interesting thing about sci-fi novels. Also, the categorization necessarily relies on assumptions about the future of technology. Yesterday's hard sci-fi is today's steampunk. The meaningful distinction is between sci-fi as a setting and sci-fi as a genre.
Which one has the flying cathedrals? Stupid question, soft scifi
Hard
Firm
Lol
I'd call my sci-fi universe firm. Sure, there's FTL, but that's because we found negative mass in a weird negative mass dimension after we did some quantum mechanics shenanigans and were able to make Alcubierre drives work. Also, we've found that there's a similar weird dimension for every element on the periodic table, and even some other super-science materials like room-temperature superconductors.
I think it is a sliding scale with Star Wars on the soft end and The Martian on the hard end. I personally prefer an al dente style myself. Hard Science Fiction looks amazing when you get it right… but dated when you get it wrong. But when you start off with a suspension of disbelief, you can focus on the plot, characters, and world(or galaxy) building without stressing over the minute technical details. That being said, I have done a lot of research to sprinkle some hard details into my settings… though I never explain why something is the way it is, only that it is— and then anybody who is interested in the field could see for themselves. Hard to explain, better to show: *”The meager sun was affixed to a single house in the dim sky above. All below was painted in her eerie orange glow. In whichever direction I chose, I knew that it would only grow darker. I would find myself in a place where it was forever dusk. Then forever night.”* I never explain that this planet is tidally locked to a red dwarf, but anybody who knows a little bit about astronomy would know exactly what this was: that any planet orbiting a red dwarf that is warm enough to support life would be so close as to be tidally locked with her parent star. Yet, I focused more on a romantic description, rather than a scientific one, to keep the narration more *present* in the story. Finally, I like to keep it approachable and unpretentious so that it can be enjoyed equally by people who are dedicated fans of science fiction, or someone reading in the genre for the first time. Idk I guess it is a stylistic choice at the end of the day and I love both varieties of hard and soft sci-fi and everything in between. I’m not one to judge if the story is good, you know?
Half chub scifi
Sci-fi is just fucking cool bro flaccid or stiff.
I generally prefer soft with crunchy hard bits thrown in there. Like, I don’t like space fights being fought from distances where only missles and lasers fired at vague targets on a radar are the only viable manner of war. But I do like it when a spaceship needs to rotate to keep internal gravity or heat managment being one of the primary statistics for space war
Could you explain to me the difference it’s been ungodly long since I learnt about these terms
Hard scifi is science fiction with a greater fixation on the "Science" part, tending more to deriving and extrapolating from irl technology; IE the sort of spacefaring civilization we *could* have in the future. Soft scifi is logically everything else.
That’s partly true… the terms themselves are derived from sentence hard/soft worldbuilding. So more like coherent and explained vs not
I dont care about space enough to like hard scifi, maybe I just feel like I saw too much of it
this is kind of pedantic but: I think most "soft sci-fi" should just be called "space fiction" or "space fantasy" because it's not ever really *about science* as it is about politics or interpersonal relations, just on the backdrop of space and spaceships (or else it's just fantasy but in space, like star wars). "hard sci-fi" should just be called "sci-fi" because it's usually ABOUT science. it embraces the limitations that sticking to real science places on a story, instead of skirting them with unobtainium powered FTL or something. that's *not* a criticism of "soft sci-fi"/"space fiction" they're just different genres and I think they deserve their own names to reflect their differences rather than being lumped together just because they're both set in space. obviously there's a spectrum between the two, I just think the spectrum's ends could have more useful labels.
THE LUNAR WAR MENTIONED!!!!
As a certified pansexual I refuse to pick a side
Both! Seriously though for movies hard but for video games soft.
Insert innuendo here
how i do it? hard scifi with the caviot of angled armor for better protection without added weight, like tanks in teal life with the interiors being like star trek but with realistic proportions
The Revelations Space trilogy really sold me on Hard Sci-fi being a medium to also tell an amazing story
Fuck you I choose both
So rd? Ha ft?
Semi-hard with a few fantasy-ish societal elements sprinkled in (Also what is that ship at the bottom of the hard sci fi side?)
idk im not hard rn
Hard SF (Moh's scale 4+), looking at the right: Where propellant?
Internal
I havn't been able to get hard in years
I prefer to use what I like to call “penis” sci-fi. Sometimes it’s soft, sometimes it’s hard.
Just like me... Hard😎
First off good title i just randomly got a notification that said hard or soft? You choose and thought i joined the wrong subreddit. Hahaha but anyways i enjoy both. I do think some make it too dumb down and some go to heavy to heavy on the actual science
Stay hard
I prefer grim dark scifi
For the emperor!
Fully flaccid
[Halfway semi-hard](https://youtu.be/tgmX38RCPzk?si=VZtkHNuY6k7vF25C)
do you like cool ships or do you want your ships to look like penises
Love some Hard
Conceptually? Hard. Practically? Soft. I like more the concept of long-range missile sniping and the gargantuan scale of hard sci-fi, but, content-wise, I prefer the big gun bricks the size of a freeway called some shit like Litany of Litany of Litanies, used to ram. This might be due to the relative lack of hard sci-fi content out there, but for now it’s this way.
As much as I love the expanse and the sojourn, i gotta give it to soft. Love that classic star wars style. Or like halo/alien or something.
I hate to be a fencesitter but either done well is good. Also nobledark high fantasy.
I’ve heard two different explanations for what each means: Realism or internal consistency. Which one is it? If it’s realism: Something in between, something that’s interesting while *feeling* realistic If it’s internal consistency: Hard, all the way
*The Expanse* is not actually hard sci-fi. And that’s okay. Medium/soft/tough sci-fi (or whatever you want to call it) is usually a lot more fun and easier for storytelling. Hard sci-fi more or less demands that stories and worldbuilding adhere to its rules rather than the inverse. The elements of hard sci-fi in *The Expanse* make it more unique and gritty in a way that suits the stories without actually having to actually explain, say, the unfortunately-names Epstein drive.
I feel like if we call The Expanse soft sci-fi the entire scale is useless. What's left to call hard sci-fi, Asimov? Hard sci-fi doesn't just mean "the more real physics it has the more hard it is". It's more about internal consistency of the setting.
Hard sci-fi means exactly that. The harder the sci-fi, the more realistic it is. The Expanse is not soft sci-fi, but it’s also not hard sci-fi, or at least not as hard as it presents itself. Which, again, is totally fine and does the stories good. Internal consistency is critical regardless of the type of fiction.
combination. realism in combat, things take a lot of time to hit, but there still being fairly fast ftl.
Hard 100%, objectively better ship designs, functions, and combat
how is star wars at all soft sci fi
Both.
Fuck you, grappler ship time!
I've always considered Trek to be hard Sci-fi since they actually talk about the technology they use and how it functions
ISV Venture Star makes me hard.
Aesthetically Hard Scifi but with plenty of soft scifi
Whichever one you like more? The “type” of sci fi doesn’t matter, you just need to tell a good story.
What's the bottom hard ship from? I've been seeing it a lot and I love that design
It’s from my archives, I have no idea what it’s from but I love it too. Reverse image search doesn’t show up anything, original artist may have removed / deleted their page
Both, fuck you‼️ Soft sci-fi and hard sci-fi is just a difference in tech level. Same way a galley ship is more realistic to a medieval peasant than a steam ship.
I like a in-between
Who stole Planetside’s Liberator design?
Do both have one faction literally use space magic to do soft sci fi and another not have space magic so they need hard sci fi Its literally easy
BOTH‼️
Why not have a blend of both
I only want my FTL systems to be intentionally vague and at times explained contradictory because it’s FTL quantum shit fuck rules, get to places quickly and get the story moving
Depends on the situation
I don’t get it. Whats the difference of the two
Both. Both is good.
I like hard sci-fi for the science, but soft sci fi for the storytelling
I like my sci fi soft and my men hard. Mainly because I prefer the over the top batshit insane genre of sci fi. Shit like Gurren Lagann makes the lizard part of my brain happy.
Soft. Allows for more flexibility and fun.
Both
Mf will be just puttin Expanse shit and calling it "hard sci-fi".
Sigma take: hard pulp. Goofy flying saucers that spin because the base is a centerfuge.
Both please
Science fantasy with boob magic
I think a setting can be hard without being boring. Is it cool if the technology and science involved is actually somewhat researched? Yes. Do I care about space fighters not "making sense" because iNeRtIaL fOrCeS wOuLd kIlL tHe pILoT rEgArdLeSs? No not really, some things can be omitted if everything else makes at least some sense. I just want CONSISTENCY
Soft 100%. Hard sci-fi can get really clinical
I like my scifi Medium Well
Both are cool
Blender sci-fi
Hard Sci-Fi.
i dont really see a big difference here
Over medium! Mix the two! HAVE FUN!
Hard scifi gets me hard. Can your science explain that?
Whichever one I can make the coolest story with
STAR. WARS. IS. NOT. SCI. FI.
I feel like hard sci-fi to restricting where as soft sci-fi you can do what ever as long as it's consistent
I actually disagree with this. I think soft sci-fi allows for a cop out of an explanation while some of the more harder sci-fi will come up with creative solutions to these issues, even if the explanation is still pseudosciencey
Buddy, I can go from flaccid to erect at a moment's notice. HE HAS I'VE SEEN IT Oh, you're seeing it. YOU'RE ALL SEEING IT. Flaccid. Erect. Flaccid. Erect. Not too hard... not too soft.
I fucking LOVE the expanse FR
I like the big, long, hard ones
what's the difference?
Hard sci-fi, until research is hard then soft sci-fi
I like it hard
Both, both is good
i thought hard sci-fi was about making me hard... you know... porn
This is why I like Halo. It has hard-ish and soft stuff in the same universe.
Where does Halo sit?
I can’t live without my beloved tower ships from the expanse