New efforts!

[Arcana]

Here's a theory for the stalling on NCS' part that I've been thinking about for awhile: What if they're waiting to see how CoT turns out before they decide on any course of action, good or bad? CoT could honestly become an expansion or revamp of CoH if the rights were given back.

The first challenge to any such theory is that it presumes NCSoft as a corporate entity is stalling negotiations.  That assumes facts not in evidence.

[Ulysses Dare]

NO, I did it too.   I even had some spare bins dedicated to one of each different type of xmas present.

If you dumped them in one bin they would be separated by type but you still didn't know what type they were, so after dumping them in one bin, I would then remove all of one of the type, use one to see what they were and then dump them into another bin, along with a standard inspiration of the correct color to know what they were:  attack, def, etc.

Genius! I wish I had known about that. My prezzies were all unsorted.

[Sinistar]

The first challenge to any such theory is that it presumes NCSoft as a corporate entity is stalling negotiations.  That assumes facts not in evidence.

I doubt it is stalling so much as a low priority to them.

Also they would likely want to save face and not admit that they erred very badly when they closed the game.

[Ulysses Dare]

Also they would likely want to save face and not admit that they erred very badly when they closed the game.

In order to show that NCSoft erred badly we'd need to know both what their business case for shutting down Paragon was and then demonstrate that that case was somehow flawed. Those facts aren't  in evidence either. Just because their handling of the shutdown was, from our perspective, hamfisted doesn't mean the underlying business reasons were wrong.

[BadWolf]

In order to show that NCSoft erred badly we'd need to know both what their business case for shutting down Paragon was and then demonstrate that that case was somehow flawed. Those facts aren't  in evidence either. Just because their handling of the shutdown was, from our perspective, hamfisted doesn't mean the underlying business reasons were wrong.

Well, I was under the impression that the basics were known--they were in the middle of a sale (to Nexon, I think?) and Paragon Studios, at the time their assets were evaluated, had a negative balance sheet due to development costs on unreleased games. If they'd had the luxury of letting it go on for a while, those might have realized revenues that would have put them back in the black, but the conditions of the evaluation were such that they had to go on the snapshot, and under those conditions nobody could really argue against shuttering it or selling it. And the sale fell through.

Not a bad business decision necessarily, just really unfortunate timing for all concerned.

[ivanhedgehog]

I agree, in point with you. However, the team that is trying to get City of. if I remember was getting it for another dev. house; that is if I remember correctly. I will wait until City of. comes back if not his time, then the next attempt. If we look at the two attempts they have gotten farther than the first attempt, which means if there is another attempt then it will go farther.
I do have to say, I am not very patient, when it comes to waiting for things, however, ever since I learned of this attempt I have learned patience, an old adage I remember is "good things happen in time, if you wait long enough" or atleast something like that. ::)

I cant imagine anyone wasting their time on another attempt. Most people with the capital for this kind of project would have walked on and invested their money where they will get some kind of return on it. If there are any sort of negotiations continuing, they need to pan out or too much time will have passed. There are slow negotiations and there are no negotiations. This project seems to have died in its sleep. I would love to be wrong but there is no indication that I am.

[Angel Phoenix77]

I cant imagine anyone wasting their time on another attempt. Most people with the capital for this kind of project would have walked on and invested their money where they will get some kind of return on it. If there are any sort of negotiations continuing, they need to pan out or too much time will have passed. There are slow negotiations and there are no negotiations. This project seems to have died in its sleep. I would love to be wrong but there is no indication that I am.

I think you are wrong, there was a very small tidbit on the City of Titans kickstarter, where someone asked, if the team was still active, and the reply they got was from someone from Missing Worlds stating that the team is still talking to NCSoft, just the talks are very slow. However, you do not know for sure if the people with the money moved on or not, same with me.
They need to pans out according to your time table, that is rarely how business is done, there is a reason there is a saying at the speed of business. You can believe that this attempt has died, I wont think that, I still have hope.

[MM3squints]

I cant imagine anyone wasting their time on another attempt. Most people with the capital for this kind of project would have walked on and invested their money where they will get some kind of return on it. If there are any sort of negotiations continuing, they need to pan out or too much time will have passed. There are slow negotiations and there are no negotiations. This project seems to have died in its sleep. I would love to be wrong but there is no indication that I am.

With the void of information, we just can go off of speculation. Yes there is a NDA, but even the people who are considered Key in the implementation (like Ironwolf) haven't really been around the forums. The APR people haven't been around either, but then that would go into another wild speculation they are some how in the process and are actually making the updated version of the game as we speak and keeping quiet till a near final product is available (who knows.) However, from a business sense it would I think it would be detrimental to the CoT project getting the CoX because if CoX was around and even in a zombie state, it's more than likely CoX will have vast amount more content that CoT will have initially, hindering people from playing CoT and any microtransation or other means to generate revenue.

[Arcana]

Well, I was under the impression that the basics were known--they were in the middle of a sale (to Nexon, I think?) and Paragon Studios, at the time their assets were evaluated, had a negative balance sheet due to development costs on unreleased games. If they'd had the luxury of letting it go on for a while, those might have realized revenues that would have put them back in the black, but the conditions of the evaluation were such that they had to go on the snapshot, and under those conditions nobody could really argue against shuttering it or selling it. And the sale fell through.

Not a bad business decision necessarily, just really unfortunate timing for all concerned.

People have proposed variations on this conjecture (or set of them) but there are significant holes in this theory.  Predominant among them is that this conjecture relies on theories that violate pretty much every possible set of accounting rules that NCSoft could be either using or held accountable to.

[pinballdave]

I got a big physics/astronomy notice in my facebook feed: picture - what if Saturn were as close as the moon. Plenty of replies scolded us realists for pointing out the obvious peril of this juxtaposition. My first thought was, well if the earth is that far down the gravity well of Saturn, it won't be long until our planet crashes into Saturn. That, and the ocean tides and the tidal affect on the mantle and core of the earth would wreak havoc on life on this planet. Still another conjecture is that the earth would be pulled apart by the gravity of Saturn, another unpleasant result. Of course Saturn would steal the moon, most likely. The analemma  would also most likely be disrupted and seasonal changes from that would have major effects as well.

[Arcana]

I got a big physics/astronomy notice in my facebook feed: picture - what if Saturn were as close as the moon. Plenty of replies scolded us realists for pointing out the obvious peril of this juxtaposition. My first thought was, well if the earth is that far down the gravity well of Saturn, it won't be long until our planet crashes into Saturn. That, and the ocean tides and the tidal affect on the mantle and core of the earth would wreak havoc on life on this planet. Still another conjecture is that the earth would be pulled apart by the gravity of Saturn, another unpleasant result. Of course Saturn would steal the moon, most likely. The analemma  would also most likely be disrupted and seasonal changes from that would have major effects as well.

If Saturn replaced the moon by placing the center of Saturn at the current location of the center of mass of the Moon, Earth would be outside Saturn's roche limit for solid objects, which is a little less than 100,000 km (mean Earth-moon distance is about 380,000 km).  At least for a while.

If Saturn is given the same velocity as the moon, then things get interesting.  What's important here to a first order approximation is the relative velocity of the objects.  At the moment, the moon has an average velocity about the Earth-moon center of mass of about 1 km/sec.  If we essentially place the Earth at a distance of 380,000 km of Saturn and give it a tangential velocity of 1 km/sec then Earth will at least attempt to trace an elliptical path around the center of mass of the Earth-Saturn system.  I'm unfortunately a little rusty calculating orbital mechanics, but I can wikipedia my way to a guestimate here.  Fortunately for me, Saturn actually has a moon that orbits at almost exactly the same average distance as the Earth-Moon system: Dione.  Dione has an orbital period of 2.74 days compared to the Moon's 27.3 days, which means Dione's orbital speed is almost exactly ten times faster than the Moon's orbital speed.

A very rough guestimate would suggest that implies Earth's motion about Saturn would be a highly elongated orbit.  Saturn's radius is about 60,000 km compared to the 380,000 km orbital radius, or 16% of the total orbital radius.  That sounds like it would be a close call as to whether Earth strikes the cloud tops of Saturn or not, but whether it does or not it almost certainly drops below the Roche limit for Saturn in that elliptical path.

So: within a few orbits Earth either a) collides with Saturn or b) disintegrates into an elliptical ring system, which itself interacts with the existing ring system to eventually disperse into a more circular ring.  And a huge one because Earth has more mass than the current Saturn ring system.  I don't think there's enough time to worry about tides, because each elliptical orbit around Saturn is going to happen in just a few days.  It is unclear to me if it is possible for Earth to survive even one of them.

On the other hand, if the Earth is put into circular orbit around Saturn at that radius, that would be a hell of a show.  Saturn is about thirty five times wider than the moon.  The moon takes up about 30 arc minutes of sky, so Saturn would take up ab out 1050 arc minutes, or 17.5 whole degrees of sky.  Make a fist and hold it out in front of your face at arm's length.  Saturn would probably be a little bigger than that in the sky (unless you happen to be a comic book character drawn by Rob Liefeld).  At that distance in a circular orbit geology becomes interesting on Earth, but probably survivable (global warming is likely to do worse things eventually, unless Saturn ignites the Yellowstone caldera; that would be worse).

[pinballdave]

If Saturn replaced the moon by placing the center of Saturn at the current location of the center of mass of the Moon, Earth would be outside Saturn's roche limit for solid objects, which is a little less than 100,000 km (mean Earth-moon distance is about 380,000 km).  At least for a while.

If Saturn is given the same velocity as the moon, then things get interesting.  What's important here to a first order approximation is the relative velocity of the objects.  At the moment, the moon has an average velocity about the Earth-moon center of mass of about 1 km/sec.  If we essentially place the Earth at a distance of 380,000 km of Saturn and give it a tangential velocity of 1 km/sec then Earth will at least attempt to trace an elliptical path around the center of mass of the Earth-Saturn system.  I'm unfortunately a little rusty calculating orbital mechanics, but I can wikipedia my way to a guestimate here.  Fortunately for me, Saturn actually has a moon that orbits at almost exactly the same average distance as the Earth-Moon system: Dione.  Dione has an orbital period of 2.74 days compared to the Moon's 27.3 days, which means Dione's orbital speed is almost exactly ten times faster than the Moon's orbital speed.

A very rough guestimate would suggest that implies Earth's motion about Saturn would be a highly elongated orbit.  Saturn's radius is about 60,000 km compared to the 380,000 km orbital radius, or 16% of the total orbital radius.  That sounds like it would be a close call as to whether Earth strikes the cloud tops of Saturn or not, but whether it does or not it almost certainly drops below the Roche limit for Saturn in that elliptical path.

So: within a few orbits Earth either a) collides with Saturn or b) disintegrates into an elliptical ring system, which itself interacts with the existing ring system to eventually disperse into a more circular ring.  And a huge one because Earth has more mass than the current Saturn ring system.  I don't think there's enough time to worry about tides, because each elliptical orbit around Saturn is going to happen in just a few days.  It is unclear to me if it is possible for Earth to survive even one of them.

On the other hand, if the Earth is put into circular orbit around Saturn at that radius, that would be a hell of a show.  Saturn is about thirty five times wider than the moon.  The moon takes up about 30 arc minutes of sky, so Saturn would take up ab out 1050 arc minutes, or 17.5 whole degrees of sky.  Make a fist and hold it out in front of your face at arm's length.  Saturn would probably be a little bigger than that in the sky (unless you happen to be a comic book character drawn by Rob Liefeld).  At that distance in a circular orbit geology becomes interesting on Earth, but probably survivable (global warming is likely to do worse things eventually, unless Saturn ignites the Yellowstone caldera; that would be worse).

I am stilled intrigued by this. Would the huge increase in gravity not precede a huge tidal surge every 14 hours and send waves and waves of water into the most heavily populated areas leaving only the inhabitants at higher altitudes? What height would that tidal surge be in New York City, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Shanghai ?

Would the 'tilt' of the earth's access be affected. This could kill off agricultural pretty quickly.

New idea: what happens to the magnetosphere and the ozone layer?

[Kassandros]

This conversation reminded me of this article which had a lot of the same speculation as you all have so I thought ya might be interested.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/05/12/close_encounter_what_if_saturn_swung_by_earth.html

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

I am stilled intrigued by this. Would the huge increase in gravity not precede a huge tidal surge every 14 hours and send waves and waves of water into the most heavily populated areas leaving only the inhabitants at higher altitudes? What height would that tidal surge be in New York City, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Shanghai ?

Would the 'tilt' of the earth's access be affected. This could kill off agricultural pretty quickly.

New idea: what happens to the magnetosphere and the ozone layer?

There's no particular reason the tilt of the Earth's axis would be affected, but that would be the least of your concerns when it comes to agriculture and climate. Actually i have no idea why the tilt of the Earth's axis would make much difference for a lot of agriculture, especially in equatorial regions. Well, i suppose if it was altered to 90 degrees from the plane of the solar system that would have a pretty major effect, but it's not something that's been observed in any gas giant's moons in the solar system, and the earth would be a moon at that point, so i'm not sure why it would happen in this case.


Of course i would be more concerned about the impact (perhaps literally in some cases) of Saturn's rings, moons, and magnetic fields; those could have some interesting effects on the Earth.

[Arcana]

I am stilled intrigued by this. Would the huge increase in gravity not precede a huge tidal surge every 14 hours and send waves and waves of water into the most heavily populated areas leaving only the inhabitants at higher altitudes? What height would that tidal surge be in New York City, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Sydney, Shanghai ?

Maybe.  This is a bit complicated because remember in this scenario while the Earth is still rotating once per day it is also orbiting Saturn once every 66 hours.  Just to illustrate the complexity, if Earth was actually orbiting Saturn once every twenty four hours it would be locked facing the same face to Saturn: there would be no tides, just an unlucky semi-hemisphere mostly under water.

Tidal *forces* would be huge, but the dynamics of how that would affect ocean tides is unclear to me.  Water doesn't just deform under tidal stresses, it actually forms tidal bulges due in part to water flowing under tidal gradients.  Its *probably* going to be really bad, but keep in mind that long term global warming is probably going to put every coast line completely under water all the time in just a couple of centuries at most.  That's really horrible for people living there, but it is not an extinction level event.  Its survivable in species terms.  Its not going to be universally survivable on an individual basis.

If the tidal forces are strong enough to actually essentially carry the oceans right across the continents, well then that would be worse.  That would be a mass extinction level event that probably includes us unless we had enough time to all move into gondolas.

Would the 'tilt' of the earth's access be affected. This could kill off agricultural pretty quickly.

I don't see why axial tilt would be affected.  I'm not sure what the impact would be to agriculture that the Sun was being eclipsed by Saturn twice a week though.

New idea: what happens to the magnetosphere and the ozone layer?

The Earth actually has a slightly stronger magnetic field than Saturn does.  But it would be interesting to have an object with a strong magnetic field like the Earth orbiting another body like Saturn that itself had a strong magnetic field close enough for the magnetic fields to "see" each other.  I don't see a specific threat to the ozone layer off the top of my head, but if you're a fan of aurorae those might get a lot more interesting in this environment.

[Vee]

Make a fist and hold it out in front of your face at arm's length.  Saturn would probably be a little bigger than that in the sky (unless you happen to be a comic book character drawn by Rob Liefeld). 

Fun fact: only 47 of Saturn's moons have been conclusively proven to be fists drawn by Rob Liefeld. The other 6 show every sign of also being Liefeld fists but the evidence is questioned by some astronomers clearly unfamiliar with Liefeld's work who consider them too big to possibly be so.

[pinballdave]

There's no particular reason the tilt of the Earth's axis would be affected, but that would be the least of your concerns when it comes to agriculture and climate. Actually i have no idea why the tilt of the Earth's axis would make much difference for a lot of agriculture, especially in equatorial regions. Well, i suppose if it was altered to 90 degrees from the plane of the solar system that would have a pretty major effect, but it's not something that's been observed in any gas giant's moons in the solar system, and the earth would be a moon at that point, so i'm not sure why it would happen in this case.


Of course i would be more concerned about the impact (perhaps literally in some cases) of Saturn's rings, moons, and magnetic fields; those could have some interesting effects on the Earth.

tilt of the earth - in an extreme example Alaska has some days with no sun, and other days with 24 hours of the sun. Snowbirds often find they sunburn more quickly on vacation in Florida because the sun is more direct, more overhead.

[Nyx Nought Nothing]

tilt of the earth - in an extreme example Alaska has some days with no sun, and other days with 24 hours of the sun.

Well it depends on how wobbly the axis becomes, although i don't know of any reason it would be affected at all by Saturn in the first place. Greatly increased axial tilt would result in colder winters and hotter summers, but depending on the frequency of precession Earth might actually have a more consistent climate with shorter, milder winters and summers even with a greater axial tilt. Honestly you don't give enough data about the degree of tilt and precession rate to make even a rough guess. Let's say it's increased to 90 degrees because that makes as much sense as any other change, and it follows the current year-long pattern. For about three months almost all the sun's light falls on the Southern hemisphere and for three months almost all the sun's light falls on the Northern hemisphere, with three month intervals in between those periods where the sun shines more directly on the equator. Yeah, that would be pretty disastrous for agriculture and life in general. Not quite as bad as being tidally locked to the sun, but still pretty bad.

Snowbirds often find they sunburn more quickly on vacation in Florida because the sun is more direct, more overhead.

Yes, the closer you get to the equator the more people who are prone to sunburns will tend to get sunburns. This is not noteworthy or even especially relevant from an agricultural standpoint, which is what the original question was about.

[MM3squints]

Something fun to look at, a top 10 list of failed MMO

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

Interesting while the other ones on the list are on their due to bugs, bad support, being too ambitious, CoX is on the list, but Watch Mojo called it an abnormality to be on the list due to budget cuts and Studio shutdown.

[Tahquitz]

I liked that subtle dig at Star Trek Online, when the announcer said, "Did we miss anything?"