how can you design an effective form of communication across a ringworld?

[The_Russian_Col]

Thus setting takes place on a ringworld that is divided into multiple sections called "realms". These realms are massive continents that are connected to each other through a portal. The only way to travel between realms are through these portals, which are controlled by an organization called CONCORD. This group are seen as demigods and worship the creator deity, which created the ringworld and the mortals living in it.

While this organization has religious overtones, it doesn't consider itself the moral authority over all walks of life. It exists simply to serve a purpose: to keep the peace within each realm and protect the ringworld from outside evil forces. Although the mortals inhabiting the realms respect and pay homage to the creator, they don't worship it, for it only answers and communicates with the demigods of CONCORD. Therefore, the mortals of the realms have developed various religions with their own minor deities, and have different understandings of the creator and it's relation to their own gods.

Some realms view their gods as smaller aspects of the main god. Others view their gods as separate entities, with the creator as their parent. Some realms are matriarch is where women dominate in most aspects of life. Others are warrior societies or battle worlds in MAD MAX like settings, where only the strongest survive. Some believe that gods are loving and all-seeing, and others are aztec-like cultures in which gods demand human sacrifice. Cultural exchange and communication occur between realms. However, with their own portal being the only point of travel, the realms each develop in their own way.

Ringworld's are stupefying in their immensity. The original Ringworld had a surface area equivalent to ~3 million Earths. A Ringworld is sufficiently big that it serves as a form of communication barrier. For these demigods to Maintain their authority, there must be a form of communication that can reliably transfer messages from one side of the world to the other in a reasonable timeframe. How can they make this possible?

[Xuc Xac]

How are they pantheists? They worship "the creator". That's monotheism: "the one deity made the world".

If they believe that other gods exist but they only worship one, that's henotheism.

Pantheists believe "god is the world".

[Mechalich]

Without extremely advanced technologies, it would be difficult for any organization to maintain authority across a Ringworld. Ringworld's are stupefying in their immensity. The original Ringworld had a surface area equivalent to ~3 million Earths. A Ringworld is sufficiently big that the speed of light comes into play as a communications barrier. For a Ringworld with a diameter of Earth's orbit, the opposite side of the ring is 16 light minutes away. Without positing some sort of hyper-advanced intelligence in control - which might as well be a god even if its only a super-intelligent AI - creating a functional bureaucracy and management structure at that scale is an exercise in absurdity.

Things are somewhat more manageable if you don't invoke the enormity of a Ringworld and instead go with a Bank's Orbital (familiar to many gamers as a Halo Ring) then you only have 20-100 Earths or so worth of territory. That might be doable, especially if your controllers are actually demigods.

[Razade]

As noted, this isn't a Pantheistic model. It's actually a Deistic model, in that the creator doesn't interfere with the system its made. If they're not religious and they don't actively engage in the world as you say then they don't really have a way to keep authority. That doesn't seem to be their goal either, according to you. So what's the question?

[Draken]

I will echo the same issues voiced by previous posters, but here are some ideas that I think include what you want:

First. Lets reiterate this organization's stated goals:

1. Maintain peace between the realms.
2. Protect the realms from outside threats.

The first goal can be carried out in a simple fashion. Each world is connected to others by a portal, maintaining peace between the worlds can be carried out simply by controlling the portal. That's literally holding one piece of land and keeping tabs on who uses it and when. All they have to do is build a fortress-monastery around the portal and keep a leash on its use.

How mortals deal with this fortress-monastery can then be as varied as the worlds themselves. Maybe in one world it is a place of religious pilgrimage. In another it is a center of commerce. In another it is the neutral meeting spot of savage wasteland warlords. In another it is unknown, hidden away in the depths of undiscovered jungle, away from the eyes of the locals. Only the fortress full of demigods with a vested interest in not allowing invading armies to cross over is a staple.

The second one, I will guess the outside threats are a real concern and there is a relatively constant influx of Zerg/Tyranids/Things intruding from elsewhere. Again, Pretty much all you want is a fortress to keep their forces in and a way to deploy relatively easily anywhere on their worlds and ask for reinforcements when needed (the portals themselves do this job). This particular threat also has the bonus effect of serving as a reason to why the mortals don't try to take over (more often than they probably do anyway) and why they possibly sign up to work with this organization. No such thing as a perfect army that can protect everyone every time after all, specially against an enemy that literally falls out of the sky (or burrows up from the ground? However it happens).

[The_Russian_Col]

[QUOTE=Mechalich;23664315]Without extremely advanced technologies, it would be difficult for any organization to maintain authority across a Ringworld. Ringworld's are stupefying in their immensity. The original Ringworld had a surface area equivalent to ~3 million Earths. A Ringworld is sufficiently big that the speed of light comes into play as a communications barrier. For a Ringworld with a diameter of Earth's orbit, the opposite side of the ring is 16 light minutes away. Without positing some sort of hyper-advanced intelligence in control - which might as well be a god even if its only a super-intelligent AI - creating a functional bureaucracy and management structure at that scale is an exercise in absurdity

Why would the speed of light make any difference? Why would it matter?

[Draken]

[QUOTE=The_Russian_Col;23664584]

Without extremely advanced technologies, it would be difficult for any organization to maintain authority across a Ringworld. Ringworld's are stupefying in their immensity. The original Ringworld had a surface area equivalent to ~3 million Earths. A Ringworld is sufficiently big that the speed of light comes into play as a communications barrier. For a Ringworld with a diameter of Earth's orbit, the opposite side of the ring is 16 light minutes away. Without positing some sort of hyper-advanced intelligence in control - which might as well be a god even if its only a super-intelligent AI - creating a functional bureaucracy and management structure at that scale is an exercise in absurdity

Why would the speed of light make any difference? Why would it matter?

Mechalich is assuming your ringworld comprises of a ring structure that encompasses a full planetary orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-likened star. Which means that the various sections of it can be far enough away from each other that even with modern communications technology, there would be a modest delay between when a message is sent and when it is delivered.

[Mechalich]

Mechalich is assuming your ringworld comprises of a ring structure that encompasses a full planetary orbit within the habitable zone of a Sun-likened star. Which means that the various sections of it can be far enough away from each other that even with modern communications technology, there would be a modest delay between when a message is sent and when it is delivered.

Yes. So if you have a Ringworld with a diameter of Earth's orbit, a radio message sent from one point on the ringworld to another point 180 degrees away on the opposite side, it takes 16 minutes to get there - 8 minutes to reach the sun, 8 minutes to go from the sun to the other side - and 16 minutes more to get back. Additionally, if you have some kind of 'central control hub' that oversees your Ringworld, it takes it 8 minutes to receive any information and 8 minutes to send a reply, making it's oversight always out of day unless you're using faster-than-light communication (which D&D gods explicitly have, but I mean, it just seems kind of ridiculous). Mostly the point here is to emphasize that any Ringworld, even one that orbits really close to a very small red dwarf, is going to be stupidly big.

And by stupidly big, I generally mean 'big well beyond your capacity to fill it' as a designer. Again, if you take the stereotypical Niven-based ringworld design and divide it into Earth-sized realms, you now have 3 million realms. If each one is controlled by a demigod, your organization of demigod controllers has 3 million members, making each demigod a tiny grunt (or a minor processor node) and requiring numerous hierarchical layers of management above them.

[Bohandas]

How are they pantheists? They worship "the creator". That's monotheism: "the one deity made the world".

If they believe that other gods exist but they only worship one, that's henotheism.

Pantheists believe "god is the world".

I think his intent is something closer to pantheonic. Its members are demigods

[JoshuaZ]

You could use strings of semaphore telegraph stations linking the various portals. This sort of system, sometimes called an optical telegraph, wasn't invented until the end of the 1700s but there's nothing fundamentally in the technology which couldn't exist at a much lower tech level. It would be still very difficult to control an entire ringworld, but it would at least help the communication part. Messages with an optical telegraph aren't instant but they can go across a continent size region in a few hours.

[Eldan]

Yes. So if you have a Ringworld with a diameter of Earth's orbit, a radio message sent from one point on the ringworld to another point 180 degrees away on the opposite side, it takes 16 minutes to get there - 8 minutes to reach the sun, 8 minutes to go from the sun to the other side - and 16 minutes more to get back. Additionally, if you have some kind of 'central control hub' that oversees your Ringworld, it takes it 8 minutes to receive any information and 8 minutes to send a reply, making it's oversight always out of day unless you're using faster-than-light communication (which D&D gods explicitly have, but I mean, it just seems kind of ridiculous). Mostly the point here is to emphasize that any Ringworld, even one that orbits really close to a very small red dwarf, is going to be stupidly big.

And by stupidly big, I generally mean 'big well beyond your capacity to fill it' as a designer. Again, if you take the stereotypical Niven-based ringworld design and divide it into Earth-sized realms, you now have 3 million realms. If each one is controlled by a demigod, your organization of demigod controllers has 3 million members, making each demigod a tiny grunt (or a minor processor node) and requiring numerous hierarchical layers of management above them.

In actuality, probably longer than that. Because you certainly can't send a radio message through the sun and I'm willing to bet you can't send one close by the sun either, without unmanagable interference, so you'd need relay station, say every 30° of the ring or so.

[Eldan]

You could use strings of semaphore telegraph stations linking the various portals. This sort of system, sometimes called an optical telegraph, wasn't invented until the end of the 1700s but there's nothing fundamentally in the technology which couldn't exist at a much lower tech level. It would be still very difficult to control an entire ringworld, but it would at least help the communication part. Messages with an optical telegraph aren't instant but they can go across a continent size region in a few hours.

If we assume, say, 10 hours across Europe, 4000km spain to Moscow, just as a basic estimate.
Diameter of the Earth's orbit, as a vague reference for our ringworld: 940 million km
So, half diameter, 4.7*10^8 km distance for 180° around the ring.
At 400 km per hour, 1175000 hours.
Or roughly 48958 days.
Or just over 134 years.

I don't think that's effective. Could you imagine if someone up in the hierarchy somewhere made a decision and it took over a hundred years for people on the other side to find out?

Quite frankly, a ringworld-sized organisation is just not possible, without either reasonably advanced technology (lasers or radio) or magic (teleportation or telepathy.)

[Mechalich]

In actuality, probably longer than that. Because you certainly can't send a radio message through the sun and I'm willing to bet you can't send one close by the sun either, without unmanagable interference, so you'd need relay station, say every 30° of the ring or so.

You could put a hub station slightly above or below the sun though. You'd lose some amount of time from taking an angled path as a result, but it would probably be only a few percent.

[Eldan]

You could put a hub station slightly above or below the sun though. You'd lose some amount of time from taking an angled path as a result, but it would probably be only a few percent.

Oh, fair point. I didn't think of polar satellites. I was thinking of ground-based relays, I didn't consider this civilization might have spacefaring technology.

[JoshuaZ]

If we assume, say, 10 hours across Europe, 4000km spain to Moscow, just as a basic estimate.
Diameter of the Earth's orbit, as a vague reference for our ringworld: 940 million km
So, half diameter, 4.7*10^8 km distance for 180° around the ring.
At 400 km per hour, 1175000 hours.
Or roughly 48958 days.
Or just over 134 years.

I don't think that's effective. Could you imagine if someone up in the hierarchy somewhere made a decision and it took over a hundred years for people on the other side to find out?

Quite frankly, a ringworld-sized organisation is just not possible, without either reasonably advanced technology (lasers or radio) or magic (teleportation or telepathy.)

Hmm, ok, so you can use an upgraded version where the stations are further apart and they use telescopes to see each other. In this context, there's normally a limit on a normal planet to how far they can be apart because one cannot see over the horizon, but for a ringworld that's not a problem. You should be able to put stations at least 10 times as far apart (much further and optical issues as well as inevitable weather issues become too much of a problem). Hmm, that means that it is still taking around 10 years to send a message. That's not great. Yeah, my suggestion doesn't really work.

[brian 333]

Larry Niven used a heliograph network in which parabolic mirrors focused light from the sun and by aiming the reflection and rocking the mirror a blinking language similar to Morse Code could be used to relay messages around the ring.

But what's wrong with good old radio? You aren't dependent upon anything but your power supply and your antenna's efficiency, and to get a signal to the far side you need only have a relay. (Assume a minimum of three stations total at 0, 120, and 240 degrees. Radio is line-of-sight, so the more stations the merrier. Put sixteen total, staggered eight to each side, on the rim walls, and you get full time broadcasts, all weather, all the time.

Enter DJ Pak on the 24 hour news and information station.

Radio is cheap and very low-tech. It might be more difficult to manufacture and transport massive mirrors needed for Niven's heliograph network.

[Xuc Xac]

But what's wrong with good old radio?

It has limited bandwidth. That's actually where we got the term "bandwidth". In the US, the FCC assigns each frequency a particular use in a given area to keep signals from overlapping. There are a limited number of frequencies and each one can only be used once in a given area without interference.

It's easy enough to divide the spectrum among the radio stations, TV stations, ham radio operators, cell phone towers, CB radios, etc. in each city or county. If you had to divide the spectrum for stations spread across an area the size of several million Earths, there's just no way.

Look at the radio and TV stations in your town and imagine if you had to share those with the whole planet. Instead of the country station, the classic rock station, the hip hop station, NPR, and everything else, you'd be lucky to have one station dedicated to English language programming. We probably couldn't use it for anything frivolous like music and talk shows. They would have to be dedicated emergency alert stations or something.

[lightningcat]

Oh, fair point. I didn't think of polar satellites. I was thinking of ground-based relays, I didn't consider this civilization might have spacefaring technology.

Even using something like a fiberoptic ring around the edge would only take a maximum of an hour to get information back to you. Which is only slightly slower then old dialup was.
Although in an advanced society, you would want a cache server every 1 degree or so around the ring. While direct communication would be a pain, information propogation would be easy enough.

Maybe this setting is similar to Lords of Light, in that the "gods" just have access to advanced technology that the people don't have. With CONCORD being the training ground for the next generation.

[Eldan]

Fun idea, having the "gods" live at the edge of the world, too. Seems flavourful. Then you could have 360 gods, one for each degree of ring, and have each of them sit on a cache server that synchs once a day or so via massive fibreoptic cables on the outside of the ring.

[TheYell]

Niven and Pournelle had Louis Wu facetiously hypothesize about mutant parrots, bred for lung capacity, who shriek to each other in relays

[brian 333]

It has limited bandwidth. That's actually where we got the term "bandwidth". In the US, the FCC assigns each frequency a particular use in a given area to keep signals from overlapping. There are a limited number of frequencies and each one can only be used once in a given area without interference.

It's easy enough to divide the spectrum among the radio stations, TV stations, ham radio operators, cell phone towers, CB radios, etc. in each city or county. If you had to divide the spectrum for stations spread across an area the size of several million Earths, there's just no way.

Look at the radio and TV stations in your town and imagine if you had to share those with the whole planet. Instead of the country station, the classic rock station, the hip hop station, NPR, and everything else, you'd be lucky to have one station dedicated to English language programming. We probably couldn't use it for anything frivolous like music and talk shows. They would have to be dedicated emergency alert stations or something.

None of which are insoluble problems. Remember that on Earth the main issue is curvature, which limits your range to the horizon as seen from the top of your mast, and creates shadows behind mountains. On a ringworld, curvature works in your favor, your mast need only be high enough to avoid local shadows, and your range is only limited by the power of the broadcast. Conceivably, three towers in a network could cover the whole system with no shadows. In some places you'll only have two stations overlap, but in most places you'll have three, so you have three frequencies to worry about. At about two-thirds the world's diameter between stations, (do the math yourself if you like,) you'll have about ten minutes lag between the origin and the repeater stations.

Note that WWL, an AM radio station based in New Orleans, bounces its signal off the ionosphere at night achieving ranges from the Rocky Mountains to Canada to the Appalachians. When I was traveling regularly I could tune in to WWL an hour or so after dark from almost anywhere and listen to replays of 1950s radio plays.

Edit: Stupid me! I forgot about Niven's Ringworld having an EM grid built in. Tie your radio into that and you need only one station, pretty much anywhere, and you have a worldwide antenna.

[Xuc Xac]

None of which are insoluble problems. Remember that on Earth the main issue is curvature, which limits your range to the horizon as seen from the top of your mast, and creates shadows behind mountains.

It has nothing to do with distance. There is a limited number of frequencies. To use your AM radio example, there are only 106 AM radio bands in the spectrum. That's just a fact of physics: that's how wide the AM radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum is. You can only fit 106 stations in that space. You can't do any scifi technobabble like "broadcasting on a narrower frequency" to fit more in the same space because narrower frequencies aren't AM radio anymore. If you try to narrow the frequency, you change bands and move up to short wave radio, then VHF (for rabbit ear TVs) and FM radio (which only has 100 bands squeezed in between VHF 6 and VHF 7).

It's not a problem on Earth because the limited range is a good thing. Limited range means you can have up to 106 AM stations in one town then go a hundred miles away or so and have 106 different stations broadcasting on the same bands.

On Earth, you only have to share those 106 AM bands in a small area. You can reuse the same band hundreds or thousands of times around the world because their broadcast areas don't overlap. On a ring world with unlimited range, you could only use each band once without interference problems and you only have 106 AM bands to share with an area the size of millions of Earths.

[TheHighWayMan]

It seems to me that you have already outlined a quick and efficient method of communication, the portals that are used by CONCORD to travel between realms. Now presumably these portals are permanent static affairs (opening a new portal up every time you wanted to get to a different realm would prove prohibitively difficult and costly for anyone), this means they should theoretically be able to be used in a similar means to an Einstein-Rosen Bridge (a wormhole). This would help explain the physics behind the portals that CONCORD uses for an instantaneous means of crossing vast distances. This means that not only should you be able to send people and animals through these portals but also information - telegraph wires through portals and the like. This would allow a message to skip vast segments of the work altogether going straight from one realm to another. You would then be left with the comparatively much easier task of delivering the message within a realm - assuming that each realm uses a fairly advanced/direct telegraph system this means you could expect someone to get a message within 2 - 3 hours max

But wait hold up, what if CONCORD is not advanced enough to have telegraph wires and simple bursts of light cannot get through their portals?
The answer to this is also a simple one, although slightly more time-consuming. Use the portals yet again, although instead of using telegraph wires use some-type of Construct. You could make each portal feed back to some hyper organised set of portal nexuses where the constructs could be programmed to quickly and efficiently find their destination portal and deliver their messages, where it could then be taken up by some form of optic light tower. It is worth noting that this method would probably take significantly longer depending on which realm you were trying to deliver, although as long as CONCORD uses a highly organised portal nexus structure and rather swift Constructs I estimate that it will only take a day and a half tops.

[brian 333]

It has nothing to do with distance. There is a limited number of frequencies. To use your AM radio example, there are only 106 AM radio bands in the spectrum. That's just a fact of physics: that's how wide the AM radio part of the electromagnetic spectrum is. You can only fit 106 stations in that space. You can't do any scifi technobabble like "broadcasting on a narrower frequency" to fit more in the same space because narrower frequencies aren't AM radio anymore. If you try to narrow the frequency, you change bands and move up to short wave radio, then VHF (for rabbit ear TVs) and FM radio (which only has 100 bands squeezed in between VHF 6 and VHF 7).

It's not a problem on Earth because the limited range is a good thing. Limited range means you can have up to 106 AM stations in one town then go a hundred miles away or so and have 106 different stations broadcasting on the same bands.

On Earth, you only have to share those 106 AM bands in a small area. You can reuse the same band hundreds or thousands of times around the world because their broadcast areas don't overlap. On a ring world with unlimited range, you could only use each band once without interference problems and you only have 106 AM bands to share with an area the size of millions of Earths.

With three stations, AM is suitable for the situation. You don't need hundreds of stations. You could have many more than the required minimum of three, of course, if you wanted them.

[Xuc Xac]

With three stations, AM is suitable for the situation. You don't need hundreds of stations. You could have many more than the required minimum of three, of course, if you wanted them.

You don't seem to understand the problem. There are 106 AM radio frequencies in total throughout the universe. That's just how the EM spectrum is. On a convex surface, like a spherical planet, the horizon limits your range, so you can reuse those same frequencies in non-overlapping areas.

On a concave surface, like a ringworld, there is no horizon. You can broadcast a signal to the entire ring with only 3 broadcast stations, but so can everyone else. On a ringworld with a surface area equivalent to millions of planets, "everyone else" is a lot of people to share those 106 frequencies with. The noise would make it useless.

Think of it this way: On a ringworld, you have quintillions of people with unlimited cellphone reception, but they have to share 1000 phone numbers among all of them. When you call your friend Bob at number 947, his phone rings but so do the phones of a few quadrillion other people who are on the same line with him. Even if you shout "I just want to talk to Bob!", he'll never hear you over the garbled mess of countless voices saying "new phone who dis?" in 10^15 different languages.

On a ringworld, broadcasting is useless. You need some kind of tight beam that can be aimed precisely at a receiver, such as a heliograph network based on powerful lasers.

[TheGrimPeddler]

How high are your magic levels? How about your tech levels?

In any case, a novel idea, assuming the portal are static affairs that can't have something running through them contiguously, such as a wire.... Couriers, or "Portal Runners", can be "messengers of the gods of CONCORD". Their job literally to hop through portals, assuming a central hub, and perhaps either deliver the messages personally, or send the message via whatever messaging system they use. Imagine having a text prepped on Earth, stepping through a portal to, say, Titan, and clicking send.

Random aside... Do you play EVE?