Lore: Who is reactivating the gates?

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sd_jasper
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Lore: Who is reactivating the gates?

Post by sd_jasper » Wed, 16. Mar 16, 21:22

(Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I couldn't find any discussion of this.)

I recently replayed the Campaign when 4.0 came out and noticed something that I hadn't really paid attention to previously: When you fly through the gate to OL the Encyclopedia update with the history of OL since the gate shutdown has some interesting images when it talks about the gate to Maelstrom opening.

The voice-over just talks about the gate reopening and the Xenon on the other side, but the images show a woman(?) in some kind of capsule, with tube coming out of her back. Then it shows what looks like to me the HUB gate ring (from X3).

Now maybe the devs just had some left over concept art and thought it'd be cool to use it here and there is no meaning behind this. Or, it could be that this is hinting at what is really going on...

I'm wondering if there is someone in control of the HUB (perhaps the capsule woman... inside some sort of life-support chamber?). Who is this person? Are the reconnects random or serving a purpose? Why connect OL to a Xenon sector? Albion to a Terran sector?

Anyway, I know that ES often implies more story than they get around to explaining in game (which is cool IMO), but has anyone seen/read/etc. any info that might expand on this? Any theories?

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Post by Carl Sumner » Fri, 18. Mar 16, 03:26

I don't know about that scene with the woman.

But the story is, that the Sohen (a client machine race from long ago) are re-connecting the gates slowly. They are trying to prevent genocide, either of us (Argon/Terran) or the Xenon. But with both in sometimes the same system, it is tricky.

And sometimes others, from outside our universe, are showing up and complicating things! 8-{
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Post by Requiemfang » Fri, 18. Mar 16, 16:15

Sohnen are pretty much caretakers and watchers/guardians who were created by the Ancients. The Ancients were the ones who created them and are the ones who originally created the gates and the gate network. If you have the collectors edition of the game there's a bonus content folder in your X rebirth directory that has The X Encyclopedia which pretty much covers the whole history, races, tech and lore of the X Universe.

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Post by Getsune » Fri, 18. Mar 16, 16:20

According to the X encyclopedia, the Sohnen are responsible for the jumpgate shutdown, as Carl Sumner wrote. The primary reason for this, however, was that the Ancients (the entity that controls the Sohnen) want to stop the AGI that originated from Earth almost a millennium ago - the Terraformers (or Xenon).

It's a very complicated topic but the general problem with the Xenon/TF is that they can improve their technological understanding endlessly without the need to evolve as a consciousness, which means that they can rapidly grow their influence without the need to interact with other civilizations. This also means that they don't have to give up on their hatred towards mankind and it's allies because there's simply no reason to do so. They can simply continue to grow and overpower everything in their way, and so far there's no known way to stop them.

It remains to be seen how effective it really was to shut down the jumpgate network, seeing as we've only seen a bunch of sectors in X Rebirth so far and all of them, especially Albion, have a massive Xenon/TF problem on their hands right now.

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Post by Requiemfang » Fri, 18. Mar 16, 16:27

:lol: Albion has that problem because PMC decided to go all drone happy using Xenon tech. That pretty much equates to them royally screwing themselves because as with what happened in the plot, Xenons pretty much hacked PMC's Drones and those drones turned coat and pretty much became xenon.

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Post by Getsune » Fri, 18. Mar 16, 16:37

Requiemfang wrote:Albion has that problem because PMC decided to go all drone happy using Xenon tech. That pretty much equates to them royally screwing themselves because as with what happened in the plot, Xenons pretty much hacked PMC's Drones and those drones turned coat and pretty much became xenon.
Indeed, they quickly lost control over them once the first few Xenon entered the Albion system. Now PMC lost half of its army and we have uncontrollable machines ravaging through our space - again.

Thanks for dooming humanity again, Plutarch. :I

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Post by Carl Sumner » Sat, 19. Mar 16, 03:36

Note that the encyclopedia mentioned here, is a different file from the encyclopedia inside the XR game, which is only about the one game.

The other one is in the extra stuff in the package with the music and stuff, I think, and on the Egosoft site.
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Post by dougeye » Sat, 19. Mar 16, 18:27

the woman in the tank is whats her face from x3, the one that blew up Torus. She has given herself to Xenon in exchange for their help to do it. possibly....

On a different note does anyone think that the new xenon designs are related to what happened to some of the Boron outposts? A bit like the reapers making a human reaper in ME2. Mabye the Xenon are discovering and researching ways to intergrate with the other species but to them that means making everything else a machine lol

I mean come on their stations are already using Argon landing platform desigggns ;)
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Post by dougeye » Sat, 19. Mar 16, 18:29

also in relation to gates why are there several gate designs in Rebirth? Are some of the new gates actually new gates rather than old gates being linked somewere else.

Also Martin Winters?
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Post by Simoom » Sun, 20. Mar 16, 01:42

Technically, Xenon has been experimenting with jumpdrive technology for a long time (the Xperimental shuttle from the original X was reverse-engineered from a Xenon ship that jumped into Sol, without the use of a jump gate). It would only be a matter of time before jump gates become completely obsolete (or, it should have been for a long time now, given the amount of time that's passed between the original X and XR).

They will probably always keep jump gates around in the X games for stylistic reasons, but I think as far as the lore is concerned, the gate shutdown probably wouldn't have stopped all these civilizations from reaching one another (especially with jumpdrive technology already in play for several games now).

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Post by Requiemfang » Sun, 20. Mar 16, 02:48

Simoom wrote:Technically, Xenon has been experimenting with jumpdrive technology for a long time (the Xperimental shuttle from the original X was reverse-engineered from a Xenon ship that jumped into Sol, without the use of a jump gate). It would only be a matter of time before jump gates become completely obsolete (or, it should have been for a long time now, given the amount of time that's passed between the original X and XR).

They will probably always keep jump gates around in the X games for stylistic reasons, but I think as far as the lore is concerned, the gate shutdown probably wouldn't have stopped all these civilizations from reaching one another (especially with jumpdrive technology already in play for several games now).
Here's one part of the lore and game mechanics I don't get, ships with jump drives shouldn't need to go through jump gates so long as they know where the beacon location is known imho you discovering a location that has a jump beacon. BUT as we can all see if you order a cap ship into another system they always decide to go through a jump gate instead of directly jumping to the local systems jump beacon.

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Post by dougeye » Sun, 20. Mar 16, 17:55

^ but that would have ruined the half written story in rebirth because everyone could have traded freely without the need to control the gate between Albion and De Vries. ;)
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Post by Simoom » Sun, 20. Mar 16, 21:29

dougeye wrote:^ but that would have ruined the half written story in rebirth because everyone could have traded freely without the need to control the gate between Albion and De Vries. ;)
Haha, except in X3 it was already established that ships can jump directly to a jump beacon without needing to go through gates (it was in fact that only way to move the Valhallas around, as they were too big to go through gates).

They are probably retroactively changing the lore for storytelling's sake, which is fine I guess.

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Post by Goliathmk2 » Mon, 21. Mar 16, 05:36

You do realize jump beacons send out a signal that allows ships to lock-on to them and that signal takes shortcuts through jumpgates.

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Post by Getsune » Mon, 21. Mar 16, 20:56

I just realized that some lore descriptions, including the game description of X Rebirth itself, mention that everything changed with 'the supernova'. Does anyone know anything about this particular supernova?

Perhaps the Ancients aren't responsible for this after all and the Xenon found a way to shutdown the jumpgate network as a means to separate the Community of Planets? :o

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Post by Goliathmk2 » Mon, 21. Mar 16, 23:02

The Ancients shut the gates down to slow down the Xenon expansion and are reactivating them for the same reason.

Omicron Lyarae connecting to Maelstrom, Albion to Field of Opportunity and Home of Light to Toride these are not coincidences.

Xenon have no concept of time, it will take as long as it takes. That's why the gates were closed only for 30 years, that's how long it takes for Xenon to travel between stars.

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Post by dougeye » Thu, 24. Mar 16, 18:04

so the xenon are too powerful for the sohnen to destroy? or maybe that's the point, the gates were shut down so that the community of planets were cut off from a war between the xenon and the sohnen.

also id like to know what is meant by "branch 9 destroyer" etc is there a branch 8 a branch 7 and what are these branches? is there one central hive of xenon etc.
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Post by Sparky Sparkycorp » Tue, 29. Mar 16, 07:12

dougeye wrote: On a different note does anyone think that the new xenon designs are related to what happened to some of the Boron outposts? A bit like the reapers making a human reaper in ME2. Mabye the Xenon are discovering and researching ways to intergrate with the other species but to them that means making everything else a machine lol
A Boron angle could make sense alongside the other hints about water:
- Mentions of water in some modules on the large Xenon stations in the DLCs.
- Hanging around the Aqueduct in Maelstrom.

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Post by Peanutcat » Fri, 1. Apr 16, 19:00

Getsune wrote:I just realized that some lore descriptions, including the game description of X Rebirth itself, mention that everything changed with 'the supernova'. Does anyone know anything about this particular supernova?

Perhaps the Ancients aren't responsible for this after all and the Xenon found a way to shutdown the jumpgate network as a means to separate the Community of Planets? :o
No it's the ancients that shut down the gates to stop the xenon though what the supernova is they never say for some reason. In the encyclopedia though it does say that the concious xenon created a supernova to warn the other races from chasing after them when they were defeated in the previous X games. Though that supernova was supposably quite a while ago so I doubt that's the one they're talking about.
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Post by Vaperius » Sun, 8. May 16, 11:06

Simoom wrote:Technically, Xenon has been experimenting with jumpdrive technology for a long time (the Xperimental shuttle from the original X was reverse-engineered from a Xenon ship that jumped into Sol, without the use of a jump gate). It would only be a matter of time before jump gates become completely obsolete (or, it should have been for a long time now, given the amount of time that's passed between the original X and XR).

They will probably always keep jump gates around in the X games for stylistic reasons, but I think as far as the lore is concerned, the gate shutdown probably wouldn't have stopped all these civilizations from reaching one another (especially with jumpdrive technology already in play for several games now).
There are large distinctions between Jump Gates, Jump Drive, FTL Tunneling and what an experimental jump drive are, and the type jump drive that Khaak and perhaps Xenon use.


Jump gates are essentially a system for connecting a stable space-time-gravity anomaly between two points in space consistently; if the anomalies in Torride are any hint to perhaps this phenomena either being a natural occurrence or merely something that that Ancients took advantage of to create stabilized gate travel across a system wherever one of these anomalies already existed.

Also: its an important note that the devs have conflated their FTL Tunneling/Jump Drive to each other, as the FTL that capital ships has are not true jump drives.

FTL Tunneling(Jump Drive as its commonly referred to in-universe) that the capital ships perform "merely" is actually a form of warp travel in my opinion and theory, and is therefore not jump drive as its in fact, not instantaneous, it only appears instantaneous because of the relatively small distance involved.

I've never seen them jump between systems; so forgive me if I am wrong; but capital ships have to use gates to travel between systems as with their FTL Tunneling it would potentially take perhaps hours or days versus minutes via simply "Jumping" into a system with a gate. However even if they are jumping into a sector via the their drive, I am fairly certain there is a specific difference between their local jumps within a system and between systems (FTL Tunneling/Warp vs Jump Drive).

True Jump Drive such as on the Xperimental shuttle can reach any destination instantly in theory although it has some obvious problems.

We also get a true Jump drive again in the X3 series however technically its superior to the X:Rebirth from a mechanics standpoint simply because we could potentially expand the areas we can jump to directly, which while not as useful in X3, would be useful in X Rebirth; however dropping independent structures from the Skunk causes (Nav Beacons in this instance) any sector with them to display a friendly signature within system despite not showing the Nav Beacon location directly on the list of ships within sector, however I digress.

Then we are finally into perfected Jump FTL, which is insane from a Lore standpoint. We've got gates; and then we've got perfected Jump FTL of the Khaa'ak and Xenon. These two race give zero shits about the ancients plans for them.

Perfect or rather "point-jump driver" is essentially relatively more accurate then an UFJD or the now-common place in X Rebirth Jump Drives in that it does not require a signature as far as we know to lock on to yet can accurately place ships in a approximate area of where they want to go within a system.


The reason that any the races haven't done this however is both a design choice by the devs to keep their game world manageable and from a lore-standpoint. Why would they? The jump gates are convenient and unless their system is resource strapped(in which case they could afford to anyway), there is no reason to leave when they realign or shut down.

There is also the matter how "How do we govern an unlimited amount of space" which is an impossible question to answer since the moment you get a solution (namely a lot of ships), someone discovered 30,000 more systems and slapped jump beacons in them for everyone. Political unity would shatter if the governments of this universe let people wildly expand freely into every nearby system.

Don't get me wrong; they definitely could do it though, they could probably colonize a quarter of the galaxy in a few centuries just by the sure virtue of how widely distributed because of the gate network Argons and Terrans have become not to mention other races..

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